John Kerry doesn't believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot President Kennedy as he says the government investigation didn't 'get to the bottom' of the assassination

Secretary of State John Kerry thinks that the shooter was influenced



Suggests it has something to do with the time Oswald spent in the Soviet Union and his connections to communist sympathizers

Does not support the 'grassy knoll' theory or the idea that the CIA was involved



John Kerry has revealed that he does not believe that President Kennedy's assassin worked alone as the government claimed in their official finding.

The Secretary of State added more credibility to conspiracy theories surrounding the former president's death by becoming one of the highest-ranking politicians to openly admit to being suspicious of the official finding.

'To this day, I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone,' Kerry told NBC's Tom Brokaw in an interview timed with the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death.

Suspect: Secretary of State John Kerry said that he believes that an outside force- possibly in the Soviet Union or Cuba- influenced Lee Harvey Oswald's decision to kill President Kennedy

Moments before: Kerry rejects some of the more far-flung theories about President Kennedy's death- saying that there wasn't a second shooter and the CIA was not involved- but he does think there is more to learn

'I certainly have doubts that he was motivated by himself, I mean I'm not sure if anybody else is involved- I won't go down that road with respect to the Grassy Knoll theory and all that- but I have serious questions about whether they got to the bottom of Lee Harvey Oswald's time and influence from Cuba and Russia.'

The particular theory that Kerry mentioned is one that was ignored by the Warren Commission who investigated the 1963 shooting.

A number of witnesses recalled seeing smoke and smelling gunpowder near a grassy knoll along the parade route, hinting that there could have been a second shooter who fired from a different angle.

The connections that Lee Harvey Oswald had to Russia and Cuba that the Secretary of State mentioned are far more factual convictions, as it is known that Oswald defected to the Soviet Union and moved there. He only returned to the U.S. the year before Kennedy was shot.

Back in the day: Kerry, seen at the bottom right corner of the 1972 photo, volunteered for Ted Kennedy's Senatorial campaign a decade earlier in 1962 and the two became close, staying friends throughout Kennedy's life

Working together: Then-Senator Kennedy is seen on the Washington Mall speaking with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group that Kerry (circled) led

When he did come back to the U.S., Oswald lived in New Orleans and rented out a room from am advocacy group called Fair Play For Cuba.

He spent a good deal of time with communist sympathizers, and travelled to Mexico in September 1963- just two months before Kennedy's assassination- in hopes of obtaining a visa and going on to Cuba, but his visa application was rejected.

‘I think he was inspired somewhere by something and I don't know what or if or any- I can't pin anything down on that,’ Kerry said in the interview.

In spite of his lingering feelings about there being ‘more’ to the assassination, Kerry categorically rejected the idea that the CIA was behind the assassination, which has been a favorite alternate scenario among anti-government conspiracy theorists.

Kerry was being interviewed as part of a series on the influence of the assassination, and though he was a college student at the time, the former presidential candidate did have a connection to the Kennedy family.

Looking back: The interview was part of a series being compiled by Tom Brokaw (left) about the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's death

As a Massachusetts native, Kerry chose to volunteer for Ted Kennedy’s senatorial campaign in 1962 and they remained close for the rest of the Senator’s life.

Kerry told Brokaw about the one time that he met John F. Kennedy at the White House when he was working for his brother and got a call saying that they were all going to go out for a sail in Washington.

‘I'm in between high school and going off to college and he said "Where you going?" and I said Yale and I grimaced knowing he was a Harvard guy and he looked at me and he said "No, no that's great now because I now have a Yale degree," Kerry said.

‘He had just gotten his Yale honorary degree and he couldn't have been nicer about it and talked to me about the campaign and what Teddy was doing, and we raced off and went sailing.