The Conspirators
The American people, for the last five decades, have overwhelmingly supported the belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was a "patsy," that Jack Ruby was a hired hit man, that police officer J.D. Tippit was involved, along with the Russian KGB, the Cubans, both pro and anti-Castro, the CIA, the FBI, Dallas Police, President Lyndon Johnson, organized crime, Ruth Paine, three tramps, Marina Oswald, Robert Oswald, Texas oil interests, George Hickey, a spectator with an umbrella, and Clay Shaw. Conspiracy theories, to this day, generate income and perpetuate more theories. The people who create these theories are the true conspirators.
There are a score of accused and admitted shooters, such that, if only a couple were in Dealey Plaza that day, bullets would have been flying everywhere and the death toll higher. E. Howard Hunt confessed on his deathbed. Another confessed shooter, James Files, offered autographed pictures of himself for sale on EBAY.
Conspiracy books number well beyond 2000 and rising with more added as the anniversary date approach
Mark Lane
Mark Lane must be considered the grandfather of conspiracy theorists. His 1966 best-selling book, Rush to Judgement, was a scathing indictment of the Warren Commission and the final conclusion, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Lane, who died following a heart attack in 2016, spent his life attacking the Warren Commission and the supporters of the lone gunman supposition. Lane's first involvement with the assassination of John F. Kennedy was an article for the National Guardian, a leftist independent newspaper, written four weeks after the murder of the president. He established himself firmly in the Oswald camp as advocate for the deceased killer of the president and council for Marguerite Oswald.
This is a video of Lane and Marguerite Oswald two months after the assassination. Lane's opening gambit to a reporter's question regarding Oswald's whereabouts at the time of the assassination was the preposterous suggestion that Oswald might not have been in the TSBD building in the first place. Lane, after the four-minute mark in the video, during Marguerite's statement, appeared to be bored. Marguerite, when questioned about Oswald's childhood problems in New York, immediately turned on the reporters. Robert Oswald, in his book, Lee, A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald, wrote that his mother never accepted responsibility for her own life, her poverty was always someone else's fault, and she believed the world owed her a living. Marguerite Oswald and Mark Lane had one common objective, the increase of their own personal wealth.
Lane discredited evidence without providing any proof, used the contradictory statements of some witnesses as suggestion of innocence, and ignored credible testimony of witnesses that, no doubt, did not support his argument. Lane, like many in the conspiracy community, felt no evidentiary burden to prove anything. That duty, apparently, fell only to the Warren Commission. His motivation was not the pursuit of truth. His primary goal was, in effect, solve the highest of high-profile murder cases and reap the rewards of celebrity and fortune. Lane presented his case in much the same manner as Messrs. Shapiro, Cochran, and Kardashian, et al. The truth was never the desired final result.
One of Lane's more interesting ploys emerged in an interview with William F. Buckley. Lane, when asked about the purchase of a Carcano rifle by Oswald, retorted the rifle was not purchased by Oswald but by someone named Hidell. Another assertion by Lane suggested Dallas police conspired to allow Jack Ruby entrance to the police headquarters parking garage prior to the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. At the 34-minute mark in this interview, Lane said Officer Roy E. Vaughn was stationed at the top of the ramp Jack Ruby used to gain entrance to the parking garage and, according to former Dallas police officer N.J. Daniels, who was standing with Vaughn, a man approached with what appeared to be a gun in his pocket. Vaughn recognized the intruder and allowed him passage down the ramp. Daniels did not offer this testimony to the Warren Commission, nor did Lane write about this incident in his book.
The Buckley v Lane interview, recorded in 1966, is extremely tedious to watch but reveals much about Lane. He puffed on his pipe, carefully deflected all of Buckley's sharp criticisms, made a case for the purchase of his book, and cast doubt on the moral fabric of the Dallas Police, the FBI, and American philosophy of law.
