JFK Assassination: Still No Answers

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Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I honestly cannot recall any anniversary being as anticipated as this one.

Well, perhaps with the exception of the American bicentennial in 1976 (for consistency's sake, perhaps this should be called the JFK semi–centennial). And maybe it only seems that way to me because I live in Dallas, and the city has been preparing for this anniversary all year (the behind–the–scenes preparations have been going on longer, I'm sure).

I suppose part of the reason it was so anticipated is the sense that, even after 50 years, the Kennedy assassination is an unsolved mystery, a cold case. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot the president, but there were enough loose ends that conspiracy theories flourished, especially after the American public got to see the Zapruder film for the first time.

Doubts persist. A recent Gallup poll shows that more than three–fifths of respondents do not believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Gallup acknowledged that the number is the lowest in nearly 50 years. What Gallup did not point out is that a majority of Americans accepted the Warren Commission's findings until the Zapruder film became public.

Since then, a solid majority of Americans has believed that Oswald did not act alone — if he acted at all.

By modern standards, I suppose the Zapruder film is almost primitive in its quality. But it is the most detailed visual record of a presidential assassination that we have — and, after they saw it, most people had to conclude that the Warren Commission's findings were not supported by the photographic evidence. By the time the Zapruder film was released (more than three years after it was made), the Kennedy assassination was already regarded as the most photographed assassination ever.

(LIFE.com focuses on a different image, one that sums up the global reaction to what happened here 50 years ago today.)

I hope we never have another attempt on a president's life, but if we do, I have to think that will become the most photographed assassination ever, given the number of cell/camera phones that are sure to be in use.

Today in Dealey Plaza — where the shooting took place — there will be a crowd of people holding tickets for a special program planned to commemorate the exact moment on this day in 1963 when the first shot was fired. As it did on that day in 1963, the day has dawned with rain — but it is considerably colder here today than it was then, and the rain doesn't seem likely to clear by midday.

Regardless of how cold it is, these tickets have been as hot as Willy Wonka's golden tickets, and I'm sure there will be few if any no–shows. A monument commemorating the assassination will be unveiled at that time (an "X" already marks the spot in the street where Kennedy suffered the fatal head wound). My understanding is that the program will be televised locally. Portions of it will almost certainly be shown on the national newscasts tonight.

It seems that so much has been said and written about the Kennedy assassination that almost nothing more could possibly be said, but the 50th anniversary is an invitation for all kinds of things — even if they aren't entirely relevant, such as Professor Nicholas Burns' piece in the Boston Globe on the three lessons of the Kennedy presidency (which is a separate topic from his death — as it is and should be for all presidents — and would be a dandy topic on the 100th anniversary of Kennedy's birth, which will be in less than four years but isn't necessarily appropriate on this occasion).

Relevance (or lack thereof) hasn't kept publications like the Los Angeles Times and others from running eyewitness accounts that are interesting but really add nothing to public knowledge of what happened.

For that matter, we know what happened. We continue to obsess over the who (which is also irrelevant). We're still asking the same questions. United Press International, for example, ran a piece a few days ago wondering who was responsible for the assassination.

Such things are to be expected, I suppose, but it has always struck me as inexcusable that so much time and energy should be wasted on speculating about who was responsible without determining why Kennedy was killed. I am certainly not a criminal investigator, but it seems to me that, if you answer the why, the rest should fall into place.

Larry Sabato, of whom I have written here before, wrote last week about five persistent myths about Kennedy. Most, like his points that the 1960 Nixon–Kennedy debates did not propel Kennedy to victory in the election that year or that JFK was not the liberal he is perceived to have been, come as no surprise to anyone with an interest in history.

Likewise, Tricia Escobedo's piece for CNN.com purports to tell readers five things they don't know about the assassination.

But I've been studying the assassination for a long time, and I knew that Oswald wasn't arrested for killing Kennedy. I also knew that the TV networks suspended all other programming for four days to report exclusively on the assassination and related events. And I knew that Judge Sarah Hughes, who swore in Lyndon Johnson on board Air Force One that afternoon, was the first woman to swear in a president.

I also knew that, earlier in 1963, Oswald tried to kill General Edwin Walker, a critic of the Kennedy administration and integration, while Walker was inside his home.

I'm not sure, though, that I knew that assassinating a president was not a federal offense in 1963. Interesting to know — at least from an historian's perspective — but of no real value when trying to answer the still unanswered questions.

Fred Kaplan of Slate.com, a onetime believer in conspiracy theories, recently devoted his energies to debunking them even though he acknowledged that "[t]here's no space to launch a full rebuttal" — apparently not even in cyberspace.

