How was President Kennedy assassinated?
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John F. Kennedy Assassination of John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy  (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, developments in the Space Race, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Trade Expansion Act to lower tariffs, and the Civil Rights Movement all took place during his presidency. His New Frontier domestic program was largely enacted as a memorial to him after his death. Kennedy increased the number of American military advisors in South Vietnam by a factor of 18 over Eisenhower, and tolerated a military coup against the country's president.

Kennedy's time in office was marked by high tensions with Communist states, particularly Cuba. An attempt at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the country's dictator Fidel Castro in April 1961 was thwarted by Cuban armed forces within three days. Kennedy's administration subsequently rejected plans by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to orchestrate false-flag attacks on American soil in order to gain public approval for a war against Cuba. In October 1962, it was discovered Soviet ballistic missiles had been deployed in Cuba; the resulting period of unease, often termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, is seen by many historians as the closest the human race has ever come to war featuring the use of nuclear weapons by more than one side.

After military service in the United States Naval Reserve in World War II, Kennedy represented Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat. He was elected subsequently to the U.S. Senate and served as the junior Senator from Massachusetts from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated Vice President, and Republican candidate, Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. Presidential Election. At age 43, he became the youngest man elected president  and the second-youngest president (after Theodore Roosevelt, who was 42 when he became president after the assassination of William McKinley). Kennedy was also the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president.  , Kennedy has been the only Roman Catholic president and the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography Profiles in Courage. 

Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested that afternoon and determined to have fired shots that hit the President from a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby mortally wounded Oswald two days later in a jail corridor. The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin, but its report was sharply criticized. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed that Oswald fired the shots that killed the president, but also concluded that Kennedy was likely assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.  The majority of Americans alive at the time of the assassination: 52% to 29%, and continuing through 2013 (61% to 30%), believed that there was a conspiracy and that Oswald was not the only shooter. 

Since the 1960s, information concerning Kennedy's private life has come to light, including his health problems and allegations of infidelity. Kennedy continues to rank highly in historians' polls of U.S. presidents and with the general public. His average approval rating of 70% is the highest of any president in Gallup's history of systematically measuring job approval. 

Early life and education

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917, to businessman/politician Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Sr. (1888–1969) and philanthropist/socialite Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald-Kennedy (1890–1995). His father was the oldest son of businessman/politician Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy (1858–1929) and Mary Augusta Hickey-Kennedy (1857–1923). His mother was the daughter of Boston Mayor John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald (1863–1950) and Mary Josephine "Josie" Hannon-Fitzgerald (1865–1964). All of his grandparents were the children of Irish immigrants.

His brothers were Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, Jr. (1915–1944), Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (1925–1968), and Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (1932–2009). Joseph Jr. was killed in action during World War II. Robert was JFK's attorney general and then a senator who was assassinated in 1968; Ted was a long-serving U.S. senator from 1962 until his death from brain cancer in 2009. His sisters were Rose Marie "Rosemary" Kennedy (1918–2005), Kathleen Agnes "Kick" Kennedy (1920–1948), Eunice Mary Kennedy (1921–2009), Patricia Helen "Pat" Kennedy (1924–2006), and Jean Ann Kennedy (born 1928).

Kennedy lived in Brookline for ten years and attended the Edward Devotion School, the Noble and Greenough Lower School, and the Dexter School through 4th grade. In 1927, the Kennedy family moved to a stately twenty-room, Georgian-style mansion at 5040 Independence Avenue (across the street from Wave Hill) in the Hudson Hill neighborhood of Riverdale, Bronx, New York City. He attended the lower campus of Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys, from 5th to 7th grade. Two years later, the family moved to 294 Pondfield Road in the New York City suburb of Bronxville, New York, where Kennedy was a member of Scout Troop 2. The Kennedy family spent summers at their home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Christmas and Easter holidays at their winter home in Palm Beach, Florida. In September 1930, Kennedy—then 13 years old—attended the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. In late April 1931, he required an appendectomy, after which he withdrew from Canterbury and recuperated at home.

In September 1931, Kennedy was sent to the The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut for 9th through 12th grade. His older brother had already been at Choate for two years as a football player and leading student. He spent his first years at Choate in his older brother's shadow, and compensated for this with rebellious behavior which attracted a coterie. Their most notorious stunt was to explode a toilet seat with a powerful firecracker. In the ensuing chapel assembly, the strict headmaster, George St. John, brandished the toilet seat and spoke of certain "muckers" who would "spit in our sea." The defiant Kennedy took the cue and named his group "The Muckers Club", which included roommate and friend Kirk LeMoyne "Lem" Billings.

During his Choate years, Kennedy was beset by health problems that culminated in 1934 with his emergency hospitalization at New Haven Hospital, where doctors thought he might have leukemia. In June 1934, he was admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, the ultimate diagnosis there was colitis. Kennedy graduated from Choate in June of the following year. For the school yearbook, of which he had been business manager, Kennedy was voted the "most likely to succeed".

In September 1935, he made his first trip abroad with his parents and his sister Kathleen to London intending to study under Harold Laski at the London School of Economics (LSE) as his older brother had done. Ill-health forced his return to America in October of that year, when he enrolled late and spent six weeks at Princeton University.  He was then hospitalized for observation at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. He convalesced further at the Kennedy winter home in Palm Beach, then spent the spring of 1936 working as a ranch hand on the 40000 acre Jay Six cattle ranch outside Benson, Arizona. It is reported that ranchman Jack Speiden worked both brothers "very hard".

In September 1936, Kennedy enrolled at Harvard College, where he produced that year's annual "Freshman Smoker", called by a reviewer "an elaborate entertainment, which included in its cast outstanding personalities of the radio, screen and sports world".  He tried out for the football, golf, and swimming teams and earned a spot on the varsity swimming team. Kennedy also sailed in the Star class and won the 1936 Nantucket Sound Star Championship.  In July 1937, Kennedy sailed to France—taking his convertible—and spent ten weeks driving through Europe with Billings. In June 1938, Kennedy sailed overseas with his father and older brother to work at the American embassy in London, where his father was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's.

In 1939, Kennedy toured Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East in preparation for his Harvard senior honors thesis. He then went to Czechoslovakia and Germany before returning to London on September 1, 1939, the day that Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, the family was in the House of Commons for speeches endorsing the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Germany. Kennedy was sent as his father's representative to help with arrangements for American survivors of the SS Athenia before flying back to the U.S. from Foynes, Ireland to Port Washington, New York on his first transatlantic flight.

As an upperclassman at Harvard, Kennedy became a more serious student and developed an interest in political philosophy. In his junior year, he made the Dean's List.  In 1940, Kennedy completed his thesis, "Appeasement in Munich", about British participation in the Munich Agreement. The thesis became a bestseller under the title Why England Slept. He graduated from Harvard College cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in government, concentrating on international affairs, that year. Kennedy enrolled in and audited classes at the Stanford Graduate School of Business that fall. In early 1941, Kennedy left and helped his father write a memoir of his three years as an American ambassador, and then traveled throughout South America; including Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.

On September 12, 1953, after a one-year courtship, Kennedy, then thirty-six, married 24-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island. 

U.S. Navy Reserve (1941–1945)

Kennedy attempted to enter the Army's Officer Candidate School in 1940, but was medically disqualified for his chronic lower back problems. On September 24, 1941, after exercising for months to strengthen his back, and with the help of the director of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), former naval attaché to Joseph Kennedy, he joined the United States Naval Reserve (U.S. Navy Reserve since 2005). He was commissioned an ensign on October 26, 1941,  and joined the staff of the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C. He attended the Naval Reserve Officer Training School at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, from July 27 to September 27  and then voluntarily entered the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center in Melville, Rhode Island. On October 10, he was promoted to lieutenant junior grade. He completed his training on December 2 and was assigned to Motor Torpedo Squadron FOUR.

His first command was PT-101 from December 7, 1942, until February 23, 1943: It was a PT boat used for training while Kennedy was an instructor at Melville. He then led three Huckins PT boats—PT-98, PT-99, and PT-101, which were being relocated from MTBRON 4 in Melville, Rhode Island, back to Jacksonville, Florida and the new MTBRON 14 (formed February 17, 1943). During the trip south, he was hospitalized briefly in Jacksonville after diving into the cold water to unfoul a propeller. Thereafter, Kennedy was assigned duty in Panama and later in the Pacific theater, where he eventually commanded two more patrol torpedo (PT) boats. 

PT-109 and PT-59

In April 1943, he was assigned to Motor Torpedo Squadron TWO. On April 24, Kennedy took command of PT-109  which was based at Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands. On the night of August 1–2, PT-109, on its 31st mission, was performing nighttime patrols near New Georgia in the Solomon Islands with PT-162 and PT-169. Kennedy spotted a Japanese destroyer nearby and attempted to turn to attack, when PT-109 was rammed suddenly at an angle and cut in half by the destroyer Amagiri, costing two PT-109 crew members  their lives. Kennedy gathered his surviving ten crew members including those injured around the wreckage, to vote on whether to "fight or surrender". Kennedy stated: "There's nothing in the book about a situation like this. A lot of you men have families and some of you have children. What do you want to do? I have nothing to lose." Shunning surrender, the men swam towards a small island three miles away. Despite re-injuring his back in the collision, Kennedy towed a badly burned crewman through the water with a life jacket strap clenched between his teeth to the island and later to a second island, where his crew was subsequently rescued on August 8. Kennedy and Ensign Leonard Thom,   his executive officer on PT-109, were both later awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism and the Purple Heart Medal for injuries. 

On September 1, 1943, Kennedy returned to duty and took command of a PT boat converted into a gunboat, the PT-59.  In October, Kennedy was promoted to lieutenant. On November 2, PT-59, which included three former PT-109 crew members, took part with another boat in the successful rescue of 87 marines stranded on two rescue landing craft on the Warrior River at Choiseul Island which was held by the Japanese. Kennedy was relieved of his command of PT-59 on November 18 under doctor's orders and returned to the United States in early January 1944. After receiving treatment for his back injury, he was released from active duty in late 1944. 
Beginning in January 1945, Kennedy spent three more months recovering from his back injury at Castle Hot Springs, a resort and temporary military hospital in Arizona. 

Kennedy was in Chelsea Naval Hospital from May to December 1942. On June 12, he was presented the Navy and Marine Corps Medal (the Navy's highest noncombat decoration for heroism) for his heroic actions on August 1–2, 1943, and the Purple Heart Medal for his back injury on PT-109, on August 1, 1943 (injured on August 2).  After the war, Kennedy felt that the medal he had received for heroism was not a combat award and asked that he be reconsidered for the Silver Star Medal for which had been recommended initially. (His father also requested the Silver Star, which is awarded for gallantry in action, for Kennedy). In 1950, The Department of the Navy offered Kennedy a Bronze Star Medal to recognize his meritorious service, however he would have to return his Navy and Marine Corps Medal in order to receive it. He declined the medal. In 1959, the Navy again offered him the Bronze Star. Kennedy responded, repeating his original request concerning the award. He received the same response from the Navy as he had in 1950. The Navy said his actions were a lifesaving case. Both of Kennedy's original medals are on display currently at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. 

On August 12, 1944, his older brother, Joe Jr., a Navy pilot, was killed after volunteering for a special and hazardous air mission when his explosive-laden plane exploded over the English Channel. 

On March 1, 1945, Kennedy was retired from the Navy Reserve on physical disability and honorably discharged with the full rank of lieutenant. When later asked later how he became a war hero, Kennedy joked: "It was easy. They cut my PT boat in half."

Military awards

Kennedy's military decorations and awards include the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, Purple Heart Medal, American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with three " bronze stars, and the World War II Victory Medal.

Navy and Marine Corps Medal citation

"For heroism in the rescue of three men following the ramming and sinking of his motor torpedo boat while attempting a torpedo attack on a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands area on the night of August 1–2, 1943. Lieutenant Kennedy, Captain of the boat, directed the rescue of the crew and personally rescued three men, one of whom was seriously injured. During the following six days, he succeeded in getting his crew ashore, and after swimming many hours attempting to secure aid and food, finally effected the rescue of the men. His courage, endurance, and excellent leadership contributed to the saving of several lives and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."

 W.F. Halsey, Admiral, U.S. Navy Temporary Citation

"For extremely heroic conduct as Commanding Officer of Motor Torpedo Boat 109 following the collision and sinking of that vessel in the Pacific War Theater on August 1–2, 1943. Unmindful of personal danger, Lieutenant (then Lieutenant, Junior Grade) Kennedy unhesitatingly braved the difficulties and hazards of darkness to direct rescue operations, swimming many hours to secure aid and food after he had succeeded in getting his crew ashore. His outstanding courage, endurance and leadership contributed to the saving of several lives and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."

 James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy 

Post-naval service

In April 1945, Kennedy's father, who was a friend of William Randolph Hearst, arranged a position for his son as a special correspondent for Hearst Newspapers; the assignment kept Kennedy's name in the public eye and "expose[d] him to journalism as a possible career." He worked as a correspondent that May, covering the Potsdam Conference and other events.

Congressional career

Because his eldest brother had been the family's political standard-bearer, and tapped by his father to seek the Presidency, his death in 1944 changed that course and the task now fell to the younger Kennedy.

U.S. House of Representatives (1947–1953)

At the urging of Kennedy's father, U.S. Representative James Michael Curley vacated his seat in the strongly Democratic 11th Congressional district in Massachusetts to become mayor of Boston in 1946. Kennedy ran for the seat, beating his Republican opponent by a large margin in November 1946. He served as a congressman for six years.

U.S. Senate (1953–1960)

In the 1952 U.S. Senate election, Kennedy defeated incumbent Republican Henry Cabot Lodge II for the Senate seat. The following year, he married Jacqueline Bouvier.

