After 30 years of investigations and re-examinations of the death of President Kennedy, just 12 percent of the American people believe they have been told the whole truth, according to an Associated Press poll.
Seven in 10 suspect a conspiracy, and those who were young on Nov. 22, 1963, are especially likely to be among the 82 percent who believe the truth has not been told.In keeping with many recent polls that show Americans suspicious and distrustful toward government, 78 percent think there was an official coverup.
There are other reasons why the truth could have been obscured: sloppiness by the Warren Commission investigators, a lack of hard evidence, a desire to close a wound to the national psyche. But the poll shows the public suspicions lean heavily toward conspiracy theories.
While 15 percent accept the Warren Commission conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, 71 percent in the poll think Oswald was part of a conspiracy. That's a much more con-spi-ra-cy-minded tilt than the 48 percent to 29 percent result for the same question in an AP poll 15 years ago.
The rest of the respondents in both polls were unsure - a percentage that is not growing as the years pass. One striking finding about the AP poll, taken by phone Nov. 5-9, is that adults who were unborn or toddlers when the assassination occurred were even more likely than elders to have an opinion.
ICR Survey Research Group of Media, Pa., part of AUS Consultants, polled 1,026 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
For the 71 percent who said Oswald was part of a conspiracy, the poll posed a list of organizations and individuals that have been mentioned by theorists.
Fifty-six percent of the conspiracy believers said the CIA or the Mafia was involved. The other suspects were the Cuban government, 34 percent; American military leaders, 29 percent; President Lyndon Johnson, 28 percent; anti-Castro Cuban exiles, 17 percent; and the Dallas police, 16 percent.
To better understand the breadth of these suspicions, the percentages also can be figured as a share of all respondents. In that case, CIA or Mafia involvement was suspected by 39 percent of all Americans - conspiracy believers, Warren Commission admirers, those who glaze over at talk of single-bullet theories - everyone.
Sixty percent of all respondents agreed that at least one suspect from the list was involved. But by 56 percent to 40 percent, those polled did not think there should be another investigation.