9 ms·

Nov. 22, 1963: 50 years, and still no conspiracy

54 points by standeven 13y ago

mikiem 13y ago
"Back, and to the left"
- lazyant 13y ago
  Look at the plaza in google maps, if there was a shooter in front of the car and slightly to the right, that would be on the curb in plain sight (grassy knoll is perpendicular to car in deadly shot); there's "nothing" in front of the car (buildings etc to hide), it's ramp to a highway.
hacknat 13y ago
The promotion of false conspiracy theories is not harmless. In the past, what one historian dubbed as the "paranoid style of American politics" has led to fear of and antipathy toward certain religions and social and political movements. This is a stretch in my opinion. This article is thinly veiled legacy defending. Not admitting to any of the Warren Commission's flaws just plays into the hands of the conspiracy theorists. Frankly there is a lot to be suspicious about. I'm not saying there is a conspiracy, but the Warren Commission deserves to be criticized. For example: Seth Kantor's testimony of encountering Ruby at Parkland hospital after JFKs assassination remains a baffling thread that the Warren Commission dismissed out of hand. Kantor had a very normal and somewhat productive journalistic career up until the assassination. During the Warren Commission he wasn't even suggesting any ideas for what his encounter with Ruby might have meant, he just wanted it out there that it happened. Later he became a little conspiratorial (from what I've heard), but who could blame him after watching the President get shot and running into the assassin's killer soon thereafter (if he was telling the truth)? If I had to be I'd say there is probably no conspiracy, but I think it's very safe to say that the Warren Commission is not even close to the entire story. People can't be blamed for filling in the details with their own imagination.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > This is a stretch in my opinion. How do things like "Obama is a Muslim!!" fit in? Or the bizarre conspiracy theories around the "crescent of embrace" having coded pro-Muslim signals? Or the ever popular "THE JEWS DID IT"? They feel like they've created ill-will towards Jewish people, and Muslim people, and anyone who looks a bit like a Muslim.
  - VLM 13y ago
    I would disagree strongly in that they've been ineffective at accomplishing anything. OK I've heard from every distant acquaintance and social media connection since 2007 who's even vaguely neo-con that 'bama is absolutely positively a verified practicing Muslim. OK so lets say he is for the sake of an inductive proof. He's been in power quite awhile, and my kids haven't been forced to attend Mosque school, Sunday school has not been made illegal, the rapture hasn't happened, we haven't nuked Israel, Sharia law hasn't replaced our local laws, OK you clowns, if he is in fact a Muslim, aside from the thought experiment above, give me one reason, just one, why I should care? Because it obviously doesn't seem to matter. And next election, if an out of the closet Muslim was on the ballot, I'd vote for him, after all nothing relevant happened with "'Bama the Muslim" in charge, so the next Muslim president isn't going to be any more of a problem, right? Ditto the jew thing, where people who hate jews to a ridiculous level seem quite competent at making themselves look like idiots, which seems fairly effective at discrediting their position. Their position may or may not be correct, but if the only people pushing it are morons, then ... at least from the "victims" point of view, that's a good thing? If the only people who hate you are widely viewed as morons, that's probably a good situation to be in?
    - DanBC 13y ago
      I guess that position is easier to hold if you're not the brown person being given extra attention every time you enter the US. This happens even to Olympic athletes. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mo-farah-reveals-he-was-detained-in-terror-bungle-at-us-airport-8433440.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mo-farah-reve...) > Farah moved to America last year, but despite his international fame he says he frequently gets stopped at customs because of his Somali origin. > He told the Sun on Sunday: "I couldn't believe it. Because of my Somali origin I get detained every time I come through US customs. This time I even got my medals out to show who I am, but they wouldn't have it." (http://www.channel4.com/news/mo-farah-stopped-at-customs-hes-not-alone http://www.channel4.com/news/mo-farah-stopped-at-customs-hes...)
hitchhiker999 13y ago
Why is it that in a lot of recent American articles, the words 'conspiracy theory' are invariably linked with 'nutjob' 'wacko' 'tinfoilhat'. (This is the 'inception' of conspiracy theories.) I am a European wacko and proud; I believe that whole JFK thing was highly suspect.
- fit2rule 13y ago
  Because you can't have control over a population like America without resorting to hatred and bigotry, plain and simple. Time and again, we've seen that conspiracy theories OFTEN prove to be correct. Until that happens, however, it behooves the powers that be to draw lines in the sand - and calling someone a crackpot sure is a nice line.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Time and again, we've seen that conspiracy theories OFTEN prove to be correct. We have?
