The Sign of a Large-Secret-Enduring Conspiracy Theory

[Dan O'meara]

According to Pat Speer's comprehensive list of witnesses who reported on the shots over 75% of the 200+ witnesses reported 3 audible shots. Of course there were others who reported different amounts of shots but 160+ witnesses reporting the same thing is convincing enough for me.
However, I should not have described it as a "fact" that there were 3 clearly audible shots, it is not.

Unfortunately, not much can be considered a fact in this case.

Agreed. That is why I think theories/models/narratives are important.
There is so much that is contradictory and misleading in this case that it will be impossible to come up with a model that doesn't have holes in it (the LNer model included). The model that has the least holes wins. That, I believe, is the best we can do.

About the shells being seen in situ by officers when the sniper's nest was discovered, there isn't much for me to say. You are basically stating a fact. Of course there will be people who saw the shells in situ, because they were there at some point in time. Far more interesting for me would be how and when they got there. You refered to the same window where a man was seen pointing a rifle. IMO you could only have been talking about Brennan, because I don't believe Euins saw anything, at least not prior to the shooting, and when the shots were fired he ducked behind a wall. And btw I am not dismissing Brennan or Euins. I'm just pointing out that you can not always take everything a witness says at face value.

Euins specifically testifies to seeing a man pointing a rifle out of the window. It must be remembered that Harkness radios in he has a witness (Euins) claiming the shooter was in the TSBD within a few minutes of the shooting. This makes Euins credible as far as I'm concerned.
As for the shells, if the three shots were fired from the window Brennan and Euins saw a man with a rifle pointing towards the President at the time of the shooting, then the shells came from the rifle - probably.
Whether they were the same shells Studebaker photographed is open to debate as there is good witness testimony that, at some point, all the original shells were in Fritz's pocket before they were photographed. Not to mention the one in the clip Fritz took away with him.

Brennan simply might not be a credible witness for known reasons an the Euins told different stories as well. In his testimony he said he saw a pipe, in a TV interview he said nothing about that pipe but instead said that he ducked behind a wall as soon as he heard the shots. In yet another interview he said he brought a camera and actually took pictures of the TSBD but somehow the camera disappeared and he could not explain how. Is their testimony invalid? No, but it isn't rock solid either.

The key to the credibility of these witnesses is the DPD tapes. Whatever they said afterwards is one thing, but minutes after the shooting they were telling police officers about the man with the rifle (as was Rowland). These reports generated calls over the police radio.

All your conclusions about where the shots came from seems to hang, for the biggest part, on the statements of Brennan and Euins and the shells being found at the sniper's nest. Was the Dal-Tex building ever searched? If this was a professional hit, which in a conspiracy against POTUS it most likely would have to, misdirection might play a big part. What if the man Brennan and Euins saw in the window was there for exactly that purpose and left the 6th floor as soon as the motorcade turned onto Houston. That would explain why nobody was found on the 6th floor or seen on the stairs, wouldn't it?

I disagree that it was a professional hit.

As for the man with the rifle being a decoy, we are now getting into "maybe Brennan and Euins were CIA assets" territory. This sort of conjecture the bread and butter of the lunatic fringe (I'm not placing you in this category, I'm just making a point).

I've said this before; all we really know had been filtered by the FBI and WC. We have no way of knowing if the information is accurate or complete. The less confident I get about the WC findings, the more likely it seems to me that we do not know everything. What if the 6th floor crime scene was staged? What would that leave you with? Two witnesses out of several hundered people who, over time, gave different accounts about what happened. And that, to me, seems a bit thin to base a string of conclusions on.

It would be a bit thin if that's all it was.
Rowland reports seeing a man with a rifle on the 6th floor.
Carolyn Walther saw a man pointing a rifle of of a TSBD window but she wasn't sure which window.
Ronald Fischer saw a man in the 6th floor window but didn't see the rifle.
Robert Edwards saw the same man in the SN window surrounded by boxes.
Mrs Earle Cabell, Malcolm Couch, James Worrell and Bob Jackson describe a rifle projecting out from a TSBD window (Cabell describes it as a projection)

Some TSBD employees report the shots as coming from inside the building.

