What are the main conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination?

Conspiracy theorists will be eagerly waiting to pour over thousands of classified files on former US president John F Kennedy’s assassination after Donald Trump signed an executive order to release them.

“That’s a big one, huh? A lot of people have been waiting for this for years, for decades,” Mr Trump said as he signed the order.

Some critics – including JFK’s grandson – have condemned the move, suggesting the president is using the notorious 1963 killing as a “political prop”.

Whatever his motives, the president is right; people have waited decades to learn more about the shooting of Kennedy.

Conspiracy theories have flourished in the decades since his death – ranging from the potentially plausible to the outlandish.

But what is the official explanation and what are some of the more well-known theories?

The official story: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone

Kennedy was shot in downtown Dallas on 22 November 1963, as his motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository building.

Former marine Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor of the building and fired multiple shots, killing the president, according to the official story.

Two days after Kennedy was killed, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.

A year after the assassination, president Lyndon Johnson ordered an investigation into the assassination called the Warren Commission, which concluded that Oswald acted alone and there was no evidence of a conspiracy.

Historians note that the investigation’s findings were widely accepted by the public immediately after its release – but scepticism from conspiracy theorists in the years that followed led many to start doubting the official story.

More than one shooter?

Alternative theories put forward include the claim that Oswald was framed – or that a second gunman also opened fire on the president at the same time.

These suggestions were fuelled by several witnesses to the assassination who believed that at least one of the shots came from a different area known as the “grassy knoll”, rather than the Texas School Book Depository.

The official inquiry into the assassination concluded that Oswald fired three times from the building, including one bullet which hit the president’s head and another which missed.

The Warren Commission said another bullet struck the president from behind, before it exited his body via the front of his throat. It then hit and injured Texas Governor John Connally Jr, who was also in the motorcade with Kennedy and his wife Jackie, the inquiry found.

That last bullet has since been referred to as “the magic bullet”, based on the unexpected trajectory it took.

One of the reasons investigators reached the conclusion that the injuries were caused by a single bullet was due to a bullet found on Connally Jr’s stretcher when he arrived at Parkland Memorial Hospital after the shooting.

To them, it showed that the bullet had passed through the president and then hit Connally Jr, before becoming dislodged on the stretcher while he was being treated.

The analysis was a significant factor in the investigators’ conclusion that Oswald acted alone.

But that finding was questioned in 2023 when ex-Secret Service agent Paul Landis, who witnessed the president’s death at close range, released a memoir in which he claimed he found the bullet in the seat of the car Kennedy was sitting in, pocketed it, and put it on the stretcher carrying the president later.

He guessed Kennedy and Connally Jr’s stretchers then somehow collided, meaning the bullet was shaken from one to the other.

This has led some to believe it wasn’t one bullet that caused so much damage to the pair, opening up the possibility that there were more bullets fired – and potentially more shooters involved.

Mr Landis’s claims are disputed by some other Secret Service agents present that day.

It was not the first time such speculation had been put forward.

The US House Select Committee on Assassinations argued in 1978 that more than one gunman was present that day.

Kennedy’s own nephew, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Mr Trump’s pick for health secretary, has also said he is not convinced just one man was behind his uncle’s murder.

This idea in turn has led to plenty of theories about a larger conspiracy involving powerful forces, domestically or internationally.

The US government

The fact there are so many conspiracy theories over JFK highlights the level of mistrust people have in government, according to Dr Darren Reid, associate professor at Coventry University and an expert in American politics and history.

But many of the conspiracies suggest the US government itself was directly involved in Kennedy’s death – though they aren’t always clear about who within the government might have been responsible.

One popular accusation claims Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s vice president, ordered the deed. According to the book The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against by libertarian political activist Roger Stone, Kennedy’s successor murdered not only Kennedy, but also several others on his path to political power.

Most believers of this theory say that Johnson had the motivation – a desire for the presidency – and that he worked with a shadowy group of co-conspirators.

The mafia

There are several iterations of the mafia theory, but they typically centre on New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello, who was deported to Guatemala after Kennedy came to office and charged his brother, Robert, with tackling organised crime as the US attorney general.

When Marcello later made his way back to the United States, he allegedly made threats against the president. He also allegedly made a jailhouse confession of killing the president to an FBI informant.

