Dan Barry recently wrote an article in which he made passing reference to Lee Harvey Oswald as having been the assassin who offed John F. Kennedy. He was, as any of us are who say such a thing, deluged with accusations — some of them, sorta rational; many of them, crazed — that there was a conspiracy and anyone who says otherwise is a puppet of (and probably a co-conspirator in) said conspiracy. As we approach the 50th anniversary of That Day in Dallas, it looks like we're in for a lot of this.
I do not intend or pretend to convince anyone that Oswald acted alone. Some people would rather change their gender than their minds on this issue. When I briefly associated with "buffs" (as JFK conspiracy theorists often call themselves) and thought they might be right, I found myself among people who had struck me as incapable of changing positions on this. They just had too much of their lives invested in the premise of a massive conspiracy, sometimes involving thousands of people and/or every institution (governmental, foreign, etc.) they already distrusted.
I think the Warren Commission was wrong on a few details but correct on its conclusion. If you really want to know why, prowl through the 1,648 pages of Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Vince Bugliosi. (A tip if you ever do: The book is a lot more manageable on Kindle than on paper.) Mr. Bugliosi is a very smart man and he spends a number of those 1,648 pages telling you he's a very smart man; that the greatest proof that Oswald acted alone is that Vince Bugliosi, who's such a smart man, thinks Oswald acted alone. But once you get past that, he really does make a solid case…and actually, most of the book is not taken up with making his case but in debunking others'. He goes through Oliver Stone's JFK movie, f'rinstance, and pretty much destroys everything in it, up to and including the credit at the end for the guy who supplied the doughnuts to the film crew.
There are other books making the case besides Bugliosi's but none quite as thorough…and you know what? None of them matter to most Americans. People are going to believe what they want to believe. There are folks there who think it's been proven beyond any doubt that Barack Obama is a gay Kenyan-born commie. I'm still waiting for someone to prove conclusively that Obama masterminded the hit on Kennedy. And don't think that the fact that he was two years old at the time proves he didn't. The devil, as they'll tell you, is capable of anything.