Why We Can't Escape JFK Conspiracy Theories

Every now and again, a work of art is so profound that it breaches the boundary between fact and fiction and affects current events. And if you had to rank the most politically resonant artworks American pop culture has produced in the last 50 years, the 1991 film JFK would top the list.

More than any document, this film codified the murder of JFK as a conspiracy in the minds of the American people. Directed by the most celebrated filmmaker in America at the time, Oliver Stone, JFK featured Kevin Costner as a character who said that President Kennedy was killed as part of a government conspiracy.

The film was so influential that Congress passed a law in 1992 that ordered government agencies to find and, ultimately, release hundreds of thousands of secret CIA files relating to the assassination. Now President Trump has ordered the declassification of all remaining records.

Many Americans never thought Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone—or they questioned if he was involved at all. But by the end of the Cold War, the JFK truthers were considered fringe and paranoid. Oliver Stonge changed that.

In today’s Breaking History, Eli Lake argues that JFK made conspiracy theories go mainstream. Tinfoil hats were no longer just for oddballs. They were for everyone. 

And the U.S. government has played a big role in that. After all, whether or not Oswald acted alone, the full array of facts still remain to be shared.

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