The scary part is that I figured it out from your IP address 
Damn…I should really get out more.
Hey y’all. Just finished watching JFK, the movie which reopened this particular can of worms (which I understand to be fiction…which, since it’s not a documentary, is fine by me). Hope you don’t mind if I throw my, er, glasses (I don’t own a hat) in.
First off, I very strongly recommend Joel Achenbach’s discussions of the assassination in his Why Things Are books. He gives a very convincing case for Oswald being the so-called lone nut, and he never veers from the facts.
Here’s my take:
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Oswald was the lone gunman. This much is completely indisputable. There’s never been so much as a credible potential suspect for a second gunman. For all the talk about the various factions that may have been involved and Oswald only being a “patsy”, you still gotta have someone pulling the trigger. And not only has the second gunman never been found, but so has the second gun, along with the casings from the bullets it supposedly fired. Also, while Oswald may have been a mediocre marksman by military standards (I don’t know about this, so I won’t comment), Kennedy was an easy target, and Oswald had a scope on the rifle, which made it even easier. Just lead the target, aim, and fire. Nothing to it.
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But was Oswald merely the triggerman for the people who really wanted Kennedy dead? Possible…just about anything is possible…but highly doubtful. The main problem is that he was just a common mope who had never even attempted something of this magnitude before. Wouldn’t the conspirators have wanted someone a little more reliable, and who also would have avoided getting caught afterward? It’s true that he sympathized with Communists (not surprising, considering the grinding poverty he grew up in), but it’s a bit of a leap to claim that they sought him out.
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But what about the Warren Commission report? Well, the United States government royally screwed up. This is not unusual for them. But this alone is not evidence of a government conspiracy. Furthermore, Lyndon Johnson, the man supposedly given the job to ensure that we’d have a Vietnam War, was hardly a bloodthirsty warmonger; he stated many times that the social welfare of America was his foremost concern, and it was well into his first term before he signed the Gulf of Tonkin Accord.
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But surely Jack Ruby’s later killing of Oswald points to Mafia involvement, right? (Ruby had Mafia connections; if they were involved, they’d wand Oswald dead before he could spill the beans to the cops.) Well…no. First off, as has already been mentioned, it was Robert Kennedy that was the bane of organized crime, not John. And second, that’s not how the Mafia works. Contrary to what you may see in the movies, they rely on public support to survive. Someone’s buying those drugs, ordering those hits, and gambling in those casinos, you know. And murdering the one person who can blow the conspiracy wide open or convincingly refute it wouldn’t sit well with the hoi polloi. On top of that, Oswald was surrounded by police, and mobsters are not known for giving cops freebies. What probably happened was that Ruby, for whatever reason (he could have simply been patriotic), decided to kill Oswald, and the police thought that no one would dare make an attempt on his life when he was so well protected…which is exactly what Ruby was counting on.
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No, I will not drag Opal into this, so don’t even go there.
Well, there you have it; make of it however you want.
Getting back to the movie, however, there is one very good point it made that stuck in my mind. “The important question is not who did it, but why.” No, we will never know the complete, unquestionable truth…but that’s not important. The fact was there were plenty of factions that wanted Kennedy dead, any of which was ruthless enough to do it. The mere plausibility of a vast, high-level conspiracy speaks volumes about who we are and how we think. (Roger Ebert made this very point in a recent article.) For much of American history, none dared entertain the notion that the government was anything less than completely virtuous. Now they’re implicated in the death of one of their own, and it actually seems possible.
I never liked the metaphor “a nation losing its innocence”, but I think it’s appropriate in this case.
Sure, the Warren Commision was desperate to find Oswald acted alone. But why? What were they terrified of? Obviously they were terrified that the conspiracy would lead back to the Russians or the Cubans. And that would probably mean WWIII, nuclear missile flying, and a lot of cities ending up as radioactive craters.
While proving that the Russkis killed Kennedy wouldn’t certainly have started WWIII, it would have been a huge blow to world stability. The Cold War would have heated up to boiling, and there’s a very good chance that most of us sitting here now would be dead.
Though I believe that Oswald acted alone, I don’t imagine for a second I can persuade conspiracy theorists of that, so I won’t even try.
However, for those tempted to believe that LBJ played some role in the assassination, and that he was chomping at the bit to start a massive war in Viet Nam, think again. Lyndon Johnson taped virtually all his Oval Office conversations, and many of these tapes are available to the public. When you hear them (or read the transcripts), it becomes clear that Johnson was NEVER gung ho for war in Viet Nam. Rather, he told everyone he trusted (Senator Richard RUssell, for instance) that the war was a fiasco, a “mess” (the word he used most often), that he didn’t know how to get out of.
Sorry, conspiracists, you’ll have to look to a different suspect and a different motive.
All wrong, all wrong.
It’s blatently obvious that JFK was shot!
Yup, shot in the head from all appearances.
With a gun too!
::runs away::
What John Bredin said.
When I first heard that theory, I just about gasped. It was perfect because it fit all of the known facts AND it didn’t fit anyone’s paranoid delusion about what went on that day.
Oswald shot at Connally, missed, and killed Kennedy. He had the motive, the motorcade gave him the opportunity, and the rifle and his marksman’s skills were the weapon.
It should be noted that Marina, when she heard about the shooting, swore he was shooting at Connally.
BTW, my own feeling is that he missed because it was a moving target. Moving targets are notoriously tough to hit. Combine that with the nervousness of the moment, and it’s all easy to explain.
The Nova special that was mentioned earlier had a film clip from a pathologist who tested this himself. He filled a human skull with white paint, then shot it from the rear with a rifle similar to Oswald’s (while filming it).
