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I highly doubt that a secret in the caliber of “let’s kill the President” can be kept by so many people for such a long time. Agree. However, what i

I highly doubt that a secret in the caliber of “let’s kill the President” can be kept by so many people for such a long time. Agree. However, what if that wasn't the conspiracy? What if the conspiracy was, "let's avoid war with the USSR"? If the US Government knew of or suspected USSR involvement in JFK's assassination: their choices were essentially "war with the USSR", "look like fools who bowed down to the USSR", or "pretend that Oswald was a lone, crazy guy." In other words: not a conspiracy per se where the government was en masse covering up some specific thing they knew to be true. I agree with you that feels implausible. Especially since presumably a significant portion of the government would have been opposed to the assassination or the cover-up. But it might have been more of a concerted effort to look the other way. Like, "If we investigate Oswald and the investigation too closely, the trail might lead to Russia or one of its satellite states, and therefore war, and therefore nuclear war. So therefore let's all agree that Oswald was a lone gunman because it sure beats war with the USSR." That does not seem impractical to me. Remember, the country was still reeling from the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the chilling possibility of having narrowly avoided nuclear war.

gordian-not 3y ago
This is very close to my feeling on the matter, and if I remember correctly there was even a case of cover up related to the fact that he visited the embassies (which can also be interpreted as not wanting to divulge their intelligence sources). However, it seems like the well known facts about Oswald (the communist background) weren't a major issue at the time (at least from what I gathered), so maybe there wasn't anything to cover up Anyway, if the US government doesn't want to stir the cold war issues around the assassination, is it a conspiracy or just common sense statesmanship? [edit]: I think I misread you, I do not think the soviets were involved, I think this is an extremely risky move no one would do. I do think there were probably fears it would be perceived as a foreign assassination which drove some actions in the US government.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  I do not think the soviets were involved, I think this is an extremely risky move no one would do. I do think there were probably fears it would be perceived as a foreign assassination which drove some actions in the US government. I was vague on that because my post was overlong already and I don't have a clue or guess about who (if anybody) was involved besides Oswald. But I agree with you: I cannot imagine that Khrushchev or the leadership of the USSR wanted open war. For the same reasons the USA didn't. There is definitely a middle ground sort of possibility, where Oswald was involved with the USSR to some extent (informant, or whatever) but they truly had no idea he was going to shoot JFK. That seems completely possible. Of course, the Soviet government was enormous and not monolithic. Maybe some within it wanted war, maybe some thought that they could prod Oswald into an assassination without getting "caught." Seems possible, but zero idea how likely that is. The simplest scenario is: Oswald worked in tandem with a second rando guy who had a rifle and wanted the president dead. No shortage of those in America, a land with cheap rifles and ~16 million WWII vets who were trained to use them. Anyway, if the US government doesn't want to stir the cold war issues around the assassination, is it a conspiracy or just common sense statesmanship? Definitely common sense statesmanship. Arguably a conspiracy as well but that depends on our definition of "conspiracy." The only thing I'm really sure of is that it was in the US government's best interests to sell the idea that Oswald was a lone crazy guy. That was the least-bad scenario for America.
  - rusk 3y ago
    > Arguably a conspiracy as well but that depends on our definition of "conspiracy." Not a conspiracy in the more surreptitious sense that most people consider. It would bear all the same hallmarks though, and I guess that’s what sets off people’s radars
  - gordian-not 3y ago
    Can’t say I believe there was another gunman. There may be forensics technicalities that are hard to explain but it seems that in any event that is highly ‘investigated’ people find too many patterns in the noise (9/11 for example) Like most of those Cold War events, these cover ups look more like protecting intelligence sources and blunders than some large overarching cabal
rusk 3y ago
> What if the conspiracy was, "let's avoid war with the USSR"? I think this is a plausible line of thinking. My issue with the official story is that it feels stretched to cover too many datapoints. Like it kind of explains the data but not quite and indeed the obfuscation I’m detecting could just as well be coming from something like that as any new world order coup. tldr; Still fishy though.
fallingknife 3y ago
Why would the USSR assassinate a US president at all? Why would they risk war (and their recent backing down in the Cuban missile crisis shows they really didn't want war) for something that gives them no strategic gain against the US?
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  I agree with you completely: I don't think Russia tasked an unstable loner malcontent with knocking off JFK and possibly kickstarting WW3 in the process. Russia did not want that. What I think the US government feared was a public perception that Russia (or Cuba, or whoever) might have been behind it. That's when swathes of the public and various grandstanding politicians start rattling their sabers and thinking about war. Any official story besides "Oswald was a crazy lone gunman" would have looked awful for the US and increased the odds of war, a recurrence of McCarthyism, etc. So I don't think the possibility of a second gunman was ever seriously entertained, even though there's some evidence for it.
bluGill 3y ago
A lot of those things were cleared up for me when I visited the site in Dallas. People claiming conspiracy are trying to make what he did much more difficult than it really was. He had a job that happened to be in the right place at the time, he had a standard gun anyone could buy, and plenty of time alone (he specifically did not have anything on his todo list for the day done despite being at work for a few hours). There is nothing about this a lone actor would have any trouble with, other than the initial luck of getting a job there in the first place and that type of coincidence isn't unlikely.

