or is that Harvey Dent…?
Well if you watched the episode of Red Dwarf that was shown on Showcase last night you would know that JFK shot himself.
Scoobysnax
Save water drink beer!
See footnote 5
Can you produce this “Clark Kent”? I didn’t think so. You’ve been duped by the Conspiracy, my friend.
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction.
www.sff.net/people/rothman
JKF was shot by Lee Osley Harvwald from the Poseral Fed Debookitory, Tellas Daxas, Venomber twencond-sety, 1639. Of course, there is some suspicion that there was a gun loneman on the krassy gnoll, but no conclusive evidence has been advanced for this. It sure didn’t hurt Stoner Olive’s box-office figures any, though.
Singed,
trasho-grl neurrr
P.S. If you rearrange the letters in “Spiro Agnew”, you get “grow a penis”.
“That’s entertainment!” —Pal the Imvlader
Some folks don’t think Oswald was that great a marksman. So maybe…
Oswald was aiming for Governor Connally… and missed. Why? Maybe he blamed Connally for getting him tossed out of the Marines. Wasn’t Connally Secretary of the Navy when Oswald was a Marine?
Or maybe he was trying to shoot that dumb pink hat off Jackie. The temptation was just too great.
Fighting my own ignorance since 1957.
I actually don’t believe that Oswald acted alone, but aside from that I have no theories.
There are just too many problems with the ‘lone gunman’ theory. One of the most troubling for me was the amazing marksmanship required. Three or four shots from a bolt-action rifle, at a moving target several hundred yards away, in something like four seconds, with all shots hitting within a few inches of each other. The FBI tried re-creating the shots under the assumption that only three were fired, and I believe they only managed it after several attempts, even using expert marksmen. Oswald had bad marksmanship scores in the Marines, and it’s a lot tougher to make this shot under stress and not knowing exactly where the vehicles will be and how fast they would be going than it was for the FBI marksmen, who were firing in controlled conditions and knowing exactly where and when they were supposed to shoot.
Also, forensic evidence brought up in the 70’s from acoustic data (and submitted to the House Select Committee on Assassinations) suggests that there were at least four shots fired, which makes the feat damned near impossible.
Also, it’s troubling to me that Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby. Ruby was an underworld figure, and it never made sense to me that this guy would kill Oswald just out of love for his president, knowing full well that he was certainly going to jail. He also had to know exactly when the prison transfer was taking place, and he had to get access. The ‘revenge for my president’ theory would be laughed out of court, IMO.
Certainly there has been so much crank material written about the assassination that anyone’s bullshit meter would be off the scale when reading about it, but that doesn’t change the fact that the lone gunman theory is on very, very shaky ground.
Don’t forget that the House Select Committee came to the same conclusion, and their official finding was that it was probably not a lone gunman.
Actually, you’ve got some of your facts wrong. Oswald was less than a hundred yards from Kennedy when he fired three shots. He hit Kennedy twice. Hitting a slow moving target the size of a human being two out of three times at this range is trivially easy. The FBI test was attempting to duplicate the shooting which is a much more difficult task. To illustrate this, take a snowball and throw it at the side of your house. Now take a second snowball and try to hit the same spot where the first one hit. Compare how easy it was to hit that particular spot the first time with how near impossible it is to hit it the second time.
You aren’t hitting something the size of a human being - you’re hitting something the size of a human being’s head.
I’m a pretty good marksman. I’ve done a fair bit of shooting with a high powered rifle. I used to have a bolt-action rifle. And sorry, but firing a shot, loading another round, re-aquiring the sight picture and firing takes a while. And even if Kennedy was only 100 yards away that’s a pretty good shot. To make that shot 3 times in 4 or 5 seconds is amazing. A trained sniper might be able to, a guy retired from the Marines for years, and who got average basic marksmanship scores while he was there, simply could not. In my opinion.
I was just looking over a condensed version of the Warren report. The FBI simulated the assassination by building a tower the height of Oswald’s perch, and then putting silhouette targets at 175, 240, and 265 feet, which would have been roughly where the president was for the three shots. They brought in four master snipers, and gave them each a Mannlicher-Carcano like Oswald’s, and told them to shoot the three targets as fast as they could. The best time of the four was 4.6 seconds, the worst 8.75 seconds, after each of them got two attempts at the three shots. These targets were not moving, and each shooter got to take as much time as he wanted setting up and firing at the first target. Even so, all four shooters missed the second target, and one shooter only hit one target out of three.
