JFK Conspiracy Theorists Who Earn Their Reputation as Crackpots

[Michael T. Griffith]

You mean the fear of Nuclear Armageddon that the KGB instilled in LBJ and others by having Kremlin-loyal triple agent Ivan Obyedkov "volunteer" to Oswald or "Oswald" the Department 13-radioactive name "Kostikov" over a sure-to-be-tapped-by-CIA phoneline on 10/1/63, which name had been made Department 13-"radioactive" a year earlier by a Kremlin-loyal triple agent at the FBI's NYC field office by the name of KGB Major Aleksei Kulak (J. Edgar Hoover's shielded-from-CIA FEDORA)?

Okay, who are you and what have you done with the real Tom Graves? The real Tom Graves would address me as "Comrade Griffith" and would not fail to accuse me of doing Vladimir Putin's bidding and of spreading KGB disinformation.

But, yes, I was referring to the professed fear of a nuclear Armageddon with the Soviet Union. Thanks to records released in 1993, we know that LBJ pressured Richard Russell and Earl Warren into serving on the WC by telling them that if the government didn't squash rumors that the Soviets and/or the Cubans were behind the JFK assassination, this could push the U.S. into a war that could “kill 40 million Americans in an hour.”

I believe that this argument was made to several senior military officers to persuade them to ensure that the autopsy findings supported the lone-gunman scenario. I also believe that one or two of those senior officers repeated this argument to Humes and Boswell when they ordered them to make sure the autopsy report supported the single-shooter story.

I'm not sure if this argument was made to Finck. I think Finck figured out very quickly which conclusions would be acceptable and which ones would not, but we know that Finck caused a lot of problems during the autopsy. He was excluded from the first brain examination. He was furious over the disappearance of his autopsy notes.

Finck was willing to tell most of the lies he knew he was expected to tell, but not all of them. At the Clay Shaw trial, he admitted that during the autopsy he was ordered not to dissect the neck wound. When the HSCA FPP tried to pressure him into changing the location of the rear head entry wound, he not only refused but questioned the authenticity of the autopsy photo of the back of the head. He admitted to the ARRB that at the time of the autopsy he knew he was supposed to measure the wound locations in relation to fixed reference points but did not do so when it came to the back wound.

[Tom Graves]

I was referring to the professed fear of a nuclear Armageddon with the Soviet Union. Thanks to records released in 1993, we know that LBJ pressured Richard Russell and Earl Warren into serving on the WC by telling them that if the government didn't squash rumors that the Soviets and/or the Cubans were behind the JFK assassination, this could push the U.S. into a war that could “kill 40 million Americans in an hour.”

Dear Comrade Griffith,

Why did the world-class humanitarian organization known as the KGB force the evil, evil CIA to do that?

-- Tom

PS "Professed fear"?

[Lance Payette]

But, yes, I was referring to the professed fear of a nuclear Armageddon with the Soviet Union. Thanks to records released in 1993, we know that LBJ pressured Richard Russell and Earl Warren into serving on the WC by telling them that if the government didn't squash rumors that the Soviets and/or the Cubans were behind the JFK assassination, this could push the U.S. into a war that could “kill 40 million Americans in an hour.”

As we used to say about the General Counsel of the Mega Corp at which I worked, "Often wrong but never in doubt." Good thing you have a professional fact-checker like me to keep on your toes.

If not before, Earl Warren revealed what LBJ had said to him in the Memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren, published in 1977. You can read the relevant excerpt from his Memoirs here at page 7: https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_WC_1_Operations.pdf. That's HSCA Volume 11, "Creation of the Warren Commission."

The similar argument made to Russell did indeed come to light (as far as I can tell) when the fabled "LBJ tapes" were released by the National Archives in response to ARRB requests in 1993. If the theory is that LBJ made this argument to stack the deck at the WC and ensure a LN outcome, then he miscalculated rather badly in the case of Russell - eh? Russell was not only a naysayer at the WC but was practically a full-tilt CTer after LBJ's death. LBJ's pressure was apparently too subtle for Russell to get the message - eh?

