23 ms·

New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

291 points by morby 3y ago

koolba 3y ago
> Landis saw and did something that he has kept secret for six decades, he says now. He claims he spotted a bullet resting on the top of the back of the seat. He says he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and brought it into the hospital. Then, upon entering Trauma Room No. 1 (at that stage, he was the only nonmedical person in the room besides Mrs. Kennedy, and both stayed for only a short period), he insists, he placed the bullet on a white cotton blanket on the president’s stretcher. The revelation is that the bullet was not lodged in JFK and did not fall out while shaking about on the gurney.
- Trombone12 3y ago
  And how does that upend anything? That it fell out already in the car does not seem dramatically different from it falling out after shaking Kennedy a bit.
  - jgalt212 3y ago
    I don't know about that, but I do know that Vanity Fair seems to have an entire department devoted to the The Kennedy's.
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    According to the Warren Commission, the bullet was on Connally's stretcher and presumably fell out of Connally. So if true (not that we can really know at this point) if the pristine bullet was retrieved from Kennedy's car then yes, that would upend everything.
    - thinkharderdev 3y ago
      They were in the same car
      - JohnBooty 3y ago
        Ah, thanks. Sorry. I meant "Kennedy's car seat" and not, "Kennedy's car."
  - ttctciyf 3y ago
    > how does that upend anything? If the story in the article is true, the bullet Landis found - i.e. the famous "magic bullet" - could not have wounded both Kennedy and Governor Connally and have been shot from the Book Depository (to Kennedy's rear) as the so-called single-bullet theory[0] requires, so it upends the Warren Commission's version of the assassination completely. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      There is nothing magical about the bullet. The governor was sitting in front and to the right of Kennedy as you can see here: * https://spacecoastdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/JFK-Assassination-580-2.jpg https://spacecoastdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/JFK-A... look at the arms. Kennedy is resting his arm on the car frame and Connally cannot. The seat he is in is not lined up with where Kennedy is. The bullet needs no magic to go in a straight line.
      - ttctciyf 3y ago
        "Magic bullet" is just the most recognisable name for CE399[0], nothing supernatural implied by my use of it. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory
- morby 3y ago
  I would probably add some major points to this synopsis. The bullet was believed to have been on Connally’s stretcher. It is the “magic bullet”. The pristine bullet that was supposed to have hit JFK and Connally both. The assumption here is that it did not penetrate through JFK. That it came from the wound in his back. This would upend the investigative findings that the bullet in this back was responsible for the neck wound and the injury to the governor. It’s a rather drastic change to the record.
  - morby 3y ago
    To add to that. The author details how this new detail subsequently alters the version of events. Namely it suggests that the bullet that hit JFK in the back and hit Connally were two different bullets and that they could not have been fired at that rate (the rate suggested by the video evidence) with the weapon used by Oswald
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
      In other words, there can only have been more than one shooter. Not just Oswald.
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        So the shooter was working with Oswald, or it was a coincidence? I'd like to know who would sign up for anything with Oswald -- probably the most unreliable and untethered person you would have been able to find in the SW USA at the time. All of these conspiracy theories would die if those taking them seriously would just sit down and read the Warren report. If you can then find something specific in the evidence or conclusions that is wrong or illogical or seems like it was covered up in the report, please point it out.
        cool_dude85 3y ago
- becquerel 3y ago
  Crazy that he chose to keep this secret for six decades. I wonder what possible reason he could have to bring it up now. Hmm, hmm, hmm.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Well, JFK’s nephew is running for president.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      I thought maybe it had to do with all of the people believing JFK is coming back to Dallas
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > Crazy that he chose to keep this secret for six decades. I wonder what possible reason he could have to bring it up now. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Maybe because he's 88 years old and likely to die soon? More or less a deathbed confession. Consider that Watergate's "Deep Throat" Mark Felt only came forward at age 91.
    - Simulacra 3y ago
      Mark Felt had more to lose, this guy might just be looking for a payday
    - emmelaich 3y ago
      Speaking of Mark Felt, this article is fascinating. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/10/watergate-deep-throat-myth-mark-felt-215591/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/10/watergate...
  - Sunhold 3y ago
    The article discusses this in detail.
  - stevage 3y ago
    Same reason Carly Simon revealed who was so vain.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  The revelation is that the bullet was not lodged in JFK and did not fall out while shaking about on the gurney. I'm sorry, this is not correct. This pristine bullet was previously thought to have been found on Connally's stretcher, not JFK's stretcher. It was thought that this bullet traveled into JFK from the rear, exited his throat, and then wounded Connally. If Landis' claim is true, that would upend entirely the Warren commission's findings. Of course, we probably can't really know the truth at this point. But the article makes a solid case for it being quite likely true.
  - lucas_membrane 3y ago
    > If Landis' claim is true, that would upend entirely the Warren commission's findings. Not so. Three shots were fired according to about 85% of the witnesses. Previously, we had a missing bullet. The bullet Landis found might be that missing bullet, previously explained as having vanished someplace in Dealey Plaza. Oswald may have fired it while his view of the limo was partially obscured by the tree. If it made some slight contact with the tree, it might have caused the small bit of flying debris that nicked one of the spectators, then continuing its flight at a lesser speed, hit Kennedy's back, popped out of his back, and been found by Landis. The other magic bullet the Warren Commission may have figured out pretty accurately. Which bullet was the one found at Parkland? Given all the unanticipated mayhem that day, it could have been either one, but one would not expect that both of two wandering bullets would have been found. Many's the detective who has been baffled by red-headed identical twins.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Landis' behaviour strikes me as being very peculiar. Shouldn't he have attempted to preserve evidence on the bullet rather than simply putting it into his pocket?
  - hyperhopper 3y ago
    I am also skeptical of Landis, but what do you mean about preserving evidence? It's a bullet. It just was next to an explosion that cleared it most most evidence. Then the barrel rifling altered the metal. That would not be harmed by picking it up. Then it went through jfk. Okay, we already know his DNA is on it. The real question is why are you picking up random things from a crime scene and then putting them down in a hospital stretcher.
    - Someone 3y ago
      Picking up the bullet destroys the evidence of the exact location it ended up in.
      - Aeolun 3y ago
        So would the car accellerating after the bullet landed there. Picking it up and putting it on the stretcher seems plausible?
      - grotorea 3y ago
        Would he be expected to know we would spend decades doing ballistic studies on that bullet trajectory in the heat of the moment?
    - Tao3300 3y ago
      > The real question is why are you picking up random things Probably seemed like a good idea at the time. My wife was in car accident once where the airbag deployed. For some reason her immediate reaction was to roll down the window. People in stressful and perilous situations sometimes do things that make no sense.
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
I don't know why people are so obsessed with this conspiracy theory. Occam's Razor says it was Oswald. Why invest time speculating and arguing over it when there is no way to verify anything? This new revelation doesn't change anything, it's just hearsay.
- morby 3y ago
  It’s an amazing bit of history. Leaders of major powers have regularly been assassinated in history. Here the leader of a globally hegemonic nation was assassinated on camera.
  - neom 3y ago
    Google tells me the number of leaders/former leaders assassinations in recent history that have been caught on camera is indeed very low. Kennedy, Gaddafi, Shinzo Abe, Benazir Bhutto, Yitzhak Rabin, Rajiv Gandhi, Anwar Sadat.
    - gordian-not 3y ago
      Rabin assassination has a pretty weird conspiracy theory though
      - rightbyte 3y ago
        These ones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin_assassination_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin_assassination_co... The bullet points seem to be mostly confusion at the scene and shitty police work afterwards. What is the conspiracy. That he was not killed at that spot, but later by the secret service? Like "that guy fired blanks at him, lets kill the PM and frame him"?
        gordian-not 3y ago
        I never really understood the logic because it is deeply oxymoronic. People that generally wanted him dead (ultra right) think that he was killed by the secret service (presumably left) and Yigal Amir (ultra right) was framed. But it is something about putting blank bullets in order to gather support with a fake assassination and then he was really killed by the Shabak on order of Shimon Peres (but can’t say that’s verbatim) It always seemed even less internally consistent than most JFK theories
gordian-not 3y ago
[flagged]
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Maybe he should’ve done it earlier in his life
- lapcat 3y ago
  He's 88 years old and has been sitting on this information not cashing in for 60 years.
  - arrowsmith 3y ago
    Maybe his grandkids need money for college.
    - Apocryphon 3y ago
      Great-grandkids even
      - dylan604 3y ago
        or just trying to pay off the existing student debt for the grandkids
        ManuelKiessling 3y ago
        Wait, now it all makes sense: Biden‘s student loan relief program existed only to prevent this book from being written, but the plan failed! Man, conspiracy theories are so easy — fun even!
  - kasey_junk 3y ago
    But he does have a book coming out now…
pella 3y ago
NYT version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37451699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37451699
empath-nirvana 3y ago
