Best-selling author James Swanson tells OregonLive.com that he is impatient with the proliferation of JFK conspiracy theories — and who can blame him? Swanson is correct that none have been proven.
But his impatience leads the author of “End of Days” into a logical mistake common in the debate about JFK’s assassination:
Lack of proof that any group of individuals is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean there is no evidence of conspiracy.
The preponderance of evidence does not eliminate the possibility that JFK’s enemies caused his death. To the contrary, the evidence shows that the official theory of a lone gunman is as implausible as many conspiracy theories. The evidence confirms what all opinion polls on the subject show: that we do not have a widely credible explanation of November 22, 1963.
And the extraordinary media attention to the 50th anniversary of the JFK’s death belies his claim that we have lost the human truth of the event.
Here’s what Swanson told the Oregonian:
“We have lost the emotion connection to Nov. 22. We have strayed too far from the human truths of that day: a wife lost her husband, two little children lost their father, and a nation lost its president. Dozens and dozens of pieces of evidence prove that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy and then murdered a Dallas police officer. To this day, none of the conspiracy theories have been proven true with hard, concrete evidence.”