As discussed, three shells were seen by the first officers to discover the SN.

The bullet/wound trajectories are consistent with a shot from the TSBD

The majority of witnesses in the motorcade describe the shots as coming from over their right shoulders - also consistent with a shot from the TSBD.

The DPD tapes reveal witnesses identifying the TSBD within a few minutes of the assassination.

I am unaware of any credible evidence the three clearly audible shots came from anywhere else. Although each point can be isolated and argued into the ground, for me, personally, I find the probability that the SN was the location from which the shots were taken enough to be taken very seriously.

Right, so Dougherty would basically be hiding in plain sight? It certainly would explain why Dorothy Garner saw nobody coming down the stairs within 90 seconds after the shots and it can't be dismissed as a possibility. Having said that, the scenario I proposed is in many ways not really much different. All you need is a conspirator, acting as a law enforcement officer or maybe even being one, running up to the 6th floor, leaving the rifle next to the stairs and throwning three shells in the pre-prepared "sniper's nest". There is nothing complex about that.

Would your conspirator not be seen by Adams or Styles or Baker or Garner or Williams/Jarman/Norman?
My proposal avoids this unnecessary complication.

[Martin Weidmann]

Agreed. That is why I think theories/models/narratives are important.
There is so much that is contradictory and misleading in this case that it will be impossible to come up with a model that doesn't have holes in it (the LNer model included). The model that has the least holes wins. That, I believe, is the best we can do.

Euins specifically testifies to seeing a man pointing a rifle out of the window. It must be remembered that Harkness radios in he has a witness (Euins) claiming the shooter was in the TSBD within a few minutes of the shooting. This makes Euins credible as far as I'm concerned.
As for the shells, if the three shots were fired from the window Brennan and Euins saw a man with a rifle pointing towards the President at the time of the shooting, then the shells came from the rifle - probably.
Whether they were the same shells Studebaker photographed is open to debate as there is good witness testimony that, at some point, all the original shells were in Fritz's pocket before they were photographed. Not to mention the one in the clip Fritz took away with him.

The key to the credibility of these witnesses is the DPD tapes. Whatever they said afterwards is one thing, but minutes after the shooting they were telling police officers about the man with the rifle (as was Rowland). These reports generated calls over the police radio.

I disagree that it was a professional hit.

As for the man with the rifle being a decoy, we are now getting into "maybe Brennan and Euins were CIA assets" territory. This sort of conjecture the bread and butter of the lunatic fringe (I'm not placing you in this category, I'm just making a point).

It would be a bit thin if that's all it was.
Rowland reports seeing a man with a rifle on the 6th floor.
Carolyn Walther saw a man pointing a rifle of of a TSBD window but she wasn't sure which window.
Ronald Fischer saw a man in the 6th floor window but didn't see the rifle.
Robert Edwards saw the same man in the SN window surrounded by boxes.
Mrs Earle Cabell, Malcolm Couch, James Worrell and Bob Jackson describe a rifle projecting out from a TSBD window (Cabell describes it as a projection)

Some TSBD employees report the shots as coming from inside the building.

As discussed, three shells were seen by the first officers to discover the SN.

The bullet/wound trajectories are consistent with a shot from the TSBD

The majority of witnesses in the motorcade describe the shots as coming from over their right shoulders - also consistent with a shot from the TSBD.

The DPD tapes reveal witnesses identifying the TSBD within a few minutes of the assassination.

I am unaware of any credible evidence the three clearly audible shots came from anywhere else. Although each point can be isolated and argued into the ground, for me, personally, I find the probability that the SN was the location from which the shots were taken enough to be taken very seriously.

Would your conspirator not be seen by Adams or Styles or Baker or Garner or Williams/Jarman/Norman?
My proposal avoids this unnecessary complication.

Euins specifically testifies to seeing a man pointing a rifle out of the window. It must be remembered that Harkness radios in he has a witness (Euins) claiming the shooter was in the TSBD within a few minutes of the shooting. This makes Euins credible as far as I'm concerned.

