JFK

Conspiracy is the paranoid's religion. Where the faithful see a divine plan behind even the most inexplicable events, the paranoid always see sinister machinations, a confluence of shadowy agendas and corrupt power. Taken to its paranoid extreme, the conspiracy theory becomes a kind of anti-God: its actors are all-powerful, all-knowing, but driven by malevolent self-interest. The hand of God is a withered claw pulling strings around the world.

Of course, that way lies madness. Conspiracy theory begins as a coping mechanism, an attempt to explain an insane world. Unchecked, it takes on a life of its own. Tendrils of coincidence and sinister synchronicity creep into everything. It all has a Meaning - and it's not a pretty one.

Perhaps nowhere is this tendency more prevalent than in that baroque cathedral of paranoia, the Kennedy Assassination. Kennedy, the Christ-like, charismatic leader who threatened the status quo, takes a final limo ride toward the triple underpass in Dealey Plaza , November 22, 1963. Nelly Connelly, wife of then-Texas Governor John Conelly, riding with the Kennedys, remarks on the cheering crowds, "Mr. President, you certainly cannot say that Dallas doesn't love you!" The smiling, waving Kennedy replies, "That's obvious," just before his head explodes in a bright red halo of blood and brain matter.

To the serious conspiriologist, the Kennedy Assassination - and that magic bullet - is a bullet hole through the scroll of history. The Death of the American Dream, the end of Camelot, the Fall beginning a great plunge into the darkness of the late 60's; Kennedy's splattered brain a Rorschach blot for an orphaned country - everything that comes before leads up to it, everything that comes after stems from it. It's the perfect symbol, but what does it mean?

The Warren Commission plays the Council of Nicea, quickly establishing the JFK Orthodoxy and its Doctrine of the Lone Gunman. Oswald acted alone, it declares, his bullet miraculous if not blessed. And pristine! CE 399 passes through Kennedy's back, travels upward to exit his throat, turns downward into Governor Connelly's ribcage, exits into his wrist, and then lodges itself in his thigh. Yet, like the bones of a saint, it is pristine, immune to decay.

Not everyone accepted this fundamental tenet of the Church of the Lone Gunman. Those unable to make the leap of faith find themselves wandering down darker paths - a second gunman at that grassy Golgotha, snipers in the sewers, an inside job - why was the Secret Service so lax that day? - cover-up and incompetence. The Corsicans, the Mob, Castro and the disillusioned Cubans, the military-industrial complex, the KGB and CIA, Lyndon Johnson and Texas oil barons. The Zapruder film as Shroud of Turin, a holy relic promising truth to those with eyes to see. Oswald as Judas and the Lamb, betrayer betrayed, sacrificed. The Doers of the Deed shuffled quickly off History's stage.

Heresies abound, eels of meaning squirming and roiling over and into one another, each with the force of righteous anger. Finally, what stands revealed in Dealey Plaza is not God but something else: a shadow glimpsed, however briefly and through a glass darkly, of the powers that turn the world.

Complexity: Remember that time your friend dared you to read all of Aquinas's Summa Theologica and you were like, "Dude, all over it," until you tried to lift it and your spine cracked and then you wept? Trying to fathom the JFK assassination is a bit like that - investigator Gerald Posner estimates that by 1992 over 2,000 books had been written about that day in Dallas . Key texts: The Men Who Killed Kennedy, a six-hour British documentary ; Don DeLillo's Libra ; the 26-volume Warren Commission Report.

Plausibility: 1979's House Select Committee on Assassinations, the only official investigation since the Warren Commision's report, decided there was a second shooter - a conspiracy. Then they patted you on the head and said, "Don't worry, your government is in control." You thanked them for the lolly.

Where It Will Help You Score: X-Files fan-fiction message boards; Cyril Wecht's house.