The problem with conversations about this topic and similar topics (9/11) is that almost no-one who cares about the topic deeply enough to have an argument about it online is interested because they're just super into ballistics and forensics and don't care about the political implications. It's all motivated reasoning because they don't like the _implications_ of the official story for whatever reason (or, alternatively, the conspiratorial reading), or they're selling something to the people who don't like the official story (or the conspiracy). You think you're having an argument with someone about the facts and what you're actually doing is having a conversation with someone who is deeply invested in defending their _entire world view_ which means they just can't accept whatever argument you're trying to make. You can go after each argument they make and dispense with them in turn, and they'll continue to invent new ones -- for decades if they have to. It's like trying to argue with a christian fundamentalist about the logical impossibilities of noah's ark. And it really doesn't matter _who is right_. Nobody is going to be arguing in good faith about it. Probably if you're about to comment on this post, you've got some motivated reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with finding out what really happened.
- jddj 3y ago
  And sadly the list of topics for which this is an excellent description of human behaviour seems to grow steadily.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Probably if you're about to comment on this post, you've got some motivated reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with finding out what really happened. I'm not sure that's true in this case. I remember 9/11, but I wasn't even born yet when the Kennedy assassination happened. I doubt that many people under age 70 remember that personally. It doesn't really have emotional salience for most people now. For me, it's merely a curiosity, and I can't say that the truth of the matter is important to me either way. Even if there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, I don't see how it's relevant to current politics, and the possible players involved are no longer relevant either. Joe Biden himself, old as he is, was only 21 at the time and still in college.
notorandit 3y ago
It sounds as silly as precisely identifying and numbering who killed Caesar. Those murders changed the history. Just like those non-murders would have done. History took its turns back then. Knowing the precise identity and number of killers won't give any extra useful detail. IMHO.
- throw_m239339 3y ago
  > Knowing the precise identity and number of killers won't give any extra useful detail. Yes it does matter, if the official story established by the Warren commission is not true, it does matter to know why was Kennedy assassinated and by whom exactly, because Kennedy's death has had so many worldwide implications, that this isn't even just about USA. If that story is ever debunked one day, factually, it will change the future of the USA. If the government lied about all that, then what other things the US government lied about? It will shake the very foundations of that country. It's literally the definition of a smoking gun, no pun.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > Kennedy's death has had so many worldwide implications Which implications exactly? > If the government lied about all that, then what other things the US government lied about? It will shake the very foundations of that country. I mean... we already know that the government has lied about countless things. However, Paul Landis is not claiming that the government lied. He's merely claiming that he himself withheld important information from the government.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      Precisely. They list of groups that might have pulled the trigger on Kennedy is dozens long. Knowing which one did, decades later, really changes nothing.
      - morby 3y ago
        Well why study history at all? Nothing in it has any more impact on us, no? Why try to determine who murdered a person even if it was decades later and the killer might be alive? It doesn’t matter anymore right? I’m not in the conspiracy theorist crowd, but the “doesn’t matter anymore” crowd is disappointing.
circumlocution 3y ago
To those who haven't seen it, I'd really recommend Lemmino's video on the assassination https://youtu.be/5u7euN1HTuU?feature=shared https://youtu.be/5u7euN1HTuU?feature=shared He dives pretty deep into the details, and it helped me form my own opinion of what probably happened
- Ylpertnodi 3y ago
  What is your own opinion of what probably happened?
  - circumlocution 3y ago
    I didn't read all the source material researched for the video myself, so I'd take all this with a grain of salt, but I personally consider Lemmino reliable. Based on his presentation of the evidence I think it was just Lee Harvey Oswald taking an attack of opportunity. It seems likely he was working at the building by happenstance, heard/read that the motercade would pass by, and hasily planned the assassination in secret. He had a motive that doesn't require any conspiracy as he was self admittedly a marxist and was described as "unstable". To me, his murder of a police officer immediately following the assassination is indicative of mental instability rather than a carefully planned conspiracy. I also consider the reports of multiple gunshots unreliable; I remember being nearby Parliment in Ottawa during the 2014 shootings at Parliment Hill. There was incredible confusion when it started, and rumours and miscommunications travelled at lightning speed since everyone feared for their lives. At first there were reports of multiple gunman in several different locations near the actual shooting because of echoes off of nearby buildings and return fire from police. Really it was a lone gunman, and despite those inital reports I'm not aware of any conspiracies about the whole event. I think the true conspiracy, if any, was that any of the people involved who failed in their role to prevent the assassination of the president by a lone unstable man, or to conduct a flawless investigation following it, were incentivized to bend evidence and testimoney in their favour (whether unconsciously or intentionally). I don't think this was done out of malice, rather, who would want to admit to any actions that could conceivably invite criticism? In the article itself he provides several (perhaps reasonable) reasons for why he moved the bullet at all, probably to defend against criticism that leaving all evidence in place (seems to me) would have been the best course of action. As for the article itself, human memory is notoriously unreliable (even shortly after shocking events like this), so even if he beleives he is telling the truth, and isn't interested in the profit motive, I don't think it's compelling enough evidence to believe in a conspiracy beyond human fallacy.
Simulacra 3y ago
Such a statement about the "magic bullet" leaves me with tremendous doubt. This idea that he put a pristine bullet that he found in the limousine, which later became the magic bullet, but somehow it got switched, just seems too far-fetched for me. All these years he never told anyone? It is completely different from his written statement at the time. After all these years, I call BS.
fsh 3y ago
The recollections of an 88 year old person about an event 60 years ago are simply not credible. He may truly remember picking up the bullet, but that doesn't mean it actually happened. Since he didn't mention it in his memos at the time, it probably didn't.
- indymike 3y ago
  > The recollections of an 88 year old person about an event 60 years ago are simply not credible. My experience with aging family members is that their memory of old events tends to improve as their short-term memory seems to get worse. I've had family memebers not remember where an object is, and from their nursing home bed, when asked about "what happened to ___?" reply with remarkable accuracy - to the point we were able to find several family heirlooms (photos from WWII that were lost in the 1960s, an old service rifle, old writings, paintings) right where they said it was. I wonder if perhaps that is the case here.
  - fsh 3y ago
    I have had aging family members who remembered things that cannot possibly have happened. Going beyond anecdotes, false memories are a well known and empirically studied effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory
deleted 3y ago
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neonate 3y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20230910120240/https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/new-jfk-assassination-revelation-upend-lone-gunman http://web.archive.org/web/20230910120240/https://www.vanity... https://archive.ph/W6A0z https://archive.ph/W6A0z
kelnos 3y ago
Even if Landis is being honest to the best of his ability, this account seems suspect for one simple reason: human memory is incredibly unreliable even in routine cases. Considering the stress and trauma around witnessing and being so close to an awful event like that, as well as the amount of time that has passed, I don't see how we can consider this story to be even remotely reliable. He may truly remember these events as he is describing them, even if what he's described never actually happened. That's unfortunately how (poorly) human memory works.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  I agree. Having gone through stuff I know how my mind can distort / hallucinate stuff in confusing / high stress situations. Even without questioning the person's honesty.. your brain is not a high quality source of information.
  - cjbgkagh 3y ago
    Totally, that's why I don't trust anything anyone says, ever. I can't trust that my fallible brain is hearing what people are saying correctly, so even if they're right my understanding of what they're saying may still be wrong.
    - bbor 3y ago
      There is no such thing as knowledge, just justified beliefs ;)
- WalterBright 3y ago
  My dad kept a diary during his WW2 duty. In his 80's, he read it and was shocked to discover it did not line up with his memories.
  - paint 3y ago
    Interesting! Without going into personal details, can you explain what sort of incongruence he found between his diary and his memory? I sometimes keep a diary, for example when I go on long trips that are different from my day-to-day life. I try to be as accurate as possible, but sometimes i notice what i write isn't fully representative of my state of mind at the time, simply because when you're writing stuff down (especially when you're writing with a pen and paper (slow!)), you can never fully capture all the concurrent thoughts and emotions you're experiencing, so its impossible for a diary to be fully accurate. Undoubtedly, e.g. Elizabeth Loftus has done a lot of prominent research in that field, our memories tend to be fallible, but maybe that's part of the reason?
chaostheory 3y ago
He should have spoken up 2-3 decades earlier for better credibility. Internally, the KGB considered the JFK assassination as a coup
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  By whom? And did they consider it successful?
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/27/560345132/documents-offer-insights-into-soviet-view-of-jfks-assassination https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/27/560345132...
EMM_386 3y ago
What I find most intriguing about the JFK assassination is the fact that parts of it still can't be declassified. In 1992, Congress passed a law saying everything was to be declassified in 25 years. October 2017 came and went, and the FBI blocked around 7,500 documents from release. The DEA didn't want CI names related to organized crime in them. The State Department blocked some due to "national security and foreign affairs concerns". Trump claimed while running for President that he was now going to release everything, yet the FBI and CIA stepped in again and those plans changed. Trump finally said he couldn't release them due to some being "of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure". So they remain secret, 60 years later.
