Why a JFK murder bombshell landed with a thud | Will Bunch Newsletter

I’m writing this on Monday, Sept. 11, 2023, the 22nd anniversary of the attack on America. This year, some still stress remembrance and their personal experiences. My thoughts on 9/11 are complicated, but I know the part we as Americans had control over — how we reacted — was badly botched. We honor the dead when we try to be better.

📮 A majority responding to last week’s question about the potential return of stop-and-frisk policing in Philadelphia think it’s a bad idea (as do I). John Hawthorne wrote that any potential drop in crime “doesn’t mean that innocent people (especially when disproportionately people of color) should pay the price of marginal improvements in law enforcement.” But Tim Lynch argued lax gun laws make it a good idea, that “everyone should be considered armed and dangerous in this country.”

This week’s question: The approaching fall is bringing a noticeable uptick in COVID-19 cases. Should governmental mask mandates return a) now? b) at a certain level? c) never? For a chance to be featured in my newsletter, email me your answer.

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For boomers, the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy has lingered a lifetime. At age 4, the unusual, unsettling sight of my mother crying that fateful Friday afternoon is my first political memory — as it is for most of my peers. As a teenage Watergate geek, I came to devour books and articles arguing that the official Warren Commission was wrong, that accused gunman Lee Harvey Oswald hadn’t acted alone — if at all.

Thinking that didn’t make me some kind of kook or a “conspiracy freak.” Questioning the government’s version of what happened in Dallas put me squarely in the mainstream. In the early 1980s, some 80% of Americans believed there was a plot to murder JFK, in line with a House committee report that there was probably at least a second gunman.

And yet America’s biggest murder mystery was never solved. The notion that someone on or near their deathbed would reveal the truth began to seem naïve as the years passed and that didn’t happen, while amateur theories of the case grew weirder and weirder. Then came the Trump years, and the increasing linkage between right-wing politics and the most ill-informed conspiracy theories — around QAnon, or the Big Lie of election fraud. That made liberals reluctant to endorse any idea with the “conspiracy” tag — even one that once animated their movement.

Then, out of the clear blue sky, nearing the 60th anniversary, came the late-life revelation of startling new evidence everyone had given up on. The new disclosure from retired Secret Service agent Paul Landis, who was in JFK’s fateful motorcade, now 88, again raises the possibility of a second gunman, and suggests the things we thought we knew about the assassination are wrong.

In a new book, Landis says he handled arguably the most famous piece of evidence: the so-called “Magic Bullet,” which according to the Warren Commission — in the Jenga piece holding up its shaky argument that Oswald was the lone gunman — passed through Kennedy’s neck before wounding then-Texas Gov. John Connolly in a front seat. The commission said this was the bullet found on a gurney at Parkland Hospital, where JFK and Connolly were rushed.

But now ex-agent Landis claims that bullet was on the gurney because he placed it there. He writes in his book he found the bullet in the back seat of Kennedy’s limo, in a fold in the leather seat. In a pre-CSI era when law enforcement had different ideas about evidence, he said he grabbed the bullet to thwart souvenir seekers and — amid hospital chaos — put it on what he insists was Kennedy’s gurney, assuming the right person would find it.

The “Magic Bullet” theory already strained credulity; the notion that one bullet could have caused multiple wounds in two men and then bounced back to the rear seat seems far too magical to believe. The Warren Commission found Oswald had time for three shots — the “Magic Bullet,” the head shot that killed Kennedy, and one that missed and struck pavement. But if Landis’ account is true, there seem to be more wounds and bullets than can be explained without a second gunman.

It’s fair to ask: Why now? Landis said he suffered from what we now call PTSD after witnessing the assassination and left the Secret Service; inexplicably, the Warren Commission never questioned this key witness. Only around 2014, the now-octogenarian insists, did he begin grappling with what he saw and did. Some assassination experts are disputing the claim, or its significance, but presidential historian James Robenalt, asked by a publisher to vet Landis’ manuscript, came to believe his story and endorsed it in a Vanity Fair article.

