Who killed JFK?

Great Debates
21

If you are new to these boards, you will quickly learn that this board is very much in line with the government’s original version, that great piece of fiction called The Warren Report. There are many reasons for this. Groupthink is a big one, but you can’t discount peer pressure from not wanting to be called a tin-foil hat wearer, and wanting to be a part of the cool group. The one assassin theory also wraps up any potential loose ends or any uncomfortable discoveries made during the investigation. From the very beginning, there was a sole assassin, they found him, and they pinned it on him. Oswald being killed before trial doesn’t seem to be fishy for these folks either. It was just “one of those things”, Ruby being someone that wanted to save Jackie from a trial. Finally, it could be the truth. You have to acknowledge that possibility as well, no matter how unlikely it may be to believe.

It certainly cleaned up a lot of work for the Dallas DA. But I’ll play devil’s advocate and reply to a couple of points made by these lemmings. :smiley:

Not exactly. This is a lie that has been perpetuated by the “Oswald Only Scenario”, from now on going to be referred to OOS, to save me some typing.

Now, if you want to go by the letter of what was filmed vs. what really happened (or supposedly happened, depending on your point of view) your answer to this question will be different.

Did Stone take creative licensing when shooting this film? Sure he did. Did he hide this fact from anyone? No he didn’t. And in fact, he went out of his way to state this fact. However, this admission causes many folks to automatically assume that the whole movie is a fabrication, done for entertainment value at the expense of actual history.

Some facts that should be taken into consideration. If Stone changed something, it was to make it more interesting or dramatic for the viewer, not to re-write history. For example, The meeting with Mr. X, played by Donald Sutherland, really did happen, but not in Washington DC. If I remember right (It’s been a while since I read the books), the meeting was held in Chicago. And Mr. X wasn’t a mystery. His name was Fletcher Prouty, someone worth reading about if you are interested in the assassination.

The other thing that frustrates me personally about this blanket charge of fiction is that it is made by people who by and large did not read the two books that were used by Stone as the main source material for the movie. I urge anyone to read “On the Trail of the Assassins”, by Jim Garrison, and “Crossfire - The Plot That Killed Kennedy”, by Jim Marrs. After reading these books, watch the movie. It will help you understand what Stone did and didn’t do, and will help you appreciate the amount of documentation those books both have, particularly Garrison’s. They are interesting reads. Garrison, in particular, writes in a straightforward style and he walks you through the steps he took to dig into the case and how he ultimately arrived at Clay Shaw. Even if you don’t believe in a conspiracy, it’s a good book. It reads like true crime, and you’ll find it interesting at the very least. I don’t know anyone who read the book that thought it was a waste of time, even if they still believe Oswald was the only gunman.

Until both books are read, most of these statements slamming Stone’s movie come from third party sources and are just repeated by someone else. So take these fabrication claims with a grain of salt. Nothing he does (as far as I know) fundamentally changes the plot or twists the truth to meet his desired outcome.

Neither of these are true. Oswald’s prints weren’t found on the rifle until AFTER his death. The FBI didn’t find any prints, and “supposedly” two Gmen were left alone with Oswald after his death - perhaps to put prints on the gun? And there were never any finger prints. Only a palm print. I’d have to check the books again, but the paraffin tests didn’t show that Oswald shot a gun that day.

I don’t know why people think this is the case. In a conspiracy, I agree that you want to keep the people in the know at a minimum. But let’s face it. If I was in on the plot to kill Kennedy, I would be pretty confident that if I opened my mouth, I’d be killed. Perhaps my family also. Wouldn’t that be a major motivational factor in keeping your mouth shut?

Also, if you were in on the plot, odds are that you were brought in by someone that knew and trusted you, and you were of the same thought that the assassins were: That Kennedy was bad for the country and had to go. Again, if I’m part of the inner circle, I’d have to believe that if they pulled off the murder of the President, what are the odds that they couldn’t get to me?

As an example, how many people would have to be a part of the 9/11 attacks on the US? At least 20 hijackers, perhaps some friends and family they may have told, certainly OBL and others in the AQ leadership, and perhaps numerous backup operatives that were in the loop but weren’t called to action that day. If these people are all aligned politically and all have the same goals, I would think many if not most of them would be just fine keeping their mouths shut.

On the other hand, the true power brokers could have you on a list of people to terminate, and get to you when the time is right. No big noise, no big scene.

