The Warren Commission Sham

[Lance Payette]

I accept the designation... But I just checked, it's 143 at present! Some folks need to think out of the box!!

If there actually were a conspiracy to kill the president and then a cover-up - at the level of the FBI and members of the Warren Commission - you can be absolutely certain they would not have left anything to chance - and BRW - with no clout to protect him - was just as likely a patsy as Oswald.

What is the significance of the whereabouts of the lunch?
That just might depend on which patsy you're trying to pin the deed on...
If the lunch is found in the SN, but someone could testify that Oswald already had lunch in the cafeteria, you've got a problem... Maybe this is why there is conflicting testimony on the lunch whereabouts...

I appreciate your good humor, Jake, because the whole JFKA Thing has become mostly just a kind-of-fun diversion to me. I hereby humbly reduce your Conspiracy Fever to 98.6.  Honestly, I TRULY DON'T CARE if Oswald was a patsy and the CIA was behind the whole thing. In fact, I'd LOVE it - the weirder the better! I am not among those who think the Lone Nut narrative is some sort of religious truth.

But your "leaving nothing to chance" statement cuts both ways. How would we explain the 4,000 clues that drive the conspiracy bus? While leaving nothing to chance, they were also such bunglers they left 4,000 clues?

The problem with your scenario above is that it's all speculation. Barring some bombshell - highly unlikely - we'll just never know. I have no problem with the idea that the chicken being found on the 6th floor "had to be" the WC narrative so the officers didn't look like lying fools and that BRW was more-or-less intimidated into going along (although, as John notes above, he was saying the 6th floor by the next day). I have great difficulty picturing Black, minimum-wage, employed-two-months, 20-year-old BRW as any sort of plausible accomplice or patsy.

If conspiracy theorizing were done in the vein of "of course it's all just speculation, but it's fun!" the discussions on forums such as this would be far more enjoyable. Too many LNers and CTers alike seem to feel they are promoting and defending some sort of religious truth.

For lots of people, the JFKA seems to have been some sort of life-shattering event. Researcher Walt Brown is only a couple of years older than me, and it sounded when I read his work like he practically had an emotional meltdown at the age of 15. For me, at age 13, it was nothing more than a couple of days off school to go shoot hoops. It's still just an interesting historical curiosity, a real-life Agatha Christie mystery that is kind of fun to play around with - and I welcome thinking outside the box if it's halfway plausible.

 

[Tom Graves]

Payette:

If conspiracy theorizing were done in the vein of "of course it's all just speculation, but it's fun!" the discussions on forums such as this would be far more enjoyable. Too many LNers and CTers alike seem to feel they are promoting and defending some sort of religious truth. For lots of people, the JFKA seems to have been some sort of life-shattering event. Researcher Walt Brown is only a couple of years older than me, and it sounded when I read his work like he practically had an emotional meltdown at the age of 15. For me, at age 13, it was nothing more than a couple of days off school to go shoot hoops. It's still just an interesting historical curiosity, a real-life Agatha Christie mystery that is kind of fun to play around with - and I welcome thinking outside the box if it's halfway plausible.

Me:

The problem is, the KGB* has made hay from the anomaly-replete assassination from Day One, and the JFKA conspiracy theories it has created and/or promulgated have, along with conspiracy theories about HIV/AIDS, the Rock Cocaine Explosion in "the Ghetto," the Moon Landings, Watergate, 9/11, the DNC Hack, and [fill in the blank] have made our body politic so cynical, apathetic and paranoiac about the government (can you say the evil, evil CIA?) that "former" KGB officer Vladimir Putin was able, with the help of Paul Manafort, GRU officer Konstantin Kilimnik, Putin's mobbed-up oligarch buddy Oleg Deripaska, Roger Stone, Harley Schlanger, Joseph Mifsud, and probable KGB agent Igor Danchenko, et al. ad nauseam, to install "useful idiot" (or worse) Donald Trump as our final President.

*Today's SVR and FSB

[Jake Maxwell]

Lance... yes, we shouldn't take ourselves or our theories too seriously... a real challenge for humans in general.

I think some of what drives my thinking on this subject, is knowing - or thinking I know - a little too much about some of the possible players on the stage, like LBJ and Hoover.

AND Arlen Specter's theory about the single bullet! Dang, look at the car Specter... Windshield is shot and the car molding... along with JFK and Connally... and the limo is whisked off the scene to be quickly repaired...

AND driver SS agent Bill Greer's rubbernecking and braking until the fatal shot!

AND Hoover's "exerting pressure" on his boys to quickly end their investigation and conclude that Oswald was the lone assassin...

Hoover, Greer, Specter... don't look in my face and lie to me! Yeah, that drives some of my thinking on this, too...

All right... peace!

