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SHOW BUSINESS has discovered the John F. Kennedy assassination.Everybody is getting into the act. We have all sorts of phony theories that help hucksters sell themselves as expert witnesses, write and promote books and films and generally muck up the story of an American tragedy.To those of us who have spent years in serious study of the assassination, the hype is extremely frustrating. We know what's wheat and what's chaff, what's based on solid evidence and what's created from thin air to promote someone's half-cocked theory.

A headline in yesterday's editions of The Sun incorrectly stated that the federal government might attempt to halt an auction of John F. Kennedy memorabilia. The government is disputing the sale of certain items at the auction, not the auction itself.The Sun regrets the error.Federal officials threatened yesterday to block the sale of items from a 600-piece collection of John F. Kennedy memorabilia scheduled to be auctioned next week, saying they belong to the American people or contain classified national security information.

NEW YORK -- Once it was shiny and new, the fine, black alligator briefcase that a father bought for his son to symbolize the launch of a promising career.The son and the briefcase fulfilled those dreams of ambition: Together they went, through the halls of Congress, to the Senate and, triumphantly, to the White House. Along the way, the handle had to be repaired and the edges frayed a bit, but the owner would not replace the trusty carrier.How the briefcase of John F. Kennedy ended here, on an auction block in New York -- even though JFK's children had staked their own claim to this particular piece of Camelot -- is an emblematic tale of the '90s.

Bruce Greenwood has a Baltimore connection he doesn't even remember. From 1986 to 1988, he played the egotistical, self-centered Dr. Seth Griffin on NBC's "St. Elsewhere." And Dr. Griffin was a Hopkins med school grad. "That's really flipping back through the files a long way," Greenwood laughs, regarding his interviewer at Washington's St. Regis Hotel with a look that says, "You've got way too much free time on your hands." Of course, he's too polite to come out and say something so cruel.

WASHINGTON -- In the long wait leading up to this week's release of filmmaker Oliver Stone's "Nixon," the main question from defenders of historical accuracy was this: Would Mr. Stone once again run roughshod over the facts with the same kind of fake authenticity that marred his earlier, controversial film, "JFK"?The answer is no. Mr. Stone seems to have been reined in by the widespread and justified criticism of the special brand of cinematic deception that enabled him in "JFK" to present conspiratorial conjectures as actual events you could see with your own eyes.

For decades, inside locked file cabinets and steamer trunks at her Chevy Chase apartment, President John F. Kennedy's personal secretary kept a priceless collection of heirlooms ranging from JFK's campaign buttons to Jackie Kennedy's engraved perfume bottles.Now, in legal battles as stormy as the Cuban missile crisis symbolized in her mementos, the late Evelyn Lincoln's private collection of JFK memorabilia is causing not just envy but enmity.Her estate -- modest but for a fortune in treasures from the Kennedy era -- has prompted fights over who is entitled to the collector's items in her husband's will.

IN September 1988 I arrived in the United States from Britain intending to write the first complete life of President John F. Kennedy, from his birth in 1917 to his assassination in 1963.I was graciously welcomed by Jacqueline Onassis (my father had been a friend of JFK and of Robert F. Kennedy).Sen. Edward Kennedy promised a series of interviews about his own family background, his grandfather John (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald, his parents and, above all, his elder brother. Unfortunately, Senator Kennedy canceled the interviews in 1989.

"Name-Dropping: From F.D.R. On," by John Kenneth Galbraith. Houghton Mifflin. 194 pages. $26.Flip to the JFK chapter in "Name-Dropping." It tells all we need to know about John Kenneth Galbraith's slender reminiscence of the great public figures of his time.Galbraith's often repeated (and unprovable) assertion that Kennedy would have ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam, had he lived, is of little interest. No, what we want, since you're dropping names, Ken, is the dirt on JFK's sex life.After decades of debate, and now that Jackie is gone, it's past time to hear the inside story.

There's a new miniseries that shows new women whom John F. Kennedy allegedly made love to -- lots and lots of them.There's a new "Frontline" report that reveals what it calls new evidence showing that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the gun that killed John Kennedy in Dallas.And there's yet another new CBS special featuring anchorman Dan Rather which the network says could be the "final" chapter in TV's favorite unsolved mystery: Who killed JFK?In all, more than a dozen hours of new Kennedy-related prime-time programming will wash across our TV screens in coming days as the 30th anniversary of the assassination of JFK is commemorated.

JOHN F. KENNEDY'S 74th birthday anniversary came and went this week with hardly a notice. The family probably has mixed emotions about that.On the one hand, they like to keep the murdered president's name and accomplishments before the generations that came after him. On the other hand, they have come to expect nothing but bad publicity and insults whenever a Kennedy attracts attention.In a new biography, JFK is described as irresponsible, self-indulgent, neurotically promiscuous, lacking intellectual, moral or philosophical vision, interested in winning elections only because he enjoyed winning, not because he really cared for the offices he sought, interested in power only because he enjoyed exercising it, not because he enjoyed achieving the goals power made possible.