Kennedy underwent several spinal operations over the next two years. Often absent from the Senate, he was at times critically ill and received Catholic last rites. During his convalescence in 1956, he published Profiles in Courage, a book about U.S. senators who risked their careers for their personal beliefs, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957. Rumors that this work was co-written by his close adviser and speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, were confirmed in Sorensen's 2008 autobiography. 

At the 1956 Democratic National Convention, Presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson let the convention select the Vice Presential nominee. Kennedy finished second in the balloting, losing to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Kennedy received national exposure from that episode; his father thought it just as well that Kennedy lost, due to the potential political debility of his Catholicism and the strength of the Eisenhower ticket.

One of the matters demanding Kennedy's attention in the Senate was President Eisenhower's bill for the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Kennedy cast a procedural vote on this, which was considered by some as an appeasement of Southern Democratic opponents of the bill. Kennedy did vote for Title III of the act, which would have given the Attorney General powers to enjoin, but Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson agreed to let the provision die as a compromise measure. Kennedy also voted for Title IV, termed the "Jury Trial Amendment". Many civil rights advocates at the time criticized that vote as one which would weaken the act. A final compromise bill, which Kennedy supported, was passed in September 1957.

In 1958, Kennedy was re-elected to a second term in the Senate, defeating his Republican opponent, Boston lawyer Vincent J. Celeste, by a wide margin. It was during his re-election campaign that Kennedy's press secretary at this time, Robert E. Thompson, put together a film entitled The U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy Story, which exhibited a day in the life of the Senator and showcased his family life as well as the inner workings of his office. It was the most comprehensive film produced about Kennedy up to that time. 

While Kennedy's father was a strong supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthy was also a friend of the Kennedy family. As well, Bobby Kennedy worked for McCarthy's subcommittee, and McCarthy dated Kennedy sister Patricia. In 1954, the Senate voted to censure McCarthy and Kennedy drafted a speech supporting the censure. The speech, however, was not delivered, because of Kennedy's hospitalization at the time. The speech had the potential of putting Kennedy in the position of participating procedurally by "pairing" his vote against that of another senator. Although Kennedy never indicated how he would have voted, the episode damaged Kennedy's support among members of the liberal community, including Eleanor Roosevelt, in the 1956 and 1960 elections.

1960 presidential election

On January 2, 1960, Kennedy initiated his campaign for president in the Democratic primary election, where he faced challenges from Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon. Kennedy defeated Humphrey in Wisconsin and West Virginia, Morse in Maryland and Oregon, as well as token opposition (often write-in candidates) in New Hampshire, Indiana, and Nebraska.

Kennedy visited a coal mine in West Virginia. Most miners and others in that predominantly conservative, Protestant state were quite wary of Kennedy's Roman Catholicism. His victory in West Virginia confirmed his broad popular appeal.

At the Democratic Convention, he gave his well-known "New Frontier" speech, saying: "For the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won—and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier.... But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them." 

With Humphrey and Morse eliminated, Kennedy's main opponent at the Los Angeles convention was Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. Kennedy overcame this formal challenge as well as informal ones from Adlai Stevenson (the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956), Stuart Symington, and several favorite sons, and on July 13, the Democratic convention nominated Kennedy as its candidate. Kennedy asked Johnson to be his vice presidential candidate, despite opposition from many liberal delegates and Kennedy's own staff, including his brother Bobby. 

Kennedy needed Johnson's strength in the South to win what was considered likely to be the closest election since 1916. Major issues included how to get the economy moving again, Kennedy's Roman Catholicism, Cuba, and whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the U.S. To address fears that his being Catholic would impact his decision-making, he famously told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, "I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party candidate for president who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters – and the Church does not speak for me."  Kennedy questioned rhetorically whether one-quarter of Americans were relegated to second-class citizenship just because they were Catholic, and once stated that, "No one asked me my religion [serving the Navy] in the South Pacific."

In September and October, Kennedy appeared with vice president and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the first televised U.S. presidential debates in U.S. history. During these programs, Nixon, with a sore, injured leg and his "five o'clock shadow", was perspiring and looked tense and uncomfortable, while Kennedy, choosing to avail himself of makeup services, appeared relaxed, leading the huge television audience to favor Kennedy as the winner. Radio listeners either thought Nixon had won or that the debates were a draw.  The debates are now considered a milestone in American political history—the point at which the medium of television began to play a dominant role in politics. 

Kennedy's campaign gained momentum after the first debate, and he pulled slightly ahead of Nixon in most polls. On November 8, Kennedy defeated Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century. In the national popular vote, Kennedy led Nixon by just two-tenths of one percent (49.7% to 49.5%), while in the Electoral College, he won 303 votes to Nixon's 219 (269 were needed to win).

Fourteen electors from Mississippi and Alabama refused to support Kennedy because of his support for the civil rights movement; they voted for Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia, as did an elector from Oklahoma. Kennedy was the youngest man elected president, succeeding Eisenhower, who was then the oldest (Ronald Reagan surpassed Eisenhower as the oldest president in 1981).

Presidency (1961–1963)

John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president at noon on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens, famously saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." He asked the nations of the world to join together to fight what he called the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself". 

He added: "All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin." In closing, he expanded on his desire for greater internationalism: "Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you."

The address reflected Kennedy's confidence that his administration would chart an historically significant course in both domestic policy and foreign affairs. The contrast between this optimistic vision and the pressures of managing daily political realities at home and abroad would be one of the main tensions running through the early years of his administration.

Kennedy brought to the White House a contrast in organization compared to the decision-making structure of former-general Eisenhower; and he wasted no time in dismantling Eisenhower's methods. Kennedy preferred the organizational structure of a wheel, with all the spokes leading to the president. He was ready and willing to make the increased number of quick decisions required in such an environment. He selected a mixture of experienced and inexperienced people to serve in his cabinet. "We can learn our jobs together", he stated.

Much to the chagrin of his economic advisors who wanted him to reduce taxes, Kennedy quickly agreed to a balanced budget pledge. This was needed in exchange for votes to expand the membership of the House Rules Committee in order to give the Democrats a majority in setting the legislative agenda. The president focused on immediate and specific issues facing the administration, and quickly voiced his impatience with pondering of deeper meanings. Deputy national security advisor Walt Whitman Rostow once began a diatribe about the growth of communism, and Kennedy abruptly cut him off, asking, "What do you want me to do about that today?"

Kennedy approved Defense secretary Robert McNamara's controversial decision to award the contract for the F-111 TFX (Tactical Fighter Experimental) fighter-bomber to General Dynamics (the choice of the civilian Defense department) over Boeing (the choice of the military).  At the request of Senator Henry Jackson, Senator John McClellan held 46 days of mostly closed-door hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations investigating the TFX contract from February to November 1963. 

Foreign policy

President Kennedy's foreign policy was dominated by American confrontations with the Soviet Union, manifested by proxy contests in the early stage of the Cold War. In 1961, Kennedy anxiously anticipated a summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The president started off on the wrong foot by reacting aggressively to a routine Khrushchev speech on Cold War confrontation in early 1961. The speech was intended for domestic audiences in the Soviet Union, but Kennedy interpreted it as a personal challenge. His mistake helped raise tensions going into the Vienna Summit of June 1961.

On the way to the summit, Kennedy stopped in Paris to meet Charles de Gaulle, who advised Kennedy to ignore Khrushchev's abrasive style. The French president feared the United States' presumed influence in Europe. Nevertheless, de Gaulle was quite impressed with the young president and his family. Kennedy picked up on this in his speech in Paris, saying that he would be remembered as "the man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy to Paris."

On June 4, 1961, the president met with Khrushchev in Vienna and left the meetings angry and disappointed that he had allowed the Premier to bully him, despite the warnings he had received. Khrushchev, for his part, was impressed with the president's intelligence, but thought him weak. Kennedy did succeed in conveying the bottom line to Khrushchev on the most sensitive issue before them, a proposed treaty between Moscow and East Berlin. He made it clear that any such treaty which interfered with U.S access rights in West Berlin would be regarded as an act of war.

Shortly after the president returned home, the U.S.S.R. announced its intention to sign a treaty with East Berlin, abrogating any third-party occupation rights in either sector of the city. Kennedy, depressed and angry, assumed that his only option was to prepare the country for nuclear war, which he personally thought had a one-in-five chance of occurring.

In the weeks immediately after the Vienna summit, more than 20,000 people fled from East Berlin to the western sector in reaction to statements from the USSR. Kennedy began intensive meetings on the Berlin issue, where Dean Acheson took the lead in recommending a military buildup alongside NATO allies. In a July 1961 speech, Kennedy announced his decision to add $3.25 billion to the defense budget, along with over 200,000 additional troops, stating that an attack on West Berlin would be taken as an attack on the U.S. The speech received an 85% approval rating.

The following month, the Soviet Union and East Berlin began blocking any further passage of East Berliners into West Berlin and erected barbed wire fences across the city, which were quickly upgraded to the Berlin Wall. Kennedy's initial reaction was to ignore this, as long as free access from West to East Berlin continued. This course was altered when it was learned that the West Berliners had lost confidence in the defense of their position by the United States. Kennedy sent Vice President Johnson, along with a host of military personnel, in convoy through West Germany, including Soviet-armed checkpoints, to demonstrate the continued commitment of the U.S. to West Berlin.

Kennedy gave a speech at Saint Anselm College on May 5, 1960, regarding America's conduct in the emerging Cold War. The address detailed how American foreign policy should be conducted towards African nations, noting a hint of support for modern African nationalism by saying that "For we, too, founded a new nation on revolt from colonial rule". 

Cuba and the Bay of Pigs Invasion

The prior Eisenhower administration had created a plan to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. The plan, led by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with help from the U.S. military, was for an invasion of Cuba by a counter-revolutionary insurgency composed of U.S.-trained anti-Castro Cuban exiles  led by CIA paramilitary officers. The intention was to invade Cuba and instigate an uprising among the Cuban people in hopes of removing Castro from power.

On April 17, 1961, Kennedy ordered what became known as the "Bay of Pigs Invasion": 1,500 U.S.-trained Cubans, called "Brigade 2506", landed on the island. No U.S. air support was provided. Allen Dulles, director of the CIA, later stated that they thought the president would authorize any action required for success once the troops were on the ground.

By April 19, 1961, the Cuban government had captured or killed the invading exiles, and Kennedy was forced to negotiate for the release of the 1,189 survivors. After twenty months, Cuba released the captured exiles in exchange for $53 million worth of food and medicine. The incident made Castro wary of the U.S. and led him to believe another invasion would occur. 

According to biographer Richard Reeves, Kennedy primarily focused on the political repercussions of the plan rather than military considerations. When it failed, he was convinced that the plan was a setup to make him look bad. He took responsibility for the failure, saying, "We got a big kick in the leg and we deserved it. But maybe we'll learn something from it."

In late 1961, the White House formed the "Special Group (Augmented)", headed by Robert Kennedy and including Edward Lansdale, Secretary Robert McNamara, and others. The group's objective—to overthrow Castro via espionage, sabotage, and other covert tactics—was never pursued.

Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 14, 1962, CIA U-2 spy planes took photographs of intermediate-range ballistic missile sites being built in Cuba by the Soviets. The photos were shown to Kennedy on October 16; a consensus was reached that the missiles were offensive in nature and thus posed an immediate nuclear threat.

Kennedy faced a dilemma: if the U.S. attacked the sites, it might lead to nuclear war with the U.S.S.R., but if the U.S. did nothing, it would be faced with the increased threat from close-range nuclear weapons. The U.S. would also appear to the world as less committed to the defense of the hemisphere. On a personal level, Kennedy needed to show resolve in reaction to Khrushchev, especially after the Vienna summit.

More than a third of the members of the National Security Council (NSC) favored an unannounced air assault on the missile sites, but for some of them this conjured up an image of "Pearl Harbor in reverse". There was also some reaction from the international community (asked in confidence), that the assault plan was an overreaction in light of U.S. missiles that had been placed in Turkey by Eisenhower. There could also be no assurance that the assault would be 100% effective. In concurrence with a majority-vote of the NSC, Kennedy decided on a naval quarantine. On October 22 he dispatched a message to Khrushchev and announced the decision on TV.

The U.S. Navy would stop and inspect all Soviet ships arriving off Cuba, beginning October 24. The Organization of American States gave unanimous support to the removal of the missiles. The president exchanged two sets of letters with Khrushchev, to no avail. United Nations (UN) Secretary General U Thant requested that both parties reverse their decisions and enter a cooling-off period. Khrushchev said yes, but Kennedy said no.

One Soviet-flagged ship was stopped and boarded. On October 28 Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile sites, subject to UN inspections. The U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and privately agreed to remove its missiles in Turkey, which were by then obsolete and had been supplanted by submarines equipped with UGM-27 Polaris missiles.

This crisis brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point before or since. In the end, "the humanity" of the two men prevailed. The crisis improved the image of American willpower and the president's credibility. Kennedy's approval rating increased from 66% to 77% immediately thereafter.

Latin America and communism

Arguing that "those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable,"  Kennedy sought to contain the perceived threat of communism in Latin America by establishing the Alliance for Progress, which sent aid to some countries and sought greater human rights standards in the region. He worked closely with Governor of Puerto Rico Luis Muñoz Marín for the development of the Alliance of Progress, and began working towards the autonomy of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

When the president took office, the Eisenhower administration, through the CIA, had begun formulating plans for the assassination of Castro in Cuba and Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Kennedy privately instructed the CIA that any such planning must include plausible deniability by the U.S. His public position was in opposition. In June 1961 the Dominican Republic's leader was assassinated; in the days following the event, Undersecretary of State Chester Bowles led a cautious reaction by the nation. Robert Kennedy, who saw an opportunity for the U.S., called Bowles "a gutless bastard" to his face.

