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Fact & Fantasy. In all the verbiage expended on the Warren Report and the assassination, an incredible variety of hypotheses—and "facts" to make them true—has been tossed out to support contentions that Lee Oswald was innocent or in league with another rifleman or the dupe of sinister powers. In its December issue, Esquire rounds up 35 theories about the whos, whys, whats and hows of the assassination.
Mark Lane—and others—theorize that Kennedy was shot from a grassy knoll in front of the motorcade, that Oswald's 6.5-mm. Italian rifle was planted in the Book Depository sniper's nest to frame him, that Jack Ruby was part of a widespread plot to eliminate Oswald before he squealed, that slain Patrolman J. D. Tippit was likely in league with the assassins, and that a bullet fired from Oswald's rifle and found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital had been planted there by unknown conspirators.
Then there are the "Oswald Impersonator" advocates, notably Authors Léo Sauvage, Harold Weisberg and Richard Popkin, who believe that one (or more) plotter was skulking around Dallas, pretending to be Oswald in order to implicate him in the crime. There is the "Manchurian Candidate Theory," which was supported by CIA men at one point: that Oswald had been brainwashed to become an assassin during his three-year self-exile in Russia.
The "Dallas Oligarchy Theory," argued by Author Thomas Buchanan, has it that the assassination was engineered by a Texas oil millionaire who thought Kennedy stood in his way to domination of the world petroleum market. The "Cuba-Framed Theory," proposed by Fidel Castro, holds that Oswald's activities in Fair Play for Cuba groups were faked so that, assuming he escaped, Washington would figure he had fled to Cuba, and would thus have an excuse to invade. The "Red Execution Theory," pushed by Right-Wing Intellectual Revilo P. Oliver, has it that Oswald was ordered by Moscow to shoot Kennedy because the President had been a Communist but was threatening to "turn American." The "Evil-Forces Theory," favored by Mali Foreign Minister Ous-man Ba, links the death of Kennedy, Patrice Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjöld with "forces behind the U.S.Belgian rescue operation in the Congo."
"Persuasive" Compromise. Tenuous and documentably erroneous as much of the anti-Warren Report literature is, even responsible commentators share the rising feeling that the Administration should reopen the case and clear up—once and for all—the nagging discrepancies. Their contention is simply that so many questions are being raised about certain details in the report that now there is reasonable doubt cast over nearly everything in it.
One of the thorniest points of specific controversy is the commission's "Single Bullet Theory"—the belief that one bullet from Oswald's rifle struck Kennedy in the neck, exited through his throat, then plowed on through Governor Connally's torso, smashed his right wrist and finally lodged in his left thigh.