Image of Dallas Police officers outside the Texas School Book Depository

One conspiracy theory holds that the future president George H. W. Bush was present in Dealey Plaza and was somehow involved with the Kennedy assassination.  This photograph and an oral history in the Museum's collection disprove that theory.  The unidentified man at the far left is thought by some, because of a physical resemblance, to be George H. W. Bush. 

When Kennedy was shot, Bush, then president of the Zapata Offshore Drilling Company, a Houston-based Texas oil operation, was speaking at a Lion's Club luncheon in Tyler, Texas, about 95 miles from Dallas.  He stopped his speech as soon as the group got word of the shooting and, according to an FBI report, called the FBI in Dallas at 1:40 p.m. with a tip that, before the assassination, he had learned the name of a man who vowed to kill Kennedy when the president came to Houston.  Bush said he would fly to Dallas with his wife, Barbara, and be available at the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel. 

According to Barbara Bush, they soon departed in a private plane and circled Love Field while waiting for Air Force One's 2:45 p.m. departure.  But this photograph was taken within 50 minutes of the 12:30 assassination, long before Bush could have traveled to Dallas.  In his oral history, Dallas Police officer M. N. "Nick" McDonald identified himself at the right in the photograph.  As he testified to the Warren Commission, McDonald confirmed that he stayed in Dealey Plaza until hearing on the police radio that an officer had just been shot.  That announcement was made just before 1:20 p.m., thus fixing the latest moment the photograph could have been taken.  And that means George H. W. Bush could not have traveled from Tyler, Texas to Dallas in time to appear in that same photo. - Gary Mack, Curator