Mark Lane, above all else, was an opportunist. He recognized the value of doubt in the Kennedy case, that the majority of Americans harbored suspicions, particularly following the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, and the revelation of Jack Ruby's checkered background. But, for Mark Lane, his importance has diminished with the passage of time. Mark Lane, with succeeding generations, has lost influence on other conspirators who have brought more suspects under scrutiny, none more than Oliver Stone.
Mark Lane, Lawyer, master of word manipulation, and language distortion.
Oliver Stone
The most significant contribution to the cause of conspiracy remains Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, JFK. Based on the books, On The Trail Of The Assassins, by former New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, and Jim Marrs' previously mentioned book, Crossfire, The Plot That Killed Kennedy. JFK was, according to Oliver Stone, "a counter myth to the Warren Commission myth." JFK, for the generations of Americans born after 1963 or too young to remember the assassination, presented itself as the definitive explanation of the murder of President Kennedy. Many accepted Stone's movie as reality, the final truth in the assassination brought to light by a trusted public servant, the District Attorney of New Orleans. Stone's presentation of "counter myth" turned out to be, for the vast majority of the 25 million movie goers worldwide who saw the film, a documentary of the facts.
Stone, drawing inspiration from Jim Garrison, Jim Marrs, and Fletcher Prouty, attempted to rewrite history. He attacked the accepted and carefully researched body of evidence about the assassination of John F. Kennedy by, "using as my weapon the motion picture medium and taking as my target the impressionable young, who will believe anything as long as it is visual." It is unfair of Stone to suggest that the "impressionable young" are incapable of arriving at their own conclusions without watching a film. Stone has suggested, incorrectly, that the assassination of President Kennedy was, "the most undocumented, unresearched, unagreed-upon nonhistorical period in our history." Oliver Stone, much like Herodotus, who had his own critics, sought to establish himself as the father of Kennedy assassination history, the one undisputable truth. But, instead of such lofty goals, he proved the truth lies buried between Earl Warren and Jim Garrison.
JFK, the movie, did have a positive result, the signing of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act by President George H.W. Bush and the release, in 1993, of over 800,000 previously classified documents from the National Archive. Conspirators descended on these documents, like hungry buzzards on a dead carcass, and much the same as the release of documents in 2017, found no confirmation of collusion by the agencies of any government or any evidence of conspiracy. It is evident, after nearly sixty years, the conspiracy community refuses to acknowledge there is no evidence of conspiracy. In fact, the lack of evidence is, according to Stone and the conspirators, proof of conspiracy.
In a 2013 article in USA Today, for the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination, Oliver Stone commented, "I'm amazed there is any single adult left in the USA who would think that Lee Harvey Oswald was the one and only assassin." Unfortunately for history, Stone's embellishment of fact and trickery with truth has created new generations of Americans unable to distinguish between Hollywood fantasy and historical accuracy.
Marguerite Oswald
Marguerite Oswald and her three sons had difficult lives. John Pic, the oldest son, did not know his father, a man that preferred not to have children. Robert Oswald, the middle brother of the three, was five years old when his father died and his younger brother, Lee, was born two months later. Both of Lee's older brothers left home at the first opportunity to enlist in the service and Lee followed their example. According to Robert Oswald, the reason all three brothers joined the service was to get away from Marguerite.
At the time of the assassination, Marguerite had not seen Lee in a year and was unaware she had a second granddaughter. Her statements to the press of having a close family were, regrettably, untrue. Marguerite Oswald, as she often told the press, had lost a son that she believed was an American hero and she felt entitled to the same monetary gifts as Marie Tippit, the wife of Dallas police officer, J.D. Tippit, slain by Oswald. Marguerite complained that Marie Tippit had received so much yet she had received nothing.
Shortly after the assassination, Life magazine photographer, Allen Grant, according to Hugh Aynesworth, took pictures of Marguerite, Marina, and Ruth Paine at the Paine residence. Marguerite told him to stop. "We should be paid for that," she shouted. This appeared to be the recurring theme for the remainder of Marguerite Oswald's life.
