JFK conspiracy... yes or no?

Great Debates
1

Based on this thread in GD, I decided to open up a JFK only thread, mainly because I’m truly against the current thinking in that thread and potentially the board.

Given the number of intelligent people who post here, I’d like to discuss this rationally as possible. I am truly amazed that the thought of a conspiracy in the shooting of JFK is in the same sentence as the faked moon landings.

So, for those of you who believe Oswald was the lone killer… what tips the evidence in that direction for you? Is it simply the Warren Report? The fact that a conspiracy of this level could never be covered up for this long? Or is something else making you see what I simply can’t.

I don’t mind being wrong, mind you. I, for instance, think JWB killed Lincoln, even though I don’t have a film of the head shot. :wink:

So, if someone could show me the way to the LHO only scenario, I’d love to hear it.

The one problem I cannot solve is who exactly carried out the assassination, and why. No one can. We can all speculate (the mafia, cubans, the CIA, FBI, whoever), but we’ll probably never know. But one thing I have never been able to wrap my head around is the lone gunman theory. I know it puts things in a tidy bundle, and we really don’t need to think about such a third world tactic to happen inside the USA, but a coup d’etat did occur (IMO) on Nov. 22.

My background is one of catching up, reading and some research. I was not alive when Kennedy was killed, so why I have such an interest in it sometimes baffles me. I have no emotional attachment to JFK, other than he was the President of my country, and I have no context to the information that was being churned out in the hours, days, weeks and months after the assassination. Maybe some of you do.

So first, I’d like to know if anyone out there besides me thinks that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK in Dallas. If you don’t, I’d appreciate hearing your point of view as well.

Another point of reference many people use is the movie JFK. It’s not fair to see one movie and make up your mind, and Oliver Stone freely admits to taking some liberties in telling the story. But if you read the two books it was based on (On the Trail of the Assassins - Garrison, and Crossfire - Maars), there seem to be many things that come out in those books that pop up in the movie… clearly a Hollywood production, but I think Stone captured the spirit of the books, and the theories, which I admit are all over the place.

Finally, I think the killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby seals the deal for me as a conspiracy. Oswald knew something, and whatever it was went to the grave with him. Ruby killing him makes absolutely no sense unless he had to kill him, and killing him in the basement of the Dallas police department makes it even more unbelievable.

I know these small snippets are pieces of information you all know. So before I continue, I’d like to hear from both sides (if they do exist) on the board. Hell, if we get a good debate going, maybe we can solve the Zodiac killings!

2

to thank CurtC for giving me the links and the nudge I needed to start this thread. The Garrison links are indeed interesting reading, but if you read his book, the list doesn’t hold too many surprises. (The gay thrill-kill idea was a new one for me, and I must say that’s a real strange leap no matter what side of the fence you are on. When you throw something like that on the table, everything else immediately comes under question.)

I also wanted to toss out another title I’ve used for reference from time to time, called High Treason, written by Gordon and Livingstone. I don’t find it particularly easy to read because the authors bounce all over the place and throw nuggets of info at you when you least expect it. Here’s one example I’ve always found intriguing:

entitled Johnson, Baker, Smathers

p.321 of paperback version.

Does it have anything to do with the assassination? Damned if I know. I just find the connections interesting, especially with both secretaries winding up dead.

3

You mean they like to introduce factoids that sound interesting and might be relevant but they have no idea if they are?

4

The fact that evidence shows Kennedy was shot from somebody in the exact place Oswald was. If that wasn’t enough, the fact that Oswald attempted to assassinate someone else a few days earlier, and that he killed a cop shortly after the assassination, would do the trick. And there’s just no evidence convincingly tying him to anybody else. A large conspiracy probably wouldn’t want him because he was a loser, and no smaller conspiracy has ever been proved. Could friends have helped him out? It’s not unimaginable, but I don’t see where it would be necessary.

I think a majority of the public still thinks that, partly due to their attachment to JFK, their disbelief that he was killed, and some errors in the Warren Report.

A work of fiction that even conspiracy theorists dislike, I’m told, because Stone ignored the facts (even their version) in favor of making up a better story.

5

I was a conspiracy theory believer until the 90s when I borrowed Gerald Posner’s Case Closed from the library. It made it clear that most of the stuff that has to be true to believe in a conspiracy is just misrepresented by the proponents of each conspiracy. After reading it twice I couldn’t believe that I had ever believed all the conspiracy stuff.

6

I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of John F. Kennedy.