Peace Corps

As one of his first presidential acts, Kennedy asked Congress to create the Peace Corps. His brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, was the first director. Through this program, Americans volunteer to help underdeveloped nations in areas such as education, farming, health care, and construction. The organization grew to 5,000 members by March 1963 and 10,000 the following year. Since 1961, over 200,000 Americans have joined the Peace Corps, serving in 139 countries.  

Southeast Asia

When briefing Kennedy, Eisenhower emphasized that the communist threat in Southeast Asia required priority; Eisenhower considered Laos to be "the cork in the bottle" in regards to the regional threat. In March 1961, Kennedy voiced a change in policy from supporting a "free" Laos to a "neutral" Laos, indicating privately that Vietnam, and not Laos, should be deemed America's tripwire for communism's spread in the area.

In May 1961 he dispatched Lyndon Johnson to meet with South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. Johnson assured Diem more aid in molding a fighting force that could resist the communists. Kennedy announced a change of policy from support to partnership with Diem in defeat of communism in South Vietnam.

During his administration, Kennedy continued policies that provided political and economic support and military advice and support to the South Vietnamese government. Late in 1961, the Viet Cong began assuming a predominant presence, initially seizing the provincial capital of Phuoc Vinh. Kennedy increased the number of military advisors and special forces U.S. Special Forces in the area, from 11,000 in 1962 to 16,000 by late 1963, but he was reluctant to order a full-scale deployment of troops.  Before his assassination, Kennedy used almost exclusively military advisors and special forces in Vietnam. A year and one-half later, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, committed the first combat troops to Vietnam and greatly escalated U.S. involvement, with forces reaching 184,000 that year and 536,000 in 1968.

In late 1961, President Kennedy sent Roger Hilsman, then director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, to assess the situation in Vietnam. There, Hilsman met Sir Robert Thompson, head of the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam and the concept of the Strategic Hamlet Program was formed. It was approved by Kennedy and South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem. It was implemented in early 1962 and involved some forced relocation, village internment, and segregation of rural South Vietnamese into new communities where the peasantry would be isolated from Communist insurgents. It was hoped these new communities would provide security for the peasants and strengthen the tie between them and the central government. By November 1963 the program waned and officially ended in 1964.

In early 1962, Kennedy formally authorized escalated involvement when he signed the "National Security Action Memorandum – Subversive Insurgency (War of Liberation)". Secretary of State Dean Rusk voiced strong support for U.S. involvement. "Operation Ranch Hand", a large-scale aerial defoliation effort, began on the roadsides of South Vietnam.

In April 1963, Kennedy assessed the situation in Vietnam: "We don't have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can't give up that territory to the communists and get the American people to re-elect me". Kennedy faced a crisis in Vietnam by July; despite increased U.S. support, the South Vietnamese military was only marginally effective against pro-communist Viet Cong forces.

On August 21, just as the new U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. arrived, Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu ordered South Vietnam forces, funded and trained by the CIA, to quell Buddhist demonstrations. The crackdowns heightened expectations of a coup d'état to remove Diem with (or perhaps by) his brother, Nhu. Lodge was instructed to try to get Diem and Nhu to step down and leave the country. Diem would not listen to Lodge.

Cable 243 (DEPTEL 243), dated August 24, followed, declaring Washington would no longer tolerate Nhu's actions, and Lodge was ordered to pressure Diem to remove Nhu. If Diem refused, the Americans would explore alternative leadership. Lodge stated that the only workable option was to get the South Vietnamese generals to overthrow Diem and Nhu, as originally planned.

At week's end, Kennedy learned from Lodge that the Diem government might, due to France's assistance to Nhu, be dealing secretly with the communists—and might ask the Americans to leave; orders were sent to Saigon and throughout Washington to "destroy all coup cables". At the same time, the first formal anti-Vietnam war sentiment was expressed by U.S. clergy from the Ministers' Vietnam Committee.

A White House meeting in September was indicative of the very different ongoing appraisals; the president was given updated assessments after personal inspections on the ground by the Department of Defense (General Victor Krulak) and the State Department (Joseph Mendenhall). Krulak said that the military fight against the communists was progressing and being won, while Mendenhall stated that the country was civilly being lost to any U.S. influence. Kennedy reacted, saying, "Did you two gentlemen visit the same country?" The president was unaware that the two men were at such odds that they had not spoken to each other on the return flight.

In October 1963, the president appointed Defense Secretary McNamara and General Maxwell D. Taylor to a Vietnam mission in another effort to synchronize the information and formulation of policy. The objective of the McNamara Taylor mission "emphasized the importance of getting to the bottom of the differences in reporting from U.S. representatives in Vietnam". In meetings with McNamara, Taylor, and Lodge, Diem again refused to agree to governing measures insisted upon by the U.S., helping to dispel McNamara's previous optimism about Diem.

Taylor and McNamara were also enlightened by Vietnam's vice president, Nguyen Ngoc Tho (choice of many to succeed Diem should a coup occur), who in detailed terms obliterated Taylor's information that the military was succeeding in the countryside. At Kennedy's insistence, the mission report contained a recommended schedule for troop withdrawals: 1,000 by year's end and complete withdrawal in 1965, something the NSC considered a strategic fantasy. The final report declared that the military was making progress, that the increasingly unpopular Diem-led government was not vulnerable to a coup, and that an assassination of Diem or Nhu was a possibility.

In late October, intelligence wires again reported that a coup against the Diem government was afoot. The source, Vietnamese General Duong Van Minh (also known as "Big Minh"), wanted to know the U.S. position. Kennedy instructed Lodge to offer covert assistance to the coup, excluding assassination, and to ensure deniability by the U.S. Later that month, as the coup became imminent, Kennedy ordered all cables to be routed through him. A policy of "control and cut out" was initiated to insure presidential control of U.S. responses, while cutting him out of the paper trail.

On November 1, 1963, South Vietnamese generals, led by "Big Minh", overthrew the Diem government, arresting and then killing Diem and Nhu. Kennedy was shocked by the deaths. He found out afterwards that Minh had asked the CIA field office to secure safe-passage out of the country for Diem and Nhu, but was told that 24 hours were needed to procure a plane. Minh responded that he could not hold them that long.

News of the coup initially led to renewed confidence—both in America and in South Vietnam—that the war might be won. McGeorge Bundy drafted a National Security Action Memo to present to Kennedy upon his return from Dallas. It reiterated the resolve to fight communism in Vietnam, with increasing military and economic aid and expansion of operations into Laos and Cambodia. Before leaving for Dallas, Kennedy told Michael Forrestal that "after the first of the year ... [he wanted] an in depth study of every possible option, including how to get out of there ... to review this whole thing from the bottom to the top". When asked what he thought the president meant, Forrestal said, "it was devil's advocate stuff."

Historians disagree on whether Vietnam would have escalated had Kennedy survived and been re-elected in 1964.  Fueling the debate are statements made by Secretary of Defense McNamara in the film "The Fog of War" that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out of Vietnam after the 1964 election.  The film also contains a tape recording of Lyndon Johnson stating that Kennedy was planning to withdraw, a position that Johnson disagreed with. Kennedy had signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, dated October 11, which ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of the year.  Such an action would have been a policy reversal, but Kennedy was moving in a less hawkish direction since his acclaimed speech about world peace at American University on June 10, 1963. 

When Robert Kennedy was asked in 1964 what his brother would have done if the South Vietnamese had been on the brink of defeat, he replied, "We'd face that when we came to it."  At the time of Kennedy's death, no final policy decision had been made as to Vietnam. In 2008, Theodore Sorensen wrote "I would like to believe that Kennedy would have found a way to withdraw all American instructors and advisors [from Vietnam]. But even someone who knew JFK as well as I did can't be certain, because I do not believe he knew in his last weeks what he was going to do." Sorensen added that, in his opinion, Vietnam "was the only foreign policy problem handed off by JFK to his successor in no better, and possibly worse, shape than it was when he inherited it." U.S. involvement in the region escalated until Lyndon Johnson, his successor, directly deployed regular U.S. military forces for fighting the Vietnam War.  After Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson passed NSAM 273 on November 26, 1963. It reversed Kennedy's decision to withdraw 1,000 troops, and reaffirmed the policy of assistance to the South Vietnamese.  

American University speech

On June 10, 1963, Kennedy delivered at the high point of his rhetorical powers  the commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C. Also known as "Strategy of Peace", Kennedy not only outlined a plan to curb nuclear arms, but also "laid out a hopeful, yet realistic route for world peace at a time when the U.S. and Soviet Union faced the potential for an escalating nuclear arms race."  The President wished "to discuss a topic on which too often ignorance abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived—yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace ... I speak of peace because of the new face of war...in an age when a singular nuclear weapon contains ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied forces in the Second World War ... an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and air and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn ... I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men ... world peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance ... our problems are man-made—therefore they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants." The president also made two announcements—that the Soviets had expressed a desire to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty and that the U.S had postponed planned atmospheric tests.

West Berlin speech

In 1963, Germany was enduring a time of particular vulnerability due to Soviet aggression to the east and the impending retirement of West German Chancellor Adenauer. At the same time, French President Charles de Gaulle was trying to build a Franco-West German counterweight to the American and Soviet spheres of influence.    To Kennedy's eyes, this Franco-German cooperation seemed directed against NATO's influence in Europe. 

On June 26, President Kennedy gave a public speech in West Berlin reiterating the American commitment to Germany and criticizing communism. He was met with an ecstatic response from a massive audience.

Kennedy used the construction of the Berlin Wall as an example of the failures of communism: "Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect. But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us." The speech is known for its famous phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a citizen of Berlin"). A million people were on the street for the speech. He remarked to Ted Sorensen afterwards: "We'll never have another day like this one, as long as we live."

Israel

In 1960, Kennedy stated: "Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom". 

Subsequently as president, Kennedy initiated the creation of security ties with Israel, and he is credited as the founder of the US-Israeli military alliance (which would be continued under subsequent presidents). Kennedy ended the arms embargo that the Eisenhower and Truman administrations had enforced on Israel. Describing the protection of Israel as a moral and national commitment, he was the first to introduce the concept of a 'special relationship' (as he described it to Golda Meir) between the US and Israel. 

Kennedy extended the first informal security guarantees to Israel in 1962 and, beginning in 1963, was the first US president to allow the sale to Israel of advanced US weaponry (the MIM-23 Hawk), as well as to provide diplomatic support for Israeli policies which were opposed by Arab neighbours; such as its water project on the Jordan River. 

As result of this newly created security alliance, Kennedy also encountered tensions with the Israeli government regarding the production of nuclear materials in Dimona, which he believed could instigate a nuclear arms-race in the Middle East. After the existence of a nuclear plant was initially denied by the Israeli government, David Ben-Gurion stated in a speech to the Israeli Knesset on December 21, 1960, that the purpose of the nuclear plant at Beersheba was for "research in problems of arid zones and desert flora and fauna". When Ben-Gurion met with Kennedy in New York, he claimed that Dimona was being developed to provide nuclear power for desalinization and other peaceful purposes "for the time being".

When Kennedy wrote that he was skeptical, and stated in a May 1963 letter to Ben-Gurion that American support to Israel could be in jeopardy if reliable information on the Israeli nuclear program was not forthcoming, Ben-Gurion repeated previous reassurances that Dimona was being developed for peaceful purposes. The Israeli government resisted American pressure to open its nuclear facilities to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections. In 1962, the US and Israeli governments had agreed to an annual inspection regime. A science attaché at the embassy in Tel Aviv concluded that parts of the Dimona facility had been shut down temporarily to mislead American scientists when they visited.

According to Seymour Hersh, the Israelis set up false control rooms to show the Americans. Israeli lobbyist Abe Feinberg stated, "It was part of my job to tip them off that Kennedy was insisting on [an inspection]." Hersh contends the inspections were conducted in such a way that it "guaranteed that the whole procedure would be little more than a whitewash, as the president and his senior advisors had to understand: the American inspection team would have to schedule its visits well in advance, and with the full acquiescence of Israel.".  Marc Trachtenberg argued: "Although well aware of what the Israelis were doing, Kennedy chose to take this as satisfactory evidence of Israeli compliance with America's non-proliferation policy."  The American who led the inspection team stated that the essential goal of the inspections was to find "ways to not reach the point of taking action against Israel's nuclear weapons program". 

Rodger Davies, the director of the State Department's Office of Near Eastern Affairs, concluded in March 1965 that Israel was developing nuclear weapons. He reported that Israel's target date for achieving nuclear capability was 1968–1969. On May 1, 1968, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach told President Johnson that Dimona was producing enough plutonium to produce two bombs a year. The State Department argued that if Israel wanted arms, it should accept international supervision of its nuclear program. Dimona was never placed under IAEA safeguards. Attempts to write Israeli adherence to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) into contracts for the supply of U.S. weapons continued throughout 1968.

Iraq

Relations between the United States and Iraq became strained following the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy on July 14, 1958, which resulted in the declaration of a republican government led by Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim. On June 25, 1961 Qasim mobilized troops along the border between Iraq and Kuwait, declaring the latter nation "an indivisible part of Iraq" and causing a short-lived "Kuwait Crisis". The United Kingdom—which had just granted Kuwait independence on June 19 and whose economy was heavily dependent on Kuwaiti oil—responded on July 1 by dispatching 5,000 troops to the country to deter an Iraqi invasion. At the same time, Kennedy dispatched a U.S. Navy task force to Bahrain, and the U.K. (at the urging of the Kennedy administration) brought the dispute to United Nations Security Council, where the proposed resolution was vetoed by the Soviet Union. The situation was resolved in October, when the British troops were withdrawn and replaced by a 4,000-strong Arab League force.