Your conspiracy scenarios are fairly standard stuff, and all could be plausible. However

I don’t think political leanings have anything to do with many conspiracy buffs. I’m sure it does for some, but I’m more interested in getting at the truth. I don’t think the huddled masses in this country want to believe that their president would be taken out by a conspiracy… in this case a coup d’etat. That’s something that happens in dysfunctional 3rd world dictatorships and puppet regimes. Not in the great ol’ USA, defenders of freedom and democracy world-wide. Could we really, as a nation, handle the truth if it turned out that the CIA was involved? I doubt it. And I highly doubt that the CIA (if involved) would ever admit to its part. there would be a demand for the dismantling of that agency, and there are a lot of powerful people who would never want to see that happen.
What I find fascinating now is that folks on either side of the argument can point to a site that “proves” their point. With a yes or no question, someone is wrong and lying. But how we separate what from what at this point is going to be a difficult exercise.

22

Preserved KGB materials state that they deliberately spread disinformation about the assassination to make it seem like a conspiracy.

23

All the stuff they distorted has been thoroughly rebutted by Vince Bugliosi in Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Garrison, in particular, was an unstable guy either as a glory hound or as just delusional.

The posters on this board are not inclined to simply accept the “government’s” “version,” so much as they are less inclined to accept the words of crackpots, particularly when the facts are shown to disagree with the crackpots.

24

It all depends on what you choose to believe. You say Garrison was a crackpot. I don’t believe it, especially in the beginning of his investigation. I simply do not see his desire to be a glory hound; if so, why did he wait so long to launch an investigation? Whether or not he turned into an unstable man after the pressure brought to bear on him after the investigation was discovered we will never know. But I would respect your opinion more if you had indeed read Garrison’s book. If you are locked onto an explanation, no amount of information I give you or anyone else gives you will change your mind.

When you say “they distorted” are you speaking of the movie and Stone? If so, you aren’t telling me anything new. Again, distorting to create history is different than distorting to attempt to explain history. In the movie, we see Ruby slide a bullet on the Governor’s gurney. That is something that Stone threw into the movie. That’s a “could’ve happened”, but it’s just a guess on his part to make the movie flow. There’s never been any proof of this, so I can understand how this can make the rest of the movie suspect for some.

This doesn’t detract from the movie at all for me, simply because I read the two books the movie was based on instead of just reading the reviews of the movie from right-thinkers like George Will. It’s the same thing as Jews who refused to see “Passion of the Christ” but said it was anti-semetic. You have to see the movie before making that judgement. Same thing here. Read Garrison’s book first before deciding he made all the stuff up and was looking for attention.

By the way… your government DOES lie, and has done so for a very long time. Whenever the lie suits the needs of the president, the party in power, or some other entity that has enough power to make things happen at the highest levels. The Gulf of Tonkin ring a bell? How about the “proof” we had of WMD’s in Iraq? So strong was the Bush administration’s desire to go to war in Iraq, we actually sent Colin Powell to the UN with a bunch of horseshit. We only find out later that there were no WMD’s and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Oops! Too late now. Better stay in Iraq until the job is done. But when will that be, exactly? I wonder what Obama knows now that he didn’t know as a candidate, because as I recall, he was getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan pronto and shutting down Gitmo immediately. Which one of those promises has he actually fulfilled?

We could, sadly, go on and on. But let’s not. Let’s stick to the subject at hand. And here’s one of the realities of the conspiracy theory. The mainstream media, and popular talking heads have successfully made anyone who even hints at a conspiracy as a member of the tin-foil hat club. Mel Gibson’s “conspiracy theory” character come to life. A nut job. And who wants to be associated with the nut jobs? Better to keep your mouth shut and stick with the program.

I have no idea who killed Kennedy. I don’t even have a good guess. But my gut feeling tells me that of all the people potentially involved in the shooting, the probability of Oswald killing Kennedy is the same as some unknown, faceless, nameless gunman/gunmen.

And the probability that we will ever know for sure is close to zero. Hell, when congress re-opened the investigation in '78, that should have told you enough about the veracity of the Warren Report. THAT report states that 2 or more guns were in Dealey Plaza that day. Which is it?

25

We’re through the looking glass here, people.

26

Yeah, the shark has been jumped.

So…the only thing you think is speculative about the movie is when Ruby puts the bullet on the gurney? Really? All the rest of it seems plausible to you? Seriously? Or are you pulling our collective legs here??

-XT

27

:rolleyes:

I did. Bugliosi showed that Garrison was either incredibly gullible or simply the sort of person who enjoys CTs.

Nope. Garrison and Marrs (and all the rest of the loons and publicity hounds).

Pointing to errors in the Warren report does not change what actually happened. That a mixed committee under time pressure made mistakes is only a big deal if you need to find a CT. That the more studious analyses have demonstrated to anyone with an open mind, (not someone with a need for a CT), that Oswald did it acting alone, regardless of any minor errors in the Warren Report, is the more important point.