Hang on, I never said Euins wasn't credible. I just wonder what he really saw, given the fact that he changed his story over time. It's pretty obvious that he instantly realized the shooter was inside the TSBD and told a cop. I deliberately use the word "realized" because concluding the shooter was inside the building is not the same as seeing a man with a rifle at a particular 6th floor window. I would have agreed with you that Euins was a witness that could be relied upon, if he had been more specific about the location inside the building to the officer.

As for the shells, if the three shots were fired from the window Brennan and Euins saw a man with a rifle pointing towards the President at the time of the shooting, then the shells came from the rifle - probably.
Whether they were the same shells Studebaker photographed is open to debate as there is good witness testimony that, at some point, all the original shells were in Fritz's pocket before they were photographed. Not to mention the one in the clip Fritz took away with him.

If the three shots were fired from that window, a logical and fair conclusion would indeed be that the shells they found probably came from the rifle. Fritz contaminating the crime scene is something I will never understand. He should have known better, even by the standard of that day. It seems to me there are way too many instances of strange things happening involving the physical evidence, that you simple can not put it all down to incompetence.

The key to the credibility of these witnesses is the DPD tapes. Whatever they said afterwards is one thing, but minutes after the shooting they were telling police officers about the man with the rifle (as was Rowland). These reports generated calls over the police radio.

And yet, the WC went with Brennan and Euins and did everything they could to discredit Rowland.

I disagree that it was a professional hit.

Well that settles that then, right? Btw I never suggested it was a profession hit. The word If at the beginning is the give away.

As for the man with the rifle being a decoy, we are now getting into "maybe Brennan and Euins were CIA assets" territory. This sort of conjecture the bread and butter of the lunatic fringe (I'm not placing you in this category, I'm just making a point).

I would never claim Brennan and Euins were CIA assets, but if you want the dismiss a possible suggestion just because you don't think it's likely or possible (which btw a lot of LNs frequently also do) that a decoy was used in a misdirection operation to draw attention away from the real shooters, than that's fine. You've already said that you don't think it was a professional hit, so this goes out of the window as well, right?

But here's something to ponder; what if Dougherty was in fact the decoy and not the shooter? Just think about for a second. He works there and if they test him he would come back negative on powder residue...

I am unaware of any credible evidence the three clearly audible shots came from anywhere else. Although each point can be isolated and argued into the ground, for me, personally, I find the probability that the SN was the location from which the shots were taken enough to be taken very seriously.

Fair enough. For me it certainly is a possibility as well, but I remain skeptical. Why would a gun man place himself on the 6th floor with only one way to escape? It hardly makes sense to me. IMO something else must have been going on.

Would your conspirator not be seen by Adams or Styles or Baker or Garner or Williams/Jarman/Norman?
My proposal avoids this unnecessary complication.

Yes and no. He might be seen, but would he be noticed with all sorts of law enforcement people rushing into the building with rifles making their way to the higher up floors? A good way to hide, is in a crowd, isn't it? Btw you did notice it was a a hypothesis?

[John Iacoletti]

According to Pat Speer's comprehensive list of witnesses who reported on the shots over 75% of the 200+ witnesses reported 3 audible shots. Of course there were others who reported different amounts of shots but 160+ witnesses reporting the same thing is convincing enough for me.

These aren't independent accounts though.  Most of these witnesses were interviewed weeks or months later -- long after the 3 shot narrative was firmly planted in the public psyche by Uncle Walter and others.

[Joe Elliott]

To convince me otherwise you have to provide a list of all the subtasks that was accomplished

With all due respect, Joe, you are basically asking me to write a book. I have no intention of trying to convince you of anything as it would require substantial effort and time on my part and our previous encounters have shown that it is near impossible to convince you of anything anyway. Besides, I wouldn't even know how to begin convincing you, or anybody, else when I loads of questions myself about what actually happened.

