Mark Chicone

I use this movie as an extra credit option for my U.S.history students. When we cover the unit on the Roaring Life in the 1920s, the movie provides my students the opportunity to watch a really good movie based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel. I offer an extra credit movie with every unit. I must say that this movie is well like by an overwhelming majority of my students.

The JFK assassination is one of the biggest tragedies in American history. There are any number of conspiracy theories that argue that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. We now know that the Warren Commission did a poor job overall by not interviewing many potential witnesses and not to mention the fact that the Warren Commission Report itself has many inconsistencies and errors. None the less, I have not been able to get passed this one question and that would be that after all these years no one has provided any real evidence to prove that any one other than Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. However, the Smoking Gun theory provides several possibilities. You do have to wonder why there were so many coverups, hidden and missing evidence, and contradictions. The Smoking Gun theory would be an absolute embarrassment for the Secret Service. This kind of accident would have led to many questions about the agency itself. It also would have ended many careers in their tracks and changed American history as we know it.