    - adventured 13y ago
      Plenty of them, yes. From the Gulf of Tonkin; to "weapons of mass destruction"; to Iran Contra and the allegations the US knew about (and helped) Saddam use chemical weapons on Iran (claimed to be equivalent to a conspiracy theory at the time, turns out it was completely true). Echelon, Carnivore and the NSA spying on everybody (including Americans)? Conspiracy theories. Joe Nacchio and Qwest? Conspiracy theory. The US involved over the decades in toppling governments in South America? The US Govt. denies it to this day, just a bunch of conspiracy theories.
      - fit2rule 13y ago
        All of this is of course due to the Politik exercising the ability to keep secrets. Such agency is exactly the environment in which one conspires; without walls erected to maintain a mystery, it is near impossible to hate in peace.
smegel 13y ago
Science at the time may have "proved" the origin of the bullets, but I thought modern science, including audio processing was a bit more ambiguous....
hugh4life 13y ago
"The promotion of false conspiracy theories is not harmless. In the past, what one historian dubbed as the "paranoid style of American politics" has led to fear of and antipathy toward certain religions and social and political movements." The allusion to "paranoid style" is rather galling because that essay attacks right wingers exclusively... and there is no doubt whatsoever that the Warren Commission purposely downplayed Oswald's communist background as not to hurt Johnson's re-election.
ChrisAntaki 13y ago
One thing that I'd recommend any supporter of the official story* (~1963) to look into, and invite them to elaborate on, is the story of Eugene Dinkins. http://themostdangerousbookintheworld.com/index.php/hot-articles/item/1-the-strange-tale-of-eugene-dinkins-by-robert-mitchell http://themostdangerousbookintheworld.com/index.php/hot-arti... *Note: As of 1979, the official story changed. A Congressional Report from 1979 suggested that JFK was assassinated as part of a conspiracy. This was 16 years after the Warren Commission. http://www.examiner.com/article/congressional-report-john-kennedy-assassination-probably-a-conspiracy http://www.examiner.com/article/congressional-report-john-ke...
jakeogh 13y ago
Magic bullet. ✓ "The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it." -John F. Kennedy April 27, 1961 https://archive.org/download/jfks19610427/jfk_1961_0427_press.flac https://archive.org/download/jfks19610427/jfk_1961_0427_pres...
- adventured 13y ago
  It's an excellent quote. Sadly by the early 1960s the monster that would make America no longer a free and open society had already been birthed. It has been nothing but secrecy and Constitutional abuses ever since, with one piece after another of the American Republic being consumed by the military industrial complex. I suspect JFK knew what was happening, given Eisenhower's warning, and he most likely had conversation/s with Eisenhower about it. From what I recall, Eisenhower warned JFK about forces inside the government that would try to push him into a conflict in southeast Asia. Now? Now we've got a psychotic general, among others - collectively potentially more powerful than the President given the blackmail material the NSA probably has on Obama after having illegally wiretapped him as a Senator for years - pointing his power at The People, and spouting off about how the media needs to be stopped. It has been a gradual coup against the democratic process and now secrecy reigns supreme.
NAFV_P 13y ago
If you want to find a conspiracy, the best place to look is a conspiracy theory.
semjada 13y ago
Come on, who bumped this shit? Or was it several of you, in collusion?
- pgreenwood 13y ago
  Some say the downvoters all died under mysterious circumstances.
maxden 13y ago
And if a last-minute interrogation of Oswald had not delayed his transfer, Ruby would not have been at the jail in time to kill Oswald. These unfortunate coincidences are not, however, consistent with a conspiracy. That seems consistent with a conspiracy though; ie: Ruby wasn't ready, so delay Oswald.
- Kadin 13y ago
  Or it was just random chance, and absent Oswald's delay, Ruby never would have killed him, and we wouldn't know anything about Jack Ruby today. (He'd just have been some dude who thought about offing Oswald but never quite got the chance, the story probably only retold to drunks at his bar for the rest of his life.) There are any number of other things things that didn't happen -- if Oswald had been walked out of the building early, maybe he'd have been run over by a bus, and we'd have a bus-driver conspiracy theory instead of a Jack Ruby-based one. But he didn't, and wasn't, and so that theory doesn't exist. It's easy to see conspiracies in long chains of events that have unfortunate consequences. But if you look at unfortunate events that are demonstrably not conspiracies (e.g. power plant or aerospace accidents), you'll see the same sort of stupendously-unlikely chains of events feeding into each other. They in fact do tend to be very unlikely, generally coincidental, events, but it's important to keep in mind that we're only looking at the events that lined up in such a way to produce a particularly bad outcome. All the times that little failures happened but didn't produce the meltdown or explosion or whatever, we don't pay any attention to. Such is the case with conspiracy theories: it's easy to look at something after the fact and say "what are the odds of that happening?!" when in reality, the odds of it happening were 100%: they happened. (And if they hadn't happened, we wouldn't be remarking on them.) But the human mind seems to deal poorly with coincidences, so there is a desire to assign agency to random chance.
