Oops, Did We Forget the 45th?

ANNIVERSARIES are not really my thing, if I’m being honest, but one passed at the end of last year without any fuss so far as I could see.

I refer to the 45th anniversary of the shooting of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on 22nd November 1963 (you hadn’t heard?)

I have to confess that my lukewarm view of anniversaries is more than made up for by my obsession with all things to do with the assassination.

I have, over the years, collected books, articles, cuttings, anything on this event – and I have been, until recently, at a loss to say why.

It isn’t because it was the slaying of the hope of the world (Kennedy had feet of clay like all of us and would probably have prosecuted the war with Vietnam with just as much vigour as Johnson), neither it is a gruesome interest in the wounds inflicted or the ballistics involved.

No, after much thought, I’ve come to realise that my obsession with this is because it is a damn good story – its got everything, celebrity (the Kennedys were the David and Victoria of the late 1950s and early 1960s, without the tattoos and trivia), underworld connections, politics, scandal.

In short, you couldn’t make it up – the President is killed, the assassin in captured within minutes, is killed by a guy with known mobster connections, and then – over the succeeding years more and more is revealed about everyone involved.

It just never gets old – Oswald the double agent; Kennedy the risk-taking womaniser; Ruby the man with links all over the place.

And all the names are just so evocative – the Grassy Knoll; the 6th Floor; “that tricky turn onto Elm”; Dealey Plaza; the triple underpass; the magic bullet; Babushka Lady; Umbrella Man; Badge Man – I could go on and on.

It almost doesn’t matter who did it, its just a great story.

Except, of course, it really does matter who did it!

My interest was spiked again by the recent deathbed confession of that old Watergate (don’t get me started on that) alumni E Howard Hunt. Hunt, if we are to believe this tale, “confessed” to his son St. John (it just gets better) that he was part of the conspiracy and that the guy behind it was….Lyndon Johnson!

So, the 36th President had the 35th President killed – and, yet, we cannot bring ourselves to believe it. If it was Columbia or Peru or somewhere in “turbulent” South America we would think it absolutely axiomatic that the vice-president bumped off the president. Of course he did, he had the most to gain.

But, because it’s the good old US of A, we cannot bring ourselves to even think it.

Yes, it was strange the 45th anniversary was not marked in some way or another – the theme of the 25th anniversary in 1988 was that it had to be a conspiracy; by 1993 Gerald Posner and others had convinced (some of) us that Oswald did it on his own. The 40th anniversary simply said it was 40 years since the assassination of JFK.

What will the 50th bring? Will we ever know the truth? I doubt it, but it doesn’t stop the fun!