For Conspiracy Theorists: No Defeat is Ever Final
- Fred Litwin
- Jul 24
- 2 min read
The release earlier this year of the last reported bunch of classified files about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy yielded information on various mysterious CIA plans worldwide — but no agency involvement in Kennedy’s murder.
There was never any actual contact between the CIA and the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald; no second shooter; no money trail; no phone call or paper trail; no game-changing witnesses; and no evidence of a cover-up after the shooting. The whole turn of events represented a setback, albeit temporary, to the conspiracy-theory community.
Fear not, though, theirs is not a crusade to be abandoned lightly. The conspiracists are already gathering and frantically scouring the files, desperately searching for some unrevealed, incriminating scrap of paper the CIA neglected to destroy.
And the money quote:
For conspiracy theorists, no defeat is final. There’s always more to the story, and no investigation will ever be sufficient. The release of documents, like commissions and books that fail to find a conspiracy, is simply part of larger conspiracies that are somehow capable of manipulating the findings of investigations decades later.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts
A good overview of the Joannides affair.
A good article in SpyTalk
An excellent article on how the KGB tried to convince the American public that the CIA killed JFK.
Rick Perlstein has written an excellent article on the worship of the Kennedys.
A good editorial from the Chicago Daily News.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports on a Clay Shaw speech.
An editorial and an opinion piece from the New York Times.
An editorial from the Washington Evening Star after Shaw's acquittal.
Several editorials about the acquittal of Clay Shaw.
The Washington Post calls for the removal of Jim Garrison from office.
News and editorials on the acquittal from the newspapers in New Orleans.
