Warren Commission: Oswald Acted Alone in JFK Murder

Ten months after President John F. Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, the commission charged with investigating his assassination delivered its findings. On September 27, 1964, the Warren Commission released an 888-page report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, had fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, killing Kennedy and wounding Texas Governor John Connally. Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald on live television two days later, had also acted alone. Chief Justice Earl Warren had accepted the chairmanship reluctantly, and the seven-member commission included prominent figures from both parties: Senator Richard Russell, Senator John Sherman Cooper, Representative Hale Boggs, Representative Gerald Ford, former CIA Director Allen Dulles, and banker John J. McCloy. The commission heard testimony from 552 witnesses and reviewed thousands of documents. The report's central conclusion rested on what critics later called the "single bullet theory." The commission determined that one of Oswald's three rounds passed through Kennedy's neck and then struck Connally, causing multiple wounds. This trajectory was necessary to explain how both men were hit while only three shell casings were found at the scene. Commission member Arlen Specter developed the theory, which many Americans found physically implausible. Public skepticism was immediate and enduring. Polls taken in the decades after the report consistently showed that a majority of Americans believed in some form of conspiracy involving the CIA, the Mafia, Cuba, the Soviet Union, or elements within the U.S. government. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979 that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy," though this finding was later challenged on methodological grounds. The Warren Commission's records were sealed for 75 years, fueling suspicion that the government was hiding evidence. Successive presidents have ordered partial releases, with the final batch scheduled for 2039. Whether the Warren Commission found the truth or buried it remains the most debated question in American criminal history.