I’ve been looking in the archives and I haven’t seen the doper input on this one yet:
Who shot J.F.K. ?
Umm…I’ve taken the liberty of pulling together a few documents on this subject. Feel free to browse.
(sorry about the crappy HTML, but it was a word doc, and I just saved as HTML.)
http://www.rpi.edu/~vannem/jfkdocuments.html
Truth does not change because it is, or is not, beleived by a majority of the people.
-Giordano Bruno
I have read a few books concerning this matter and my own conclusion from what I have been told by others, and I think that is the important thing, is that Oswald did not execute the president by himself if he was indeed even involved. The fact that the FBI had major control over what evidence was passed to the commision and certain things were not looked into as much as they should have been, etc. The list is endless and I don’t believe that anyone will ever know the truth about the whole incident as the ‘powers that be’ won’t allow it to happen.
I encourage you to read Case Closed by Gerald Posner. It, well, closes the case. And it was, indeed, Oswald.
Indeed it was Oswald just as it was McVeigh & Nichols who committed the Oklahoma City bombing.
Makes the world a lot more interesting, and scary, that individuals and tiny groups can have such a large impact through mayhem.
I wonder if anyone has ever done a correlation between the people who believe in the “Kennedy killed by unknown conspirators” theory and people who believe in alien abductions.
Nixon said:
Exactly. I think a large number of people don’t want to believe that one or two individuals can make such an impact, so they figure there must be some huge conspiracy behind it. Same applies to the King family’s acceptance of conspiracy theories to explain MLK’s assassination. They don’t want to believe that one guy could kill MLK (and “the dream”) so easily. But we see it every day – people are murdered by individuals. Sometimes one of those people is a famous person, but that doesn’t mean it was anything more than all the other murders around the world.
I agree that just because someone who is murdered is famous, doesn’t mean that there was a conspiracy involved. But I fail to see how you can make a judgement and quite clearly say that Oswald did it when not all of the evidence is avaible for viewing. From my knowledge of the situation (and I don’t claim to be an authority)it makes it very hard to see clearly what is correct or true. The fact that not every murder involves a conspiracy is obvious but to rule out that possibilty because of that fact seems illogical and a little blinkered. I’m not hung up on a conspiracy but I do consider it to have be a possible answer to what I see as an eternal question.
Things DO go on in the world that you or I are completeley unaware of…
I agree Gesh. I don’t claim to know what happened, but it seems awfully suspicious to me that Jack Ruby, who had mob ties, was motivated enough to quite publicly kill Oswald before he had a chance to talk.
In my opinion, there was definitely some sort of conspiracy going on there.
How do you know it’s not? Have you read the book I mention above? It lays everything out and when all is said and done, there can be only one logical conclusion.
Good thing I never did that, then, isn’t it?
Jack Ruby had “Mafia ties” to the same degree that I had “ties” to the Yankees. That is, I used to love the Yankees, I used to go to Yankee Stadium a lot, I used to try to get autographs and pictures of players.
But do you think the Yankees knew or cared who I was? Not a chance. To them, I was one of a bunch of kids… if they thought of me at all, it was as a nuisance!
That, in a nutshell, was Jack Ruby. He was a lowlife who fancied himself a big shot. A few Mafia flunkies liked to hang out at his strip club, and he fancied that made HIm a goodfella too. Among the police in Dallas, Ruby was well known, and regarded as a buffoon. One of the few great lines in the Warren Commission report was from the Dallas Police CHief, who muttered, “If Jack Ruby was a mafioso, then the Mafia needs a new Personnel director.”
The topic of this thread is “Oswald in the Depository with the Rifle”.
To which I must reply: Nonsense. It was Miss Scarlet, in the Library, with the Knife.
(Or as I frequently like to quip, “I suggest Miss Scarlet and Mister Green did it in the lounge with the rope and the candlestick.” 
)
What is the legal status of the Kennedy murder? Oswald was arrested but was killed before being tried. Clay Shaw was tried for conspiracy and acquitted. Is the murder case itself still considered open? What agency has jurisdiction? I would think the Dallas PD, but of course Shaw was tried in New Orleans. So could my local prosecutor if she felt like it have someone arrested, either for the murder or for conspiracy? I am leaving aside all questions of proof and probable cause for the moment and focusing purely on jurisdiction.
