What's the worst JFK assassination related book you ever came across?

[Paul May]

have you actually read his jfk assassination books ? . i know LN often dont read so called CT material . even (and i am going from memory here ) Mr von pien in debate with Jim di eugenio refused point blank to view or even read any of the books , resources etc that Jim provided in that debate that supported his claims (i dont remember if the debate was here on this forum or the ed forum ) . Mr von pien posted in essence that he has absolutely no interest in reading ANYTHING that is CT related . and LN very often complain that CT dont read LN material such as the warren report or reclaiming history lol , that is quite a large slice of LN hypocrisy dont you think ? . but this is hardly surprising .

I have which is why I made my comment.

[Fergus O'brien]

Yes. Exactly.
There's nothing incongruous there.

lol

[Fergus O'brien]

Warning!

This is either a claim made by somebody who knows what the actual truth is (and can prove it with conclusive evidence) or the biased opinion of a fanatical LN who dismisses everything out of hand that does not match his belief.

Which is it, Paul?

what we are of course seeing in this thread from some is sadly what i expected from the very start . which is biased and or agenda driven LN comments about books . and this mentality also can be the case with authors and researchers , if they have a theory ,  bias , or agenda that this bias etc will be evident in any book they write .

[Jon Banks]

I'd be completely against any new laws; the existing ones on defamation are fine. Although some people have advocated re-visiting Sullivan's distinction between public and private individuals. I think Justice Thomas has supported that. Besides, LBJ is dead; you can't defame a dead person. I still believe that the answer to bad speech, to bad ideas is more speech. The truth doesn't always win out but the alternatives are worse.

At this point the assassination is simply an event that people use to express their grievances with the government or with some entity. For Roger Stone it's LBJ. It's why we see people with far right wing or far left wing views using it; they both think democracy has been stolen. And they've convinced themselves that the only reason these powerful groups killed JFK was because he was such a threat to them and their power. He was going to "end the Cold War", leave Vietnam, make nice with Castro, establish Camelot. And it was for this they had to strike him down.

"Just because you're 'paranoid' doesn't mean someone isn't trying to kill you"


I'll grant that people who distrust major government institutions and the mainstream media are more likely to believe there was a conspiracy in JFK's assassination while people on the Left and Right who still defend and trust major institutions are less likely to believe in conspiracy in this case.

While those two things explain the level of confirmation bias on both sides, the bottom lines that we can't ignore without lying to people or being intellectually dishonest are:

- The forensic evidence is conflicting and inconclusive for the most part on the question of a single shooter vs multiple shooters.

- From the Dallas PD to the CIA, investigators lied, covered up important facts, and manipulated or destroyed evidence.

- LHO was killed while in police custody by a guy who was connected to both organized crime and the US intelligence community (Ruby was an FBI informant).

- 60 years later, the government refuses to declassify all the remaining files related to the JFK investigations or files related to a handful of suspected intelligence officers who have been dead for decades.


So it's totally reasonable given the above described circumstances for people to suspect that we don't know the complete truth about what happened leading up to 11/22/63.

Without accusing people of being "kooks" or "conspiracy theorists, we should be able to accept that the JFK assassination may never reach some sort of general consensus where everyone agrees on what happened due to the points I cited above...

[Gary Davis]

Having read books on both sides of the equation one pair has amazed me. Cover Up by J. Gary Shaw and the killing of a president by Robert Groden. The basic idea of both volumes is strikingly Similar even down to the basic structure of the books. Anyone else notice this?

Gary 

[Gary Davis]

One of the worst conspiracy volumes I've read has to be Killing Kennedy and the hoax of the century, by Harrison Edward Livingstone. According to Mr Livingstone everything is fake all the pictures, films, all of it. all the witness statements are altered all the physical evidence is either faked or altered by a massive government conspiracy.He even blasts many of his fellow critics calling then liars.

Not worth reading

Gary   

[Steve M. Galbraith]

One of the worst conspiracy volumes I've read has to be Killing Kennedy and the hoax of the century, by Harrison Edward Livingstone. According to Mr Livingstone everything is fake all the pictures, films, all of it. all the witness statements are altered all the physical evidence is either faked or altered by a massive government conspiracy.He even blasts many of his fellow critics calling then liars.

Not worth reading

Gary

From what I've read he believed people like Doug Horne and David Lifton are (or were) "intelligence operators."

