Why JFK files won’t stop the conspiracy theories

There were 81 minutes between the shots echoing on Dealey Plaza in Dallas and Lee Harvey Oswald being arrested for the crime of the century. Then, two days after the assassination of President Kennedy (JFK), Oswald was himself killed. There would be no trial and the case was closed. For some, this was all too neat.

When Martin Luther King and JFK’s brother Bobby (RFK) met with the same end five years later, an entire generation of conspiracy theorists was born. Now, President Trump’s decision to release the remaining files on these cases (some of which, of course, relate to the family of RFK Jr, his nominee for health secretary) could answer some questions.

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Many — if not most — have never seen grounds for conspiracy in the killing of JFK on November 22, 1963. There were good reasons for thinking that the strange loner Oswald had shot the president: he had been spotted fleeing the scene, his gun was found in a sniper’s nest in the Dallas Book Depository and there was evidence of his palm print and shirt upon the firearm.

Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for protesting against US policy in Cuba months before shooting JFK

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Furthermore, no one debates the fact that Oswald shot a police officer who tried to apprehend him in the hours after the assassination. His testimony to the Dallas police was found to be filled with falsehoods. The simplest explanation has always been that Oswald did it.

However, in the aftermath of the shooting, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, ordered the creation of the Warren Commission, which investigated the murder. It received reams of evidence, such as the Zapruder film — grainy video taken by an onlooker of that name.

Abraham Zapruder’s amateur video is one of the most recognisable clips of the assassination

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The report concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby, had also acted alone.

However, in the American imagination, it was never a closed case and there were intriguing questions.

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For instance, the Zapruder film showed that the crucial shot had sent Kennedy’s head backwards and to the left, whereas Oswald had supposedly been firing from behind and to the right.

Some concluded that the fatal shot had come from a grassy knoll. Others, looking at the five-second interval between the first shot and the last, concluded this was too quick for a single gunman.

Over the years, answers have been provided for these questions but doubts were also fuelled by incidents such as the 1967 trial of Clay Shaw, which alleged a conspiracy to murder the president (Shaw was quickly acquitted).

The prosecution case in the trial was popularised by the 1991 film JFK, directed by Oliver Stone. Kevin Costner played Jim Garrison, the real-life New Orleans district attorney who became obsessed with revealing the supposed cover-up.

Kevin Costner and Oliver Stone on the set of the film JFK

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And there were those who could never accept that JFK, King and RFK had all been shot by lone gunmen.

A House of Representatives committee — never the most sober of forums — concluded by eight members to four that there was a “probable conspiracy”, but this was based on evidence that was subsequently dismissed as faulty.

The CIA was accused of withholding information. Some theories, dismissed by President Ford’s Rockefeller Commission, claimed that CIA operatives had been on the ground and that Ruby had CIA connections.

Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby two days after JFK’s murder in a corridor of the Dallas police headquarters

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Trump blocked the release of the remaining files in his first presidency, but has changed his mind.

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RFK Jr has said that his father thought the Warren Commission was a “shoddy piece of craftsmanship” and that there had been a conspiracy by Cuban exiles, the mafia or the CIA.

If such a view has remained unshaken for more than six decades, a few files maintaining the official line are unlikely to dissuade conspiracy theorists from that opinion.