Kennedy Assassination Censorship Controversy
The Kennedy Assassination Censorship Controversy revolves around the events and investigations following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. After the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed before he could be put on trial, public doubt emerged regarding the official narrative. The Warren Commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded that Oswald acted alone, but many Americans questioned this conclusion, giving rise to numerous conspiracy theories. The commission's voluminous findings were largely sealed for 75 years, contributing to ongoing skepticism and calls for transparency. Critic Mark Lane's book, "Rush to Judgment," challenged the commission's findings, leading to significant scrutiny from federal agencies and limited media support for dissenting views. Notably, the iconic Zapruder film, which captured the assassination, was withheld from the public for years, further fueling speculation. Over time, legislative actions and public interest prompted the gradual release of classified materials, culminating in the establishment of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. This controversy highlights the complexities of public trust and the struggle for transparency in significant historical events.
Kennedy Assassination Censorship Controversy
Date: November 22, 1963
Place: Dallas, Texas
Significance: After the possibility of a conspiracy was rejected by a presidential commission, efforts were made to suppress unofficial inquiries and withhold evidence from public view
Public Opinion on Assassination Theories
In November, 1993, thirty years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll asked a cross section of Americans to express their opinions on who killed the president. Of those polled, 75 percent said they believed that more than one person was involved in the assassination. Only 15 percent believed that one man was responsible; the remaining 10 percent expressed no opinion.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy created an atmosphere of doubt, largely because the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself murdered before he could stand trial. A commission was appointed by Kennedy’s successor, President Lyndon Johnson, to investigate and report on the circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s assassination. Chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the commission concluded that Oswald and his own killer, Jack Ruby, had both acted alone. Public opinion polls, however, showed that many Americans questioned the lone-assassin thesis, and numerous books were written advancing various conspiracy theories. Although the Warren Commission published twenty-six volumes of material from its hearings and evidence, most of its files were declared sealed for seventy-five years.
One of the Warren Commission’s severest critics, attorney Mark Lane, wrote the best-selling book Rush to Judgment in 1966. Lane’s public activities were closely monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) instructed its overseas posts to employ their propaganda assets to refute this book, and Lane himself complained of having his radio and television appearances canceled. He also found his motives questioned and his arguments misrepresented by the press and, especially, by those defenders of the Warren Commission who opposed dissent. His experience was shared, at least to some extent, by other critics who sought to be a voice independent of the mainstream press.
The most important piece of evidence related to the assassination, an eight-millimeter motion picture taken by a man named Abraham Zapruder, was purchased by Life magazine for more than $150,000. Life placed the film under lock and key. The magazine occasionally published single frames, but the film was not seen by the American public until Geraldo Rivera showed it on ABC’s Goodnight America in 1975. The Warren Commission had concluded that Oswald alone shot Kennedy from a building behind the president’s motorcade. The film’s vivid depiction of President Kennedy’s backward movement after the head shot in Dallas—a movement interpreted by many viewers as evidence of a bullet coming from the so-called Grassy Knoll in front of the president’s car— made the showing of the film a key event in initiating a new investigation of the assassination in 1976-1979 by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Official control of assassination evidence proved to be an even greater obstacle to public disclosure than private ownership. The Warren Commission relaxed its initial seventy-five year ban on disclosure, and passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 1966 gave private researchers an important tool in securing the release of documents, but many were still being withheld decades later. Following the publication of twelve volumes of hearings on the Kennedy assassination, the U.S. House of Representatives in 1979 ordered the remaining files of its Select Committee on Assassinations sealed for fifty years. Later, Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK prompted a debate over this secrecy policy that led to creation of a federal Assassination Records Review Board, which in 1994 began the process of reviewing and releasing withheld assassination files, including those of the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee, the FBI, and the CIA.