  - maxden 13y ago
    I agree that it could have been random chance, and any number of things could have or did happen to make events happen as they did. It depends on how far back you want to go to highlight pivotal events, or with the butterfly effect, consider every miniscule event is important to the end result. Absolutely agree with aerospace accidents occurring because of events that by themselves wouldn't be fatal, but the combination is. I still think the original articles attempt at proving there was no conspiracy by using that example is a poor choice, because if you did want Ruby to kill Oswald, and the timing was wrong, Oswald needed to be delayed.
singularity2001 13y ago
Everything surrounding the De Mohrenschildt persona is most peculiar. His brother founder of Radio Free Europe, his close connection to Jackie Kennedy, his correspondence with H.W.Bush oh and let's not forget Hoovers 29.11.63 memo on "information furnished by George Bush of Central Intelligence Agency"
podperson 13y ago
It's not that there's no conspiracy, it's that there are too many credible, and not even mutually exclusive, options (some with strong supporting evidence) to pick from. My three favorite isolated pieces of evidence: (a) the pristine "magic bullet" found on the stretcher JFK was brought in on (it wasn't just magic how it supposedly hit two people 1/12 of a second apart, but it took no damage in the process, and was found lying on a stretcher), (b) the perfect handprint of Lee Harvey Oswald found on the rifle by Dallas PD -- which happened to have custody to Lee Harvey Oswald's corpse -- after the rifle was returned by the FBI lab which found no prints at all, and (c) the implausibly large number of witnesses with strong mob connections (many of whom died in suspicious circumstances over the next ten years). Each of those, on its own, is enough to launch a thousand conspiracy theories. BTW: I really love American Tabloid by James Ellroy. It doesn't pretend to be "true" but it's a lot more compelling that JFK. Anyway, in 2025 the LA Times can declare that Jimmy Hoffa died of natural causes.
- lazyant 13y ago
  regarding a) magic bullet, it wasn't pristine; it was deformed but not longitudinally but sideways, also they have fired the same bullets/rifle and it doesn't deform if it doesn't touch a bone
  - podperson 13y ago
    Interesting, I did not know that. (I guess I don't obsess enough over it!) It's still very unconvincing (it didn't just "touch" a bone). There is far more weirdness in the case and there's plenty of collateral evidence that the FBI's modus operandi at the time was to frame suspects in high profile cases -- along with anyone J. Edgar Hoover simply didn't like -- to reinforce its reputation for infallibility. Anyhow, the basic argument "if there was a conspiracy, someone would have talked by now" is disingenuous. All kinds of people have talked -- so many that it's impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff.
jstalin 13y ago
For those who are pointing to the "magic bullet" theory, it's all a matter of understanding how both Kennedy and Connally were seated in the limo. No "magic" bullet required: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_bullet_theory#Theorized_path_of_the_bullet_CE399 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_bullet_theory#Theorized... I grew up with a steady diet of conspiracy theories. My mom could be considered a guru on JFK. But after venturing out on my own and reading actual source materials, like many of the interviews in the Warren report, such as the doctors, Marina Oswald, and even the bus driver that picked Oswald up after the murder, makes it clear that Oswald did it. I'll admit that there are still some weird parts to the story, like Oswald's visit to the Cuban embassy in Mexico city, but I'm willing to bet that Oswald was some sort of CIA source or contact and that fact needed to be covered up. It would have been supremely embarrassing. But I don't think that there's any wider conspiracy. Edit: For those that are interested, I think the McAdams site is the best "anti-conspiracy" site out there, despite its 1990 internet look: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm
- mhartl 13y ago
