It happened in six seconds. On November 22, 1963, the world stopped because of a few shots in Dealey Plaza. We’ve all seen the grainy Zapruder film. We’ve seen the pink suit, the frantic scramble over the back of the limousine, and the chaos of Dallas. But the question that sticks—the one that launched a thousand books and kept late-night radio hosts in business for decades—is simple: why was JFK killed? Honestly, if you’re looking for a single, neat answer that ties every loose thread into a bow, you’re going to be disappointed. History is rarely that clean.
Most people start with Lee Harvey Oswald. The Warren Commission said he was a lone nut, a guy with a $12 rifle and a chip on his shoulder. Case closed, right? Not really. Depending on who you ask, Kennedy was killed because he was too soft on communism, or because he was too hard on the mob, or maybe because he wanted to dismantle the CIA. It’s a rabbit hole. And once you start digging, you realize that 1963 was a pressure cooker of Cold War paranoia and internal power struggles.
The Official Story vs. The Motive Problem
The Warren Commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, basically argued that Oswald acted alone. Their version of the "why" was psychological. Oswald was a defector who went to the USSR and came back miserable. He was a man who felt small and wanted to be big. By killing the President, he became the center of the universe. It’s the "Lone Wolf" theory. It’s simple. It fits the evidence found at the Texas School Book Depository. But it doesn't satisfy the gut feeling that such a monumental shift in history must have had a more complex catalyst.
Think about the timing. JFK wasn't just any president; he was a guy navigating the peak of the Cold War. Only a year earlier, the world almost ended during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy had stared down Khrushchev and won, but in doing so, he made enemies at home. Some generals in the Pentagon thought he was a coward for not invading Cuba. They felt he’d "betrayed" the anti-Castro exiles during the botched Bay of Pigs invasion. If you’re looking for a motive, the "Betrayal in Cuba" is a massive one.
Did the Mob Have a Reason?
Then there’s the Mafia. This is where things get really gritty. It’s no secret that Joe Kennedy, JFK’s father, had ties to organized crime. The rumor—and there’s plenty of smoke here—is that the mob helped swing the 1960 election in Illinois to get Jack into the White House. They expected a "thank you." Instead, they got Robert F. Kennedy.
As Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy went on a holy war against the mob. He went after Jimmy Hoffa. He went after Carlos Marcello and Sam Giancana. Imagine being a mob boss who thought you bought a president, only to have his brother try to put you in a cage. That’s a motive for murder. Frank Ragano, a lawyer for the mob, later claimed in his book Mob Lawyer that Marcello actually confessed to the hit. Whether you believe a deathbed confession is up to you, but the resentment was objective fact.
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The "Deep State" of 1963
You can't talk about why was JFK killed without mentioning the intelligence community. Kennedy famously said he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds" after the Bay of Pigs disaster. He fired Allen Dulles, the legendary director of the CIA.
Dulles didn’t just go away. He actually ended up on the Warren Commission later, which is a detail that makes conspiracy theorists lose their minds. The theory here is that the "permanent government"—the military-industrial complex—saw Kennedy as a threat to the status quo. He was talking about pulling advisors out of Vietnam. He was opening a back channel to Khrushchev to talk about peace. In the eyes of a hardline Cold Warrior in 1963, that didn't look like diplomacy. It looked like treason.
The Vietnam Factor
Let's look at NSAM 263. This was a National Security Action Memorandum that outlined a plan to withdraw 1,000 military personnel from Vietnam by the end of 1963. JFK was skeptical of the war. He’d seen the internal reports; he knew it was a quagmire in the making.
Critics of the official story point out that almost immediately after Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath on Air Force One, the policy shifted. NSAM 273 replaced the withdrawal plan. Suddenly, the U.S. was leaning in, not pulling out. To many, this is the "smoking gun" of motive. If JFK stays alive, the Vietnam War arguably doesn't happen the way it did. If he’s gone, the defense contractors and the hawks get their war. It's a cold, cynical way to look at it, but history is often cold and cynical.
