I’m sure there must be, but I just have one specific question, or rather, request. I’d like to hear any theories offered on why Ruby shot Oswald. Thank you in advance!
Check out Rush to Judgment and Plausible Denial, both by Mark Lane. No conspiracy theorist I, but the Warren Report has–in my judgment–more holes in it than a chain link sieve.
My obligatory self plug, although I’m not certain I believe this anymore. Oh well:
Okay, Gadarene, I’ll check those out.
Keep 'em coming, though!
I should add that, in my opinion, those books are documented to an exhaustive enough degree as to merit the attention of everyone who tends to dismiss as paranoid bunk any doubt cast on the accepted version of the assassination. Not that Lane’s necessarily got it right, of course, but I’d certainly like to see reasonable responses to the points he raises. I really recommend that everyone read those books.
(One’s a point-by-point examination of the Warren Report, and the other’s an account of a defamation trial in 1978 in which Lane defended a small right-wing magazine against E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame. Depositions abound.)
sigh In order to forestall being labelled a wacko conspiracy theorist, let me again point out that I subscribe to no particular theory and hold no real preconceptions concerning JFK’s assassination or, for that matter, the assassinations of RFK or King; I only try to evaluate what I read. For all I know, everything happened exactly the way most people think it did…it’s just that the books I’ve linked present information to which I haven’t yet heard a (subjectively) plausible counterargument. I certainly believe people have the capacity to find in certain circumstances meaning which doesn’t exist. On the other hand, I have no illusions about the ability of the public to buy really good PR, and for official truth to sometimes override, or attempt to override, the inconvenience of fact. …This disclaimer, upon reflection, probably dug me deeper. Well, whatever.
Sometime in the 70’s, I don’t remember the exact year their was a House Subcommitee on associations (HSCA). They concluded that their likely was a conspiracy, but I don’t know the exact details of their findings. For some reason most conspiracy theorists do not lean on this heavily, which leads me to believe their may be some flaws in their findings.
A few things I would note if you want to get into conspiracy theories:
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The HSCA had an independent(?) audio tape of the assasination analyzed, and it was concluded that their were 4 shots, not three.
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The three tramps have already been identified, I’ll have to check the source, but I wouldn’t bother bringing them up. The police arrested some hobos for loitering or somesuch, and because it was in Dallas in that day people attached more importance to it than necessary.
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Oswalds ability as a marksman is in doubt. Furthermore, whether or not he could have gotten the shots off is in doubt. I’ve heard both sides, and both are convincing.
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Ruby’s explanation for shooting Oswald, “Wanted to spare Jackie the pain of a trial” makes little or no sense to me.
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Many of the mysterious deaths are easily explained, and the list has been padded more than the “Clinton list.” If witnesses were being knocked off, why was Ruby allowed to live, albeit in prison.
Just my 2 cents. I don’t have an opinion, but I find it fascinating.
The whole assaination-conspiracy thing is about making money. Consider this-it has been more than 37 years since the event-by now somebody would have spilled the beans-if there was anything to all of these cockeyed theories!
No, the asassination remains a HUGE moneymaker-the city of Dallas was going to tear down the old Texas School Book Depository building-till the tourist council convinced them of what a tourist draw the old dump still is!
I would really like to see a list of all the books and movies that this has spawned-it ought to be called the “JFK ASASSINATION CONSPIRACY INDUSTRY”!
What Gadarene said.
I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think it was Oswald all by himself. In fact, I kinda doubt Oswald knew about it in advance.
But I really don’t think I know what happened except that someone killed Kennedy and got away with it.
The HCSA’s report on the likelihood of a conspiracy dependended almost exclusively on the audio tape of a police radio in which four shots can be heard. Sometime later an audio engineer listened to the tape and proved conclusively that the tape in question was recorded after the assination.
As to why Ruby shot Oswald, Ruby was tremendously upset at JFK’s death because he thought the president had been a great friend of the jewish people and Isreal. He was also enraged at Oswald’s cockiness and jubilant demeanor.
Even a debunking of the 4 shot thing raises more conspiracy questions.
Who made an audio tape AFTER the assasination and tried to play it off as real?
There are just to many coincidences and crazy things going on for me to believe that it was just Oswald.
The audiotape in question was made of the police radio that was stuck in the one position during the assination. I think it would be reasonable for an investigator to listen to tapes of police radio at he time of the assination. The tape was real it was just that the noises in question were made after the assination took place.
IIRC, it was print through from a recording of the actual shots onto the next layers of tape after the tightly wound reel had been stored for some time. Remember pre and post echo on cassettes? Same thing here. JDM
My all-time favorite explanation is (drum roll please):
Oswald was a Marine. The Marines are under the authority of the Department of the Navy. Connolly, who you will recall was riding in the car and was wounded in the attack, had been Secretary of the Navy somewhere in there. Oswald had wanted his discharge upped to honorable or something, and Connolly had written him a letter refusing to do so. Oswald, therefore, had a beef against Connolly. A real, and personal, beef. Therefore…
He was aiming at Connolly, and missed! Which explains why he was so deadly accurate on JFK. He wasn’t trying to hit him!