Master snipers practice with their weapons daily, and fire thousands of rounds through them. Oswald’s total training in firearms consisted of five days, firing 50 rounds per day, and that was years and years before. Since then, he had been hunting with a .22 a couple of times, and his wife testified that he had gone out to practice with the assassination rifle once.
It was also found that the scope on the rifle was not zeroed properly, and that the rifle fired high and to the right. The Warren Commission said that he could have still hit the President because the scope would have accidentally compensated for leading. Problem is, Kennedy was moving directly away from Oswald, so there would have been no lead required.
And the Warren Commission decided that Oswald did not know Jack Ruby, even though they had six witnesses placing them together at Ruby’s club, and that the two lived less than a mile from each other, had memberships in the same YMCA, and had several mutual acquaintances. Instead, they chose to place a lot of faith in the polygraph test that Ruby demanded and passed. But even this demand is suspicious. When they started questioning him, he said, “I would like to get a lie detector test of what motivated me to do what I did.” Why should he care, if he was just a citizen killing Oswald in rage? Why was that his first request?
Anyway, the main thing that troubles me was the ability to make those shots. The House Select Committee determined that at least four shots were fired. If that’s the case, then it was physically impossible for Oswald to fire them all.
I have to go with dhanson on this. I mean all the CIA conspiracy mumbo jumbo can be disproven but the actual firing of gun was a physical impossibility in the time needed by a long gunman. The firearm experts could not even do it with the bolt action rifle in the time needed.
And don’t even get started on the magic bullet theory. I am a novice marksman at best and even I can say that there is NO WAY those trajectories explained by the Warren Commision can be believed.
All the who did it and why can be forever argued but the physical and scientific evidence proves there was more than one assassin
I know that I have put you through hell, and I know that I have been one rough pecker. But from here on, you are all in my cool book.- Seth Gecko From Dusk Till Dawn
To Reality Chuck: Great, GREAT POST!!
How hypocritical can the Kennedys be?! Their father made his money running booze during Prohibition and then Bobby is out to put an end to the very group of people that helped his father get rich and got his brother elected!(?)
What gives me heartburn about The Warren Commission is the magic bullet and the Jack Ruby-LHO conection. What a crock! I have seen Gerald Ford, who served on the commission, flat out deny any and all conspiracy theories (just like a politician!).
I have read several books and seen several specials (A&E had a good series about this issue) and one “claim” made by a few was that the man murdered by Ruby was not LHO but a Russian look-a-like. LHO was shorter and had several scars that were somehow missing when the autopsy was performed.
And I am sorry, but when you are shot in the head from the front, your head does not snap FORWARD! Many “expert witnesses” have testified that JKF’s head snapped backward due to a shot from BEHIND! As you watch the Zapruder film, Kennedy places his hands around his neck after being shot through the neck. Then the fatal shot comes from the front, snapping his head BACK and blowing the crown of his skull out the back of limo. I don’t think Lincoln’s head slumped backwards in his theatre seat when JWB shot him from behind.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE - but I very seriously doubt that we will ever find it regarding this issue.
“Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
E A Poe
Eh, if a bunch of ejecta consisting of skull and brain fragments lies out one side of your head, your head is gonna move in the opposite direction. If you’re shot from the back, and stuff flies out the front of your head, your head is going to move back. Newtonian physics and all that.
“Come on, Phonics Monkey–drum!”
Neuro–
Where’d you learn to talk like that?
You’re way too young to have every heard “The Kingfish.” 
PlDennison: Let’s try those Newtonian physics again… Unless you think the ejecta somehow picked up energy from somewhere, it could only contain the kinetic energy passed on from the bullet. The net vector always has to be in the direction of the bullet. Conservation of momentum and all that.
There have been other explanations for Kennedy’s backwards movement, including muscle spasms from the brain shot. All of them are speculative and have problems, and therefore the most logical conclusion is that the shot came from the front.
Most of the conspiracy theories kicking around are completely crazy, but the reason there are so many of them is because the Warren Commission report was a hack job and everyone knows it. Even the U.S. government now agrees that there was a conspiracy.
“Also, forensic evidence brought up in the 70’s from acoustic data (and submitted to the
House Select Committee on Assassinations) suggests that there were at least four shots
fired, which makes the feat damned near impossible.”
