Kennedy Assassination Web Sites A Conspiracy?

Just as conspiracy books have been more popular than books supporting the Warren Commission conclusions, there are more conspiracy-oriented web sites than lone-nut oriented web sites. While many web sites have some Kennedy assassination material, the following specialize in the subject. This is a somewhat selective list of sites, emphasizing those with the strongest collections of resources.

The Texas Monthly's Dealey Plaza Revisited is a fine balanced introduction to the issues surrounding the assassination from a journal that has become a mainstay of Texas journalism.

The Mary Ferrell Foundation is named in honor of highly respected long-time Dallas area researcher Mary Ferrell, and contains a broad range of resources including essays (mostly conspiracy oriented), photos and (most important) a massive collection of primary source documents.

The National Archives' Kennedy Assassination Records Collection has a search engine that allows locating documents in the Archives' massive holdings. This makes it easy to order relevant documents from the Archives. And indeed, simply knowing what documents the government has can be important information. Give the Feds some credit: this is a fine resource.

The JFK Lancer site is a fine source for ordering various materials on the assassination, and it contains selected articles from The Assassination Chronicles, as well as a good selection of links to other JFK-oriented sites.

JFK Online has several interesting essays (on Ruby, Silvia Odio, Jean Hill), a good links page, good brief reviews of all the major assassination books, and an excellent collection of unedited statements from assassination witnesses. It's signal strong point, however, is a very large collection of resources on Jim Garrison and Garrison's New Orleans "investigation" into the murder.

Mike Russ' John F. Kennedy Assassination Information Center is strong on witness testimony, and has the invaluable technical reports of the House Select Committee on Assassinations which address issues such as the nature of Kennedy's wounds and the authenticity of the Backyard Photos.

Max Holland's Washington DeCoded shows the work of a journalist intimately familiar with the history of the 60s and of the ways Washington politics impinged upon and affected how the assassination was viewed and how it was dealt with.

The site 22 November 1963 is an overview of the assassination from a conspiracy perspective. Consider it a good primer on conspiracy arguments, and make a point of looking at counter-arguments on other sites.

Ralph Schuster's John F. Kennedy Assassination Homepage, from Germany, is further evidence of world-wide interest in the assassination. Schuster has has a rich variety of offerings, including the Warren Commission Report, Jim Marrs' "Convenient Deaths" list, Walt Brown's index to assassination books, and extensive witness testimonies.

The Real Issues Home Page, shows Mike Griffith, the page's author, to be a diligent reader of conspiracy books and a prolific writer. You can find about any aspect of the case interpreted from a conspiracy perspective here.

John Simkin's Spartacus Educational site has in common with Mike Griffith's site (above) a dilligent webmaster who has put a lot of information (and, unfortunately, pseudoinformation) online. But where Griffith's site is deep, going into issues in great detail, Simkin's site is broad, providing some information on a vast number of suspects, witnesses, and even researchers.

Dale Myers' JFK Files web site shows Myers' computer modelling of the shooting in Dealey Plaza, as well as material about the Tippit shooting. Myers also critiques, from a lone assassin perspective, various of the claims of conspiracists.

The Academic JFK Assassination Site reflects a course on the JFK assassination taught by Kenneth A. Rahn at the University of Rhode Island. His web site is not just his syllabus, but rather a wide-ranging collection of materials. Especially interesting are sections on critical thinking, information on Warren Commission critics and collections of materials from researchers such as Tony Marsh and Peter Whitmey.

Lisa Pease' Real History Archives gives you a dose of the really extreme conspiracy view. Pease believes that a very large conspiracy murdered Kennedy, and continues to cover up the crime. She includes the mainstream media, much of academia, many conspiracy authors, all authors who believe Oswald did it alone, and virtually all the posters on USENET newsgroups who don't believe in a conspiracy in her cast of sinister people. For a scary reminder of where this sort of thinking leads, click here for Lisa Pease' page on the Oklahoma City bombing. Now removed from her site, she displayed it for over two years.

The site Kennedy and King (formerly Probe Magazine) is a project of James DiEugenio, a supporter of Jim Garrison and believer in a wide-ranging conspiracy that killed Kennedy and continues to cover up the murder.

