JFK Conspiracy Theories: A Book to Disprove Them All
In a new book, famed author Vincent Bugliosi weighs in on the JFK murder.
May 15, 2007 — -- In the decades since the assassination of President Kennedy, the questions about who killed him and why still draw fierce debate despite the 1964 Warren Commission report that fingered Lee Harvey Oswald.
By some measures, as many as three-quarters of Americans believe there was a conspiracy. Vincent Bugliosi, the famed prosecutor who put away Charles Manson and co-authored the book "Helter Skelter" about the Manson trial, is not one of them.
Bugliosi has written a comprehensive book that claims to debunk nearly every conspiracy theory put forth: the 1,600-page-long "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy."
In an interview with ABC News' Cynthia McFadden, Bugliosi explained why it was necessary to write a book of such length.
"The case has become kind of complex as a result of the unceasing, fanatical obsession of literally thousands upon thousands of researchers in this case examining every single aspect of this case, making hundreds upon hundreds of allegations," he said.
While Bugliosi blames conspiracy theorists for making the JFK assassination more complex than it should be, he might be accused of becoming obsessed with the case.
After all, it took 20 years to complete the book. However, Bugliosi said, "the Kennedy case is the most important murder case in American history. … I think the assassination, to put it mildly, was sufficiently important to have a book for the ages written for it."
Bugliosi said others who had attempted to tackle the material had until now been able to concentrate only on specific parts of the case and parts of the conspiracy theories. In "Reclaiming History," he attempts to encapsulate every aspect of the case.
"I decided, maybe like a fool, to take on the whole case, and there's no bottom of the pile in the Kennedy case," he said.
Bugliosi said that in the last seven years he'd worked between 80 and 100 hours a week on the tome, writing every day during that time. He doesn't own a computer, and while some of his notes were dictated to an assistant, most of the book was written in longhand on yellow legal paper.
