WASHINGTON (WCSC) — One week after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas in 1963, his successor assembled a commission to investigate the killing.
President Lyndon Johnson issued an executive order establishing what would be known as the Warren Commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
** FILE ** In this Aug. 14, 1964, file photo, the bipartisan presidential commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy sits for an official picture, at the Veterans of Foreign Wars office on Capitol Hill in Washington. From left, are: Rep. Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich.; Rep. Hale Boggs, D-La.; Sen. Richard Russell, D-Ga.; Chief Justice Earl Warren, chairman of the group; Sen. John Sherman Cooper, R-Ky.; John J. McCloy, New York banker; Allen W. Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and J. Lee Rankin, general counsel for the commission. Former President Gerald R. Ford secretly advised the FBI that two of his fellow members on the Warren Commission doubted the FBI's conclusion that President John F. Kennedy was shot from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, according to newly released records from Ford's FBI files. The new details were included in 500 pages of the FBI's large file on Ford. (AP Photo)(Anonymous | AP)
Future President Gerald Ford and former CIA Director Allen Dulles also served on the commission.
Johnson ordered the commission to investigate the presidential assassination and the subsequent murder of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
President John F. Kennedy, first lady Jackie Kennedy, Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie, ride in the presidential limosine in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963. This image was taken just moments before Kennedy was fatally shot.(AP)
A 26-volume report released the following September concluded that Oswald acted alone.
But despite the official findings, conspiracy theories persist more than six decades later.