In December 1961, Qasim's government passed Public Law 80, which restricted the British- and American-owned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)'s concessionary holding to those areas in which oil was actually being produced, effectively expropriating 99.5% of the IPC concession. U.S. officials were alarmed by the expropriation as well as the recent Soviet veto of an Egyptian-sponsored UN resolution requesting the admittance of Kuwait as UN member state, which they believed to be connected. Senior National Security Council adviser Robert Komer worried that if the IPC ceased production in response, Qasim might "grab Kuwait" (thus achieving a "stranglehold" on Middle Eastern oil production) or "throw himself into Russian arms". Komer also made note of widespread rumors that a nationalist coup against Qasim could be imminent, and had the potential to "get Iraq back on [a] more neutral keel".

In April 1962, the State Department issued new guidelines on Iraq that were intended to increase American influence there. Meanwhile, Kennedy instructed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—under the direction of Archie Roosevelt, Jr.—to begin making preparations for a military coup against Qasim.

The anti-imperialist and anti-communist Iraqi Ba'ath Party overthrew and executed Qasim in a violent coup on February 8, 1963. While there have been persistent rumors that the CIA orchestrated the coup, declassified documents and the testimony of former CIA officers indicate there was no direct American involvement, although the CIA was actively seeking to find a suitable replacement for Qasim within the Iraqi military and had been informed of an earlier Ba'athist coup plot. The Kennedy administration was pleased with the outcome and ultimately approved a $55 million arms deal for Iraq.

Ireland

During his four-day visit to his ancestral home of Ireland in June 1963,  Kennedy accepted a grant of armorial bearings from the Chief Herald of Ireland and received honorary degrees from the National University of Ireland and Trinity College, Dublin. He visited the cottage at Dunganstown, near New Ross, County Wexford where his ancestors had lived before emigrating to America. 

He also became the first foreign leader to address the Houses of the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament).  On December 22, 2006, the Irish Department of Justice released declassified police documents indicating that security was heightened as Kennedy was the subject of three death threats during this visit. 

Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Troubled by the long-term dangers of radioactive contamination and nuclear weapons proliferation, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty, originally conceived in Adlai Stevenson's 1956 presidential campaign. In their Vienna summit meeting in June 1961, Khrushchev and Kennedy reached an informal understanding against nuclear testing, but the Soviet Union began testing nuclear weapons that September. The United States responded by conducting tests five days later. Shortly thereafter, new U.S. satellites began delivering images which made it clear that the Soviets were substantially behind the U.S. in the arms race. Nevertheless, the greater nuclear strength of the U.S. was of little value as long as the U.S.S.R. perceived themselves to be at parity.

In July 1963, Kennedy sent W. Averell Harriman to Moscow to negotiate a treaty with the Soviets. The introductory sessions included Khrushchev, who later delegated Soviet representation to Andrei Gromyko. It quickly became clear that a comprehensive test ban would not be implemented, due largely to the reluctance of the Soviets to allow inspections that would verify compliance.

Ultimately, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union were the initial signatories to a limited treaty, which prohibited atomic testing on the ground, in the atmosphere, or underwater, but not underground. The U.S. Senate ratified this and Kennedy signed it into law in October 1963. France was quick to declare that it was free to continue developing and testing its nuclear defenses.

Domestic policy

Kennedy called his domestic program the "New Frontier". It ambitiously promised federal funding for education, medical care for the elderly, economic aid to rural regions, and government intervention to halt the recession. Kennedy also promised an end to racial discrimination. 

In his 1963 State of the Union address, he proposed substantial tax reform and a reduction in income tax rates from the current range of 20–90% to a range of 14–65%; he proposed a reduction in the corporate tax rates from 52 to 47%. Kennedy added that the top rate should be set at 70% if certain deductions were not eliminated for high income earners. Congress did not act until 1964, after his death, when the top individual rate was lowered to 70%, and the top corporate rate was set at 48% (see Revenue Act of 1964). 

To the Economic Club of New York, he spoke in 1963 of "... the paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and revenues too low; and the soundest way to raise revenue in the long term is to lower rates now." Congress passed few of Kennedy's major programs during his lifetime, but did vote them through in 1964 and 1965 under his successor Johnson.

Economy

Kennedy ended a period of tight fiscal policies, loosening monetary policy to keep interest rates down and encourage growth of the economy. He presided over the first government budget to top the $100 billion mark, in 1962, and his first budget in 1961 led to the country's first non-war, non-recession deficit. The economy, which had been through two recessions in three years and was in one when Kennedy took office, accelerated notably during his presidency. Despite low inflation and interest rates, GDP had grown by an average of only 2.2% per annum during the Eisenhower presidency (scarcely more than population growth at the time), and had declined by 1% during Eisenhower's last twelve months in office. 

The economy turned around and prospered during the Kennedy administration. GDP expanded by an average of 5.5% from early 1961 to late 1963, while inflation remained steady at around 1% and unemployment eased.  Industrial production rose by 15% and motor vehicle sales rose by 40%.  This rate of growth in GDP and industry continued until around 1969, and has yet to be repeated for such a sustained period of time.

Bobby Kennedy stated, "We're going for broke..... their expense accounts, where they've been and what they've been doing..... the FBI is to interview them all..... we can't lose this."

Robert took the position that the steel executives had illegally colluded to fix prices. The administration's actions influenced U.S. Steel to rescind the price increase.  The Wall Street Journal wrote that the administration had acted "by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police." Yale law professor Charles Reich opined in The New Republic that the administration had violated civil liberties by calling a grand jury to indict U.S. Steel for collusion so quickly.

A New York Times editorial praised Kennedy's actions and said that the steel industry's price increase "imperils the economic welfare of the country by inviting a tidal wave of inflation."  Nevertheless, the administration's Bureau of Budget reported the price increase would have resulted in a net gain for GDP as well as a net budget surplus. The stock market, which had steadily declined since Kennedy's election, dropped 10% shortly after the administration's action on the steel industry.

Federal and military death penalty

As president, Kennedy oversaw the last federal execution prior to Furman v. Georgia, a 1972 case that led to a moratorium on federal executions.  Victor Feguer was sentenced to death by a federal court in Iowa and was executed on March 15, 1963.  Kennedy commuted a death sentence imposed by a military court on seaman Jimmie Henderson on February 12, 1962, changing the penalty to life in prison. 

On March 22, 1962, Kennedy signed into law HR5143 (PL87-423), abolishing the mandatory death penalty for first degree murder in the District of Columbia, the only remaining jurisdiction in the United States with such a penalty.  The death penalty has not been applied in the District of Columbia since 1957, and has now been abolished. 

Civil rights

Kennedy in May 1961 appointed Thurgood Marshall to the federal bench.
The turbulent end of state-sanctioned racial discrimination was one of the most pressing domestic issues of the 1960s. Jim Crow segregation was the established law in the Deep South.Grantham (1988), The Life and Death of the Solid South: A Political History, p. 156 The Supreme Court of the United States had ruled in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Many schools, especially in southern states, did not obey the Supreme Court's decision. The Court also prohibited segregation at other public facilities (such as buses, restaurants, theaters, courtrooms, bathrooms, and beaches) but it continued nonetheless.

Kennedy verbally supported racial integration and civil rights; during the 1960 campaign he telephoned Coretta Scott King, wife of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been jailed while trying to integrate a department store lunch counter. Robert Kennedy called Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver and obtained King's release from prison, which drew additional black support to his brother's candidacy. Upon taking office in 1961 Kennedy postponed promised civil rights legislation he made while campaigning in 1960 recognizing that conservative Southern Democrats controlled congressional legislation. Historian Carl M. Brauer concluded that passing any civil rights legislation in 1961 would have been futile.  During his first year in office Kennedy appointed many blacks to office including his May appointment of civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall to the federal bench. 

In his first State of the Union Address in January 1961, President Kennedy said "The denial of constitutional rights to some of our fellow Americans on account of race - at the ballot box and elsewhere - disturbs the national conscience, and subjects us to the charge of world opinion that our democracy is not equal to the high promise of our heritage."  Kennedy believed the grassroots movement for civil rights would anger many Southern whites and make it more difficult to pass civil rights laws in Congress, including anti-poverty legislation, and he distanced himself from it.

Kennedy additionally was concerned by other issues early in his presidency, such as the Cold War, Bay of Pigs fiasco and the situation in Southeast Asia. As articulated by brother Robert, the administration's early priority was to "keep the president out of this civil rights mess". Civil rights movement participants, mainly those on the front line in the South, viewed Kennedy as lukewarm,  especially concerning the Freedom Riders, who organized an integrated public transportation effort in the south, and who were repeatedly met with white mob violence, including law enforcement officers, both federal and state. Kennedy assigned federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders rather than using federal troops or uncooperative FBI agents. Robert Kennedy, speaking for the president, urged the Freedom Riders to "get off the buses and leave the matter to peaceful settlement in the courts." Kennedy feared sending federal troops would stir up "hated memories of Reconstrucion" after the Civil War among conservative Southern whites.

On March 6, 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925 which required government contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."  It established the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Displeased with the pace of Kennedy's addressing the issue of segregation, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his associates produced a document in 1962 calling on the president to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln and use an Executive Order to deliver a blow for Civil Rights as a kind of Second Emancipation Proclamation - Kennedy did not execute the order. 

In September 1962, James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi, but was prevented from entering. Attorney General Robert Kennedy responded by sending 400 federal marshals, while President Kennedy reluctantly sent 3,000 troops after the situation on campus turned violent. The Ole Miss riot of 1962 left two dead and dozens injured, but Meredith did finally enroll in his first class. Kennedy regretted not sending in troops earlier and he began to doubt whether the "evils of Reconstruction" of the 1860s and 1870s he had been taught or believed in were true. The instigating subculture at the Old Miss riot and at many other racially ignited events, was the Ku Klux Klan.Gitlin (2009), The Ku Klux Klan: A Guide to an American Subculture, p. 29 On November 20, 1962, Kennedy signed Executive Order 11063, prohibiting racial discrimination in federally supported housing or "related facilities".

In early 1963, Kennedy related to Martin Luther King, Jr., about the prospects for civil rights legislation: "If we get into a long fight over this in Congress, it will bottleneck everything else, and we will still get no bill." Civil rights clashes were on the rise that year.  Brother Robert and Ted Sorenson pressed Kennedy to take more initiative on the legislative front.

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending. Wallace moved aside only after being confronted by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard, which had just been federalized by order of the president. That evening Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio, launching his initiative for civil rights legislation—to provide equal access to public schools and other facilities, and greater protection of voting rights. 

His proposals became part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The day ended with the murder of a NAACP leader, Medgar Evers, in front of his home in Mississippi. As the president had predicted, the day after his TV speech, and in reaction to it, House Majority leader Carl Albert called to advise him that his two-year signature effort in Congress to combat poverty in Appalachia (Area Redevelopment Administration) had been defeated, primarily by the votes of Southern Democrats and Republicans.

Earlier, Kennedy had signed the executive order creating the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women on December 14, 1961.  Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt led the commission. The Commission statistics revealed that women were also experiencing discrimination; their final report documenting legal and cultural barriers was issued in October 1963. Further, on June 10, 1963, Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, a federal law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex. 

Over a hundred thousand, predominantly African Americans, gathered in Washington for the civil rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Kennedy feared the March would have a negative effect on the prospects for the civil rights bills in Congress, and declined an invitation to speak. He turned over some of the details of the government's involvement to the Dept. of Justice, which channelled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the six sponsors of the March, including the N.A.A.C.P. and Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

To ensure a peaceful demonstration, the organizers and the president personally edited speeches which were inflammatory and agreed the March would be held on a Wednesday and would be over at 4:00 pm. Thousands of troops were placed on standby. Kennedy watched King's speech on TV and was very impressed. The March was considered a "triumph of managed protest", and not one arrest relating to the demonstration occurred. Afterwards, the March leaders accepted an invitation to the White House to meet with Kennedy and photos were taken. Kennedy felt the March was a victory for him as well and bolstered the chances for his civil rights bill.

Nevertheless, the struggle was far from over. Three weeks later, a bomb exploded on Sunday, September 15 at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; by the end of the day, four African American children had died in the explosion and two other children shot to death in the aftermath. Due to this resurgent violence, the civil rights legislation underwent some drastic amendments that critically endangered any prospects for passage of the bill, to the outrage of the president. Kennedy called the congressional leaders to the White House and by the following day the original bill, without the additions, had enough votes to get it out of the House committee. Gaining Republican support, Senator Everett Dirksen promised the legislation would be brought to a vote preventing a Senate filibuster. The legislation was enacted by Kennedy's successor President Lyndon B. Johnson, prompted by Kennedy's memory after his assassination in November, enforcing voting rights, public accommodations, employment, education, and the administration of justice.

Civil liberties

In 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who hated civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and viewed him as an upstart troublemaker,  presented the Kennedy Administration with allegations that some of King's close confidants and advisers were communists. Concerned that the allegations, if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Robert Kennedy and the president both warned King to discontinue the suspect associations. After the associations continued, Robert Kennedy issued a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's civil rights organization.

Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy. The wiretapping continued through June 1966 and was revealed in 1968. 

Immigration

John F. Kennedy initially proposed an overhaul of American immigration policy that later was to become the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, sponsored by Kennedy's brother Senator Edward Kennedy. It dramatically shifted the source of immigration from Northern and Western European countries towards immigration from Latin America and Asia. The policy change also shifted the emphasis in the selection of immigrants in favor of family reunification.  Kennedy wanted to dismantle the selection of immigrants based on country of origin and saw this as an extension of his civil rights policies. 