A question for the big "C" conspiracy advocates, people like Livingstone at al.: Two weaknesses in the lone assassin theory are placing Oswald in that window at 12:30 and, second, showing a motive. If you believe in the big conspiracy involving all of these powerful groups wouldn't they have placed witnesses in Dealey Plaza claiming that they saw Oswald (or a person who looked like him) in the window at 12:30? Isn't that the claim in the Tippit shooting? That those witnesses were plants or coerced? So why not do this in Dealey Plaza? As to the second: wouldn't they have had witnesses, e.g., Marina, say they heard him say he detested JFK, that he viewed JFK as a fascist enemy of "The Revolution" and the Cuban people? At least manufacture documents/writings where he wrote this, et cetera. Many of these other writings implicating him - the Walker "note", the letter to the Soviet Embassy - are supposedly fake; so why not create anti-JFK material? It seems obvious, to me, that those two aspects - showing motive and evidence he was in the window - would have been what these conspirators would have done at the least.

[Martin Weidmann]

From what I've read he believed people like Doug Horne and David Lifton are (or were) "intelligence operators."

A question for the big "C" conspiracy advocates, people like Livingstone at al.: Two weaknesses in the lone assassin theory are placing Oswald in that window at 12:30 and, second, showing a motive. If you believe in the big conspiracy involving all of these powerful groups wouldn't they have placed witnesses in Dealey Plaza claiming that they saw Oswald (or a person who looked like him) in the window at 12:30? Isn't that the claim in the Tippit shooting? That those witnesses were plants or coerced? So why not do this in Dealey Plaza? As to the second: wouldn't they have had witnesses, e.g., Marina, say they heard him say he detested JFK, that he viewed JFK as a fascist enemy of "The Revolution" and the Cuban people? At least manufacture documents/writings where he wrote this, et cetera. Many of these other writings implicating him - the Walker "note", the letter to the Soviet Embassy - are supposedly fake; so why not create anti-JFK material? It seems obvious, to me, that those two aspects - showing motive and evidence he was in the window - would have been what these conspirators would have done at the least.

If you believe in the big conspiracy involving all of these powerful groups wouldn't they have placed witnesses in Dealey Plaza claiming that they saw Oswald (or a person who looked like him) in the window at 12:30?

Perhaps, but then again, what if there were really two conspiracies; a relatively small one for the assassination of Kennedy and setting up Oswald as the patsy and another, after the fact, one to wrap the case around Oswald instead of conducting a detailed investigation that might lead to other possibilities?

Isn't that the claim in the Tippit shooting? That those witnesses were plants or coerced?

I have actually never heard that claim, nor do I believe it is true. What I do question is the way witnesses were selected for the DPD line up and how the line ups were conducted. Having been a witness to a robbery that happened right in front of me, I know first hand just how difficult it is to identify somebody you've only seen for a few seconds in the midst of chaos. And then there is the fact that some people are easily influenced and persuaded to confirm something that in reality they did not see. I would be seriously out of pocket if I had to pay $1 to every witness who, under cross examination, had to admit that their identification of a suspect wasn't as secure as they thought it was.

At least manufacture documents/writings where he wrote this, et cetera. Many of these other writings implicating him - the Walker "note", the letter to the Soviet Embassy - are supposedly fake; so why not create anti-JFK material?

For lack of sufficient knowledge we really do not know for sure how much value can be placed on the opinions of so-called questioned documents experts in this case. Many years ago, I was involved in a court case where the opposing party claimed that signatures on mulitiple contracts and documents had been falsified. The claims were ultimately debunked by the expert, who requested the court to compell the opposing party to provide handwriting samples, to be written in front of (and authenticated by) the judge, for comparison. He rejected documents already provided by the opposing party's lawyers because the authenticity of those documents could not be sufficiently verified.

One of the biggest problems in this case is that fact that all comparisons of handwriting and/or prints were done using "existing" documents of which the authenticity can and should be questioned.

It seems obvious, to me, that those two aspects - showing motive and evidence he was in the window - would have been what these conspirators would have done at the least.

You seem to be overthinking this thing and are forgetting one thing. What would happen if they placed witnesses in Dealey Plaza claiming that they saw Oswald in the window, when Oswald himself could conclusively show he was somewhere else? The simple answer would be that they would have to conclude that the witnesses were wrong, right? But, wouldn't that also mean that they could never argue again that Oswald was in fact the man who shot Kennedy?