The New Neo

[NOTE: Yesterday I noticed that there is a new entry in the JFK assassination conspiracy rolls. And then later, commenter “John Tyler” posted a link to it, wondering what to make of it. I gave a perfunctory answer, but then it occurred to me that it might be good to re-post some thoughts of mine on the subject of the JFK assassination and theories about it. The following is a slightly-edited version of two previous posts, one that first appeared here in June of 2011 and one in August of 2019. I think the information is valuable for its general discussion of how JFK conspiracy theories tend to work, and why some people find them persuasive.]

I’ve mentioned that Vincent Bugliosi’s book on JFK assassination conspiracy theories entitled Reclaiming History is very long, in part because it attempts to deal with every single one. Most people are not going to read the whole thing. But the first 500 pages or so are quite doable, often riveting, and present a ton of facts that in my opinion should be exceedingly convincing to those who attempt to take it all in objectively.

The rest of the book can be considered as a reference—and a handy one at that, since it is also available though Kindle, and a great deal of it is posted online for free at Google Books.

Since Bugliosi has pondered virtually every aspect of the Kennedy assassination and its conspiracy buffs, he’s pondered how they go about their business, and he has this to say (see pp. 951 ff) [emphasis mine]:

It is remarkable that conspiracy theorists can believe that groups like the CIA, military-industrial complex, and FBI would murder the president, but cannot accept the likelihood, even the possibility, that a nut like Oswald would flip out and commit the act, despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence that Oswald killed Kennedy, and not an ounce showing that any of these groups had anything to do with the assassination.

It is further remarkable that these conspiracy theorists aren’t troubled in the least by their inability to present any evidence that Oswald was set up and framed. For them, the mere belief or speculation that he was is a more-than-adequate substitute for evidence. More importantly, there is a simple fact of life that Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists either don’t realize or fail to take into consideration, something I learned from my experience as a prosecutor; namely, that in the real world—you know, the world in which when I talk you can hear me, there will be a dawn tomorrow, et cetera—you cannot be innocent and yet still have a prodigious amount of highly incriminating evidence against you…

…[T]he evidence against Oswald is so great that you could throw 80% of it out the window and there would still be more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt…

The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists display an astonishing inability to see the vast forest of evidence proving Oswald’s guilt because of their penchant for obsessing over the branches, even the individual branches. And, because virtually all of them have no background in criminal investigation, they look at each leaf (piece of evidence) by itself, hardly ever in relation to, and in the context of, all the other evidence.

Bugliosi is describing something I’ve noticed as well. There is indeed a mountain—or a forest, or whatever comparison you like—of solid evidence implicating Oswald, from a multiplicity of sources, such that it could not be planted simultaneously. There are countless witnesses to actions before and after the assassination, and that involve the murder of Officer Tippit as well. There are fingerprints. There are mail orders for firearms and fake IDs written in Owald’s handwriting and photos that are NOT faked (and that his widow attested to having taken herself—did she frame Oswald as well?).

There is an absence of all of this evidence for everyone else. All that is left is “well, this person talked to that person once” or “this person was acquainted with that person” or “this group had reason to want Kennedy dead,” and on and on and on. Tiny discrepancies—common to all prosecutions of all crimes that do not involve a video of the perpetrator committing the act and an uncoerced confession—are found and focused on. Witnesses might disagree on a detail here and there. Sometimes some change their story. Not every single fact is completely nailed down. But, as Bugliosi points out, the evidence for Oswald as the sole perpetrator is so enormously overwhelming that it has been proven not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond a doubt.

However, doubting remains, and is extremely prevalent. A poll from 2003 indicated that 70% of Americans believe there was a conspiracy. The persistence of such ideas reflects, among other things, the fact that people are reluctant to believe that an insignificant individual such as Oswald could have committed an act that changed history. But it happens all the time—and, by the way, it was one of Oswald’s motivations: he wanted to change history and to turn his own insignificance into significance. They also play on the now-rampant – and rather justified – distrust of government and government agencies and institutions. .

Yet another reason for the prevalence of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists is that understanding a huge and unwieldy body of evidence is time-consuming and somewhat boring as well as difficult. Much easier to attempt to poke a hole in a fact or two (often misunderstanding or misinterpreting what a certain piece of evidence signifies) and/or at times to rely on outright lies or misrepresentations of what happened.

Bugliosi makes an especially interesting point in his introduction, one I hadn’t really thought of before, which is that although most of the people who believe in the various conspiracies are probably sincere in their beliefs, many of those who actually write the conspiracy books are not. They are lying and they know it, but they count on their readers not to realize this.

The Kennedy assassination involves an almost unimaginable amount of data and evidence, so much so that most of us have forgotten many of the details although we may think we remember them. Authors of conspiracy books—who generally are exceedingly familiar with these details—are counting on their readers’ faulty or incomplete memories.

