I know the JFK assassination conspiracy theories have been beaten to death but...

Great Debates
181

The final conclusion, I think, was that they were bells tolling, not random background or electronic noise.

Ruby liked to paint himself as a really important guy, but I’ve never heard of any actual evidence he was even involved with the Mafia, much less meeting very important people regularly.

Lie-detector tests are pointless. Anyway, does your book mention that Ruby was also claiming the government gave him cancer? He was not a stable character and seems to have really lost it later on, which is also the explanation I would give for the shooting of Oswald. Probably didn’t think he’d get thrown in jail for killing the guy who killed the President either.

I find the notion that Jack Ruby was involved with the Mafia is as absurd as the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA operative.

182

But all of this falls apart under closer scrutiny. First, I’ll grant that since I haven’t read Scheim’s book, I haven’t seen his data that shows his alleged mob connections. The data that I have seen paints a picture of a mobster wannabe who’s really someone the mob wouldn’t touch with a ten foot mob pole.

You hint that with the shooting of Oswald, the police themselves could have been involved in the timing of events. Think about what this would mean - first, that people in the DPD were in on the conspiracy. Then they went through that whole business about delaying Oswald’s transfer, because… what? Because Ruby had a personal errand to take care of at Western Union? Why didn’t they just get Jack there on time? I would think that the mob, when pulling off a huge event like this, would hire dependable people. Instead, Scheim wants us to believe that they hired a couple of unstable weirdos, one a lone nut, and the other a shady hothead. And how does it help the mob to have Ruby rub out Oswald anyway? Wouldn’t they need someone to rub out Ruby too? Oh yeah, according to Ruby, they “injected him with cancer” in prison. But why wait so long? He would have already done all the singing he could do in that time. And why have Ruby wait two whole days to kill Oswald? Wouldn’t that be enough time for him to tell everything there was to tell?

Then the story about the WC testimony is not persuasive. Ruby wanted a lie detector to show that he wasn’t involved in a conspiracy, and he was scared of the John Birchers, not the mob. See http://www.jfk-online.com//rubydef.html .

Next, you’ve made a strawman argument that we say Ruby shot Oswald because he loved Kennedy. No one believes that. Ruby was an unstable hothead who wanted to be a hero, but had extremely poor judgment. That’s much more plausible that the mob using someone like this for an important job.

Now back to the acoustic re-evaluation of the evidence by Thomas. This is somewhat new info, so hasn’t fully been addressed yet, but I don’t think that his analysis holds water any more than the original. See http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/odell/ . Since you understand signal processing, see http://www.jfk-online.com/acousibm07.html .

183

As Prof. McAdams notes, the JFK assassination is not just the story of ONE lone nut with a gun…but TWO! Ruby was a nut who suffered some serious emotional problems. This nut also got caught up in the whole patriotic martyrdom of JFK thing(in the same way as many who were not normally patriotic got caught up in the post 9/11 thing…waving flags all over etc.) and saw an oppurtunity to be somebody rather than just act like he was somebody.

What I am seeing here is simple pattern recognition. People convinced that there “must have been a conspiracy” looking at the evidence(or not) with this presumption always in the forefront and then re-interpreting the evidence to suggest something other than what the evidence suggests.

Let me give you an example of how easy it is to do this:
I am a conspiracy nut and I am firmly convinced that John Hinkley was a patsy in a conspiracy to kill Reagan. Now I will examine the facts and evidence surrounding the failed assassination attempt:
There were at least half a dozen secret service agents around Ronnie and not one of them noticed a guy taking aim with a gun at the president?!? They were ALL conveniently looking in other directions??? Sounds fishy.

That is just one brief example. If I were to go dig up all of the information about the assassination attempt I could list hundreds of “fishy sounding”(to a conspiracy nut) things just like that one. It would also not be difficult to find “experts” in impressive sounding fields to say things which cast a suspicious light on the whole affair.

184

Wow — talk about your deep dives! I’ve just consumed this entire thread in one sitting, and…feel…like…head…must… (uh, considering what happened to poor JFK, let’s drop that analogy in a hurry).

Anyway, after all that, I still haven’t seen anyone touch on the single piece of evidence that turned me from a conspiracy agnostic into a believer (but not, I hasten to add, a fanatic. Always ready to listen to the sweet voice of reason. And my apologies to the hard core, for I know what I’m about to bring up here has undoubtedly been addressed somewhere in the endless JFK/Dallas archives, but, please, I’m too exhausted to search right now.)

To whit — some years back the BBC produced a show (chorus from the anti-conspirators: “Oh, Christ! Not THAT thing again!”; for the rest of you, sorry, don’t remember its name) that presented what seemed to me to be pretty convincing evidence that the bullet that exited Kennedy’s upper body couldn’t have been the one that also hit Connally. Now, because of Oswald’s limited window of opportunity, if that single “magic” bullet didn’t do all the damage attributed to it, there had to be more than one shooter, ergo, there had to be a conspiracy. I believe all sides agree to that, but correct me if i’m wrong.

So here’s the problem: doing the all-too-familiar-by-now super-blown-up frame-by-frame analysis of the Zapruder film, the commentator points out that, although (maddeningly) the exact moment of the “magic” bullet’s impact on Kennedy is obscured by a street sign, he’s obviously reacting to it when he emerges from behind the sign (the famous grabbing-at-the-throat). Connally is not reacting, but given what I’ve read in this thread about the different ways people react to being shot, that isn’t in itself an insuperable objection to the single-bullet theory. However, what comes a second or two later is — or so it seems to me.

