New York Times: JFK conspiracy theorists need to be shunned. Agree?

Great Debates
161

[QUOTE=Pochacco]
I don’t think any of the witnesses claimed to actually see the shooter in the window. A large number said they thought they had heard the shots coming the book depository. The police sealed off the building as a precaution and rounded up all the employees. Oswald’s supervisor told the police that Oswald was missing and gave them a brief description of what he looked like. That description of a possible suspect was sent out by radio to police officers across the city. Officer Tibbit saw a man matching the description walking down the street looking nervous, called him over to talk to him, and was gunned down.
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I’m afraid you’ve garbled the facts. By the time police headquarters knew he was missing from the Depository Oswald was already in custody. Officer Tippit had heard no more than a general description of the suspect. That description came from Brennan (who actually saw the last shot fired) and one other eyewitness at the scene.

162

[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
But why go back outside to be bookin’ out in plain sight in the first place?
Does Bugliosi deal with Earline Robert’s statement that a cop car pulled up outside Oswald’s residence and honked it’s horn twice?
Your observations certainly cast doubt on an argument that Oswald had no involvement whatsoever. I’d say, on the other hand, that they make perfect sense for a patsy - someone with marginal involvement who realizes that the shit that just went down might be laid at his feet.
Actually, Howard Brennan is cited as the source of the description that went out over the radio, leading, supposedly, to Tippit stopping Oswald.
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Why did Oswald not stay home? Lemme ask ya: if you had just shot the president, would you go home, pop open a brewsky, stretch out on the Barcalounger, and wait for the authorities to knock on your door? Not bloody well likely. (Incidentally, no one knows where Oswald has headed. There are a couple of good educated guesses, but they’re just guesses.)

I do not recall if Bugliosi said anything about Roberts’ cop car statement. He does, of course, quote Roberts’ testimony that she said to Oswald, “My, you are in a hurry!” I hope Johnny Hildo’s response will suffice.

Bugliosi did have some things to say about Oswald’s patsy claim, one of which was along the lines of, how did he figure out so fast that he was being set up? Whatever. I’ll just point out that the demonstrable lies Oswald told his interrogators are consistant with his guilt. His behavior was not that of someone being wrongfully accused. Why, when he was taken into headquarters, did he give the cameras a raised-fist salute?

163

[QUOTE=BJMoose]
I’m afraid you’ve garbled the facts. By the time police headquarters knew he was missing from the Depository Oswald was already in custody. Officer Tippit had heard no more than a general description of the suspect. That description came from Brennan (who actually saw the last shot fired) and one other eyewitness at the scene.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, you’re right. Disregard what I said previously, please.

164

Hentor: I just checked, and it looks like Bugliosi has nothing to say about Roberts seeing a police car (gee, in 2500 pages of text youda thunk he’d cover everything :wink: ). Did come across this little gem (Endnotes p. 464): “Yet Roberts testified that Oswald was ‘walking unusually fast . . . He was all but running’ (6 H 439).” You’ll understand if I persist in believing Oswald was acting like a man who was trying to get the hell out of Dodge.

Pochacco: no problem. As much information and misinformation as there is in this case, no one can possibly keep everything straight.

165

Which isn’t to say there are NOT mysteries still involved with the JFK assassination.

For instance, who was the Babuska Lady who filmed the motorcade? Why doesn’t anyone know who she is or why her footage has never surfaced? Odd, that.

It’s not Beverly Oliver. Don’t even fuckin start with me on that.

166

[QUOTE=dropzone]
Well, in his “defense,” Oswald was a pitifully poor employee, quitting those jobs where he hadn’t gotten fired. Completely incompetent in just about everything he did; the assasination was about the only thing he’d done right in years, which could be used to argue against his complicity. :wink:

Reading various CT articles and books, he strikes me as being like Kevin Spacey, in The Usual Suspects: shifting from inept “Verbal” to mastermind Kaiser Soeze as the situation requires, except I can’t imagine him taking a bath on his own without drowning. In some ways the perfect patsy.
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Okay, I’m gonna call you on this, since it looks like you know little about Oswald. You should do some reading. If the bio in that dastardly Warren report is too much for you, try Edward Epstein’s Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald or Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale. Bugliosi also devotes 275 pages to Oswald’s life. I dare you to read one of those then come back here and say, with a straight face, that Oswald was a dolt.
So far as the Babushka Lady (and her ilk) go, I suppose she was one of those folks who just doesn’t like to “get involved.”
Related news: Tom Hanks and a couple of others are negotiating for film rights to Reclaiming History, planning a ten-part series for HBO (Hanks did something like this a few years back with From the Earth to the Moon). Given that many, many more people will watch something like that than will ever crack open any book on the assassination, I say, You go, guys!

167

Son, while you are researching your current interest, I hope that you learn to read other material more carefully than you read my post.

