Kennedy at Dealey Plaza: One Gunman, Three Networks, and a Story That Stopped at Oswald

At 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, the presidential limousine moved slowly past the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. Gunfire rang out. President John F. Kennedy died at Parkland Hospital soon afterward. Lee Harvey Oswald, who worked inside that building, was arrested the same day. Two days later, as police moved Oswald out of the station, Jack Ruby lunged forward and shot the accused man in front of television cameras. The events lock into one chain: Kennedy died, the accused was silenced before trial, and the case file sat scattered across government agencies, opening to the public only after decades. That chain is the bigger story this article follows, with three networks running through it: the Cuba network, the Dallas network, and the information-control network wrapped around a six-million-page archive.

The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that Oswald fired alone from the sixth floor of the depository. The conclusion relied on the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, the cartridges, the window position, and witness testimony. People standing at the scene saw the mismatch right away. Witnesses heard a shot from the grassy knoll fence area in front of the motorcade. The Zapruder film shows Kennedy's head snapping hard. The number of bangs, the directions they came from, and the very short gaps between them convinced viewers that not every bullet flew out of the single window behind the motorcade.