If you’re talking about the famous (or, IMHO, infamous) dictabelt recording of Dallas Police Dep’t radio traffic, hasn’t it been proven that the so-called fourth shot occurred several minutes after the shooting? IIRC, the dictabelt records cross-talk from the Sheriff’s Dep’t radio frequency that has, BEFORE the sound described as the “fourth gunshot,” the sheriff giving an order that was given several minutes AFTER the shooting occurred.
Also, re. JFK’s rearward head movement, I distinctly recall a demonstration on a PBS program of a test where skulls filled with paint were placed on a stool and shot from behind with a rifle. While most trials resulted in the head and the splatter going forward, as one would expect, there were some instances of the skull and the splatter going backward though the bullet came from the rear.
I’ve never heard about the problem with the Police radio data, which I believe was the data used by the House Select Committee.
Now for the pumkin going backwards… Conservation of angular momentum means that the net direction vector of the pumpkin/bullet before the collision has to be the same as it after the collision. If the bullet is travelling north and the head is standing still, then the net vector still has to be going north. Assuming the bullet is slowed down by the pumpkin, some of that energy is transferred to the pumpkin, in the same direction. The net energy of the pumpkin has to be in the same direction.
I’m trying to picture a situation in which some of the pumpkin might move backwards. I guess if some complex hydraulic arrangement moved some of the mass of the pumpkin forward at a speed even greater than the bullet’s, that would allow some other parts of the pumpkin to move backwards. The problem with that is that not much material from Kennedy moved forwards. It went straight up or backwards. The front-seat occupants didn’t get splattered, and neither did the windshield. Chunks of Kennedy’s head did, however, wind up all over the back of the limo. All of that is really hard to justify from a rearward shot.
There is one frame on the Zapruder film taken almost immediately at impact, and shows a debris cloud around Kennedy’s head. That debris cloud is NOT moving forward.
I have at least one question here:
Were any bullets recovered–from JFK’s body, from Connally, from the limousine, from the roadway, anywhere? And were they compared to bullets fired from Oswald’s gun? (Ballistics)
I used to work with a carpenter–who came to the U.S. from Germany three years after the assassination–who told me “25 witnesses [to the shooting] were killed,” presumably by government order, which sounds to me like something he got out of National Enquirer or Police Gazette.
One writer said of the conspiracy, “We need to believe in a conspiracy” rather than accept the fact that a two-bit punk like Lee Harvey Oswald killed a President. A grand life/person/personality, the writer suggested, requires that even the person’s death be grandiose–here, needing belief in a conspiracy–rather than just another cheap murder whose victim happened to be president.
I enjoyed the parody commentary about Superman! 
There was one bullet recovered, and two bullet fragments were found in the vehicle. Ballistics matched the whole bullet and the two fragments to Oswald’s gun.
According to the Warren Commission, three shots were fired. One of the three missed the vehicle completely. One of the shots hit Kennedy in the neck, passed through him into governor Connolly’s back, where it shattered a rib, then exited the front of his body and hit his wrist, shattering bones there, then exited the wrist and lodged in his thigh. No bullet was found in Connolly’s body at the hospital, but a nearly pristine bullet was found on one of the stretchers, and the Warren Commission decided that this was the bullet that hit Connolly, and it fell out of his leg on the stretcher.
The other bullet is the one that took off the side of Kennedy’s head.
So, in total we have 5 wounds on two people, caused by two bullets. One of the problems with the analysis is that it’s really hard to match the trajectory of the bullet that went through Kennedy’s neck with the entry wound on Connolly. The other problem is that the bullet found on the stretcher was in almost perfect condition, even though it supposedly shattered a rib and some wrist bones and passed completely through two people. Tests on cadavers have always shown much more bullet deformity than was seen on the ‘magic bullet’.
There are a lot of inconsistencies with testimony about the bullets and trajectories. For example, two policemen and a secret service agent all testified that there was a ‘bullet hole’ in the windshield. The secret service man filed a report to that effect. When questioned about it, he said it was definitely a hole, “You could push the eraser on my pen through it”. The windshield the FBI produced for the Warren Commission had a crack, and no hole. Later, when the windshield was requested again for forensic study it mysteriously disappeared.
To be fair, I believe that Oswald was certainly one of the shooters, and it is possible that he acted alone, although highly unlikely. There are just too many leaps of faith required. Yes, it’s physically possible that he fired all the shots (if there were only three), but highly unlikely. Yes, it’s possible that one bullet went through Kennedy and Connolly and through some miracle survived almost like new. It’s just highly unlikely. Yes, it’s possible that some jet of material just happened to push his head backwards. It’s just highly unlikely. Yes, it’s possible that Kennedy and Connolly had each turned and leaned in such a way as to make the bullet trajectory possible. It’s just highly unlikely.