gordian-not 3y ago

This is very close to my feeling on the matter, and if I remember correctly there was even a case of cover up related to the fact that he visited the embassies (which can also be interpreted as not wanting to divulge their intelligence sources). However, it seems like the well known facts about Oswald (the communist background) weren't a major issue at the time (at least from what I gathered), so maybe there wasn't anything to cover up Anyway, if the US government doesn't want to stir the cold war issues around the assassination, is it a conspiracy or just common sense statesmanship? [edit]: I think I misread you, I do not think the soviets were involved, I think this is an extremely risky move no one would do. I do think there were probably fears it would be perceived as a foreign assassination which drove some actions in the US government.

JohnBooty 3y ago
I do not think the soviets were involved, I think this is an extremely risky move no one would do. I do think there were probably fears it would be perceived as a foreign assassination which drove some actions in the US government. I was vague on that because my post was overlong already and I don't have a clue or guess about who (if anybody) was involved besides Oswald. But I agree with you: I cannot imagine that Khrushchev or the leadership of the USSR wanted open war. For the same reasons the USA didn't. There is definitely a middle ground sort of possibility, where Oswald was involved with the USSR to some extent (informant, or whatever) but they truly had no idea he was going to shoot JFK. That seems completely possible. Of course, the Soviet government was enormous and not monolithic. Maybe some within it wanted war, maybe some thought that they could prod Oswald into an assassination without getting "caught." Seems possible, but zero idea how likely that is. The simplest scenario is: Oswald worked in tandem with a second rando guy who had a rifle and wanted the president dead. No shortage of those in America, a land with cheap rifles and ~16 million WWII vets who were trained to use them. Anyway, if the US government doesn't want to stir the cold war issues around the assassination, is it a conspiracy or just common sense statesmanship? Definitely common sense statesmanship. Arguably a conspiracy as well but that depends on our definition of "conspiracy." The only thing I'm really sure of is that it was in the US government's best interests to sell the idea that Oswald was a lone crazy guy. That was the least-bad scenario for America.
- rusk 3y ago
  > Arguably a conspiracy as well but that depends on our definition of "conspiracy." Not a conspiracy in the more surreptitious sense that most people consider. It would bear all the same hallmarks though, and I guess that’s what sets off people’s radars
- gordian-not 3y ago
  Can’t say I believe there was another gunman. There may be forensics technicalities that are hard to explain but it seems that in any event that is highly ‘investigated’ people find too many patterns in the noise (9/11 for example) Like most of those Cold War events, these cover ups look more like protecting intelligence sources and blunders than some large overarching cabal

rusk 3y ago

> What if the conspiracy was, "let's avoid war with the USSR"? I think this is a plausible line of thinking. My issue with the official story is that it feels stretched to cover too many datapoints. Like it kind of explains the data but not quite and indeed the obfuscation I’m detecting could just as well be coming from something like that as any new world order coup. tldr; Still fishy though.

fallingknife 3y ago

Why would the USSR assassinate a US president at all? Why would they risk war (and their recent backing down in the Cuban missile crisis shows they really didn't want war) for something that gives them no strategic gain against the US?

JohnBooty 3y ago
I agree with you completely: I don't think Russia tasked an unstable loner malcontent with knocking off JFK and possibly kickstarting WW3 in the process. Russia did not want that. What I think the US government feared was a public perception that Russia (or Cuba, or whoever) might have been behind it. That's when swathes of the public and various grandstanding politicians start rattling their sabers and thinking about war. Any official story besides "Oswald was a crazy lone gunman" would have looked awful for the US and increased the odds of war, a recurrence of McCarthyism, etc. So I don't think the possibility of a second gunman was ever seriously entertained, even though there's some evidence for it.

bluGill 3y ago

A lot of those things were cleared up for me when I visited the site in Dallas. People claiming conspiracy are trying to make what he did much more difficult than it really was. He had a job that happened to be in the right place at the time, he had a standard gun anyone could buy, and plenty of time alone (he specifically did not have anything on his todo list for the day done despite being at work for a few hours). There is nothing about this a lone actor would have any trouble with, other than the initial luck of getting a job there in the first place and that type of coincidence isn't unlikely.