Although I’m looking for more or a yes no, answer, I’d be a bit naive to believe that any JFK assassination question would stay long in the general questions.
Here’s my question: Have any of the major conspiracy theory advocates, publicly changed their minds in light of the work done in the last 3-4 years?
I’ve generally believed that the the assassination occurred more-or-less the way outlined by the Warren commission. LHO, acting alone killed him. As we know there had been a significant cottage industry over the years with theories, both reasonable and less reasonable. Books such as Six Seconds in Dallas (Thompson), Crossfire (Marrs) and High Treason (Livingstone and Groden) to name a few, along with Mr. Wecht have gotten a lot of attention and play in support of one conspiracy theory or another.
Without getting into details, in the last few years there has be a fair amount of work, supporting the commission, and as a result have weakened the conspiracy theories. Peter Jennings 2003 ABC special, Discovery Channel’s Beyond the Magic Bullet" and Posner’s Case Closed are a few. Just from overhearing discussion around the office etc., it seem that more and more folks believe that the Warren commission got it right. I understand that if one had spend a significant portions of their lives writing and speaking on the assassination, than there wouldn’t be much of a chance of changing his or her mind, but I was just curious if any of the “major” theorists have done so.
I’ve always been interested in the event, but i have to admit; the fact that more than 43 years have gone by (with no deathbed confessions0, leads me to believe that nothing new will be learned. I guess there are still some archival records that remain sealed, but i doubt they contain anything especially interesting. the only thing i am stiull convinced of; Lee harvey oswald was a VERY strange man, who may well have had some very odd relationship with both the CIA and the KGB. unfortunately, we are unlikely EVER to know the details of these relationships, if they ever existed.
I still don’t believe Oswald killed Kennedy. I will concede that he could have done it. The simulation/game JFK Reloaded opened my eyes considerably–the shots as described in the Warren Report are not as difficult as I’d previously imagined. However, I’m still bothered about the head motion after the killing shot.
Still, even if there was a second shooter, it does not necessarily mean that a conspiracy existed, or if there was a conspiracy, it does not necessarily mean that Oswald was in it.
I was a belieber in conspiracy theories regarding the assasination, but I got better.
Looking at the evidence I do think now that Lee Harvey Oswald did shot and killed Kennedy, I do think though that the idea that he did it alone is still too convinient.
He was a nut and a loose canon, yet I will always think there were many nutty guys not being frowned upon by the Intelligence community, in short I do think Oswald had connections to the CIA, the conspiracies that followed were monumental red herrings designed to minimize the huge egg the CIA got in their face. It was butt covering a la 9/11, once again the government agencies are not guilty, only criminally negligent. (I can not wrap the idea that no one knew or bothered to investigate or prevented a nut like him to be allowed to come back to the USA)
IIRC back then even the status of funding or the very existance of the CIA was in doubt (The Bay of Pigs fiasco was a fresh item in the face of the CIA then), a scandal like this (that a killer that was nuts with connections to the CIA or KGB) was allowed to go to Soviet Russia and back and was involved in killing the President would have been a factor in the end of the CIA as we knew it.
IOW, I do think even if Lee Harvey acted alone, there was a need to hide or minimize those embarassing connections and missed opportunities to prevent the assasination.
It was then critical to muddle the waters, even to this day.
Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy? | US news | The Guardian We have more Kennedys. Sounds like we can start all over.
I wondered after the assassination. I still have questions. When I saw the recent tv specials I saw how it could have happened. It is possible.
So many conspiracies ,so few Kennedys.
Dale Myers, who created the computer graphics reconstruction featured in the Peter Jennings documentary, was himself previously an active conspiracy theorist.
No, we knew about it. It was established by an act of Congress in the late Forties and given federal funding. They just didn’t have to account for how they spent the money.