28

no. Read my posts. I used the Ruby-bullet things as an example only. I think Stone took a lot of “liberties” with the information he had to make an interesting story. I think what he was trying to do was show one potential scenario that would explain an alternative to the Warren Report. That doesn’t mean that what he showed was correct.

29

Garrison was pretty much a gloryhound with a history of using his office for publicity and personal purposes even before the investigation into Kennedy’s murder. As DA, he initiated a high profile vice sting, but had to drop most of the charges for lack of evidence. He indicted the previous DA, the man he had defeated in the Democratic primary for corruption, but had to drop those charges for lack of evidence. When he got into an argument with the Parish’s judges over his office’s budget, he accused them of racketeering and arrested one of them for criminal malfeasance. The judge was acquitted. He charged the police with brutality and then dropped the charges. He accused both the parole board and the state legislature of accepting bribes, but refused to follow up on it.

Garrison’s whole theory of the Clay Shaw case was that there was a homosexual conspiracy between Shaw, Ferrie, Oswald, and Ruby to kill Kennedy because Kennedy was a virile, successful, handsome man.

I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with movies changing history to be entertaining. I mean, Tom Cruise didn’t lead the rebellion against Meiji Japan, and Mel Gibson wasn’t Edward III’s father. But it’s a mistake to look at Garrison’s work and see it as anything other than entertaining fiction.

30

Can you lay out the parts of the movie (or books) that you found plausible, and why you thought they were plausible? In your other thread you mentioned that you thought it was strange that someone hit in the back of the neck would reach for their throat, even though that’s where the bullet exited, and that you found this compelling evidence that there obviously had to be another shooter shooting from the front. Of course, looking at the angles involved, they would have had to be the size of a smurf and sitting in the front seat firing up at Kennedy to make that shot at those angles, but if you find it convincing then that’s fine. What else do you find convincing or plausible from the show? The Magic Bullet? Back and to the left…back and to the left…back and to the left??

I haven’t just taken the governments word on this, no more than I simply took the governments word on what happened on 9/11. I did research. I read about the subject. I watched demonstrations of the various aspects of the event. I watched computer simulations. I looked at all of the facts available, then I used my own Occam’s Razor to figure out which was the simplest and most plausible explanation. It was pretty overwhelmingly in favor of LHO firing a single rifle from the top of the book store. No other explanation hangs together with the known facts and the evidence.

-XT

31

Ooooooh!
You got two details wrong in this sentence; you are obviously part of the Conspiracy!

(It was the sixth floor, not the top, and the “Depository” was a warehouse, not a store.)

32

:rolleyes: Are you saying you read Garrison’s book, or are you saying that you read Bugliosi’s book that pointed out things in Garrison’s book that he thought were flawed?

:rolleyes:

I don’t get this. Are you saying that everyone that disagrees with the Warren Commission is a loon and/or publicity hound? I suppose that includes the House Select Committee on Assassinations that reinvestigated the shooting and concluded there was a second shooter. Since this “conclusion” has since been denounced by the Oswald alone crowd, those congressmen/women must all be loons and/or publicity hounds. (wait. you might have something there). :smiley:

You sound like someone trying to minimize the errors of the WC as minor problems. And who cares if they got the answer right? Well, that’s an interesting way of looking at it. And you think you are open minded? This is truly fascinating. If I said the same thing you said in your paragraph, and substituted Garrison’s book for the WR, you’d call me an apologist and someone close-minded who refused to take a look at the evidence objectively. Funny how you don’t see any of that in yourself.

Look, I’m not going to debate this. I originally came into the thread to be contrary to the OP to give the thread a kick start. However, I’ve been around these boards long enough to know how the “debates” on this particular topic always go. Everyone who believes in Oswald Alone believes Posner is a god, and that’s that. Anyone that even suggests the whiff of a conspiracy is a crackpot. There is no debate. On this topic, I find most people completely closed minded, and those people are always on the Oswald Alone side of the fence.

Why is that? There is no value in being right at this point. If someone showed me something that convinced me that Oswald alone was the answer, that would be good enough for me. I simply haven’t seen or read that nugget. However, those that believe Oswald Alone wouldn’t change their minds if shown a picture of the grassy knoll shooter squeezing the trigger of his rifle and taking off the president’s head in the same frame.