As he’s turning around in his seat, Connally’s cheeks suddenly puff out, and he drops a hat he’s been holding. According to the commentator, the puffed cheeks are a response to a bullet collapsing his lung, and the dropped hat is evidence that a nerve in his wrist has just been severed. Both of these are things that would’ve happened virtually instantaneously upon being hit. Even if I was off in assuming this was a “second or two” of film later, even if we’re talking only fractions of seconds, it’s still way too much time between impacts for a high-velocity bullet.

So there goes the single-bullet, single assassin theory.

Or does it? Hands, please?

185

One of your premises is wrong: In the Zapruder film, President Kennedy is not already clutching his throat when he reappears from behind the freeway sign. We in fact see the throat cluthing motion occur (he doesn’t actually touch his throat).

During the motorcade, Kennedy rests his right arm on the top edge of the car door, occasionally waving to the passing crowd. When his right forearm is at rest, it is horizontal, the right hand roughly at throat level, with the fingers of his right hand interlaced with the fingers of his left (see first frame animation on that page). Kennedy had just waved with his right hand to the crowds on his right along Elm Street, and was returning his right forearm to a horizontal position, and his left hand was coming up to interlace the fingers of his hands (see second frame animation on that page), when he was hit in the throat from behind. Compare the position of Kennedy’s arms in Z 225, where his right elbow rests on the door frame, to their positions in Z 230, with both elbows unnaturally elevated to face level.

Governor Connally is hit in Zapruder frames 223/224. In Z 224, only 1/18th of a second after Z 223, the right side of his jacket puffs out, and the right lapel of his jacket flaps over his shirt and necktie. Connally has just been hit in his back near his right armpit, and the bullet has exited below his right nipple. The actions you describe — the puffing out of his cheeks, the sudden flip of the white hat he is clutching in his left hand as the bullet pierces his wrist (he never drops the hat, though) — all follow Z 223.

You can follow the whole Zapruder film here.

Given the positions of the entrance and exit wounds in Kennedy and Connally, a single bullet had to have caused the wounds in both men. And if you draw a straight-line trajectory from Connally’s back wound, through Kennedy’s neck wound, the line ends at one place — the sixth floor corner window of the Texas School Book Depository.

There is much other supporting evidence against two shots hitting Kennedy and Connally separately, including the fact that only five of the 91 witnesses in Dealey Plaza who testified as to the number and direction of the shots said that the shots came from two or more directions, and that all but four witnesses said that there were three or fewer shots.

186

Count one more hand for no conspiracy.

Connally never drops his hat. He holds onto it throughout the entire shooting. Does this mean he was never shot at all?

One or two seconds IS vitually simulatanious. Certainly it would have taken that long for the effects of the shot to run from his lung to his puffed up cheeks.

Far more compelling is the fact that the cuff on his jacket suddenly lurches and lifts at the exact moment that the first JFK hit occurs.

Several computer simulations, the most advanced being the one aired on the ABC documentary, show that the trajectory of the wounds on both JFK and Connally perfectly line up to Oswald’s sniper perch at the exact moment of the shooting…and no other point on Earth.

Where were those hypothetical other shooters that fired the rear shots? Why is is that several people actually saw someone in Oswald’s postion, and the majority of earwitnesses who could identify the direction of the shots named the Book Depository, while no-one saw or heard anything from the Dal-Tex Building, or the Dallas County Records Building or any other location for a rear shot? Conspiracy buffs never deal with the problem of other shooters (in some cases, whole platoons of other shooters) getting into position, firing the shots and escaping unseen and unheard. Any buffs want to tackle this?

All of this stuff is done to death in Posner’s book, the already linked Macadams site, the ABC documentary, and numerous other places.

187

Other evidence that the bullet that wounded Governor Connally also wounded President Kennedy: the bullet entered Connally’s back laterally, on its side. The bullet was tumbling end to end when it reached his back, instead of spinning head first. The bullet had already hit something substantial on its way to Connally’s back.

188

…And I’d like to think that that should be the end of the JFK conspiracy fiasco but somehow I just know someone else will come here, unaware of the thorough debunkings and restart the whole thing with "…but it was proven that the French/Itallians/Protestants/Catholics/Republicans/Democrats/NRA/AARP/name an organisation wanted JFK dead because he was …

  1. About to do something horribly liberal even though he was a conservative.

2)About to do something to stop the war in Viet nam even though he and his family pretty much STARTED the war and did his best to maintain the war throughout his short reign as President.

3)Was about to shut down the so-secret-he-should-not-have-even-known-about it CIA assassination school where Oswald learned to miss shots that any averaged marksman should have made.

Etc.

189

Indeed.. Several other tests have been run to show that the ‘blips’ on the dictaphone are not what is claimed.

The Court TV investiagtion is interesting since it actually used the original dictabelt recording (the “95%” case was based purely on mathemtics) and compared the blips to actualy gunshots, random noise, and other non-gunshot acoutsitc events. The result was that the blips were not gunshots, and were much more likely to be random noise. Spikes happen.

190

I haven’t given up yet. I am halfway through another response (it is rather long) give me another 18 hours and check back (I have to do leave the house today).

Also could you sceptics out there recommend me a couple of good debunking books? Thanks

191

Edward Jay Epstein came up with a list of Kennedy conspiracy theories back in the 60s for “Esquire.”

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/Conspiracy_theories/Primer/Primer_of_assassination_theories.html
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/conspiracy_theories/Second_Primer/Second_primer.html

And not just Vietnam - Kennedy also authorized (and screwed up) the invasion of Cuba, and got us as close to nuclear war as we’ve ever been with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy-as-peacenik is more fable than reality.

192

I’m a skeptic, and I highly recommend Gerald Posner’s Case Closed.

