Assassination Tourism, Part 1: The JFK Museum, Dallas, TX

Back in 2013 I had an interview in Dallas, Texas, for a job in the Middle East; after the interview concluded I had some free time before my flight, so I decided to check out the JFK assassination museum, officially known as "the Sixth Floor Museum."

The Texas Schoolbook depository, from which the fatal shot was fired, and in which now you can see a museum about the events surrounding the assassination of President John Kennedy.

The museum itself is a modern one with videos and interactive exhibits with headphones and all that, and worth the price of admission, but it was to me mainly interesting to see the actual area where it happened. 

Dealey Plaza was much smaller than I expected, and the shot from the window did not look like it would have been that difficult to make; the car would have been moving at a straight angle away from the window as it turned onto the highway near the Plaza. 

The museum does address the numerous conspiracy theories and presents some of the evidence for and against them, but it seems to make a point of trying not to be too definitive one way or the other.

(Gotta give the people what they want, after all. Everybody loves a good murder mystery.)  

Here's the actual grassy knoll, where various shadowy government-sponsored hitmen might have been hiding. 

Now, I'm the right age to have heard all the conspiracies that were floated around in the 70s, 80s, and 90s up to the present: I've seen plenty of films about it, including Oliver Stone's movie JFK, and have read numerous fictional accounts of the assassination -- Don Delillo's Libra, Jame's Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy, etc. 

The general consensus is that of a CIA / military-industrial complex conspiracy, basically a state coup, that involved the Mafia. 

To me it always seemed strange that possible Russian / KGB involvement is never much talked about. It is documented that Lee Harvey Oswald lived in Russia (then the Soviet Union)  for about four years. He even had a Russian wife, who he brought back to the US.  

Hell, maybe she did it ...

To me, it seems just as likely he was a pawn of the KGB as the CIA. And Nikita Kruschev had plenty of reason to be pissed at JFK, following the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

I'm not saying I believe that's what happened,by the way, I was just wondering why (even in the Cold War 80s) it wasn't ever much discussed as a theory. 

Me? I personally believe that lone crazy people are perfectly capable of changing the course of history with no assistance from government-sponsored conspiracies. 

Next: Assassination Tourism, Part 2: The Civil Rights Museum / Martin Luther King assassination place, Memphis TN.