I remember reading a comment by Carlos Hathcock, the record holding marine sniper who is considered one of the foremost experts on sniping. He had 93 confirmed kills in Viet Nam, and a kill at 2500 yards. He said something to the effect the he probably couldnt have made the shots in that amount of time in those conditions with that rifle.
I find it hard to believe that Oswald could, so I think there at least was another shooter.
I read Rush to Judgment a long time ago, like back in high school. At the time, I thought it did a bang-up job of pointing out holes in the Warren Commission, but not necessarily showing that there was a conspiracy. Even as a young breath mint, I had a keen admiration for Mr. Occam’s razor company.
The thing that I found most fascinating about Case Closed was the thorough debunking of many of the alleged witnesses, whose stories have become central parts of the conspiracy lore. Theory upon theory has been built on top of these people’s statements, when there are excellent sources to show that they either weren’t where they said they were in the first place, or suddenly started concocting wilder and wilder stories years after their initial statements.
Best example I can think of off the top of my head is the person who claims to be the “Babushka lady” seen in some of the pictures of Dealey Plaza. I believe her latest story is that not only was she in the plaza at the time of the shooting, but that she was friends with Jack Ruby, and that Ruby had gone out of his way to introduce her to Lee Harvey Oswald one night at his club. Puh-freakin’-leez.
I feel the same way you do about Rush to Judgment; like I said, just because the Warren Commission’s findings are flawed doesn’t necessarily mean the same about its conclusion. Some of those holes the book points out, however, are pretty large. Oh, and I really do recommend Plausible Denial–it relies on a lot of primary source material, and is a fascinating read.
Something anecdotal which goes some way in explaining my distaste for Posner–I read a blurb in a magazine in which he was asked which conspiracy theory was, to him, the silliest. His response? “All of them.”
Now, I’m sorry, but that’s a patently ludicrous statement. Unless you’re defining “conspiracy theory” tautologically as something which is silly, it’s remarkably closed-minded to refuse to accept any validity in any story about two or more people colluding to illegal end in a way which contradicts conventional historical wisdom (a thumbnail definition of a conspiracy theory?). Hell, so Caesar was killed by a lone knifeman?
That’s the dogmatism I’ve sensed on Posner’s part.
(Oh, and I don’t doubt that many of the alleged witnesses in the JFK assassination deserve debunking; “many” and “all,” however, are two very different things.)
This is cool! I’ve never set foot in GD before, but this is a pleasant experience! Just some random thoughts, grown out of what I’ve read here:
1)pantom, the idea of Oswald aiming at Connally (sp?) seems plausible to me. But…wouldn’t there have been a more subtle way to take out the governor, without such a large crowd around, and without the President being right there? Or do you think he counted on people assuming Connally had gotten a bullet meant for Kennedy?
3)minty green, yes, Ruby did seem to be in the right place at the right time. I read a true-crime book once (I often do) about some high school kids in Texas who killed the narc who was about to get them busted. One of the officers involved in the case (or maybe it was a kid’s dad. See how easily these things get blurred?) had a chip on his shoulder because some book or official report had named him as the DPD officer who had “left unlocked” the door by which Ruby entered the garage. But I’m not sure what “left unlocked” was supposed to mean. It could mean that he simply overlooked the door, not necessarily that he unlocked a door that had been locked, for a specific purpose. “Left” adds a suspicious note to what may have been a simple mistake by a rookie cop.
I don’t believe this scenario, but assuming for a minute it is true- maybe the thought of the guy he hated (Connally) riding right next to JFK is what pushed him over the edge.
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Good Point
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He was being chased by the police, and ran into the movie theatre to get lost in the crowd. JDM
JDM: Nah, he was just shooting at Connally, according to the guy who suggested this theory.
I actually went out & paid for where I read this, in an article in History Today magazine.
The author, William D. Rubenstein, professor of history at the University of Wales, makes the following points:
1 - That Connally had signed a letter stating that his dishonorable discharge from the Navy would not be reviewed. Allegedly, Oswald had a grudge against him for this.
