© Reuters
In the persistent, probably eternal whirlwind of conspiracy theories about the November 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy, there is one conspiracy theory that is no longer just a theory - and hasn't been for years.
That wide-ranging conspiracy was for real. And proof of its existence will almost certainly grow more solid on Thursday with the imminent release of tens of thousands of pages of long-classified, assassination-related documents from the National Archives - supposedly the last of the government's secret files on Kennedy's murder.
What conspiracy? Not one involving a second assassin in Dealey Plaza. (All of the most credible evidence continues to point to Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman in Dallas.) Not some sort of mafia plot that resulted in the silencing of Oswald two days later by Dallas strip-club impresario Jack Ruby. (Really, what half-way competent Mob boss would choose a delusional blabbermouth like Ruby to carry out a second Crime of the Century by murdering Oswald?) Not a sprawling coup d'état involving everyone from President Lyndon Johnson to the Pentagon architects of the Vietnam war to a cabal of gay rightwingers in New Orleans. (See Oliver Stone's hit 1991 film JFK.)
I'm referring to the well-documented, proven conspiracy within the highest reaches of the US government - a criminal conspiracy from the start,
involving the destruction of top-secret documents and photographs, the silencing of witnesses and whistleblowers, and the wholesale suborning of perjury - to cover up the truth about
what the government had known in advance about Oswald and the clear threat he had posed to one man: President Kennedy.
Comment: You can put Shenon in the "so safe he's useless" department. All the stuff he writes about the CIA/FBI cover-up is probably correct. But if he thinks that's the extent of it, he's dreaming. For an account by someone who can think, see David Talbot's Devil's Chessboard. And keep an eye out for Russ Baker's upcoming book on the assassination.