Conspiracy buffs may feast on JFK documents

John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy buffs have been handed a Presidents' Day present they are sure to savour.

The Dallas County district attorney said on Monday that he could not categorically dismiss as fake a transcript of an alleged conversation between Mr Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby.

The transcript is one of many items related to the Kennedy slaying in November 1963 and Mr Ruby's trial that were found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse about a year ago and have been painstakingly catalogued.

In the purported conversation nearly two months before the assassination, Mr Oswald and Mr Ruby discuss killing Mr Kennedy to halt the mafia-busting agenda of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

"We don't know if this is an actual conversation or not," District Attorney Craig Watkins told a news conference. "It will open up the debate as to whether or not there was a conspiracy to assassinate the President."

Yet if it were proven these two key figures in one of the most captivating periods in US history did meet ahead of that day in Dallas, then the Kennedy assassination was almost certainly a conspiracy.

One theory about the transcript holds that it is part of a movie script that Henry Wade, the district attorney who prosecuted Mr Ruby, worked on later with producers for a film that was never made. Among the documents found was a contract signed by Wade for a movie deal.

Adding fuel to the conspiracy fires, Mr Watkins said his predecessors in the DA's office were "aware of the contents of the safe" but had decided to keep them secret "for whatever reason".

Mr Watkins did not say why he went public with his find on Presidents' Day, the US holiday that honours its leaders.

Mr Watkins and others in his office came across the items after being told the gun used to kill Mr Oswald was in the courthouse. The gun was not there because it is privately owned.

The purported Lee-Ruby meeting took place at Mr Ruby's Carousel Club on October 4, 1963. The transcript reads like scripted cloak-and-dagger dialogue.

Mr Lee: "There is a way to get rid of him (Attorney General Robert Kennedy) without killing him."

Mr Ruby: "How's that?"

Mr Lee: "I can shoot his brother."

Mr Ruby: "You mean the President?"

Mr Lee: "Yes, the President."

Ruby: "But that wouldn't be patriotic."

At one point, Mr Lee says that to kill Mr Kennedy all he needs "is my rifle and a tall building."

A bit later Mr Ruby tells Mr Oswald: "You're asking too many questions; remember, they know who you are already; but you don't know them. They'll be watching you..."

Legions of conspiracy theorists have long questioned the conclusion of the Warren Commission that investigated the slaying that Mr Oswald acted alone when he shot Mr Kennedy as his motorcade swept past the Texas School Book Depository.