To Kill A President
Four United States Presidents have been assassinated.
In 1881, President James Garfield was shot in the back by Charles Julius Guiteau, who believed that Garfield was the architect of a vast conspiracy to remove a faction of his political enemies from Congress.
President William McKinley was killed in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, who confessed to the killing and shortly before his execution stated: “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people! I did it for the help of the good people, the working men of all countries!”
President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth in 1865. Conspiracy theories surrounded the assassination almost immediately. Evidence supporting the idea that the Confederacy was involved in the plot emerged as late as 1995. In 1977 historians discovered a statement from a convicted co-conspirator, George Atzerodt, that was made before his trial. Atzerodt told of Booth’s knowledge of a Confederate plot to blow up the White House. Additional evidence was disclosed in 1988 and 1995 by William Tidwell and others, in two books describing the Confederate conspiracy. The latest, released in 1995 is “April ’65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War”. Proponents of the Confederate grand conspiracy point out that as the Confederacy’s situation deteriorated, the South became more daring and desperate in their efforts to end the war.
President John F. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald in November, 1963. Oswald had no obvious motive for killing the President like Garfield’s killer and did not appear to be mentally deranged. Indeed, his statements to the press were quite reasoned and calm. [See previous blog with link to Oswald statements]. He did not blurt out a confession like McKinley’s assassin. Thus conspiracy theories quickly arose. The history surrounding the Lincoln assassination demonstrates that evidence relating to the motives and circumstances surrounding such a conspiracy can take decades to uncover. In the Kennedy’s case, certain evidence was admittedly concealed from the first investigators. The Select Committee report conceded that there was a conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination [see previous blogs for a link to the report].
The Lincoln assassination demonstrates another important element of a plot to kill a President. If the perpetrator is not deranged, plot must be driven by urgent motivations – the death of the Confederacy, for example. Americans have far more simple ways of getting rid of unpopular presidents – elections.
Finally, the Lincoln assassination demonstrates that when a powerful lobby (the Confederacy) wants to kill a President, they try several different means. Blowing up the White House, hiring an assassin. Other historians have speculated that Confederate agents even tried to poison Lincoln. This simple fact undermines the entire theory behind the Warren Commission report. The Commission focused on the shooter and the path of the bullet. But there could have been many shooters at various places who were prepared to carry out orders. Oswald happened to succeed. the focus on Oswald rather than on possible motivations and actors was either a foolish oversight or the result of a corrupt investigative process – one that could have been influenced and molded by the perpetrators themselves. Chief among the suspects is the FBI, who served as the investigative body for the Warren Commission although they released a report that “Oswald Acted Alone” just days after the assassination.
The formal Kennedy investigations do not indicate any serious investigation into who might have had such motives. One of the most highly motivated actors – then Vice President Johnson – was not investigated at all, even though his ties to the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover and his ability to use political influence to cover up such a crime would have been known by the investigators.
Subsequent events give credence to the theory that a powerful political group planned the Kennedy assassination and the cover up. The delays in releasing evidence (until 2017) are themselves evidence of a possible cover up. Why else delay the disclosure of such evidence for so long?
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