David Von Pein has been all over the Internet of late, capably arguing for the lone assassin viewpoint. His blog, The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: A Lone-Gunman Viewpoint has a lot of resources, including especially video resources.

The Assassination Web is a source for COPA information, COPA videos, and the world's most extensive collection of essays purporting to debunk Gerald Posner's book Case Closed.

W. Tracy Parnell is a lone assassin theorist whose Lee Harvey Oswald Research Page has several valuable resources. Parnell is the chief Internet debunker of "two Oswalds" theories.

Parnell's more recent research can be found on his blog W. Tracy Parnell. He continues to debunk "two Oswalds" theories, which continue to resurface in various permutations.

David Perry, a crackerjack researcher who has debunked many of the stories conspiracy books repeat (although he in fact believes there was a conspiracy), has the John F. Kennedy Assassination Pages where you can learn about him and read several of his articles.

Clintbradford.com has a fine collection of files covering many aspects of the assassination. The site grew out of Clint Bradford's ATD BBS (now defunct), and is resource-rich.

John Masland's The Nook is a site of interest to people who want to do some real digging, featuring large databases of Warren Commission Documents, Warren Commission Witnesses, selected portions of the Warren Report, and a collection of video sound bites. Not especially recommended for the casual web "surfer," this site will be a huge boon to the serious researcher.

Tony Marsh's website, The Puzzle Palace, has one thing going for it: Marsh himself, a quirky, independent-minded and innovative researcher capable of occasional near-brilliant work.

Dr. Chad Zimmerman is a chiropractor who has leveraged his knowledge of anatomy to produce the JFK Assassination Research Page, which deals with various medical and ballistics issues.

Fair Play was formerly an online magazine put together by John Kelin. Seldom updated now, the site's archives nonetheless has a wide variety of materials of interest. Although it often seemed to support some of the most unreliable witnesses (Roger Craig, Perry Raymond Russo), it has also debunked conspiracy fables. An important feature is Joe Backes' detailed accounts of document releases from the Assassination Records Review Board. The pioneering JFK assassination page.

Visit my own Best of Assassination Sites page for a list of the offerings — chosen from the sites listed here — that I consider to be outstanding. This page is not exactly a listing of the best sites, but rather of the best resources.


The following sites lack the depth of resources of the sites listed above, but all have something that the average assassination buff would want to see:
Related Web Pages?
Is the Kennedy assassination a "cultist" topic? Do the people with an intense interest in the assassination display the same intellectual habits as those interested in other "crackpot" phenomena?
You might examine, for example, The Bermuda Triangle Web Page. Does the logic and use of evidence in the Bermuda Triangle literature remind you of the conspiracy literature?
Likewise, the UFO Skeptics Toolkit raises the same question in the context of supposed aliens from elsewhere in the Universe. Does the rhetoric about a government "coverup" sound familiar?
The notion that NASA faked the landing of astronauts on the moon has had a bit of a revival lately. But the arguments are as silly as ever. Philip Plait's Bad Astronomy web site brings a dose of level-headed scientific thinking to this theory.
The events of 9/11 have of course created a whole raft of conspiracy theories. One of them is from Jim Fetzer, a man well known for his Kennedy assassination books. Fetzer's page 9/11 Web Sites supports his view that no Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon, but rather a cruise missile did. Ironically, conspiracist Mike Griffith (see above) takes issue with claims like this, and provides a fine set of links titled "Refuting the 9/11 Conspiracy Theories."
Is Christianity just a big conspiracy? That's the theme of Dan Brown’s popular novel The Da Vinci Code. But as history the book is wild and wacky, on a par with the most bizarre conspiracy theories. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has a web site debunking The Da Vinci Code. And don't say: "well of course they would do that." Say of Dan Brown: "well of course an author hostile toward religion and wanting to make a killing would write such a book."

Dale Myer's site JFK Lancer site Cheryl Overfield's site Best of Assassination Web Pages National Archives page Dallas Sixth Floor Museum JFK Deep Politics Quarterly Lee Harvey Oswald Research Page Dallas Morning News Site Dealey Plaza Revisited JFK Assassination Information Center The Smoking Gun The Assassination Web History Matters The Nook Mary Ferrell Foundation Ralph Schuster's John F. Kennedy Assassination Homepage

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