Nothing more to be revealed, despite Trump’s promises

Donald Trump says ‘everything will be revealed’ after ordering the release of a few thousand classified JFK assassination governmental documents during his first week in office.

The Kennedy assassination in Dallas, Texas, is probably the most famous conspiracy of all time and the circumstances surrounding the assassination of the popular young president by Lee Harvey Oswald remain the subject of widespread speculation, even today. 

Up until pretty recently, my view of the Kennedy’s assassination was informed by the comedy of the late great comedian Bill Hicks, the graphic photographic record of the shooting featured in Robert J Groden’s The Killing of a President, Abraham Zapruder’s film footage of the assassination, Oliver Stone’s JFK movie, and American Tabloid, James Ellroy’s alternative history, probably my favourite crime fiction novel simply because of the subject matter.

However, it’s time for a major rethink after reading a book review in the Guardian about Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch’s The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy—and Why It Failed.

Although the book focuses on septuagenarian Richard Pavlick’s attempt to blow up Kennedy and himself three years before Dallas, Texas, it also debunks the mythology and Trump’s hyperbole.

In the review of his co-authored book, Brad Meltzer said, ‘I do not think there are magical papers that are being hidden that are going to show us things that no one knows about. If you want to know who killed JFK, I’ll tell you right now. If you look at the 60s, right after JFK is shot, we said JFK was killed by our enemies at the height of the cold war: the Russians did it, the Cubans did it. If you look in the 70s, right after Watergate happens and distrust of the government hits new heights, who killed JFK? It was our own government did it, it was an inside job, it was the CIA, it was LBJ. Then in the 80s The Godfather movies peak. Who killed JFK? It was the mob. If you want to know who killed JFK, it’s whoever America is most afraid of at that moment in time decade by decade.’

Meltzer continued, ‘The reason why conspiracies exist is because they allow us to believe in a reality that makes us feel safer. The idea that the whole world can come undone by one person is such a scary thought. It’s so much safer to believe that if you wanted to take down a president, you need a cabal. You’d need tons of people, you need billions of dollars, you need a plan and chalkboards and string and it would take all these things to make it happen. That’s such a safer thought than the idea that one person on one day can just do it himself. Over and over we refuse to realise that’s how it’s always going to be. It just takes one person to change the world.

Meltzer’s explanation is a far more realistic take on proceedings than the very funny comedy of Bill Hicks making Castro coo coo and empty sniper nest jokes, the incredible imagination and the staccato prose of James Ellroy and the indignation of JFK conspiracy authorities like author Robert Groden and filmmaker Oliver Stone.

The cold reality is some assassins like Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth, who shot Abraham Lincoln, are destined to be famous for eternity while other would-be assassins like Richard Pavlick and Thomas Matthew Crooks, who shot Trump’s ear at a rally near Butler, Pennsylvania, aren’t.