Marguerite retained Mark Lane to represent the interests of lee Harvey Oswald before the Warren Commission.
Lane's closing remark at the end of this video is an example of the tactic of saying whatever one chooses to support their case, in effect that Marina Oswald was brainwashed while in the protective custody of the FBI. It must be remembered that Marina's testimony before the Warren Commission occurred after she had retained a business manager and an attorney. She understood her situation in America remained secure.
Bob Schieffer, a reporter for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, later the long-time reporter for CBS, revealed meeting Marguerite in Ft. Worth, the day of the assassination, and his impression of her mental stability is noted in this interview in 2013.
Marguerite went on to claim that Lee Harvey Oswald was an American hero. Curiously, the first statement of Oswald's association with American intelligence came from Marguerite and she intended to prove it.
Marguerite Oswald with Mark Lane
Jim Marrs
Jim Marrs biggest contribution to the Kennedy assassination conspiracy was his book Crossfire, The Plot That Killed Kennedy, which became a significant part of the basis for Oliver Stone's movie, JFK. Marrs, who passed away in August 2017, was a journalist, author, and, most prominently, self proclaimed whistle blower of the "government cover-up, the coup d'etat of 1963," the murder of John F. Kennedy. Additionally, Marrs taught a class on the Kennedy assassination at the University of Texas at Arlington for thirty years. Marrs' work frequently employed the word "evidence," when conjecture, supposition, misdirection, and untruth were more appropriate nouns. If Marrs misused words in the classroom in this manner, his assassination course was more akin to another course taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the Star Trek language of Klingon.
Marrs, like many conspiracy writers, identified motive, not the perpetrators in any specific sense. Marrs suggested, "a consensus of powerful men in the leadership of U.S. military, banking, government, intelligence, and organized crime" were responsible for the President's death. Marrs claimed the assassination was the result of the following: Attorney General Robert Kennedy's attacks on organized crime, President Kennedy's failure to invade Cuba, right wing backlash against detente with the Soviet Union, plans to disengage from Viet Nam by the end of 1965, the elimination of the oil-depletion allowance, the Kennedy Administration's stance on civil rights, and the possibility of Vice President Johnson's removal from the re-election ticket in 1964. These possible motives, as impossible as one writer might suggest, are also impossible for another to refute.
There is, however, "evidence" that can be disputed. Marrs wrote the rifle cannot be physically tied to Oswald at the time of discovery in the TSBD, there were no prints found on the murder weapon. Dallas Police Lt. J.C. Day testified before the Warren Commission the rifle stayed in his possession from the time of discovery, he lifted a palm print, and released the rifle to the FBI. The palm print was tentatively identified as Oswald's by Lt. Day, confirmed by the FBI's Sebastian Latona, and, later, by New York City Police fingerprint supervisor, Vincent Scalice, for the HSCA. Marrs claimed the FBI, unable to find usable fingerprints, took the rifle to the Miller Funeral Home, where Oswald's body was prepared for burial, on Monday, November 25, and placed it in Oswald's hands. Marrs claimed this information was given to him by Paul Groody, director at Miller Funeral Home. This writer spoke with Allen Baumgardner, owner of the Miller Funeral Home (now Baumgardner) and a participant in the preparation of Oswald's body. Baumgardner said in 2016, "No rifle was brought inside the funeral home, there were plenty of police and officials in civilian clothes, but no rifle."
Marrs and Lane both took exception to the light colored jacket found near the Tippit murder scene. The jacket, identified as worn by Oswald, is not the issue. Oswald, the man, was seen shooting Officer Tippit, was identified fleeing the scene, was observed hiding in a doorway on Jefferson Boulevard, was seen inside the Texas Theatre, and was arrested at that location. The inability of the Warren Commission to identify the owner by a laundry tag inside the jacket is of secondary value. Lee Harvey Oswald was identified, not the unnamed owner of a light colored, zip front jacket, with a laundry tag marked 30 030, or a dry cleaning tag numbered B 9738. Marina Oswald, indeed, identified the Jacket as belonging to Oswald. Hardly evidence for dismissal as suggested by Marrs and Lane.
