Suppose it’s proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was given instructions to shoot JFK, and these instructions were traced to a memo dated October 29th, 1963, sent to LBJ, Kruschev, the Mafia heads, and Castro detailing the “Oswald Option.” Oswald was then trained on the rifle, and he was to take it to the Book Depository and shoot the President. For this, LHO was to be paid a cool $1 million.
However, Oswald wasn’t the only one involved. The memo mentions the “Ruby Option”, who is a man known to be in Dallas Texas on that day, and who was deeply in debt and desperate. Ruby didn’t know why the guy wanted LHO killed, but the $150,000 he was going to earn would be enough to pay off his debts.
OK, so the CT-ers were right and they were proved so on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death. What are the consequences?
(For purposes of this thread, if you wish to presume another one of the many, many conspiracy theories about JFK was to be proven, feel free to change the opening scenario conditions.)
It would all depend on the exact parties involved and whether they - or their countries or organizations, for that matter - still existed. But it’s hard to find meaning in the question as asked.
It’s not that I dismiss the question, but if there had been a conspiracy, it would have been uncovered a long time ago, so the question takes on the dimension of “…in 1964?” “…in 1967?” “…in 1970?” and not assuming nothing was known or done until now.
No, it’s proven in 2013 that a conspiracy existed and got a few people to take shots at the President, other shooters.
One of the reasons why I ask is I’m interested in what the doubters think the desired outcome to be if their pet theory is proven correct. Are there consequences in our world today if it is, in fact, discovered a cabal of powerful people in 1963 did indeed successfully conspire to kill the President?
*HARTMAN: Anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald was? Private Snowball?
SNOWBALL: Sir, he shot Kennedy, sir!
HARTMAN: That’s right, and do you know how far away he was?
SNOWBALL: Sir, it was pretty far! From that book suppository building, sir!
HARTMAN: All right, knock it off! Two hundred and fifty feet! He was two hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a moving target. Oswald got off three rounds with an old Italian bolt action rifle in only six seconds and scored two hits, including a head shot! Do any of you people know where these individuals learned to shoot? Private Joker?
JOKER: Sir, in the Marines, sir!
HARTMAN: In the Marines! Outstanding!*
The conspiracy falls on that point alone, never mind the others.
But AB is right - the nutballs would just wonder why the info was coming out now and what was still hidden, if not disbelieving the whole thing.
So this latest theory of the Secret Service Agent accidentally firing a shot which hit the president in the head can not be possible because it would have been found out by now?
I was half way around the world with no TV available when it all went down. I do not get on CT’s theories much but from all I have seen & heard & read casually, this latest explanation explains a lot (all?) of ther things that the CT folks claim are the inconsistency’s that drive them to keep questioning.
As a theory of what actually happened at that time, it makes more sense, is more plausible and does not trip my ‘woo woo’ meter than the CT’s, or the ‘Official Warren Report’ does.
On a lot of things, I do not give my brain much wiggle room to fall off the edge, but some things I do, so in my ranking system that I use, this SS accident scenario as shown on that particular program / show is what I think makes the most sense to me.
I will now put on my least restriction blinders and wander into another thread.
Short answer? Yes. It would have been found out within the hour - the day, at most, when all the [um, poor choice of words here] pieces were put together. The idea that it could have been successfully hidden for 30 days, much less 30+ years, is just laughable.
A little advice: everything you see on TV is wrong. Especially when it has any tinge of sensationalism. So arguing that “this TV program makes the most sense to you” is like arguing about which episode of SpongeBob best explains 9/11.
Then you’re back to my first sentence. Assuming any of the plotters or their organizations (or countries) still existed, it would be a legal matter more than anything else. We’re not going to nuke Moscow or even Havana (or Joisey) at this late date. The world has changed a hell of a lot in 50 years and there might not even be anyone left to interrogate or imprison.
An earlier JFK conspiracy-theory thread (they’re popping up everywhere because of the anniversary) lead me to a book on Amazon that rejects the identification of Mark Felt as Deep Throat, creating a whole new conspiracy theory in which Dick Cheney was Deep Throat, and Watergate was a coverup for the JFK assassination. At this point, I don’t think there is anything that could stop the JFK conspiracy theorists from continuing to spin out conspiracy theories.