193

Posner’s the obvious attempt to cover pretty much everything in one book. Agree or disagree with him, it’s the mostly widely read “Oswald did it alone” account in recent years and must be read by anybody interested in the assassination.
Richard B. Trask’s Pictures of the Pain (Yeoman, 1994) restricts itself to exhaustively and carefully discussing all the films and photographs taken in the Plaza and the people who took them. His introduction makes clear his opinion that there was no conspiracy, despite his having thought otherwise for years. That said, it’s a book about the photos rather than a debunking per se. However, his throughness and the importance people have attached to this evidence means that he uncovers much rubbish from conspiracy theorists. Filled with lots of good examples where he straightens out misinformation about what happened.
Since you’re interested in Ruby, it’s worth reading Wills and Demaris’ Jack Ruby (1968; Da Capo, 1994). It’s far from perfect, being rather old and partly originally written as a series of Esquire articles. But it does vividly capture Ruby’s character, his world and plausibly explains why he shot Oswald.
I haven’t read it, but Patricia Lambert’s False Witness (Evans, 1998) deals with Garrison and JFK, arguing that it was a load of bollocks.

194

Firstly, Godless sceptic no one doubts the ease with which people can get carried away with conspiracies but that is not the issue here. Secondly, no one said that Ruby wasn’t stupid, erratic and uneducated. In the 1960’s I’ll wager that quite a few uneducated peoples would have thought that you could get cancer by injection. Just because someone is telling a story that you find fantastic does not mean you can ignore them and call them a nut. Finally (well not really) no one is saying that a conspiracy to kill the President of the USA is an easy or small thing. It is precisely this reason that I care enough about it to spend hours writing these responses (I am Australian after all).

First to the acoustic evidence, I will have to give you that one. O’Dell’s report casts enough doubt on the acoustical evidence for it to be inadmissible. I still think that the other evidence from that day strongly suggests a second shooter but I am sure that you have been over that many times. One thing that I would like to say in response to Walloon’s remark is that regardless if only 5 witnesses heard gunshots from two positions the fact that 33% thought that they heard shots from the grassy knoll compared to 52% from the book depository (conservative estimate found on debunking site) suggests something don’t you think? Given that the shots from the book depository are theorized to have been fired first, I think that it is reasonable that more people associated the direction of the shooting to the first shot that they heard.

The conspiracy that Scheim proposes does not only include core mafia members but people under their influence and other powerful people that the Kennedy’s managed to piss off. I am not saying that they all knew about the assassination beforehand but just played a part in covering it up. The reason why this case is still important is because if JFK was killed by the mob then it implies a very scary view of the power of the mafia in America.

As for that first site that you sent me to Curt, it is just as bad as any half-baked conspiracy site. It claims that there is ‘not a shred of evidence’ that links Ruby to a conspiracy, what do you think that I am writing about? It uses circular logic in that it first claims that Ruby was erratic and irresponsible (a fact that I nor Scheim do not dispute) and therefore implies (watch this implication) that anything he talks about cannot be trusted.

Ruby crazy -> talk of conspiracy ludicrous

Then when he talks about his life and the lives of his family members being threatened by a conspiracy (which is sooo ludicrous) because he wants to tell the truth (which he can’t say in Dallas and wants to be indisputable by using a lie detector test so it cant be ignored!).

Talk of conspiracy ludicrous -> Ruby crazy

Now I don’t know much about this Birch society except it is some right-wing nut group. So I can’t really comment on it except that Scheim proposes in his thesis that the conspiracy is a sort of mafia/right-wing alliance like the mafia assassination attempts on Castro. I took Ruby’s Birch society references as a veiled reference to the mob (since he was scared of directly implicating the mob), but that is very disputable.

Ruby’s testimony (have you read it yet? If not you should. Okay, it may take a couple of hours but then we can really discuss it) is without doubt erratic and confusing. The interpretation that Scheim put on it (it is hard now for me to look at it with fresh eyes although I tried) was that he starts off by recalling the premeditated story he told the FBI (note the incredible detail by which he recalls the days leading up to the shooting). Then out of nowhere he tries to get through to Warren and tell him about the conspiracy that he has been involved in, which totally throws Warren. Scheim implies that Warren is part of the conspiracy and is deliberately unresponsive to Jack Ruby’s requests (I know, they’re all out to get you). However there isn’t any hard evidence so you will have to make your own mind up (after you read it). All the time Ruby is talking he wants to be alone with Warren, without his attorney Joe Tonahill (who he claims is not ‘his lawyer’) present because

‘I don’t think I will get a fair representation with my counsel, Joe Tonahill, I don’t think so. I would like to request that I got to Washington and you take all the tests that I have to take. It is very important’ (Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, vol. 5 pp. ).

As this is my first wade into the JFK forums I was not aware that we had moved on past the story about Ruby killing Oswald to save Mrs Kennedy trauma. I glad that we all find this absurd then. So the current thinking is that Ruby was a not-too-bright, erratic, try-hard mobster that wanted to feel part of something (which is incidentally the picture that Scheim painted), I can work with that. The quotes from my last reply make it unlikely that he was motivated by patriotic reasons. So stop me if this is absurd, but if a big mafia player comes to Ruby and tells him that this is his chance to make it in the underworld, just do this one thing and you will be ‘in’ with the real players not just the try-hards.

Okay, in his book Scheim spends a chapter on Ruby’s background, a chapter on his mafia connections, a chapter on his relations with the police a chapter on his movements in the days before the shooting and a chapter on his movements in the months leading up to the shooting. Obviously I am not going to reproduce them but if I must, I will try to convey the basic idea if not the impact as it is the sheer weight of many small connections that has got me convinced (please read the book if you do not believe me).

Jack Ruby grew up in Chicago in the Al Capone era. While a teenager he was placed into a foster home by a juvenile court for disciplinary reasons. During this time he used to hang out at a boxing gym of questionable repute. After that he was known to be a member of the Dave Miller Gang. Dave Miller was a Chicago boxing referee who was a notorious gambling boss with a long criminal record. Understand that at this time, right at the height of the Capone era in Chicago almost no organized crime occurred without some mafia control. While never a player Ruby was on the outskirts of this scene for until he was called up for military service in 1943.

