Again, I must invoke Curmie’s versatile “Oh bloody hell!”

I have been studying Presidential assassination history and conspiracy theories since before I had to shave, and I have little patience with those who misrepresent, distort or exploit these events. Just two days ago, I was pointing out that the much-admired Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins” was a blight on the culture despite my belief that entertainment should have a wide margin for creative license. The musical—the songs aren’t bad—is based on the absurd premise that John Wilkes Booth’s motivation for his decision to assassinate Lincoln is a mystery, and that, like other POTUS assassins and attempted assassins, he was trying to make a difference in a society that had ignored and marginalized him. That’s just crap for most of the historical killers and wackos portrayed in the show, but especially Booth. “Was it bad reviews, Johnny?” a balladeer croons. Of course not, you idiot: no assassin ever made his motivations clearer than John Wilkes Booth.

He was a dedicated Confederate partisan; he blamed Lincoln (correctly) for not letting the South go its own way, he was crushed that the South was headed for defeat, and believed that if the Union government could be decapitated (the plot was to kill Lincoln, Vice-President Johnson, Secretary of State Seward and General Grant in a single night) the South might yet prevail—and his plan might have worked. No mystery! But our history is constantly misrepresented to the historically ignorant and illiterate, that is to say, most of the public, often for the selfish purposes of rumormongers and worse.

You know, like Tucker Carlson.

The latest episode started this way: Trump has at various times said that as President he would declassify the JFK assassination files so everything would be out in the open. He didn’t however, and at some point, when asked shy he didn’t keep his promise, Trump answered to the effect that anyone who knew what was in those files would understand. So, on a podcast with Joe Rogan, asked about that, Tucker Carlson had a typical attack of logorrhea and oozed,

I mean, you know, Trump is saying: Of course, the CIA had knowledge of it. That is known. I mean, I mean, the whole thing, it’s so funny. There’s so many levels and there’s so much I don’t understand. But the whole JFK conspiracy industry, and it really is an industry, more books written on that than almost any historical topic is filled with wackos. Right? There are a lot of wackos in there. But that fact obscures the larger fact, which is the facts themselves tell an unbelievable story. And so whatever, I could get into it at great length.  But, yeah, yeah, they’re still classifying documents 61 years later. Both Trump and Joe Biden have, in violation of my read of federal law, kept those documents secret. There’s no living person connected to the Kennedy assassination. It was a couple generations ago. There’s no one person whose secrets are being protected. It’s an institution. Or maybe countries, there may have been countries involved, too. I mean, I don’t know the answer, but there’s clearly something worth protecting… I spoke to someone who’d seen the documents two years ago, and I got one fact out of him, which is, yes, the CIA was involved. And by CIA, CIA is a huge organization. But James Jesus Angleton, the head of the operations directorate, had knowledge of this, which I think is well known. But that’s the view of someone who saw the documents. So I thought that was news. So I went on tv and said that the next day, I’ll never forget it, I went quail hunting, and I was driving back and I got a phone call from Mike Pompeo’s lawyer. Mike Pompeo was the secretary of state, but before then, he was the director of the CIA. And in that position, he plotted the murder of Julian Assange. So he is a criminal as far as I’m concerned. But his lawyer called me and said, you know, you should know that anyone who tells you the contents of classified documents has committed a crime. He’s threatening me, is in my car. I’ll never — with my dog sitting next to me — I’ll never forget this. And I said, are you really saying that to reveal that the US government had a role in the murder of a democratically elected president, to say that out loud, that’s the crime. What about the actual crime, which is murdering a president? Like, you’re covering up for that. Mike Pompeo, he had no response at all. And so Mike Pompeo is the one who pressed Trump to keep those documents secret. And so it’s like, what’s crazy to me is not just that Pompeo did that. I think Pompeo is a really sinister person. And a criminal. I think that. I think that because the facts suggest that he was caught. Yahoo news Mike Isikoff wrote a long piece on this several years ago. His employees went to Mike Isakoff and said, hey, Mike Pompeo is plotting to murder Julian Assange, who has never even been charged with a crime in the United States as CIA director. That’s illegal. You’re not allowed. Federal employees are not allowed to just kill people they don’t like. Okay, just to set the baseline here. So that’s who Mike Pompeo is. But he somehow intimidated Trump into not releasing this. Well, okay, that’s all bad, right? I think it’s criminal behavior. What’s crazy is how Mike Pompeo is treated. He’s treated as, like a republican poobah in good standing. He fully expects to become the secretary of defense in a Trump administration, which is, like, completely insane….

Tangential to the purpose of the post but still important to note is the fact that this statement alone is conclusive proof that Fox News had to fire Carlson, that it was irresponsible and destructive to allow him on the air at all, and any influence he has on the election, politics, or any aspect of American culture and public opinion is to be deplored and counteracted quickly and decisively.  But back to the conspiracy theory:

1. As with the 9-11 Truther conspiracy theory, and as with the Lincoln assassination conspiracy theories (notably that Secretary of War Stanton along with others in the Union’s “Deep State” were complicit in Lincoln’s death), the fact that not a single individual with credible claims of knowledge or participation in such a plot has surfaced creates nearly overwhelming evidence that such a plot didn’t exist. We found out who “Deep Throat” was, after all, and who really killed Liberty Valence.

2. Trump did not say that the CIA “was involved” in any statement I can find, but even if he did, that can mean anything. Assuming (arguendo!) that he did say it, consider the source and how he deliberately says stuff to get reporters scampering to their keyboards.

3. Tucker spoke to “someone” years ago, and that authoritative someone said the C.I.A. was involved. Wow, stop the presses. That’s some journalism there, Tucker.

I talked to someone once who said your mother was a jackal.

4. The CIA does illegal things because international intelligence, spying and black ops occur in a Bizarro World fog of ends-justify-any-means ethics. This isn’t news, and it certainly doesn’t prove anything about JFK’s assassination.

5. As it happens, the Lincoln assassination and the Kennedy assassination have more in common than those familiar coincidences, like “Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln (made by Ford) and Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater,” or “Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and was caught in a warehouse, while Oswald shot Lincoln from a warehouse and was caught in a theater.” In 1923, a friend of Robert Lincoln, Lincoln’s oldest son, walked in on him burning some of his father’s private papers, or so the friend claimed. When asked why, Robert (a fascinating figure on his own), supposedly answered that the papers contained evidence that a member of Lincoln’s Cabinet had committed treason. The friend protested that “for the sake of history” Robert should prserve the papers, and Lincoln replied that for the sake of history, it was best to burn them. (Sound like Trump’s alleged statement, doesn’t it?)

This incident has been used by the conspiracy theorists as a “smoking gun” to confirm Stanton’s guilt in assisting Booth, but that was and is pure speculation. Today most respectable historians have dismissed it, yet Robert Lincoln’s reported comment was more informative than Trump’s—if the story is even true. As evidence of the alleged treason, it’s double hearsay at best.

If and when the JFK files are revealed and shocking evidence appears, which is unlikely, I’ll be one of the first to say I was wrong. Until then, I remain confident that Booth killed Lincoln, Oswald killed Kennedy, Jack Ruby killed Oswald, and there was no sinister government complicity in either assassination.

Shut up, Tucker.