Mafia conspiracy believers point to a trip Lee Harvey Oswald took to New Orleans prior to the assassination, as well as to the mob ties of Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby.

The CIA

Some Americans blame the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for Kennedy’s death, as they were on rough terms after the Bay of Pigs invasion – a failed military operation the president had ordered in Cuba in 1961.

Classified papers released in 2017 detailed unusual schemes the Kennedy administration and CIA came up with to kill Fidel Castro, who at the time was president of Cuba.

They included giving the leader, known for his love of diving, an exploding seashell or a contaminated diving suit.

Conspiracy theorists believe tension built up after the failed assassination attempt on Castro which led the CIA to retaliate by having Kennedy killed.

CIA conspiracies often overlap with mob conspiracies because of revelations that the agency worked with organised crime on its Castro schemes, at one point hiring an intermediary to approach mafia boss Sam Giancana to offer him “$150,000 to hire some gunman to go into Cuba and kill Castro”.

Fidel Castro

The finger of blame has also been pointed at the Cuban leader, who may have wanted to hit back at American attempts to kill him and overthrow his communist government.

Kennedy’s successor Johnson subscribed to this theory, revealing in two interviews in 1968 and 1969 that he thought Castro was behind the assassination.

Castro denied the allegations, calling the idea “absolute insanity” in a 1977 interview. He said that having the president killed would have been too dangerous for Cuba, as it risked a brutal US retaliation.

Someone else?

Dr Reid says JFK conspiracies are “so prolific” and that there are “too many to name”.

“I don’t think there’s any group or interest group that existed at that time which hasn’t in some way been accused or implicated in it [JFK’s death],” he tells Sky News.

Many, according to polls taken in the US on the subject, simply express dissatisfaction with the official story and believe there are plenty of viable alternatives.

Dr Reid believes the assassination – and the conspiracies around it – have become a part of US culture.

“It was so traumatic that people began to looking for explanations, and because it was an extraordinary event, they started to look for extraordinary explanations.

“The number of people who looked for those explanations in the first instance was relatively small, but over time, they wrote books, they made movies, they told stories, listened to radio broadcasts and watched TV shows.

“This conspiracy was depicted time after time after time, and it just worked its way into the popular culture.”

What documents are being released – and what will they show?

Over half a century after the assassination, there is a collection of over five million records relating to JFK’s death.

It has taken many years for the files to see the light of day. Congress ordered in 1992 that all remaining sealed files relating to the investigation into Kennedy’s death should be fully opened to the public by 2017, except for those the president authorised for further withholding.

In 2017, Mr Trump released a cache of records, but decided to release the remaining documents on a rolling basis.

Joe Biden’s government continued to release some files during his term, and now only a few thousand of the millions of records on the case are still to be fully declassified.

Thanks to Mr Trump’s executive order, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general must develop a plan to declassify the documents by 6 February.

Obviously, no members of the public can know what these documents will show before they are released.

Experts on the subject, though, have been giving their thoughts.

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“There’s always the possibility that something would slip through that would be the tiny tip of a much larger iceberg that would be revealing,” says Larry J Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Centre for Politics and author of a book on Kennedy.

“That’s what researchers look for. Now, odds are you won’t find that but it is possible that it’s there.”

Mr Sabato previously said: “It just seemed so fantastical that one very disturbed individual could end up pulling off the crime of the century.

“But the more I studied it, the more I realized that is a very possible, maybe even probable in my view, hypothesis.”

Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed, which concludes that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, says: “Anybody waiting for a smoking gun that’s going to turn this case upside down will be sorely disappointed.”

Dr Reid says he’s “really excited to read what’s in these documents”, but admits he would “be surprised if there were any major revelations”.

“But there might be some intriguing clues and it will certainly be enough ambiguity to fuel a thousand more conspiracy theories for the next 50 years,” he concludes.

What’s in it for Trump?

For the president, Dr Reid says, the significance is in the act of releasing the documents, rather than the content of the documents.

“I think the reason Trump is releasing these files isn’t because he’s interested in proving, you know, conspiracy theory one, two or three is right – I think it’s about trust in the government.

“He ran on a very disruptive ticket, in which essentially Trump depicted himself as running against a corrupt political order.”

Dr Reid says the move speaks to a core part of his base: the people who don’t trust the government.

He said it sends them the message that he will be more transparent than governments of the past.