Oswald or conspiracy, the end result is the same. Kennedy is dead. Let’s say the CIA did it with contracted shooters. The proof is irrefutable. What happens at this point? Nothing. Everyone is dead or senile, so pursuing it would accomplish little… except it would add a bit of skepticism to your believing everything your government tells you. Like you need another example.
So go at it, all. But in all seriousness, I’d be interested in someone who actually sat down and read Garrison’s book without any preconceived conclusions and could point to something that is factually wrong in the book. As far as I can tell, it’s his recording of his actual investigation. What’s been fabricated?

I’m not trying to be a Garrison backer here. I really don’t know his mental state when he checked out, although I’ve read those comments about him. I’m more interested in someone pointing to a page or paragraph in his book that is completely fabricated. You can send me a PM. I’m not going to reply in this thread any longer. I don’t care enough one way or the other to go over the same material ad naus.

33

I’ll answer just one thing here. I didn’t say I found it compelling evidence that there was a second shooter. I said it made me think, that’s all. And what it made me wonder was if this reaction to the front of his throat could indicate a shot from the front, since this is where the bullet hit first?

Most people in that thread think that this doesn’t tell us much, since if you buy the theory that the bullet came from behind, the hole in the neck would have been created fractions of a second after the entrance in the back, thereby making the reflexive grab upward just that.

I also wondered if there was any anecdotal evidence out there regarding this subject, i.e. someone gets shot thru-and-thru. do they react to the entrance wound always, the exit wound, or whichever wound they feel like grabbing for?

Sorry if I gave the wrong impression in that thread. I may have gotten confused in that thread since I was posting in both of these at the same time.

34

I read Garrison, found him unpersuasive, then read Bugliosi and discovered the facts that Garrison distorted or misinterpreted or suppressed.

No. There were mistakes in the Warren Report. When the loons and publicity hounds got going they flooded the country with wild distortions and got a lot of people, (like Oliver Stone and like the later Congresscritters), to simply buy into the CT. That the Warren Reort had errors indicates that they were in a hurry to wrap up their mission to help calm the public. None of their actual errors, (as distinguished from the lies and distortions told about their report by loons such as Garrison), were meaningful errors and their general conclusion remains ture: Oswald acted alone.

There have been so many loons that I do not fault various individuals for being misled. However, anyone who both swallows the CT lies and then goes on a campaign to promulgate their lies is simply joining the loons.

35

No. The Warren Commission errors were not significant and most of the “big” errors (such as Garrison’s “magic bullet”), have already been demonstrated to be distortions.
Being open minded does not mean simply accepting everything anyone says. It means considering the quality of the evidence–and the loons have far less quality than even the flawed Warren Report.

36

I think a lot of people do want to believe that the assassination of John Kennedy somehow had greater significance than the work of a lone nut. In addition, many want to believe that people they dislike for other reasons were responsible. Liberal conspiracy buffs blame the CIA, rather than the KGB.

Also, a lot of people want to believe that if Kennedy had lived the 1960s would have turned out much better: the War in Vietnam would not have happened; poverty and racial inequality would have come to an end; there would not have been the black ghetto riots, etc.

37

Look , I only said I liked the film!

I don’t claim that it is all fiction, that would be silly. Real events and real people are depicted but that alone should not lead one into taking the film as a serious exploration of the Kennedy assassination.
There are too many areas of artistic licence, embellishment and omission to consider this a forensic examination of the actual events, nor a reliable suggestion of an alternative scenario.

However, If you can detach yourself from preconceptions and look at his purely as a fiction, an alternative universe, a dramatic hypothesis…rather than a history, then it is possible to appreciate the film on another level. And it is brilliantly well made. The Garrison courtroom scene is stand-out, as are the set-pieces with Sutherland, Pesci, Bacon, Lee-Jones et al.

Stone has, technically, rarely been better, and therein lies the danger. He convinces through the quality of his film-making and so you have to be considered in your reaction to it. By all means be convinced by the characters and storyline within that filmic universe but beware of thinking it relates accurately the real world beyond.

38

And we see exactly this mindset at work with many conspiracy theories.

The death of princess Di, 9-11 etc. etc. For momentous events we seem to demand momentous explanations. What chance does mundane reality have really?
We can invent intricate explanations that appeal to our instinctive distrust of authority and suspicion of the powerful.
And how handy that fallible human beings tends to run imperfect investigations, mis-remember facts, mis-represent evidence or fail to fully explain it. This allows conspiracies a foothold and from there they tend to very cleverly stay just the other side of “unprovable” just out of reach of rational enquiry. Very rarely is it malicious though. Most often it is just human nature in action.

39

I’ve never bought this as an argument for ANY conspiracy theory, especially now that it’s nearly half a century down the road and STILL nobody has talked.

40

Well, after that whole lipstick on a pig kerfluffle, I don’t see her wilfully going rouge.