John F. Kennedy Shooting Discussed in Lecture

By: Emily Sirois
Posted In: News

“After 40 Years, Who Killed JFK?”, a two part lecture that featured Dr. Phillip Melanson, chancellor professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, took place on November 18 and 19 at Salve Regina University’s O’Hare Academic Center.

Melanson said that the background to his main hypothesis focuses on the politics and intrigues surrounding Kennedy’s assassination. Melanson said that the CIA held Kennedy personally responsible for the Bay of Pigs affair in 1961, but Kennedy felt betrayed and took its covert powers away.

Melanson showed several slides during his lecture, including slides of the memos related to Kennedy’s potential withdrawal of 1000 troops from Vietnam by the end of 1963. Melanson said that there was quite a sense of desperation and that the CIA needed to create some form of invasion of Cuba through a full fledged military action in order to get rid of Fidel Castro.

“If Kennedy was killed by a supporter of Castro, the two motives of the CIA would be to get rid of a soft president and to get rid of Castro,” Melanson said.

Lee Harvey Oswald served in the Civil Air Patrol in New Orleans when he was fifteen and David Ferry, the leader, had known connections to the CIA. Melanson also said that Oswald quickly learned to speak Russian fluently when he was in the Marines and his wife had ties to the Russian FBI. After getting discharged three months early from the Marines, Oswald headed straight for Moscow, where a U.S. U2 spy plane was shot down in 1960. This ruined President Eisenhower’s chances for a peace summit in Paris with the Russians. This event occurred after Eisenhower had warned Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, to stop using the spy planes.

Melanson said that he believes that Oswald was framed, but can’t say for sure if he played a role in the assassination. He also said that it is not impossible that Oswald could have been part of a plot to kill the president, given his support to Castro and communism. Melanson also said that Oswald’s going to the movie theater directly after the shooting was a sign for help and a sign that he was in over his head.

He also said that the group Alpha 66, which had defied Kennedy’s ban during the Bay of Pigs affair and had previously tried to kill the president, was composed of CIA officers and was present in Dallas at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. Government agencies and mainstream media also staked their credibility on the fact that Oswald acted alone and wouldn’t admit to mistakes because they may have believed in the “lone assassin” theory themselves, Melanson said.

“Because of the amalgamation of interest in Kennedy, we have room for all kinds of people, and Kennedy left a trail of enemies behind him because of his very controversial administration,” Melanson said.