JFK Two Shooters Theory: Files Release Could Upend Assassination Details
Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R) said Tuesday that she believes “two shooters” were involved in the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.
Why It Matters
The news comes after President Donald Trump signed an order declassifying government files related to the assassination of JFK, in a move that could upend our understanding of how his assassination went down.
Trump has also declassified files related to the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
What To Know
During a Capitol Hill press conference on Tuesday, Republican Representative Luna said she believes “two shooters” were involved in the assassination of JFK.
“I believe that there were two shooters,” she said. She did not provide any evidence for this.
The Warren Commission, a nearly year-long government probe into the JFK assassination, determined that Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted alone.
However, Kennedy’s assassination has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, with some believing that a second shooter was involved in the Massachusetts Democrat’s murder.
“There’s been conflicting evidence,” Luna said of the various probes into the JFK assassination, “and I think that even the FBI at the time reported some anomalies in the initial autopsy at Bethesda, Maryland.”
“All of those, though, seem to have been rinsed and repeated in the media to push a certain narrative that we don’t agree with,” the congresswoman argued.
Luna will now head up a new congressional task force aimed at exposing “federal secrets,” which will review thousands of pages of JFK assassination files before they are released to the public.
Luna said that she hopes the new task force can “put to bed some of the theories that have been out there” about the JFK assassination with “the full truth.”
“And the full truth starts with transparency,” Luna said.
She added that the bipartisan task force plans to bring in some of the “attending physicians at the initial assassination” to provide testimony, as well as people that sat on “various commissions” investigating the assassination, including the Warren Commission. However, every member of the Warren Commission is now dead, so it is unclear who Luna plans to bring in to testify.
What Is The Two Shooter Theory?
The two-shooter theory in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy suggests that more than one gunman was involved in the killing on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. This theory challenges the official conclusion of the Warren Commission, which determined that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in firing three shots from the Texas School Book Depository.
Supporters of the two-shooter theory cite eyewitness accounts, forensic evidence, and government documents suggesting gunfire came from the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza, not just the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald was stationed. Some witnesses, including law enforcement officers, reported hearing shots from the front of Kennedy’s motorcade, contradicting the government’s lone-gunman conclusion.
Additionally, acoustical analysis of police recordings, reviewed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1979, suggested a 95 percent probability of a second shooter. While later studies challenged those findings, questions remain over whether the “magic bullet”—which allegedly struck both Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally—could have caused multiple wounds without additional gunfire.
Meanwhile, some theorists believe the CIA, FBI, or Mafia may have played a role, while others suggest foreign involvement from the Soviet Union or Cuba. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President Kennedy, has previously suggested the CIA could have been involved in his uncle’s assassination. Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is a known conspiracy theorist, to be the next U.S. health secretary.
A poll of 2,000 U.S. voters conducted by the Democratic pollster Fernand Amandi in 2022 found just 38 percent of American voters were convinced by the Warren Commission’s conclusions, while half believed multiple conspirators were involved.
The FBI has unearthed about 14,000 pages worth of material related to the JFK assassination since Trump’s executive order, Axios reported Monday.
What People Are Saying
In an interview with Reuters, Professor Fredrik Logevall, a Harvard historian, commented: “I suspect that we won’t get anything too dramatic in the releases, or anything that fundamentally overturns our understanding of what occurred in Dallas.”
Speaking to Voice of America, Gerald Posner, author of Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, said: “Anybody waiting for a smoking gun that’s going to turn this case upside down will be sorely disappointed.”
Cenk Uygur, a left-wing political commentator and fervent Trump critic, praised the executive order, writing on X: “Trump ordering the release of government files on JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations is a great thing. I don’t know how much of the real evidence is in there, but I’ll take it. And I’d like to remind my friends on the left, releasing the files was originally a left-wing position.”
What Happens Next
It is still unclear when the JFK files will be released to the public. Trump’s executive order directed the director of national intelligence and attorney general to present a plan within 15 days for the “full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”
Trump did pledge to release all the remaining files during his first term in office, but agreed to withhold some documents after the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and other government agencies said that releasing them could pose national security risks.
Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in July 2023 that 99 percent of records associated with Kennedy’s assassination were available for public consumption through the National Archives and Records Administration. Biden declassified more than 16,000 documents related to the assassination between 2021 and July 2023.
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