Native American relations

Construction of the Kinzua Dam flooded 10000 acres of Seneca nation land that they had occupied under the Treaty of 1794, and forced 600 Seneca to relocate to Salamanca, New York. Kennedy was asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to intervene and halt the project, but he declined, citing a critical need for flood control. He expressed concern about the plight of the Seneca, and directed government agencies to assist in obtaining more land, damages, and assistance to help mitigate their displacement. 

Space policy

The Apollo program was conceived early in 1960, during the Eisenhower administration, as a follow-up to Project Mercury, to be used as a shuttle to an Earth-orbital space station, flights around the Moon, or landing on it. While NASA went ahead with planning for Apollo, funding for the program was far from certain, given Eisenhower's ambivalent attitude to manned spaceflight.  As Senator, Kennedy had been opposed to the space program and wanted to terminate it.

In constructing his Presidential administration, Kennedy elected to retain Eisenhower's last science advisor Jerome Wiesner as head of the President's Science Advisory Committee. Wiesner was strongly opposed to manned space exploration, having issued a report highly critical of Project Mercury.   Kennedy was turned down by seventeen candidates for NASA administrator before the post was accepted by James E. Webb, an experienced Washington insider who served President Harry S. Truman as budget director and undersecretary of State. Webb proved to be adept at obtaining the support of Congress, the President, and the American people. Kennedy also persuaded Congress to amend the National Aeronautics and Space Act to allow him to delegate his chairmanship of the National Aeronautics and Space Council to the Vice President,
 both because of the knowledge of the space program Johnson gained in the Senate working for the creation of NASA, and to help keep the politically savvy Johnson occupied.

In Kennedy's January 1961 State of the Union address, he had suggested international cooperation in space. Khrushchev declined, as the Soviets did not wish to reveal the status of their rocketry and space capabilities. Early in his presidency, Kennedy was poised to dismantle the manned space program, but postponed any decision out of deference to Johnson, who had been a strong supporter of the space program in the Senate. Kennedy's advisors speculated that a Moon flight would be prohibitively expensive, and he was considering plans to dismantle the Apollo program due to its cost. 

However, this quickly changed on April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, reinforcing American fears about being left behind in a technological competition with the Soviet Union. Kennedy now became eager for the U.S. to take the lead in the Space Race, for reasons of strategy and prestige. On April 20, he sent a memo to Johnson, asking him to look into the status of America's space program, and into programs that could offer NASA the opportunity to catch up.   After consulting with Wernher von Braun, Johnson responded approximately one week later, concluding that "we are neither making maximum effort nor achieving results necessary if this country is to reach a position of leadership."   His memo concluded that a manned Moon landing was far enough in the future that it was likely the United States would achieve it first. Kennedy's advisor Ted Sorensen advised him to support the Moon landing, and on May 25, Kennedy announced the goal in a speech titled Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs: "... I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."  

After Congress authorized the funding, Webb began reorganizing NASA, increasing its staffing level, and building two new centers: a Launch Operations Center for the large Moon rocket northwest of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and a Manned Spacecraft Center on land donated through Rice University in Houston, Texas. Kennedy took the latter occasion as an opportunity to deliver another speech at Rice to promote the space effort on September 12, 1962, in which he said:
 "No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. ... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."  
On November 21, 1962, in a cabinet meeting with NASA administrator Webb and other officials, Kennedy explained that the Moon shot was important for reasons of international prestige, and that the expense was justified.  Johnson assured him that lessons learned from the space program had military value as well. Costs for the Apollo program were expected to reach $40 billion.

In a September 1963 speech before the United Nations, Kennedy urged cooperation between the Soviets and Americans in space, specifically recommending that Apollo be switched to "a joint expedition to the Moon".  Khrushchev again declined, and the Soviets did not commit to a manned Moon mission until 1964. On July 20, 1969, almost six years after Kennedy's death, Apollo 11 landed the first manned spacecraft on the Moon.

Assassination

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 pm Central Standard Time on Friday November 22, 1963, while on a political trip to Texas to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party between liberals Ralph Yarborough and Don Yarborough (no relation) and conservative John Connally.  Traveling in a presidential motorcade through downtown Dallas, he was shot once in the back, the bullet exiting via his throat,  and once in the head.

Kennedy was taken to Parkland Hospital for emergency medical treatment, but pronounced dead at 1:00 pm. Only 46, President Kennedy died younger than any other U.S. president to date. Lee Harvey Oswald, an order filler at the Texas School Book Depository from which the shots were suspected to have been fired, was arrested for the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit, and was subsequently charged with the assassination of Kennedy. He denied shooting anyone, claiming he was a patsy,   but was killed by Jack Ruby on November 24, before he could be prosecuted. Ruby was then arrested and convicted for the murder of Oswald. Ruby successfully appealed his conviction and death sentence but became ill and died of cancer on January 3, 1967, while the date for his new trial was being set.

President Johnson created the Warren Commission—chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren—to investigate the assassination, which concluded that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy, and that Oswald was not part of any conspiracy. The results of this investigation are disputed by many.  The assassination proved to be an important moment in U.S. history because of its impact on the nation and the ensuing political repercussions. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, while 74% thought there had been a cover-up.  A Gallup Poll in mid-November 2013, showed 61% believed in a conspiracy, and only 30% thought Oswald did it alone.  In 1979, the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that it believed "that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy."  In 2002, historian Carl M. Brauer concluded that the public's "fascination with the assassination may indicate a psychological denial of Kennedy's death, a mass wish...to undo it."

Funeral

A Requiem Mass was held for Kennedy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on November 25, 1963. Afterwards, Kennedy was interred in a small plot, (20 by 30 ft.), in Arlington National Cemetery. Over a period of three years (1964–1966), an estimated 16 million people had visited his grave. On March 14, 1967, Kennedy's remains were moved to a permanent burial plot and memorial at the cemetery. The funeral was officiated by Father John J. Cavanaugh. It was from this memorial that the graves of both Bobby and Ted were modeled.

The honor guard at Kennedy's graveside was the 37th Cadet Class of the Irish Army. Kennedy was greatly impressed by the Irish Cadets on his last official visit to Ireland, so much so that Jackie Kennedy requested the Irish Army to be the honor guard at her husband's funeral.

Kennedy's wife, Jacqueline and their two deceased minor children were buried with him later. His brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, was buried nearby in June 1968. In August 2009, his brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, was also buried near his two brothers. John F. Kennedy's grave is lit with an "Eternal Flame". Kennedy and William Howard Taft are the only two U.S. presidents buried at Arlington.   According to the JFK Library, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death", by Alan Seeger "was one of John F. Kennedy's favorite poems and he often asked his wife to recite it". 

Administration, Cabinet, and judicial appointments 1961–1963

Judicial appointments

Supreme Court

Kennedy appointed the following Justices to the Supreme Court of the United States:
* Byron White – 1962
* Arthur Goldberg – 1962

Other courts

In addition to his two Supreme Court appointments, Kennedy appointed 21 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 102 judges to the United States district courts.

Personal life, family, and reputation

Kennedy met his future wife, Jacqueline Lee "Jackie" Bouvier (1929–1994), when he was a congressman. Charles L. Bartlett, a journalist, introduced the pair at a dinner party.  They were married a year after he was elected senator, on September 12, 1953.  The Kennedy family is one of the most established political families in the United States, having produced a president, three senators, and multiple other Representatives, both on the federal and state level. Family patriarch, Joe Kennedy, was a prominent American businessman and political figure, serving in multiple roles, including Ambassador to the United Kingdom, from 1938 to 1940.

In October 1951, during his third term as Massachusetts's 11th district congressman, the then 34-year-old Kennedy embarked on a seven-week trip to India, Japan, Vietnam, and Israel with his then 25-year-old brother Bobby (who had just graduated from law school four months earlier) and his then 27-year-old sister Pat. Because they were several years apart in age, the brothers had previously seen little of each other. This 25000 mi trip was the first extended time they had spent together and resulted in their becoming best friends.

Bobby was campaign manager for Kennedy's successful 1952 Senate campaign and later, his successful 1960 presidential campaign. The two brothers worked closely together from 1957 to 1959 on the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field, when Robert was its chief counsel. During Kennedy's presidency, Robert served in his cabinet as Attorney General and was his closest advisor.

Kennedy was a life member of the National Rifle Association.   Kennedy came in third (behind Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Teresa) in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century.  

Children

Caroline Bouvier Kennedy was born in 1957 and is the only surviving member of JFK's immediate family. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr., nicknamed "John-John" by the press as a child, was born in late November 1960, 17 days after his father was elected. John Jr., died in 1999 when the small plane he was piloting crashed en route to Martha's Vineyard. 

Popular image

Kennedy and his wife were younger in comparison to the presidents and first ladies who preceded them, and both were popular in the media culture in ways more common to pop singers and movie stars than politicians, influencing fashion trends and becoming the subjects of numerous photo spreads in popular magazines. Although Eisenhower had allowed presidential press conferences to be filmed for television, Kennedy was the first president to ask for them to be broadcast live and made good use of the medium.  In 1961 the Radio-Television News Directors Association presented Kennedy with its highest honor, the Paul White Award, in recognition of his open relationship with the media. 

Mrs. Kennedy brought new art and furniture to the White House, and directed its restoration. They invited a range of artists, writers and intellectuals to rounds of White House dinners, raising the profile of the arts in America. On the White House lawn, the Kennedys established a swimming pool and tree house, while Caroline attended a preschool along with 10 other children inside the home.

The president was closely tied to popular culture, emphasized by songs such as "Twisting at the White House". Vaughn Meader's First Family comedy album, which parodied the president, the first lady, their family, and the administration, sold about four million copies. On May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at a large party in Madison Square Garden, celebrating Kennedy's upcoming forty-fifth birthday.

"Camelot Era"

The term "Camelot" came to be used retrospectively as iconic of the Kennedy administration, and the charisma of him and his family. The term was first publicly used by his wife in a post-assassination Life magazine interview with Theodore H. White, in which she revealed his affection for the contemporary Broadway musical of the same name, particularly the closing lines of the title song: 

Health

In 2002 Robert Dallek wrote an extensive history of Kennedy's health. Dallek was able to consult a collection of Kennedy-associated papers from the years 1955-1963 including x-rays and prescription records from the files of White House physician Dr. Janet Travell. According to Travell's records, during his Presidential years Kennedy suffered from: high fevers, stomach, colon, and prostate issues, abscesses, high cholesterol, and adrenal problems. Travell kept a "Medicine Administration Record," cataloguing Kennedy's medications: "injected and ingested corticosteroids for his adrenal insufficiency; procaine shots and ultrasound treatments and hot packs for his back; Lomotil, Metamucil, paregoric, phenobarbital, testosterone, and trasentine to control his diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, and weight loss; penicillin and other antibiotics for his urinary-tract infections and an abscess; and Tuinal to help him sleep."

Years after Kennedy's death, it was revealed that in September 1947, while Kennedy was 30 and in his first term in Congress, he was diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The London Clinic with Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder. In 1966 Dr. Travell revealed that Kennedy also had hypothyroidism. The presence of two endocrine diseases raises the possibility that Kennedy had autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS 2). 

Kennedy also suffered from chronic and severe back pain, for which he had surgery and was written up in the American Medical Association's Archives of Surgery. Kennedy's condition may have had diplomatic repercussions, as he appears to have been taking a combination of drugs to treat severe back pain during the 1961 Vienna Summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The combination included hormones, animal organ cells, steroids, vitamins, enzymes, and amphetamines, and possible potential side effects included hyperactivity, hypertension, impaired judgment, nervousness, and mood swings. Kennedy at one time was regularly seen by no fewer than three doctors, one of whom, Max Jacobson, was unknown to the other two, as his mode of treatment was controversial  and used for the most severe bouts of back pain.

There were disagreements among his doctors, into late 1961, over the proper balance of medication and exercise, with the president preferring the former as he was short on time and desired immediate relief. During that timeframe the president's physician, George Burkley, did set up some gym equipment in the White House basement where Kennedy did stretching exercises for his back three times a week. Details of these and other medical problems were not publicly disclosed during Kennedy's lifetime. 

Personal tragedies

Kennedy experienced many personal, family tragedies. His oldest sibling, Joe Jr., was killed in action in 1944 at age 29 over the English Channel during a first attack execution of Operation Aphrodite during World War II.  Kennedy's younger sister Rose Marie "Rosemary" Kennedy was born in 1918 with intellectual disabilities and underwent a pre-frontal lobotomy at age 23, leaving her permanently incapacitated. His next youngest sister, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy Cavendish, died in France as the result of a plane crash in 1948. His wife Jacqueline Kennedy suffered a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956: a daughter informally named Arabella.   A son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died two days after birth in August 1963.

Affairs and extramarital relationships

As a young single man in the 1940s, Kennedy had affairs with Danish journalist Inga Arvad, and actress Gene Tierney. Later in life, Kennedy reportedly had extramarital affairs with a number of women, including Marilyn Monroe, Gunilla von Post,  Judith Campbell, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Marlene Dietrich, Mimi Alford, and his wife's press secretary, Pamela Turnure.

The extent of a relationship with Monroe will never be known, although it has been reported they spent a weekend together in March 1962 while Kennedy was staying at Bing Crosby's house. Furthermore, the White House switchboard noted calls from her during 1962. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, received reports as to Kennedy's indiscretions.

Kennedy inspired affection and loyalty from the members of his team and his supporters. According to Reeves, this included "the logistics of Kennedy's liaisons.....[which] required secrecy and devotion rare in the annals of the energetic service demanded by successful politicians". Kennedy believed that his friendly relationship with members of the press would help protect him from revelations about his sex life.

