John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.
A great deal of controversy surrounds his assassination: Was there a larger conspiracy? Were there additional shooters? Was organized crime involved? Was the government hiding the truth?
While the 1964 report of the Warren Commission’s investigation (named after its chair, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren) said there was no such conspiracy (see previous blog entry), a later investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978-1979) allowed that there may have been another shooter (but found that Russia, Cuba, and organized crime as a collective group were not involved). Conspiracy theories persisted because many government records were not made public. The President John F. Kennedy Records Collection Act of 1992 (106 Stat. 3443) created an independent Assassination Records Review Board to collect and review all records related to the assassination, and make as many as possible available to the public as a collection in the National Archives. That collection consists of “more than 5 million pages of assassination-related records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts.”
Andersen Library has materials you can use to learn more. Search HALCAT (the Harold Andersen Library Catalog) to find books such as The Kennedy assassination tapes (3rd-Floor Main Collection, E842.9 .J6425 2004), A concise compendium of the Warren Commission report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy (3rd-Floor Main Collection, E842.9 .A55 1964c), and the Final report of the Assassination Records Review Board (2nd-floor U.S. Federal Documents Y 3.2:AS 7/R 29, or online). There are historical newspaper databases you can search to find articles, e.g, Access NewspaperARCHIVE and the historical Chicago Tribune and New York Times.
Please ask a librarian for assistance with finding materials.
UWW’s Andersen Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and online. Come check out your government at Andersen Library!
There is significant evidence now to suggest that there was a conspiracy surrounding the JFK assassination. Just about everyone recognizes that the Warren Report was compromised.