I’m having a hard time seeing the logic of this. The Secret Service was there to keep people from shooting the President. Oswald was there to shoot the President. So how does it make more sense to think the President got shot by a Secret Service agent rather than Oswald? If you could have magically appeared at the scene a couple of minutes earlier and seen all of the people in the area and read their minds and then you were asked “Which of these people is about to kill Kennedy?” your best answer would be “That guy with the rifle who’s planning on shooting him in two minutes.” So why figure this doesn’t make sense after the fact?
And why did hundreds of people - none of whom planned on killing the President - get together after he was shot and create a massive conspiracy to cover up for the agent who shot him by accident? And how did they coordinate this conspiracy when they had no advance knowledge of the shooting?
Look at genuine conspiracies like Watergate or Iran-Contra and see how quickly people began scrambling for cover and trying to save themselves from criminal prosecution. But your theory has everyone doing the exact opposite and joining in on a criminal cover-up when they hadn’t committed the original crime.
One of the CT folks I know personally insists that somebody wrote down all their secrets in a book that will only be made public three years after they die. I forget who the somebody is, but the CT-er accepts it as gospel that there is a conspiracy because this person said so, but the somebody just can’t reveal the truth until after they die.
So that’s at least one plausible* scenario for how the truth might come out at this time when it didn’t come out before.
*Well, for certain values of plausible.
Anyway, what would happen completely depends on the details, but I doubt anything much could be done right now. Most Mafia heads are dead or in jail anyway. If it turned out that it was a corporate conspiracy (some people think JFK was killed so that the Vietnam war could create demand for more guns and tanks), I suppose there are ways to penalize the companies involved such as denying them future contracts.
In a broader sense, though… I think it would shake the trust that people have in the government. I think it would be a huge boost to certain political parties and candidates. I could absolutely see people saying “JFK was a conspiracy, proving that Obamacare is evil!” This might not be a logical connection, but politics has never been big on logic. All we need is a little faux outrage at the right time to swing an election.
What would happen now? It’s simple. Every CT nut denounces and denies the validity of the smoking gun memo because it implies that some *other *CT is actually what happened, and their own CT is wrong.
Because, you know, it’s not enough for JFK to be killed by a vast conspiracy, it had to be the perfect vast conspiracy.
So far, no one but me seems to have watched that show. Or offered an proof to me that the movies, pictures, the words said at that time sa shown on that show were factually wrong.
Now I know that unless we all sat down in a room with all information available to us & we go point by point on ANY sequence of events will we ever agree that because you say it is a CT and wrong, but my interpretation or the Warren commission is indeed all the true facts…
That can’t happen.
If all television is untruthful and Wikp is absolute truth from learned top of the profession experts then you all need to go edit a lot of old posts you have made.
Pick some points from that broadcast & cite the wrong parts with an SDMB acceptable cite. Got to watch it first.
I did not say it was THE answer, but IMO, it did answer many things that I have wondered about that were never even touched on enough to make it into the normal news as far as I know.
You all may be absolutely correct. I hope that the powers that be notice and you get the accolades for impeccable critical thinking that seems to be desired & getting them by shouting that every thing you do not want to even talk about is a CT.
::: sigh :::: another thread off limits due to my inability to follow up the imaginatively built escape hatch to rational thought that has been built over the rabbit hole. Bawahahahah
Wow…that’s great! Thanks for making my day!
But for bonus points, the author should have added something about the faked moon landings, too.
Oh…And Elvis, too. Don’t forget Elvis.
Conspiracy Deniers would start clucking about tinfoil hats and “It was the Illuminati! Using a 1920s Death Ray! From the Grassy Knoll!” and the fact that there was a Conspiracy would be forgotten, or discounted.
What should take place, given the scenario of the OP, is an investigation to see who is still around and benefiting, what the facts were, how it had been covered up.
We would need to prosecute anybody involved that was still alive. Let’s be real, it was a murder.
If it was a Republican backed murder, the Dems would surely demand the death penalty for the perps. If it was a Democratic thing, the Pubs would do the same.
