THE MOTHER OF ALL CONSPIRACIES

The murder of President John F. Kennedy is probably the most famous and most involved conspiracy in the history of conspiracy theory. The subject has come up twice on the X-Files: when the Lone Gunman's Langly tells Mulder he "had lunch with the guy who shot JFK" in the episode "EBE", and again in "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man", when a young CSM is shown as the killer of the President.

The Warren Commission, the Senate subcommittee responsible for the investigation into the death of JFK which published it's findings in September of 1964, officially declared that on November 22, 1962, President Kennedy was shot to death by one Lee Harvey Oswald, a known communist sympathizer and one-time resident of the USSR. Harvey had shot the president from out of the window of the sixth floor of the Dallas Book Depository, where Oswald worked. He then ran, ending up in a movie theater, where he was arrested. Two days later, on his way to jail, he himself was shot to death by one Jack Ruby, a crazed bar owner. So ended the investigation. At least for the government.

For most of the rest of the country, however, there were still questions to be answered. It soon became clear that, despite what the government said, Oswald was not the only person involved in the death of President Kennedy. The confusion does not center on whether there was a conspiracy, but who orchestrated it. There are several candidates, including several organizations within the US government: the CIA, the military, even a group of extreme right-wing supporters in the Senate. Outside the government, there's the Mafia, the KGB and/or supporters of the Castro regime in Cuba, and more. There is evidence supporting all of these theories, and even of alliances within two or more of these groups. For example, a CIA officer arrested two months before Dallas told his arresting officer, "I'm glad you caught me. I really didn't want to be in Dallas." Hearsay and documents containing remarks like this and ideas on how to carry out the assassination can be found everywhere.

Was it a man "dressed as a cop on the grassy knoll" as Langly claims, or an undercover government agent dressed as a sanitation worker? It is unlikely that the truth behind the murder will ever be uncovered completely. It is destined to be one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century.