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Dawson Snow
Professor Lindsay
English 102
21 August 2013
How The CIA Got Away With Murder
There was a light mist of rain in Dallas Texas on November 22, 1963. President
Kennedy was going on a drive in his limousine. At 12:29 central time the limousine, with
President Kennedy, drives by the Book Depository. Moments later witnesses say three
gunshots are heard. The first bullet misses the limousine. The second bullet, strikes the
president straight in the chest as he gasps for air and hits Governor Connelly in the back.
The final bullet hits the president in the head. Lee Harvey Oswald was spotted by police
officer J.D. Tippit that witnessed him on the 6th floor of the Book Depository. Gunman
Oswald is spotted 20 minutes later fleeing from the scene. Tippit chases him and gets killed
by Oswald. Over an hour later Oswald is arrested at the Texas Theater in Oak Cliff.
Interestingly, Jack Ruby, a night club owner, shoots and kills Oswald in the basement of the
Dallas Police Department a couple days later. Although this case seems to get straight to the
point with Oswald supposedly killing Kennedy, he in fact was not the only person involved
in killing J.F.K. Most people believe that there was a conspiracy with the CIA involved.
The death of Kennedy brought many suspects. The first on the list is the CIA with
revenge from the “Bay of Pigs” event. The major sources of controversies is who killed the
president and why? There are many possibilities for why the CIA wanted to kill Kennedy.
Besides the CIA alone, there are at least three other possible killers. Oswald, the Cubans, or
a mafia group could have killed Kennedy.
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Lee Harvey Oswald was an American spy that had also served some time as a sharp
shooter in the Marines. The Marines also taught him how to speak Russian. In an
bibliography about Oswald called “Lee Harvey Oswald Bibliography,“ experts persist that
when Oswald was 18 years old he had been through 22 residencies and lived in the USSR
for several years. While he lived in the USSR, now known as Russia, Oswald was suspected
of being a spy after he attempted suicide. He then immediately fled to Minsk, just west of
the USSR where he got married. Doctors had said that he had a “personality disorder,“ at
the age of 14 (“Lee Harvey Oswald Bibliography”). Later Oswald moved back to the states
and created detailed maps of Cuba.
Two years prior to Kennedy’s assassination, Fidel Castro took over Cuba and
declared the country as communist. Immediately after the United States broke up
diplomatic relations. The CIA had planned on a attack on Cuba. The event was called the
“Bay of Pigs.” President Eisenhower was at the head of the operation when Kennedy took
over. 1400 men were sent to the coast of Cuba while another small group was sent to the
opposite coast to confuse the Cubans. Meanwhile two airstrikes were planned but the first
one went unsuccessful. The ground troops were destroyed. Kennedy canceled the second
airstrike because he didn‘t want a nuclear war with Cuba and the Russians. Many of the
soldiers were killed in actions and were held as prisoners. This event made the CIA enraged
that Kennedy wouldn‘t send the air support for the second airstrike..
Perhaps the Cubans could have killed Kennedy to pay back for all the times that
Kennedy tried killing Fidel Castro. Shortly after the “Bay of Pigs” event, in 1962 the Cuban
Missile crisis heated up real quick. A spy plane had spotted some nuclear bombs in Cuba
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and took some photos. When the photos were given to Kennedy, he had a further
investigation done to make sure that there was nuclear bombs in Cuba. When the second
spy plane scoured the sky looking for more evidence, the plane was shot down by the
soviets. This event was then further heated up and the two countries nearly had a nuclear
war. Both the USSR and the United States knew how devastating a nuclear war would be.
Kennedy especially took the calmest and friendliest method of dealing with the nuclear
bombs in Cuba. He set up a blockade in the coast so that no Russian ships could make their
way to Cuba without being checked for bombs. In an article “Cuban Missile Crisis,” the
author said “No one was sure how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would respond to the
naval blockade and U.S. demands”(“Cuban Missile Crisis”). Later on agreements were made
