THIRTY YEARS LATER, A NATION STILL WONDERS WHAT HAPPENED

Thirty years ago today the nation -- indeed the entire world -- was shocked by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as he rode in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas.

That day, Nov. 22, 1963, ranks among the saddest in the history of this great nation. No one at the time had endured the tragedy of an assassination of a U.S. president. To those who were old enough to remember, Kennedy's death and the nationally broadcast funeral procession for him in Washington, D.C., would become sorrowful events etched forever in their minds.

As evidenced by stories elsewhere in today's Southeast Missourian, practically everyone who was old enough at the time can recall where they were and what they were doing when word of Kennedy's death was received. A nation instantly came to almost a standstill, shock-stricken by the needless death of a young president in whom it had held high hopes.

There have been countless theories and much speculation about who killed the president, or more specifically, who might have been involved with his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, in some type of conspiracy.

Even 30 years later Americans have a hard time accepting the Warren Commission's finding that Oswald acted alone when he fired three rapid shots that killed Kennedy and wounded Texas Gov. John Connally. The commission, appointed by Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren. But its investigation raised more questions than it answered.

Perhaps all of the hype over conspiracy theories has led more Americans today than in 1963 to suspect that Oswald did not act alone. That is indicated by Gallup Polls taken a week after the assassination and in 1988. The first poll showed 29 percent of Americans believed that Oswald alone killed Kennedy; in the latter, 13 percent thought Oswald alone was responsible. Yet another poll -- this one done for The Associated Press earlier this month -- indicated that fewer than 15 percent believe Oswald acted alone.

Understandably so. The events seemed preposterous 30 years ago and more so today.

Consider that after the shooting, despite the intense security that accompanied the president, Oswald got away from the murder scene on foot. He was arrested and jailed. Two days later, while being transferred from one jail to another, nightclub owner Jack Ruby, who had ties with the mob, managed to get into the jail with a gun. He shot and killed Oswald.

And the Warren Commission made mistakes of its own. It depended on the work of the CIA and FBI, the very agencies that some believed to have been part of the conspiracy, when it should have engaged independent investigators.

To top it off, when the House Select Committee on Assassinations restudied Kennedy's killing in 1979, it concluded that the slaying "probably" was the result of a plot. Having decided that, it disbanded, and no government body has taken up the matter since.

To further promote belief in a plot, one simply wonders how such an enormous crime, one with worldwide consequences, could be committed by such an inconsequential criminal as Oswald.

Oswald was a nobody with twisted political beliefs. He was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. He married a Russian woman, and three years after his defection, Soviet authorities allowed him to return to America. He ended up in Dallas, and on the day the president visited managed to sneak a rifle through all of the security into his work place, which overlooked the route of the motorcade.

Had Ruby not gunned him down, Oswald was the one person who could have set the record straight on who, if anyone else, was involved in a plot to assassinate Kennedy. No investigation yet has produced the facts to satisfy a nation hungry for substantiated evidence concerning the president's death.

But chances are no further government investigations will ever be conducted. If that is the case, absent solid evidence that a plot did or did not exist, suspicions of a conspiracy will go on forever to be debated by a country that lost its young leader on that fateful November day.