JFK's Murder at 60: When You Want to Believe it Wasn't a Conspiracy (But You Can't)

Sometimes shit happens. And sometimes J. Edgar Hoover made sure it happened.

Magnicides are not rare, simply because the kind of people whose murders would qualify as magnicides (kings, dictators, presidents, big honchos) are themselves a statistical bottleneck. There is a direct correlation between how much power you accumulate and how many enemies you can accumulate; sometimes just the potential of acquiring power puts you in the crosshairs, sometimes you deserve it, and very few times you don’t. That’s a simple rule of History. But fret not! Since most people don’t think statistically, it’s very probable that your magnicide will leave a mark in the history of your community, your country, or even the world, even though it was not an abnormal event. People will remember you if you were powerful and murdered. Well, except if you are James A. Garfield or William McKinley. I bet you forgot those two were assassinated.

As some have jokingly mentioned, the job of President of the United States is a risky one, with a staggering rate of 9% killed in action and a further 5% wounded by gunfire. Forget about counting failed attempts; the US Secret Service operates on the assumption that there are multiple people, all over the world, actively trying to (in YouTube parlance) unalive the sitting POTUS. The funny thing is that, following in-your-face statistics, a POTUS is much more likely to be shot by a crazy lone wolf than by a well-organized conspiracy. That was the case with Garfield, Roosevelt, and Reagan; only Leon Czolgosz, McKinley’s assassin, had a clear political reasoning. There was a conspiracy behind Lincoln’s murder, but his assassin would probably have done it with or without a network. And then there’s JFK.

As someone who has always been prone to believe in conspiracy theories, it has taken me a while to deprogram myself from always seeing cabals pulling the strings behind major historical events. For example, there will always be a part of me who will suspect W. Bush and Co. of being deliberately incompetent regarding 9/11. But then again, I’m Latin American and Chilean. Carefully crafted conspiracies have actually been behind major historical events in our history. Our history is basically one long, intergenerational conspiracy by the elites.

But I also know that History is mostly marked by accidents, incompetence, absurd timing, and major trends effecting its course like gravity, a bunch of smaller patterns forming something without a structure. This is why I have always felt more inclined to believe the official story about JFK’s murder: A single man with two last names, vague leftists inclinations, an obscure past in the USSR, and excellent aim managed to put two bullets through Kennedy’s neck and head, using a relatively capable rifle and from a decent vantage point.

He was arrested that same day after killing a police officer days, and two later, that man was shot by a shady and temperamental club manager, who would die a few years later from a pulmonary embolism. It’s a story that actually makes sense within the chaos of History and against the statistical facts behind presidential assassinations in the US. Hell, even the whole “magic bullet” discrepancy can be disproved by clarifying how were JFK and Texas Governor John Connally actually seated in the limousine

Bradipus, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In fact, I still believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the main shooter that day and his bullets got JFK killed. There is, though, a credible witness’ reports of a third bullet and a possible second shooter. There are 60 years of circumstantial but no less compelling evidence of just how many people and interest groups had it against him because of his pivot towards defusing the Cold War and limiting the de facto operational freedom of the CIA.

That’s not to mention the Cuban exilees who felt betrayed after the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs landings, and as we have all seen recently, right-wing, white Cubans have a thing for stomping on things that are fun and cool, like JFK or Florida were. Then again, Occam’s razor counterargument would be that killing a sitting US president would be the kind of thing that brings too much attention, as in fact it did.

That’s the kind of shit the CIA could get away with outside the US. And to properly operate within the US, that task would fall on the FBI, you know, legally. Luckily, the FBI wasn’t at all ruled by the kind of person who would … oh wait. Then there’s the whole deal with David Ferrie, but more importantly, one George Joannides, who served as the CIA liaison to the US House Select Committee on Assassinations, the follow-up to the Warren Commission that attempted to clarify the latter’s shortcomings. A man who was deeply involved with the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, an anti-Castro militant group (with connections to Oswald), and lead psychological warfare operations. You know, there’s circumstantial evidence, and then there’s “I have no evidence, but I have no doubts.” No wonder most Americans have doubts about the official narrative; the JFK conspiracy theories have become one of the few that are acceptable across the board, from GOPers to the most centrist of Democrats to Vermont Leftists. Moreover, those same polls singly shared a belief in the same broader narrative: Groups within the CIA and Military-Industrial Complex were the main conspirators behind his murder. Ironically, that’s where the institutional tragedy of JFK’s murder really lies.