This is exactly the thought I had when I saw the OP. Except I thought it was Col. Mustard, in the conservatory, with the candlestick.
This is one of those questions that just won’t go away. There is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that the government was less than forthcoming with the physical evidence and testimony of some witnesses. The path of the bullet is improbable enough to inspire doubt in many minds. The problem with all the conspiracy theories out there is that they are all built on shakier ground than the government’s explanations. I don’t know whether Oswald did it or not, but I suspect that the evidence that would silence all doubters does not exist. The tales and rumors are firmly entrenched enough that many will always harbor a lingering doubt, and many others will be utterly convinced of Oswald’s guilt or innocence.
This is one of those questions that makes me want to live to be a very old man just so I can learn more about it. 75 years after it happened, in 2038, many of the now sealed documents about this case will be released to the public and hopefully they will reveal more information. Oswald may have been involved or he may have been a patsy, but if he was a patsy he was hardly a random one, with all his ties to the government and Cuban dissidents. The so called “magic bullet” can not be accepted as truth by any reasonable person which means there had be a 4th bullet fired and a second shooter, as all evidence about who shot from the 6th floor seems to agree only 3 shots were fired from there.
Also after seeing the Zepruder film of the head shot to Kennedy I can not accept any arguments that try to explain how that could have happened from a bullet from the rear.
I used to wondered why the Kennedys with all their money haven’t done more to find the truth about this issue, but then someone suggested to me that perhaps they have and that they do know the truth and for reasons unknown to us just have decided to not make it known to the public. I don’t know of any public record where a Kennedy has referred to the assassin of President Kennedy as Oswald. Of course I don’t know of any record where they have talked the assassination at all. It could be just privacy issues, or it could be because they know the truth.
There’s one hell of a lot wrong with Case Closed. Posner makes some leaps of logic that are truly astounding, and rival those of the most close-minded conspiracy freak in their inattention to detail or the laws of physics. Richard Belzer, for Chrissake, makes mincemeat of some of Posner’s key arguments in his latest book. It may well have been Oswald, but Posner certainly ain’t the last word on the subject.
I am no expert on the JFK thing, but I do remember an interesting article in a book I read by Penn and Teller. They took a melon (about the size and shape of a human head) and shot it with a rifle, recreating as best they could the exact conditions (distance, wind, etc) that Oswald is alleged to have shot through.
Their point (which is illustrated in the book, How To Play With Your Food beautifully) is that a head, when shot, will snap toward the shooter, not away. Thus, since JFK’s head snapped back and to the left (as Costner says 15,000,000 times in the movie) evidence supports the theory that Oswald was the shooter, not someone on the Grassy Knoll.
The idea is that a small caliber bullet will punch into a head quite smoothly, but will blow a big pile of gook out the far side. The force of the exit wound will push the head back toward the shooter.
I guess this belongs in GenQues, right?
sigh…
No, there will never be an end to this debate.
People are still arguing over Lincoln’s murder - The missing pages from Booth’s diary, taken and destroyed by Secretary Stanton; Booth’s quick and easy escape into P.G. County; The role, if any, of the Confederate secret service, which towards the end of the war became much more violent and heedless of civilain casualties; The identity of Booth’s body after his capture and why he wasn’t taken alive; Booth’s missing grave; the quick execution of all the conspirators, including Mrs. Surratt; U.S. Grant’s decision not to go to the theater with Lincoln; Dr. Mudd’s role as a Confederate agent helping another agent (Booth); Mrs Lincoln’s quick decline into mental illness; The attempted theft of Lincoln’s body; etc…etc…
Let’s not forget that the Booth family was among the most famous and wealthiest acting families in the country. Oh, how they and their rich friends could subvert the truth!
The truth is out there!
(How do you know its not true?)
sdimbert wrote:
A previous Great Debates thread about this very issue: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=22317
One of the posters in that thread said that, upon close inspection of the Zapruder film, the very first frame in which Kennedy is shot clearly shows his head lurching FORWARD, followed immediately in the next few frames by his whole upper body falling backward.
You should have looked in the Active Topics, not the Archive. I found this one just now: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=22317
I have a few posts there.