This was the fist question we were asked to answer before even beginning discussion on Libra. And what a question it is! Obviously, nobody in the classroom knows who actually killed JFK but the question served as an excellent introduction to the novel. So, who did kill JFK? I didn't get a chance to fully flesh out my answer to the question in class so I thought I would discuss my thoughts on the matter here.
The official story, which only 10% of people believe in, goes that Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist from New Orleans shot JFK in Dallas and fled the scene. He then shot a police man and was arrested. The day after JFK's death, Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby; a man who was so patriotic that he needed to kill the assassin before he could be put on trial.
The official story, which only 10% of people believe in, goes that Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist from New Orleans shot JFK in Dallas and fled the scene. He then shot a police man and was arrested. The day after JFK's death, Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby; a man who was so patriotic that he needed to kill the assassin before he could be put on trial.
I find this act of patriotism to be a little bit too suspicious. Jack Ruby is quoted as saying: "Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world." When asked by a reporter, "Are these people in very high positions Jack?", he responded "Yes.". I believe the shooting of Oswald to be the main cause of suspicion with the official report. I believe that some organization, possibly the mob, organized the entire assassination and used Oswald as a puppet. They didn't want him to talk during the trials so they shut him up.
Of course there is absolutely no way to know what actually happened so speculation is the best thing that we have got. I am excited to read about the new twist on the assassination that Libra offers.
You're right that much of the suspicion stems from Ruby killing Oswald--it just fits the mafia paradigm of eliminating a witness too neatly for comfort. So I need to qualify my earlier claim that the Zapruder film is the source of all the paranoia (as DeLillo reminds us in _Underworld_, it wasn't even publicly available for years).
ReplyDeleteAnd DeLillo manages to account for both possibilities simultaneously with Ruby: he is both acting out of a patriotic/heroic impulse *and* he's put up to it by the mob. I'm amazed at how often DeLillo's narrative manages to allow for seemingly exclusive possibilities to both exist.