Poll: Lingering Suspicion Over JFK Assassination

Nov. 16 -- Forty years later, suspicions of a conspiracy endure: Seven in 10 Americans think the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the result of a plot, not the act of a lone killer — and a bare majority thinks that plot included a second shooter on Dealey Plaza.

ABCNEWS has completed a poll in conjunction with a two-hour ABCNEWS special, Peter Jennings Reporting: The Kennedy Assassination — Beyond Conspiracy, airing 9-11 p.m. (EST) Thursday, Nov. 20. The program includes a computer-generated reconstruction of the shooting that confirms that Oswald was the lone gunman. And it finds no persuasive evidence of a conspiracy to kill the president.

Just 32 percent accept the Warren Commission's 1964 finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy as his motorcade passed through downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Fifty-one percent think there was a second gunman, and seven percent go so far as to think Oswald wasn't involved at all.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans also think there was "an official cover-up" to hide the truth about the assassination from the public. And about as many, 65 percent, think that "important unanswered questions" remain, four decades after Kennedy's death.

While such suspicions are well-documented — and well-stoked by conspiracy theorists — for many people they're guesses, not convictions. In a new follow-up question, fewer than half of Americans, four in 10, say they're "pretty sure" there was a plot; another three in 10 say it's just a hunch. Similarly, half of those who suspect a second shooter say this, too, is just their hunch.

Trend

Suspicion has been long-running; as far back as 1966, a Harris poll found that 46 percent of Americans thought there was a "broader plot" in the assassination. This jumped to 60 percent in 1967, after New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison filed charges alleging a conspiracy (the man he charged, Clay Shaw, was acquitted in 1969).

Belief in a broader plot peaked at 80 percent in a 1983 ABCNEWS poll; it's since eased a bit, to today's 70 percent. Similarly, the number of people who think there was an official cover-up has moved back from its peak, 81 percent in 1993, to 68 percent now.