Government adoption of the label conspiracy theorist coincided with the Kennedy assassination debates.

Evidence

But if you spend any time at all in this conspiracy world, you will hear that the term itself was created by the CIA to discredit people who get too close to the truth. The notion was promoted most prominently by Lance deHaven-Smith of Florida State University, who in a 2013 book proposed that the CIA came up with the phrase to undermine anyone who questioned the official story of the Kennedy assassination. It was part of what he called “a whisper campaign against critics of the Warren Commission,” whose investigation JFK truthers have found unsatisfactory and obfuscatory for decades. DeHaven-Smith and others point to a batch of Warren Commission documents released to the New York Times under a FOIA request in 1976. A CIA memo included in the documents showed that the agency was indeed concerned with alternate theories of the assassination, and with “countering and discrediting them,” it said, “so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries.” … Though the term was used long before he claims it was, there’s still some degree of truth to deHaven-Smith’s premise, according to Kathryn Olmsted. Public officials began adopting the term only “on a regular basis in the late ’60s in reference to the Kennedy assassination,” she said. “There might have been isolated incidents before then, but it wasn’t widespread.” — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 97

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that CIA sought to discredit assassination-doubters while the term itself predates the CIA is a useful nuance for the vault’s conspiracy-belief claims.
• XREF: Connects to authoritarianism epistemic-style claims in the vault: state-managed labeling of dissent as irrational. — connects to: Political actors can legitimize conspiracy theories by inspiring new investigation into them — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 432

Broader Connections

• Political actors can legitimize conspiracy theories by inspiring new investigation into them #expands (0.72) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 432