What Most People Get Wrong About Oswald
People think Lee Harvey Oswald was just some random loser. He wasn't. He was a former U.S. Marine who had been granted a hardship discharge, defected to the Soviet Union, lived in Minsk, married a Russian woman, and then was allowed to come back to the U.S. during the height of the Red Scare.
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Does that sound like a normal guy to you?
If you look at the FBI files released in recent years, it’s clear they were watching him. The CIA had a 201 file on him. Whether he was a "patsy," as he famously shouted in the hallway of the Dallas Police Department, or a deeply disturbed individual acting on his own, the fact remains that he was a man with connections to both sides of the Iron Curtain. Some believe he was a low-level asset who went rogue. Others think he was being handled by someone who wanted Kennedy out of the way.
The Mystery of the "Three Tramps" and Grassy Knoll
The physical evidence is where the "why" gets buried under the "how." We’ve heard about the Magic Bullet. We’ve heard about the "back and to the left" motion of Kennedy’s head. While ballistics experts have gone back and forth for sixty years, the sheer number of witnesses who reported smoke or sound coming from the grassy knoll cannot be ignored.
If there was a second shooter, then it wasn't just a lone nut. It was a hit. And if it was a hit, the "why" shifts from a psychological break to a political execution.
The Legacy of the Investigation
The 1970s brought the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). This is the part of the story people forget. After the Church Committee exposed the CIA’s illegal activities and assassination plots against foreign leaders, Congress took another look at the JFK case.
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Their conclusion in 1979? Kennedy was "probably" assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.
They couldn't name the conspirators, but they acknowledged that the original investigation was flawed. They pointed toward a "high probability" of two gunmen. This flipped the script. It moved the conversation from "fringe theory" to "government-acknowledged possibility." Yet, here we are, decades later, with the remaining files still being trickled out by the National Archives, usually with heavy redactions.
Why It Still Matters Today
You might wonder why we’re still obsessing over a murder from the 60s. It’s because the JFK assassination was the moment the American public stopped trusting their government. It was the crack in the windshield that eventually shattered with Watergate and the Pentagon Papers.
When people ask why was JFK killed, they aren't just asking about a crime. They’re asking if the people in charge are actually the ones making the decisions. They’re asking if the "will of the people" can be overridden by a sniper in a high-rise or a group of men in a smoke-filled room.
The reality is likely a mix of these things. Kennedy was a president who was trying to change the direction of a massive, inertia-heavy government. He was pushing against the mob, the CIA, the Soviets, and the segregationists in the South. He had a lot of people who wanted him gone. Whether Oswald was a tool of one of those groups or just a man who caught the fever of the era remains the great American mystery.
Actionable Insights for the Curious
If you want to actually understand the nuance of this case without getting lost in the "tinfoil hat" weeds, you have to look at the primary sources. Don't just watch a movie.
- Read the HSCA Final Report: It’s much more modern and critical than the Warren Commission. It acknowledges the failures of the FBI and CIA to share information.
- Examine the JFK Records Act: Look into the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. They have digitized thousands of pages of declassified documents. You can see the actual cables and memos from 1963.
- Contextualize the 1960s: Read about the "Secret War" against Castro. Understanding the atmosphere of the JM/WAVE station in Miami (the CIA's massive anti-Castro base) explains why so many people had the training and the motive to carry out a high-level operation.
- Follow the Money: Look at the shift in defense spending and policy immediately following the assassination.
The question of why JFK was killed is a lens through which we see the hidden gears of power. Whether it was the act of a lone Marxist or a sophisticated coup d’état, the result was the same: a turning point in history that we are still trying to navigate. The files are still coming out, and while they may never provide a "smoking gun" confession, they continue to paint a picture of a government that was far more chaotic and compromised than the 1963 public ever could have imagined.