John F Kennedy's personal secretary didn't buy into the official story surrounding his death, according to reports.
The late president's right-hand woman, Evelyn Lincoln, believed that his 1963 assassination was a 'deliberate, professional, political murder'.
She claimed that the alleged plot to kill the former commander-in-chief was 'planned by a group in government who wanted him removed from office'.
Lincoln, the daughter of a US congressman, began working alongside JFK before he was elected to the Senate in 1953 and later became his trusted personal secretary.
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She remained by his side when he started serving as president in 1961 and was sat in one of the several cars that trailed behind him on that fateful day he was shot dead.
JFK was driving through Dallas, Texas, in an open-topped car on 22 November, 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire. Oswald was then shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby just two days later.
Lincoln didn't publicly share any of her personal theories on the assassination prior to her death, however, she did jot them down.
During her lifetime, she wrote two memoirs which did not include her opinions on the questionable circumstances surrounding JFK's - but in a third unpublished book, titled 'I Was There', she did.
She made an 11-page addendum to the document prior to her death in 1995, which was later discovered in Boston's JFK Library by the blog 'JFK Facts'.
According to its editor Jefferson Morley, as Lincoln was so so 'discreet' about her suspicions while she was alive, it adds weight to the idea that she might have been onto something.
"This is somebody who knew his [JFK's] world, she lived in his world, and so her testimony is important," he told the Daily Mail. "And it's also something that she was not trying to exploit in her lifetime.
"Because she lives in that world and is so trusted by him, her intuitions and her observations, I think carry a lot of weight. Her thinking reflected his. She was influenced by his thinking.
"So yes, in some sense, we can say this is his way of thinking. This was not her first choice of things to talk about. But because people were so interested in what she had to say about it, she finally came forward and said it."
Although Morley said it's 'not quite clear' why Lincoln never publicised her writing, he believes it is 'valuable testimony' that people should at least consider.
She reckoned that the suggestion that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone was not entirely true.
Lincoln wrote that her suspicions had 'smouldered in her mind all of these years' and that she would 'try to answer, to the best of my knowledge' one question: "Who conspired to assassinate President Kennedy?"
She reeled off a long list of JFK's potential rivals who she believed might have wiped him out for political reasons - such as far-right groups, criminal gangs, anti-civil rights organisations and even 'Texans who hated him'.
As well as this, Lincoln alleged that figures such as FBI chief J Edgar Hoover, the president of the Teamsters Union Jimmy Hoffa and the de facto First Lady of South Vietnam, Madame Nhu, had an axe to grind with JFK.
"It is ironic, I feel, that so many of these factions, who felt so strongly against the President, had their people in or around Dallas at the time of the assassination," JFK's personal secretary wrote.
"Any one of these factions, I reasoned, could have hired a hit man. I have heard that they come dime a dozen. Likewise, the atmosphere in Dallas at the time was filled with hatred and suspicion. The time was ripe to pull this off."
According to Lincoln, some of these factions might have united against JFK after he refused to green light the invasion of Cuba, as they were 'constantly conspiring to overthrow Castro'.
"A linkage grew between the Mob, the CIA and right-wing extremists over what they felt was the President’s moderation toward Castro, his civil rights proposals, his drive for peace and the Kennedys’ crusade against organised crime," Lincoln alleged. "Therefore, it is logical to conjecture that these elements could have formed a conspiracy to assassinate the President.
"There is definitely an intertwining of people and factions in much of the opposition and efforts to 'stop' or destroy the President."
She claimed that JFK's successor, Lyndon Johnson, had initially 'maintained that there had been a conspiracy', however he then allegedly 'hurriedly set the wheels in motion to build a case against Lee Harvey Oswald as being the lone assassin'.
"From the catbird seat that I had during my 12 years as John F. Kennedy’s Personal Secretary I would have to say that, in my opinion, President Kennedy’s death in Dallas, Texas, was a deliberate professional political murder, planned by a group in government who wanted him removed from office," Lincoln claimed.
Topics: John F. Kennedy, US News, Conspiracy Theory, Books, History, Politics
Olivia Burke