Scheim details a life of thuggery, small-time scams and ventures, constantly linking it back to mafia contacts (As stated before all most nothing went on in Chicago without the mafia’s blessing). I would just like to stress again how thoroughly Scheim portraits this picture.

He moved to Dallas at a time the Chicago mafia was looking to move in to the operations. A delegation from the Chicago mob approached the newly elected sheriff Steve Guthrie with an offer to put him in their pay. This delegation included a close friend of Jack Ruby, Paul Roland amongst four others. During this time Guthrie was reporting to his supervisors and taping their conversations. Gutherie told the FBI as it was summarized in the report

‘there were approximately 25 “thugs” and hoodlums from Chicago in Dallas from time to time …. Jack Ruby at that time was a “small-time peanut” with this group who going to bribe Guthrie. Ruby’s name came up on numerous occasions…as being the person who would take over a very fabulous restaurant at Industrial and Commerce Streets in Dallas…the upper floor would be used for gambling…Ruby’s name constantly came up as being the person who would run the restaurant’ (Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits 2980; C. Ray Hall Exhibit 3, p.13)

He also stated:

‘if the records can still be heard, Ruby’s name will be heard on numerous occasions’(Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits 2328; vol 14 pp.458)

The warren commission dismissed this report saying that Ruby’s name was not mentioned on the tapes. However the HSCA found that the transcripts of the sessions were incomplete, the tapes were almost inaudible and one was missing. Remember this testimony came from a policeman who had turned down mafia bribes.

Ruby moved to Dallas in 1947, a Dallas business man who knew Ruby, Giles Miller explained:

‘Jack Ruby would sit at the table where I was seated and discuss how he was sent down here by “them”- he always referred to “them”-meaning the syndicate in Chicago. He always complained that if he had to be exiled, why couldn’t he have been exiled to California or Florida?’ (Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits 1279)

It was reported in the Washingtonian by Milton Viorst that

‘Louis Kutner, a Chicago attorney who had worked for the Kefauver Crime Committee, said Ruby had appeared before Kefauver’s staff in 1950, and in the course of subsequent investigation it was learned that Ruby was a syndicate lieutenant who had been sent to Dallas to serve as a liaison for Chicago mobsters’ (Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits 1293;1321;C. Ray Hall Exhibit 1)
Last but not least, aging mafia member Johny Roselli was quoted by numerous sources as saying that ‘Ruby was one of our boys’ and he was ordered to silence Oswald (Malone, ‘The Secret Life of Jack Ruby’, New Times, January 23,1978, pp.51). Roselli ended up in a barrel in the harbour a year later when he was being sought by the HSCA. Maybe a mafia member ending up in the drink is just part of the job but maybe not.

Scheim then spends a chapter listing Ruby’s contacts who were well known to be in the mafia. I am getting sick of writing this stuff now so I’ll keep it short each contact has at least three or four paragraphs listing their connections, if you want that kind of detail get the book, but the names of the contacts are:

Joeseph Campisi – DEA identified as part of organized crime – Campisi was described by Ruby’s sister as a close friend of Ruby’s (Warren Commission Document 106, pp.89)

Frank Caracci – id’d by judiciary committee hearing as a ‘cosa nostra involved’ – Ruby met with Caracci in the months leading up to the assassination

Frank Chavez – arrested for obstruction of justice and attempted murder by hurling a firebomb. He worked under Jimmy Hoffa (long standing Teamsters boss who was pursued by Bobby Kennedy for involvement in organized crime) – justice department memo of Nov 26 1963 indicated a connection between Ruby and Chavez

Joe Civello – the mafia boss of Dallas during the 50’s and 60’s – FBI interview Civello stated that he had know Ruby casually ‘for about ten years’

Paul Roland Jones – Dallas bribe attempt – said he new Ruby quite well, dropped into Ruby’s club a week before the assassination.

Lewis J. McWillie – DPD described McWillie as a gambler and a murder - mentioned in Ruby’s testimony, worked with Ruby on a number of ventures

There are more but I will leave it for now. One last thing on Jack Ruby is that it is known that the mafia engaged in public relation efforts so it is possible that that book you recommended bonzer is that. Again, only a possibility.

My answer to the plausibility of enough Dallas police being corrupt to manage to cover it up (Godless Sceptic you will like this one) is something akin to the anthropological principle’s answer to the question, if there is no god then how come we just happen to live in a universe that is just perfect for life? The answer being that we live in one of many universes and only ones that can support life can have beings asking such questions. There were no real time constraints on the assassination so a perfect time and place could be chosen. Said in another way, Dallas is one of many places that JFK could be shot and only the ones in which they could pull strings to cover it up would be chosen.

As to why the mafia would use outsiders such as Ruby and Oswald instead of their own men? I would have thought that it was pretty obvious, because it would be pretty easy to link a mafia assassin to the mafia. The motive for killing Oswald would not have been to shut him up as such since he could be discredited (I mean really, fancy claiming he was set up, how absurd! What a nut!). With Oswald dead there could not be a criminal trial with him protesting that he was set up and calling witnesses. In its place was an investigative commission in which the chairmen were politically appointed at LBJ (Scheim attacks LBJ’s integrity, which I wont go into detail here. An interesting fact about the mafia’s involvement in politics is that Ralph Salerno, a New York police expert on organised crime believes that 25 seats in congress can be swayed by the mafia which others believe is a conservative estimate).

I will now try and summarized Scheims thesis as to the motive, plan and cover up of the mafia’s assassination.

