I have had a JFKA epiphany!

[John Iacoletti]

Iacoletti,

Just answer the question -- Do you still believe the three people who can be seen walking across the pergola "patio" a few minutes after the assassination in the Mr. Towner clip were NOT self-described American Indian Stella Mae Jacobs, strawberry-blond Gloria Holt, and blue-headscarf-wearing Sharron Simmons, but three Bermuda-shorts-wearing dudes?

I never believed that. You made it up because you never have anything useful to say.

Now give it a damn rest.

[Tom Graves]

I never believed that. You made it up because you never have anything useful to say.

Now give it a damn rest.

Shall I "bump" the pertinent thread from a few years ago?

Did you delete the photo you'd posted showing some male models wearing Bermuda shorts in the snow?

[Mark A. Oblazney]

Graves, give it a damn rest.

this WAS a pretty good discussion until, well……… the first part is good.

[Dan O'meara]

The Dallas PD was either incompetent or intentionally malicious, but most of the problems with the evidence at the Book Depository and Tippit crime scenes originates from the mishandling of the case by local police. Captain Westbrook appears to have been in the middle of nearly all the problems with the Dallas PD evidence on 11/22/63.

The FBI is responsible for the post-11/22 cover-up and they no doubt got orders from LBJ and Hoover to focus on Oswald and ignore other potential leads.

The CIA and Secret Service obstructed investigations and covered up stuff too.

All of the above could be dismissed as incompetence and attempts after the fact to cover up their incompetence. I'm receptive to that argument.

However, in the big picture, that explanation doesn't explain the inconsistencies in the forensic evidence and other inexplicable stuff related to this case.

For example, how is it that dozens of witnesses between Parkland and Bethesda said they saw the back of Kennedy's head blown out but the autopsy photos don't show it? We're talking about doctors and nurses. Not lay people. How could so many of them be wrong in their description of Kennedy's head wound?

The inconsistencies with the Medical evidence are one of the main reasons I don't think we'll ever be able to conclusively say there was a single shooter.

People intuitively feel that there's more to the story and they're probably right.

"However, in the big picture, that explanation doesn't explain the inconsistencies in the forensic evidence and other inexplicable stuff related to this case."

Hoover laid down the law before the investigation had really begun - it was to be demonstrated to the public that Oswald was the lone assassin.
The FBI's investigation into JFK's assassination began with this conclusion!
The Warren Commission Sham was merely an extension of this pre-ordained FBI conclusion in the guise of a lame puppet show.
The Warren Commission Report is a ridiculous tissue of fabrication, misrepresentation and misinformation. This is an easily demonstrable fact.

On top of the laughably incompetent/corrupt DPD investigation, it's all grist for the CTer mill.
But none of it necessarily points to a conspiracy or cover up.
The planet had stood on the brink of World War III only a couple of years before. Now the most beloved President had been assassinated by an ex-Marine who had recently returned from Russia.
It was of paramount importance to demonstrate that this was just some random loner. The slightest hint of Russian involvement would have ignited a situation far more serious than the Bay of Pigs.
So the order went out - Oswald is the lone assassin and the purpose of any investigation is demonstrate this and nothing but this.
Whether or not he was a lone assassin was irrelevant.
Evidence was manufactured, manipulated and misinterpreted to this end. Not to cover-up a conspiracy but to avert a global catastrophe.

Further muddying the waters was the fact that 99.9% of all law enforcement officers appeared to be utterly convinced Oswald was the lone assassin as soon as he was arrested. By the end of the first day of the investigation it was deemed to be a slam dunk of a case. Altering a few details to make sure some Pinko lawyer didn't get him off on a technicality was a perfectly acceptable approach to the case. Again, not in the service of a conspiracy but as part of an utter conviction that Oswald was the assassin and he acted alone. A perfectly natural conviction.

On top of this was the rush by the intelligence services to hide the fact they had been closely monitoring Oswald prior to the assassination.
This was a very bad look indeed but a worse look was when evidence of this cover-up started to come to light. This really was fodder for CTers.
Again, actions not taken as part of an assassination related conspiracy, merely CYA on a grand scale.

[John Corbett]

I’m embarrassed to admit that this never clicked with me before, but my interactions here have been a genuine epiphany.

I always assumed the JFKA research community, LNers and CTers alike, was a quest for What Really Happened. Silly me.

