Conspiracy Theories and JFK

    It is the nightmare of every history lecturer. You open up your pile of essays and a title stares up at you: ‘Who really assassinated John F. Kennedy?’ This question guarantees 2,000 words of tendentious conspiracy theory and supposition, with – importantly for a history essay – little, if any, hard evidence.

    The Kennedy assassination is nonetheless a historical mystery (sort of) that has captured countless imaginations. For better and worse, Donald Trump seems to be one of them. Just recently (for a number of reasons), he released more than 31,000 pages from the National Archives concerning this most speculated-upon event. Now, I think this a good thing. Something of this magnitude should not be hidden away forever. 

    Trump, like many people, has a long-standing fascination with the JFK assassination. On the campaign trail last year, he declared that it was “time for the American people to know the truth” about what “really” happened on the grassy knoll. As such, when he took office earlier this year, he issued ANOTHER Executive Order announcing that documents concerning the deaths of JFK (as well as those of his younger brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.) would be declassified. 

    The majority of the National Archives’ six million pages of records relating to the JFK assassination have already been declassified. (That’s 6,000,000 pages people. So when I get a little wordy...remember that!) But many were hoping some surprises would emerge. As it stands, however, little evidence of any conspiracy regarding JFK’s assassination has been found in these newly released papers. In fact, according to The Washington Post, the files’ document-identification numbers show that none of them is actually being released for the first time. As the New York Times bluntly puts it, “the big reveal was that there wasn’t much of a reveal at all.”

    The JFK files are at least less heavily redacted than they were previously. We now know they were classified to hide what historian David J Garrow called ‘bad acts’ – dirty tricks and illegal spying by the CIA and other government agencies. But none of them contains the smoking gun that conspiracy theorists were hoping for – proof that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the killer, or at least did not act alone. Historian Philip Shenon says that he struggled to find much in the documents that altered his understanding of the killing at all.

    Of course, none of this is likely to cut through the fog of rumor and speculation that continues to swirl around this historical event. In many ways, the JFK assassination is the daddy of all conspiracy theories – their ‘source and paradigm’.

    Interestingly, it wasn’t always the case that the JFK assassination was treated as some grand X-File. You just can’t help yourself, can you? When Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, it shocked and alarmed the nation. But it did not give rise to wild explanations, even though this was the height of Cold War hysteria. Even when Oswald was himself shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days later, this provoked some condemnation (and much spontaneous applause), but little in the way of speculation. Not long after, Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B Johnson, set up the Warren Commission to establish the truth. It concluded, reasonably, that Oswald killed JFK and had acted alone.

    The starting point for conspiracy theories only really grew with the decline of authority, and trust in, American institutions. In the late 1950s, trust in government was polled at 80 per cent. By 1976, it had declined to 33 per cent. Since then, belief in conspiracies has grown significantly, particularly in relation to the JFK assassination. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 65 per cent of Americans rejected the Warren Commission’s conclusions.

    The release of the JFK files is to be welcomed in the interest of greater transparency. But Trump’s interest in the JFK assassination indicates that he and other members of his administration have been captured by conspiracy theories. Current health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is a notorious believer in various anti-vaccination conspiracy theories (though he now claims to have u-turned on many of these). He has also claimed that Sirhan Sirhan may have been hypnotized and coerced into assassinating his father, Robert F Kennedy Sr. Trump himself infamously believed that the 2020 presidential election had been ‘stolen’ from him. The subsequent ‘January 6’ riot showed us that some conspiracy theories can have violent repercussions in the real world.

    Conspiracy theories provide simple answers to what are usually difficult and uncomfortable questions. It is perhaps neater to view JFK’s assassination as the handiwork of Johnson’s towering ambition, or the result of recalcitrant Southerners enraged at JFK’s stance on civil rights. In a similar way, it is easier for Trump to blame his loss in 2020 on dark forces and institutional bias than on the fact that he simply did not win enough votes in the right places.

    For these reasons, we should not expect the underwhelming revelations from the JFK files to dampen the enthusiasms for any number of pet hypotheses. Conspiracy theories have less to do with evidence and more to do with a profound collapse of trust in the establishment. And c’mon, who’s kidding who? Just ask any hard-core X-Files fan: Cigarette Smoking Man did it!

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com