  So much of the conspiracy theorists' case rests on the "magic bullet" that you'd think its definitive refutation would have chastened them. Perhaps my favorite source is this video, which uses the Zapruder film and computer animation techniques to recreate the scene: http://youtu.be/DSBXW1-VGmM http://youtu.be/DSBXW1-VGmM It's clear from the timing and the geometry that a single bullet, originating from the Texas School Book Depository, did indeed hit both Kennedy and Connally. Another cornerstone of the conspiracy case is that Kennedy's head moved "back and to the left" after being hit, when in fact the Zapruder film shows a sharp movement forward immediately after impact. This fact was uncovered by, of all people, Richard Feynman: http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/wound.html http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/wound... (Warning: graphic imagery). The real world is messy, and conspiracy theorists will always be able to find things to stoke their suspicions, even though many of the key "facts" underpinning the conspiracy theories have been debunked in the years since the assassination. It's clear at this point that no amount of evidence will convince some people that Kennedy was killed not by an elaborate plot but rather by a lone nutjob. But Oswald had the means (rifle & training), motive (desire, as a 24-year-old loser, to prove his importance to the world), and opportunity (a job in a building that happened to lie on the motorcade route published in the paper on 11/20 and 11/21). As Robert Oswald, Lee Harvey's brother, put it, the Kennedy assassination was one of those "happenstances of history"—undeniably, a bitter pill to swallow.
Went2NZ4JFK 13y ago
I confirmed one of the claims in the movie JFK myself. I'm always more interested in proof of a conspiracy, than in evidence of any particular parties guilt. This is usually easier to find, because the conspiracy itself leaves more evidence in harder to control situations than the crime does. One good example of this is something I was able to confirm myself by direct examination. In JFK there's a scene that really struck me, where Kevin Costner is getting filled in by Mr. X in Washington. He tells JFK that the papers in New Zealand have full write-ups of LHO that would be impossible without a pre-planted cover up story. So, one day I found myself in New Zealand and went to a university library and looked up the papers on that day. LHO was arrested approx. 1:40pm, Dallas time. Time Zone differences: NZ is UTC +12 hours, Dallas is UTC -6 hours. Thus LHO was arrested on November 23rd, at 7:40AM NZ Time. Yet the morning papers on the 23rd, a Saturday, which came out between 8AM and 10AM (it varies by the edition) had a write up of LHO's dossier. In the 1960s they did have telephones so the news could have easily reached NZ by then. However, printing tonnes of newspapers takes time, as does writing a story and distributing the papers. The papers likely went to print in the middle of the night before-- which is before the assassination even happened. I wanted proof, and I got it. The people who don't believe are not interested in evidence and will take any rationalizations presented to them at face value. This is the reason that, every year or every 5 years, in November, we get these asinine "there was no conspiracy" stories like this one. Check my account name, I won't be back (assuming I don't get hellbanned for the "crime" of disagreeing with the hive mind, like so many do.)
- lazyant 13y ago
  that paper was printed in the afternoon http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/heritage/newspapers/star23nov1963/ http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/heritage/newspapers/sta...
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  So the conspiracy decided to notify a newspaper in New Zealand in advance? And none of the many, many people involved in putting it together and printing it noticed the rather large cover story that hadn't happened yet?
- jlgreco 13y ago
vezzy-fnord 13y ago
There's no doubt it was a conspiracy. The Warren Commission is the most famous, but most people are unaware of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, which ruled in 1978 that JFK's assassination was part of a conspiracy and that even further, Cuba and the USSR had no involvement in it.
po8crg 13y ago
So, it's just a coincidence that it happened on the day that the first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast? :)
philwelch 13y ago
The frightening thing is that all of the usual suspects--CIA, FBI, Mafia--committed assassinations regularly and it would have not been out of character for them. And for most motives, you can't count out LBJ either--whoever wanted Kennedy dead likely had some belief that LBJ would be better for their purposes, and what better way to ensure that than to involve him in the plot? On the other hand, knowing JFK it could have just as easily been a jealous husband.
nedlerner 13y ago
I highly recommend the book 'Crossfire' by Jim Marrs which is full of interviews and perspectives the Warren Commission chose to ignore. Marrs was a Texas new reporter at this time. The term 'conspiracy theory' has no place in a functioning democracy - if we don't question authority and keep our wits about us our democratic rights are quickly stripped away as we increasingly find