When Robert Kennedy was a senator he sat on a committee into the mafia’s infiltration of the labour unions. This so outraged him that he wrote a book in 1960 called the enemy within and when he became Attorney General he lead a huge push to break the power of the mob. The results of Robert Kennedy’s crusade on organized crime in 1962-63 make for very interesting reading as it offers and insight into the mindset of the mafia bosses at this point. The reason why he became a target was that this crusade came dangerously close to putting some major players away.

One of them was Carlos Marcello the New Orleans mafia boss and one of the most powerful bosses in the south. A conversation that Marcello had with Ed Becker (part-time private eye) is a good insight into the passion with which he hated the Kennedy’s. When Robert Kennedy’s name was mentioned (Becker retold the story to the FBI) Marcello was quoted as saying

‘Livarsi na petra di la scarpa’ (Take the stone out of my shoe, supposedly a mafia war cry)
‘Don’t worry about that little Bobby son of a bitch, He’s going to be taken care of!’ (Reid the grim reapers p.161-162)

Becker testified to the House Assassinations Committee that Marcello had been very angry and had ‘clearly stated that he was going to arrange to have President Kennedy murdered in some way’ ( House Assas. Hearings vol 9, pp.82). Marcello explained why John would be killed instead of Bobby in a dog analogy. He likened John to a dog’s head and Bobby to its tail

‘The dog will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail’, but the dog would die if you cut its head off (House Assas. Hearings vol 9, pp.83)

Summarized to the FBI by Ed Reid who interviewed Becker in 1967:

‘They could not kill Bobby because the President would use the Army and the Marines to get them. The result of killing the president would cause Bobby to lose his power as attorney General because of the new President’

Becker also said that Marcello indicated that an outsider would be used to do the crime so as not to link one of his lieutenants to the crime. Becker did not think that he would be able to pull it off so ignored it but after it happened he immediately was sure that Marcello was behind it. The assassination plan was one which they had used before in the assassination of a Chicago major Anton Cemark (no saint, probably aligned with rival racketeers) and labour movement leader Walter Reuther to name but a few possible lone-nut mafia hits.

Please read Scheims book for details because this response is getting pretty long but trust me that these precedents are pretty convincing. Basically the plan is to get some outsider who can’t be traced to the mob, who has a chequered history so he could pass for a bit of a nutter and owes them (gambling debts or something) put a gun in his hand and tell him to take a few shots at the target. In the confusion a mafia assassin, who is placed in the best spot to take the shot makes sure of it by delivering the killer shot.

Oswald’s uncle/adopted father owned a dog track in New Orleans, Scheim proposes that to own a dog track in New Orleans he would have had to be known to the Mob at the very least. So they get Oswald in to take a shot at JFK from the book depository, the real mafia assassin is lined up in the best spot to take the shot and get away quickly (behind the grassy knoll). Oswald starts shooting drawing all the attention and then the professional hit man delivers the head shot (from the front, I don’t care what you say but if half his head went backwards he was hit from the front) then speeds off away from the scene.

They make sure that Oswald is picked up and J. Edgar Hoover sends around memos round the FBI instructing his staff to find Oswald as a ‘lone gunman’. A conversation of November 24 1963,

‘The thing I am most concerned about, and so is Mr.Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin’ (US senate Intelligence report - JFK assassination, pp.33)

A memo by Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach the next day read

‘The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial’. (US senate Intelligence report - JFK assassination, pp.23) Both these incidents happened before the Warren commission and if these were not sinister they were extremely irresponsible.

Oswald protests and says that he is being set up but because he is nut (why he just shot the president of course he is a nut!) no credence is given to such a story. Then Jack Ruby who had been preparing for this incident for months now steps up and silences Oswald once and for all. Expecting to serve a bit of time and then be pardoned (check out the record of suspect mafia killers receiving governor pardons) he gets the death penalty and then realises that he is being hung out to dry and starts talking about a conspiracy to kill the president (again he is a nut so you can’t trust what he says, hence the truth syrum).

The presidential murder trial doesn’t happen, Ruby’s trial is straightforward only leaving the Warren commission. LBJ chooses Chief Justice Warren as the commission chair who makes sure the finding is consistent with the FBI’s report. A tantalizing hint of Warren’s situation is that when he had a private meeting with LBJ he was seen leaving with tears streaming down his face by an office intern (make what you will). The killer blow for the cover-up (according to Scheim) may come as a shock to conspiracy theorists. Scheim proposes that Jim Garrison (aka Kevin Costner) (a DA with a suspicious record dealing with organized crime according to Scheim) then stirs up the shit by claiming all these weird and implausible conspiracy theories (he however excludes the mafia as a possibility), thus discrediting all the conspiracy theorists.

to be contd…

195

Bobby Kennedy loses his position as Attorney general and the push against organized crime stops. However when he decides to run for president and starts looking like he might win, another ‘lone-nut’ steps forward and kills him, what are the odds? Those Kennedy’s are pretty unlucky! I guess the guy just saw all the attention that Oswald got and couldn’t resist. This is probably going to open a whole new can of worms but there is a bit of pattern here. Cemark, Reuther, JFK, Oswald, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcom X amongst others are all killed by lone-nuts (or pairs of nuts). Scheim puts forward compelling evidence that casts serious suspicions on all these killings (MLK and Malcom X were strong advocates against organised crime and gambling in the ghettos). I mean I know your country is full of nuts (sorry couldn’t resist) but why is it always the people that the mafia/right-wing would want to see dead? When is someone going to kill Rupert Murdoch or Dick Cheney?

This might seem a bit too much to be plausible but I challenge the belief that we, mere plebs know a fraction of what happens in the circles of power. No doubt the JFK assassination would be a big play but when powerful people (i.e. Carlos Marcello) become desperate what is and isn’t possible is pretty hard to judge.

