The Final Conspiracy

Posner muses for a moment about the prospect of one author trying to silence another by going to court. "What is it about Case Closed? It's almost as if he doesn't want anybody to read it."

As this article went to press, Brad Kizzia -- appropriately enough
-- was scheduled to moderate a panel discussion of doctors and lawyers during the third annual Assassination Symposium on Kennedy. Norman Mailer, who is writing a book about Oswald, would deliver the keynote speech at the Hyatt Hotel.

It is clear that, within this gathering of conspiracy theorists, Gerald Posner has assumed the status of the assassinologists' antichrist.

Tom Wilson, for example, whose invention caused such a stir in Dallas two years ago, is devastated that a story Newsweek planned to write about him was replaced by a story on Posner's new book. "Everything Posner says is black, I say is white. It's very difficult to take."

Wilson suspects the decision to pull the story about him might have been, yes, part of an effort to conceal the truth. "I have a feeling certain interests don't want this [information] to come forward," Wilson says. Then, in a moment of self-insight, he adds: "You can get so paranoid with this."

An employee with the symposium, who didn't want her name used, said Posner had been invited to speak this year but might not come because Norman Mailer will be speaking. Posner confirmed that he wouldn't be coming and that Mailer's presence -- as well as the ASK group's hostility toward his book -- are among the reasons.

The symposium staffer said Mark Lane was not welcome. "He came to the first one to speak, and stood up and told all of us we were exploiting KennedyÕs death and trying to make money off of the assassination." Ironically, Lane's 1966 best-seller, Rush To Judgment, is considered the first commercial success for a conspiracy theorist. Hundreds of other books about conspiracy theories have followed. Hundreds more are surely to come.

So the gathering known as "ASK" -- dedicated to airing divergent views about the assassination of President Kennedy -- would take place without the presence of several key figures on both sides of one of America's longest-running historical debates.

"Some days," says the symposium staffer, "I think they are all loony."
Rebecca Sherman is a staff writer for The Dallas Observer.