Marrs' description of events in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, suggest a number of conspirators are visible on the Zapruder film. He pointed out the individual known as the "umbrella man" as a suspect and a black man or "dark complected man" as individuals giving signals to the shooters. Marrs suggested the Secret Service agents in the follow-up car knew of the assassination. His "evidence" is the response by agent Clint Hill, the only agent who ran to cover the presidential limousine and was part of the detail that protected Mrs. Kennedy, not the president. The "umbrella man" was identified as Louie Steven Witt. Witt testified before the HSCA he was in Dealey Plaza during his lunch break and the umbrella was a sign of protest, not an act of murder as many conspirators have claimed.
Jim Marrs in his oft worn felt hat
Cyril Wecht
Dr. Cyril Wecht, forensic pathologist, attorney, and medical-legal consultant is a leading critic of the Warren Commission medical findings. Dr Wecht, as previously noted, accuses the autopsy doctors, Cdr. Humes, Cdr. Boswell, and Lt. Col. Finck of gross negligence. Dr. Wecht argues the doctors at Parkland Hospital were unanimously in agreement the fatal wound defect was in the rear of the President's head, in sharp contrast to the findings at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations forensic panel that reviewed the medical evidence in 1978. Additionally, Dr. Wecht's view is inconsistent with the fatal shot as seen on Zapruder film frame 313, that shows the fracturing of the president's skull and the subsequent ejection of material to the front.
Dr. Wecht, quite emotionally, argues the neck wounds to President Kennedy and the wounds to Governor Connally could not have been caused by the same bullet and, with equal enthusiasm, rejects the possibility that said bullet could remain intact. Further, Wecht and others contend the "magic bullet," found on a gurney at Parkland hospital, outside the trauma rooms, was placed on the gurney by a person or persons unknown as part of conspiracy. No example of this premises is greater than Oliver Stone's scene of a hand slipping a bullet onto a hospital gurney.
Dr. Wecht, like most of the conspirators, believes it was impossible for one bullet to inflict two wounds to President Kennedy and five to Governor Connally and remain, essentially, intact. The problem with conspiratorial thinking occurs when one considers theconclusive "evidence" that the bullet in question was found to have been fired by Lee Harvey Oswald's Carcano rifle, C2766, to the exclusion of all other weapons. To validate conspiracy, someone, perhaps Oswald himself, fired the weapon into some form of shooting range backstop and retrieved the bullet for delivery to Parkland hospital after the assassination. If Oswald was not involved with this aspect of the assassination, then someone retrieved the rifle from Ruth Paine's garage, fired the weapon, and returned it to the wool blanket on the garage floor without being seen. The accomplice then had to deliver the bullet to Parkland hospital after the arrival of the President, place the bullet on the gurney, all under the noses of the Secret Service, Dallas Police, television cameras, and photographers.
Dr. Wecht, in his numerous videos, is fond of disputing the single bullet theory with a magician's sleight of hand. Wecht's explanation of the bullet strikes to President Kennedy and Governor Connally incorrectly positions the president and the governor on the same plane, one directly in front of the other, and at the same relative height. His explanations, like Mark Lane's presumptuous assertions, leave out significant facts regarding the seating geometry of the president and the governor. It is important to note the governor was seated lower and towards the center of the limousine with his torso twisted to the right. Given this placement of the president and Governor Connally, the single bullet theory is not only plausible, but probable.
Wecht has frequently referred to Oswald's Carcano rifle as junk, an inaccurate weapon, and most humorously, as a "weapon of love." Admittedly, there were weapons available that served the needs of a sniper much better than the Carcano, the Winchester model 70, for example, but the fact remains the Carcano did the job. I would not want anyone shooting at me with one. Wecht's oxymoron, an interesting choice of words, indicates he has not fired the weapon and has no knowledge of its capabilities.