  1. Because I realize after forty-three years of scrutiny and mind-changing that I will never be solidly convinced one way or the other, you have taken it upon yourself to draw conclusions that that means: I want there to be a conspiracy..

How bizarre! By the same rationale, I could say that you want me to want there to be a conspiracy! Guffaw!

And I’m supposed to look to you for a logical interpretation of the facts?

  1. As for research, squirt, you are a beginner. Work on your comprehension.
168

[QUOTE=Zoe]
squirt,
[/QUOTE]
Come on. You’ve been here long enough to know that is out of line.

[ /Moderating ]

169

On booktv last week ,they had a guy who wrote a book about the assassination. He said he was on the car when Kennedy got shot. (secret service). When he told the Warren Report investigators that he heard shots from the front ,they told him to change his testimony. Is it true. I do not know but it will never end.

170

[QUOTE=gonzomax]
On booktv last week ,they had a guy who wrote a book about the assassination. He said he was on the car when Kennedy got shot. (secret service). When he told the Warren Report investigators that he heard shots from the front ,they told him to change his testimony. Is it true. I do not know but it will never end.
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Clint Hill was on BookTV? I see no sign of it on their website, but I’ll readily admit I did not do a detailed search.

In a statement dated 30 Nov. 1963 Hill says (JFK: Statement of Clint Hill, eyewitness to the assassination of John F. Kennedy) that while scanning the folks on the grassy knoll he heard a shot from his “right rear”, saw Kennedy slumped over, started to run, heard another shot, apparent direction not specified. If he is changing his story now he is admitting to be a perjurer. (He also did not reach the car until after the fatal headshot.)

To my knowledge, no one has found a shread of evidence that the Warren Commission ever suborned perjury.

You are right about one thing: so long as people have imaginations, the spinning of uncorroborated theories (not to mention utter hokum) about this detail and that detail shall never end.

171

I ran into it last weekend. I did not catch the beginning so I did not catch the name. I also went through the Cspan web site and could not find it .

172

… some ex-CIA agent confesses that there was a conspiracy. It was funded by righ-wing texas oilmen, and carried out by Cuban agents, under the direction of the CIA. Castro confesses on his deathbed “I wnated the yangui president dead-because he tried to kill ME”! Johnny Roselli 9the mafia boss who coordinated the hit) was killed to keep the secret. And it is revealed, that some of LBJ’s friends funded the operation. So now, we know that the president was killed by a cabal of unlikely allies: Cuban communists, mafia bosses, and Texas Rightwing nutjobs . So what? What would historians do with this? :confused:

173

The point is that it will never die. There is a new one tomorrow.

174

I don’t see why JFK assassination theorists need to be shunned. Bush Administration apologists, maybe. But Kennedy assassination theorists have a perfectly harmless hobby/obsession.

In the early 1990s, my aunt was even dating one for awhile. Seemed like a perfectly nice guy, really. No reason at all to shun him, since he didn’t mind letting most of the talk be about other things.

175

[QUOTE=BJMoose]
Okay, I’m gonna call you on this, since it looks like you know little about Oswald. You should do some reading. If the bio in that dastardly Warren report is too much for you, try Edward Epstein’s Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald or Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale. Bugliosi also devotes 275 pages to Oswald’s life. I dare you to read one of those then come back here and say, with a straight face, that Oswald was a dolt.
[/QUOTE]
I have Legend packed away somewhere. Haven’t read it yet, nor have I read Mailer’s book. And both the Warren Report and Bugliosi are intent on showing Oswald to be a criminal mastermind. Lee Oswald, the flake who I can’t recall offhand staying at a minimum-wage job for longer than three months, except for the Marines, where quitting wasn’t an option and where he was court-martialled twice, and the one in Minsk where, despite the USSR being a worker’s paradise, he was written up for incompetence before he left the country. Lee Oswald, who never managed to learn to drive a car.

Then there’s Oswald the Pretty Good Shot. Let’s see what a Marine buddy told the Commission:

Or, as another fellow he trained with said,

However, as Delgado said, it wasn’t as if Oswald was trying to shoot well. It’s possible had some then-unrealized potential.

And I didn’t call him a “dolt,” just incompetent in everything he did. Maybe he was even kinda smart, though he couldn’t spell his way out of a brown paper bag. Let’s look at what the Warren Report says:

Sounds like he’d’ve made a good Doper. :wink: And an excellent patsy.

176

[QUOTE=dropzone]

Then there’s Oswald the Pretty Good Shot. Let’s see what a Marine buddy told the Commission:
[/QUOTE]

Oswald was a perfectly competent shooter. In the Peter Jennings special Beyond Conspiracy they had a researcher who showed us Oswald’s Marine marksmanship tests. At shooting targets 300 yards away, Oswald scored a 48 out of a possible 50 one day. On another day, he scored 49 out of 50. The report said that JFK was something like 85 yards away during the headshot.

