Steve Jackson’s Illuminati for the win!
Your reference to “two Soviet citizens” sounds so nefarious! It was his wife and baby daughter.
Oswald originally entered the Soviet Union on a visa that allowed him to stay there for a week. As was customary, he had a handler to watch over him. But when his guided trip was up and he was told to go, he slashed his wrists and ended up in the hospital.
For the Soviets, this was a problem. “American student - a former Marine, no less - visits Russia and ends up dead” is an international incident. So, they let him recover, and then acquiesce and let him stay.
Except he was sent to a small town and given a boring job, and of course he was closely watched. But he displayed no interest in anything remotely “sensitive”, and he was typical of American defectors to the Soviet Union - lonely, unhappy, and directionless.
So when, as would be expected of a man who was always restless, he finally decided that this Soviet life was not for him, it wasn’t an issue to let him return. In fact, despite the fact that he had relinquished his passport, he had never actually formally renounced his citizenship. So, the American, who only stayed to avoid some sort of diplomatic incident, and who the KGB has has had to watch for 2 years, wants to go home? From Russia’s perspective, this is getting rid of a problem.
(And what exactly did his young wife and infant daughter offer the Soviets that they should care if they leave as well?)
Indeed, when he did return, he became America’s problem. The FBI did have to follow up on him, something Oswald openly complained about. In fact,
that’s the biggest issue of all with the assassination- a failure of intelligence to realize that this mentally unstable guy who they had an open file on was working at a warehouse along the parade route.
Or, as already stated,
The sole reason they reached this conclusion is because they had the sound of what they heard to be additional gunshots which they could not explain.
But, as others here have already explained, that noise was captured by a motorcycle cop at another location who had his radio inadvertently stuck open. I believe it was later determined to be a vehicle backfire.
More importantly, it doesn’t match the totality of evidence which best explains what happened. If you just keep digging into any particular situation, you can eventually find some sort of anomalies that let you conclude “well, I guess we’ll never know.”
I’m imaging this sort of logic applied to a car accident. Some guy is going too fast, miss a turn, hits an embankment, and ends up dead. The cops investigate, note the position of the car and the debris, find a surveillance video showing him speeding less than a minute prior, and speak to two eyewitnesses who saw him flip his car. Simple enough, case closed.
Except somebody comes forward and declares that a second car hit this car and then took off.
“Where’s the evidence? We should expect that some of that debris from this mystery car would show up on scene.”
“Are you saying you that you can categorically declare that every instance of two cars colliding ends up with debris from both cars on scene?!”
“No, but experience shows…look, we have two witnesses who say they saw a single car.”
“Yeah, but there was a guy across the street at a bar who said that he was looking out the window and saw a second car. It was a shoddy investigation!”
“Yeah, we actually spoke to that guy and he was drunk.”
“His buddy was also there and has an opinion. I just feel like there are so many loose ends in this case. Isn’t it curious that the guy who prepared the coroner’s report once got a DUI, and had to negotiate with the government for a reduced sentenced. How confident can we be that he concluded that this was a simple case of blunt force trauma?”
“You know, the video showing this guy speeding right before the accident is totally consistent with him missing the turn.”
“If you watch that video, though, you can hear what sounds like a gunshot. It definitely makes you wonder what actually happened here. Too bad we’ll never know.”
I believe that Joel Achenbach said it best in his books “Why Things Are” Volumes 1 and 3.
I believe the following link is copied from the relevant section in Volume 3 (Hmm, the link allowed me to view this ONCE, then disappeared behind a paywall.)
I’ll paraphrase: There are things called evidence, like palmprints, film, and even (less conclusive) witnesses who saw Oswald firing from the book depository building. Against that we have things that look fishy, but which are not in themselves any evidence of a conspiracy.
Here is his later column on the subject:
Do you apply that same philosophy to other things? Could get interesting.
No, I just apply it to those that claim that they are not typical conspiracists…then ask the same kinds of questions all the other “not typical conspiracists” ask.
I don’t know if it was or wasn’t. @E-DUB stated that they had never heard the question asked, let alone answered, and I was just pointing out that it had actually been asked and answered in this very thread. Whether it’s a good answer…I honestly don’t know.