2 - That Connally was a right-wing Democrat (later to become a Republican) who was a logical target to this self-proclaimed ‘hunter of fascists’.
3 - That it would have been easy for Oswald to aim at Connally, hesitate for a tiny fraction of a second, and hit Kennedy, who was sitting two feet behind him in a moving car.
4 - That Marina, when she first heard news of the assassination, thought Oswald was firing at Connally and not at Kennedy.
I actually first heard this theory being promoted by someone else on the radio, and as I recall he said it even explained why Oswald looked so bewildered when they picked him up for killing the President, since he would have believed himself to have been shooting at and hitting Connally.
Anyway, that’s it. Like I said, my favorite theory. After all, how many times have you aimed at something only to hit something else with deadly accuracy, something you never would have hit had you been deliberately trying to do so? Seems very plausible to me.
Also, re the OP and Ruby’s connection to all this, the article also makes some decent points in defense of the idea that Ruby acted alone:
My idea was that:
Yes, he was shooting at Connally, and
The reason he picked that day was that his anger at Connally was fanned into flame by seeing that Connally would be in a place of honor sitting by JFK.
The reason I thought about this in the first place was reading that Connally himself poo-pooed this idea, saying that Oswald would have had plenty of times to shoot him before Nov. 22, so why pick that day? I say, what could be more maddening than to see the object of your hatred flaunting his power by riding next to the president.
Having said that, I think that Oswald shot at, and killed, Kennedy for the same reason many assassins kill- to show the world (or Jodie Foster) he’s not so insignificant after all.
As far as the shooting itself goes, I think it was really pretty poor- one shot missed altogether, and the other two were hardly in a close pattern. And the shooting has been replicated, in the case of Howard Donahue (sp?) in fact, getting all three shots into the target in the allotted time. Donahue had his own idea about the shooting, which was very interesting, though probably wrong. His analysis of the timing of the shots and the SBT, however, is to me compelling. JDM
Share it with us. Sounds intriguing.
Welcome!!!
(but don’t get used to it being pleasant:))
Donahue’s idea was that after the neck shot, the Secret Service car following the JFK car sped up. One agent, who Donahue named but whose name I can’t remember, was standing up at the time, carrying an AK-47. When the car sped up, he fell back, and the AK-47 went off, and that was the head shot- a horrible accident. This was published in a book by Bonar Menninger called Mortal Error. I read that the Secret Service agent sued, and got the book pulled. One thing Donahue said was that also would explain Oswald’s bewildered look, and the word “patsy”- if he was aiming his rifle and saw Kennedy’s head explode- he’d certainly feel like something strange had happened. The funny thing about this idea is that the conspiracy theorists turned on it with a vengeance- they seem to need a big target more than they need an accurate accounting for the facts.
JDM
Mind blowing. (pardon the pun.)
AK-47 is a soviet weapon, no Secret service agent would be caught dead with one. I heard this theory, but it was an M-16 or an AR-15(I didn’t read it, and I don’t recall which), not an AK. Supposedly, these had just ben issued at the time.
Of course the secret service senario doesn’t explain how there could be three shots fired from Oswald’s gun and three shots heard by a majority of the ear witnesses. What happenned to Oswald’s third shot?
The secret service scenario also has the flaw that Kennedy’s head moved back and to the left when it was shot. While it seems counter-intuitive, a shot that goes through the skull causes the head to move towards the shot- the entry wound is small, but the amount of tissue shooting out the large exit wound is akin to a quick bit of jet propulsion. (This was proved in the early '70’s in some scientific magazine; see Penn & Teller’s How To Play With Your Food for their demonstration and cite.
Ergo, had the agent shot Kennedy, Kennedy’s head should have moved forward towards the shot. As it is, Kennedy’s head moved back and to the right, towards Oswald’s gun. Ergo, Oswald was the shooter.
