Unsurprisingly, due to the number of assassination theories posed by the popular American magazine, and publicized elsewhere, literally hundreds of conspiracy theories grew throughout the population. In 1966, just fifty percent of Americans believed JFK had been assassinated as a result of a conspiracy, compared to eighty one percent in 1976. Gilles (1994), states that ‘the Kennedy assassination has been left almost exclusively in the hands of non-historians – politicians, columnists, reporters, filmmakers, novelists and a collection of “assassination recorders” who have produced hundreds of books and articles about the events surrounding November 22nd 1963’.
In 2003, after forty years of speculation, Austin listed the ‘highlights’ of the main conspiracies surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Using Austin’s article, the following commentary will briefly discuss the ten ‘leading’ conspiracy theories.
Firstly, ‘The Shadow Government Theory’, widely publicized through the 1993 Oliver Stone Hollywood film ‘JFK’, claims a secret government of crooks, rich industrialists and right wing politicians within America’s government ordered President Kennedy's murder.
David Lifton and Bonar Menninger, secondly, professed that Secret Service agents gave an assassin or assassins a clear shot when they provided lax security and, additionally, hijacked the body to alter the corpse then scuttled the autopsy to secrete the entire affair.
Similarly depicting an ‘enemy within’, Mark North and George O’Tool have asserted blame towards FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. They claim he feared JFK would replace him on Hoover’s 70th birthday. The theory here proposes Hoover either ‘knew of assassination plans and did nothing to stop them, or ordered Oswald to kill him, or Oswald warned the FBI of plots to kill Kennedy, only to find himself framed, then silenced by fellow informant Jack Ruby.’ (Austin, 2003)
Moreover, continuing this theme, authors Mark Lane, John Newman and Anthony Summers developed ‘The CIA Theory’. Supposedly, Kennedy threatened to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds," following failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, devised by the agency. Subsequently members fearing the survival of the CIA arranged Kennedy’s assassination.
In addition, ‘The LBJ Theory’ professed Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), who lost the 1960 election to Kennedy and became his inferior, schemed for an overthrow when reports surfaced stating Kennedy was going to drop him from the 1964 Democratic ticket.
Keeping within America, but reaching outside the political spectrum ‘The Mafia Connection Theory’ proposed Oswald was either an assassin for the mob, or easy prey in a murder that avenged Attorney General Robert Kennedy's organized-crime crackdown. Jack Ruby’s killing of Oswald was additionally carried out as instructed by the Mob.
Internationally, ‘The KGB Theory’, offered by CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton and author Michael Eddowes, stated that: ‘Humiliated by Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev punished him. Scenario 1: Oswald was trained in espionage in the Soviet Union and made the hit. Scenario 2: Oswald was Khrushchev's game, set up by an Oswald double and KGB operatives who fired the shots at Dealey Plaza. Scenario 3: Oswald returned home from the Soviet Union after being programmed ala The Manchurian Candidate to carry out his Iron Curtain orders.’ (Austin, 2003)
The theory proposed by LBJ stated that the family of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem ordered the hit on JFK in revenge for a U.S.-backed coup in which Diem was gunned down at point-blank range.
Again internationally, Gaeton Fonzi, Bernard Fensterwald, Sylvia Meagher and Peter Noyes claimed Cuban exiles coordinated the assassination. It was alleged 1,500 Cuban soldiers were left to be slaughtered by Fidel Castro's troops after Kennedy withheld air support for the mission, and Oswald was an agent for a group of Cuban exiles who wanted revenge.
Additionally, it has been offered that the Cuban dictator, Castro, ordered Kennedy killed after one too many U.S.-commissioned bazooka attacks and exploding cigars.
Determining the factors of the JFK assassination relative to the factors of a ‘traditional conspiracy’ initially appeared problematic, due to the difficulty of defining a ‘traditional conspiracy’. Therefore, the following discourse uses a selection of ‘traditional conspiracy’ perspectives in comparison to the characteristics of the JFK assassination.
Rudmin (2003) states ‘conspiracy theories arise when dramatic events happen, and the orthodox explanations try to diminish the events and gloss them over’, which appeared to be true of the Warren Commission, which conflicted many other official reports, omitted selected evidence and ended with an inadequate explanation. Rudmin discussed a similar occurrence in 1517, when Martin Luther translated the Bible into German allowing widespread reading so ‘ordinary people could think about theology for themselves’. Challenging the Church, Luther proclaimed ‘I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or to the Councils, because it is clear they have frequently erred and contradicted each other.’ (Rudmin, 2003) This fourteenth century conspiracy operates on identical impetus to the JFK assassination theories, supporting the notion that ‘the paranoid is the person in possession of all the facts’ (Knight, 2000), which will be discussed later.