Ancestry

The Kennedy family originally came from Dunganstown, County Wexford, Ireland.  In 1848 Kennedy's patrilineal great-grandfather, Patrick Kennedy (1823–1858), left his farm and boarded a ship in New Ross bound for Liverpool on his way to Boston. Kennedy left Ireland at the height of the Great Famine. In Boston he met the woman he was to marry, Bridget Murphy (c. 1824–1888). Their son Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy was Kennedy's paternal grandfather and father of Joseph Kennedy.

Historical evaluations and legacy

Television became the primary source by which people were kept informed of events surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. In fact, television started to come of age before the assassination. On September 2, 1963, Kennedy helped inaugurate network television's first half-hour nightly evening newscast according to an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite. 

Newspapers were kept as souvenirs rather than sources of updated information. In this sense it was the first major "TV news event" of its kind, the TV coverage uniting the nation, interpreting what went on and creating memories of this space in time. All three major U.S. television networks suspended their regular schedules and switched to all-news coverage from November 22 through November 25, 1963, being on the air for 70 hours, making it the longest uninterrupted news event on American TV until 9/11. 

Kennedy's state funeral procession and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald were all broadcast live in America and in other places around the world. The state funeral was the first of three in a span of 12 months. The other two were for General Douglas MacArthur and President Herbert Clark Hoover. All three have two things in common: the commanding general of the Military District of Washington during those funerals was Army Major General Philip C. Wehle and the riderless horse was Black Jack, who also served in that role during Lyndon B. Johnson's funeral.

The assassination had an effect on many people, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Many vividly remember where they were when first learning of the news that Kennedy was assassinated, as with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, before it and the September 11 attacks after it. UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson said of the assassination: "all of us..... will bear the grief of his death until the day of ours." Many people have also spoken of the shocking news, compounded by the pall of uncertainty about the identity of the assassin(s), the possible instigators and the causes of the killing as an end to innocence, and in retrospect it has been coalesced with other changes of the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, especially the Vietnam War.

The US Special Forces had a special bond with Kennedy. "It was President Kennedy who was responsible for the rebuilding of the Special Forces and giving us back our Green Beret," said Forrest Lindley, a writer for the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes who served with Special Forces in Vietnam. This bond was shown at Kennedy's funeral. At the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Kennedy's death, General Michael D. Healy, the last commander of Special Forces in Vietnam, spoke at Arlington Cemetery. Later, a wreath in the form of the Green Beret would be placed on the grave, continuing a tradition that began the day of his funeral when a sergeant in charge of a detail of Special Forces men guarding the grave placed his beret on the coffin.

Kennedy was the first of six presidents to have served in the U.S. Navy,  and one of the enduring legacies of his administration was the creation in 1961 of another special forces command, the Navy SEALs,  which Kennedy enthusiastically supported. 

Ultimately, the death of President Kennedy and the ensuing confusion surrounding the facts of his assassination are of political and historical importance insofar as they marked a turning point and decline in the faith of the American people in the political establishment—a point made by commentators from Gore Vidal to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and implied by Oliver Stone in several of his films, such as his landmark 1991 JFK.

Although President Kennedy opposed segregation and had shown support for the civil rights of African Americans, he originally believed in a more measured approach to legislation given the political realities he faced in Congress, especially with the Southern Conservatives. However, impelled by the civil rights demonstrations of Martin Luther King, Kennedy in 1963 proposed legislative action. In a radio and TV address to the nation in June 1963—a century after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation—Kennedy became the first president to call on all Americans to denounce racism as morally wrong. Kennedy's civil rights proposals led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's successor, took up the mantle and pushed the landmark Civil Rights Act through a bitterly divided Congress by invoking the slain president's memory.  President Johnson then signed the Act into law on July 2, 1964. This civil rights law ended what was known as the "Solid South" and certain provisions were modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1875, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant.

Kennedy's continuation of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower's policies of giving economic and military aid to South Vietnam left the door open for President Johnson's escalation of the conflict.  At the time of Kennedy's death, no final policy decision had been made as to Vietnam, leading historians, cabinet members and writers to continue to disagree on whether the Vietnam conflict would have escalated to the point it did had he survived.  His agreement to the NSAM 263 action of withdrawing 1,000 troops by the end of 1963, and his earlier 1963 speech at American University, suggested he was ready to end the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War contributed greatly to a decade of national difficulties, amid violent disappointment on the political landscape.

Many of Kennedy's speeches (especially his inaugural address) are considered iconic; and despite his relatively short term in office and lack of major legislative changes coming to fruition during his term, Americans regularly vote him as one of the best presidents, in the same league as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some excerpts of Kennedy's inaugural address are engraved on a plaque at his grave at Arlington.

He was posthumously awarded the Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of goodwill to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in terris is Latin for 'Peace on Earth'.

President Kennedy is the only president to have predeceased both his mother and father. He is also the only president to have predeceased a grandparent. His maternal grandmother, Mary Josephine "Josie" Hannon, died in August 1964, nine months after his assassination.

Throughout the English-speaking world, the given name Kennedy has sometimes been used in honor of President Kennedy, as well his brother Robert. 

Eponyms

* John F. Kennedy International Airport, American airport (renamed from Idlewild in December 1963) in New York City; nation's busiest international gateway
* John F. Kennedy Memorial Airport American airport in Ashland County, Wisconsin, near the city of Ashland 
* John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge American seven-lane transportation hub across Ohio River; completed in late 1963, the bridge links Kentucky and Indiana
* John F. Kennedy School of Government, American institution (renamed from Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration in 1966)
* John F. Kennedy Space Center, U.S. government installation that manages and operates America's astronaut launch facilities in Titusville, near Cocoa Beach, FL
* John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School—trains United States Army personnel for the United States Army Special Operations Command and Army Special Operation Forces at Fort Bragg outside Fayetteville, NC
* John F. Kennedy University, American private educational institution founded in California in 1964; locations in Pleasant Hill, Campbell, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz
* , U.S. Navy aircraft carrier ordered in April 1964, launched May 1967, decommissioned August 2007; nicknamed "Big John"
* John F. Kennedy High School is the name of many secondary schools
* , U.S. Navy aircraft carrier that began construction in 2011, and is scheduled to be placed in commission in 2020
* John F Kennedy (horse), Irish-trained thoroughbred racehorse foaled in 2012
John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame memorial

Memorials

Coat of arms

In 1961, Kennedy was presented with a grant of arms for all the descendants of Patrick Kennedy from the Chief Herald of Ireland. The design of the arms strongly alludes to symbols in the coats of arms of the O'Kennedys of Ormonde and the FitzGeralds of Desmond, from whom the family is believed to be descended. The crest is an armored hand holding four arrows between two olive branches, elements taken from the coat of arms of the United States of America and also symbolic of Kennedy and his brothers.

Kennedy received a signet ring engraved with his arms for his 44th birthday as a gift from his wife, and the arms were incorporated into the seal of the USS John F. Kennedy. Following his assassination, Kennedy was honored by the Canadian government by having a mountain, Mount Kennedy, named for him, which his brother, Robert Kennedy, climbed in 1965 to plant a banner of the arms at the summit. 

Media John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Fatally shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy was traveling with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, in a presidential motorcade. A ten-month investigation from November 1963 to September 1964 by the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in shooting Kennedy, and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial.  Kennedy's death marked the fourth and latest successful assassination of an American President. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became President upon Kennedy's death,  taking the constitutionally prescribed  oath of office onboard Air Force One at Dallas's Love Field airport before departing for Washington, D.C.

In contrast to the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded in 1979 that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". The HSCA agreed with the Warren Commission in that Kennedy's and Connally's injuries were caused by Oswald's three rifle shots, but they also determined the existence of additional gunshots based on analysis of an audio recording and therefore "... a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President". The Committee was not able to identify any individuals or groups involved with the conspiracy. In addition, the HSCA found that the original federal investigations were "seriously flawed" in respect of information-sharing and the possibility of conspiracy. As recommended by the HSCA, the acoustic evidence indicating conspiracy was subsequently re-examined and rejected. 

In light of the investigative reports determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", the Justice Department has concluded active investigations, stating "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy".  However, Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios. Polling in 2013 showed that 60% of Americans believe that a group of conspirators was responsible for the assassination.  

Assassination 

Background 

John Fitzgerald Kennedy traveled to Texas in November 1963 in order to support his next reelection campaign for 1964 United States presidential elections.

Route to Dealey Plaza

President Kennedy's motorcade route through Dallas was planned to give him maximum exposure to Dallas crowds before his arrival,  along with Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Texas Governor John Connally, at a luncheon with civic and business leaders in that city. The White House staff informed the Secret Service that the President would arrive in Dallas via a short flight from Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth to Dallas Love Field airport.

The Dallas Trade Mart had been preliminarily selected for the luncheon and the final decision of the Trade Mart as the end of the motorcade journey was selected by President Kennedy's friend and appointments secretary Kenneth O'Donnell. Leaving from Dallas' Love Field, 45 minutes had been allotted for the motorcade to reach the Dallas Trade Mart at a planned arrival time of 12:15 p.m. The actual route was chosen to be a meandering 10-mile (16-km) route from Love Field to the Trade Mart, which could be driven slowly in the allotted time.

Special Agent Winston G. Lawson, a member of the White House detail who acted as the advance Secret Service Agent, and Secret Service Agent Forrest V. Sorrels, Special Agent In Charge of the Dallas office, were most active in planning the actual route. On November 14, Lawson and Sorrels attended a meeting at Love Field and drove over the route that Sorrels believed best suited for the motorcade. From Love Field, the route passed through a portion of suburban Dallas, through the downtown area along Main Street, and finally to the Trade Mart via a short segment of the Stemmons Freeway.

For the President's return to Love Field, from which he planned to depart for a fund-raising dinner in Austin later in the day, the agents selected a more direct route, which was approximately 4 miles, or 6.4 kilometers (some of this route would be used after the assassination). The planned route to the Trade Mart was widely reported in Dallas newspapers several days before the event, for the benefit of people who wished to view the motorcade.

To pass through downtown Dallas, a route west along Dallas' Main Street, rather than Elm Street (one block to the north) was chosen, because this was the traditional parade route, and provided the maximal building and crowd views. The Main Street route precluded a direct turn onto the Fort Worth Turnpike exit (which served also as the Stemmons Freeway exit), which was the route to the Trade Mart, because this exit was accessible only from Elm Street. The planned motorcade route thus included a short one-block turn at the end of the downtown segment of Main Street, onto Houston Street for one block northward, before turning again west onto Elm, in order to proceed through Dealey Plaza before exiting Elm onto the Stemmons Freeway. The Texas School Book Depository was situated at this corner of Houston and Elm. 

Three vehicles were used for secret service and police protection in the Dallas motorcade. The first car, an unmarked white Ford (hardtop), carried Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, Secret Service Agent Win Lawson, Sheriff Bill Decker and Dallas Field Agent Forrest Sorrels. The second car, a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible, held driver Agent Bill Greer, SAIC Roy Kellerman, Governor John Connally, Nellie Connally, President Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy. 

The third car, a 1955 Cadillac convertible code-named "Halfback", contained driver Agent Sam Kinney, ATSAIC Emory Roberts, presidential aides Ken O'Donnell and Dave Powers, driver Agent George Hickey and PRS agent Glen Bennett. Secret service agents Clint Hill, Jack Ready, Tim McIntyre and Paul Landis rode on the running boards. There was an AR-15 rifle in the third vehicle.

On November 22, after a breakfast speech in Fort Worth, where President Kennedy had stayed overnight after arriving from San Antonio, Houston, and Washington, D.C., the previous day,  the president boarded Air Force One, which departed at 11:10 and arrived at Love Field 15 minutes later. At about 11:40, the presidential motorcade left Love Field for the trip through Dallas, which was running on a schedule about 10 minutes longer than the planned 45 minutes, due to enthusiastic crowds estimated at 150,000–200,000 people, and two unplanned stops directed by the president.   By the time the motorcade reached Dealey Plaza they were only 5 minutes away from their planned destination.

The assassination 

Shooting in Dealey Plaza

At 12:30 p.m. CST, as President Kennedy's uncovered 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible limousine entered Dealey Plaza, Nellie Connally, then the First Lady of Texas, turned around to President Kennedy, who was sitting behind her, and commented, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you," which President Kennedy acknowledged by saying "No, you certainly can't." Those were the last words ever spoken by John F. Kennedy.   

From Houston Street, the presidential limousine made the planned left turn onto Elm Street, allowing it access to the Stemmons Freeway exit. As it turned on Elm, the motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository. Shots were fired at President Kennedy as they continued down Elm Street. About 80% of the witnesses recalled hearing three shots. 

A minority of the witnesses recognized the first gunshot they heard as weapon fire, but there was hardly any reaction to the first shot from a majority of the people in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade. Many later said they heard what they first thought to be a firecracker, or the exhaust backfire of a vehicle, just after the President started waving.  

Within one second of each other, President Kennedy, Governor Connally, and Mrs. Kennedy, all turned abruptly from looking to their left to looking to their right, between Zapruder film frames 155 and 169.  Connally, like the President a World War II military veteran (and, unlike him, a longtime hunter), testified he immediately recognized the sound of a high-powered rifle, then he turned his head and torso rightward, attempting to see President Kennedy behind him. Governor Connally testified he could not see the President, so he then started to turn forward again (turning from his right to his left). Connally testified that when his head was facing about 20 degrees left of center, he was hit in his upper right back by a bullet he did not hear fired. The doctor who operated on Connally measured his head at the time he was hit as turned 27 degrees left of center. After Connally was hit he shouted, "Oh, no, no, no. My God. They're going to kill us all!" 