Yes, it’s possible that Jack Ruby and Oswald never met, even though their lives crossed in many ways. It’s just highly unlikely. It’s a major coincidence that the one guy out of millions who decided to kill Oswald happens to be Jack Ruby, who’s life seemed to mirror Oswald’s in a lot of ways and who lived just a few blocks away and frequented the same places.
When you add all of these unlikely events together, it stretches credibility. And all of these unlikely occurances go away if you simply accept that there was another shooter.
If there was a conspiracy, it might be something completely mundane like Oswald and Ruby deciding to kill Kennedy over a few beers, to curry favor with the Mob or the Free Cuba bunch or both. Then Oswald is caught, and Ruby figures it’s either take him out and maybe become a hero and serve a few years, or be implicated in the assassination and go to jail for life and go down in history as a scumbag. Easy decision.
Try this one out for size conspiracy fans: Lee Oswald was a man with a history of mental problems who had written threatening letters to the president. Mail order records prove Oswald bought a rifle and several people who knew Osawld (including his wife) confirmed he owned this rifle. On November 22, 1963 Oswald was observed bringing a long thin package (which he described as “curtain rods”) to his place of employment. Later that day, President Kennedy drove by the building where Oswald worked and three shots were fired at him. Several witnesses in buildings across the street testify they saw Oswald in the window firing the shots. Within minutes, Oswald was seen fleeing the building. The room where the shots were fired from was found to contain the Oswald’s rifle which had his fingerprints on it. The bullets that were fired were recovered and ballistically proven to have been shot from this rifle. And of course, if a bullet passes through a head, the resulting exit of blood, brains, and bones will propel the head away from the exit wound.
Now of course as any Oliver Stone fans will tell you, all of the above means nothing. All of the evidence was falsified by the CIA and the FBI. Dozens of witnesses were pressured into giving false testimony by the Mafia and South Vietnamese government. The Illuminati had one of their top agents, who had spent the last few decades building up his cover as a local nightclub owner, kill Oswald. Of course, a conspiracy this size could easily have arranged Kennedy’s death in a secluded location and made it look like natural causes. But where was the sport in that? It was much more fun to arrange to have him shot in public in front of several hundred witnesses.
And it’s much more fun for Oliver Stone to sell movie tickets by concocting a wild conspiracy; remember the hare-brained theories of Jim Garrison, the New Orleans DA who had the same notions about doctored evidence Stone tried to foist in the film?
I think Stone was out of line to petition Congress to reopen the investigation; to me it’s clear Stone’s only objective was to sell tickets to his movie(s).
I remember a principle of logic, Occam’s Razor: The simplest explanation that covers all the facts is most likely to be the correct one. If Ruby and Oswald hatched the plot together over a couple of beers, and Ruby killed Oswald to silence him, so be it. They’re still a couple of two-bit punks.
All your evidence proves is that Oswald was one of the shooters. I think that’s certainly true.
There were a lot of strange ‘facts’ reported about the assassination, but IMO that’s going to happen any time something like momentous happens that has this much confusion surrounding it.
For instance, much is made of the fact that almost all the eye witnesses turned towards the grassy knoll when the shots were fired. A lot of the conspiracy nuts use this as ‘proof’ that the shots were fired from there. But something I’ve never seen mentioned before is that there is a large semicircular monument almost directly across from where Kennedy was shot. The sound of rifle shots would certainly be reflected from this monument, making it understandable that people would be confused as to where the shots came from.
As I said, the toughest part of the whole lone gunman scenario was for me Oswald’s ability to make three shots in around five seconds with a bolt-action rifle, and put two of those shots into an area less than a foot in diameter from several hundred feet.
Incidentally, the FBI also did a ‘maximum rate of fire’ test with the rifle where FBI marksmen were asked to cycle the action and fire three bullets as fast as they possibly could and shoot a target only 15 meters away. The fastest one was still over 4 seconds, meaning that Oswald’s three shots still came at almost the physical limit for moving the action on the gun, without even aiming it.
The FBI also took Oswald’s gun and put a camera on the scope and took some photos through it at a mockup of the motorcade. It highlights that this was not that easy a shot. There are a lot of trees that pass through the field of vision as the limo moves, and the presiden’t head looks about the size of a pea. It was definitely world-class shooting, and Oswald wasn’t a world-class shooter.