- ip26 3y ago
  What’s the anti-conspiratorial explanation for that? I can imagine a million different things they’d love to hide, but what would the legitimate, honest/harmless reason?
  - h2odragon 3y ago
    Hypothetical: They checked with an agent who is deep / high up in some foreign agency and he said "wasnt us." that agent retired but helped recruit others. those may have retired and helped recruit others. Just that one connection in a file, "we asked agent $name and he said $agency knew nothing" might be justifiable to keep secret if theres a connection to someone still active.
    - throw_m239339 3y ago
      > Hypothetical: They checked with an agent who is deep / high up in some foreign agency and he said "wasnt us." that agent retired but helped recruit others. those may have retired and helped recruit others. > Just that one connection in a file, "we asked agent $name and he said $agency knew nothing" might be justifiable to keep secret if theres a connection to someone still active. The names of the agents would be redacted at first place on declassified material.
pookah 3y ago
[dead]
shrimpx 3y ago
Bill Hicks was right.
xyzelement 3y ago
Not directly related to this article, but I found the lone gunman theory much easier to accept after visiting the museum in the former book depository in Dallas. You can look down onto the plaza from the exact spot Oswald shot from, and you can easily imagine how the bullet fired from there would go through JFK and into the governor sitting in front of him. Not that this proves anything, it was just a "oh, I can tangibly see it" feeling that I didn't get from reading about it. For some reason the view from Oswald's window isn't in popular knowledge although you can find plenty of pictures.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Similar: recent PR photos made it "click" for me that modern stealthy aircraft look exactly like "flying saucer" UFOs from the front. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/politics/b-21-stealth-bomber-air-force/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/politics/b-21-stealth-bomber-...
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Everyone knows that modern stealth aircraft looks like that, but that is not what has been causing the recent furor.
    - tomrod 3y ago
      Furor which may well have been caused by unacknowledged aircraft like the above. But who knows, maybe an intelligence or sapience from another world just wants to confuse people, or something similar in the long probability tail of life experience in this universe.
      - sekh60 3y ago
        Aliens are doing for the lulz.
        tomrod 3y ago
pseingatl 3y ago
The article suggests that Landis' come to Jesus moment came after reading Josih Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas. Three years ago Thompson wrote another book, Last Seconds in Dallas in which he and an audio expert examined recently released magnetophone recordings. The inescapable conclusion is that there were two gunmen.
- distortionfield 3y ago
  That would line up with Landis’ statements now: he claims to have heard a louder, different shot, which was ultimately the fatal blow.
- philistine 3y ago
  The second gunmen doesn't require a conspiracy to explain. Oswald fired two shots: one in Kennedy's back which did not fully penetrate, and one through his neck which hit Connally. Then, in the ensuing confusion, a Secret Service agent following the motorcade accidentally discharged his AR-15 in the back of Kennedy's head, killing him. The agent who pulled the trigger on the ground doesn't even need to realize he had done it; it's possible to accidentally discharge without realizing it.
  - defen 3y ago
    How would that agent eventually account for the missing round?
    - philistine 3y ago
      I don’t want to turn into a conspiration loonie but it might have been easy to make that little mishap disappear. The quality of the secret service back then was nothing compared to what it is now. I mean one of the reasons the secret service agent in the article didn’t come forward was because he got drunk with other secret service agents the night before the shooting and he didn’t want it to surface.
  - msrenee 3y ago
    Firing an Ak-15 and not realizing it? I know it was a hectic, stressful situation, but that gun has some kick to it.
WalterBright 3y ago
People just can't stand the idea that a lone nut could bring down Camelot.
thinkharderdev 3y ago
I didn't read the article but a few months ago I randomly came across https://www.posner.com/case-closed https://www.posner.com/case-closed and gave it a read. I haven't really read much else about the Kennedy assassination and the various conspiracy theories (certainly no other 400p books on the subject) but came away from the reading pretty impressed with the thoroughness of the argument. Spoiler alert, the argument is that the official story that Oswald acted alone is almost certainly correct and evidence to the contrary is entirely unconvincing when examined in detail.
- PaulRobinson 3y ago
  How does this book account for the magic bullet, an exit wound to the back of the head, gun smoke seem from another location, eyewitness reports of Oswald that make it impossible for him to make the shots in those timeframes, or the eyewitness reports of a "police officer" near the grassy knoll that was never accounted for or found? The magic bullet and exit wound - as seen on film kept from Americans for years - were enough to convince me the lone gunman theory was nonsense, but the rest of it also needs some accounting for.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    The magic bullet took a straight trajectory through Kennedy and Connolly. Modern theory is that they weren't seated in a straight line and Connolly was turned. Oswald could definitely have made the shots. He was a trained Marine marksman. There have been multiple tests showing that it is possible to make the shots. Kennedy had a small entry in back of the head. The explosion on top and side of head was not the entry wound. There isn't an exit wound because it was probably in damaged area so could say explosion was the exit wound. Remember that he was hit with rifle bullet that causes lots more damage than handgun.
    - PaulRobinson 3y ago
      But you can see from video evidence that they were sat aligned and Connolly was not turned. If you are in the room, you might be able to make the shots - although the FBI failed to, and Oswald was a lousy shot - but my main problem is that he could not have moved through the building as needed without being seen by some people, and not by others who did. The photos of Kennedy do not show a small wound in the back of the head. They are distressing for a number of reasons, not least they clearly show the back of the head has exploded out.
beowulfey 3y ago
At this point the effects of the JFK assassination are so far back in history that new knowledge of possibly real and alternative sequences of events should have little impact on society as it is now. Let’s say it was orchestrated by political enemies—what effect would this have on things today? The state of US government is so dramatically different from back then. This kind of discussion is really only interesting from a historical perspective. It doesn’t really have any bearing on modern politics or society.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- logicchains 3y ago
  >This kind of discussion is really only interesting from a historical perspective. It doesn’t really have any bearing on modern politics or society. This is completely untrue. Some of his family members suspect he was murdered by the US intelligence agencies for planning to curb their power. Given the intelligence agencies have even more power now than back then, and are still not held accountable for their actions, if they were indeed responsible for killing JFK that heightens the need for the public to come out in mass in support of candidates committed to breaking up or disbanding those agencies.
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    > This is completely untrue. Some of his family members suspect he was murdered by the US intelligence agencies for planning to curb their power. [...] the need for the public to come out in mass in support of candidates committed to breaking up or disbanding those agencies. The people have some kind of obligation to that but what looks like dynastic power is fine?
  - wheelerof4te 3y ago
    Completely agree. I'd even go further and say that those still living should be tried for high treason.
    - 3y ago
Octokiddie 3y ago
Cutting to the chase: > He claims he spotted a bullet resting on the top of the back of the seat. He says he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and brought it into the hospital. Then, upon entering Trauma Room No. 1 (at that stage, he was the only nonmedical person in the room besides Mrs. Kennedy, and both stayed for only a short period), he insists, he placed the bullet on a white cotton blanket on the president’s stretcher. > ... > Yet the bullet that Landis now claims to have discovered that morning emerged largely intact and only moderately damaged, its base having been squeezed in.
deleted 3y ago
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avgcorrection 3y ago
I don't understand why regular people care about this. If it was a conspiracy then some elite was killed by other elites. Conspiracies to kill relatively powerless people seems more interesting to me because it's The Man vs. the everyman.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  You wonder why people care if the president of our country was assassinated by some other group?
  - avgcorrection 3y ago
    That's what I said.
    - jazzyjackson 3y ago
      you have to remember this "elites vs the rest of us" is not a universal narrative, I wasn't around back then but I get the sense that a significant portion of the population believed that the government was actually doing work on behalf of the people, not in opposition.. "I’m from the government and I’m here to help." wasn't said til 1986
      - avgcorrection 3y ago
        You weren't around back then but you “get a sense”? This was the Civil rights movement era. But I guess you'll say that normies didn't care about that. > "I’m from the government and I’m here to help." wasn't said til 1986 Yes, we mustn't forget the pioneer of populism and anti-elitism Ronald Reagan.
- hyperhopper 3y ago
  It's because many people saw him as fighting for the everyman.
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  He was loved by the people. And he had ambition to deeply change the country. And let us not forget that one famous speech about a certain "conspiracy".
varelse 3y ago
[dead]
a2tech 3y ago
I used to be passingly interested in the conspiracy part of the JFK assassination until I watched this EXTENSIVE in length and sourced video on the assassination: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8tO16xdrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8tO16xdrY It's all very logical and straightforward.
- Tmpod 3y ago
  Recently watched this detailed and well sourced video by LEMMiNO on a particular prespective, might be of interesting for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU
  - bni 3y ago
    The production value in this one is amazing
- pliesfan97 3y ago