On pages xxviii-xxix of the introduction to his book, Bugliosi points out:

The conspiracy theorists [most of those who originate and profit off them, that is] are so outrageously brazen that they tell lies not just about verifiable, documentary evidence, but about clear, photographic evidence, knowing that only one out of a thousand of their readers, if that, is in possession of the subject photographs. Robert Groden (the leading photographic expert for the conspiracy proponents who was the photographic adviser the Oliver Stone’s movie JFK) draws a diagram on page 24 of his book High Treason of Governor Connally seated directly in front of President Kennedy in the presidential limousine and postulates the “remarkable path” a bullet coming from behind Kennedy, and traveling from left to right, would have to take to hit Connally—after passing straight through Kennedy’s body, making a right turn and then a left one in midair, which, the buffs chortle, bullets “don’t even do in cartoons.” What average reader would be in a position to dispute this seemingly common-sense, geometric assault on the Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory?…But of course, if you start out with an erroneous premise, whatever flows from it makes a lot of sense. The only problem is that it’s wrong. The indisputable fact here—which all people who have studied the assassination know—is that Connally was not seated directly in front of Kennedy, but to his left front.

Bugliosi goes on to add that Connally’s jump seat was also three inches lower than Kennedy, and his head was turned to his right (which is clear from the Zapruder film) at the time the bullet hit. The proper trajectory of the bullet was therefore exactly as the Warren Commission stated. None of these facts are all that difficult to ascertain, and there is little doubt that conspiracy author and consultant Groden is (or should be) well aware of them. And this is just a single point on which conspiracists prevaricate; there are countless others.

Bugliosi continues [emphasis mine]:

I am unaware of any other major event in world history which has been shrouded in so much intentional misinformation as has the assassination of JFK.

The question is why? Bugliosi notes that conspiracy sells, and he is correct. There is no question that some of the motivation to write these things is to make money. But for at least some of the conspiracy authors and promoters there is probably another reason, which is that belief in conspiracies undermine faith in our government as a whole. Earl Warren had this to say about the matter (page xxi of the introduction):

To say now that [the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Departments of State and Defense], as well as the [Warren] Commission, suppressed, neglected to unearth, or overlooked evidence of a conspiracy would be an indictment of the entire government of the United States. It would mean the whole structure was absolutely corrupt from top to bottom, not one person of high or low rank willing to come forward to expose the villainy, in spite of the fact that the entire country bitterly mourned the death of its young president.

To add some thoughts based on events that have occurred since then, Russiagate and then the exposure of Russiagate has only underlined the believability of the idea that the government (“deep state”) did something as crooked and awful as killing Kennedy. In Russiagate, we saw a false conspiracy theory pushed about Trump by certain government agencies (or at least people in those agencies who were quite high up), and then we saw that conspiracy theory about Trump and Russia unravel as evidence was presented for the very real conspiracy against Trump by those agencies. Which theory one believes is true should be based on the facts and the clarity and abundance and convincing nature of the evidence, and I think it’s clear that Russiagate was false and the Russia Hoax was conspiracy to promote a false conspiracy (something like the authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). But most Democrats probably still disagree with me, and see the reverse (Russiagate was true and its undermining was false) as quite obvious. I think the evidence is absolutely overwhelming for the side in which I have come to believe, but the others of course disagree, whether they’re even aware of that evidence or not.

And the entire episode only fosters the general idea of government conspiracies on conspiracies on conspiracies.

From my reading of Oswald’s testimony and demeanor, he was well aware that he would be championed and/or exonerated by those who would want to believe him innocent. His famous “I am a patsy” remark was a brilliant statement along those lines. Bugliosi’s book explains that Oswald maintained a resistance to police interrogation that was impressive; he virtually never lost his imperturbable demeanor during the time he was in custody. When confronted with clear evidence of his guilt, he calmly and arrogantly denied whatever implicated him, no matter how powerfully it did so. When asked, for example, to explain a fact that pointed strongly to his guilt, he merely answered, “I don’t explain it” (page 255).

Perhaps Oswald correctly surmised that others would do his explaining for him.

[NOTE II: I’ve limited this post to the question of JFK’s assassination, but the same arguments are true for Ruby’s killing of Oswald – absolutely overwhelming mountain of evidence, and good explanations for whatever may superficially look like a flaw in the argument.

And regarding the book Reclaiming History, to those who point out that Bugliosi has written some rather sketchy books on other topics, my answer is that while this indeed may be so (I haven’t read those), on this one – which I have read – he is both exhaustive and accurate. That is because it is in his wheelhouse, the prosecution of a criminal act, whereas the sketchy ones are not (one, for example, is about Bush being guilty of war crimes, which is not in Bugliosi’s field of expertise as an LA deputy district attorney). I have read Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, about the Manson murder case which he had prosecuted; it is an excellent book on the subject.]