On the very limited JFK file release last week, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Frank notes that “secrecy itself shares the blame for fomenting so many conspiracy theories and
“…so much suspicion that, according to the Pew Research Center, only nineteen per cent of Americans say that they trust the government to do what’s right. (In 1958, when the question was first posed, seventy-three per cent trusted the government.) In a democracy that relies on trust in its institutions, and the consent of the governed, that diminishment of faith is a national tragedy on the level of the murder of a President.
Source: The J.F.K. Files and the Problem of Trust | The New Yorker