Is This Anything?

The other day when I was looking around for some information on the Hinckleys and the Bushes, I perhaps unsurprisingly came across some other information about some other presidential conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination is an evergreen in terms of conspiracy theory, and surely we're all familiar with at least a few of the suspicions that surround it. On Wednesday, Doug Thompson, a journalist and former Capitol Hill staffer, announced that John Connally told him twenty-some years ago that he didn't buy into the Warren Commission explanation of the Kennedy assassination. Connally, of course, was governor of Texas and was riding with JFK and Jackie when they all came under fire in Dealey Plaza. He has the distinction of reputably sharing the magic bullet with Kennedy. Or not--his widow, Nellie Connally, was also in the car and has loudly argued that her husband and the President were shot by separate bullets (of which this Larry King transcript from the fortieth anniversary of the assassination is just one example).

Thompson says that, as far as he knows, Connally never made his own doubts about the Warren Commission report public "because I love this country and we needed closure at the time. I will never speak out publicly about what I believe." I couldn't confirm that for sure, but it's possible. In his autobiography, Connally disputed the details of the magic bullet theory and the number of bullets but didn't question the Commission's conclusion that Oswald acted alone (never mind that disputing the number of bullets implicitly calls that conclusion into question). So does that mean this is a new piece in the puzzle? Should we make anything of it? Or is this column, like so many historical comparisons these days, another metaphor for how the Bush administration isn't being held to account for its actions?