The Problem with the Conspiracy View of the JFK Assassination

[Michael T. Griffith]

The problem with the conspiracy view of the JFK assassination is not that it is without merit or untenable. A select committee of Congress in 1979 concluded JFK was killed by a conspiracy. Many reputable, notable public figures have said they believe there was a conspiracy. A number of reputable historians and scholars have concluded there was a conspiracy. Opinion surveys show that a sizable majority of Americans and Europeans believe there was a conspiracy. So what is the problem?

The problem with the conspiracy view of the JFK assassination, and the reason that many academics and journalists reject it, is that a large number of conspiracy theorists are radical leftists who push a wild JFK murder plot and who also embrace a number of nutty, fringe conspiracy theories, such as the 9/11 Truther nonsense, the claim that the Moon landings were faked, and the claim that Princess Diana and John Lennon were assassinated by "the Secret Team," i.e., the CIA and/or the military-intelligence-industrial complex.

Just in the last year, there have been conspiracy theorists in the Education Forum who have cited websites that either outright claim the Moon landings were faked or that host authors who claim the Moon landings were faked and who also argue that the Nazis did not really perform cruel medical experiments in the death camps. When I pointed out these troubling facts, they were dismissed as "irrelevant" and "a smear."

Not too long ago, one conspiracy theorist in the Education Forum posted a thread that argued that the CIA and/or the military assassinated John Lennon and framed Mark Chapman as the patsy. Another conspiracy theorist, a rather prominent one, defended Fletcher Prouty's nutty claim that Churchill had FDR poisoned. Most far-left JFK conspiracy theorists also view the fraud and crackpot Fletcher Prouty as a trustworthy and heroic figure. W. Niederhut has actually accused me of being a CIA disinformation agent for questioning Prouty's reliability, veracity, and character.

Moreover, many conspiracy theorists, like so many other woke leftists, have become stridently anti-Israeli, to the point of claiming that Israel was involved in JFK's death, that Israel purposely attacked the USS Liberty in 1967, that Israel is oppressing Palestinians in the West Bank, and that Israel is committing "genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza.

They also embrace Prouty's erroneous claim that JFK was murdered because he was going to unconditionally and totally end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War after the 1964 election. The likes of James DiEugenio, W. Niederhut, Greg Lavin, Robert Morrow, Jeff Carter, Sandy Larsen, Greg Burnham, Jefferson Morley, Len Osanic, and James K. Galbraith just don't care that even the vast majority of liberal scholars reject the idea that JFK intended to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election. I address this myth at length in a long chapter in my recent book A Comforting Lie: The Myth that a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy.

A number of Americans have formed the view that it is unpatriotic to reject the Warren Commission's essential findings, unpatriotic to believe that government officials lied about/covered up key facts about the assassination, and unpatriotic to believe that elements within the government were involved in JFK's death. They have formed this view at least partly because so many conspiracy theorists come across as anti-American--in point of fact, some of them are anti-American.

Some people will begin to read about the JFK case and will soon become convinced that there was more to JFK's death than just a disturbed lone gunman, that there was a conspiracy of some kind and size behind JFK's death. However, they then come across the wild conspiracy scenarios posited by far-left researchers and then conclude that the lone-gunman theory is more believable after all. I have known a few people like this. It is hard to blame them.

Finally, as an example of the problem posed by far-left extremists in the research community, I cite the example of James Fetzer. In the late 1990s, Fetzer, then a professor of scientific philosophy at the University of Minnesota, made a valuable contribution to our understanding of the JFK case by coordinating research with a number of experts in relevant fields. He served as the editor of two outstanding books, Assassination Science and Murder in Dealey Plaza. Fetzer was becoming a leading, high-profile advocate for the case for conspiracy in JFK's death. However, following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Fetzer embraced the nuttiest of the wacky 9/11 conspiracy theories and also began denying the Holocaust. His advocacy of these obscene fringe views received considerable press coverage. I knew several people who abandoned the research community in disgust after Fetzer's embarrassing conduct.