LEE HARVEY OSWALD

Oswald killed Kennedy.

That simple statement, three weeks out from the fiftieth anniversary of the event, remains more controversial than it needs to be. In any group of five people it’s likely at least two will vehemently disagree, while a third – and possibly a fourth – will have “unanswered questions”.

It was the CIA. It was the Mob. It was pro-Castro Cubans. It was anti-Castro Cubans. It was the military-industrial complex. It was some combination of the above – maybe all of them. There were two gunmen. There were four. Even Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, didn’t “discount the possibility” of a conspiracy – commies, of course (Johnson himself was yet another at whom the finger has been pointed).

All the conspiracy theories ignore one important piece of evidence: the person of Lee Harvey Oswald. Once you understand a little about this enigmatic figure, hidden for fifty years in plain sight, no further explanation is required. The assassination can be seen for what it was – a simple, senseless act of murder.

Why is it important? Stick around, I’ll tell you later.

Profile

Loner. Misfit. Malcontent. Ideologue. All the usual clichés apply. Father, either absent or brutal. Mother, by turns indulgent and manipulative (Interestingly, while the first mass-media assassination has yielded interview upon interview with just about anyone who was in Dallas that day, there are precious few with Mrs Oswald. She always demanded money first).

He was nobody’s dupe, nobody’s patsy, nobody’s sleeper-agent. These demand either gross stupidity or respect for an authority beyond oneself. Oswald possessed neither.

Here was a guy who taught himself Russian, then read the classics, before defecting to the Soviet Union. His diary entries from the return trip reveal profound disillusionment. He’d hoped to discover a paradise of freedom and equality. Instead he found hypocrisy – just another society where, in his eyes, the politico-military elite oppressed the people by means of centralised government. He could have that back at home.

It’s at about this time, it seems, that his thoughts began to coalesce. No definite plan yet, but the germ of an idea. If the world was going to change, he’d have to strike the blow himself.

Objections and Evidence

Conspiracists raise countless objections to Oswald being the shooter or, if he was, to the idea he acted alone. I’ll deal, briefly, with just three.

First and most famous, the “magic bullet” – also known as the “pristine bullet” due to its being, it is said, improbably intact after doing impossible damage. This, Oliver Stone notwithstanding, is nonsense. Repeated computer reconstructions and ballistic experiments have shown a single bullet would not only follow the course described in (what doubters call) the official version, but would arrive in much the same condition.

The first objection intersects the second. We’ll call it “Back, and to the left” – Oswald couldn’t be the only gunman because of the nature of the wound, and the way the President’s body reacted to the head-shot. There had to have been a second sniper, in front of the motorcade, on the grassy-knoll.

Again, live-fire experiments – on everything from ballistics gel to live goats to gel-packed human skulls – have reproduced identical wound-patterns with a shot from behind.

And then, as he had on most days for twenty-five years, Kennedy was wearing a back-brace. The Zapruder film shows what happened. At the moment of impact the President’s head pitches forward for an instant. Then the combined force of the exiting bullet, the back-brace restraining his torso, and his skull exploding like an overripe watermelon, jerks him upright and back as he slumps over sideways. Isaac Newton would have understood.

Finally, we’re told that Oswald possessed neither the time nor the skill to make the shots. To the contrary, Oswald, an ex-marine, was a proficient marksman. He had a serviceable rifle with a telescopic sight. He had an excellent firing position with good visibility and little cross-wind. He had a clear target moving slowly along his line of vision. And he had seven-point-one seconds to discharge the three recorded shots.

These facts alone – viewed dispassionately – render flights of fancy about magic bullets, doppelgangers and puffs of smoke on the grassy-knoll superfluous.

Oswald’s Razor

Lee Harvey Oswald was an incurable malcontent. He held strident yet amorphous political views, based on not only the rejection but the destruction of all authority. Abortive attempts to find his place in the world – the Marine Corps; Russia; a rejected application for residency in Mexico – fuelled a growing resentment.

Reeling from one frustration to the next, he began to lash out. Oswald frequented various, often opposing, political organisations, causing trouble wherever he went. Seven months before the Kennedy killing he fired a bullet into the Dallas home of Major-General Edwin A Walker. Walker (unlike Kennedy, unencumbered by a surgical corset) was able to take cover. Thwarted again, Oswald went back to trouble-making – until fate delivered the most powerful man in the world to the street under his window.

As we’ve seen, there is no good reason to believe Oswald didn’t kill the President. The School Book Depository was immediately searched, and an improvised sniper’s nest discovered at the sixth-floor corner window.

Descriptions – and the name – of a man seen leaving the area led, within the hour, to Oswald being stopped in the street by patrolman JD Tippet. In front of witnesses, he shot Tippet four times. Lest there be any doubt about the eyewitness accounts, they led officers to a cinema nearby. Here, Oswald was arrested, still holding a gun. The chain of events is incontrovertible.

Unseen Hands

So, why is any of this important? Belief in conspiracy theories is rarely harmless. At best, it distracts us from real problems. At worst it leads to dangerous extremes.

It’s a palliative, a white-noise ego massage. We’re in on the secret. We know the truth but are relieved of responsibility. “They” are much too powerful – we can do nothing but bleat.

Whether it’s the Kennedy assassination, the charge that the Royal Family killed Princess Diana, or the belief that the US Government caused 9/11, conspiracist-thinking can have unforeseen consequences.

The first two instances – leaving aside the simple, human pain of those caught in the crossfire – have led to endless inquiries, chasing absurd leads, employing public resources that could be much better used elsewhere.

The third is more interesting. While millions believe the Bush Administration carried-out the 9/11 attacks, the Administration’s own belief in a global Islamist conspiracy diverted its attention from the small group that actually did the deed – leading them to invade Iraq in search of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Conspiracy theories come in many flavours. Which ones we choose to believe is dictated by our political, social, intellectual or ethnic prejudices.

Fifty years on from Dallas, we’re also seventy-odd years from a bigger, more brutal event that scarred the twentieth-century.

It’s worth pausing to reflect on just what, in favourable circumstances, can be accomplished by a small, angry man with big ideas.

And on what can happen when enough, otherwise rational, people give credence to the notion that history is directed by unseen, all-powerful hands.