Mrs. Connally testified that just after hearing a loud, frightening noise that came from somewhere behind her and to her right, she turned toward President Kennedy and saw him with his arms and elbows raised high, with his hands in front of his face and throat. She then heard another gunshot and then Governor Connally yelling. Mrs. Connally then turned away from President Kennedy toward her husband, at which point another gunshot sounded and she and the limousine's rear interior were covered with fragments of skull, blood, and brain.

According to the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, as President Kennedy waved to the crowds on his right with his right arm upraised on the side of the limo, a shot entered his upper back, penetrated his neck, slightly damaged a spinal vertebra and the top of his right lung, and exited his throat nearly centerline just beneath his larynx, nicking the left side of his suit tie knot. He raised his elbows and clenched his fists in front of his face and neck, then leaned forward and left. Mrs. Kennedy, facing him, then put her arms around him in concern. 

Governor Connally also reacted after the same bullet penetrated his back just below his right armpit, creating an oval entry wound, impacted and destroyed four inches of his right fifth rib, exited his chest just below his right nipple, creating a two-and-a-half inch oval sucking-air chest wound, entered his arm just above his right wrist, cleanly shattered his right radius bone into eight pieces, exited just below the wrist at the inner side of his right palm, and finally lodged in his left inner thigh. The Warren Commission theorized that the "single bullet" (see single-bullet theory) struck sometime between Zapruder frames 210 to 225, while the House Select Committee theorized that it struck exactly at Zapruder frame 190. 

According to the Warren Commission, a second shot struck the President at Zapruder film frame 313. The Commission made no conclusion as to whether this was the second or third bullet fired. The presidential limousine was then passing in front of the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure. Each body concluded that the second shot to hit the president entered the rear of his head (the House Select Committee placed the entry wound four inches higher than the Warren Commission placed it) and, passing in fragments through his head, created a large, "roughly ovular" [sic] hole on the rear, right side. The president's blood and fragments of his scalp, brain, and skull landed on the interior of the car, the inner and outer surfaces of the front glass windshield and raised sun visors, the front engine hood, the rear trunk lid, the followup Secret Service car and its driver's left arm, and motorcycle officers riding on both sides of the President behind him.  

United States Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill was riding on the left front running board of the follow-up car, which was immediately behind the Presidential limousine. Hill testified that he heard one shot, then, as documented in other films and concurrent with Zapruder frame 308, he jumped off into Elm Street and ran forward to try to get on the limousine and protect the President. (Hill testified to the Warren Commission that after he jumped into Elm Street, he heard two more shots.) 

After the President had been shot in the head, Mrs. Kennedy began to climb out onto the back of the limousine, though she later had no recollection of doing so.  Hill believed she was reaching for something, perhaps a piece of the President's skull. He jumped onto the back of the limousine while at the same time Mrs. Kennedy returned to her seat, and he clung to the car as it exited Dealey Plaza and accelerated, speeding to Parkland Memorial Hospital.

After Mrs. Kennedy crawled back into her limousine seat, both Governor Connally and Mrs. Connally heard her say more than once, "They have killed my husband," and "I have his brains in my hand." In a long-redacted interview for Life magazine days later, Mrs. Kennedy recalled, "All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him saying, 'Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you, Jack.' I kept holding the top of his head down trying to keep the ..." The President's widow could not finish her sentence. 

Others wounded

Governor Connally, riding in the same limousine in a seat in front of the President and three inches more to the left than the President, was also critically injured but survived. Doctors later stated that after the Governor was shot, his wife pulled him onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound (which was causing air to be sucked directly into his chest around his collapsed right lung).

James Tague, a spectator and witness to the assassination, also received a minor wound to his right cheek while standing 531 ft away from the Depository's sixth floor, easternmost window, 270 ft in front of and slightly to the right of President Kennedy's head facing direction, and more than 16 ft below the top of the President's head. Tague's injury occurred when a bullet or bullet fragment with no copper casing struck the nearby Main Street south curb. A deputy sheriff noticed some blood on Tague's cheek, and Tague realized something had stung his face during the shooting. When Tague pointed to where he had been standing, the police officer noticed a bullet smear on a nearby curb. Nine months later the FBI removed the curb, and a spectrographic analysis revealed metallic residue consistent with that of the lead core in Oswald's ammunition.  When Tague testified to the Warren Commission and was asked which of the three shots he remembered hearing struck him, he stated it was the second or third shot. When the Warren Commission attorney pressed him further, Tague stated he was struck concurrent with the second shot. 

Aftermath in Dealey Plaza

The presidential limousine was passing a grassy knoll on the north side of Elm Street at the moment of the fatal head shot. As the motorcade left the plaza, police officers and spectators ran up the knoll and from a railroad bridge over Elm Street (the triple underpass), to the area behind a five-foot (1.5 m) high stockade fence atop the knoll, separating it from a parking lot. No sniper was found.  S. M. Holland, who had been watching the motorcade on the triple underpass, testified that "immediately" after the shots were fired, he went around the corner where the overpass joined the fence, but did not see anyone running from the area.  

Lee Bowers, a railroad switchman sitting in a two-story tower, had an unobstructed view of the rear of the stockade fence atop the grassy knoll during the shooting.  He saw a total of four men in the area between his tower and Elm Street: a middle-aged man and a younger man, standing 10 to apart near the triple underpass, who did not seem to know each other, and one or two uniformed parking lot attendants. At the time of the shooting, he saw "something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around", which he could not identify. Bowers testified that one or both of the men were still there when motorcycle officer Clyde Haygood ran up the grassy knoll to the back of the fence.  In a 1966 interview, Bowers clarified that the two men he saw were standing in the opening between the pergola and the fence, and that "no one" was behind the fence at the time the shots were fired.  

Meanwhile, Howard Brennan, a steamfitter who was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, notified police that as he watched the motorcade go by, he heard a shot come from above, and looked up to see a man with a rifle make another shot from a corner window on the sixth floor. He said he had seen the same man minutes earlier looking out the window.  Brennan gave a description of the shooter,  and Dallas police subsequently broadcast descriptions at 12:45 p.m., 12:48 p.m., and 12:55 p.m.  After the second shot was fired, Brennan recalled, "This man I saw previous was aiming for his last shot ... and maybe paused for another second as though to assure himself that he had hit his mark." 

As Brennan spoke to the police in front of the building, they were joined by Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr.,  two employees of the Texas School Book Depository who had watched the motorcade from windows at the southeast corner of the fifth floor.  Norman reported that he heard three gunshots come from directly over their heads.  Norman also heard the sounds of a bolt-action rifle and cartridges dropping on the floor above them. 

Estimates of when Dallas police sealed off the entrances to the Texas School Book Depository range from 12:33 to after 12:50 p.m.  

Of the 104 earwitnesses in Dealey Plaza who are on record with an opinion as to the direction from which the shots came, 54 (51.9%) thought that all shots came from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository, 33 (31.7%) thought that all shots came from the area of the grassy knoll or the triple underpass, 9 (8.7%) thought all shots came from a location entirely distinct from the knoll or the Depository, 5 (4.8%) thought they heard shots from two locations, and 3 (2.9%) thought the shots came from a direction consistent with both the knoll and the Depository. 

Additionally, the Warren Commission said of the three shots they concluded were fired that "a substantial majority of the witnesses stated that the shots were not evenly spaced. Most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together."

Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald, reported missing to the Dallas police by Roy Truly, his supervisor at the Depository,  was arrested approximately 70 minutes after the assassination for the murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. According to witness Helen Markam, Tippit had spotted Oswald walking along a sidewalk in the residential neighborhood of Oak Cliff,  three miles from Dealey Plaza. Officer Tippit had earlier received a radio message that gave a description of the suspect being sought in the assassination and called Oswald over to the patrol car.

Helen Markam testified that after an exchange of words, Tippit got out of his car and Oswald shot him four times. Oswald was next seen by shoe store manager Johnny Brewer "ducking into" the entrance alcove of his store. Suspicious of this activity, Brewer watched Oswald continue up the street and slip into the nearby Texas Theatre without paying.  Brewer alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who telephoned the police  at about 1:40 p.m.

According to one of the arresting officers, M.N. McDonald, Oswald resisted arrest and was attempting to draw his pistol when he was struck and forcibly restrained by the police.  He was charged with the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit later that night.  Oswald denied shooting anyone and claimed he was a patsy who was arrested because he had lived in the Soviet Union.   

Oswald's case never came to trial because two days later, while being escorted to a car for transfer from Dallas Police Headquarters to the Dallas County Jail, he was shot and mortally wounded by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, live on American television at 11:21 a.m. CST on Sunday, November 24. He was taken unconscious by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where doctors had tried to save President Kennedy's life two days earlier, and died at 1:07 p.m.  Oswald's death was announced on a TV news broadcast by Dallas police chief Jesse Curry. An autopsy was performed by the Dallas County Medical Examiner at 2:45 p.m. the same day. The stated cause of death in the autopsy report was "hemorrhage secondary to gunshot wound of the chest".  Arrested immediately after the shooting, Ruby later said that he had been distraught over the Kennedy assassination and that killing Oswald would spare "... Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial." 

Carcano rifle

An Italian Carcano M91/38 bolt-action rifle (see 6.5×52mm Mannlicher–Carcano cartridge) was found on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository by Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman and Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone soon after the assassination of President Kennedy.  The recovery was filmed by Tom Alyea of WFAA-TV.

This footage shows the rifle to be a Carcano, and it was later verified by photographic analysis commissioned by the HSCA that the rifle filmed was the same one later identified as the assassination weapon.  Compared to photographs taken of Oswald holding the rifle in his backyard, "one notch in the stock at [a] point that appears very faintly in the photograph" matched, as well as the rifle's dimensions.

The previous March, the Carcano rifle had been bought by Oswald under the name "A. Hidell" and delivered to a post-office box Oswald rented in Dallas. According to the Warren Commission Report, a partial palm print of Oswald was also found on the barrel of the gun,  and a tuft of fibers found in a crevice of the rifle was consistent with the fibers and colors of the shirt Oswald was wearing at the time of his arrest. 

A bullet found on Governor Connally's hospital gurney, and two bullet fragments found in the Presidential limousine, were ballistically matched to this rifle.

President Kennedy declared dead in the emergency room

The staff at Parkland Hospital's Trauma Room 1 who treated President Kennedy observed that his condition was "moribund" (a mortal wound), meaning that he had no chance of survival upon arriving at the hospital. George Burkley,  the President's personal physician, stated that a gunshot wound to the skull was the cause of death. Burkley signed President Kennedy's death certificate.

At 1:00 p.m., CST (19:00 UTC), after all heart activity had ceased and after Father Oscar Huber  had administered the last rites, the President was pronounced dead. Father Huber told The New York Times that the President was already dead by the time he arrived at the hospital, and he had to draw back a sheet covering the President's face to administer the sacrament of Extreme Unction. President Kennedy's death was officially announced by White House Acting Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff at 1:33 p.m. CST (19:33 UTC).  Kilduff was acting press secretary on the trip because Pierre Salinger was traveling to Japan with half the Cabinet, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk.    Governor Connally, meanwhile, was taken to emergency surgery, where he underwent two operations that day.

As members of the President's security detail attempted to remove Kennedy's body from the hospital, they briefly scuffled with Dallas officials, including Dallas County Coroner Earl Rose who believed he was legally obligated to perform an autopsy before Kennedy's body was removed. The Secret Service pushed through and Rose eventually stepped aside. The forensic panel of the HSCA, of which Rose was a member, later reported that Texas law indicated that it was the responsibility of the justice of the peace to determine the cause of death as well as the necessity of whether an autopsy was needed to determine the cause of death.  Theran Ward, a justice of the peace in Dallas County, signed the official record of inquest as well as a second certificate of death. 

A few minutes after 2:00 p.m. CST (20:00 UTC), President Kennedy's body was taken from Parkland Hospital and driven to Air Force One. The casket was then loaded aboard the airplane through the rear door, where it remained at the rear of the passenger compartment, in place of a removed row of seats. Lyndon B. Johnson, who as Vice President, became President upon Kennedy's death,  and had been riding two cars behind President Kennedy in the motorcade, refused to leave for Washington without President Kennedy and his widow.

At 2:38 p.m. CST (20:38 UTC), President Johnson took the oath of office on board Air Force One just before it departed from Love Field, with Jacqueline Kennedy at his side.

Autopsy

The autopsy was performed, beginning at about 8 p.m. and ending at about midnight EST at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. The choice of autopsy hospital in the Washington, D.C., area was made at the request of Mrs. Kennedy, on the basis that John F. Kennedy had been a naval officer. 

Funeral

The state funeral took place in Washington, D.C., during the three days that followed the assassination. 

The body of President Kennedy was brought back to Washington, D.C., and placed in the East Room of the White House for 24 hours.   On the Sunday after the assassination, his coffin was carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the U.S. Capitol to lie in state.  Throughout the day and night, hundreds of thousands lined up to view the guarded casket.  Representatives from over 90 countries attended the state funeral on Monday, November 25.  After the Requiem Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral, the late President was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Recordings of the assassination

No radio or television stations broadcast the assassination live because the area through which the motorcade was traveling was not considered important enough for a live broadcast. Most media crews were not even with the motorcade but were waiting instead at the Dallas Trade Mart in anticipation of President Kennedy's arrival. Those members of the media who were with the motorcade were riding at the rear of the procession.