(Though, I suppose it would have been kind of ironic- Kennedy’s head jerking back and to the right is seen by many as an indication that a second shooter was forward and to the left of Kennedy (i.e., the grassy knoll); had the agent accidentally shot Kennedy, his head movement would have been a jerk forward, which most viewers would see as logical for having been shot by Oswald. Ergo, the lack of consiparcy fuels the conspiracy; but a real conspiracy would have quelled suspicions of a conspiracy. My brain hurts.)
Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory, but most are fictional rather than factual. The sheer number of theories involving JFK, some of them contradictory, indicate that they can’t all be true even though a few honest believe in this or that theory. Of course, just because some theories are false does not mean that all theories are false, it is just a matter a weeding out a the correct theory. Well, the field of JFK conspiracy theories has been weeded ad nauseam and no clearly obvious or credible conspiracy has emerged so far.
I think it was Carl Sagan who said “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” This condition has not been meet. The only credible solution, so far as I know, is the lone gunman of Oswald action all by himself. As someone pointed out earlier, Case Closed renders an excellent portrayal of Oswald and I doubt any shadow organization would invite him into their ranks or even use him as a “patsy.” It is just not very believable. Books like Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs require high levels credulity, like reading J.R.R. Tolkien, in order to accept some of the theories.
Also, I think it is easy to interpret actions and events in hindsight as see irregularities and unexplained peculiarities which can burgeon into conspiracy theories. Common, everyday events can seem ominous and strange once you start examining each detail and cause that led up to the event.
The secret service person was supposed to be in the car behind him, if I remember correctly, so that would work. I have the Penn and Teller book, and they did thier demonstration with fruit wrapped in tape. I’m not convinced that this would be the case with a person.
Sorry for the late response on this point, Gadarene, but I had to run last night.
No question about it. Posner’s conclusions are fundamentally at odds with primary sources. But it’s inevitable that ANY researcher in this area is going to be at odds with many primary sources, since the witnesses themselves conflict on so many different points. One of Posner’s main points is that it’s intellectually dishonest of the conspiracy buffs to pick and choose individual accounts that support their pet theories, even when the bulk of the evidence converges on a different conclusion.
Just as a basic example, let’s take that (conclusively debunked) police tape recording that supposedly recorded four shots in Dealey Plaza. It’s easy for a conspiracist to cite that bit of evidence to say that there must have been four shots. But that is “fundamentally at odds” with the statements of the majority of witnesses in Dealey Plaza who said they heard exactly three shots. At the same time, Posner’s conclusion that there were only three shots conflicts with the witnesses who said they heard two, four, five, or a dozen shots. The question is not whether his conclusions conflict with primary sources, but where all that sometimes conflicting evidence converges.
Heres a real good link to John kennedy Jr.'s “assassination”.
http://www.texemarrs.com/072000/hilpres.htm
minty: From what I understand in this case, Posner’s being at odds with primary sources means not that he was supporting certain witnesses despite what others said, but that he was claiming things which were contradicted or put into an obviously different context in official documents. That he was getting matters of fact flatly wrong, not just matters of eyewitness experience. I agree with your entire previous post, and I think it is dishonest for many conspiracy people to pick and choose their evidence (just as Posner seems to do, by the way). But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t compelling and consistent accounts out there–especially given that the burden of proof is eased by the selective, haphazard nature of the Warren Report’s evidence itself.
Very good point JDM…John Douglas, the retired FBI profiler and writer mentions Oswald in one of his books as being a classic assasin type. Much like Hinkley, losers who shot important people in some twisted attempt to make themselves important. And the thought that he may have actually been trying to kill Connelly supports the idea even more.
Of course we all know that the Kennedy’s had Marilyn killed because she knew too much and Peter Lawford was the hit man. Perhaps some of her other lovers are involved in the revenge killing of the Kennedy Bros. No telling how many powerful guys the broad slept with, congressmen, Mafia types, baseball players and playwrites. Geez!
Maybe it was a UFO. Any pictures surfaced yet?
Needs2know