5/7/2015 The JFK Assassination Context

In what wider context should we understand the assassination? There are two broadly defined visions of
the context of the assassination, and they are flatly contradictory.

Conspiracy Worldview Lone Assassin Worldview

Kennedy was a threat to Kennedy was a rather conventional politician.

many interests.
Kennedy was going to
withdraw from Vietnam.
Administration officials
knew there was a conspiracy,
or were actually part of it.
The administration feared the
public learning about the
conspiracy.
The Warren Commission was
a coverup.
When bureaucrats keep
documents secret, it is to
conceal wrongdoing on their
part.
Conspiracy thinking results
from government lying and
scheming.
Kennedy had not decided to withdraw from Vietnam.
Administration officials believed Oswald to be the lone
gunman.
The administration feared the consequences if the public
came to believe that a communist nation had Kennedy killed.
The Warren Commission sought the truth although it was
excessively sensitive about matters relating to national
security and the Kennedy family.
Bureaucracies have a "culture of secrecy" that leads them to
conceal records for no good reason, and where good reasons
for keeping secrets exist, bureaucrats interpret them too
broadly.
Conspiracy thinking results from a psychological process:
people are unwilling to accept that the assassination had no
broader meaning.

So then, what does the evidence show?

Kennedy and Foreign Policy

Was Kennedy going to withdraw from Vietnam, and did the Evil Minions of the Military Industrial
Complex have him killed for that reason? Was Kennedy a foreign policy "dove," soft on communism and
on Castro? Did Dwight Eisenhower describe an evil Military Industrial Complex that later killed JFK?

The Warren Commission

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5/7/2015 The JFK Assassination Context

Was it a coverup, or an honest investigation? Was the Commission's Report less than frank about
Oswald's motives?

How Government Works

Are government officials highly competent, but nefarious? Or are they bumblers who can't get things
straight? Is it normal for government to release records in a timely way, or is it normal for government to
secret records for a very long time?

Thinking About Conspiracy

Do normal psychological processes bias our thinking on the issue of conspiracy? Do we not want to
believe in a lone assassin?

The Suspects
Does the large number of suspects in the assassination mean that some of them must have conspired to
kill Kennedy? Or does it indicate the weakness of conspiracy theories?

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