President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he traveled in an open top car in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. On November 22, 1963, Texas Governor John Connally was also injured. Within two hours Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder of a Dallas policeman and by that evening, he was arraigned on a charge of murder in the death of officer J. D. Tippit. At 1:35 the following morning, Oswald was arraigned on the charge of murdering the President. On November 24, 1963, while being transferred from the Dallas Police Department to the county jail, Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that there was no persuasive evidence that Oswald was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, and stated it was their belief that he acted alone. Critics, even before the publication of the official government conclusions, suggested a conspiracy was behind the assassination.
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, but found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that there were at least four shots fired, that there was a "high probability" that two gunmen fired at the President, and that it was probable that a conspiracy existed. The HSCA also stated that “the Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.”
Polls have indicated that large numbers of Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. These same polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved. A 2003 ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected there was an assassination plot involving more than one person. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% thought there had been a cover-up.
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