When I'm not wearing my CT propellor beanie, I see no reason to think LBJ was not sincere in his concerns. Your "belief" that LBJ pressured "several senior military officers" with this argument to ensure a LN result at the autopsy has no foundation whatsoever as far as I can discern. We know that the Joint Chiefs had suggested to JFK that the loss of tens of millions of American lives in a nuclear war would be an acceptable price to pay, whereupon a dismayed JFK had said "And we call ourselves the human race." Why would we think your unnamed "senior military officers" would not have responded "Nuclear war? Cool!" to LBJ's argument?

[Benjamin Cole]

LP:

"Years ago, one of the current moderators at the Ed Forum launched into a blatantly anti-Semitic narrative of 9/11. It was the Jews, the Jews, the Jews. I called him on it and even CTers who were no fans of mine joined in the outcry. I have had to laugh in more recent years at his efforts to tone it down and try to appear more reasonable, but as Kirk Galloway said back then: "You've shown us who you are."---Likely that was William N.

It is a large dollop of excrement on the JFKA research community escutcheon that W is a moderator of the EF-JFKA.

Yes, W quotes the anti-Semitic lunatics at Ron Unz, and promotes the theory that the Jews and Mossad perped the 9/11 event, by placing many hundreds of timed explosives in the WTC towers and setting them off after the jets struck. You can't make this stuff up.

Sadly, the JFKA research community has certain less pleasant characters, and also those with agendas.

I agree with you that Pat Speer, Tink Thompson, Larry Hancock, David Boylan, and a few others just want to know what happened. Me too.

I don't care if the truth is a LN, or a CT, or a big CT, or a KGB CT or a CIA CT. I would just like to know what happened.

Just don't dog-whistle "Mossad" to make some money.

[Benjamin Cole]

MTG--

Thanks for your collegial comments. It is possible to have disagreements about the JFKA without rancor and churlish sniping!

My best guess---and it is a guess---is that the JFKA CT was possibly just two guys, from Alpha 66 (or something called Command-L) and LHO.

If a couple guys in Alpha 66, for deep nationalistic, ideological and personal revenge reasons (see BoP) decided to perp the JFKA...why would they tell anybody? 

One was a shooter behind JFK, and the other was the GK smoke-and-bang show. If they were Herminio Diaz and Eladio Del Valle, they were both dead by 1967, and LHO in 1963. Dead men tell no tales. They kept no paperwork, and acted on no one's instructions.

We see from the Trump and Kirk shootings that anyone reasonably skilled with a rifle could have perped the JFKA. The JFKA "trained assassins" mumbo-jumbo is for the pulp novels.

I have no compelling answer of how the Alpha-66 pair gained LHO's witting or unwitting cooperation. Del Valle had been a pol in Cuba, and can be presumed to have some brains and social skills. They may have learned about LHO through the Cuban grapevine, and told him of passage to Cuba if he cooperated in a pro-Castro protest.

Marchetti's explanation of the JFKA cover-up may ring true. It was figured out or suspected that that CIA assets were involved in the JFKA...and so the investigation thus became a LN prosecution. That was Dulles at work. The nuclear-war concern, and LHO visit to Kostikov, may have been factors too.

The media and investigation? See coverage of the Kirk and Trump shootings. The media follows a narrative, and agenda. Maybe investigators do too.

In general, I lose faith in large many-headed CTs...on any topic.

For example, I do not believe that the three autopsists in Bethesda actually saw an obvious large avulsive or exit wound in the rear of JFK's head, and then never spoke a word about for the rest or their lives, or even left behind a letter to be opened after death, or anything in that regard. Yet they resected JFK's scalp (peeled it away from the skull). They would have seen such a wound.

I concede this is baffling, given the comments of those in Parkland. Well, so I am baffled.

Well, as I always say, just IMHO, caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

[Michael T. Griffith]

MTG--

Thanks for your collegial comments. It is possible to have disagreements about the JFKA without rancor and churlish sniping!

My best guess---and it is a guess---is that the JFKA CT was possibly just two guys, from Alpha 66 (or something called Command-L) and LHO.

