Sort of an opposite position, but had there been a conspiracy, other assassin, etc., what are the chances that the secret could be kept for 50 years? I’d say that the Warren Commission report has stood the test of time-had there been anything grossly wrong with it, the facts would have emerged by now.
Colonel Mustard, on the Grassy Knoll, with a candle stick.
And he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those darn meddling kids!
Most conspiracy theories absolutely require the knowledgeable involvement of dozens, hundreds or thousands of people. That even a hundred people could keep absolute silence for fifty years - even in memos, notes, diaries, deathbed confessions, etc. - is simply not believable.
My counterexample has always been this: what might have been the greatest US political conspiracy of the 20th century was at one point known by only a small handful of people (I think six), was eminently containable, had the potential to bring down the President and rock US politics to its core… and it was secret for a matter of weeks.
Watergate, of course.
So the conspiracy needed to assassinate a popular sitting US President would have, especially in those days, been unraveling before the funeral. That it hasn’t unraveled in 50 years is as close to proof positive as I think can exist.
I certainly do remember the Kennedy assassination myself, as do many other posters here. But even we old fogies are still glad to have such a font of ancient wisdom correct our misperceptions.
This is the number one request from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. The craziness will never die.
Ever visited the 6th Floor Museum?
I must admit, I was always skeptical until I visited it a couple of years ago. You can’t get into the actual sniper’s nest, but you can get to the window two down from it and see the same view Oswald did. It’s an absolutely perfect site for a shooting. And as I have repeatedly said after seeing it, my grandmother could have taken those shots and made them. It’s like being on a target range.
And no, there was no extra bullet damage. They know where all three shots went. Oswald hurried the first and missed. He settled down for the last two and didn’t.
I thought they never accounted for the first bullet.
There is circumstantial evidence that it hit a curb, including a bystander who was hit by a fragment of either the bullet or the curb concrete, but the bullet was never recovered.
Case Closed.
History Reclaimed.
The other insight one gains from visiting the assassination site is the ridiculous lack of cover provided by the fence on the grassy knoll. From the spot on the pergola where Zapruder shot his film (and where other spectators were standing), one has a completely unobstructed view of the parking lot behind the fence. The notion that anyone could have set up, waited, and fired a rifle from there without being seen or heard is worse than absurd.
There is a psycological aspect to the CT belief with the Kennedy assasination. Hearing about it finally ended any and all doubt to me that Oswald shot alone. Kennedy was such a seminal figure, a monumental personality in American history, it’s hard to believe he was removed from this world by such a lowly, insignifigant scumbag as Lee Harvey Oswald. The scales of history would indicate that others would have had to help Oswald do it.
Sorry folks, just this Oswald guy, and nobody else.
I used to believe in a conspiracy. Then I read Posner’s Case Closed and felt like an idiot for believing in a conspiracy.
Now, thanks to the new wave of CTs I have started to believe again. I think it goes like this:
Who did it?
**Don’t know. **
How did they do it?
**
Somehow.**
Why did they do it?
Don’t know.
Was Oswald involved at all?
Yes/No/Maybe
Is Kennedy dead?
Yes.
Each of these facts is irrefutable. And saying there was a lone gunman will not change that fact.
Time to reread Posner.
I recommended this book elsewhere on this site recently.
If any interested in Kennedy assassination have not read Vincent Bugliosi’s History Reclaimed, I highly recommend it. This marvelously in-depth work examines just about every contention raised on lone gunman/not lone/oswald/not oswald arguments.
Argument and available evidence is provided on both sides. I too am old enough to have read Warren when it came out and cynical enough to have read A.J. Weberman when he first published. Of course I’ve read Mark Lane and Posner too
.As much as I hate to trust the work of a former prosecurting attorney, this book should open a lot of eyes by closing a lot of imagined loopholes.
OK, who got convicted in the Hoffa thing? Or, does that happen in the last 10 of the 50 year time limit?
I read Rush to Judgement. Then I read Posner. Then, I read Rush to Judgement again. Then, I felt like an idiot for believing Posner.
Posner is a strong and compelling arguer, but, the goodies aren’t there.
People have the idea, from watching movies, that when a person is shot they fly across the room from the force of it. Or, if they don’t fly across the room, they at least get shoved around a bit.
But that’s because movies are fake. When you see a guy in a movie get shot, he flies across the room because he’s being pulled by wires. When people really get shot, they just crumple, and whether they fall forward or backward depends more on how their legs buckle than what direction they were shot from. Think about the laws of physics for a minute. If the force of a bullet could knock a person across the room, it would have to knock the shooter across the room too. Simple laws of physics.
Shoot a melon with a rifle, and the melon is just as likely to roll backwards towards the shooter than be knocked forward away from the shooter. This is a well known effect that anyone who wants to have an opinion on what happens when you shoot someone in the head should know.