  I personally believe it's somewhat possible that there was some CIA involvement in JFK's assassination. I did not watch the entire video, but the part that addresses potential CIA involvement seems to have 2 main flaws IMO: 1. It only addresses the Vietnam War as a potential motive and "debunks" this motive. Geopolitics is complicated, and there are countless other potential motives, especially surrounding Cuba and the CIA's involvement there (Bay of Pigs, etc). The parts of the video I watched (including part 2) did not seem to address this at all. Eliminating one motive does not by any means eliminate the possibility of CIA involvement. 2. The video's creator seems to assume that CIA's involvement would consist of "hiring" Oswald to perform the assassination and that Oswald would have full awareness of the plans, etc. This is not the only scheme in which a conspiracy may have taken place, and in fact seems like a highly unlikely and unsophisticated scheme. It seems much more likely that Oswald was "used" rather than "hired" and that he was either convinced or coerced to shoot Kennedy. This is how murderous intelligence organizations do their dirty work (the CIA is known to have killed people) - via coercion, power, politics, propaganda, and not via direct orders or contracts. Assuming my theory is correct (of which I do not have certainty), Oswald likely had his own motives to wanting to shoot Kennedy, but it required a conspiracy to actually get him to carry through with it. This model of the relationships and dynamics involved seems entirely foreign to the video's creator and is completely unaddressed. In general, discourse around the JFK assassination and potential conspiracies focuses way too much on the shooting itself - ballistic physics, positions of possible shooters, analysis of film. This is a complete distraction from the more important question which is around Lee Harvey Oswald's incredibly suspicious relationships and contacts with known CIA people.
soderfoo 3y ago
A great and semi related book is The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
  +1. The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War is a great complimentary biopic.
AndyMcConachie 3y ago
It's wild that people still talk about the Warren Commission as having any relevance. The House Select Committee on Assassinations is the last thing the government 'officially' said on the case and they concluded there was a conspiracy and most likely not a lone gunman.
jmyeet 3y ago
I highly suggest people go watch "inside the book Depository" [1]. It's long but it gives a good overview of the sequence of events and the discrepancies. Thing is, it's not a conspiracy theorist video. The best part of the video is the last segment where the creator uses all the examples to show just how unreliable eyewitness testimony is, even when fresh let alone decades later. They go on to say that pretty much any conspiracy theory relies on cherry-picking certain details as irrefutable while ignoring others and this is esentially an arbitrary decision based on whatever narrative someone is pushing. Additionally, the details supposedly changed never make sense for a conspiracy that is supposedly powerful enough to arrange all this. Lastly, people often see things through a modern lens. Presidential security is a big one. JFK used to stop his motorcade and go into the crowd. Anyone with a handgun could've ended him. These people weren't all frisked and vetted. It was a different time. JFK's assassination is probably a big part of why presidential security changed. So the idea that you needed to have or be a sniper (or a team of snipers) is a silly one and based on modern assumptions. Myths in this area persist too despite them being debunked. One that springs to mind is that you couldn't fire Oswald's rifle fast enough. CBS and the FBI tested and debunked this in the 1960s [2]. When this happens you'll often find the conspiracy theory moves the goalposts from it being "impossible" to "very hard". I'm sure it was hard but Oswald was also irrefutably a Marine-trained shooter. Personally my theory is that any mystery surrounding JFK is much like that of 9-11: intelligence agencies caught with their pants down, not wanting to upset allies and/or not wanting to expose intelligence assets. The last point I'll make is a study was recently done on the link between narcissism and conspiracy theories [3]. Now this has a lot of relevance to why who gets sucked into QAnon and their political leanings. But it's relevant beyond that. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea that random things happen. They'd rather believe it's all part of a plan. It's almost preferable if it's a nefarious force as some people love to LARP as being oppressed or even just being brave warriors standing up for what's righteous. But this shares a lot of the psychology with those for a predilection for religion. And narcissim is the definition of main character syndrome. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_rifle#CBS_firing_test_in_1967 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_... [3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35816915/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35816915/
jjtheblunt 3y ago
if there were a way to set user-level filters on HN, i'd set one which drops all titles with subjunctive verbs (like the "could" here), everything about Elon Musk, etc. It would be interesting to analyze a collection of user-defined user-level customization filters, as some sort of zeitgeist.
raylad 3y ago
It was the conclusion of the House Select Committee on Assassinations that there was a high probability there were two gunmen. This was based on acoustical analysis of Dallas police radio recordings: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1b.html https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-repor...
- lostNFound 3y ago
  Another commenter linked a video which I’ll re-link[0]. Essentially the conclusion of the HSCA was, as you say, literally entirely based on that recording. If the recording hadn’t been there, the HSCA actually was on the verge of concluding the same as Warren. (In other words, if the recording evidence wasn’t there they would’ve concluded Oswald lone). The recording was, indeed, later found to not even be from the time of the shots but from an entirely different point in time, after police already noticed Kennedy shot. In that very recording, police officers say things in reaction to the shooting. After those voices, the “shots” from which the conclusion was drawn appear. Painfully obviously, that doesn’t make any sense. Also the recording was in an entirely different point in space too, as it wasn’t even from a bike in the motorcade, as the HSCA thought but it from a different 3-wheeled-motorcycle stationed where Kennedy would’ve been arriving. Drawing conclusions from that recording about the Kennedy shooting is probably less reliable than drawing them from the Live Aid concert version recording of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. In summary, after adjusting for that lone error in HSCA, Warren and HSCA concluded the same. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8tO16xdrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8tO16xdrY
damontal 3y ago
The movement of his head has led some to suggest there was a shooter in the sewer that the car passed.
robswc 3y ago
I honestly don't think there was a conspiracy... but I wouldn't be surprised to learn there was more to it, at the same time. I never gave it much thought but one day I saw a documentary and its like "damn, there's a lot of weird stuff to this." However, I think it also shows just how bad people's memory is _or_ how bad people are at extracting details from witnesses.
mcpackieh 3y ago
JFK was trying to stop Israel's nuclear weapons program: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kennedy-administration-policy-on-israel-rsquo-s-nuclear-program https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kennedy-administration-...
- JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
  Wow, yep. That'll do it.
- kahirsch 3y ago
  And Johnson continued those policies.
dahdum 3y ago
What a convenient revelation to have when it comes time to sell some books.
eurticket 3y ago
Wasn't there a documented operation that JFK didn't want to sign/rejected, that pertained to the CIA wanting to set up false flags to justify war against Cuba? Found it: Operation Northwoods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
- missedthecue 3y ago
  So the CIA killed JFK and then decided not to invade Cuba anyway?
  - harry8 3y ago
    Knowing nothing much about this there are still some obvious points to make. The CIA will not be one singular entity of one mind and focus. There will be factions in that organisation, there will be rogue elements. There does not have to be a grand master plan but there could be. There does not have to be uniform competence and there will not be. Operations go wrong all the time. Pieces will be moved into position at vast expense then not used for so many possible reasons. Further if it were a cia operation (and I have no idea about that) it may not have been intended to actually kill anyone and Oswald surprised people by his effectiveness. All sorts of wild stuff is plausible and you need evidence to assess it. Every huckster will trade on the doubt, there will be wishful thinking and genuine, directed official misinformation. Treating the CIA as an entity all marching in lock-step of one mind and purpose is an assumption that stretches plausibility and certainly requires evidence. Chaos is almost certainly a major factor in any explanation and indeed counts as the entirety of the official version of what happened and its aftermath.
voisin 3y ago
I seem to recall the bullet on the gurney story to figure fairly prominently in the latest JFK documentary by Oliver Stone. Am I mistaken? When I read this accounting it didn’t strike me as totally new but rather a vindication of a story that had been relegated to being a conspiracy?
rendall 3y ago
"As an international superstar, [Jackie Kennedy] was the Princess Di of her era..." Interesting turn of phrase. Princess Di was far closer a contemporary of Jackie Kennedy than either are today. I can't imagine there is a large audience of people who would understand the reference to Princess Di but not Jackie Kennedy. Like saying "Will Rogers was the Red Skelton of his era". Iykyk.
jwally 3y ago
If I'm the CIA and I have exclusive access to the President's food, transportation, calendar, etc...this isn't how I take him out. Plane malfunction, opiate overdose in bathtub, food poisoning. Plenty of other options with way higher probability for success.
- fatfingerd 3y ago
  You mean if you are in the Secret Service?
  - jwally 3y ago
    probably, lol! Or food service for that matter.
- offtrail 3y ago
  >this isn't how I take him out It is if you want to make it look like Cuba did it. They (the CIA) needed it to be public.
mannanj 3y ago
Isn't it pretty common knowledge now that CIA played an active role in Kennedy's assassination? Current Kennedy in 2023 running for President talks about this.
- _8j50 3y ago
  Do you have credible sources for that? The kennedy running for president is a racist nutjob so not very credible
LPavearoadi 3y ago
Don DeLillo's 'Libra' is sterling, convincingly colors the multiple-shooter narrative, and adds lots of depth to Oswald the man - a whole biography really. It is a novel, therefore fiction; but, by now, what of the assassination's narrative isn't in question? Highly recommended. Link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libra_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libra_(novel)

