TPM Article on JFK assassination on the conspiracies cluster

[Bucky]

x-posted to Good Reads

from Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo ==> http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/watching-the-kennedy-assassination

For what it's worth, I don't 'believe' any of the conspiracy theories, at least not as far as it goes. But watching this unfold, experiencing it in a sense, renewed my total understanding with how the country has never been able to shake an undying suspicion about just what happened. The available evidence doesn't point to one or two potential conspiracies but to an almost countless number. 'Points', doesn't prove or even make likely. But the bread crumbs are everywhere.

Probably twenty years ago, I read a transcript of a talk by Norman Mailer, presumably in preparation for writing Oswald's Tale. There's no question that the CIA and other arms of the federal government covered up a lot that was related to the assassination. Not a 'cover up' per se, but kept a lot of information from the public. The simplest answer is that there was just a lot of stuff that didn't incriminate the government but which the public simply couldn't be allowed to know - the attempts on Castro's life, the connections with the mob and so much more.

Mailor's take was different and appropriately novelistic in its contingency. Mailer said the CIA in particular was so cagey and institutionally dishonest not because it had anything to do with Kennedy's death but because the Agency had so many ties and operations and assets in and around so many people Oswald was connected to that they couldn't be sure they didn't have anything to do with it.