Seems the best, and simplest, explanation to me.
As to Ruby, well, he was probably just a little bit left of weird.
egkelly: While I don’t doubt that there’s an assassination cottage industry, I’m fairly confident that Mark Lane isn’t a part of it. Read the books.
Freedom: Glad to see there’s something we agree on; I guess we’re both partisan nutcases. 
One thing I’ve never seen satisfactorily addressed is Oswald’s documented intelligence ties and their possible repercussions–how, to give one example, he was able to get into and out of the Soviet Union so easily in the height of the Cold War. Also, from what I’ve read, Ruby had ties both with the mob and as an FBI informant. For what it’s worth.
Thanks , you touched on the one thing that is still unexplained-Oswald’s very strange behavior, and his equally strange travels. I DO belive that he had some relationship with the CIA-whether as an informant or double agent, we will probably never know. Based upon what we know now about the CIA’s activities (eg the murder of Dr. Frank Olsen after he ingested LSD), I can imagine what might have transpired with Oswald.
Unfortunately, I don’t see the CIA ever opening its files on this one.
As for Jack Ruby, there is some evidence connecting him to the Chicago Mafia-but as far as I know, nothing concrete ever was proven.
For a good debunking of various conspiracy canards, try Gerald Posner’s Case Closed. It does a good job of examining some of the “suspicious” questions also (such as Oswald’s USSR visit, Ruby’s mob connections, etc.).
As to the OP: I think puddleglum has it right about Ruby.
A few things…
You guys are right about the cottage industry. Whether they like it or not, all authors who write about Kennedy are immediately thrust into that. Furthermore both Lane and Posner allegedly have their biases (I have not read their work, but I have read some critiques of their work).
For example, in Posners work he interviewed some people that even the Warren commision rejected, because it proved his point. There used to be a web page listed on about.com that did a point by point rebuttal of his work, but it appears to be dead. At the same time, conspiracy “researchers” often use bad or contradictory evidence. I believe Lane may have been the creator of the “death list” which has numerous factual errors. I’m gonna have to pick up my copy of the Big Book of Conspiracies.
As it is, about.com has a few good links on their conspiracy web page:
http://conspiracies.about.com/newsissues/conspiracies/cs/jfkassassination/index.htm
Both sides can be very convincing, and it is hard to filter out noise.
puddleglum: I didn’t know that about the tape. I still don’t buy the resoning about Ruby, but I suppose World Wars have been started for less.
I was wondering who the first person would be to bring up Case Closed… Thanks, xeno.
Umm. I must confess a predisposition against Posner, so much so that I haven’t read very much of that book. This may well weaken my intellectual position in this thread, but… The guy seems to me to be more dogmatic than most conspiracy theorists. His tone grates on me. It is my understanding that he glosses over or dismisses outright many of the points raised in Rush to Judgment. Richard Belzer, though hardly the most weighty cite, devotes a chapter of his conspiracy book to Posner and Case Closed, and pokes fairly convincing holes in the foundation of several of Posner’s contentions and debunkings. It is also my understanding that Posner adheres fairly stringently to the findings of the Warren Report, substantial portions of which, in my opinion, have been pretty conclusively discredited (not least by the HSCA). It’s obviously possible to support some of the Warren Report without supporting all of it, though, and to support the conclusion without necessarily supporting the substance of the findings; can someone tell me if Posner gives ground in that respect anywhere in his book?
I guess what it comes down to is that I’m perfectly willing to accept what Posner says, if it wasn’t for my perception of Posner himself. If someone else can provide primary source material (or at least support material that rivals or supercedes what I’ve seen from Lane) that supports Case Closed, I’m happy to incorporate it into my weltanshauung. For whatever reason, though, I don’t have faith in Case Closed. I acknowledge that this position may not be fully rational, but there you go.
You’re right, Gadarene, that’s not very rational. Read the book. It convinced me Oswald acted alone and, more to the OP, that Ruby was an emotionally unbalanced, impulsive guy who was in the right place at the right time. (Literally. If the Dallas cops had moved Oswald at the time they said they were, Ruby would still have been in line across the street, buying a money order for one of his strippers.)
Reading through the Amazon.com reviews of Case Closed from xeno’s link, I see that several of its detractors (and the reviews are about 60-40 in support of it) talk about how the book is in many places fundamentally at odds with primary sources. Primary sources. To me, being the good little ignorance fighter that I am, this is a Very Big No-No. There’s one review by someone who claims to have accepted the lone gunman theoryafter studying the issue for years which says that Posner simply doesn’t have a very good grasp of the facts, misquoting people and documents, taking things out of context, and flatly ignoring many witnesses who testified for the Warren Commission, apparently because their testimony is at odds with his account of the truth.
Again, to me, that kind of stuff–if true–is fundamentally fatal to his credibility. shrug
As a matter of interest, have you read Lane, minty?