291 points by morby 3y ago

> Landis saw and did something that he has kept secret for six decades, he says now. He claims he spotted a bullet resting on the top of the back of the seat. He says he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and brought it into the hospital. Then, upon entering Trauma Room No. 1 (at that stage, he was the only nonmedical person in the room besides Mrs. Kennedy, and both stayed for only a short period), he insists, he placed the bullet on a white cotton blanket on the president’s stretcher. The revelation is that the bullet was not lodged in JFK and did not fall out while shaking about on the gurney.

Trombone12 3y ago
And how does that upend anything? That it fell out already in the car does not seem dramatically different from it falling out after shaking Kennedy a bit.
- jgalt212 3y ago
  I don't know about that, but I do know that Vanity Fair seems to have an entire department devoted to the The Kennedy's.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  According to the Warren Commission, the bullet was on Connally's stretcher and presumably fell out of Connally. So if true (not that we can really know at this point) if the pristine bullet was retrieved from Kennedy's car then yes, that would upend everything.
  - thinkharderdev 3y ago
    They were in the same car
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      Ah, thanks. Sorry. I meant "Kennedy's car seat" and not, "Kennedy's car."
- ttctciyf 3y ago
  > how does that upend anything? If the story in the article is true, the bullet Landis found - i.e. the famous "magic bullet" - could not have wounded both Kennedy and Governor Connally and have been shot from the Book Depository (to Kennedy's rear) as the so-called single-bullet theory[0] requires, so it upends the Warren Commission's version of the assassination completely. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    There is nothing magical about the bullet. The governor was sitting in front and to the right of Kennedy as you can see here: * https://spacecoastdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/JFK-Assassination-580-2.jpg https://spacecoastdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/JFK-A... look at the arms. Kennedy is resting his arm on the car frame and Connally cannot. The seat he is in is not lined up with where Kennedy is. The bullet needs no magic to go in a straight line.
    - ttctciyf 3y ago
      "Magic bullet" is just the most recognisable name for CE399[0], nothing supernatural implied by my use of it. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-bullet_theory
morby 3y ago
I would probably add some major points to this synopsis. The bullet was believed to have been on Connally’s stretcher. It is the “magic bullet”. The pristine bullet that was supposed to have hit JFK and Connally both. The assumption here is that it did not penetrate through JFK. That it came from the wound in his back. This would upend the investigative findings that the bullet in this back was responsible for the neck wound and the injury to the governor. It’s a rather drastic change to the record.
- morby 3y ago
  To add to that. The author details how this new detail subsequently alters the version of events. Namely it suggests that the bullet that hit JFK in the back and hit Connally were two different bullets and that they could not have been fired at that rate (the rate suggested by the video evidence) with the weapon used by Oswald
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
    In other words, there can only have been more than one shooter. Not just Oswald.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      So the shooter was working with Oswald, or it was a coincidence? I'd like to know who would sign up for anything with Oswald -- probably the most unreliable and untethered person you would have been able to find in the SW USA at the time. All of these conspiracy theories would die if those taking them seriously would just sit down and read the Warren report. If you can then find something specific in the evidence or conclusions that is wrong or illogical or seems like it was covered up in the report, please point it out.
      - cool_dude85 3y ago
becquerel 3y ago
Crazy that he chose to keep this secret for six decades. I wonder what possible reason he could have to bring it up now. Hmm, hmm, hmm.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Well, JFK’s nephew is running for president.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    I thought maybe it had to do with all of the people believing JFK is coming back to Dallas
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Crazy that he chose to keep this secret for six decades. I wonder what possible reason he could have to bring it up now. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Maybe because he's 88 years old and likely to die soon? More or less a deathbed confession. Consider that Watergate's "Deep Throat" Mark Felt only came forward at age 91.
  - Simulacra 3y ago
    Mark Felt had more to lose, this guy might just be looking for a payday
  - emmelaich 3y ago
    Speaking of Mark Felt, this article is fascinating. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/10/watergate-deep-throat-myth-mark-felt-215591/ https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/10/watergate...
- Sunhold 3y ago
  The article discusses this in detail.
- stevage 3y ago
  Same reason Carly Simon revealed who was so vain.
JohnBooty 3y ago
The revelation is that the bullet was not lodged in JFK and did not fall out while shaking about on the gurney. I'm sorry, this is not correct. This pristine bullet was previously thought to have been found on Connally's stretcher, not JFK's stretcher. It was thought that this bullet traveled into JFK from the rear, exited his throat, and then wounded Connally. If Landis' claim is true, that would upend entirely the Warren commission's findings. Of course, we probably can't really know the truth at this point. But the article makes a solid case for it being quite likely true.
- lucas_membrane 3y ago
  > If Landis' claim is true, that would upend entirely the Warren commission's findings. Not so. Three shots were fired according to about 85% of the witnesses. Previously, we had a missing bullet. The bullet Landis found might be that missing bullet, previously explained as having vanished someplace in Dealey Plaza. Oswald may have fired it while his view of the limo was partially obscured by the tree. If it made some slight contact with the tree, it might have caused the small bit of flying debris that nicked one of the spectators, then continuing its flight at a lesser speed, hit Kennedy's back, popped out of his back, and been found by Landis. The other magic bullet the Warren Commission may have figured out pretty accurately. Which bullet was the one found at Parkland? Given all the unanticipated mayhem that day, it could have been either one, but one would not expect that both of two wandering bullets would have been found. Many's the detective who has been baffled by red-headed identical twins.
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Landis' behaviour strikes me as being very peculiar. Shouldn't he have attempted to preserve evidence on the bullet rather than simply putting it into his pocket?
- hyperhopper 3y ago
  I am also skeptical of Landis, but what do you mean about preserving evidence? It's a bullet. It just was next to an explosion that cleared it most most evidence. Then the barrel rifling altered the metal. That would not be harmed by picking it up. Then it went through jfk. Okay, we already know his DNA is on it. The real question is why are you picking up random things from a crime scene and then putting them down in a hospital stretcher.
  - Someone 3y ago
    Picking up the bullet destroys the evidence of the exact location it ended up in.
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      So would the car accellerating after the bullet landed there. Picking it up and putting it on the stretcher seems plausible?
    - grotorea 3y ago
      Would he be expected to know we would spend decades doing ballistic studies on that bullet trajectory in the heat of the moment?
  - Tao3300 3y ago
    > The real question is why are you picking up random things Probably seemed like a good idea at the time. My wife was in car accident once where the airbag deployed. For some reason her immediate reaction was to roll down the window. People in stressful and perilous situations sometimes do things that make no sense.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

I don't know why people are so obsessed with this conspiracy theory. Occam's Razor says it was Oswald. Why invest time speculating and arguing over it when there is no way to verify anything? This new revelation doesn't change anything, it's just hearsay.

morby 3y ago
It’s an amazing bit of history. Leaders of major powers have regularly been assassinated in history. Here the leader of a globally hegemonic nation was assassinated on camera.
- neom 3y ago
  Google tells me the number of leaders/former leaders assassinations in recent history that have been caught on camera is indeed very low. Kennedy, Gaddafi, Shinzo Abe, Benazir Bhutto, Yitzhak Rabin, Rajiv Gandhi, Anwar Sadat.
  - gordian-not 3y ago
    Rabin assassination has a pretty weird conspiracy theory though
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      These ones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin_assassination_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin_assassination_co... The bullet points seem to be mostly confusion at the scene and shitty police work afterwards. What is the conspiracy. That he was not killed at that spot, but later by the secret service? Like "that guy fired blanks at him, lets kill the PM and frame him"?
      - gordian-not 3y ago
        I never really understood the logic because it is deeply oxymoronic. People that generally wanted him dead (ultra right) think that he was killed by the secret service (presumably left) and Yigal Amir (ultra right) was framed. But it is something about putting blank bullets in order to gather support with a fake assassination and then he was really killed by the Shabak on order of Shimon Peres (but can’t say that’s verbatim) It always seemed even less internally consistent than most JFK theories

gordian-not 3y ago

[flagged]

Apocryphon 3y ago
Maybe he should’ve done it earlier in his life
lapcat 3y ago
He's 88 years old and has been sitting on this information not cashing in for 60 years.
- arrowsmith 3y ago
  Maybe his grandkids need money for college.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Great-grandkids even
    - dylan604 3y ago
      or just trying to pay off the existing student debt for the grandkids
      - ManuelKiessling 3y ago
        Wait, now it all makes sense: Biden‘s student loan relief program existed only to prevent this book from being written, but the plan failed! Man, conspiracy theories are so easy — fun even!
- kasey_junk 3y ago
  But he does have a book coming out now…

pella 3y ago

NYT version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37451699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37451699

empath-nirvana 3y ago

The problem with conversations about this topic and similar topics (9/11) is that almost no-one who cares about the topic deeply enough to have an argument about it online is interested because they're just super into ballistics and forensics and don't care about the political implications. It's all motivated reasoning because they don't like the _implications_ of the official story for whatever reason (or, alternatively, the conspiratorial reading), or they're selling something to the people who don't like the official story (or the conspiracy). You think you're having an argument with someone about the facts and what you're actually doing is having a conversation with someone who is deeply invested in defending their _entire world view_ which means they just can't accept whatever argument you're trying to make. You can go after each argument they make and dispense with them in turn, and they'll continue to invent new ones -- for decades if they have to. It's like trying to argue with a christian fundamentalist about the logical impossibilities of noah's ark. And it really doesn't matter _who is right_. Nobody is going to be arguing in good faith about it. Probably if you're about to comment on this post, you've got some motivated reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with finding out what really happened.

