Stranger
Well, the thing here is that you dismiss what I say, but it is not just me, but what the FBI and others said after looking and examining the limo, again, you did say that it “was immediately scrubbed clean”.
I will go with what the record shows, thank you very much.
Oh, I understood it. I was just hoping that you would cite specifics so we could all laugh at the preposterous claims.
But, I’ll indulge you.
Let’s start with the fact that the article, although in the Washington Post, is conspiracy nonsense from a nonserious source: The Assassination Information Bureau. I’m going to venture a guess that they have a (financial) interest in uncovering the conspiracy.
And they establish it with the useless tactic of deciding that if two people know each other, or once met, then they are working together. And in this way you can draw connections between people without ever showing that they actually worked together.
The other strategy is to use “anonymous sources”, or random people with official sounding credentials, to sprinkle in whatever tenuous facts you need to establish links.
Here’s an example from the article. I’ve bolded what I’m referring to.
So all we actually have is a claim that Oswald had an uncle. But anonymous sources and some guy named Aaron Kohn have breathlessly reported that he knew a mob boss. And since his was Oswald’s uncle, that means Oswald knew a mob boss.
Never mind that there is simply no independent corroboration (other than “sources” and this guy Aaron) to confirm this.
Now, here we have a connection based on three unnamed sources. How can you beat that? There’s three of them. And since Oswald once perhaps occupied the same air that Ferrie once occupied, however many years apart, why, the connection is double documented!
This is tripe. (And reminiscent of Jim Garrison’s lunacy, as captured in the movie JFK. Recall that Garrison believed that Kennedy was killed by gay people because they are degenerate)
So mobsters just told Oswald “you should kill Kennedy”, and…that was it? Was it along the lines of “you seem like you have potential. Do this and we’ll let you actually go to our hangout and meet us?” Or maybe it was just a telegram saying “We’re rooting for you!”
(Actually, that can’t be it. Oswald was investigated so thoroughly that we’d know if he’d received a telegram)
Then we would be hearing about the cover-up in the labs and how the limo wasn’t even the same one JFK rode in because the Secret Service would never use a limo where the tires all had slightly different pressures.
Given the macabre exhibition of Bonnie & Clyde’s death car, I imagine some people deliberately refurbished Kennedy’s death car to avoid having it placed on display.
Well, that’s awkward because I’m going to revise my theory. The second (real) shooter wasn’t Oswald; it was Patten Oswalt. Journalists conflated the two because of the similar phonetics of their last names. Now, someone is going to complain that Oswalt wasn’t even alive when Jack Kennedy was assassinated, but that is because they refuse to acknowledge the existence of time travel technology recovered from the crash of a timeship in Roswell, NM (concealed by the cover story that it was an alien spaceship). There are more details to my theory which are captured in an interview with Bob Lazar, who is an authoritative source of unimpeachable credentials which have been obfuscated by the FBI, the CIA, and the BSA; however, the video was blocked by YouTube.com because it violates their algorithm designed by the NSA to conceal the truth.
Also, Timothy Olyphant is somehow involved in this. I haven’t worked out the details but he’s definitely culpable.
Stranger
I’ve got that one covered: he’s part of a secret cloning program. I became aware of this fact secret knowledge when rewatching the cult classic Go many years after its release and upon rewatching it realized the drug dealer Todd Gaines was none other than Timothy Olyphant. Looking deeper into his filmography I became aware of him being in far too many movies to be a single person.
Precious. Bodily. Fluids.
This thread is becoming intriguing, and there are a number of newsletters to which I would like to subscribe.
I heard it was Dick Van Patten.
No, it’s Olyphants all the way down.
The USMC has always placed a high emphasis on their recruits learning how to shoot. What casual observers completely fail to understand is that even an officially “lousy” shot in the Marine corps is a pretty competent marksman. They know how to train people to shoot accurately and consistently.
Besides, shooting a rifle isn’t some impossibly difficult arcane skill get right down to it. Just about anyone can be reliably hitting the target at 600 meters after just a few minutes of training having never fired a rifle before.
There are some weird things about that day in Dallas, but most all the stuff that is posited as “evidence” is complete nonsense. The Carcano rifle was plenty accurate, the fact that the scope was discovered upon close inspection to be misaligned 6 months later isn’t even cause for comment particularly.
No argument from me; my point was just some conspiracy theorists have argued Oswald was a great shot, others that he was a poor shot, to “prove” he didn’t act alone. Consistency isn’t a hallmark of such theories, and neither is reference to actual evidence.
My comment was not that he was a good shot, nor a bad one-- it was the weaselly way that a military term with a very specific meaning was being used the way a layperson would use it, which meant something different.
Kinda like when biblical literalists speak of evolution as “only” a theory, because they don’t understand the way scientists use the word. They want to use it the way lawyers use it when talking about the “theory of a crime,” probably because there have been more lawyer shows than science shows.
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. 600 meters is pushing the basic capability of a battle rifle to reliably hit a man-sized target with open sights, and it will take more than a few minutes training to learn how to estimate and adjust for windage and elevation rise/loss. In my experience, most people can learn to reliably hit a target out to 200 yards with a couple hours worth of instruction, and depending on aptitude could reliably hit a stationary target in light breeze out to 500 yards prone or standing with a few sessions of shooting (provided that is within the capability of rifle and round selected, of course).
