The Kennedy Assassination And Conspiracy Theories -- Final Thoughts

After today I promise to move on to other topics. But for today, some final thoughts on the Kennedy assassination and conspiracy theories.

Prolific commenter Richard Greene points out that immediately after issuance of findings by the Warren Commission, something like 87% of Americans accepted those findings. Today, it is more like 30%. What happened?

Put aside for the moment the “anomalies” that I have identified in this series. They are significant, but they are not the most important reason for the change. The most important reason for the change is that we have learned from bitter experience that the criminal justice and national security agencies of our country are only too willing to use their powers to seek to control who runs the government. Among the tactics we now know that they will use, because they have been caught red-handed using them: spying on the campaign of the lead candidate of the opposition; helping to spread false information (e.g., the Steele dossier on Trump) to undermine that campaign; bringing baloney criminal charges against the disfavored candidate in order to take him out of the race; enlisting and pressuring social media platforms into systematically suppressing the political speech of the opposition; suppressing information unfavorable to the favored political party or its candidates (e.g., the Hunter Biden laptop); and so forth.

If these agencies are willing to engage in such clearly improper behavior in the attempt to swing elections and get their favored candidates into power, then why exactly would they not be willing to go to the next step and do an assassination?

The second most important reason for the greatly increased receptivity to conspiracy theories is something closely related. A strong argument against Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories has always been that a hypothesized conspiracy involves too many people for the secret to be kept. If a hypothesized conspiracy involves many people in the CIA, perhaps some more in the FBI, and yet some more in “the mob,” surely at some point someone would have spilled the beans. I certainly would have thought that. But somehow, the spying on the Trump campaign involved lots of people, but it never would have become public if Trump had not won the 2017 election. The “Censorship Industrial Complex” would never have become public unless Elon Musk had bought Twitter. The details of how information about the Hunter Biden laptop was suppressed within the FBI are only becoming public now that Kash Patel has taken the helm of that agency. These agencies have much more ability to keep a deep secret than I ever would have thought possible — at least if the deep secret relates to controlling who gets to be in power in the government.

And then we come to the various “anomalies” that I have identified — facts at least arguably undermining the “lone shooter” narrative. The government has had the ability to address these anomalies for decades, but has mostly chosen not to do so. Now, it is probably too late.

For example, consider the anomaly of George de Mohrenschildt. At some point along the way the government could have said “yes, we sent George de Mohrenschildt to keep tabs on Oswald.” They could have released all of their files on de Mohrenschildt. Undoubtedly, there have been plausible reasons for not doing that. Such a release could have undermined de Mohrenschildt’s subsequent work in Haiti, or could have embarrassed the CIA for its role in Haiti. But in the absence of a full accounting of what de Mohrenschildt was up to, Oswald’s sending him a photograph showing the newly-purchased rifle certainly raises questions. Why would Oswald send such a picture to de Mohrenschildt unless he was discussing with de Mohrenschildt some potential use of the weapon?

Similar issues arise with the government’s failure to address the subject of Jack Ruby. Anyone would look at Ruby’s killing of Oswald as exceedingly suspicious. Why would the government possibly not do a thorough and comprehensive investigation of everything related to Ruby?

It may well be that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in planning and carrying out the assassination of President Kennedy. But the American people have a healthy level of skepticism as to whether that is all there is to it, and their skepticism is fully justified.