jddj 3y ago
And sadly the list of topics for which this is an excellent description of human behaviour seems to grow steadily.
deleted 3y ago
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lapcat 3y ago
> Probably if you're about to comment on this post, you've got some motivated reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with finding out what really happened. I'm not sure that's true in this case. I remember 9/11, but I wasn't even born yet when the Kennedy assassination happened. I doubt that many people under age 70 remember that personally. It doesn't really have emotional salience for most people now. For me, it's merely a curiosity, and I can't say that the truth of the matter is important to me either way. Even if there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, I don't see how it's relevant to current politics, and the possible players involved are no longer relevant either. Joe Biden himself, old as he is, was only 21 at the time and still in college.

notorandit 3y ago

It sounds as silly as precisely identifying and numbering who killed Caesar. Those murders changed the history. Just like those non-murders would have done. History took its turns back then. Knowing the precise identity and number of killers won't give any extra useful detail. IMHO.

throw_m239339 3y ago
> Knowing the precise identity and number of killers won't give any extra useful detail. Yes it does matter, if the official story established by the Warren commission is not true, it does matter to know why was Kennedy assassinated and by whom exactly, because Kennedy's death has had so many worldwide implications, that this isn't even just about USA. If that story is ever debunked one day, factually, it will change the future of the USA. If the government lied about all that, then what other things the US government lied about? It will shake the very foundations of that country. It's literally the definition of a smoking gun, no pun.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Kennedy's death has had so many worldwide implications Which implications exactly? > If the government lied about all that, then what other things the US government lied about? It will shake the very foundations of that country. I mean... we already know that the government has lied about countless things. However, Paul Landis is not claiming that the government lied. He's merely claiming that he himself withheld important information from the government.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Precisely. They list of groups that might have pulled the trigger on Kennedy is dozens long. Knowing which one did, decades later, really changes nothing.
    - morby 3y ago
      Well why study history at all? Nothing in it has any more impact on us, no? Why try to determine who murdered a person even if it was decades later and the killer might be alive? It doesn’t matter anymore right? I’m not in the conspiracy theorist crowd, but the “doesn’t matter anymore” crowd is disappointing.

circumlocution 3y ago

To those who haven't seen it, I'd really recommend Lemmino's video on the assassination https://youtu.be/5u7euN1HTuU?feature=shared https://youtu.be/5u7euN1HTuU?feature=shared He dives pretty deep into the details, and it helped me form my own opinion of what probably happened

Ylpertnodi 3y ago
What is your own opinion of what probably happened?
- circumlocution 3y ago
  I didn't read all the source material researched for the video myself, so I'd take all this with a grain of salt, but I personally consider Lemmino reliable. Based on his presentation of the evidence I think it was just Lee Harvey Oswald taking an attack of opportunity. It seems likely he was working at the building by happenstance, heard/read that the motercade would pass by, and hasily planned the assassination in secret. He had a motive that doesn't require any conspiracy as he was self admittedly a marxist and was described as "unstable". To me, his murder of a police officer immediately following the assassination is indicative of mental instability rather than a carefully planned conspiracy. I also consider the reports of multiple gunshots unreliable; I remember being nearby Parliment in Ottawa during the 2014 shootings at Parliment Hill. There was incredible confusion when it started, and rumours and miscommunications travelled at lightning speed since everyone feared for their lives. At first there were reports of multiple gunman in several different locations near the actual shooting because of echoes off of nearby buildings and return fire from police. Really it was a lone gunman, and despite those inital reports I'm not aware of any conspiracies about the whole event. I think the true conspiracy, if any, was that any of the people involved who failed in their role to prevent the assassination of the president by a lone unstable man, or to conduct a flawless investigation following it, were incentivized to bend evidence and testimoney in their favour (whether unconsciously or intentionally). I don't think this was done out of malice, rather, who would want to admit to any actions that could conceivably invite criticism? In the article itself he provides several (perhaps reasonable) reasons for why he moved the bullet at all, probably to defend against criticism that leaving all evidence in place (seems to me) would have been the best course of action. As for the article itself, human memory is notoriously unreliable (even shortly after shocking events like this), so even if he beleives he is telling the truth, and isn't interested in the profit motive, I don't think it's compelling enough evidence to believe in a conspiracy beyond human fallacy.

Simulacra 3y ago

Such a statement about the "magic bullet" leaves me with tremendous doubt. This idea that he put a pristine bullet that he found in the limousine, which later became the magic bullet, but somehow it got switched, just seems too far-fetched for me. All these years he never told anyone? It is completely different from his written statement at the time. After all these years, I call BS.

fsh 3y ago

The recollections of an 88 year old person about an event 60 years ago are simply not credible. He may truly remember picking up the bullet, but that doesn't mean it actually happened. Since he didn't mention it in his memos at the time, it probably didn't.

indymike 3y ago
> The recollections of an 88 year old person about an event 60 years ago are simply not credible. My experience with aging family members is that their memory of old events tends to improve as their short-term memory seems to get worse. I've had family memebers not remember where an object is, and from their nursing home bed, when asked about "what happened to ___?" reply with remarkable accuracy - to the point we were able to find several family heirlooms (photos from WWII that were lost in the 1960s, an old service rifle, old writings, paintings) right where they said it was. I wonder if perhaps that is the case here.
- fsh 3y ago
  I have had aging family members who remembered things that cannot possibly have happened. Going beyond anecdotes, false memories are a well known and empirically studied effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory

deleted 3y ago

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neonate 3y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20230910120240/https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/new-jfk-assassination-revelation-upend-lone-gunman http://web.archive.org/web/20230910120240/https://www.vanity... https://archive.ph/W6A0z https://archive.ph/W6A0z

kelnos 3y ago

Even if Landis is being honest to the best of his ability, this account seems suspect for one simple reason: human memory is incredibly unreliable even in routine cases. Considering the stress and trauma around witnessing and being so close to an awful event like that, as well as the amount of time that has passed, I don't see how we can consider this story to be even remotely reliable. He may truly remember these events as he is describing them, even if what he's described never actually happened. That's unfortunately how (poorly) human memory works.

agumonkey 3y ago
I agree. Having gone through stuff I know how my mind can distort / hallucinate stuff in confusing / high stress situations. Even without questioning the person's honesty.. your brain is not a high quality source of information.
- cjbgkagh 3y ago
  Totally, that's why I don't trust anything anyone says, ever. I can't trust that my fallible brain is hearing what people are saying correctly, so even if they're right my understanding of what they're saying may still be wrong.
  - bbor 3y ago
    There is no such thing as knowledge, just justified beliefs ;)
WalterBright 3y ago
My dad kept a diary during his WW2 duty. In his 80's, he read it and was shocked to discover it did not line up with his memories.
- paint 3y ago
  Interesting! Without going into personal details, can you explain what sort of incongruence he found between his diary and his memory? I sometimes keep a diary, for example when I go on long trips that are different from my day-to-day life. I try to be as accurate as possible, but sometimes i notice what i write isn't fully representative of my state of mind at the time, simply because when you're writing stuff down (especially when you're writing with a pen and paper (slow!)), you can never fully capture all the concurrent thoughts and emotions you're experiencing, so its impossible for a diary to be fully accurate. Undoubtedly, e.g. Elizabeth Loftus has done a lot of prominent research in that field, our memories tend to be fallible, but maybe that's part of the reason?

chaostheory 3y ago

He should have spoken up 2-3 decades earlier for better credibility. Internally, the KGB considered the JFK assassination as a coup

paulryanrogers 3y ago
By whom? And did they consider it successful?
- chaostheory 3y ago
  https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/27/560345132/documents-offer-insights-into-soviet-view-of-jfks-assassination https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/10/27/560345132...