Over the last 15 years, and especially since 2019, substantial evidence has come forth that Eduardo Frei Montalva, the Chilean President who preceded Salvador Allende, had been poisoned to death by the Chilean military dictatorship, resulting in murder convictions. The convictions were hence overturned, and the Supreme Court ruled that no sufficient evidence was found for his murder, but that’s a lie. Our justice system and Supreme Court are superior to the US, but it’s still a Byzantine mess. Rumors about his assassination had been common ever since his death in 1982, at the age of 71, right as he had become a major figurehead against Pinochet, a person who had already conducted targeted killings of exiled opposition leaders outside Chile, one right in the middle of Washington DC. That’s aside from the other thousands of political killings he carried out within our borders. We, as a nation, haven’t fully processed that Eduardo Frei (a relatively respected president) was murdered, partly because it’s one more atrocity into a whole marked by them, but also because we have deluded ourselves into thinking that magnicide is something that happens to our neighbors.

For those wondering, Salvador Allende most likely committed suicide during the coup and bombing of the Presidential Palace. Still, of course, it had been made very clear by Pinochet that Allende was not to survive. That trauma alone, that horror alone, makes us throw up our hands and just process the collective trauma of our recent history as a unified whole. Separating its constitutive tragedies, like the specific murder of a former president, is sometimes too hard to bear. But at least we have a glimpse of the truth; we can frame that specific murder within a narrative in which it makes sense. Americans have not been granted that, not with all the loose ends spilling from JFK’s murder.

The deep trauma of his assassination wasn’t the handsome young(ish) man being cut short, Jackie’s splattered two-piece or John Kennedy Jr.’s saluting the coffin. That’s the first layer, the purely emotional. The historical trauma is that his murder revealed the perverse structure beneath US’ institutions of government, even though it is possible they had nothing to do with it. Because JFK’s murder is perfectly mirrored by an even worse tragedy, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., where it’s pretty fucking obvious that there was involvement by Memphis police and the FBI. And so it is with countless other ways the FBI, CIA and the broader institutions connecting the Military, Industry and Business have interfered over the last seven decades, by way of conspiracy, disinformation and violence. If Oswald was a lone wolf, the Military Industrial Complex, the right wing establishment and the Intelligence Community accidentally became his patsies, because they already had enough of a rap sheet to warrant doubts and lose legitimacy.

That is, among white Americans. As Soledad O’Brien comments in the Who Killed JFK? podcast (I’m mixed about it), People of Color in the US already knew to distrust the government.

Capping this social tragedy in the debate over who killed JFK is that, for many in the US, but especially for right-wing white Americans, they are unable to make a cognitive jump. They are willing to believe that JFK and many others like him were killed by the government, the FBI and the CIA, acting on behalf of the Military-Industrial Complex, but they are not able to bring those doubts one step forward and put into question the entire structures that upend the US. They just blame it on the Jews or something. They just see it as a force coming for their white privileges. They turn a not-unreasonable conspiracy into fanfiction that justifies their limited version of history. Not that it gets any better outside of the GOP mindset. The truth of JFK’s murder (or MLK’s, or Fred Hampton’s, or Malcolm X’s, or…) becomes yet another thing that evidences how broken the US is, but in being forever unconfirmed, slowly, decade by decade, it becomes part of a mythical narrative of the American Experience, a story that happens by the wayside instead of being a tangible thing that affects the US in the here and now. At least for white Americans. And the thing is, no, you better still talk about it until every truth that can be drained out is drained out while those who lived it are still alive. While it still hurts.

Alberto Cox does believe that RFK was actually killed by Sirhan Sirhan, he’s not that obtuse.