It is the nightmare of every history lecturer. You open up your pile of essays and a title stares up at you: ‘Who really assassinated John F Kennedy?’ This question guarantees 2,000 words of tendentious waffle and supposition, with – importantly for a history essay – little hard evidence.
The JFK assassination is nonetheless a historical mystery that has captured countless imaginations. US president Donald Trump seems to be one of them. This week, he released more than 31,000 pages from the National Archives concerning this most speculated-upon event.
Trump has a long-standing fascination with the JFK assassination. On the campaign trail last year, he declared that it was ‘time for the American people to know the truth’ about what ‘really’ happened on the grassy knoll. As such, when he took office earlier this year, he issued an Executive Order announcing that documents concerning the deaths of JFK (as well as those of his younger brother, Senator Robert F Kennedy, and civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr) would be declassified.
The majority of the National Archives’ six million pages of records relating to the JFK assassination have already been declassified. But many were hoping some surprises would emerge. As it stands, however, little evidence for any conspiracy regarding JFK has been found in these newly released papers. In fact, according to the Washington Post, the files’ document-identification numbers show that none of them is actually being released for the first time. As the New York Times bluntly puts it, ‘the big reveal was that there wasn’t much of a reveal at all’.
The JFK files are at least less heavily redacted than they were previously. We now know that they were classified to hide what historian David J Garrow called ‘bad acts’ – dirty tricks and illegal spying by the CIA and other government agencies. But none of them contains the smoking gun that conspiracy theorists were hoping for – proof that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the killer, or at least did not act alone. Historian Philip Shenon says that he struggled to find much in the documents that altered his understanding of the killing at all.
Of course, none of this is likely to cut through the fog of rumour and speculation that continues to swirl around this momentous historical event. In many ways, the JFK assassination is the daddy of all conspiracy theories – or, as the New York Times puts it, their ‘source and paradigm’.
Interestingly, it wasn’t always the case that the JFK assassination was treated as some grand conspiracy. When Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed the then US president on 22 November 1963 in Dallas, Texas, it shocked and alarmed the nation. But it did not give rise to wild explanations, even though this was the height of Cold War hysteria. Even when Oswald was himself shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days later, this provoked some condemnation (and occasionally spontaneous applause), but little in the way of speculation. In November 1963, JFK’s successor, Lyndon B Johnson, set up the Warren Commission to establish the truth. It concluded, reasonably, that Oswald killed JFK and had acted alone.
The impetus for conspiracy theories only really grew with the decline of the authority of, and trust in, American institutions. In the late 1950s, trust in government was polled at 80 per cent. By 1976, it had declined to 33 per cent. Since then, belief in conspiracies has grown significantly, particularly in relation to the JFK assassination. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 65 per cent of Americans rejected the Warren Commission’s conclusions.
The release of the JFK files is to be welcomed in the interest of greater transparency. But Trump’s interest in the JFK assassination indicates that he and other members of his administration have been captured by conspiracy theories. Current health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is a notorious believer in various anti-vaccination conspiracy theories (though he now claims to have u-turned on many of these). He has also claimed that Sirhan Sirhan may have been hypnotised and coerced into assassinating his father, Robert F Kennedy Sr. Trump himself infamously believed that the 2020 presidential election had been ‘stolen’ from him. The subsequent ‘January 6’ riot showed us that some conspiracy theories can have violent repercussions in the real world.
Conspiracy theories provide simple answers to what are usually difficult and uncomfortable questions. It is perhaps neater to view JFK’s assassination as the handiwork of Jonhson’s towering ambition, or the result of recalcitrant Southerners enraged at JFK’s stance on civil rights. In a similar way, it is easier for Trump to blame his loss in 2020 on dark forces and institutional bias than on the fact that he simply did not win enough votes in the right places.
For these reasons, we should not expect the underwhelming revelations from the JFK files to dampen enthusiasm for any number of pet hypotheses. Conspiracy theories have less to do with evidence and more to do with a profound collapse in trust in the establishment.
Kevin Yuill is emeritus professor of history at the University of Sunderland and CEO of Humanists Against Assisted Suicide.