EMM_386 3y ago

What I find most intriguing about the JFK assassination is the fact that parts of it still can't be declassified. In 1992, Congress passed a law saying everything was to be declassified in 25 years. October 2017 came and went, and the FBI blocked around 7,500 documents from release. The DEA didn't want CI names related to organized crime in them. The State Department blocked some due to "national security and foreign affairs concerns". Trump claimed while running for President that he was now going to release everything, yet the FBI and CIA stepped in again and those plans changed. Trump finally said he couldn't release them due to some being "of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure". So they remain secret, 60 years later.

ip26 3y ago
What’s the anti-conspiratorial explanation for that? I can imagine a million different things they’d love to hide, but what would the legitimate, honest/harmless reason?
- h2odragon 3y ago
  Hypothetical: They checked with an agent who is deep / high up in some foreign agency and he said "wasnt us." that agent retired but helped recruit others. those may have retired and helped recruit others. Just that one connection in a file, "we asked agent $name and he said $agency knew nothing" might be justifiable to keep secret if theres a connection to someone still active.
  - throw_m239339 3y ago
    > Hypothetical: They checked with an agent who is deep / high up in some foreign agency and he said "wasnt us." that agent retired but helped recruit others. those may have retired and helped recruit others. > Just that one connection in a file, "we asked agent $name and he said $agency knew nothing" might be justifiable to keep secret if theres a connection to someone still active. The names of the agents would be redacted at first place on declassified material.

pookah 3y ago

[dead]

shrimpx 3y ago

Bill Hicks was right.

xyzelement 3y ago

Not directly related to this article, but I found the lone gunman theory much easier to accept after visiting the museum in the former book depository in Dallas. You can look down onto the plaza from the exact spot Oswald shot from, and you can easily imagine how the bullet fired from there would go through JFK and into the governor sitting in front of him. Not that this proves anything, it was just a "oh, I can tangibly see it" feeling that I didn't get from reading about it. For some reason the view from Oswald's window isn't in popular knowledge although you can find plenty of pictures.

jjoonathan 3y ago
Similar: recent PR photos made it "click" for me that modern stealthy aircraft look exactly like "flying saucer" UFOs from the front. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/politics/b-21-stealth-bomber-air-force/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/02/politics/b-21-stealth-bomber-...
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Everyone knows that modern stealth aircraft looks like that, but that is not what has been causing the recent furor.
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Furor which may well have been caused by unacknowledged aircraft like the above. But who knows, maybe an intelligence or sapience from another world just wants to confuse people, or something similar in the long probability tail of life experience in this universe.
    - sekh60 3y ago
      Aliens are doing for the lulz.
      - tomrod 3y ago

pseingatl 3y ago

The article suggests that Landis' come to Jesus moment came after reading Josih Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas. Three years ago Thompson wrote another book, Last Seconds in Dallas in which he and an audio expert examined recently released magnetophone recordings. The inescapable conclusion is that there were two gunmen.

distortionfield 3y ago
That would line up with Landis’ statements now: he claims to have heard a louder, different shot, which was ultimately the fatal blow.
philistine 3y ago
The second gunmen doesn't require a conspiracy to explain. Oswald fired two shots: one in Kennedy's back which did not fully penetrate, and one through his neck which hit Connally. Then, in the ensuing confusion, a Secret Service agent following the motorcade accidentally discharged his AR-15 in the back of Kennedy's head, killing him. The agent who pulled the trigger on the ground doesn't even need to realize he had done it; it's possible to accidentally discharge without realizing it.
- defen 3y ago
  How would that agent eventually account for the missing round?
  - philistine 3y ago
    I don’t want to turn into a conspiration loonie but it might have been easy to make that little mishap disappear. The quality of the secret service back then was nothing compared to what it is now. I mean one of the reasons the secret service agent in the article didn’t come forward was because he got drunk with other secret service agents the night before the shooting and he didn’t want it to surface.
- msrenee 3y ago
  Firing an Ak-15 and not realizing it? I know it was a hectic, stressful situation, but that gun has some kick to it.

WalterBright 3y ago

People just can't stand the idea that a lone nut could bring down Camelot.

thinkharderdev 3y ago

I didn't read the article but a few months ago I randomly came across https://www.posner.com/case-closed https://www.posner.com/case-closed and gave it a read. I haven't really read much else about the Kennedy assassination and the various conspiracy theories (certainly no other 400p books on the subject) but came away from the reading pretty impressed with the thoroughness of the argument. Spoiler alert, the argument is that the official story that Oswald acted alone is almost certainly correct and evidence to the contrary is entirely unconvincing when examined in detail.

PaulRobinson 3y ago
How does this book account for the magic bullet, an exit wound to the back of the head, gun smoke seem from another location, eyewitness reports of Oswald that make it impossible for him to make the shots in those timeframes, or the eyewitness reports of a "police officer" near the grassy knoll that was never accounted for or found? The magic bullet and exit wound - as seen on film kept from Americans for years - were enough to convince me the lone gunman theory was nonsense, but the rest of it also needs some accounting for.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  The magic bullet took a straight trajectory through Kennedy and Connolly. Modern theory is that they weren't seated in a straight line and Connolly was turned. Oswald could definitely have made the shots. He was a trained Marine marksman. There have been multiple tests showing that it is possible to make the shots. Kennedy had a small entry in back of the head. The explosion on top and side of head was not the entry wound. There isn't an exit wound because it was probably in damaged area so could say explosion was the exit wound. Remember that he was hit with rifle bullet that causes lots more damage than handgun.
  - PaulRobinson 3y ago
    But you can see from video evidence that they were sat aligned and Connolly was not turned. If you are in the room, you might be able to make the shots - although the FBI failed to, and Oswald was a lousy shot - but my main problem is that he could not have moved through the building as needed without being seen by some people, and not by others who did. The photos of Kennedy do not show a small wound in the back of the head. They are distressing for a number of reasons, not least they clearly show the back of the head has exploded out.

beowulfey 3y ago

At this point the effects of the JFK assassination are so far back in history that new knowledge of possibly real and alternative sequences of events should have little impact on society as it is now. Let’s say it was orchestrated by political enemies—what effect would this have on things today? The state of US government is so dramatically different from back then. This kind of discussion is really only interesting from a historical perspective. It doesn’t really have any bearing on modern politics or society.

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logicchains 3y ago
>This kind of discussion is really only interesting from a historical perspective. It doesn’t really have any bearing on modern politics or society. This is completely untrue. Some of his family members suspect he was murdered by the US intelligence agencies for planning to curb their power. Given the intelligence agencies have even more power now than back then, and are still not held accountable for their actions, if they were indeed responsible for killing JFK that heightens the need for the public to come out in mass in support of candidates committed to breaking up or disbanding those agencies.
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  > This is completely untrue. Some of his family members suspect he was murdered by the US intelligence agencies for planning to curb their power. [...] the need for the public to come out in mass in support of candidates committed to breaking up or disbanding those agencies. The people have some kind of obligation to that but what looks like dynastic power is fine?
- wheelerof4te 3y ago
  Completely agree. I'd even go further and say that those still living should be tried for high treason.
  - 3y ago

Octokiddie 3y ago

Cutting to the chase: > He claims he spotted a bullet resting on the top of the back of the seat. He says he picked it up, put it in his pocket, and brought it into the hospital. Then, upon entering Trauma Room No. 1 (at that stage, he was the only nonmedical person in the room besides Mrs. Kennedy, and both stayed for only a short period), he insists, he placed the bullet on a white cotton blanket on the president’s stretcher. > ... > Yet the bullet that Landis now claims to have discovered that morning emerged largely intact and only moderately damaged, its base having been squeezed in.

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avgcorrection 3y ago

I don't understand why regular people care about this. If it was a conspiracy then some elite was killed by other elites. Conspiracies to kill relatively powerless people seems more interesting to me because it's The Man vs. the everyman.

Mistletoe 3y ago
You wonder why people care if the president of our country was assassinated by some other group?
- avgcorrection 3y ago
  That's what I said.
  - jazzyjackson 3y ago
    you have to remember this "elites vs the rest of us" is not a universal narrative, I wasn't around back then but I get the sense that a significant portion of the population believed that the government was actually doing work on behalf of the people, not in opposition.. "I’m from the government and I’m here to help." wasn't said til 1986
    - avgcorrection 3y ago
      You weren't around back then but you “get a sense”? This was the Civil rights movement era. But I guess you'll say that normies didn't care about that. > "I’m from the government and I’m here to help." wasn't said til 1986 Yes, we mustn't forget the pioneer of populism and anti-elitism Ronald Reagan.
hyperhopper 3y ago
It's because many people saw him as fighting for the everyman.
wheelerof4te 3y ago
He was loved by the people. And he had ambition to deeply change the country. And let us not forget that one famous speech about a certain "conspiracy".

varelse 3y ago

[dead]

a2tech 3y ago

I used to be passingly interested in the conspiracy part of the JFK assassination until I watched this EXTENSIVE in length and sourced video on the assassination: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8tO16xdrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8tO16xdrY It's all very logical and straightforward.

