BTW, this letter came from a “Dennis Dalrymple” from New York on June 4, 1994.
I suspect it’s mostly a bunch of guys with smoke machines and boxes of “What Really Happened to JFK” books for sale.
You mean like the practical effects crew on Oliver Stone’s JFK?
I was on hand for the filming of the 1991 film, JFK, where the smoke on the knoll is seen rising. However, when it came time to film the scene, a number of rifles were trotted out, none of which emitted any smoke. Eventually, the special-effects team was brought in. Now the truth can be told: when the film audience sees the “smoke behind the fence” scene, what they are seeing are the effects of a production assistant kneeling behind the fence, armed with a smoke machine.
I don’t remember any hue and cry, but what I do remember is a lot of people who thought that it showed the bullet HAD to come from the front because President Kennedy’s head was seen to jerk backwards. Of course, this has also been explained over and over and over…
It’s rather reminiscent of the Clinton Body Count that started up in the early-mid '90s (so, old enough that it no longer has to register for Selective Service!)
Deaths that occur with only the most tenuous connection to the subject; deaths that are actuarially explainable - even inevitable - when you consider the entire population with such a tenuous connection, deaths listed as suspicious for which there is really no reason to suspect foul play at all, deaths for which the official account of death is ignored and allusions to dark doings by officialdom are made (thus swelling the coverup conspiracy to many orders of magnitude larger than the original conspiracy) - it’s all there in both lists.
Discussion forum. I post stuff that I have doubts about.
Experts here clarify for me.
That does not mean I am a CT or conform to CTs.
I just don’t believe it is an open and shut case just like a good percentage of average joes.
“Just asking questions”, then?
You realize that’s one of the hallmarks of a CTer, even if you don’t intend to present as one, don’t you?
Just asking questions.
I get it that questions are not welcome. So I will shut up for now and continue reading. : )
Questions are certainly welcome. Apparently, in your case, answers and evidence are not.
Specifically, what is the most pressing issue you have with the LG, and or the Warren Commission? What specific item points to a conspiracy?
I have not mentioned the word conspiracy anywhere.
I had some questions for Moriarty that he answered promptly that made a lot of the timing clearer for me.
All I wanted was an interesting discussion from people who have lived through it and it was fun to read until it became so aggressive to the point where the mod had to intervene.
Now that the fun part is no longer there I have no more interest in the subject.
What can trotting out the “pristine bullet” mean other than a conspiracy that states that Oswald wasn’t the only shooter? “I’ve heard about a ‘pristine bullet’; it is true?” is a question. “Lets … work on the pristine bullet for a bit” is a conspiracy theory.
Do you honestly think that if you don’t use the word, the conspiracy aspect magically goes away? Conspiracy theorists don’t like the word applied to them; they rather see themselves as “truth seekers.” But talking about how the obvious answer isn’t the right answer and throwing smokescreens at reality is conspiracy theorizing by definition.
No. When did that happen? Googling tells me that Geraldo Rivera was the first person to air the video, in 1975.
Prior, however, the frames had been published by Life magazine, who had purchased the film from Abraham Zapruder (Time later sold it back to his family following his death) and put out the pictures in their November 29, 1963 edition.
So I’d ask for me specificity regarding this “hue and cry” and when you are saying that it happened? The first conspiracy book that I am aware of, Rush to Judgment, came out in 1966.
In the effort to profit of the JFK assassination CT cottage industry, many practitioners are not above presenting incorrect information as support for their theories. It’s not always clear if this is outright lying, or if people are merely being sloppy in their investigations (ironic, since the CTers like to impugn the thoroughness of the actual criminal investigation).
The “magic bullet theory”, insofar as it misstates how the people in the limo were sitting, is a classic example (I.e. in actuality, Governor Connally was sitting in a ‘jump seat’ that was lower and farther toward the middle of the car than JFK).
The condition of the bullet is another part of this misinformation. The bullet was not pristine. That fact is simply wrong. (I can’t figure out how to imbed the picture in this thread, but here’s a link. Go to the one showing the bullet from the butt and you can see how it was flattened. It’s So2.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305144)
I was actually born 15 years later. My first interest was the movie JFK, which led me to some conspiracy books. But I just kept reading until I had debunked for myself all of the conspiracy nonsense.
I think that the first sentence of this post does represent an important distinction between the JFK CTs and other CTs that gives them mainstream status. Namely that the JFK ones are generally at least plausible. They don’t require disappearing air planes, aliens, ignoring mirrors placed on the moon, or traveling back in time to post birth announcements in Hawaiian news papers. There are no laws of physics that prevents the Cubans from putting a hit on JFK, and covering their tracks so well that no body saw it. But there is no evidence that they did either.
But if you open up possibilities for things that could have happen but for which there is no evidence, then the list of possibilities are endless, see for example my tongue in cheek theory earlier in this thread.. So at the end of the day you are going to have to rely on Occam’s razor to select one of them. To me that falls easily on the side of what you see is what you get. One gunman acting alone as reported by the Warren commission.
There are some questions that can be asked for which this explanation does not provide answers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t non-CT answers that fit. Why didn’t Oswald fire at Kennedy as he was coming towards him? Who knows? But that’s what he did. Yes, he would have done that because he wanted to catch Kennedy in a cross fire, but he also could have done it because he hesitated for a second or two to clam his nerves before taking the shot, or he didn’t want to risk hitting a kid behind Kennedy as he was coming towards him or …
Sure once you’ve eliminated the impossible whatever remains must be the truth, but you can never eliminate all the impossible. Simply finding things which are not completely explained by the standard theory is not sufficient. You will need to either find evidence that proves the standard theory impossible (or at least requires enough contortions to lose Occam’s razor) or else produce direct evidence that the alternative theory is correct, neither of which have been done.
I concede.
That is exactly what I meant 
I have an odd question about this that, if the moderator will allow it, I will try to keep from derailing this thread.
What is it about a “crossfire” that is so much better tactically for multiple shooters with a single target? Is there some reason why one shooter in the book depository and one on the “grassy knoll” would have been incredibly better than two in either place? I mean a crossfire is good if you have a target with the capability of shooting back, because it divides attention between two different threat axes - but if you’re just sniping at someone, how does it help?
I guess I’m wondering why this notion seems to have attracted the imagination of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.
I’m not an expert, but based on my limited experience with FPS video games, the big disadvantage of being in a cross fire is difficulty finding cover. If the shot misses and JFK ducks down so the side of the car shields him from one shooter, he may still be exposed to the other shooter. But if its an easy shot and you can get three bullets off before anybody can react, it doesn’t matter much.
Thank you for saying that.
In addition to what @Buck_Godot lays out, a crossfire has other benefits. It makes more likely that at least one shooter will have a clean shot, which would probably be the most important consideration in this particular situation. It’s more confusing for the target, and makes it more difficult to ascertain where the fire is coming from. It makes escape and evasion for the target much harder. It makes escape and evasion for the shooters easier. It’s also just very basic tactics, which anyone with even minimal training (or maybe especially anyone with minimal training) will default to.
If you’re ambushing the motorcade, you’d absolutely want to set up a crossfire. Even for a single, exposed target, if you have multiple shooters, you’d probably want to set up a crossfire. There’s just no particular reason not to do that. And Dealey Plaza, a relatively open and exposed area, with high rises offering the high ground on multiple sides, is a pretty good spot to set up a kill box.
That being said…the Grassy Knoll, as pointed out numerous times in this thread, would make for a terrible sniper position. And there’s just no real evidence that there was a “kill box” with multiple shooters.
Oh, and what I suspect may be at least as important for CTers as any of the above, it just sounds tacticool.