FRESH AIR
It’s been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, and polls show that a majority of Americans still believe Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy, not a lone assassin. Though an official investigation concluded that Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, conspiracy theories about the assassination were spawned almost immediately, and they keep 
coming to this day: Republican consultant Roger Stone has a new book — The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ — arguing Lyndon Johnson was behind the crime. Veteran investigative reporter Philip Shenon looks for the root of five decades of speculation in A Cruel and Shocking Act. The new book recounts the work of the Warren Commission appointed by President Johnson to investigate the assassination. Shenon tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies that throughout the investigation, Chief Justice Warren — who was close to the Kennedy family — “makes decisions that seem to be designed to protect President Kennedy’s legacy, to protect the privacy of the Kennedy family, even if that means that not all the facts are gathered about the assassination.” Shenon pored over the files of the commission, spoke to many of its surviving staff attorneys, and did original research and interviews about some aspects of the case. While he’s not convinced of a conspiracy to murder the president, he concludes that senior officials of the U.S. government, especially at the CIA, destroyed evidence and lied about the assassination and the events that led up to it. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: NOTHING IS REAL: The JFK Assassination Conspiracy
PREVIOUSLY: BEYOND THE GRASSY KNOLL: Dallas D.A. Finds Alleged Smoking Gun Proof Of JFK Conspiracy In A Safe