In January 1967, the CIA sent a now infamous memo (marked "Secret," "Restricted," and "Destroy When No Longer Needed,") to its army of media "assets" secretly embedded in virtually every area of U.S. communications, entitled "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report," which recommended smearing critics of the Warren Report by describing the critics as being financially motivated, or having "anti-American, far-left or communist sympathies," or being "hasty, inaccurate or ego-driven in their research." Subsequently, within the mainstream political culture, being labeled a "conspiracy theorist" became equivalent to being called a communist in the heart of the McCarthy era, or practitioner of witchcraft in Salem Massachusetts. John P. Roche, a special assistant to Lyndon B. Johnson, compared "conspiracy theory gospel" to a "priesthood of marginal paranoiacs"--a view convenient for Johnson, who was the most likely mastermind behind the JFK assassination, as chapter 5 details. Roche's "priesthood of marginal paranoiacs" included New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, whose investigation of the CIA's role in the JFK assassination resulted in his being the target of venomous hit pieces by CIA media "assets.

" King family lawyer William Pepper, whose incredible research helped crack the King case, was called a "credulous buffoon and con artist" in The New Republic, a respected liberal journal, and dismissed as a "frequent presence at conspiracy theory conventions" in his New York Times obituary. Characterizations like these led public intellectuals even of the stature of Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges to self-censor and shy away from the topic of political assassination and "deep state" conspiracies like the plague -lest they be called the big, bad C-word. The Intrigues Behind Political Assassinations in America aims to correct the historical record and debunk the myth of American exceptionalism advanced by Robert J. Donovan and others who have followed in his footsteps. It shows that political assassinations have been rooted in conspiracies and have been a weapon in the struggle for political power in America--just like in other countries--and have resulted in major policy shifts that were usually negative.