54 points by standeven 13y ago

mikiem 13y ago

"Back, and to the left"

lazyant 13y ago
Look at the plaza in google maps, if there was a shooter in front of the car and slightly to the right, that would be on the curb in plain sight (grassy knoll is perpendicular to car in deadly shot); there's "nothing" in front of the car (buildings etc to hide), it's ramp to a highway.

hacknat 13y ago

The promotion of false conspiracy theories is not harmless. In the past, what one historian dubbed as the "paranoid style of American politics" has led to fear of and antipathy toward certain religions and social and political movements. This is a stretch in my opinion. This article is thinly veiled legacy defending. Not admitting to any of the Warren Commission's flaws just plays into the hands of the conspiracy theorists. Frankly there is a lot to be suspicious about. I'm not saying there is a conspiracy, but the Warren Commission deserves to be criticized. For example: Seth Kantor's testimony of encountering Ruby at Parkland hospital after JFKs assassination remains a baffling thread that the Warren Commission dismissed out of hand. Kantor had a very normal and somewhat productive journalistic career up until the assassination. During the Warren Commission he wasn't even suggesting any ideas for what his encounter with Ruby might have meant, he just wanted it out there that it happened. Later he became a little conspiratorial (from what I've heard), but who could blame him after watching the President get shot and running into the assassin's killer soon thereafter (if he was telling the truth)? If I had to be I'd say there is probably no conspiracy, but I think it's very safe to say that the Warren Commission is not even close to the entire story. People can't be blamed for filling in the details with their own imagination.

DanBC 13y ago
> This is a stretch in my opinion. How do things like "Obama is a Muslim!!" fit in? Or the bizarre conspiracy theories around the "crescent of embrace" having coded pro-Muslim signals? Or the ever popular "THE JEWS DID IT"? They feel like they've created ill-will towards Jewish people, and Muslim people, and anyone who looks a bit like a Muslim.
- VLM 13y ago
  I would disagree strongly in that they've been ineffective at accomplishing anything. OK I've heard from every distant acquaintance and social media connection since 2007 who's even vaguely neo-con that 'bama is absolutely positively a verified practicing Muslim. OK so lets say he is for the sake of an inductive proof. He's been in power quite awhile, and my kids haven't been forced to attend Mosque school, Sunday school has not been made illegal, the rapture hasn't happened, we haven't nuked Israel, Sharia law hasn't replaced our local laws, OK you clowns, if he is in fact a Muslim, aside from the thought experiment above, give me one reason, just one, why I should care? Because it obviously doesn't seem to matter. And next election, if an out of the closet Muslim was on the ballot, I'd vote for him, after all nothing relevant happened with "'Bama the Muslim" in charge, so the next Muslim president isn't going to be any more of a problem, right? Ditto the jew thing, where people who hate jews to a ridiculous level seem quite competent at making themselves look like idiots, which seems fairly effective at discrediting their position. Their position may or may not be correct, but if the only people pushing it are morons, then ... at least from the "victims" point of view, that's a good thing? If the only people who hate you are widely viewed as morons, that's probably a good situation to be in?
  - DanBC 13y ago
    I guess that position is easier to hold if you're not the brown person being given extra attention every time you enter the US. This happens even to Olympic athletes. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mo-farah-reveals-he-was-detained-in-terror-bungle-at-us-airport-8433440.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mo-farah-reve...) > Farah moved to America last year, but despite his international fame he says he frequently gets stopped at customs because of his Somali origin. > He told the Sun on Sunday: "I couldn't believe it. Because of my Somali origin I get detained every time I come through US customs. This time I even got my medals out to show who I am, but they wouldn't have it." (http://www.channel4.com/news/mo-farah-stopped-at-customs-hes-not-alone http://www.channel4.com/news/mo-farah-stopped-at-customs-hes...)

hitchhiker999 13y ago

Why is it that in a lot of recent American articles, the words 'conspiracy theory' are invariably linked with 'nutjob' 'wacko' 'tinfoilhat'. (This is the 'inception' of conspiracy theories.) I am a European wacko and proud; I believe that whole JFK thing was highly suspect.

