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sive wound in the President s head and a small wound approximately one-fourth
inch in diameter in the lower third of his neck. . . . At l p.m., after all heart activity
ceased and the Last Rites were administered by a priest, President Kennedy was
pronounced dead.17
In addition to addressing questions about how the president was shot and
what the follow-up actions had been, the Warren Commission also sought
to answer an even bigger question: Did Oswald act alone? In answering this
question, the Warren Commission confirmed the so-called lone gunman
version of events, refuting suspicions that some sort of conspiracy had been at
work. The report summarized the commission s findings about the question
this way:
Based upon the investigation . . . the Commission concluded that there is no
credible evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a conspiracy to assassi-
nate President Kennedy. . . . Review of Oswald s life and activities since 1959,
although productive in illuminating the character of Lee Harvey Oswald . . . did
not produce any meaningful evidence of a conspiracy. The Commission discov-
ered no evidence that the Soviet Union or Cuba were involved in the assassi-
nation of President Kennedy. Nor did the Commission s investigation of Jack
Ruby produce any grounds for believing that Ruby s killing of Oswald was part
62 Conspiracy Theory in Film, Television, and Politics
of a conspiracy. The conclusion that there is no evidence of a conspiracy was also
reached independently by Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State; Robert S. McNa-
mara, the Secretary of Defense; C. Douglas Dillon, the Secretary of the Treasury;
Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General; J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the
FBI; John A. McCone, the Director of the CIA; and James J. Rowley, the Chief
18
of the Secret Service. . . .
Thus, according to the official version of events, the case, traumatic though
it was, was closed. The lone perpetrator was dead, and while not every detail
was fully illuminated, the story was plainly discernible: Oswald had acted
alone.
In the aftermath of the assassination, memory of November 1963 came to
be dominated by the death of John Kennedy, whose reputation soon rose to
stratospheric heights. He had won the presidency by only a slight margin,
but his passing was interpreted as martyrdom, and his presidency of 1,000
days passed into popular legend. He would, for more than a generation, be
revered by much of the public. The days of his presidency, which often had
been perilous, were remembered in a glowing, idealized manner, sometimes
as the modern incarnation of King Arthur s mythic Camelot, which had been
the subject of a popular Broadway play a few years earlier.
The release of the Warren Report reassured much of the American public,
which had not yet become as wary and cynical about government as would be
the case in later years. It could not change the traumatic outcome, of course,
but the Report did seem to indicate that America could carry on with its
business, secure in the knowledge that it was only one criminal mind, rather
than a shadowy array of dark forces, that had carried out the evil deed. As it
had done before, the nation would pick up the pieces and move forward.
Yet, many people were not completely satisfied with the official version
of events. Some people were perhaps only mildly skeptical of its investiga-
tions, wondering if in haste the commission had left out details that would
add further clarity to the event. Others came to be much more skeptical. To
those people, both soon after the Report s first release and far into the future,
the official findings were much more problematic. At best, the conclusions
seemed inept; at worst, they were evidence of far darker and more dangerous
forces. Indeed, the assassination of John F. Kennedy was not only a pivotal
point in American history, it became the fountainhead of modern conspir-
acy theorizing in American culture. The ambiguities, unresolved details, and
missing information in the Warren Report, while never appearing to signifi-
cantly cast doubt on its findings to many people, became for others the Holy
Grail of conspiracy.
THE ABRUPT END OF A BRIEF ERA
During Kennedy s brief presidency, American society had negotiated highs
and lows, and fears of conspiracy that seemed so prevalent a decade earlier
Conspiracy in the New Frontier 63
subsided to a noticeable degree. There were dangerous crises, but before the
president s assassination shocked the nation, it stared down these crises. For
some people, the spirit of the New Frontier seemed to suggest that America s
moral dignity and technological resourcefulness could handle any problem.
Looking back at conspiracy theory in films of the early 1960s, the progres-
sion of the theme is noticeable. Movies such as Advise and Consent and The
Manchurian Candidate significantly updated the conspiracy theme s treat-
ment on film. The aura of anxiety and fear that was so prevalent in 1950s
conspiracy films was lessened. These movies were evidence that popular cul-
ture was processing the raw emotion, which had been evident in many earlier
works. Such films remade conspiracy story lines with wit and urbanity, adding
a filmic self-consciousness. They suggested a reduction of generalized, over-
arching Cold War fears into a more manageable and human scale. Even as
real-world events such as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis
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