I thus assumed that CTers’ efforts to poke holes in the LN narrative were in furtherance of some coherent conspiracy theory. Some favored LBJ, some the Mafia, others the CIA or KGB, and so on and so forth.

I now realize this was simply wrong. Some, like Tom with his KGB narrative, do have and promote a coherent theory. However, a very large and vocal segment of the CT community is not working in furtherance of ANY THEORY AT ALL. Like criminal defense counsel, all they want to do is create doubt about the LN narrative.

A criminal defense attorney doesn’t need a theory as to who DID rob the bank or commit the murder. He just needs to create doubt that his client did. Any silly argument is worth making if there is the slightest chance the dummies on the jury might buy it. This is why lawyers refer to the “straight face test” – can you at least assert your nonsense with a straight face?

I now see why my efforts at the “epistemological” level go nowhere. I keep asking, “How does what you are saying making any sense at all unless the conspirators were utter bumbling fools?"

I never get any answers because, for the Oswald Defense Counsel Team, what they say doesn’t have to make sense! It doesn’t have to further any coherent conspiracy theory! Whether what they say would require the conspirators to have been utter bumbling fools is irrelevant!

This has been a true epiphany. I now realize that this is why I end up consigning this class of CTers to the bin of people not worth my time. Unless all I were interested in were defending the LN narrative like a religious zealot, why would I waste my time with folks who genuinely don’t care whether what they say makes any sense?

This does raise a second-level epistemological concern: Why would anyone waste so much time playing defense counsel for a guy who’s been dead almost 62 years? If your efforts aren’t in furtherance of a coherent alternative theory, what’s the point? Obviously, I expect no answers to THOSE questions either.

Epiphanies at age 75 are few and far between, but this was one.

You hit the nail on the head. The CT efforts aren't a quest for the truth. It is a rejection of the truth because they don't like the truth. They don't want to believe that a little nobody with a cheap, imported, war surplus rifle could take out the leader of the free world. They want to believe there is more to the story than that. They treat the JFKA as if it is a mystery novel and who wants a mystery novel that reveals the perpetrator on the first page. It doesn't make for much of a read after that.

I have been saying pretty much the same thing as you have for decades on this and other online forums. If the CTs were really interested in the truth, they would produce an alternative explanation. That way it could be tested, subject to scrutiny, and refined. The alternatives could be compared to the WCR for credibility.

Prior to retirement, I programmed mainframe computers. Once a program is written, the real and most important process begins. Testing and debugging. It's a trial-and-error process. You find out what works, what doesn't, and apply fixes. Then you start the whole process over again. Too often, programmers would set out to prove their program worked. A good test plan will try to prove it doesn't. Rarely would we get it right the first time so you do everything you can to break it. You create as many conditions and combinations of conditions that you can think of and if your program can stand up to that, then you can be confident you have a good end product ready for implementation.

Most CTs have no interest in doing that kind of heavy lifting. All they want to do is tell us what didn't happen and they will come up with all sorts of half-assed excuses to dismiss the evidence that tells us what did happen. They almost never show any interest in explaining the evidence. They only want to explain it away with what-about-this and what-about-that arguments.

Oliver Stone's 1991 movie came along at about the same time when internet access was becoming widespread and online discussion groups flourished. There was a time when some CTs would actually propose alternative scenarios that identified perps, whether that be LBJ, the CIA, the Mafia, rich Texas oilmen, anti-Castro Cubans, pro-Castro Cubans, etc. That proved to be difficult because invariably that would require actual evidence of involvement by these various entities. In the past few decades, I see very little efforts at identifying actual suspects in the assassination. Now all they want to do claim various people engaged in a cover up without ever explaining why they would do that. If the CTs ever hint at who actually was behind the assassination, it is usually aimed at the mysterious "they". "They" coerced almost everyone involved in gathering and analyzing the evidence of manipulating that evidence to create the false narrative that LHO alone killed JFK. Never do they explain how "they" coerced all these people and got 100% cooperation in the cover up.

The WC gave a us a thorough examination and analysis of the evidence when they made their report public in September of 1964. They gave us their 888 page report which summarized that evidence and their conclusions of what that evidence indicated. With just minor flaws, that report has stood the test of time. It will remain the definitive explanation of the JFKA for one simple reason. Nobody ever has or ever will come up with a better explanation of the evidence. The WCR wins by default.