These issues were officially revisited by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late seventies and the Warren Commission's findings were again affirmed.
The next big boost to the controversy was spurred by Oliver Stone's big-budget film "JFK", which appeared in 1991, based on Jim Garrison's prosecution of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. Oliver Stone presented the murder of JFK as a conspiracy set up by reactionary forces who wanted to stop the implementation of the progressive ideas of greater action for social justice and the end of the Cold War.
The fact is that the real JFK bears no relation to the "progressive martyr" created by Oliver Stone and numerous conspiracy believers. To promote their ideas, they have asserted some strange things that even liberal historians find puzzling. For instance, "liberal" JFK and "conservative" Richard Nixon were not enemies, JFK respected Nixon, and preferred him to liberal members of his own party. John and Robert Kennedy did not oppose McCarthyism as they both were friends with and politically supported McCarthy. Kennedy was a "Cold Warrior" and anti-Communist, neither his foreign nor domestic policy was in fact too liberal. Kennedy was a rather conventional politician.
He had not decided to withdraw the military forces from Vietnam. Kennedy was not a big threat to "many interests". I do agree, he was an outstanding personality, a gifted speaker and eloquent communicator, who understood the pulse of the nation. A man who recognised early the need for changes in the American society and who positioned himself perfectly within the framework of the "Age of Consensus", as American historians call it. A man who understood the moral correctness of integration but who was reluctant to press too hard in the struggle for racial justice. A man who as President, never forgot his roots and was an active Cold Warrior in the tradition of Truman and Eisenhower, and who in domestic policy kept himself positioned to the right of the Democratic party's liberal wing.
