President Lyndon B. Johnson hastily created the Warren Commission to respond to the fears of an international conspiracy, subsume a possible investigation by the Texas attorney general, and answer the political questions that were prompted by John F. Kennedy's assassination. Gerald D. McKnight joins those who have argued that the members of the commission, in the words of his subtitle, “failed the nation.” The Warren Commission, he argues, was a cover-up.

McKnight notes that even before the commission met, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover, was certain that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only gunman, and he convinced both President Johnson and the commission members that they needed to look no further. To McKnight, Hoover was the major culprit behind the failure of the commission. Hoover kept information from the commission and ensured that its chief counsel was a man he could work with, rather than Chairman Earl Warren's first choice. He gained even more influence over the commission through internal commission information provided by commission member and future president, Gerald R. Ford.