It would not be necessary to write a whole book, if you were defending a Small Conspiracy. You could do it with a short article. This is only necessary to defend a Large Conspiracy. So, that means that you believe in a Large-Secret-Enduring Conspiracy. One that is so large, one would have to write a whole book, just to list all the actions taken by the conspiracy:

* Making CE-399.
* Getting the right people on your side so you can swap in CE-399.
etc.

And coming up with an estimate of the number of people needed to pull this off.


You also did not address my point that simply removing a frame from the Zapruder film would make it appear the limousine suddenly double its speed and just as suddenly went back to it’s original speed, with an impossible amount of acceleration and deceleration.

Question:

Do you still think a Zapruder frame was removed from the film?

If so, where in the Zapruder film does the limousine appear to move twice it’s usual distance between two consecutive frames?

[Joe Elliott]

Hi Joe, I know this is a discussion you're having with Martin but I'd just like to quickly jump in as, whether you know it or not, you are completely misrepresenting some of the points I've been making.

Yes, I believe I have, inadvertently. At least regarding the oil companies. That was someone else who mentioned them.

"Sometimes he puts forth four names, At other times seven names."

In Reply #37 of this thread you made exactly the same point, implying that I'm not quite sure as to how many people I believe were involved in my own theory. I clarified this point for you when I replied:

"The list of four - Truly, Shelley, Fritz and Dougherty - are those who had foreknowledge of events that day.
The list of seven - Shelley, Lovelady, Williams, Norman, Jarman, Dougherty, Givens - are those who clearly lied to the investigating authorities. Williams, Norman and Jarman did not lie because they were part of the conspiracy they lied because Williams saw something he shouldn't have seen. Williams tried to distance himself from it and dragged Norman and Jarman into his lie as back up."

4 men who had foreknowledge of the assassination that day.

7 men who lied to the investigating authorities.

You shouldn't have been confused in the first place, it just revealed you hadn't read my posts properly but posting this again, after I'd already clarified it for you, smacks of something more than just basic confusion.

Four with foreknowledge. Plus, three others lying, as if they were part of the conspiracy. Ok, it’s a difference, but a subtle difference.

"For instance, if Oswald was not part of this conspiracy, how did these 4 or 7 get a hold of Oswald’s rifle to plant it?"

Again, you have clearly not read my posts on this subject. When outlining my theory I wrote:

"Oswald definitely knew something serious was going to happen that day but as to the full extent, I can't say. It's enough to say that when he left the TSBD after the assassination, he was a man on the run."

Oswald was involved in something that day but I don't believe he knew it was going to be the assassination of the President. And why should he know when he is being set-up as a patsy.
He is a foot soldier, taking orders, most probably answering to Shelley.
He wouldn't have been asked to provide a rifle, he would have been told to provide one.

Well, then, with this reasoning, one could argue the conspiracy did not involve four with foreknowledge. Just one, Shelley. And the other three, like Oswald, just doing what Shelley told them to do. Honestly, I don’t see any rational reason for leaving Oswald out of your “Gang of Four”. If he was told the provide a rifle and he did so then it is most logical to conclude that he was part of the conspiracy. I think you are still under the influence of the “Anyone but Oswald” line of thinking.

"In any case, the vast majority of JFK CTers don’t believe in a conspiracy that is this small."

Most CTers are nut-jobs propping up their tiny egos at the expense of the truth.
Unfortunately, I'm getting the creeping feeling some LNers are in the same camp.

Not nut jobs. Just believers in a Large-Secret-Enduring Conspiracy Theory. Everyone is prone to believing in stories that appeal to some level of the subconscious. And large conspiracy stories are naturally compelling stories. Skeptics aren’t any less crazy than everyone else. They just allow themselves to be guided by logic, that Large-Secret-Enduring Conspiracy Theories are astronomically unlikely. Too many people would spill the beans.

You are not a believer in Large-Secret-Enduring Conspiracy Theories, as far as I can tell. But you are a very atypical CTer.

[Jerry Freeman]

J. Edgar Hoover said in a memo two days after John F. Kennedy's assassination that the public must be led to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/jfk-assassination-files/jfk-files-j-edgar-hoover-said-public-must-believe-lee-n814881
 
 And that is no theory. And as usual there is no response.

