Marc Ambinder is a self-described "JFK assassination buff." "I've read just about every book ever published on the assassination, watched every documentary, mock trial, and dramatization," he confesses at The Week. So naturally, for a long time, he was a conspiracy theory believer—and, just as naturally, the day he stopped believing "was a seminal intellectual experience" for him. It happened at age 15, when he sat down to read Gerald Posner's Case Closed. "It was my first exposure to the powers of skepticism and reasoned argument."
The floodgates opened when Posner pointed out that the president's row of seats in the limousine were higher than John Connally's, rendering the bullet's path through the president and into Connally's leg completely plausible. "The two men were perfectly aligned. It was just true." From there, he realized that if Oswald had been part of the conspiracy, Ruth Paine (who told him about the job at the Texas School Book Depository) and Roy Truly (the building superintendent who assigned Oswald to the fifth and sixth floors) would have had to have been involved too—and they clearly weren't. "None of it hung together. The evidence of Oswald's guilt was, and is, overwhelming." Click for Ambinder's full column, or check out a similar take on the JFK conspiracy theories. (More Marc Ambinder stories.)
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