Bijan C Bayne: On JFK's 95th Birthday!!

President Kennedy, whose mother lived to be 104 and his sister Eunice to be 88, would have been 95 years old today, but JFK was robbed of the chance for a ripe old age on November 22, 1963, in Dealy Plaza, Dallas, Texas when he was fatally shot in the head and neck. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the murder, and a presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren found that the gunman acted alone. But ever since, questions about the tragedy have haunted the public, and more than a few writers have taken their turn to try to untangle the web of mystery surrounding the killer. Were CIA agents really behind the murder? KGB operatives? The mob? Speculations about the crime could fill up your entire summer reading list. In his latest bestseller, 11/22/63, Stephen King weaves time travel into a fictional narrative about the Kennedy assassination. After several years devoted to researching the book, suspense master King concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. In that belief, King joins the late Norman Mailer, who arrived at the same conclusion after writing the 828-page historical novel "Oswald's Tale" in 1995. What led two of America's most successful purveyors of fiction, whose living depends on character development, to decide Oswald was not a pawn of the New Orleans Cosa Nostra, the CIA, pro-Castro Cubans, the KGB, or any combination thereof? Upon careful character examination, both scribes determined that Oswald's motives were more personal than political. The belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a plot, has been a persistent theme in our national conversation.