Why did David Crosby believe in the JFK conspiracy theory?
The late David Crosby was a man who always stuck to his guns. From his musical decisions to his own personal opinions, throughout his career – and despite criticism from those he once called friends – Crosby never strayed from what he saw as the righteous path. Duly, this provided a string of memorable moments that resulted in the Los Angeles native being one of the most storied figures in rock music.
One of his most notorious theories was what he believed to be the conspiracy behind the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. Famously, it came to the fore during The Byrds’ performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, with Crosby airing his thoughts to the audience between songs. This angered his bandmates so much, particularly band leader Roger McGuinn, that it signalled the beginning of the end for Crosby and The Byrds.
“He was not killed by one man,” Crosby told the crowd. “He was shot from a number of different directions by different guns. The story has been suppressed, witnesses have been killed, and this is your country.” After further disagreements in the studio, Crosby was fired from the band in October 1967. “He didn’t know anything more than anyone else,” Roger McGuinn would say later. “He was just trying to be Mr Cool up there.”
Typically, David Crosby would never change his opinion of what happened when JFK was killed. When speaking to Rolling Stone in 2022, a fan asked him if anything had changed his “outlook” on the assassination some 50 years after Monterey Pop Festival. His response was a typically full-bodied one. Crosby replied: “Absolutely not. Kennedy was shot by more than one person from two different directions. You can tell if you watch the Zapruder film. I’ve been to [Dealey Plaza in Dallas]. If you look at the range from the little knoll and the wooden fence to where the car was, I could have hit him with a pistol from there, let alone a rifle.”
He continued: “Now, the guy in the switchyard that goes over the freeway, who was near the freeway, he said he saw a guy with a rifle come from behind that fence. He also got killed. A number of people got killed afterwards.”
Going into more detail about what he believes really occurred, Crosby then mentioned the Dalton Trumbo-written 1973 thriller Executive Action, which he felt was “probably very close to the truth”. The former CSNY man asserted: “The movie Executive Action tried very hard to portray what actually happened. I think it is probably very close to the truth. They did try very hard to keep it from coming out. I think it is very close to what actually happened. There’s no question in my mind.”
Debating why people sought to kill Kennedy, Crosby sensed it was the racists and the oil companies who wanted him gone: “Kennedy pissed off a lot of people. There were racists who felt he was giving the country away to Black people. There were people who felt he was fucking with the oil depletion allowance, which is a freebie the oil companies get because they’re eventually going to run out of oil. I don’t know how they got that through. They must have bought some senators and got that one. But he was messing with it. He was unpopular with the power structure, and that’s why he got killed.”
He concluded: “I mean, Oswald shot at him. That’s not what killed him. I’m firmly convinced that I’m right. I’ve seen nothing to contradict that opinion.”
