Following the assassination, conspiracy believers focused on one piece of evidence more than any other: the Zapruder film, a home movie shot on super-8 film which clearly showed Kennedy’s motorcade and those closest to the car at the time of the attack. One figure they zero in on was the “umbrella man,” an unidentified man spotted on the sidewalk near the president at the time of the shooting, who, conspicuously, was holding aloft an umbrella on an otherwise sunny day.
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In 2011, The New York Times spoke to author Josiah Thomson (“Six Seconds in Dallas“) about theories concerning the umbrella man (via YouTube). Thomson explained that early investigators believed that the umbrella could have been used as a signal for multiple shooters in a coordinated attack planned by the CIA, with one arguing that the umbrella itself could have been fitted with a device that fired one of the shots.
The umbrella man eventually revealed himself as Louie Steven Witt, per Town and Country. In 1976, Witt revealed himself before the House Assassinations Committee. Witt explained that his use of an umbrella on an otherwise clear day was intended as an innocent — albeit obscure — form of protest. Apparently, the item was a reference to Neville Chamberlain, the wartime British Prime Minister who had unsuccessfully adopted a policy of appeasement against Adolf Hitler. Kennedy’s father, Joseph, had been a Chamberlain supporter, and per History Matters, Witt, a conservative, claimed that a friend had told him that umbrellas represented a “sore spot” for the Kennedys, and had gone with the intention of heckling the Democratic president.
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