I haven’t made a prolonged study of the assassination, but what I’ve seen and read of the various conspiracy theories doesn’t hold up. People claim that Oswald couldn’t have worked the action on his rifle and fired three times in the time allowed, but if the clock starts with the first shot, you only have to work the action twice. The Warren Commission report posed an impossible trajectory for the first bullet, and from that have come elaborate theories about additional gunmen. But the report had Kennedy and Connally sitting perfectly straight, one directly behind the other. When you factor in that Connally was in a jumpseat inboard and below Kennedy’s, and was turning his head to talk to him, the bullet paths line up. So there were questions, but the conspiracy theories dismiss the simple explanations and use the questions as evidence of something much more elaborate. That just seems very muddled to me.

The questions about Oswald have simple answers. The questions about the conspiracy theories just lead to an ever greater conspiracy, and I’ve yet to see one that was complete. Did Oswald know there would be other shooters, or did the conspiracy uncover his plot and just use it as a smokescreen to cover their own activities? If Ruby killed Oswald to keep him from talking, then Oswald must have known. But then why would Oswald have taken the ‘impossible’ shot from the sixth floor window if the real assassin was going to be on the grassy knoll? I’ve never heard a conspiracy theory that holds up.

7

This is a site rivalling TalkOrigins for its comprehensive coverage of a topic that puts it beyond rational disagreement.

All the credible evidence points to Oswald having acted alone.

Regards,
Shodan

8

The numerous eyewitnesses who literally watched Oswald shooting Kennedy is pretty convincing evidence to me.

Dealy Plaza was a street. There were buildings on both sides of the street and there were hundreds of people in the windows of these buildings to watch the president drive by. So when Oswald started shooting out of the window of the building he was in, the people in the building across the street heard the shots and looked over and saw Oswald shooting.

There’s plenty of other evidence to corroborate what they saw but this evidence alone disproves pretty much every conspiracy theory out there. Oswald shot Kennedy. Any theory you want to build has to start from there.

9

+1. The conspiracy theories are just so scattershot. They take a seemingly innocent statement that a witness made and turn it into a grand conspiracy. One that doesn’t even mesh with the other theories they are putting out there.

The grassy knoll shooter is absurd if you think about it. You are going to plan on killing the POTUS from an open area overlooking the parade route? All it would take is one person standing in the area to screw up the whole works.

10

While New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison is heroically portrayed in Oliver Stone’s movie, in real life his sleazy opportunism and sloppy investigating were obvious. Even with the massive complexity of the case his office threw at the jury in the Clay Shaw trial, the pressure to provide some resolution to the assassination and the (misplaced) public respect for Garrison, the jury took less than an hour to acquit Shaw.

Read James Kirkwood’s American Grotesque and any respect you might have had for Garrison is bound to evaporate.

11

Let’s be clear about what you’re asking. Almost everyone on this board thinks that LHO was the lone gunman.

And almost everyone here (in my estimation) thinks that LHO acted alone, but we have more tolerance for the idea that maybe he conspired with someone else. Personally, I don’t think he conspired, because what we know of his life just fits with the lone nut idea, and that he had tried to assassinate someone else earlier that year. Plus, even if there was someone else he conspired with, it was surely not any organization, like the mafia, Secret Service, CIA, etc. Those groups wouldn’t pick such a nut for the most important piece of the job.

You credit Ruby’s killing of Oswald with a lot of weight, but were you aware that Ruby was there at the police station only because of some coincidences? At the time Oswald was scheduled to be transferred, Ruby was down the street sending some money to an employee at the Western Union office. After that, he wandered down to the police station and happened to get there when Oswald was coming out late. Also, Ruby’s dearest friend, his little dog, was left in his car because he thought he would be gone just a few minutes. And Ruby didn’t have any plausible mob ties. All the evidence points to Ruby just being an impulsive hothead who acted alone.

12

Just to clean up some details…

It was actually about six months earlier when Oswald took a shot at General Walker.

Dealey Plaza is an area, not a street. The street that Kennedy was on during the shots was Elm Street, and there are no buildings on Elm across from the Book Depository building. There were other buildings on Houston St, catty-cornered to the depository building.

13

Case Closed did it for me too, despite some minor errors. It managed to do this by

  1. Narrating Oswald’s sad, sad life from birth to Ruby shooting him. It didn’t take much to realize how utterly unreliable he was and that depending on him to work with any team of killers or complex plot is a joke. He sure as heck wasn’t a patsy, either, since he killed a cop right after the assassination and tried to shoot another in the theater.

