1917-1963. 35th president of the USA 1961-63,
a Democrat. Kennedy was the first Roman
Catholic and the youngest person to be
elected president. In foreign policy he
carried through the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs
invasion of Cuba, and in 1963 secured the
withdrawal of Soviet missiles from the
island. His programme for reforms at home,
called the New Frontier, was posthumously
executed by Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy was
assassinated while on a state visit to
Dallas, Texas, on 22 Nov 1963 by Lee Harvey
Oswald (1939-1963), who was in turn shot dead
by Jack Ruby. Son of Joseph Kennedy, he was
born in Brookline, Massachusetts, and served
in the navy in the Pacific during World War
II. He was elected to Congress 1946 and to
the Senate 1952. In 1960 he defeated Nixon
for the presidency, partly as a result of
televised debates, and brought academics and
intellectuals to Washington as advisers. He
married the socialite Jacqueline Lee Bouvier
(1929-) in 1953. A number of conspiracy
theories have been spun around the Kennedy
assassination, which was investigated by a
special commission headed by Chief Justice
Earl Warren. The commission determined that
Oswald acted alone, although this is
extremely unlikely. A later congressional
committee re-examined the evidence and
determined that Kennedy `was probably
assassinated as a result of a conspiracy'.
Oswald was an ex-marine who had gone to live
in the USSR 1959 and returned when he could
not become a Soviet citizen. Ruby was a
Dallas nightclub owner, associated with the
underworld and the police.