It was November 22 in the year 1963 when the United States Head of state, John F. Kennedy was murdered at a time shortly after the strike of noon. The leader of the US was killed as he moved in his convoy down Dallas, Texas and ever since many theories have been developed to try and explain how exactly it was that the most man that occupied the most powerful office in the land could be taken down despite his security detail. The person accused of his murder was a former US marine by the name Lee Harvey Oswald, and he was suspected of having embraced Marxism and even gone a step further to defect to the Soviet Union to further polarize his beliefs. Although many theories lean towards the forensic and the scientific evidence compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that paints all the shots as having come from one rifle, scientific evidence abounds on some of the factors that point to two shooters that must have conspired to kill the President.
In the aftermath of investigations for the killing of John F. Kennedy, the US House Select Committee on Assassinations (USHSCA) points to an “Umbrella man” as one of the suspects in the killing of the President. The man appears to be holding an umbrella. He is suspected to be a party to the assassination of the President is recognized as Louie Steven Witt, and he is seen in the Zapruder film as well as several other films and photographs were taken on that fateful day (Rahn & Sturdivan, 2004) . Witt is seen carrying the umbrella closest to the President at the time of his killing, and this is flagged as one of the reasons why perhaps he could have been privy to the murder and that he carried his umbrella as a signal or that maybe even the umbrella was itself a concealed weapon.
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Umbrellas are typically seen as transitory items that are left behind in restaurants and department stores, and therefore no one can ever find a reason to suspect anyone carrying an umbrella when out doing their regular business. Witt brandished an umbrella conveniently at the time of the President's killing, and on coming out after enormous publicity in the media, he said he carried it as a protest against the President. The USHSCA made an appeal to the public regarding the whereabouts of the mysterious "umbrella man". In 1978, Witt came forward claiming to be the umbrella man the committee was looking for. He said he still had the umbrella and had never imagined that it had been a source of such considerable speculation. He claimed he brandished the umbrella to protest against the President whose father has appeased the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.
A close juxtaposition of the character traits of the ultimate suspect of the President, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the “umbrella man” could seem to suggest people who are direct opposites of each other when in fact their seeming oppositeness could point to a similitude of purpose. Witt posited that he held out his umbrella conveniently at the time the President was killed to signify his protest against Kennedy’s family’s appeasement to Adolf Hitler. He said he carried it to heckle the President because his predecessor had been an enthusiast of Nazi-Premier Minister of Britain.
Umbrellas were used in the 1930s as symbols of appeasement. Additionally, at the time of the building of the Berlin Wall, black umbrellas had been used by students as symbols of protest against the President. In claiming that he was simply a “victim of circumstances” who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time Witt seems to play into the House Committee’s wit by applying reverse psychology on them (Umbrella Cover-up, 1978) . This leaves out all the other speculations about whether the umbrella was a weapon. There was no way the House Committee was ever going to know whether it was the same umbrella he used on that fateful day.
In explaining the character traits of the shooter McMillan, (2008) posits that even though Oswald was only 24 years at the time of the killing, his action was full of motive. The young man has planned to surrender his US citizenship. He further planned to become a citizen of the Soviet Union. At the time of compiling his story, the McMillan says Oswald had been a subject for a social account. He had just marked his 20 th birthday. Being a trusting communalist, his primary intention was to strike a lethal blow and to make a significant impact that would be felt for a long time. Therefore, different from the umbrella man, he was not afraid to express his ideas and hence was willing to experiment with the extremes of killing the most powerful man on the land at the time.
Overall, even though many theories lean towards the forensic and the scientific evidence compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that paints all the shots as having come from one rifle, scientific evidence abounds on some of the factors that point to two shooters that must have conspired to kill the President. Based on the similarities between Oswald and Witt, the two suspects must be held in the same esteem because besides the testimony that Witt gave to the House Committee on Assassinations, it remains inapparent whether he presented the same umbrella he has brandished before and whether he indeed was a “victim of circumstances” as he claimed. This will remain a contentious issue because as much as Oswald is a known Marxist revolutionary, Witt only claims to be anti-nazi and this cannot be verified.
References
Umbrella Cover-up. (1978). Umbrella Cover-up .
McMillan, P. (2008). JFK and Oswald: The Inconvenient Truth. World Policy Institute.
Rahn, K., & Sturdivan, L. (2004). Neutron Activation and the JFK Assassination: Part 1 Data and Interpretation. Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, 262 (1), 205-213.