A couple of points I genuinely don’t know, and maybe someone better informed on the minutiae of the assassination can answer. From the storeroom where Oswald set up his sniper’s nest, did he have an angle and clear line of sight on Kennedy’s car as it approached the school book depository? From the elevated angle he was firing from, would the front windscreen and/or the occupants of the front seat give significant cover to Kennedy?
Beyond that, maybe they didn’t technically obstruct Oswald’s line of sight to Kennedy’s head, but cluttered his sight picture sufficiently that he didn’t feel comfortable taking that shot. Or maybe he preferred to shoot Kennedy in the back, like a coward. Or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to shoot another human being while looking at his face. Or maybe it took some time for him to line up his shot and/or work up his nerve. Or maybe some residual Marine infantry tactics kicked in - he had standard rifleman training, but not specialized sniper training, and standard tactics are to shoot the enemy in the back instead of when they’re approaching you when possible.
There’s also another important factor. Oswald slipped away from work to go to his sniper position, then quickly returned to the lunchroom. He was pretty clearly trying to minimize and conceal his absence. He didn’t have real-time GPS tracking of Kennedy’s exact position. The most logical course of action would be to wait until the motorcade was approaching the school book depository, then slip away to his sniper’s nest. By the time he got there and got set up, Kennedy’s car might already have passed by. Maybe he was intending to shoot as it approached, but mis-timed taking up his position, and got there too late.
The point being, even if Oswald would have had a clear line of sight on Kennedy’s car as it approached the building, there are any number of reasons why he might have shot Kennedy as his car was driving away from the building. Against that, we have E-DUB’s speculation that Oswald should have preferred to shoot Kennedy as he approached rather than receded. And that seems entirely based on his supposition that Oswald should have taken into account the driver accelerating under fire. But it’s not at all clear to me why that would make a difference, especially since Oswald was sniping a single, specific target, and, in the event, it didn’t actually make any difference, and he still killed Kennedy, and the driver wasn’t able to accelerate away.
One question I have that I don’t think I’ve seen addressed:
How did the Conspiracy achieve the intersection of Oswald’s and Kennedy’s lives?
This site gives an excellent rundown of the series of events that resulted in Oswald being at the Texas School Book Depository. Did the Conspiracy somehow arrange all of that just to get Oswald into position for the motorcade, including getting him assigned to the right book depository building (there were two)? Was it a happy coincidence that a Conspiracy asset just happened to get a menial job in a building along the motorcade route? Did the Conspiracy only recruit Oswald because he had started work at a convenient location a month prior? Did the Conspiracy also arrange the motorcade route to ensure it went by Oswald’s workplace? Just how far-reaching is this conspiracy?
I had seen a documentary on the assassination quite a number of years ago, that showed that LHO would have had a rather unobstructed shot at Kennedy as the limousine approached the book depository before making it’s left turn. If “the plan” is to shoot Kennedy in a cross fire situation, then that frontal shot isn’t taken. In any event, he is shot from behind by LHO alone.
I’ve been to Dealey Plaza. They’ve turned the book depository into a really good museum about the assassination. You can actually go to the sixth floor and look out the windows down to the street and see for yourself how trivially easy it would be to shoot somebody from this location.
You can also see the grassy knoll. Contrary to what conspiracy theorists would tell you, it’s not some deep woods. It’s a small rise which is all open grass. There’s a public parking lot at the top of it. The idea that somebody shooting a rifle could conceal themselves there is ridiculous.
There is that semi-circular arch thingy at the back with openings, the lowest of which could serve as a pretty good gunrest. Nobody’d be behind that and the folks in front would all be looking ahead.Dealey Plaza – Site of the JFK Assassination | Interactive Infographic - ABC News
Both sides are completely visible, either from the crowded streets or from the crowded park.
I agree with this and all that follows. The Warren Commission researched this extensively yet are chided for ignoring…something. The mountain of evidence shows that Oswald was a wanna be. A former marine who proclaimed to be a Marxist. At the time, that was bound to get you at least an audience with low level Cuban or Soviet officials.
The evidence shows that those officials quickly tired of him because they realized that he had no value to them at all, let alone enough to entrust him to carry out a conspiracy to kill JFK. It was this rejection that led Oswald to do something bold like kill JFK.
And, again, the Warren Commission, far from sweeping this under the rug, interviewed everyone even tangentially involved in this to see if there was anything there. And there indisputably was not.
