JFK conspiracy industry

Dave Powers/Assassination Records Review Board/AP

In this still from footage taken by presidential aide Dave Powers and photographed from a television screen, President John F. Kennedy, accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline, waves from his limousine in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

According to a CBS News poll released this month, 61 percent of Americans say they believe multiple people were involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, while 20 percent think Oswald acted alone.

Belief in a conspiracy, though strong, has declined in recent years. In 1998, just 10 percent of Americans believed Oswald had acted alone. And while 56 percent currently believe there was an official cover-up to keep Americans from learning the truth about JFK's death, that number was far larger -- 81 percent -- in 1993.

Powers ran out of film before the motorcade entered Dealey Plaza where the fatal shots where fired.

Kennedy assassination

American lawyer Mark Lane points to a photo showing the route followed by the late President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, during a news conference in Paris criticizing the report of the Warren Commission, Oct. 4, 1966.

On the chart is a bush from which he claims that shots were fired toward the motorcade. In his book "Rush to Judgment" the commission, he argued, "frequently chose to rely on evidence that was no stronger and sometimes demonstrably weaker than contrary evidence which it rejected."

Kennedy assassination

A vendor holds up a magazine-style publication titled "JFK The Case For Conspiracy" in downtown Dallas, Nov. 8, 2003.

Kennedy assassination

This series of photographs provided by the Warren Commission shows four sides of a bullet, found at Parkland Hospital, which is the subject of a dispute over which stretcher it had come from - Texas Gov. John Connally's or President John F. Kennedy's, June 13, 1967.

Tests show it came from Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle, and it is almost undamaged.

Kennedy assassination

Former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi sits next to his book: "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" at his home in Pasadena, Calif., March 7, 2013.

Bugliosi embarked on his book expecting to vindicate the Warren Commission. What he didn't expect was for it to balloon into 1,650-pages.

The 78-year-old lawyer blames the conspiracy theorists. He says, he responded to all of their allegations. "It's a bottomless pit. It never, ever ends. And if my publisher ... didn't finally step in and say, 'Vince, we're going to print,' I'd still be writing the book."

Kennedy assassination

Former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi shows pages from his 1,600-page book: "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" at his home in Pasadena, Calif., March 7, 2013.

The book had a respectable first printing of 40,000, says Bugliosi, best known as the former deputy Los Angeles district attorney who prosecuted Charles Manson.

Kennedy assassination

One of the exhibits contained in the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Sept. 26, 1964.

The commission said the handbills in the image were samples of ones on which Lee Harvey Oswald had stamped his name and the name "A.J. Hidell".

The image below was identified as showing Oswald distributing the handbills in New Orleans on Aug. 16, 1963.

Kennedy assassination

Gerald Posner poses for a photo in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Fla., Oct. 7, 2009.

In writing his 1993 book "Case Closed," the legal researcher says he didn't set out to write a defense of the Warren Commission. Instead, he planned to go back through the critical evidence to see what more could be determined through hindsight and more modern investigative techniques.

Halfway through the allotted research time, Posner went to the editorial staff with a new idea: A book that says flat-out who killed Kennedy. "Who?" one of the editors asked, as Posner retells it. "Oswald,” he answered.

Kennedy assassination

This image from Oliver Stone's 1991 movie "JFK" shows Kevin Costner as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison demonstrating the "magic bullet" theory.

Critics say Stone's film has done more than anything to shape the public's perception of President John F. Kennedy's assassination. "He made this kind of paranoid conspiracy theory respectable," says New York writer Arthur Goldwag, author of "Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies."

The movie tells the story of a New Orleans District Attorney played by Kevin Costner. Garrison remains the only prosecutor to bring someone to trial for an alleged conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

Kennedy assassination

A reconstruction of the approximate view the assassin of President John Kennedy might have had through the telescopic sight of the rifle fired from the Texas School Book Depository Building on Nov. 22, 1963.