Hardly will I revile, lionize or equivocate on Lee Harvey Oswald’s marksmanship, except to say that for him to have done the shooting, he remains until this day the finest rifleman in the history of the United States Marine Corps. No—I’m being less than generous. Let’s be as charitable as possible, shall we? The publication of the Warren Report effectively canonized Lee Harvey Oswald as the greatest rifleman that the Marine Corps has ever produced in its 233-year history. No sharpshooter has before or since been able to match Oswald's performance.

But as an ex-Marine, I find such a conclusion…haunting.

Chief Justice Earl Warren and his commissioners received prominent and uncritical news coverage while contrary evidence was either ignored or played down in a climate where journalist were not willing to report negative information about the commission’s inquiry; an inquiry whose firm conclusion stated unequivocally that the lone assassin of President John F. Kennedy was Lee Harvey Oswald—of course that Oswald, almost more than one could possibly imagine, was given conspiratorial credit and sharpshooter skills.

No magic will remove the flaws in “the official record” where it lacks information that has been either discarded or lost in an atmosphere that allows for no errors in judgment or stimuli for better results. The culture of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency precluded sharing information, coordination of data gathering and analysis. Whether prior to 22 November 1963 or 11 September 2001, it has largely been due to a legacy of arrogance, incompetence but largely indifference.

What the FBI and CIA have shown is how the course of history is far from inevitable. “The Official Record” is one that can benefit us all, historian and layman both, or be used to build a foundation of repression that destroys our freedom…to know.

There is no agreed opinion. And yet without a whit of proof outside circumstantial evidence, Lee Harvey Oswald is accused, while the logic wobbles.

Where truth is hidden in plain sight and proof is only found in the power to dissolve reason in that ever-ascending reach for storytelling, one might ask: If Oswald didn’t do it, then who was shooting at the president?

When you don’t know, you always have to wonder. For almost half a century, the unknown has prevailed. It's the perfect murder mystery—a mystery where facts flow seamlessly into fiction and grows inexorably into myth. To say “Oswald did it” is an answer more suggestive than definitive, becoming a burden that historians have assiduously avoided, making “Why” one of the imponderables.          

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