  2. Pointing out the gross, gross, lies and deceptions that have become accepted facts among the ‘buffs’. Like how many shots most people heard, Oswald’s rifle skill, and much worse. These showed to me how buffs can make stuff up out of whole cloth and run with. Pretty much every conspiracy theorist does this, I realize that now.

14

I am much less convinced than I used to be about Oswald not being a shooter, but I still do not find myself convinced by the LHO lone gunman story.

Much of the counter argument (e.g. Posner’s evidence) seems to rest on deciding to give more credence to one person’s account over another, or one variation of a report from the same person at one time over another.

Although I did take a trip to Dealy Plaza in my youth, I am not at this point involved enough to care much what other people think. I do find the level of affect on the part of many lone gunman theorists to be intriguing, however.

15

After almost 50 years, no one has yet to offer any proof of a conspiracy. It’s all raising objections to the official story – all based on the assumption that merely raising objections disproves something. It’s like saying “Oswald couldn’t have been the assassin because he was only 2 inches tall. You see! I’ve disproved the entire thing!” Nearly all of the conspiracy theories are chock full with these sort of assertions.

But no evidence for a conspiracy has ever come to light. None. And by evidence, I’d include another bullet, a person coming forth to admit he was part of it, eyewitness testimony at the time of the assassination (there are many cases of witnesses changing their stories over time, but, of course, memory fades over time and is influenced by what people hear later, so many witnesses said nothing to support the conspiracy theory in 1963 but changed their story several years later).

Hell, the conspiracy theories all come up with different possibilities – Cuba, LBJ, the CIA Mafia, etc. If they were the truth, wouldn’t they all agree on who was behind it?

And, of course, the conspiracy theories are just plain preposterous. Much is made about a gunman from the grassy knoll, but a simple look at the map indicates that, in order to hit JFK with a bullet in the way everyone – including conspiracy theorists – agree the bullets traveled, it would have to make a right angle turn in flight. And they call the Warren Report a magic bullet. :rolleyes:

As for Jack Ruby, the key fact was, at the time Oswald was supposed to be transferred, Jack Ruby was buying a money order elsewhere. He arrived at the garage only a minute or so before the transfer (which had been delayed because Oswald wanted to change clothes, something Ruby couldn’t have known). What kind of conspiracy doesn’t get its assassin to the place of assassination at the correct time?

So again, there is absolutely no evidence supporting a conspiracy, a fact the conspiracy theorists ignore. Claiming Superman was the killer is just as valid as any other conspiracy theory, since it doesn’t have any evidence, either.

16

I believe Oswald acted alone, but he was far from the only one who wanted to kill JFK. There were elements within the government that were tacitly happy JFK got offed (CIA, I’m looking at you).

Oswald was one of those wannabes/fruitcakes that was always wanting to make the big score, and tried to run in the circles that many of the conspiracy theories invoke as the real people behind the assassination. Once he killed JFK, all these people who had had contact with him were very keen on playing down his dealings with them. Hence the appearance of a coverup, and many of the CTs still bouncing around today.

So, Oswald, with a side of clusterfucky asscovering.

17

But the CT doesn’t ever question that Oswald shot Kennedy, only that he was not alone in the act. So none of that eyewitness testamony really contradicts anything that CTs put up either. That Oswald took shots from the window is a given in any assassination theory.

18

This is not true. Some theorists insist Oswald’s gun couldn’t have fired, for one thing.

19

I don’t know how old the OP is, but in my younger days, I wanted to believe in a CT. But as I’ve gotten older, it crystal clear there was no conspiracy.

  • At this point, there have been so many legitimate news programs and TV shows that have used computer graphic and studies that cooperate the Warren commission findings.

-Case closed is methodical, simple and concise. It really carves up some of the CT theories.

-It’s been almost 46 years. This would arguably be the grandest CT in American history. In all this time no one has come forward with legitimate information? Hard to believe there would be no information if there was a CT.

-IF one was going to have a conspiracy, Oswald and Ruby are last of the list of people you’d include. As was noted up thread, they are two of the most unreliable and or unpredictable folks you could find.

-More anecdotal than anything, but this site is probably 90% liberal, and untrusting of the government. If you could find a group that would be inclined to believe in CT if it existed, it would be here.

In short for me, there is so much evidence to prove that Oswald acted alone, coupled with a complete dearth of evidence pointing to a CT, that it’s really not even a question or debate any longer.

20

Heck, some claim that because Oswald declared that he was a patsy that he obviously didn’t do it.