177

Dropzone: Lordy loo. I don’t think anyone has ever accused Oswald of being a “criminal mastermind”. And he certainly wasn’t. But think of it: how much grey matter does it take to decide you want to kill a president, take your rifle to work, then sit by the window until your target appears? The presidential assassin (I forget which one) who hid his handgun by putting it in his hand and wrapping his hand with gauze showed more cunning than Oswald did.

You’re certainly right that Oswald had problems. But too flakey to plan anything more complicated than crossing the street without getting run over? Hardly. Look at his plan to defect to the Soviet Union. In those days he just couldn’t hop on a jet and go. He applied for admission to a Swiss college (and was accepted), then travelled to Europe, eventually lighting in Finland where he, posing as a travelling student, could get an entry visa to the Soviet Union.

By the way: at the time of the assassination, Ruth Paine was teaching Oswald how to drive. (Hell, my mother never drove and she regularly whupped my ass at Jeopardy. Things were a bit different fifty years back).

You may not know you’ve done it, but you’ve cherry-picked the evidence. When Oswald first qualified he scored high enough to be rated Sharpshooter. It hardly matters. He had experience using a rifle and, if in fact he killed Kennedy, he was good enough. There’s the problem with your argument. So what that he never would have made valedictorian at Sniper School?! If he did it, he did it, and that must be decided on the basis of the actual evidence, not on speculation on whether or not he was a “good enough” shot. (Bugliosi makes the interesting, but I think rather lame, point that if we assume Oswald was aiming for Kennedy’s head, then he hit his target just one time out of three. Meh.)

(By the way, I didn’t say you said Oswald was a dolt, just dared you to call him one after learning more about him.)

Oswald a Doper?? Oy, the mind, she boggles. I suspect he would have been a one-trick pony who got Pitted a lot. . . .

Gad, the patsy thing again. ::sigh:: Whether or not he was a patsy depends on whether or not he did it. And given the evidence, considered in its totality, he did it.

178

[QUOTE=ralph124c]
.. some ex-CIA agent confesses that there was a conspiracy. It was funded by righ-wing texas oilmen, and carried out by Cuban agents, under the direction of the CIA. Castro confesses on his deathbed “I wnated the yangui president dead-because he tried to kill ME”! Johnny Roselli 9the mafia boss who coordinated the hit) was killed to keep the secret. And it is revealed, that some of LBJ’s friends funded the operation. So now, we know that the president was killed by a cabal of unlikely allies: Cuban communists, mafia bosses, and Texas Rightwing nutjobs . So what? What would historians do with this? :confused:
[/QUOTE]

What would historians do? I suspect most of them would laugh their bloody arses off. . . .

179

[QUOTE=Johnny Hildo]
Oswald was a perfectly competent shooter.
[/QUOTE]
Which was why I suggested he might’ve been screwing off when Delgado saw him shoot so poorly.

Of course I did. Unfortunately, so has pretty much everybody else who has investigated this, whether the CTers, the Warren Commission, the HSCA, or Posner and Bugliosi. Everybody has a point they want to make and, whether consciously or unconciously, they will show a preference for the data that supports their position.

I’ve told this story before, but Robert Millikan’s notes from his experiment to determine the charge of an electron include test data he crossed out because it was too far from the theoretical number. I said to my wife, “this guy got a Nobel Prize when he doctored his data?”

She said, “What gets you a Nobel is knowing which data are wrong and that you can safely throw out.”

With as much chaff as this case has generated picking out the wheat from it is difficult, especially with all of the contradictory testimony. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as with real chaff, which blows away in the slightest breeze; if it were enough wind has been blown by just Mark Lane and Gerald Posner to clear up anything. And the WC ignored or force-fit enough evidence, and enough new stuff has been released since then, that I cannot take what they say as my sole reference. I am trying to find which data–from all sides–I can throw out.

180

I understand where you’re coming from, dropzone. There has been so much stuff thrown in people’s faces over the years that most folks, too lazy or indifferent to sort through the mess, simply throw up their hands (or worse, take a “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” approach). I wish you well in your winnowing efforts. And I think I’ll recommend you get Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History. It’s not an easy book to recommend. The sucker’s so large that most folks will be scared away by its four-pound heft. Much worse, the publisher, loathe to print a two-volume work, put Bugliosi’s 958 pages of Endnotes in a PDF file on a CD-ROM (so also his citations). Since most of his detailed discussion of evidentiary matters is in the Endnotes the reader is obliged to either read the book while sitting at a computer or print out the monstrosity. Anyway, he presents a massive case against Oswald, and has much more “debunking” of the maelstrom of chaff out there than anyone else. If you really want to dig into the Kennedy assassination, that would be a good place to start. But don’t stop there (unless he convinces you :wink: ).

(Since Bugliosi’s Endnotes are in a mere PDF file, I suspect bootleg copies of it will soon be wafting the Internet, with lawyers from W.W. Norton in hot pursuit. Serves 'em right.)