The Warren Commission: What It Found and What It Missed
What the Warren Commission concluded
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known as the Warren Commission, reported in September 1964 after ten months of investigation. It heard from 552 witnesses and reviewed a large volume of physical and documentary evidence.
Its central conclusions were that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired three shots from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository; that one bullet caused all seven non-fatal wounds to President Kennedy and Governor Connally; and that Jack Ruby acted alone when he shot Oswald two days later.
What the House Committee found
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations revisited the case after new evidence emerged, including a police radio recording that appeared to contain four shots rather than three. The committee concluded that Kennedy was probably killed as a result of a conspiracy, based primarily on this acoustic evidence.
In 1982, a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the acoustic evidence and concluded that the sounds the House Committee identified as gunshots were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination, making them irrelevant. The acoustic evidence has been disputed by researchers on both sides ever since.
The files
The JFK Records Act of 1992, passed in response to public concern about secrecy after the release of Oliver Stone's film, mandated the release of all government assassination records. Most were released by 2017.
Subsequent releases, including batches in 2021, 2022 and 2025, have filled in details about the CIA's surveillance of Oswald before the assassination and the FBI's handling of intelligence about him. They have not produced evidence of a government conspiracy to kill the president, though researchers continue to study the newly released material.
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