fit2rule 13y ago
Because you can't have control over a population like America without resorting to hatred and bigotry, plain and simple. Time and again, we've seen that conspiracy theories OFTEN prove to be correct. Until that happens, however, it behooves the powers that be to draw lines in the sand - and calling someone a crackpot sure is a nice line.
- icebraining 13y ago
  Time and again, we've seen that conspiracy theories OFTEN prove to be correct. We have?
  - adventured 13y ago
    Plenty of them, yes. From the Gulf of Tonkin; to "weapons of mass destruction"; to Iran Contra and the allegations the US knew about (and helped) Saddam use chemical weapons on Iran (claimed to be equivalent to a conspiracy theory at the time, turns out it was completely true). Echelon, Carnivore and the NSA spying on everybody (including Americans)? Conspiracy theories. Joe Nacchio and Qwest? Conspiracy theory. The US involved over the decades in toppling governments in South America? The US Govt. denies it to this day, just a bunch of conspiracy theories.
    - fit2rule 13y ago
      All of this is of course due to the Politik exercising the ability to keep secrets. Such agency is exactly the environment in which one conspires; without walls erected to maintain a mystery, it is near impossible to hate in peace.

smegel 13y ago

Science at the time may have "proved" the origin of the bullets, but I thought modern science, including audio processing was a bit more ambiguous....

hugh4life 13y ago

"The promotion of false conspiracy theories is not harmless. In the past, what one historian dubbed as the "paranoid style of American politics" has led to fear of and antipathy toward certain religions and social and political movements." The allusion to "paranoid style" is rather galling because that essay attacks right wingers exclusively... and there is no doubt whatsoever that the Warren Commission purposely downplayed Oswald's communist background as not to hurt Johnson's re-election.

ChrisAntaki 13y ago

One thing that I'd recommend any supporter of the official story* (~1963) to look into, and invite them to elaborate on, is the story of Eugene Dinkins. http://themostdangerousbookintheworld.com/index.php/hot-articles/item/1-the-strange-tale-of-eugene-dinkins-by-robert-mitchell http://themostdangerousbookintheworld.com/index.php/hot-arti... *Note: As of 1979, the official story changed. A Congressional Report from 1979 suggested that JFK was assassinated as part of a conspiracy. This was 16 years after the Warren Commission. http://www.examiner.com/article/congressional-report-john-kennedy-assassination-probably-a-conspiracy http://www.examiner.com/article/congressional-report-john-ke...

jakeogh 13y ago

Magic bullet. ✓ "The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it." -John F. Kennedy April 27, 1961 https://archive.org/download/jfks19610427/jfk_1961_0427_press.flac https://archive.org/download/jfks19610427/jfk_1961_0427_pres...

adventured 13y ago
It's an excellent quote. Sadly by the early 1960s the monster that would make America no longer a free and open society had already been birthed. It has been nothing but secrecy and Constitutional abuses ever since, with one piece after another of the American Republic being consumed by the military industrial complex. I suspect JFK knew what was happening, given Eisenhower's warning, and he most likely had conversation/s with Eisenhower about it. From what I recall, Eisenhower warned JFK about forces inside the government that would try to push him into a conflict in southeast Asia. Now? Now we've got a psychotic general, among others - collectively potentially more powerful than the President given the blackmail material the NSA probably has on Obama after having illegally wiretapped him as a Senator for years - pointing his power at The People, and spouting off about how the media needs to be stopped. It has been a gradual coup against the democratic process and now secrecy reigns supreme.

NAFV_P 13y ago

If you want to find a conspiracy, the best place to look is a conspiracy theory.

semjada 13y ago

Come on, who bumped this shit? Or was it several of you, in collusion?

pgreenwood 13y ago
Some say the downvoters all died under mysterious circumstances.

maxden 13y ago

And if a last-minute interrogation of Oswald had not delayed his transfer, Ruby would not have been at the jail in time to kill Oswald. These unfortunate coincidences are not, however, consistent with a conspiracy. That seems consistent with a conspiracy though; ie: Ruby wasn't ready, so delay Oswald.