I know there is a lot of shit out there but I really don’t think that you can consider yourself a well-informed sceptic until you read this book. I think it is one of the most important real-politic books that have been written in the last 25 years. Everything that I have hinted at here is substantiated by strong evidence in Scheim’s book and it is only the very tip of the iceberg. It really is the most well researched book that I have picked up. I challenge any of you sceptics to read this book and email me your dissection of his arguments to debunk_contract_on_america@yahoo.com.au.

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You’re correct that thinking that you can get cancer by injection isn’t nuts, just ignorant. However, Ruby said the government was injecting HIM with cancer (and I think he also claimed Jews were being murdered down the hall from his prison cell). THAT is nuts.

It suggests things echo, or that people weren’t thinking about it at the time. The fact that nobody actually on the grassy knoll heard shots from behind them, and that it would’ve been an absolutely terrible shooting position for what occurred, pretty thoroughly discount that idea as far as I’m concerned.

Or would, if it was true.

If his sanity is questionable, which it was, it doesn’t exactly lend credibility to what he said, does it?

No… it means it’s ludicrous to suggest someone would have hired him or used him in a conspiracy. Of course, most conspiracy hypotheses include Ruby, because “what are the odds…”

There’s something of a tautology there, yes. If it wasn’t for the evidence that suggests it’s true, that’d be a problem.

Why would right wing anti-Communist nuts kill JFK?

Even the author you’re quoting doesn’t seem to believe that.

I’d like to see proof that the detail is ‘incredible,’ and more important if it’s accurate. Nor do I see why a guy who’s off his rocker is made sane and credible by virtue of having a good memory.

Why is it unusual that he’d want to talk to the head of the commission investigating the assassination?

Ruby’s mistrust of his lawyer doesn’t mean too much either. Look at the trouble Robert Blake is having with lawyers.

He may not have been motivated by sane patriotic or sympathetic reasons. He strikes me as a guy who would have said just about anything. The fact that he was somewhat loony makes it that much harder to trust him.

The problem with your very long history of Ruby is that it’s the old “connection” game. It’s evidence that he had mob ties because he lived in Chicago in the Al Capone era? Jeez, that makes millions of people who have mob ties!
‘Jack Ruby would sit at the table where I was seated and discuss how he was sent down here by “them”- he always referred to “them”-meaning the syndicate in Chicago. He always complained that if he had to be exiled, why couldn’t he have been exiled to California or Florida?’ (Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits 1279)

It was reported in the Washingtonian by Milton Viorst that

‘Louis Kutner, a Chicago attorney who had worked for the Kefauver Crime Committee, said Ruby had appeared before Kefauver’s staff in 1950, and in the course of subsequent investigation it was learned that Ruby was a syndicate lieutenant who had been sent to Dallas to serve as a liaison for Chicago mobsters’ (Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits 1293;1321;C. Ray Hall Exhibit 1)

Something REALLY unusual must be happening if a mob guy gets murdered. That never happens!

Was this parade planned months in advance?

On the contrary, if the mob killed JFK to stop him from going after them, you’d think they would want to stop him quickly, before the plotters were thrown in jail.

So instead they used a man who you say has numerous and far-reaching links to the Mafia. Good work.

Who would have believed him if he had lived?

I’m sure this is a highly unusual thing for a mob boss to say. And RFK lived for about six more years, which would make you think it wasn’t a terribly high priority.

Except they screwed up and instead used somebody who had, so you say, LOADS of Mafia links.

So the unproven assumption of JFK being murdered by the mob is supported by a few other murders that were also not proved to be mob hits. That makes sense.

[quoteSo they get Oswald in to take a shot at JFK from the book depository, the real mafia assassin is lined up in the best spot to take the shot[/quote]

The grassy knoll was a very bad shooting spot.

Using a ‘professional’ doesn’t support the hypothesis of using people unconnected to the mob, does it?

You don’t know anything about physics. Several threads here have dealt with why “I don’t care what you say but if half his head went backwards” doesn’t support a shot from the front. For one, his head moves forward first, and second that would require the bullet to be carrying an impossible amount of momentum. Do a search on “JFK” and my handle and you’ll see just one of the many threads here on the subject.

What are Hoover’s mob ties? Why is he helping them?

Of course, loads of other evidence also says he’s a nut- not just the fact that he killed the President.

And making Oswald’s ‘setup’ case much more credible because so many people will decide he must’ve been killed for saying it.

You’re not suggesting that stuff actually works, are you?

I’ll make absolutely nothing of that.

So is Garrison part of the conspiracy also?

Prove to me that Sirhan Sirhan is connected to the mob. Please.

Unfortunately, a lot of public figures have been assassinated through history. The only unusual thing about these two guys in that regard is that they were related. And that America hasn’t had too much of it compared to Europe.

Security is quite a bit better now that it was 40 years ago, for one thing because so many major figures were assassinated in the 60s. Cheney is not often seen in public, btw. Is this another “Kennedy was a liberal” thing?

You know, if the mob killed ALL those people, it’d be pretty amazing that nobody has ever conclusively connected ANY of those killings to them. I thought the whole idea of organized crime was to not draw attention to yourself.

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Ignoring the shooting of racial demagogue and presidential candidate George Wallace in 1972, two assassination attempts on President Ford in 1975, the nearly fatal shooting of President Reagan in 1981, and the attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait in 1993.

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snapster, thanks for the details behind your beliefs. The Ruby story just seems like the life of a strange guy who desperately wanted to “be somebody.”