At first everyone seemed to believe the Warren Report. We had been brought up to trust our government. Then some things just didn’t seem to fit and there were a lot of coincidences pointed out and rumors of conspiracies. You were considered pretty naive if you believed that LHO acted alone. After Oliver Stones’ movie confused the issue with its version (never claiming to be the truth), and with more explanations given in support of the lone gunman given, the majority again seem to support the Warren Report.
This is one case in which it has not been unreasonable to think there might have been a conspiracy. I suppose I will remain unconvinced either way for the remainder of my life. I’ve been back and forth too many times with too much “evidence.”
To this day I resent Oliver Stone’s presentation of photographs that I never wanted to see. I wish there had been a warning. I’m not usually that careful about what I allow inside my head, but the autopsy photos of this particular man were different.
I think by their existence “was in doubt”, GiGo means its continued existence was tenuous and it was subject to dissolution if a sufficiently major scandal hit it, so soon after the Bay of Pigs.
I could imagine a major restructuring if the CIA ended up publicly accused of letting Oswald slip by, especially covered in metaphorical red flags and all, but the function the CIA serves is necessary and if not by them, some other agency would have stepped in or been created to fulfill it.
For those interested, Distributed Proofreading (http://www.pgdp.net/) is currently proofing its way thru all the Warren Commission Reports, for eventual inclusion in the free online library Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/).
They are currently processing Volume 6, at the part where a forensic weapons specialist talks about the bullets that went thru JFK’s clothes, Gov. Connally’s clothes, and struck the windshield and the chrome mounting bracket. These are the detailed, court reporter’s notes of every word of the testimony.*
There are 20-some volumes in total, I think. So there’s lots more to be proofread. Anybody who’s interested is welcome to participate in proofreading these.
P.S. In these transcripts, Representative (later President) Gerald Ford comes off as an idiot, in my opinion. Or maybe he was just dozing & not paying attention – he seems to regularly ask a question that was just answered a few seconds earlier. The witnesses patiently repeat their answer, but you have to wonder what they thought of this guy.
Actually, that sentence makes a very shrewd assumption. Just because records remain sealed does not mean they’re ‘interesting’, let alone sensational/embarassing/the Big Secret. Oddly enough, what conspiracy theorists never seem to grasp is that this is true precisely because, left to their own devices, government bureaucracies would prefer to be secretive about everything, important or not. So, more often than not, sealed files turn out to have been sealed for the most mundane of reasons, such as protecting the identities of informants, preserving details of surveillance methods etc. Believing otherwise, as conspiracy theorists tend to do, is actually the naïve view. The true cynical position is that most declassified files turn out to be deeply boring, just like the overwhelming bulk of other archival records.
On the broader point, it seems to me that the backlash against the conspiracy theories dated from the release of JFK. But it wasn’t so much that Oliver North created that backlash as that, when he re-opened all the old debates, those who were inclined to think that the Warren-Commission-got-it-more-or-less-right-all-along discovered, rather to their surprise, that this wasn’t some weird, eccentric minority view after all. Posner’s achievement was mainly to provide a convenient statement of that view in print.
Then there was the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board. Swamping the conspiracy theorists with (almost) all the archival material they could ever possibly want has proved to be a most effective way of encouraging them to chase ever more irrelevant deadends.
All the new evidence shows that Oswald could have done it. But there is still the question of why so many key witnesses, died an untimely death. Perhaps Oswald was the “Lone Gunman,” but sponcered by others. I don’t know if we’ll ever know for sure.
Because I don’t know how anyone can specify when is a “timely” death for any specific person.
Statisticians can and do give average life expectancy that apply to large population groups, but not for specific individuals. And any such average has outliers, people in the group who live longer than the average, and those who die earlier. That is part of the average.
Also, what decides who is on the list of “key witnesses”? You can easily skew the results by selectively choosing who to include in the group. For example, was Gov. Connally included? He was certainly a “key witness”, and I remember when he died a few years ago, well over the average life expectancy.