Kadin 13y ago
Or it was just random chance, and absent Oswald's delay, Ruby never would have killed him, and we wouldn't know anything about Jack Ruby today. (He'd just have been some dude who thought about offing Oswald but never quite got the chance, the story probably only retold to drunks at his bar for the rest of his life.) There are any number of other things things that didn't happen -- if Oswald had been walked out of the building early, maybe he'd have been run over by a bus, and we'd have a bus-driver conspiracy theory instead of a Jack Ruby-based one. But he didn't, and wasn't, and so that theory doesn't exist. It's easy to see conspiracies in long chains of events that have unfortunate consequences. But if you look at unfortunate events that are demonstrably not conspiracies (e.g. power plant or aerospace accidents), you'll see the same sort of stupendously-unlikely chains of events feeding into each other. They in fact do tend to be very unlikely, generally coincidental, events, but it's important to keep in mind that we're only looking at the events that lined up in such a way to produce a particularly bad outcome. All the times that little failures happened but didn't produce the meltdown or explosion or whatever, we don't pay any attention to. Such is the case with conspiracy theories: it's easy to look at something after the fact and say "what are the odds of that happening?!" when in reality, the odds of it happening were 100%: they happened. (And if they hadn't happened, we wouldn't be remarking on them.) But the human mind seems to deal poorly with coincidences, so there is a desire to assign agency to random chance.
- maxden 13y ago
  I agree that it could have been random chance, and any number of things could have or did happen to make events happen as they did. It depends on how far back you want to go to highlight pivotal events, or with the butterfly effect, consider every miniscule event is important to the end result. Absolutely agree with aerospace accidents occurring because of events that by themselves wouldn't be fatal, but the combination is. I still think the original articles attempt at proving there was no conspiracy by using that example is a poor choice, because if you did want Ruby to kill Oswald, and the timing was wrong, Oswald needed to be delayed.

singularity2001 13y ago

Everything surrounding the De Mohrenschildt persona is most peculiar. His brother founder of Radio Free Europe, his close connection to Jackie Kennedy, his correspondence with H.W.Bush oh and let's not forget Hoovers 29.11.63 memo on "information furnished by George Bush of Central Intelligence Agency"

podperson 13y ago

It's not that there's no conspiracy, it's that there are too many credible, and not even mutually exclusive, options (some with strong supporting evidence) to pick from. My three favorite isolated pieces of evidence: (a) the pristine "magic bullet" found on the stretcher JFK was brought in on (it wasn't just magic how it supposedly hit two people 1/12 of a second apart, but it took no damage in the process, and was found lying on a stretcher), (b) the perfect handprint of Lee Harvey Oswald found on the rifle by Dallas PD -- which happened to have custody to Lee Harvey Oswald's corpse -- after the rifle was returned by the FBI lab which found no prints at all, and (c) the implausibly large number of witnesses with strong mob connections (many of whom died in suspicious circumstances over the next ten years). Each of those, on its own, is enough to launch a thousand conspiracy theories. BTW: I really love American Tabloid by James Ellroy. It doesn't pretend to be "true" but it's a lot more compelling that JFK. Anyway, in 2025 the LA Times can declare that Jimmy Hoffa died of natural causes.

lazyant 13y ago
regarding a) magic bullet, it wasn't pristine; it was deformed but not longitudinally but sideways, also they have fired the same bullets/rifle and it doesn't deform if it doesn't touch a bone
- podperson 13y ago
  Interesting, I did not know that. (I guess I don't obsess enough over it!) It's still very unconvincing (it didn't just "touch" a bone). There is far more weirdness in the case and there's plenty of collateral evidence that the FBI's modus operandi at the time was to frame suspects in high profile cases -- along with anyone J. Edgar Hoover simply didn't like -- to reinforce its reputation for infallibility. Anyhow, the basic argument "if there was a conspiracy, someone would have talked by now" is disingenuous. All kinds of people have talked -- so many that it's impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff.

jstalin 13y ago

For those who are pointing to the "magic bullet" theory, it's all a matter of understanding how both Kennedy and Connally were seated in the limo. No "magic" bullet required: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_bullet_theory#Theorized_path_of_the_bullet_CE399 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_bullet_theory#Theorized... I grew up with a steady diet of conspiracy theories. My mom could be considered a guru on JFK. But after venturing out on my own and reading actual source materials, like many of the interviews in the Warren report, such as the doctors, Marina Oswald, and even the bus driver that picked Oswald up after the murder, makes it clear that Oswald did it. I'll admit that there are still some weird parts to the story, like Oswald's visit to the Cuban embassy in Mexico city, but I'm willing to bet that Oswald was some sort of CIA source or contact and that fact needed to be covered up. It would have been supremely embarrassing. But I don't think that there's any wider conspiracy. Edit: For those that are interested, I think the McAdams site is the best "anti-conspiracy" site out there, despite its 1990 internet look: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm

