"The idea that Kennedy was a victim of the far right surfaced the day after the assassination in an influential article by James Reston on the front page of the New York Times. Reston was then chief of the Times Washington bureau, and his piece ran under the headline: 'Why America Weeps: Kennedy Victim of Violent Streak He Sought to Curb in the Nation.' Reston wrote, America wept tonight, not alone for its dead young president, but
for itself. The grief was general, for somehow the worst in the nation
had prevailed over the best. The indictment extended beyond the
assassin, for something in the nation itself, some strain of madness
and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order.
He continued to develop this theme: 'The irony of the President's death,' he wrote, 'is that his short administration was devoted almost entirely to various attempts to curb this very streak of violence in the American character.' He went on to observe that, 'from the beginning to the end of his administration, he was trying to damp down the violence of extremists on the Right.' The fact that the assassin was a violent extremist from the left did not deter Reston. He blamed the right wing notwithstanding the fact that a detailed article listing Oswald's Communist associations ran adjacent to his article." James Piereson