The assassination conspiracies work ‘within what Stephen Weale has called a system of ‘regulated difference’ in which individual texts, and the conspiracies represented in those texts, share basic narrative structures and stylistic elements but differ to a limited degree.’ (Fenster, 1999:109) Gilles (1994) elaborates; ‘the fact that conspiracies seek to turn the Kenney assassination into “story” by positioning it in terms of larger forces is at once they key to their rhetorical success… in a culture still dominated by an Aristotelian lens.’ The JFK assassination conspiracy theories adopt, as in Aristotelian writing, traditional concepts of ‘ethos’ and ‘logos’. The JFK conspiracy theories provide grounds for this as the ‘conspirators’ are from a superior position in society, enabling them with ‘larger forces’, perceptibly evil. This is assisted by JFK’s popularity whilst in presidency; attempts to salvage the ‘truth’ for JFK, the hero, and overcome the evil larger forces, creates the ‘ethos’ within the theories which appeals to the American - and world – public. The extensive evidence and ‘proofs’, although always edited for individual conspiracies, represent the ‘logos’, or the topics of rational argument. ‘It’s a synthesis of argument and narrative’ (Gilles, 1994) which emerges as a factor of the assassination conspiracy theories, adopted to persuade the reader. Bale, 1995, further proposes that conspiracy theories are nothing more than ‘essentially elaborate fables even though they may well be based upon a kernel of truth, and the activities of actual clandestine and covert political groups.’ Evidently this has to be true in the case of many conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination, as by default they cannot all be true, but the inability to decipher the ‘fact’ from the ‘fiction’ poses problems when trying to correspond theories to this notion. He extends his concept of ‘elaborate fables’ in that he identifies that ‘conspiracy theories share a number of distinguishing characteristics, but in all of them the essential element is a belief in the existence of a vast, insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiratorial network designed to penetrate acts of the most fiendish in character, acts which aim to undermine and destroy a way of life.’ (Bale, 1995) Fundamentally, this quote directly mirrors the assassination conspiracy theories. They consist of super-powerful conspirators; the CIA, FBI, the vice-president, plotting the murder of a popular, and seemingly innocent, leader, which – it has been claimed – was to enforce a ‘loss of innocence’ in the American public ‘as a direct consequence of the Kennedy Assassination.’ (Knight, 2000:23)
Fenster (1999:108) defines ‘the classical conspiracy narrative’ as an attempt ‘to unify seemingly disparate, globally significant events within a singular plot, doing so through the traditional logic of conventional popular narratives including causality, consequence, psychological motivations, and drive towards overcoming obstacles and achieving goals. Character-centred – i.e. personal or psychological – causality is the armature of the classical story.’ The JFK assassination theories posit compliance to Fenster’s deduction of the ‘classical conspiracy narrative’ in each respect. Each theory pivots on the central character, JFK, and associates external threatening forces with the ‘villains’ in the narrative, such as the Mafia, Castro and the Soviets. Even the theories asserting blame towards an ‘internal’ villain, the official organisations; the CIA, FBI, vice president, represent the classical conspiracy in that they focus on the relationship between motive and desired effect, and the actual consequence for the ‘conspirators’. The LBJ theory exemplifies this style. LBJ’s ‘consequence’; he became President of America. Fenster (1999:113) continues; ‘the conspiracy narrative thus relies on this relation of the individual to history, each term necessary to the other for their mutual survival. History, so the conspiracy narrative asserts, needs the individual in order to be save, while the individual needs for history for meaning, for a purpose.’ This theme is illustrated throughout the assassination theories, and perhaps accounts for their continuing popularity. Their pivotal point, the JFK assassination, supplies a significant link between individuals, and the history surrounding the event. ‘The conspiracy narrative reveals a longing for closure and resolution that its formal resources cannot satisfy’ (Dean, 2000) The JFK assassination was ‘a momentous historical event’ (Gilles, 1994) and the ‘justice’ implemented by the official organisation designated appeared to be incomplete and not wholly just. The relationship here between history and the individual is cemented by Dean’s notion of a need for ‘closure’; a fuller, more comprehensive meaningful explanation.