You’ve implicated (so far) the mob, Oswald, Ruby, the Dallas Police, Earl Warren, J. Edgar Hoover, and (I think) Lyndon Johnson. If we started asking pointed questions about the evidence, then this path would without a doubt lead to many others, including the Secret Service and Parkland medical staff. (Since you believe the head shot was from the front/right and matter was blown out the back/left of his head, there must have been lots more cover-up to switch caskets, fake autopsies, fake the Zapruder film, etc.) So in your scenario, dozens or maybe hundreds of people would have to have been involved in the murder of a sitting president, and keep it quiet for 40 years. This just is not a plausible scenario.

Does this story hinge on the second shooter? You’ve been coming at the evidence from a slightly tangential direction with the focus on Ruby. If you became convinced that there were only two bullets that found targets, and both came from the rear, would that change your mind?

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I’ve read Scheim…he is first rate compared to someone like Jim Marrs or Robert Grodin, but his scenario is still far more problematic than the Lone Nut thesis.

There are some major problems. A big part of his case consists of high ranking mobsters blurting out the plan to casual acquaintances. Let’s take this guy Becker who heard Marcello say “Take this stone out of my shoe”. Which is more plausible…a stone cold, cany mob boss like Marcello just blurting out the order to kill the president in front of an outsider, a part-time private investigater no less, or Becker just making it up? Other scenarios have people like Marcello and Santos Trafficante discussing the assasination with other outsiders, like lawyers and known informants. Sorry, no way. Marcello and Trafficante were two of the sharpest, longest reigning mob bosses, and they would have never discussed the crime of the century in any shape or form with anyone except their most trusted people.

On the other hand…thousands of hours of surveillance recordings of mobsters reveal not a single mention of the JFK hit. A large number of mobsters from the New Orleans, Miami and Chicago families (the ones supposedly involved in the assasination) went to prison for life. Doesn’t seem like at least one guy would have made a deal for his freedom in exchange for info on the JFK assasination?

I still don’t understand the motivation for the mob killing JFK. Did they hate him? Sure. They also hated Rudy Gulliani and G. Blakey and any number of other mob busters, but they didn’t kill any of them. Did the mob really believe that if they killed JFK, the federal government would just leave them alone? No, we would have immediately seen passage of the Anti-Mob/Remember JFK bill from Congress which would have authorized suspension of all constitutional protections of accused mobsters, as well as allowing summary execution of them. Anyone in the government with any mob contacts whatsoever would have run for cover rather than try to protect these guys. The Kennedys had enough loyalists in the CIA, Justice Department and military that any attempted cover-up to protect the mob would have been exposed, and the cover-upers would have went in front of the same firing squads that killed Trafficante and Marcello.

I know it gets boring to just tell everyone to read Posner, but CASE CLOSED conclusively proves that any there are no mob ties to Oswald, and none beyond the most peripheral for Ruby.

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Curt, is the basis for your argument is that it is just not plausible to cover up such a thing? I understand that feeling but what is it based on? I don’t have any personal experience with the circles it would have to propagate in so I can’t say. Your argument that no one has come forward about it isn’t exactly true you should have said that no credible people have come forward. Oswald, Ruby, that doctor who claims to know that JFK was hit from the front and Johnny Roselli have all cast suspicions.

Walloon, you’re right I got a bit carried away saying that there haven’t been conservative assassinations. Scheim puts forward strong evidence as to the mafia’s links to the shootings of Bobby Kennedy, MLK and Malcom X though, almost all drawn from the HSAC hearings.

I am not sure how you can talk about what I do and do not know about physics. Although I may be wrong in this instance (we will see) I do know a decent amount about physics. Sorry to drag you through this again but I tried that search and didn’t get anything, apparently JFK as a topic is too common. I have been over that Zapruder film a lot of times now and the forward motion of his head is extremely subtle if present at all. I think that it is more like a lag than a forward motion, which would be due to the compression of his brain matter.

The hint of forward motion which is over before the bullet leaves his head I attribute to the downward pressure of his exploding brains causing his neck to buckle. His neck was leaning forward so we would expect this motion for an explosion from the top of his head. He then goes from a slightly hunched position to rocked back in his seat; please explain to me how a bullet coming from the opposite direction can achieve that. Since the rocked back position is not an equilibrium point as he comes to rest crumpled on Mrs. Kennedy’s shoulder, you must be attributing the backwards motion to oscillation around the hunched forward equilibrium point. Putting aside that there are no tensions in his body that could cause this reversal in direction in such a brief moment in time, if this was the case we would expect if the system is approximately linear that the initial overshoot (the forward direction) to be larger than the second which it blatantly isn’t.

Also if the shot came from the book depository and hit him on the side of the forehead it would exert a tangential force on his neck causing it to turn towards Mrs Kennedy, which it doesn’t. The chunk of his head that Mrs Kennedy clambered over the boot of the car to retrieve would have ended up on Mrs Connolly, which it doesn’t (such a fucked up thing to watch over and over).

Not being a munitions expert I can’t tell you what the momentum of a bullet fired from a high powered rifle 30 metres away is (please let me know if you do) but I expect that it could cause a 85Kg (or so) person to rock back in his chair. I don’t see how if a bullet fired from the grassy knoll does not have enough momentum to cause him to rock back then a bullet fired from the opposite direction from further away would.

By no real time constraints I meant that they had a few months to play with, probably a little misleading I admit.

So it doesn’t matter that it was cancer, only that the government might be doing it? I see. Now I am not saying that the government necessarily was trying to kill him but you could forgive Ruby for being a little paranoid if in fact he was involved in a large conspiracy. Marley, where did you hear the info about the Jews being murdered in his prison cell? Could you give me directions to where I can find it?

