[5][6] As president, he authorized operations to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba,[7] which culminated in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, during which he declined to directly involve American troops.

[9] In 1963, Kennedy decided to travel to Texas to smooth over frictions in the state's Democratic Party between liberal U.S. senator Ralph Yarborough and conservative governor John Connally.

[14] Lee Harvey Oswald (born 1939)[17] was a former U.S. Marine who had served in Japan and the Philippines and had espoused communist beliefs since reading Karl Marx aged 14.

[33] In April 1963, Oswald returned to his birthplace, New Orleans,[34] and established an independent chapter of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which he was the sole member.

After another block, the motorcade was to turn left onto Elm Street, pass through Dealey Plaza, and travel a short segment of the Stemmons Freeway to the Trade Mart.

"[67] According to the Warren Commission and the HSCA, Kennedy was waving to the crowds on his right when a shot entered his upper back and exited his throat just beneath his larynx.

[88] As the motorcade left Dealey Plaza, some witnesses sought cover,[90] and others joined police officers to run up the grassy knoll in search of a shooter.

[92] Bowers testified to the Warren Commission that "one or two" men were between him and the fence during the assassination: one was a familiar parking lot attendant and the other wore a uniform like a county courthouse custodian.

[125][note 11] Johnson returned to Air Force One around 1:30 p.m., and shortly thereafter, he received telephone calls from advisors McGeorge Bundy and Walter Jenkins advising him to depart for Washington, D.C., immediately.

[152] Even in the Soviet Union—according to a memo by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover—news of the assassination "was greeted by great shock and consternation and church bells were tolled in the memory of President Kennedy".

[164] The bullet had entered his lower left chest but had not exited; major heart blood vessels such as the aorta and inferior vena cava were severed, and the spleen, kidney, and liver were hit.

[193] On the evening of November 22, Dallas Police performed paraffin tests on Oswald's hands and right cheek in an effort to establish whether or not he had recently fired a weapon.

[202][203] It made no conclusions as to Oswald's motive, but noted his Marxism, anti-authoritarianism, violent tendencies, failure to form personal relationships, and his desire to be significant in history.

"[214] According to a 2014 report by CIA Chief Historian David Robarge, then-CIA director John A. McCone was involved in a "benign cover-up" by withholding information from the commission.

[219] On The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1968, Garrison first publicly alleged that Shaw and Ferrie had been part of a larger CIA scheme to kill Kennedy and frame Oswald.

[220] In the 34-day trial conducted in 1969,[221] Garrison played the Zapruder film and argued that the backwards motion of Kennedy's head after the fatal shot was indicative of a shooter in front on the grassy knoll.

[234] Due to persistent speculation, in February 1968, Attorney General Ramsey Clark convened a panel of four medical experts to examine the photographs and X-rays from the Kennedy autopsy.

[240] Pathologist Vincent Di Maio testified before the HSCA that the notion of a "transfer of momentum" from a grassy knoll bullet was unfounded and something from "Arnold Schwarzenegger pictures".

Due to persisting theories, the Church Committee organized a subcommittee (staffed by Senators Richard Schweiker and Gary Hart) to examine CIA and FBI conduct pertaining to the assassination.

[251] The chief reason for the conclusion of "probable conspiracy" was, according to the report's dissent, the subsequently discredited acoustic analysis of a police channel Dictabelt recording.

[261] The board also found that, conflicting with the photographic images showing no such defect, several witnesses (at both Parkland hospital and the autopsy) remembered a large wound in the back of Kennedy's head.

[263] All remaining assassination-related records were scheduled to be released by October 2017, with the exception of documents certified for continued postponement by succeeding presidents due to "identifiable harm... to the military, defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations... of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

[272] U.S Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who is head of the task force investigating the remaining documents, believes that there were two shooters present during President Kennedy's assassination.

Luna claims her task force will review thousands of pages of remaining files before they are released to the public, stating "the full truth starts with transparency.

[279][280] Common culprits include the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military,[280] the Mafia,[281] the military-industrial complex,[281] Vice President Johnson, Castro, the KGB, or some combination thereof.

[283] Conspiracy theorists often argue that there were multiple shooters—a "triangulation of crossfire"—and that the fatal shot was fired from the grassy knoll and struck Kennedy in the front of the head.

[285][286][287] Conspiracy theorists argue that the autopsy and official investigations were flawed or, at worst, complicit,[288] and that witnesses to the Kennedy assassination met mysterious and suspicious deaths.

[290] Governor Connally also rejected the single-bullet theory,[291][292] and President Johnson reportedly expressed doubt regarding the Warren Commission's conclusions prior to his death.

[319] Besides explicit portrayals, some critics have argued that the Zapruder film—which itself has been featured in many films and television episodes—advanced cinéma vérité or inspired more graphic depictions of violence in American cinema.

Other items in the Archives include Parkland Hospital trauma room equipment; Oswald's rifle, diary, and revolver; bullet fragments; and the limousine's windshield.