The Dallas police were recording their radio transmissions over two channels. A frequency designated as Channel One was used for routine police communications; Channel Two was an auxiliary channel dedicated to the President's motorcade. Up until the time of the assassination, most of the broadcasts on the second channel consisted of Police Chief Jesse Curry's announcements of the location of the motorcade as it wound through the city.

President Kennedy's last seconds traveling through Dealey Plaza were recorded on silent 8 mm film for the 26.6 seconds before, during, and immediately following the assassination. This famous film footage was taken by garment manufacturer and amateur cameraman Abraham Zapruder, in what became known as the Zapruder film. Frame enlargements from the Zapruder film were published by Life magazine shortly after the assassination. The footage was first shown publicly as a film at the trial of Clay Shaw in 1969, and on television in 1975.  According to the Guinness Book of World Records, in 1999 an arbitration panel ordered the U.S. government to pay $615,384 per second of film to Zapruder's heirs for giving the film to the National Archives. The complete film, which lasts for 26 seconds, was valued at $16 million.  

Zapruder was not the only person who photographed at least part of the assassination; a total of 32 photographers were in Dealey Plaza. Amateur movies taken by Orville Nix, Marie Muchmore (shown on television in New York on November 26, 1963),    and photographer Charles Bronson captured the fatal shot, although at a greater distance than Zapruder. Other motion picture films were taken in Dealey Plaza at or around the time of the shooting by Robert Hughes, F. Mark Bell, Elsie Dorman, John Martin Jr., Patsy Paschall, Tina Towner, James Underwood, Dave Wiegman, Mal Couch, Thomas Atkins, and an unknown woman in a blue dress on the south side of Elm Street. 

Still photos were taken by Phillip Willis, Mary Ann Moorman, Hugh W. Betzner Jr., Wilma Bond, Robert Croft, and many others. The lone professional photographer in Dealey Plaza who was not in the press cars was Ike Altgens, photo editor for the Associated Press in Dallas.

An unidentified woman, nicknamed the Babushka Lady by researchers, might have been filming the Presidential motorcade during the assassination. She was seen apparently doing so on film and in photographs taken by the others.

Previously unknown color footage filmed on the assassination day by George Jefferies was released on February 19, 2007 by the Sixth Floor Museum, Dallas, Texas.   The film does not include the shooting, having been taken roughly 90 seconds beforehand and a couple of blocks away. The only detail relevant to the investigation of the assassination is a clear view of President Kennedy's bunched suit jacket, just below the collar, which has led to different calculations about how low in the back President Kennedy was first shot (see discussion above).

Official investigations

Dallas Police

After arresting Oswald and collecting physical evidence at the crime scenes, the Dallas Police held Oswald at the police headquarters for interrogation. Oswald was questioned all afternoon about both the Tippit shooting and the assassination of the President. He was questioned intermittently for approximately 12 hours between 2:30 p.m., on November 22, and 11 a.m., on November 24. Throughout this interrogation Oswald denied any involvement with either the assassination of President Kennedy or the murder of Patrolman Tippit. Captain Fritz of the homicide and robbery bureau did most of the questioning, keeping only rudimentary notes.  Days later, he wrote a report of the interrogation from notes he made afterwards.  There were no stenographic or tape recordings. Representatives of other law enforcement agencies were also present, including the FBI and the Secret Service, and occasionally participated in the questioning. Several of the FBI agents present wrote contemporaneous reports of the interrogation. 

During the evening of November 22, the Dallas Police Department performed paraffin tests on Oswald's hands and right cheek in an apparent effort to determine, by means of a scientific test, whether Oswald had recently fired a weapon. The results were positive for the hands and negative for the right cheek. Because of the unreliability of these tests, the Warren Commission did not rely on the results of the test in making their findings.

Oswald provided little information during his questioning. When confronted with evidence that he could not explain he resorted to statements that were found to be false.  Dallas authorities were not able to complete their investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy because of interruptions from the FBI and the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby.

FBI investigation

The FBI was the first authority to complete an investigation. On December 9, 1963, the FBI issued a report and gave it to the Warren Commission.

The FBI stated that three bullets were fired during the Kennedy assassination; the Warren Commission agreed with the FBI investigation that three shots were fired but disagreed with the FBI report on which shots hit Kennedy and which hit Governor Connally. The FBI report claimed that the first shot hit President Kennedy, the second shot hit Governor Connally, and the third shot hit President Kennedy in the head, killing him. In contrast, the Warren Commission concluded that one of the three shots missed, one of the shots hit President Kennedy and then struck Governor Connally, and a third shot struck President Kennedy in the head, killing him.

Warren Commission

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 29, 1963, by President Johnson to investigate the assassination.  Its 888-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964,  and made public three days later.  It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of President Kennedy and the wounding of Texas Governor John Connally,  and that Jack Ruby also acted alone in the murder of Oswald.  The Commission's findings have since proven controversial and been both challenged and supported by later studies.

The Commission took its unofficial name, "The Warren Commission", from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. According to published transcripts of Johnson's presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission, and several commission members took part only with extreme reluctance.  One of their chief reservations was that a commission would ultimately create more controversy than consensus, and those fears ultimately proved valid.

All of the Warren Commission's records were submitted to the National Archives in 1964. The unpublished portion of those records was initially sealed for 75 years (to 2039) under a general National Archives policy that applied to all federal investigations by the executive branch of government, a period "intended to serve as protection for innocent persons who could otherwise be damaged because of their relationship with participants in the case".  The 75-year rule no longer exists, supplanted by the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the JFK Records Act of 1992.

Ramsey Clark Panel

In 1968, a panel of four medical experts appointed by Attorney General Ramsey Clark met in Washington, D.C., to examine various photographs, X-ray films, documents, and other evidence about the death of President Kennedy. The Clark Panel determined that President Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him, one of which traversed the base of the neck on the right side without striking bone and the other of which entered the skull from behind and destroyed its upper right side. 

Rockefeller Commission

The United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the CIA within the United States. The commission was led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and is sometimes referred to as the Rockefeller Commission.

Part of the commission's work dealt with the Kennedy assassination, specifically the head snap as seen in the Zapruder film (first shown to the general public in 1975), and the possible presence of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas.  The commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Sturgis was in Dallas at the time of the assassination. 

Church Committee

Church Committee is the common term referring to the 1975 United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church, to investigate the illegal intelligence gathering by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after the Watergate incident. It also investigated the CIA and FBI conduct relating to the JFK assassination.

Their report concluded that the investigation on the assassination by FBI and CIA were fundamentally deficient and the facts that have greatly affected the investigation had not been forwarded to the Warren Commission by the agencies. It also found that the FBI, the agency with primary responsibility on the matter, was ordered by Director Hoover and pressured by unnamed higher government officials to conclude its investigation quickly.  The report hinted that there was a possibility that senior officials in both agencies made conscious decisions not to disclose potentially important information. 

United States House Select Committee on Assassinations

As a result of increasing public and congressional skepticism regarding the Warren Commission's findings and the transparency of government agencies, House Resolution 1540 was passed in September 1976, creating the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr..

The Committee investigated until 1978, and in March 1979 issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. While one of the reasons for that finding of "probable conspiracy" was a since-discredited acoustic analysis of a police channel dictabelt recording, the HSCA also commissioned numerous other scientific studies of acoustic analysis that corroborate the Warren Commission's findings. The Committee concluded that previous investigations into Oswald's responsibility were "thorough and reliable" but they did not adequately investigate the possibility of a conspiracy, and that Federal agencies performed with "varying degrees of competency". Specifically, the FBI and CIA were found to be deficient in sharing information with other agencies and the Warren Commission. Instead of furnishing all information relevant to the investigation, the FBI and CIA only responded to specific requests and were still occasionally inadequate. Furthermore, the Secret Service did not properly analyze information it possessed prior to the assassination and was inadequately prepared to protect the President.

Concerning the conclusions of "probable conspiracy", four of the twelve committee members wrote dissenting opinions. In accordance with the recommendations of the HSCA, the Dictabelt recording and acoustic evidence of a second assassin was subsequently reexamined. In light of investigative reports from the FBI's Technical Services Division and a specially appointed National Academy of Sciences Committee determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman,"  the Justice Department concluded "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in ... the assassination of President Kennedy".

Although the final report and supporting volumes of the HSCA was publicly released, the working papers and primary documents were sealed until 2029 under Congressional rules and only partially released as part of the 1992 JFK Act. 

The JFK Act and Assassination Records Review Board

In 1992, the popular but controversial movie JFK had renewed public interest in the assassination and particularly in the still-classified documents referenced in the film's postscript. Largely in response to the film, Congress passed the JFK Act, or "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992". The goal of the legislation was to collect at the National Archives and make publicly available all of the assassination-related records held by federal and state government agencies, private citizens and various other organizations.

The JFK Act also mandated the creation of an independent office, the Assassination Records Review Board, to review the submitted records for completeness and continued secrecy. The Review Board was not commissioned to make any findings or conclusions regarding the assassination, just to collect and release all related documents. From 1994 until 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board gathered and unsealed about 60,000 documents, consisting of over 4 million pages.   Government agencies requested that some records remain classified and these were reviewed under section 6 criteria of the JFK Act. There were 29,420 such records and all of them were fully or partially released, with stringent requirements for redaction.

All remaining assassination-related records (approximately 5,000 pages) are scheduled to be released by October 2017, with the exception of documents certified for continued postponement by the President under the following conditions:
(1) "continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military, defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations" and (2) "the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure." There is some concern among researchers that significant records, particularly those of the CIA, may still remain classified after 2017.  Although these documents may include interesting historical information, all of the records were examined by the Review Board and were not determined to impact the facts of the Kennedy assassination.

Conspiracy theories

There are numerous conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination. These theories posit that the assassination involved people or organizations other than Lee Harvey Oswald. Most current theories put forth a criminal conspiracy involving parties as varied as the CIA, the Mafia, Vice President Johnson, Cuban President Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of those entities.  Some conspiracy theories claim that the United States government covered up crucial information in the aftermath of the assassination.

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that only Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. Subsequent investigations confirmed most of the conclusions of the Commission. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that a second gunman besides Oswald probably fired at Kennedy. The HSCA did not identify the second gunman, nor did it identify any other person or organization as having been involved.   The acoustical evidence that the HSCA based its second gunman conclusion on has since been discredited.     

Public opinion polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Gallup polls have also found that only 20–30% of the population believe that Oswald had acted alone. These polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved.  Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused in various Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. 

Reaction to the assassination

The assassination evoked stunned reactions worldwide. Before the President's death was announced, the first hour after the shooting was a time of great confusion. Taking place during the Cold War, it was at first unclear whether the shooting might be part of a larger attack upon the U.S., and whether Vice President Johnson, who had been riding two cars behind in the motorcade, was safe.

The news shocked the nation. People wept openly and gathered in department stores to watch the television coverage, while others prayed. Traffic in some areas came to a halt as the news spread from car to car.  Schools across the U.S. dismissed their students early.  Anger against Texas and Texans was reported from some individuals. Various Cleveland Browns fans, for example, carried signs at the next Sunday's home game against the Dallas Cowboys decrying the city of Dallas as having "killed the President".  

The event left a lasting impression on many Americans. As with the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor before it and the September 11 attacks after it, asking "Where were you when you heard about President Kennedy's assassination" would become a common topic of discussion.   

Artifacts, museums and locations today

The plane serving as Air Force One is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, where tours of the aircraft are offered including the rear of the aircraft where President Kennedy's casket was placed and the location where Mrs. Kennedy stood in her blood-stained pink dress while Vice President Johnson was sworn in as president. The 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine is at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. 

Equipment from the trauma room at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where President Kennedy was pronounced dead, including a gurney, was purchased by the federal government from the hospital in 1973 and is now stored by the National Archives at an underground facility in Lenexa, Kansas. The First Lady's pink suit, the autopsy report, X-rays and President Kennedy's blood-stained jacket, shirt and tie worn during the assassination are stored in the National Archives facility in College Park, Maryland, with access controlled by a representative of the Kennedy family. The rifle used by Oswald, his diary, revolver, bullet fragments, and the windshield of Kennedy's limousine are also stored by the Archives. The Lincoln Catafalque, which President Kennedy's coffin rested on while he lay in state in the Capitol, is on display at the United States Capitol Visitor Center. 

The three-acre park within Dealey Plaza, the buildings facing it, the overpass, and a portion of the adjacent railyard – including the railroad switching tower – were designated part of the Dealey Plaza Historic District by the National Park Service on October 12, 1993. Much of the area is accessible to visitors, including the park and grassy knoll. Though still an active city street, the approximate spot where the presidential limousine was located at the time of the shooting is marked with an X on the street.  The Texas School Book Depository now draws over 325,000 visitors each year to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza operated by the Dallas County Historical Foundation. There is a re-creation of the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the building. 

At the Historic Auto Attractions museum in Roscoe, Illinois, are permanently displayed items related to the assassination such as the catalogue Oswald used to order the rifle, a hat and jacket that belonged to Jack Ruby and the shoes he wore when he shot Oswald, and a window from the Texas School Book Depository. The Texas State Archives have the clothes Governor Connally wore on November 22, 1963.

Some items were intentionally destroyed by the U.S. government at the direction of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, such as the casket used to transport President Kennedy's body aboard Air Force One from Dallas to Washington, which was dropped by the Air Force into the sea as "its public display would be extremely offensive and contrary to public policy".  Other items such as the hat worn by Jack Ruby the day he shot Lee Harvey Oswald and the toe tag on Oswald's corpse are in the hands of private collectors and have sold for tens of thousands of dollars at auctions.

Jack Ruby's gun, owned by his brother Earl Ruby, was sold by the Herman Darvick Autograph Auctions in New York City on December 26, 1991, for $220,000.
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