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For a long time, whenever the Kennedy assassination has been the topic of conversation, the focus has been on whether it was the result of a conspiracy and who really fired the fatal shot.

America should have been asking why, not who. After half a century, I think it is too late.

Of Myths, Heroism and Flight 93

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I realize that this is a weekend of somber reflection, of remembering the thousands of lives that were lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11.

And I realize that it is true, as President Clinton said during his remarks at the dedication of the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania, that there has always been a special place in the American heart and memory for heroes who sacrificed themselves for others.

But one of the things my mother taught me was that there is true value in genuinely inspiring words and deeds, and I don't think what happened with Flight 93 was exactly what we have been told.

I agree that the story of that flight is very moving. It is tragic, as are the accounts of the other three hijacked flights, but it differs from the other three primarily in one way — the passengers on Flight 93 had the benefit of the knowledge that everyone on the ground had, that other flights had been turned into missiles that had struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Those other three plane crashes happened so rapidly that relatively few passengers on those flights probably knew what was happening. It was that element of simultaneous surprise that the terrorists apparently were counting on — to strike before anyone realized what was happening.

But there was a delay in the departure of Flight 93, and it disrupted their timing. It wasn't terribly long as these things go (I've been through worse even though I have never been a frequent flier), but it was long enough that, after the flight finally was airborne, the pilot and co–pilot nearly got a general warning from the ground about hijackings, and it was long enough for the passengers to learn what had happened in New York and Washington.

That gave them some time to consider their situation — and their response.

Consequently, many people have accepted the myth that has emerged that the passengers revolted as some sort of selfless sense of patriotism and sacrifice swelled within them.

I don't doubt that they were patriotic, but neither am I convinced that their motives were as altruistic as we have been told for the last 10 years, either.

If they put two and two together — as most of them apparently did — they must have realized that their plane was not going to land safely. They must have realized they were part of a suicide mission. They must have known that it was almost certain that they would die — unless some sort of miracle happened and they were able to take control of the plane and one of the passengers could, either alone or with assistance from the ground, manage to land it.

I'm reminded of a scene from the movie "Lenny" about comedian Lenny Bruce. In the movie, Dustin Hoffman re–created segments from Bruce's shows, including one about the famous Zapruder film, the graphic account of the JFK assassination.

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After the fatal shot, Jackie Kennedy could be seen climbing from her seat onto the trunk of the car and a Secret Service agent coming forward to help her back into her seat. A sequence of photos from the film was published nationally (in TIME, I think) with a caption that said something about how the first lady gave no thought to her personal safety and tried to shield the president from further gunshots.

Bruce/Hoffman said it was a "dirty lie."

"I think that, when she saw the president get it and the governor get it, she decided to get the hell out of there," he said. I agree. I think it was a split–second decision, reaction without reflection. Human instinct.

If she had had more time to think about it, she might have said yes, she would try to protect her husband if she saw he had been hurt.

But others assigned more meaning to it than that.

That's the feeling I get when I hear people speak of the passengers' revolt on Flight 93. They speak of them as if they sat in the back of that hijacked plane and had an in–depth discussion of American history and the principles of freedom and democracy — and then voted to stand up to terrorism.

I'm not saying that the passengers of Flight 93 reacted without any reflection. And the fact that they forced that plane to go down in a Pennsylvania field instead of Washington probably did save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

But I don't think that possibility crossed their minds. I think they were thinking only of their own survival. And that isn't a bad thing. It's a normal human instinct — self–preservation.

I've read the transcripts and heard the recordings that have been released to the public. I recall one of the passengers telling the others, "In the cockpit ... if we don't, we'll die!"

I have heard nothing about passengers shouting "Give me liberty or give me death!" or any other patriotic slogans from American history.

Their fates were sealed when that plane left the ground, but they mentally resisted that knowledge. They weren't thinking beyond the moment and doing whatever they could to live to the next moment ... and the next and the next.

There was, I should add, a certain poignance in Vice President Joe Biden's words about rising to the occasion and overcoming adversity. As a young senator–elect, Biden's life was forever altered by the loss of his first wife and their small daughter in a car accident, and for a time he considered leaving politics, but he did not.

Nor did he withdraw from life. He raised his sons the best he could and re–married a few years later. And his nearly four decades of public service stand as testimony to his survival.

Perhaps that will be the future inspiration of September 11 — the way the friends and relatives of the victims rose from the ashes and survived and persevered.

Things were over fairly quickly for the passengers of the planes. Sometimes just surviving is the hardest part.