By 1966, a coupla’ years after the release of the phony Warren [C]ommission report distorting the facts of the JFK assassination, the CIA began to fear exposure of its participation by independent investigative journalists such as Mark Lane and Penn Jones initially. Kevin Barrett reported recently, “The terms ‘conspiracy theory’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ were virtually unheard-of until the mid-1960s when the CIA issued a memorandum to its thousands of Operation Mockingbird media assets telling them to attack JFK assassination researchers using those words. That memo is preserved as CIA Document 1035-960, released in response to a 1976 FOIA request by none other than the New York Times.”
Weaponizing the Term “Conspiracy Theory”: Disinformation Agents and the CIA