Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 28, 1993                   TAG: 9311280178
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MIKE FEINSILBER Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

WHY MILLIONS THINK THERE WAS MORE TO IT THAN OSWALD

Thirty years after the murder of John F. Kennedy, most Americans think that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. Or they think Oswald had helpers, never apprehended, in a plot that's never been investigated.

They reject the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald was a warped loner who acted alone, without the knowledge of anyone else.

If the Kennedy family itself accepts the commission's conclusion, why is it so widely doubted? Even Bill Clinton and Al Gore told reporters last year that they doubted the official version.

A week after the assassination, a Gallup Poll said only 29 percent of American believed that Oswald alone killed JFK. In a 1988 poll, only 13 percent thought Oswald was responsible.

And a poll conducted for The Associated Press earlier this month found that the majority of people still reject Oswald as the sole culprit. Fewer than 15 percent said he acted alone.

One reason for the skepticism is obvious: the case is so implausible.

A 19-year-old former Marine defects to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War and marries a Russian woman. Three years after his defection, Soviet authorities allow him to return to this country. He drifts to Dallas and on the day that the president is to visit, he is able to sneak a rifle into his work place, overlooking the route of the presidential motorcade.

He fires three shots in short order. A single bullet kills the president and wounds Texas Gov. John Connally. Then, despite the intense security that accompanies any president, he gets away from the murder scene on foot.

But he is arrested and jailed. Two days later, while being transferred from one jail to another, a nightclub owner with ties to the mob manages to get into the jail with a gun and to kill Oswald.

And that's not all. The official commission created to investigate the murder made mistakes of its own, starting with the way it conducted the investigation.

Instead of hiring independent investigators, the Warren Commission depended on the work of the CIA and the FBI, the very agencies that some saw as part of the conspiracy.

And when the House Select Committee on Assassinations restudied the Kennedy case in 1979, it concluded that the slaying "probably" was the result of a plot. But having decided that, it disbanded. No government body followed up.