Kennedy Assassination ‘Con’ ’Spiracy

The PBS show NOVA frequently evokes mixed reactions from me: on the one hand, I love shows with scientific and/or technological content; on the other, NOVA seems at times to have an ax to grind. Tonight's show in Houston was billed as containing "new" forensic evidence shedding light on the Kennedy assassination. As I watched, I realized I had seen the episode or one very much like it several years ago, and knew the conclusion: that the Warren Commission got it right... one assassin, three shots, one bullet through Kennedy and Connally, no shot from the grassy knoll (decades later I wondered if the late Progressive editor Erwin Knoll, who occasionally appeared as the token liberal on the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, was any relation to Grassy), yada yada yada. No real news from a years-old segment.

Well, almost no news. Sometimes I actually watch as the credits roll, and this was one of those times. The episode was sponsored in part by the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, the same David H. Koch who is on the board of WGBH, PBS's Boston station that produces so much science content, including... you guessed it... NOVA; one of the Koch brothers currently infamous for effectively funding the founding of the Tea Party.

IMHO, that fact alone renders every expert who participated in the ballistics experiments shown in the episode highly suspect. And could the rebroadcast of that episode years after it was made be an attempt to improve D. Koch's public image as he is under attack by progressives who want him off the WGBH board? YMMV. I was never much of a Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist back in the day, but I may have to do some more thinking...