Why the Fact That the Events of Libra Could've Been What Really Happened is Very Unsettling

     The Kennedy Assassination is and always will be shrouded in mystery, which is strange considering the fact that this assassination was the first one caught on live video. One would think that this would lead to a definitive, agreed-upon series of events, but in actuality it only sparked more conspiracy theories. 

    In Libra, Don DeLillo paints a picture of a conspiracy that spans pretty much every mainstream theory surrounding JFK's assassination that exists. He incorporates the CIA, the mob, and Cubans (or rather ex-Cubans) into the plot at varying levels of knowledge about the greater plan. He also incorporates the theory that Jack Ruby was tasked by someone else to kill Lee Harvey Oswald, the theory about a second shooter, the grassy knoll, and that Lee was part of a bigger plot that he may or may not have known about. And, the most masterful part is that we, even over 50 years after the assassination and 30 years after Libra was written, we can't disprove any of the conspiratorial theorizing that DeLillo does. 

    For example, early on in Libra it's established that the main people planning JFK's assassination (or near miss) are CIA agents. But, if this were a regular CIA operation someone would've probably leaked it by now. So, DeLillo has the CIA agents who are doing this be a rogue trio who don't use the regular CIA channels but instead use their previous contacts from the Bay of Pigs invasion and keep everything off the books. Plus, pretty much everyone that these agents deal with then disappear into Latin America with a bunch of money and new identities, which would make tracking them down, even if they were implicated by something slipping, nearly impossible. 

    Another example is how Lee is used by those same CIA agents to be the fall guy for the assassination and how he only realizes at the very end how big of a pot he got himself mixed up in. To do this, DeLillo uses recorded events, such as how Lee inexplicably ran into a movie theater to hide, mixed with made up events, such as how the reason he ran in the theater was to meet another member of the plot who was there to kill him (which Lee didn't know). This is a plausible explanation to why Lee would do something that strange in an attempt to escape the police and also keeps the events that history is certain happened from being altered, because who could ever prove that Wayne Elko wasn't waiting in the back of the theater with a tiny pistol?

    The point of this is that we view the modern age as one where things that are unknown to us during important events are growing ever rarer. So, the fact that something as well-investigated and even caught on camera like the Kennedy Assassination could still have all these unknown factors and parts to it after hundreds of pages of evidence were compiled is sort of frightening, because if we can't figure this out, do we even know as much as we think we do?