[Martin Weidmann]

It would not be necessary to write a whole book, if you were defending a Small Conspiracy. You could do it with a short article. This is only necessary to defend a Large Conspiracy. So, that means that you believe in a Large-Secret-Enduring Conspiracy. One that is so large, one would have to write a whole book, just to list all the actions taken by the conspiracy:

* Making CE-399.
* Getting the right people on your side so you can swap in CE-399.
etc.

And coming up with an estimate of the number of people needed to pull this off.


You also did not address my point that simply removing a frame from the Zapruder film would make it appear the limousine suddenly double its speed and just as suddenly went back to it’s original speed, with an impossible amount of acceleration and deceleration.

Question:

Do you still think a Zapruder frame was removed from the film?

If so, where in the Zapruder film does the limousine appear to move twice it’s usual distance between two consecutive frames?

You could do it with a short article.

That's only your opinion. I disagree


This is only necessary to defend a Large Conspiracy.

Again, only your opinion. You are doing what you always do; predetermine the way somebody should respond to you. I don't play that game.

It would not be necessary to write a whole book, if you were defending a Small Conspiracy.

Oh yes it would require a massive book, as there are way too many variables in this case that were never properly addressed. I could write a complete chapter alone about the rifle transaction, another one about CE399 and so on. I'm not about to do it, but if I did the result would indeed be a massive book.

And what makes you think I am defending any kind of conspiracy? It is simply my position that, if Oswald did not do it, the most likely conspiracy would be a small scale one with the means to control the evidence.

So, that means that you believe in a Large-Secret-Enduring Conspiracy.

No, it means that you are jumping to incorrect conclusions way too quickly.


* Making CE-399.
* Getting the right people on your side so you can swap in CE-399.
etc.

And coming up with an estimate of the number of people needed to pull this off.


Making CE399 is easy. Just fire a bullet with the MC rifle into water or cotton wool! And what makes you think you need a number of people to swap one bullet? SA Johnsen took the bullet he received from Wright to Washington, where he gave it to SS Chief Rowley. If I remember correctly, Rowley gave it to FBI agent Todd, who in turn passed it to Frazier at the FBI crime lab.

If no swap occured, then why did the WC not show bullet CE399 for identification to Tomlinson, during his testimony, and why did Wright say, in 1966, when shown a photograph of CE399 that it wasn't the (type of) bullet he had handled?

And when we look at the larger picture, consider this as well; Frazier and his team were supposed to examine the limo after it arrived in Washington. When the FBI team arrived at the Secret Service garage they were told that the car had already been searched (resulting in a contaminated crime scene) and they were given bullet fragments that allegedly were found inside the car. How can anyone know for sure those fragments were indeed found in the car?

And then there is the Walker bullet. Again we have a major inconsistency between how the bullet was described, prior to the assassination, and how the bullet now in evidence actually looks like. When General Walker saw the bullet the HSCA had been given he instantly claimed that the bullet now in evidence wasn't the one DPD removed from his house in April 1963. He was so convinced he was right that he got his lawyer involved, to communicate with the HSCA.

None of this has anything to do with a normal regular investigation. What we have here is a rifle that can only tentatively linked to Oswald, based on a photocopy of an order form and the highly questionable opinion of an FBI questioned documents expert. You got one bullet with no proper chain of custody until it gets to Washington, you've got bullet fragments given to the FBI who were told they came from the limo and you've got a highly disputed Walker bullet. And all that in a case of a lone nut shooting a man.... Really?

Anybody who ignores this and pretends there is nothing abnormal about this, doesn't want to know the real facts of the case. For those who are interested in the facts, all this just seems a bit too much coincidence to be credible. Even more so as we are talking about a high profile case.

You also did not address my point that simply removing a frame from the Zapruder film would make it appear the limousine suddenly double its speed and just as suddenly went back to it’s original speed, with an impossible amount of acceleration and deceleration.

Question:

Do you still think a Zapruder frame was removed from the film?


I have never said I thought a Zapruder frame was removed. I said that I am no expert but, yes, I still think it's possible one or more frames were removed.