ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 presents close readings of media reports and official and unofficial documents about the Kennedy assassination, such as the Warren Report, which reveal that officials and journalists not only echoed the language of the academic discourse described in the first chapter but also worked with a narrow, legal notion of conspiracy to contrast the conspiracist accounts circulating at the time. These conspiracy theories can be categorized chronologically: early accounts still appealed to a mainstream audience as they did not sketch out any large-scale conspiracy scenarios, avoided words like “plot” or “conspiracy,” and instead resorted to asking questions. Later texts, in contrast, explicitly used the terminology, developed complex conspiracy scenarios, and addressed an emerging subculture open to ideas of conspiracy.