Dr. Cyril Wecht
Smoke on the Bridge
Jim Marrs offered "evidence" of a shot from the Grassy Knoll in a photograph of the railroad bridge which, to the right of the frame, a cloud is visible. Considering the blurred appearance of the photograph, it is difficult to determine what the cloud is, but it does appear to be smoke. The object in the photograph could easily be any number of unidentified visual aberrations. The photograph was taken from the film of NBC cameraman, David Wiegman, who filmed the motorcade from the press car until shots were fired.
Weigman jumped from the car and moved to the area of the Grassy Knoll. On closer examination of the Wiegman film, the cloud does not appear as a blast from a rifle, a linear emission from the barrel. It is visible in one frame more like a reflection, and, in the next frame, is not discernible at all. Marrs claimed, correctly, that modern rifles do, in fact, emit smoke on discharge. However, the amount of "smoke" in the photograph has the appearance of coming from an eighteenth-century Kentucky long rifle rather than a modern weapon. Further, the cloud is closer to the railroad bridge than the Grassy Knoll and the suggestion has been made the cloud came from a steam line that runs next to the bridge. It is possible the smoke might be indicative of a dirty windshield.
The timing of the photograph is uncertain, the vehicle in the lower circle might be the presidential limousine, but it might not be, either. In any case, what appears to be smoke has been used by the conspirators to "prove" conspiracy.
Smoke in right corner of bridge.
The Kill Zone
Jim Marrs, among others, suggested there were yellow paint marks on the curb on the south side of Elm Street, placed there by persons unknown, as an aid in the assassination of President Kennedy. The yellow marks are shown on the street plot drawn by Dallas surveyor Robert West. Conspirators claimed the yellow marks were painted the morning of the assassination and "many" spectators had paint on their shoes. This claim seems unlikely, the numbers of spectators in the area were few, there were six people on the south side of Elm Street near the murder scene at the time of the assassination. The conspiracy community observes no commitment to provide any evidential proof to support their allegations.
Marrs developed a supposition from a series of photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald, taken at various times in Oswald's life, that the person depicted was not Oswald because the faces, "didn't look like the same person." This statement is an example of imagination taking the place of evidence. A person's facial appearance can, in fact, change between the ages of 15 and 25 such that passports and driver's license photos must be updated more frequently than older people. At the same time, conspirators have examined photographs of the crime scene and found people who look like George H.W. Bush and the young George W. Bush, "evidence" of their involvement in conspiracy to murder President Kennedy. The British have a word to describe such thinking, it is rubbish.
Perhaps the most reprehensible allegation by Marrs was his suggestion the Secret Service agents in the follow-up car were involved in conspiracy. As only one agent, Clint Hill, attempted to protect the occupants of the Presidential limousine, the other three agents, according to Marrs, were guilty, and their inaction was "evidence" of conspiracy. Secret Service agent, William Greer, driver of the Presidential limousine, was also accused of participation in conspiracy. According to conspirators, he slowed or stopped the vehicle in the area of the yellow painted curb, "the Kill Zone," and failed to accelerate the vehicle until after President Kennedy's fatal head wound. The conspiracy community, most disdainfully, has even suggested Clint Hill could have and should have acted sooner.
Survey of Elm Street by Robert West
Back and to the left
The lingering doubts about the lone gunman supposition come from many sources, none more agonizingly painful than the explanation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Garrison surmised the presence of multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza, a team of assassins in the TSBD, in the Dal-Tex building, and on the Grassy Knoll. During the pre-trial publicity surrounding the Clay Shaw case, Garrison was characterized as a buffoon by the major television news agencies and print media. Garrison, in a reply to the attacks on his office, made a 45-minute taped response which outlined for the American people the essence of his case for conspiracy, that John F. Kennedy was murdered to change foreign policy toward Cuba.