Tmpod 3y ago
Recently watched this detailed and well sourced video by LEMMiNO on a particular prespective, might be of interesting for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU
- bni 3y ago
  The production value in this one is amazing
pliesfan97 3y ago
I personally believe it's somewhat possible that there was some CIA involvement in JFK's assassination. I did not watch the entire video, but the part that addresses potential CIA involvement seems to have 2 main flaws IMO: 1. It only addresses the Vietnam War as a potential motive and "debunks" this motive. Geopolitics is complicated, and there are countless other potential motives, especially surrounding Cuba and the CIA's involvement there (Bay of Pigs, etc). The parts of the video I watched (including part 2) did not seem to address this at all. Eliminating one motive does not by any means eliminate the possibility of CIA involvement. 2. The video's creator seems to assume that CIA's involvement would consist of "hiring" Oswald to perform the assassination and that Oswald would have full awareness of the plans, etc. This is not the only scheme in which a conspiracy may have taken place, and in fact seems like a highly unlikely and unsophisticated scheme. It seems much more likely that Oswald was "used" rather than "hired" and that he was either convinced or coerced to shoot Kennedy. This is how murderous intelligence organizations do their dirty work (the CIA is known to have killed people) - via coercion, power, politics, propaganda, and not via direct orders or contracts. Assuming my theory is correct (of which I do not have certainty), Oswald likely had his own motives to wanting to shoot Kennedy, but it required a conspiracy to actually get him to carry through with it. This model of the relationships and dynamics involved seems entirely foreign to the video's creator and is completely unaddressed. In general, discourse around the JFK assassination and potential conspiracies focuses way too much on the shooting itself - ballistic physics, positions of possible shooters, analysis of film. This is a complete distraction from the more important question which is around Lee Harvey Oswald's incredibly suspicious relationships and contacts with known CIA people.

soderfoo 3y ago

A great and semi related book is The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
+1. The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War is a great complimentary biopic.

AndyMcConachie 3y ago

It's wild that people still talk about the Warren Commission as having any relevance. The House Select Committee on Assassinations is the last thing the government 'officially' said on the case and they concluded there was a conspiracy and most likely not a lone gunman.

jmyeet 3y ago

I highly suggest people go watch "inside the book Depository" [1]. It's long but it gives a good overview of the sequence of events and the discrepancies. Thing is, it's not a conspiracy theorist video. The best part of the video is the last segment where the creator uses all the examples to show just how unreliable eyewitness testimony is, even when fresh let alone decades later. They go on to say that pretty much any conspiracy theory relies on cherry-picking certain details as irrefutable while ignoring others and this is esentially an arbitrary decision based on whatever narrative someone is pushing. Additionally, the details supposedly changed never make sense for a conspiracy that is supposedly powerful enough to arrange all this. Lastly, people often see things through a modern lens. Presidential security is a big one. JFK used to stop his motorcade and go into the crowd. Anyone with a handgun could've ended him. These people weren't all frisked and vetted. It was a different time. JFK's assassination is probably a big part of why presidential security changed. So the idea that you needed to have or be a sniper (or a team of snipers) is a silly one and based on modern assumptions. Myths in this area persist too despite them being debunked. One that springs to mind is that you couldn't fire Oswald's rifle fast enough. CBS and the FBI tested and debunked this in the 1960s [2]. When this happens you'll often find the conspiracy theory moves the goalposts from it being "impossible" to "very hard". I'm sure it was hard but Oswald was also irrefutably a Marine-trained shooter. Personally my theory is that any mystery surrounding JFK is much like that of 9-11: intelligence agencies caught with their pants down, not wanting to upset allies and/or not wanting to expose intelligence assets. The last point I'll make is a study was recently done on the link between narcissism and conspiracy theories [3]. Now this has a lot of relevance to why who gets sucked into QAnon and their political leanings. But it's relevant beyond that. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea that random things happen. They'd rather believe it's all part of a plan. It's almost preferable if it's a nefarious force as some people love to LARP as being oppressed or even just being brave warriors standing up for what's righteous. But this shares a lot of the psychology with those for a predilection for religion. And narcissim is the definition of main character syndrome. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7euN1HTuU [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_rifle#CBS_firing_test_in_1967 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_... [3]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35816915/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35816915/

jjtheblunt 3y ago

if there were a way to set user-level filters on HN, i'd set one which drops all titles with subjunctive verbs (like the "could" here), everything about Elon Musk, etc. It would be interesting to analyze a collection of user-defined user-level customization filters, as some sort of zeitgeist.

raylad 3y ago

It was the conclusion of the House Select Committee on Assassinations that there was a high probability there were two gunmen. This was based on acoustical analysis of Dallas police radio recordings: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-1b.html https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-repor...

lostNFound 3y ago
Another commenter linked a video which I’ll re-link[0]. Essentially the conclusion of the HSCA was, as you say, literally entirely based on that recording. If the recording hadn’t been there, the HSCA actually was on the verge of concluding the same as Warren. (In other words, if the recording evidence wasn’t there they would’ve concluded Oswald lone). The recording was, indeed, later found to not even be from the time of the shots but from an entirely different point in time, after police already noticed Kennedy shot. In that very recording, police officers say things in reaction to the shooting. After those voices, the “shots” from which the conclusion was drawn appear. Painfully obviously, that doesn’t make any sense. Also the recording was in an entirely different point in space too, as it wasn’t even from a bike in the motorcade, as the HSCA thought but it from a different 3-wheeled-motorcycle stationed where Kennedy would’ve been arriving. Drawing conclusions from that recording about the Kennedy shooting is probably less reliable than drawing them from the Live Aid concert version recording of Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. In summary, after adjusting for that lone error in HSCA, Warren and HSCA concluded the same. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8tO16xdrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC8tO16xdrY

damontal 3y ago

The movement of his head has led some to suggest there was a shooter in the sewer that the car passed.

robswc 3y ago

I honestly don't think there was a conspiracy... but I wouldn't be surprised to learn there was more to it, at the same time. I never gave it much thought but one day I saw a documentary and its like "damn, there's a lot of weird stuff to this." However, I think it also shows just how bad people's memory is _or_ how bad people are at extracting details from witnesses.

mcpackieh 3y ago

JFK was trying to stop Israel's nuclear weapons program: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kennedy-administration-policy-on-israel-rsquo-s-nuclear-program https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kennedy-administration-...

JPws_Prntr_Fngr 3y ago
Wow, yep. That'll do it.
kahirsch 3y ago
And Johnson continued those policies.

dahdum 3y ago

What a convenient revelation to have when it comes time to sell some books.

eurticket 3y ago

Wasn't there a documented operation that JFK didn't want to sign/rejected, that pertained to the CIA wanting to set up false flags to justify war against Cuba? Found it: Operation Northwoods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

missedthecue 3y ago
So the CIA killed JFK and then decided not to invade Cuba anyway?
- harry8 3y ago
  Knowing nothing much about this there are still some obvious points to make. The CIA will not be one singular entity of one mind and focus. There will be factions in that organisation, there will be rogue elements. There does not have to be a grand master plan but there could be. There does not have to be uniform competence and there will not be. Operations go wrong all the time. Pieces will be moved into position at vast expense then not used for so many possible reasons. Further if it were a cia operation (and I have no idea about that) it may not have been intended to actually kill anyone and Oswald surprised people by his effectiveness. All sorts of wild stuff is plausible and you need evidence to assess it. Every huckster will trade on the doubt, there will be wishful thinking and genuine, directed official misinformation. Treating the CIA as an entity all marching in lock-step of one mind and purpose is an assumption that stretches plausibility and certainly requires evidence. Chaos is almost certainly a major factor in any explanation and indeed counts as the entirety of the official version of what happened and its aftermath.

voisin 3y ago

I seem to recall the bullet on the gurney story to figure fairly prominently in the latest JFK documentary by Oliver Stone. Am I mistaken? When I read this accounting it didn’t strike me as totally new but rather a vindication of a story that had been relegated to being a conspiracy?

rendall 3y ago

"As an international superstar, [Jackie Kennedy] was the Princess Di of her era..." Interesting turn of phrase. Princess Di was far closer a contemporary of Jackie Kennedy than either are today. I can't imagine there is a large audience of people who would understand the reference to Princess Di but not Jackie Kennedy. Like saying "Will Rogers was the Red Skelton of his era". Iykyk.

jwally 3y ago

If I'm the CIA and I have exclusive access to the President's food, transportation, calendar, etc...this isn't how I take him out. Plane malfunction, opiate overdose in bathtub, food poisoning. Plenty of other options with way higher probability for success.

fatfingerd 3y ago
You mean if you are in the Secret Service?
- jwally 3y ago
  probably, lol! Or food service for that matter.
offtrail 3y ago
>this isn't how I take him out It is if you want to make it look like Cuba did it. They (the CIA) needed it to be public.

mannanj 3y ago

Isn't it pretty common knowledge now that CIA played an active role in Kennedy's assassination? Current Kennedy in 2023 running for President talks about this.

_8j50 3y ago
Do you have credible sources for that? The kennedy running for president is a racist nutjob so not very credible

LPavearoadi 3y ago

Don DeLillo's 'Libra' is sterling, convincingly colors the multiple-shooter narrative, and adds lots of depth to Oswald the man - a whole biography really. It is a novel, therefore fiction; but, by now, what of the assassination's narrative isn't in question? Highly recommended. Link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libra_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libra_(novel)