The JFK assassination and the various conspiracies that go along with it.
People often say that in the year 20XX everything will e declassified and show what really happened.
My question is, why would the government have documents pointing to anything other than the official story? Even if the official story was a fallacy, why would the government keep documents saying it was and contradicting their own official investigation.
To make things clear, I am not leaning one way or another on the JFK conspiracy, just a question on government record keeping.
A different but related question is why /how any believer in conspiracy theories would believe they themselves could learn anything useful from any sealed or hidden government files. By CT-standard definitions, all government files are subject to manipulation by Them. And are hence untrustworthy by CT believers. And yet they persist in suggesting that if only they could get to the files the Truth would be revealed.
To me that’s just further proof that CT believers are pretty much incapable of even simple logical thought.
Exactly. F. Scott Fitzgerald said “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” He may have been right in context, but in the larger world that is the opposite of fact. First-rate intelligences stop an argument when contradictions appear. CTers absolutely depend on contiguous utterances in opposition. You can’t argue with that; you can only dismiss it. And they consider that a victory.
You’re too busy patting yourself on the back trying to establish a straw man, or listening to those who do, without even going into the community to find out what the CTers believe.
The CTers believe that the files were sealed because, at the time, there was no FOIA to allow people who didn’t believe the party line access to them at the time of the sealing, and the government wanted the info kept secret, but, wasn’t in a position to deny or destroy the evidence. The government was in a wonderful time of bureaucracy, and it was not unreasonable to believe that information would remain classified for the 75 years.
Don’t let your own self admiration fool you into thinking that CTers believe that there is a special file that says “…and these are the people who killed JFK…” which will be either manipulated by the CIA or conclusively lay out the plot to the public when it is opened.
CTers, or at least my coterie of same, think that the sealed evidence can give the lie to some of the long reaches made by the government in forcing the conclusion of the Warren Report onto the people.
Bureacracies love to collect papers and information. Information collection, storage, and distribution is their lifeblood. While they don’t mind hiding these things or making them difficult to access or understand, they hate destroying them forever. You never know when it will come in handy for something.
Conspiray theorists are relying on this packrat nature of bureacracies.
To put it another way, the evidence is all there, but it may lead a reasonable person to a different conclusion than what the “official” report said.
I honestly think that many of these official reports are written with the primary purpose of trying to make the controversy go away. Thus, the preferred answer is always the one that provides the neatest solution, with the fewest loose ends. That’s why plane crashes are nearly always “pilot error,” the suspect rarely ever had any accomplices (unless said accomplices are already in custody), and no of course that shooting by a Muslim convert wasn’t connected to terrorism in any way. The desire to calm troubled waters trumps the desire to air the whole truth.
Plenty of documented CTs or info the government didn’t want to reveal in general were exposed via the release of papers. Reference the Snowden mother lode, the Church Committee, COINTELPRO, or the Pentagon Papers. Foreign ops. Assassinations/regime change. Pretty straight forward.
If JFK was a CIA op (doubtful) the govt probably wouldn’t voluntarily release such information.
There is a difference between speculating about possibilities in otherwise unknown or shadowed territory, and denying facts to prop up alternate theories.
I don’t believe anything released by Snowden was a complete shock to anyone; the material, at least so far, has only confirmed and detailed things that relatively sober and grounded observers already knew or suspected. (That is, I don’t see anything like alien autopsies or visits to the Oval Office, documentation of JFK/RFK/MLK assassination involvement, etc. - just deeper and deeper confirmation of government surveillance on domestic subjects, for the most part. No real surprise there.
OTOH, claiming (for overused example) that “no one has ever been able to replicate Oswald’s shooting” and then constructing an elaborate explanation why, and expecting to someday find deeply buried memos and reports supporting that explanation… that’s nearly all CT movements and theories I’ve encountered in a long life of peeking at such things. Start with something not unknown but contrary to fact and then built a Disneyland castle on it, and claim the gummint is hiding the blueprints.
The government doesn’t keep official records of what it knows is illegal activity. And assassinating the President would qualify.
Let’s step down to a lesser level of government crime. Let’s say the mayor of some city is taking bribes for municipal contracts. Sure, he may keep extensive records so he can keep track of who’s paid him how much.
But these are personal records not official records. When the mayor leaves office, he’ll burn these records or hide them in a safety deposit box, not place them in a government archive to be sealed for fifty years.
The records that go into the archives are the official records of legitimate government business. If some government officials conspired to kill Kennedy, any records they may have made were never filed in any public archive and therefore aren’t waiting to be released.
I imagine we will have some conspiracy theories floating around once the Guantanomo files are released if the backlash is anywhere near as bad as is being predicted. The release sounds like a political temper tantrum to me.
Just remember, a lack of evidence is all part of the conspiracy. And evidence that contradicts the conspiracy is all part of the conspiracy. And redacted
Sure it does. Reference my earlier post. You’re telling me you never heard of any of that?
Or take Iran-Contra. After the conspiracy was outed, Oliver North (well, his secretary) destroyed so many documents they famously ended up jamming a shredder. Presumably if it never went public those hundreds of files would be carted off to some archive somewhere, never to be seen again.
I’m seriously wondering if we’re going to see President Obama get assassinated in the very near future. And maybe his family too. I’m sure plenty of people at the CIA are pissed! :eek: