An author has laid bare a grizzly discovery he made while researching the John F Kennedy assassination, a find that was “frightening”.
This month marks the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, which rocked the planet when the then-US President was shot dead in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for unleashing the weapon on Kennedy – affectionately known as JFK – as he was part of an open motorcade riding through Dealey Plaza.
But author Stephen F. Knott – a professor in national security affairs at the US Naval War College – claimed JFK’s life had been in danger since the fall of 1962.
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While going through the John F. Kennedy Library, Boston archives – a place he once worked – Dr Knott found that on October 19, 1962, witnesses saw a rifle being pointed at JFK during a similar motorcade.
This time the open-vehicle motorcade was driving through Springfield, Illinois, and one witness described seeing the weapon being aimed at the president from a second-storey downtown building.
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Dr Knott said: “The only thing new that I learned was that there had been a previous near miss, let’s say, almost a year earlier at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which would have been a disaster.
“President Kennedy visited Springfield to lay a wreath at the tomb of Abraham Lincoln and then to deliver a political speech.”
The author added: “And while he was parading in an open car through downtown Springfield, a police officer spotted a rifle with a scope on it, emerged from a nearby building under which Kennedy’s limousine was going to pass.”
Most harrowingly for JFK, Dr Knott noted, was Kennedy expected to take the exact same route on his return.
He said: “What made it even more frightening was Kennedy was scheduled to return on the exact same route.
“And thankfully, this Illinois police officer spotted it.”
As a result of the police intervention, a 20-year-old man and a 16-year-old boy were arrested after they were seen by a member of the Illinois Department of Public Safety pointing a .22-caliber rifle.
Though the gun was confiscated, the pair were never charged. They claimed they were attempted to get a better look at the president.
Dr Knott said: “The Secret Service held these two individuals for a time. They insisted that all they wanted to do was to get a better look at the president. And it seems to me kind of odd that you use a rifle scope to do that.”
Conspiracy theories about how and why JFK was killed have endured in the decades since his death – including one theory that Oswald was not the only shooter on the day.
Dr Knott concluded: “I was always of the school of thought that there probably was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. I’m no longer in that camp. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and that the evidence against Oswald is pretty damning. So I’m not of the school of thought that buys into some conspiracy.”
