Excerpt: "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy"

May 15, 2007 — -- It is believed that more words have been written about the assassination than any other single, one-day event in world history. Close to one thousand books have been written. So why the need for this book, which can only add to an already overwhelming surfeit of literature on the case? The answer is that over 95 percent of the books on the case happen to be pro-conspiracy and anti-Warren Commission, so certainly there is a need for far more books on the other side to give a much better balance to the debate. But more importantly, although there have been hundreds of books on the assassination, no book has even attempted to be a comprehensive and fair evaluation of the entire case, including all of the major conspiracy theories.

On the issue of fairness, the more I studied the assassination and the writings of the conspiracy theorists and Warren Commission critics, the more I became disturbed with them. Though they accused the bipartisan Warren Commission of bias, distorting the evidence, and deliberately suppressing the truth from the American people, I found that for the most part it was they, not the Warren Commission, who were guilty of these very same things. I haven't read all of the pro-conspiracy books. I don't know anyone who has. I have, however, read all the major ones, and a goodly number of minor ones. And with a few notable exceptions, when the vast majority of these conspiracy authors are confronted with evidence that is incompatible with their fanciful theories, to one degree or another their modus operandi is to do one of two things -- twist, warp, and distort the evidence, or simply ignore it—both of which are designed to deceive their readers. Waiting for the conspiracy theorists to tell the truth is a little like leaving the front-porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa.

Ninety-nine percent of the conspiracy community are not, of course, writers and authors. These conspiracy "buffs" (as they are frequently called) are obsessed with the assassination, have formed networks among their peers, and actually attend conspiracy-oriented conventions around the country. Though most of them are as kooky as a three-dollar bill in their beliefs and paranoia about the assassination, it is my sense that their motivations are patriotic and that they are sincere in their misguided and uninformed conclusions. I cannot say that about the conspiracy authors. Unlike the buffs -- virtually none of whom have a copy of the forty official volumes on the case -- the authors possess and work with these volumes. Yet the majority of them knowingly mislead their readers by lies, omissions, and deliberately distorting the official record. I realize this is an astonishing charge I am making. Unfortunately, it happens to be the truth. In any other field, such as the scientific or literary disciplines, even a fraction of these lies, distortions, and omissions by a member would cause the author to be ostracized professionally by his colleagues and peers. But in the conspiracy community of the Kennedy assassination, where one's peers have turned their mothers' pictures against the wall and are telling even bigger lies themselves, and where the American public is unaware of these lies, not only is this type of deception routinely accepted by most members of the community, but the perpetrators are treated as celebrities who lecture for handsome fees and sign autographs at conventions of Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists.

When the Warren Commission released its 888-page, 296,000-word report on September 24, 1964, a national poll showed that only a minority of Americans (31.6 percent) rejected the conclusion of the Commission that Oswald had acted alone.15 But through their torrent of books, radio and TV talk shows, movies, college lectures, and so on, over the years the shrill voice of the conspiracy theorists finally penetrated the consciousness of the American people and actually succeeded in discrediting the Warren Commission Report* and convincing the overwhelming majority of Americans that Oswald either was a part of a high-level conspiracy or was just a patsy framed by some exotic and elaborate group of conspirators ranging from anti-Castro Cuban exiles to organized crime working in league with U.S. intelligence. Although I had commenced my work on the case with a completely open mind, I found there was absolutely no substance to their charges and that they have performed a flagrant disservice to the American public. Dissent is what makes this country the great nation that it is, but this was not responsible dissent. This was wanton and reckless disregard for the facts of the case.

Throughout the years, national polls have consistently shown that the percentage of Americans who believe that there was a conspiracy in the assassination usually fluctuates from 70 to 80 percent, down to 10 to 20 percent for those who believe only one person was involved, with about 5 to 15 percent having no opinion. The most recent Gallup Poll, conducted on November 10–12, 2003, shows that a remarkable 75 percent of the American public reject the findings of the Warren Commission and believe there was a conspiracy in the assassination. Only 19 percent believe the assassin acted alone, with 6 percent having no opinion.† It is the ambitious objective of this work to turn the percentages around in the debate. If I can even come close to doing so I will feel I have achieved something meaningful. Such an objective, after all, is not misplaced when the Kennedy assassination is perhaps the most important murder case ever, arguably altering the course of American as well as world history.

It should be added that the millions of Americans who have been hoodwinked into buying into the conspiracy illusion don't believe that Oswald conspired with some other lowly malcontent like himself to assassinate the president. Instead, though most don't clearly articulate the thought in their mind, they believe that Oswald was merely the triggerman for organized crime, a foreign nation, or conspirators who walked the highest corridors of power in our nation's capital -- people or groups who eliminated Kennedy because his policies were antithetical to their interests. Such a belief, gestating for decades in the nation's marrow, obviously has to have had a deleterious effect on the way Americans view those who lead them and determine their destiny. Indeed, Jefferson Morley, former Washington editor of the Nation, observes that Kennedy's assassination has been "a kind of national Rorschach test of the American political psyche. What Americans think about the Kennedy assassination reveals what they think about their government."16

Nineteenth-century French statesman and author Alexis de Tocqueville noted a characteristic of the American body politic that he felt boded well for America: its capacity for self-correction. But in the Kennedy assassination, we'll soon be approaching the half-century mark, and the substantial majority of Americans still erroneously believe that their thirty-fifth president was murdered as a result of a high-level conspiracy.

Reprinted from Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Vincent Bugliosi.

With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.