Are you sitting comfortably and wearing your tinfoil hat? If so, open YouTube and watch a full-screen version of the Zapruder film, in particular the section after frame 215 where the presidential limousine passes behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. What you will see, partly obscured by the sign, is a man’s opened umbrella 30 feet from the presidential car when the first shot is fired. Yet it hadn’t rained in Dallas since early morning; Dealey Plaza was bathed in sunshine.
As you can imagine, many conspiracy theories formed around ‘Umbrella Man’ — who also appears in still photographs of the scene. Some theorised that the umbrella canopy concealed a gun or paralysing dart; others maintained the bearer of the umbrella, in league with a ‘dark-complexioned man’, possibly Cuban, formed part of a sniper team signalling that a second shot was needed.
The lesson of Umbrella Man is that the truth is often very strange
Only in 1975 did Louis Witt go public when he explained his actions to the Warren Commission.
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