Garrison's response, like many conspiracy theories, used the obscure word "they" to considerable lengths. One is compelled to ask, who exactly are "they?" Garrison used the term to describe, presumably, persons of interest in the intelligence community without giving specific names. In fact, the only named assassin comes to us from former Minnesota Governor, Jesse (the Body) Ventura who divulged CIA operative David Morales was the shooter. While other conspiracy sleuths have offered names of organizations, only Ventura has been bold enough to claim to know the identity of the killer. Garrison could only muster the pronoun "they" and the motive of a change in foreign policy.
Garrison adamantly defended his belief that a shot or shots came from the Grassy Knoll because "most of the people in Dealey Plaza heard shots from there" and "men were observed running from the Grassy Knoll" after the assassination. The hard evidence suggests that the majority of people in Dealey Plaza admitted hearing shots from the TSBD and the witnesses in the area of the Grassy Knoll did not find anyone fleeing the scene after the shooting of the president. Garrison claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the shooter but described, at great length, Oswald's involvement with the intelligence community, that Oswald was, in fact, "employed by a US intelligence agency."
Jim Garrison's address to the American people was intended to warn of the dangers of "fairy tales," the dangers of which have supposedly obscured the truth. Garrison, like Mark Lane and Jim Marrs, only increased the opacity of the case. Evidence and truth confused with supposition and conjecture. Garrison suggested President Kennedy was murdered as a result of his desire to seek detente with the Soviet Union. This assertion flies in the face of reason. Kennedy's speech at American University was accepted by the Russians as a true peace offering and, considering the very real threat of global annihilation by nuclear war, every living human being, those alive at the time, must have been relieved at the lessening of this threat, and any suggestion that detente was the motive for assassination is ludicrous.
The final product of the melding of Garrison, Marrs, and Stone is the lasting vision of frame 313 of the Zapruder film, played over and over, "back and to the left" quoted five times, with suspenseful music burning the image into our souls, a masterful piece of film making.
In time, as the assassination era generations pass away, future historians will find reading the conspiracy books a tedious waste of time, and, hopefully, as more documents are released to the public, the case for conspiracy, as with an open sore, will dry up and go away. It is likely that future students will be indifferent to the Kennedy case and accept the facts as they are.
One-half second after fatal head wound.
Judyth Vary Baker
One of the more colorful conspiracy stories come to us from Judyth Vary Baker, the self-proclaimed soul mate of Lee Harvey Oswald. Baker claimed she met Oswald in New Orleans in the late spring in 1963 and engaged in a wild and romantic love affair with the future alleged assassin. The reader will find her claim that she and Oswald were involved in secret bioweapons research, along with David Ferrie, to be an eyebrow raising revelation. Ms. Baker makes a compelling case for her assertions but serious assassination research scholars, both conspirators and lone gunmen alike, dismiss her claims.
Among Ms. Baker's evidence are pay stubs from the Reily Coffee Company, in New Orleans, along with pay stubs belonging to Oswald, during the summer of 1963, evidence that places them together at the same place and the same time. Baker claimed Oswald was involved with bookmaking operations, through his uncle, Charles Murret, with loose ties to the Marcello crime family of New Orleans. This is an interesting claim. Oswald, never a man of means and newly arrived in New Orleans, apparently drove a borrowed car, spent money on a girlfriend, attended parties, and enjoyed himself while working for his uncle, then, inexplicably, decided to take a menial job at a coffee company.
Ms. Baker's affair with Lee Harvey Oswald, by her own assertions, was torrid. However, one must consider the condition of his wife and daughter, living five hundred miles away in Irving, Texas. Given Oswald had Ruth Paine taking care of his family at no expense to himself, a situation he enjoyed in the past, it is unlikely he would invite Marina to New Orleans after only two weeks of separation. One would think, in Oswald's case, having just begun a love affair with an attractive twenty-year-old, the penis would have overruled the brain, Marina remained in Texas, and history, perhaps, changed for the better. For this reason alone, we cannot accept Ms. Baker's assertions of being Oswald's lover, at least, beyond two weeks.