The result was that the skull jumped backwards from the shot, while the paint blew out a massive hole in the front, just as JFK’s head did.
For my money, it’s the lone gunman. It’s been reliably demonstrated that it’s possible for Oswald to have done it (the skull test above, the fact that Oswald’s shooting has been duplicated by others, that the trajectory of the “magic bullet” lines up with minimal adjustments to the postures of Kennedy and Connally, other tests demonstrating that bullets change trajectory in soft tissue…), and having seen JFK and a lot of material on the various conspiracies, the lone gunman is the most plausible story I’ve heard so far.
Nonsense, balderdash, and horsefeathers. First, there was (and is) absolutely overwhelming evidence that Oswald acted alone. Second, even if the WC was afraid the trail would lead to the Soviet Union–and there is no evidence whatsoever they were worried about that or tried to cover it up–do you seriously think that the result would have been nuclear holocaust?
Earl Warren: “Mr. President! The Russians killed John Kennedy!”
LBJ: “My God! We have no choice but to commit suicide! Launch the missiles!”
Lemur When you say " The Cold War would have heated up to boiling, and there’s a very good chance that most of us sitting here now would be dead." do you mean that most of us sitting here now are older than 37? While I am, I would doubt your hyperbole.
barbitu8 When you said “I did say that Congress concluded with a 90% certainty in 1978 that there were at least two people involved in the assination.” did you actually mean Congress? Or just some subcommittee?
Hey, I think Oswald acted alone too. I’m just thinking that perhaps accusations that the Warren Commision was hiding something have some basis in fact. That they badly wanted to avoid blaming the Russians. The fact that the Warren Commission was afraid that the commies were behind the assassination doesn’t change the fact that Oswald was a lone nut who shot Kennedy all by himself.
It’s not that we would have immediately launched ICBMs at Russia if they had killed Kennedy. But face facts, it would have seriously soured relations with them. The American people would have been out for blood. So not nukes, but definately a much more confrontative and aggressive foreign policy. Which would have increased the likelihood of another crisis like Cuba, where one side presents the other with an ultimatum that the other side can’t afford to back down on. If you have enough of these situations eventually one of them is going to end very very badly.
And samclem, I was imagining that our younger dopers would have been killed retroactively.
The obvious objection being that he waited until Kennedy was in the way.
<my dad>
JFK was in fact not killed. “They” are hiding him away until there is a great national crisis, and he will be miraculously “resurrected.” He will then lead us onwards to victory, thus beginning his role as the Antichrist.
</my dad>
No, he’s not joking. Please keep in mind that I didn’t post this for debunking.
Whoa…
The truth is that Oswald was a lousy shot in the Marine Corp, but he did manage to get off three deadly accurate shots because wasn’t acting alone in his own body. A group alien research scientists from Yuhuhutuk were hidden in an underground base on the dark side of the moon; they became increasingly worried about Kennedy’s enthusiasm for an advanced space program. Yuhunutukains were concerned that a landing on the moon could result in discovery of their base.
Using an advanced technology, called the Mind Dominator, they were able to insert an Alpha Mind, or Ruling Mind, from their Warrior Caste onto the mentally unstable Oswald. Oswald was a perfect receptacle the Warrior’s Alpha Mind, a mentally healthy individual might have fought for control of the mind, but Oswald was helpless. It was also important to the Yuhuhutokians that Oswald would be believable as an assassin, or at least they thought he’d make a believable assassin.
One of the problems was that the Warrior Alpha mind was not being familiar with primitive Earth weaponry, e.g. the Rifle, but it was clear that Kennedy couldn’t be killed the standard issue Yuhuhutokian Ion Blaster, so the alien scientists came up with a rather ingenious plot. From the Grassy Hill, an other Alpha Mind had possession of an individual’s mind and body, nobody knows who it was, and used two devices to assist the Oswald-Alpha Mind: a Time Prognosticator and a Magnetic Guidance System. The advanced technology allowed the second Alpha Mind to predict the future course of the bullet by a few seconds, then modify its trajectory magnetically. This resulted in a very unusual trajectory, but it got the job done, not perfectly, but good enough. The disturbance made by the Magnetic Guidance system created an effect a little like a gun shot, which some people noticed. The Alpha Minds fled the bodies after the assassination.
Oswald kind of knew happened, he know he was controlled by an other, but he didn’t have enough clues to articulately speak about what had happened to him, so he simply said he was a “patsy.” Which was true.
Oddly enough, Ruby did Oswald in on his on accord. The Yuhuhutukians weren’t worried about being uncovered if Oswald ever developed enough coherence to talk about his ordeal.
After the assassination, the aliens decided to dissemble their moon base and go home anyway, though every now and then a spy ship is stopped in our atmosphere.
Many people have stated that a conspiracy is impossible because a secret that big couldn’t be kept.
Then where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Lets face it Oswald did it.
He was sent back in time by an aged obscure JFK in 2021. Kennedy looked over the history books and realized 90% of children under 25 didn’t know who he was.
Because his second term was such a nothing Term he saw that the only way he’d ever be remembered was to die young.
Through psychic mind manipulation (only possessed by the Kennedy Clan) he was able to find a young child named Lee Harvey Oswald, who he tortured for a year. The Young child filled with rage and resentment was teleported back in time and allowed to grow up as a misfit. Eventually he saw his tormentor become president and then decided to kill him.
Ironically other Kennedys saw the value of a sudden tragic death and sent others back in time to eliminate them. Only Ted failed, while Joe (AKA the Forgotten Kennedy) got rid of his past self too early.
The result: JFK and RFK became glorified, Ted was just left to chug on and Joe… who is he.