- Question
- Who killed John F. Kennedy?
- Position‹2 of 5›
- The CIA killed JFK
A suspicious person appeared during the time when JFK was shot. He was seen in the Zapruder film with a black umbrella. Because he was the only person with an umbrella on a sunny day, near the road when JFK was shot, he could very well have been involved with the assassination plan.
The argument
In the Zapruder film there is a man in the background dressed in all black and holding an open umbrella. He has since become known as "the umbrella man", and he is a key component of many conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination. The figure is tied specifically to the second shooter theory. In the film of the assassination, Kennedy is shot as the car passes the man, and theorists hold that the coincidence of position and timing is not a coincidence at all: they believe he was signalling to another gunman, using the raising of the umbrella as the cue to fire. On this reading the umbrella is not an object being carried but a device being operated, chosen because it is large enough to be seen from a distance and unremarkable enough to be overlooked. What draws attention to him, in the theory's account, is how unusually he was dressed for the occasion. In other pictures taken that day he is the only person seen holding an umbrella, in weather that gave no one else a reason to carry one. Proponents treat this as the detail that rules out innocent explanation — a man doing something no one else present had cause to do, at precisely the moment that mattered. The inference drawn is about the scope of the plot rather than about the umbrella man himself. If he was signalling a second shooter, then the shooting was coordinated between at least two people, and Oswald was working with a larger group rather than acting alone. That is the significance the figure carries for this position: a single unexplained gesture in a few frames of film is offered as evidence that the assassination was organised.
Premises
Counter-arguments
The umbrella man, later identified as Louie Steven Witt, was never officially linked to the assassination. When finally interviewed about that day he claimed to be dressed entirely in black with an umbrella to make a statement against JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy. The umbrella mimicked Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's trademark black umbrella, who Joseph Kennedy supported despite his appeasement to the Nazis. When testifying to the House committee, Witt claimed no involvement in the assassination. The umbrella man cannot be used to support the CIA's involvement in Kennedy's assassination because it is just a conspiracy theory.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P2] The umbrella man was not involved with Kennedy's assassination. [Rejecting P3] This does not prove that there was a second shooter involved.