If a couple guys in Alpha 66, for deep nationalistic, ideological and personal revenge reasons (see BoP) decided to perp the JFKA...why would they tell anybody? 

One was a shooter behind JFK, and the other was the GK smoke-and-bang show. If they were Herminio Diaz and Eladio Del Valle, they were both dead by 1967, and LHO in 1963. Dead men tell no tales. They kept no paperwork, and acted on no one's instructions.

We see from the Trump and Kirk shootings that anyone reasonably skilled with a rifle could have perped the JFKA. The JFKA "trained assassins" mumbo-jumbo is for the pulp novels.

I have no compelling answer of how the Alpha-66 pair gained LHO's witting or unwitting cooperation. Del Valle had been a pol in Cuba, and can be presumed to have some brains and social skills. They may have learned about LHO through the Cuban grapevine, and told him of passage to Cuba if he cooperated in a pro-Castro protest.

Marchetti's explanation of the JFKA cover-up may ring true. It was figured out or suspected that that CIA assets were involved in the JFKA...and so the investigation thus became a LN prosecution. That was Dulles at work. The nuclear-war concern, and LHO visit to Kostikov, may have been factors too.

The media and investigation? See coverage of the Kirk and Trump shootings. The media follows a narrative, and agenda. Maybe investigators do too.

In general, I lose faith in large many-headed CTs...on any topic.

For example, I do not believe that the three autopsists in Bethesda actually saw an obvious large avulsive or exit wound in the rear of JFK's head, and then never spoke a word about for the rest or their lives, or even left behind a letter to be opened after death, or anything in that regard. Yet they resected JFK's scalp (peeled it away from the skull). They would have seen such a wound.

I concede this is baffling, given the comments of those in Parkland. Well, so I am baffled.

Well, as I always say, just IMHO, caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

Regarding the difficulty of the JFK shooting, the three Master-rated riflemen in the WC's rifle test markedly failed to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting feat, even though they were firing from only 30 feet up, were firing at stationary target boards, and took as much time as they wanted for their first shot. Not one of the 11 expert riflemen in the 1967 CBS rifle test managed to score two hits on his first attempt.

I think this shows that Oswald was utterly incapable of performing the alleged shooting feat, and that the feat would have required a marksman of exceptionally rare kill, if not unprecedented skill, a marksman who was even better than the three Master-rated riflemen in the WC's rifle test and better than the 11 expert riflemen in the CBS rifle test.

I don't think the Trump and Kirk shootings bear any resemblance to the JFK shooting. Crooks fired 8 shots with a high-quality rifle and failed to hit Trump with any of them, except for one shot that barely grazed Trump's right ear. Crooks was not firing from 60 feet up at a target that was moving away from him at 11 mph; seven of his shots missed Trump entirely; and only one of them even grazed Trump, barely grazing his right ear. Also, Crooks used a DPMS - Panther Arms A-15 rifle with an AEMS optics sight, a far superior weapon to the Mannlicher-Carcano that Oswald supposedly used.

Tyler Robinson was firing at a large man who was sitting down, not at a man who was moving away from him at 11 mph. Robinson was able to take as much time as he wanted to aim his shot, a luxury that Oswald would not have enjoyed. Robinson used a Mauser 98, a popular hunting rifle, with a properly aligned scope. Oswald supposedly used a far-inferior Mannlicher-Carcano with a misaligned scope, a difficult bolt, and an odd trigger pull (per the Master-riflemen in the WC's rifle test, who used the alleged murder weapon itself).   

[Tom Graves]

Regarding the difficulty of the JFK shooting, the three Master-rated riflemen in the WC's rifle test markedly failed to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting feat, even though they were firing from only 30 feet up, were firing at stationary target boards, and took as much time as they wanted for their first shot. Not one of the 11 expert riflemen in the 1967 CBS rifle test managed to score two hits on his first attempt.

The problem is, they were given only 5.6 seconds to fire all three shots.

Oswald, on the other hand, took 10.2 seconds to fire all three shots in the echo chamber known as Dealey Plaza.