mhartl 13y ago
So much of the conspiracy theorists' case rests on the "magic bullet" that you'd think its definitive refutation would have chastened them. Perhaps my favorite source is this video, which uses the Zapruder film and computer animation techniques to recreate the scene: http://youtu.be/DSBXW1-VGmM http://youtu.be/DSBXW1-VGmM It's clear from the timing and the geometry that a single bullet, originating from the Texas School Book Depository, did indeed hit both Kennedy and Connally. Another cornerstone of the conspiracy case is that Kennedy's head moved "back and to the left" after being hit, when in fact the Zapruder film shows a sharp movement forward immediately after impact. This fact was uncovered by, of all people, Richard Feynman: http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/wound.html http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro/wound... (Warning: graphic imagery). The real world is messy, and conspiracy theorists will always be able to find things to stoke their suspicions, even though many of the key "facts" underpinning the conspiracy theories have been debunked in the years since the assassination. It's clear at this point that no amount of evidence will convince some people that Kennedy was killed not by an elaborate plot but rather by a lone nutjob. But Oswald had the means (rifle & training), motive (desire, as a 24-year-old loser, to prove his importance to the world), and opportunity (a job in a building that happened to lie on the motorcade route published in the paper on 11/20 and 11/21). As Robert Oswald, Lee Harvey's brother, put it, the Kennedy assassination was one of those "happenstances of history"—undeniably, a bitter pill to swallow.

Went2NZ4JFK 13y ago

I confirmed one of the claims in the movie JFK myself. I'm always more interested in proof of a conspiracy, than in evidence of any particular parties guilt. This is usually easier to find, because the conspiracy itself leaves more evidence in harder to control situations than the crime does. One good example of this is something I was able to confirm myself by direct examination. In JFK there's a scene that really struck me, where Kevin Costner is getting filled in by Mr. X in Washington. He tells JFK that the papers in New Zealand have full write-ups of LHO that would be impossible without a pre-planted cover up story. So, one day I found myself in New Zealand and went to a university library and looked up the papers on that day. LHO was arrested approx. 1:40pm, Dallas time. Time Zone differences: NZ is UTC +12 hours, Dallas is UTC -6 hours. Thus LHO was arrested on November 23rd, at 7:40AM NZ Time. Yet the morning papers on the 23rd, a Saturday, which came out between 8AM and 10AM (it varies by the edition) had a write up of LHO's dossier. In the 1960s they did have telephones so the news could have easily reached NZ by then. However, printing tonnes of newspapers takes time, as does writing a story and distributing the papers. The papers likely went to print in the middle of the night before-- which is before the assassination even happened. I wanted proof, and I got it. The people who don't believe are not interested in evidence and will take any rationalizations presented to them at face value. This is the reason that, every year or every 5 years, in November, we get these asinine "there was no conspiracy" stories like this one. Check my account name, I won't be back (assuming I don't get hellbanned for the "crime" of disagreeing with the hive mind, like so many do.)

lazyant 13y ago
that paper was printed in the afternoon http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/heritage/newspapers/star23nov1963/ http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/heritage/newspapers/sta...
ceejayoz 13y ago
So the conspiracy decided to notify a newspaper in New Zealand in advance? And none of the many, many people involved in putting it together and printing it noticed the rather large cover story that hadn't happened yet?
jlgreco 13y ago

vezzy-fnord 13y ago

There's no doubt it was a conspiracy. The Warren Commission is the most famous, but most people are unaware of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, which ruled in 1978 that JFK's assassination was part of a conspiracy and that even further, Cuba and the USSR had no involvement in it.

po8crg 13y ago

So, it's just a coincidence that it happened on the day that the first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast? :)

philwelch 13y ago

The frightening thing is that all of the usual suspects--CIA, FBI, Mafia--committed assassinations regularly and it would have not been out of character for them. And for most motives, you can't count out LBJ either--whoever wanted Kennedy dead likely had some belief that LBJ would be better for their purposes, and what better way to ensure that than to involve him in the plot? On the other hand, knowing JFK it could have just as easily been a jealous husband.

nedlerner 13y ago

I highly recommend the book 'Crossfire' by Jim Marrs which is full of interviews and perspectives the Warren Commission chose to ignore. Marrs was a Texas new reporter at this time. The term 'conspiracy theory' has no place in a functioning democracy - if we don't question authority and keep our wits about us our democratic rights are quickly stripped away as we increasingly find