A Diatribe vs. What JFK Researchers Actually Believe

An unbalanced, uninformed piece caricatures critics of the Warren Commission.

It was disappointing to read Gus Russo's piece, New Portrait of Oswald as a Violent, Delusional, Loner, in SpyTalk. The piece is ill-informed, unbalanced, and vituperative. Russo studiously ignored evidence that casts doubt on his claims and insults anybody who disagrees. I write for SpyTalk, precisely because the site is usually judicious, well-reported, and independent. (Why you should subscribe.)

Except in this case.

I don’t want to pass judgment on Paul Gregory’s book  The Oswalds: An Untold Account of Marina and Lee, because I have not read it. Gregory (and Russo) assert as indisputable historical fact that ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald suffering from a crisis of masculinity (or a massive inferiority complex) shot Kennedy dead. JFK’s assassination was, Russo asserts, a “delusional attempt to show [his wife] Marina and the world that he was someone to be reckoned with.”

Along the way Russo claims that attendees at a recent conference in Dallas displayed a “MAGA-style insistence that all the government’s evidence is fake news.” Gregory’s book, he sighed, was “likely to dislodge the JFK truthers from their conspiracy theories. Thus Russo likens skeptics of the official theory to those people who once believed the world was flat.

Where to start? As a factual matter Russo is simply wrong. If you want to know what 26 leading researchers and authors actually say about state of the JFK story, read this useful collection found at the Washington DC-based Assassination Archives and Research Center. There are Trump supporters among us—and they are welcome—but this not a MAGA crowd. 

President Kennedy and the First Lady arrive in Dallas, November 22, 1963.