After looking at a map of Dealey Plaza, that seems quite plausible to me. By the same token, though, it looks like if Kennedy’s car had accelerated under fire as it approached Oswald’s position, it quickly would have exited his field of fire, on the side of the building, and out direct line of sight from his perch. On the other hand, if it accelerated away from the building after passing in front of it, it would have remained in Oswald’s line of fire, in Dealey Plaza. There just doesn’t seem obvious to me that Oswald “should” have fired on Kennedy’s car as it approached the building instead of taking the shot as it receded away from the building.
That’s only true if the kill box is set up that way. It could have been set up to catch Kennedy’s car as it approached the Texas School Book Depository. As several posters have pointed out, the Grassy Knoll would make for a terrible sniper position.
Also if Oswald had shot as the motorcade approached, then that would have been “proof” that he didn’t do it because “clearly” if he was doing it alone, the better shot was as the motorcade was driving away.
It’s not original but: Reality is the only true conspiracy.
I’ve always thought so. A a person moderately well-versed in firing a bolt action rifle, I’ve always found it easier and quicker to track a target moving away from me rather than one moving towards me, especially shooting from a downward angle like LHO was.
I agree with this, but my point was that whichever option LHO took, the conspiracy minded could say that the other was the better shot, and therefore evidence of a conspiracy to set up a “kill box.”
Not Yoyodyne?
Well, one thing which has occurred to me after someone mentioned the possibility of the windshield obstructing a shot is that while a shooter six floors above ground level might not have found that a problem, there could have been glare off the windshield depending on the position of the car and the sun that day.
Good job! Seriously, I mean that.
We know what did happen, so to try and figure out why something else didn’t happen is damn near impossible, because there are so many possible reasons.
Maybe, as you said, the glare on an approaching vehicle made that shot impractical. It’s one of a million possible explanations for why something didn’t transpire.
I tend to think it was simpler than that; maybe Oswald just never considered the other window.
Oswald didn’t necessarily have a lot of time, and we know he used some boxes as a makeshift “sniper’s nest” to aim out the window. My guess is that this is where the boxes already were, and all he had to do was move some around a little bit. He didn’t overthink it; here was a window the president was going to be driving under, here was some boxes that allowed him to aim, so that’s where he set up and fired.
And, considering that his attempt was successful, it’s not like it was an illogical or outrageous choice.
Just to be pedantic, I believe he was already on the 6th floor when everybody stopped work for lunch, so he didn’t actually slip away - it was the last place before the shooting where he had been seen. When his coworkers went downstairs to eat (and watch the president’s motorcade), he stayed behind, and asked them to send back the elevator (it was an old fashioned elevator; you have to close the door for it to return, or else it wouldn’t go back up).
They didn’t send the elevator back up, which was why he had to descend the staircase (which is not arduous, as opposed to climbing stairs). He was next found in the lunchroom by a cop running up to the top floors looking for a suspect (because it was obvious to many witnesses that shots had come from the building), but was passed because it was confirmed that he worked there.
Once the cop kept on, Oswald then left the building.
Now, if you want to believe that Oswald was not on the 6th floor shooting out the window, you are left believing that this man who was obsessed with politics exhibited no interest in the fact that the President was going to be driving by him, and decided instead to sit alone in the building while everyone else watched the famous people drive by. And then, when the biggest news story of his life occurred, this man who always wanted some importance or attention just decided to walk away without speaking to anybody.
Not pedantic at all. That’s a useful correction. If Oswald was already laying in wait when Kennedy’s car approached the building, then that eliminates the possibility that Oswald simply wasn’t in position until after Kennedy’s car passed the building.
I think that still leaves quite a few plausible reasons why he would have waited until Kennedy had passed to take the shot. And still no particularly persuasive reason why he “should” have shot Kennedy as he was approaching.
To be fair to @E-DUB, if you look at the map from his cite upthread:
and other maps and pictures of Dealey Plaza, it certainly appears that Oswald could have used his makeshift sniper’s nest in that same window to shoot at Kennedy as he was approaching. All of the pictures I can find from that vantage point understandably are oriented towards the actual location of the shooting, so I’m not sure what the approach actually looked like from there. Maybe there were actually obstructions from trees? Or maybe not. Again, there are any number of reasons to take the shot from behind.