However, Oswald was less than 100 yards from the limousine procession, had plenty of time and view to take aim, and could easily lead the slow moving vehicle. At that range iron sights would actually be better than a high magnification scope, and it took longer than the entire shooting for people to realize that the procession was under attack and take action. Much is often made about the speed at which one could fire shots from a Carcano Model 38 but it has been demonstrated repeatedly by people who were not previously familiar with the Carcano, and while I’ve never fired a Model 38 I have handled rifles with similar throw and didn’t find it that difficult to function the action rapidly enough to get three shots inside of five seconds. He was basically “shooting ducks in a barrel” in those conditions.
Stranger
Since we’ve accepted the possibility of time travel, I prefer the Red Dwarf theory. In it, JFK was taken forward in time, discovered that he didn’t like his legacy, then went back in time and shot himself.
“It’ll drive the conspiracy nuts crazy, but they’ll never figure it out!”
Oswald was an ideal candidate for the job because he had connections to Cuba and Russia.
As to whether it was an “ideal plan” (your phrase), I cannot say as I have no experience or expertise plotting presidential assassinations.
Have you?
That’s not my reading of it at all. The article describes what is known and unknown about each relationship.
As far as I can tell, all of those sources were taken from the Select Committee Report (SCR). I agree it’s not enough to draw firm conclusions; that is why the SCR drew the conclusion it did.
“The committee established that Oswald was familiar with his uncle’s underworld activities and had discussed them with his wife, Marina, in 1963.(271)” - SCR, pg. 170, second paragraph
This is hyperbole. The article is summarizing the SCR, leading off with “We still have much to learn about (the relationship between Ferrie and Oswald).” The report itself notes: “During the course of its investigation, the committee developed several areas of credible evidence and testimony indicating a possible association in New Orleans and elsewhere between Lee Harvey Oswald and David W. Ferrie, a private investigator and even, perhaps, a pilot for Marcello before and during 1963.(274) From the evidence available to the committee, the nature of the Oswald-Ferrie association remained largely a mystery.”
That is a far cry from establishing the connection as a fact, let alone one that has been “double documented.”
First off, I don’t think Oswald was even aware he was being used by the mob. He was approached by intermediaries in order to insulate the men behind the hit from being associated with it in any way. This was the strategy used in the three cases cited by SCR demonstrating that in rare cases, the mob used non-mob personnel - unreliable loners - to perform their hits (at least one of whom was a public figure murdered in front of 65,000 people).
As to how they convinced Oswald to take part, I was not there and cannot say. There are several possibilities, including (but not limited to): money and/or ideological reasons. Even if we assume there was no mob involvement, we do not know what motivated Oswald to clip JFK.
Oh, my deepest and most humble apologies for soiling your word ‘ideal’ by associating it with that awful word ‘plan.’ I’ll be certain to run it by the copyright office to see if doing so passes the legal muster for word usage in the future. Hmmm, hey wait a minute. It would appear that you are moving the goalposts on something as absurdly trivial as semantic games. You clearly only objected to the use of your own word “ideal” by putting it in scare quotes, not ‘ideal plan’. I call foul, sir!
Don’t worry, maybe I’ll make a typo in the future that you can use in an attempt to discredit me. In the future you might want to come up with some reasoning behind why the mob considered risking WWIII to be the ideal cover for them to hide behind. And no, I’m not going to apologize for using ‘ideal’ to describe ‘cover.’
It’s useful to note that the Select Committee Report reached a flawed conclusion that there were two gunmen, based on a dictabelt recording of a motorcycle backfire. It was reaching for new material, so anything it concludes must be considered with some reservations.
Even if we accept that the committee was credible when it established this (more than a decade after Oswald and his uncle had died), let’s be clear about what is established: Lee Oswald spoke to his wife about his uncle being a bookie.
And…?
So the committee was just throwing stuff against a wall and seeing if it would stick.
My point stands: they are asserting a nexus by the weakest of links. And they are only asserting a nexus; any evidence of coordination is completely lacking.
There is absolutely no evidence that he was approached by intermediaries! Even if we accept that he knew people who knew mobsters, there is zero evidence to suggest that they approached him about the assassination. None.
And why would the “men behind the hit” need to be insulated? They offered no assistance.
He had no extra money. So you have zero evidence that money was part of the bargain. Or are you saying that a guy decided to kill the president on the basis of an IOU?
I don’t get “ideological reasons”. What - they gave him a heart to heart? Told him that La Cosa Nostra was a collective? Your theory is that the mob facilitated an assassination with a political presentation?
This is more absurdity. We know all about Oswald’s personal ideology. You don’t think you can figure out what motivated this Marxist who wanted the US to lay off Cuba to want to kill John F. Kennedy? It’s just a big mystery?
Query: it’s been mentioned upthread that Oswald was interrogated for over a day before he was killed. Are there transcripts of those interrogations? If so, do they cast any light on his motivation?