Ognibene, 1998, states that ‘in a traditional conspiracy, individuals come together one at a time, each carefully testing the others, until all are in accord on tactics and target. Secrecy is essential. When they finally do move, they do so swiftly. All is won or lost in a single act.’ This relates to the case presented in the theories surrounding the JFK assassination; it entailed, according to the theories, planning within groups, followed by a swift execution, followed rapidly by an autopsy and an imprecise investigation.
Although we have established the JFK assassination conspiracies do exhibit, in many ways, the characteristics of ‘traditional conspiracy’ theories, they also pose differences, and developments of the classical concept. Traditionally conspiracy theories, and theorists, have been subject to accusations of delusion and paranoia. ‘The traditional portrait of the conspiracy theorist is a marginal, paranoid crackpot usually located in the far right of the political spectrum, and, in the American context, in a decided minority,’ and traditional conspiracies were “the mark of – in order – a delusional, right wing, marginal, dogmatic mindset.’ (Knight, 2000: 24) Over two thirds of the American public believe a conspiracy was the cause of JFK’s assassination. Rudmin (2003) contends, correctly in my opinion, that ‘a society could not function if that many people were ‘paranoid’’. The English dictionary excluded ‘conspiracy theory’ until 1997, epitomizing the ‘minority’ mindset surrounding classical conspiracies. However, the stage at which conspiracy thinking was altered is dated a little farther back.
‘The assassination provides the ‘mother-lode’ for conspiracies… and therefore, November 22nd 1963 serves as one of the fractures from which the modern conspiracy era has been dated, and – as important – is back dated to the contemporary ‘reverse mapping’ of recent American history as conspiracy led… In doing so it has served as a primer or evolving text for contemporary conspiracy thinking… It has also established a marketplace for conspiracy.’ (, 2003) Although the assassination conspiracies concur with traditional conspiracies in that they demonstrate a need for ‘closure’ on a subject poorly justified by officials, the JFK assassination occurred in a period of postmodernity and globalisation. Schwartz (1992) defines ‘postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives’. This ‘incredulity’ towards explanations of those in high society, or official positions, coupled with the widespread knowledge and outburst in technological and mass media advances during the process of globalisation, provided foundations for pervasive scepticism throughout America, and the loss of an admired leader generated an extensive following for the conspiracy theories.
Immediately ensuing the assassination all the available evidence was publicised on television, ‘so that the record is full of contradictory rumours and eyewitness accounts… The record is multivocal.’ (Schwartz, 1992) Whereas in a traditional conspiracy, theories would be published in text, edited and carefully constructed, ‘television (and, to a much lesser extent other mass media) made Kennedy’s death the prototype of a new form of spectacle.’ (Schwartz, 1992) JFK’s assassination denotes an alteration in conspiracy thinking, from traditional notions of ‘paranoid crackpots’, to extensive populist considerations of the possibilities for ‘truth’. Schwartz (1992) defines the new conspiracy thinking as a ‘political, populist and American version of post-structuralist reading.’ Dean, 2000, expands ‘the term “conspiracy” rarely signifies a small secret plot anymore. Instead it frequently refers to the workings of a large organisation, technology or system – a powerful and obscure entity so disperse that it is the antithesis of the traditional conspiracy.’ Although it has previously been established that the assassination represents a traditional theory in some respects, what Dean asserts is additionally true. The JFK conspiracies illustrate a transformation of such theories, through mass publicity, technology, postmodern mind-sets and globalisation, into colossal systems of doubt and uncertainty. Although I have discussed the ten ‘leading’ conspiracies, there are literally hundreds of varying plot-lines surrounding the assassination, each taking selected ‘facts’, ‘evidence’ and eyewitness accounts and producing a number of diverse theories. Dean (2000) concludes ‘in contrast… to thinking about conspiracy theory in terms of style, plot, or pathology, I think it makes better sense to understand it as an informational assemblage, linking lines of power (legitimacy/ authority) and possibilities for agency (intention/ subjection) along the axis (publicity/ secrecy) and through nodes of evidence.’
In conclusion, although the JFK assassination operates on the basis of a ‘traditional conspiracy theory’, as time has progressed the traditional conspiratorial concept has been ‘outgrown’ by alterations in society. The immediacy and availability of knowledge at the time of the JFK assassination allowed huge variations of people to become ‘theorists’ on the subject, and the thirst for knowledge and a resolution was significant throughout the population, enabling a development of the ‘traditional conspiracy theory’ and marking the commencement of modern, populist conspiracy thinking.
Bibliography
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