After the trouble I went to, to write an extended version of Ruby’s history all you can do is focus on one part of it and say that it is not enough, that’s why I wrote more! Come on you can do better than that. Some additional Ruby facts, again I stress there are plenty to pick from:

So you want more than simple connections – An FBI informant Eileen Curry related a story of when she and her boyfriend James Breen moved to Dallas in 1956. Curry told the FBI Breen ‘made a connection with a large narcotics set-up operating between Mexico, Texas, and the East’ (Warren Commission Hearing (CE) 1761) and ‘some fashion James got the okay to operate through Jack Ruby of Dallas’ (ibid). Ruby had already been investigated in a previous narcotics operation along with his brother, Hyman and Paul Roland Jones but was not charged.

She also saw Ruby drive up to her house and pick up her boyfriend Breen and drive him away somewhere. When he return he told her that ‘he had accompanied Ruby to an unnamed location, where he had been shown moving pictures of various border guards’ plus narcotics agents and contacts on the Mexican side (CE 1762) ‘Breen was enthused over what he considered an extremely efficient operation in connection with narcotics traffic’(ibid)

Ruby ran a classy strip joint the Carousel Club where he pimped out girls. A waitress who had worked there ‘all girls employed did fill $100 a night dates after work’ (CE 2822) and Ruby ‘got a percentage of prostitution dates’ (ibid). A former business associate Joe Bonds told the FBI that Ruby would ‘make women available’ to Dallas police officers (CE 1227).

Chicago attorney Jack Marcus told the FBI that Ruby ‘indicated he had “everything” at the night club [the carousel including gambling’(CE 1772) other witnesses reported that Ruby operated a number of criminal activities out of the Carousel Club including the distribution of stolen razor blades and pornography, both of which are lucrative Mob rackets (Razor blades: Teresa, ‘My life in the Mafia’ pp.135)

There is more stuff that I can reproduce if you want.

Echo could work both ways and would tend to have people believing in multiple shooting directions I would suspect. But as was pointed out only five people heard the shots from multiple directions. Wouldn’t the echo bounce off the three large buildings in the direction of the book depository rather than the train works anyway?

I have looked at the CAD rendering of the plaza and I fail to see why it is a bad spot to take a shot. JFK is coming almost directly towards the knoll no more than 30 metres away and he can hide behind the trees. Also he can leave the scene quickly, please enlighten me.

How many people were on the grassy knoll and where did they think the shots came from? What about that policeman who ran behind the grassy knoll and the call on the police transmission? The proposed second gunman would be in almost the same direction as the book depository from most of the area in front of the grassy knoll anyway wouldn’t he?

So far as I am aware (Scheim does go into Ruby in great detail), he was known to be erratic, which is a long way from being insane.

I think you missed the role that I (also Scheim) was suggesting that Ruby played. He needed to be far enough removed from the mafia for it not to be obvious but still bound by the honour of the underworld not to grass and believe they would pull some strings to get him out. Scheim believes that it fell down on both fronts and set about to prove it. I don’t see Oswald’s assassination as being a terribly hard one to pull off, all he needs to do is time it right (note in his testimony how vividly he remembers the time of things he did in the minutes before the shooting). Ruby was also cosy with the Dallas police which would help any cover up. I can’t see what is ludicrous with this suggestion at all, by this reasoning he was almost the only man for the job

The theories that Scheim puts forward stems basically from his foreign policy and his will to ‘splinter the CIA ‘into a thousand pieces and scatter [it] to the winds’ (Taylor Branc and George Crile III, ‘The Kennedy Vendetta’, Harper’s, August 1975 pp. 50 see also HAH vol 1 pp.6). Being a liberal you will understand the great profits that flowed into your country by exploiting poor countries that occurred with the blessing of puppet regimes from all over the world during the communist era (and to a slightly lesser extent still today). Without the CIA these regimes would not exist and it would hit the rich pockets into which the profits flowed. Couple this with the bitterness over the Bay of Pigs and Cuban missile crisis there is a fair bit of animosity in the right. Maybe, maybe not enough to kill him, it is hard to tell.

The mafia was also pissed about his pledge not to invade Cuba since they had a very lucrative casino business there before Castro kicked them out. There was also Vietnam, in the spring of 1963 Kennedy told an aide of his determination to withdraw the forces from Vietnam, ‘I’ll be damned everywhere as a communist appeaser. But I don’t care’ (O’Donnell and Powers, Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye, pp. 16). I am a firm believer that wars are not just about who you are fighting but also who is getting paid to make the weapons. A lot of really rich families made their money this way in the Second World War. I believe this is why your military has a tendency to drop bombs on a place until there is nothing left and then keep on bombing. Every bomb costs a million dollars and someone is getting a nice share, what is it called Caijian (how do you spell?) spending or something to boost the economy, such bullshit! I don’t think that we can underestimate the arrogance of some people with shit-loads of money.

The mafia and CIA had been working very closely together in the period up to this time, for a better account (wait for it) read the book. An interesting fact that highlights this cooperation is that the Nixon Administration intervened for the defence – ostensibly to protect ‘intelligence sources and methods’ in at least 20 trials of organized crime figures (Anson, Robert Sam ‘They’ve Killed the President!’New York:Bantam 1975), pp. 295-96). So the coalition is some of the right-wing super-rich, Cuban exiles, factions of the CIA and the mafia. There was a very interesting report by the secret service from an informant about statements made by Homer Echevarria, a Cuban exile. It states that he was ready to proceed with an illegal arms purchase ‘as soon as we take care of Kennedy’ (House Select Assassination Committee Hearing 133-134). I know these lines come out every time but I have yet to hear a convincing refute of them.

The transcript of Ruby’s testimony can be found here Warren Commission Hearings, Volume V. I didn’t say that remembering incredible detail was an argument for Ruby’s sanity just that there is no proof of him being insane in the first place.

No, it is not unusual that he would want to talk to the head of the commission, only that he requested being moved to Washington because he couldn’t say anything important in Dallas.

Okay this was a stupid way to put it. However Roselli’s death was at the time when he was being sought by the HSAC to give a hearing.