Penance Lane

A Benign Conspiracy is an award-winning 10-part documentary that demonstrates the problems with the official version of what happened in the Kennedy assassination ("three shots, all fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, all from behind") and presents evidence to support a theory of a Secret Service accident involving a defective AR-15 handled by a well-intentioned Secret Service agent who was likely poorly trained. The scenario provided is a modification of a theory first presented by ballistics expert Howard Donahue in 1977, but fixing errors made in the original theory. It explores necessary background information on the Secret Service agents and other figures, inconsistencies with the official version of events, Donahue's original theory and its problems, questions about Zapruder film authenticity, issues with autopsy image authenticity, when and how the first shot occurred, how many shots were actually fired and who fired them, actual validity of the acoustical evidence, and the development of the many "conspiracy theories" related to the assassination. The scenario presented gives a satisfactory accounting of all the physical and witness evidence, but without reaching a "Deep State regime change / coup d'erat" conclusion. Oswald may have been the lone assassin, but he wasn't the lone shooter. —Denise Hazelwood