Ms. Baker, on every anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, makes an appearance, hosts a conference, or signs books. She clutches to her place in history; however it was earned.
L. Fletcher Prouty
Another contributor to the assassination conspiracy debate was Leroy Fletcher Prouty, US Air Force career officer, Pentagon liaison to the CIA, and the man whose theories were key elements in Oliver Stone's movie, JFK. Prouty, from his own book, The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, wrote of his service as chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy administration. His primary theory of conspiracy centered on National Security Action Memorandum -263, (NSAM 263). Issued on October 11, 1963, NSAM 263, according to Prouty, was the source of rancorous hatred towards Kennedy by a cabal of unknown government officials and senior military officers, hatred that developed into coup d' etat, the murder of the President of the United States.
NSAM-263, a short, three paragraph document, signed by National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, recommended the president consider council from Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor contained in their report on their mission to South Vietnam. The second paragraph of the document contains a specific reference to the removal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963. This is the crux of Prouty's assertion that a "high cabal" of industrialists and bankers conspired to murder the president and avert the end of United States economic and military support to South Vietnam, with the potential loss of countless billions of dollars in war profits. Prouty further stated NSAM 263 disclosed all US forces would be removed from Vietnam by 1965 and was the "straw that broke the camel's back."
The political and military situation in South Vietnam began to unravel in the summer of 1963. The government, democratic in name only, had become increasingly unpopular among various factions of the population, among the Buddhist majority, in particular. President Ngo Dinh Diem and his chief political advisor, his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu essentially ruled South Vietnam as a totalitarian state through repressive police tactics and a suspension of basic civil liberties. The Diem regime installed senior military officers by political patronage rather than ability and promotion came to catholic government officials and military officers before those of other faiths. Perhaps, the most controversial incidents occurred during the Buddhist protests, the self-immolation of monk Thich Quang Duc, the subsequent arrest of thousands of monks, nuns, and student protesters, and their illegal incarceration in government prisons.
The Kennedy administration saw South Vietnam as a country where the people had lost confidence in their own government, the army had no will to fight, and serious social reform was unlikely to take place without pressure from the United States. Nhu, in particular, was seen as a serious threat to success in South Vietnam. Nhu, in fact, had sought back-channel negotiations with the French and the North Vietnamese. But, as political adviser, Nhu wielded control of the ARVN Special Forces, the forces that allowed him to satisfy his penchant for night-time arrests and brutal interrogation practices which only contributed to growing unrest and resentment of the regime.
It was the policy of the United States in the fall of 1963 to apply pressure on the Diem government to reform its military and political policies, encourage the South Vietnamese army to draw sufficient manpower from the populace, and train the army to fight a successful campaign to completion, strategies the Diem regime resisted. In due course, the Kennedy administration was favorable to a change in leadership in South Vietnam. The resultant change was implemented through the removal of the Diem government by outright murder of the Nhus, not the method of arrest and deportation preferred by the Kennedy administration. Much like organized crime, the senior generals in South Vietnam were convinced by the United States to get rid of the Nhus and they did, in the same month as the assassination of President Kennedy.
Col. Prouty's suggestion that troop removal from South Vietnam was the key element of a coup d' etat in the United States is without substance. The Kennedy administration's policy towards Vietnam had always been to fight against communist insurgency with military support and training of indigenous troops without of the infusion of American military personnel to do the fighting. The Vietnamese people themselves, however, were unwilling to fight for a corrupt government, corrupt from the presidential palace down to the individual hamlets. President Kennedy's policies toward South Vietnam were basically sound and supported by the Joint Chiefs. Aside from the failed CIA project, the Strategic Hamlet Program, Washington's power elite were hopeful with the prospects for success in Vietnam in the fall of 1963 and there was no significant policy change that led directly to Kennedy's death.
Donald Southerland as Prouty ( Mr. X ) in JFK