It’s a bombshell, so why did it land with such a thud? Articles in Vanity Fair and by the New York Times’ Peter Baker didn’t get much if any play on TV news or even on social media. A Twitter/X post of the Vanity Fair article by an editor at the magazine got a mediocre 250 reposts — and a number of mocking responses.

I know most Americans weren’t yet born in 1963 and maybe don’t see the relevance, although if you lived through it or are just a history buff, you understand how those gunshots still reverberate. I think the bigger issue is that the 21st century’s internet-fueled flood of misinformation — and their centrality to Trump-fried right-wing populism — means a lot of folks, especially liberals, will no longer touch anything with the faintest whiff of “conspiracy theory.” That’s mostly good — 90% or more of them are total bunkum — but weren’t Watergate and Iran-Contra once “conspiracy theories”? Respect for facts is critical, but liberals must all remember what journalist I.F. Stone told us about all governments: They lie.

Question: What will be the effects [on] Florida’s university sports teams in the long run if DeSantis’ continues with his “education” agenda? (Conservative teachings, Ben Sasse, etc.) — Via Rick Loewen (@rickloewen) on Twitter/X

Answer: Rick, the university sports teams will be fine! (Even at the once-progressive New College of Florida, where queer students are being driven out and replaced with jocks.) I’m more worried about who’ll be left to teach those athletes; a stunning new poll by the national faculty union found a whopping 47% of Florida professors are planning to leave the Sunshine State, mostly because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s regressive policies. When forward-thinking government finally returns to Florida, rebuilding a higher-ed system on the brink of ruin will be Job No. 1.

In an era in which presidential elections routinely swing on about 100,000 votes, or less, President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection prospects may hang on how everyday voters feel about the economy. And media coverage is critical, but journalists are clearly struggling. A central tenet of modern, supposedly unbiased journalism is a reliance on facts over emotion, and the facts of the Biden economy are overwhelmingly positive — best jobs numbers since the 1960s, with growth that outpaces other developed nations. Inflation was high in 2022 and is still slightly ahead of recent norms, but that number has come down substantially as the administration has responded.

The problem for those writing about the U.S. economy is how few people believe the facts. A new CNN poll, for example, found that 58% of Americans believe that Biden is making the economy worse — actually up from last year (50%). Why the disconnect? There’s no one answer. Some voters just don’t like Biden for other reasons — his age, or because they are Republicans. For some, the higher price of eggs or gasoline feels real but the stats claiming their wages are now keeping pace do not. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a Nobel-winning economist, notes increasingly Americans say “the economy” is bad but that they’re doing OK. Yet writers who focus on the facts of the economy instead of “the feels” are portrayed as effete, impudent snobs.

Journalists believe in science, including the science of public opinion. But what happens when what everyday Americans believe — sometimes a majority of Americans, or a substantial minority — is wrong, not just on the economy but on life-or-death issues around COVID-19 or climate change? We’ve focused lately on whether the United States will be governed by the rule of law, but there’s also the matter of whether the nation will be governed by truth or misinformation that has metastasized in the internet age. The media needs a better strategy. That means talking more to folks who’ve done best under “Bidenomics” — young people, Black and brown “essential workers” — and prioritizing the truth while grappling with how people are feeling.

Hey, remember Melvin Redick, graduate of Philadelphia’s Central High School with a popular Facebook account where he posted beach pictures with his daughter when he wasn’t ranting against Hillary Clinton? Of course you don’t, because “Melvin Redick” wasn’t real (nor were the pictures, taken in Brazil). “Redick” was a Russian troll — a cog in a massive election interference effort by Vladimir Putin’s regime. You’ll remember the “Russia hoax” wasn’t a hoax when you read my piece from exactly six years ago: “Meet the ‘Philly Central High grad’ who was really a Russian troll helping Trump win.”