 

[Tom Graves]

I think some of what drives my thinking on this subject, is knowing - or thinking I know - a little too much about some of the possible players on the stage, like LBJ and Hoover. AND Arlen Specter's theory about the single bullet! Dang, look at the car Specter... Windshield is shot and the car molding... along with JFK and Connally... and the limo is whisked off the scene to be quickly repaired. AND driver SS agent Bill Greer's rubbernecking and braking until the fatal shot! AND Hoover's "exerting pressure" on his boys to quickly end their investigation and conclude that Oswald was the lone assassin. Hoover, Greer, Specter . . .

It's too bad you're so gullible and so open to being influenced by KGB* disinformation, Maxwell.

*Today's SVR and FSB

[Jake Maxwell]

It's too bad you're so gullible and so open to being influenced by KGB* disinformation, Maxwell.

*Today's SVR and FSB

None of the following is disinformation... all well-documented:

AND Arlen Specter's theory about the single bullet! Dang, look at the car Specter... Windshield is shot and the car molding... along with JFK and Connally... and the limo is whisked off the scene to be quickly repaired...

AND driver SS agent Bill Greer's rubbernecking and braking until the fatal shot!

AND Hoover's "exerting pressure" on his boys to quickly end their investigation and conclude that Oswald was the lone assassin...

[Tom Graves]

None of the following is disinformation... all well-documented:

AND Arlen Specter's theory about the single bullet! Dang, look at the car Specter... Windshield is shot and the car molding... along with JFK and Connally... and the limo is whisked off the scene to be quickly repaired...

AND driver SS agent Bill Greer's rubbernecking and braking until the fatal shot!

AND Hoover's "exerting pressure" on his boys to quickly end their investigation and conclude that Oswald was the lone assassin...

All of those "incriminating things" can be explained in a non-conspiratorial way, e.g., "THE WINDSHIELD IS SHOT!!!" (don't you mean to say, ". . . with a through-and-through hole, PROVING THAT THE BULLET THAT CAUSED IT MUST HAVE COME FROM THE FRONT!!!"?).

To wit: It wasn't a through-and-through hole; the windshield (and the chrome strip) had been hit by a largish fragment from the Z-313 fatal head shot, the impact caused the laminated windshield to lose a chunk of glass from its outside layer, only, and the lead fragment left a residue of lead on the inside surface of the windshield, not the outside.

D'oh

[Lance Payette]

Lance... yes, we shouldn't take ourselves or our theories too seriously... a real challenge for humans in general.

I think some of what drives my thinking on this subject, is knowing - or thinking I know - a little too much about some of the possible players on the stage, like LBJ and Hoover.

AND Arlen Specter's theory about the single bullet! Dang, look at the car Specter... Windshield is shot and the car molding... along with JFK and Connally... and the limo is whisked off the scene to be quickly repaired...

AND driver SS agent Bill Greer's rubbernecking and braking until the fatal shot!

AND Hoover's "exerting pressure" on his boys to quickly end their investigation and conclude that Oswald was the lone assassin...

Hoover, Greer, Specter... don't look in my face and lie to me! Yeah, that drives some of my thinking on this, too...

All right... peace!

 

One problem is that JFK was detested by such a diverse group of organizations and individuals, and so many stood to benefit from his demise, that weaving superficially plausible conspiracy theories is easy.

Then we factor in that most of the usual suspects - LBJ, Hoover, CIA, Mafia, etc. - were fully capable of ghastly deeds, in some cases up to and including assassinations and murders.

Then we factor in some huge motives - LBJ becomes President, Hoover isn't forced into retirement, the CIA has a friend in the White House, Castro is ousted, the heat is off the Mafia and their Cuban empire is restored, revenge is had for the Bay of Pigs, the oil depletion allowance survives, etc., etc.

It all starts to look, as it once did to me, like "How could this NOT have been a conspiracy??? OF COURSE, it was - the only issue is exactly who did it and how."

However, over my decades as a lawyer my conspiracy-prone mindset was gradually subordinated to the need for real evidence, reasonable inferences and critical thinking rather than Gee Whiz speculation and leaps of logic.

The more I studied and analyzed, the more the LN perspective made sense - not rock-solid sense, not a religious belief, but simply the most plausible explanation. If ever a conspiracy theory seems more plausible, I'll change my mind.

In many ways, the CT community is its own worst enemy. The wild diversity of theories, some of the most prominent being preposterous. The focus on anomalies and inconsistencies that in themselves go nowhere and that the CTers don't even attempt to fit into a coherent theory. The obsession with the WC as though its shortcomings were somehow proof of something. The absurd effort to play defense counsel for Oswald. The venom toward the LN position as though this were a religious debate (many of the LNers being equally guilty, of course).

If there were a single, reasonably evidence-based, reasonably plausible and coherent theory, one that at least generated interest among professional historians and journals, I and pretty much everyone else would listen and perhaps be swayed. As it is, the leading conspiracy exponents simply don't generate this sort of interest and strike most reasonable people, including me, as self-promoting cranks and hucksters.