OK, there was a conspiracy: What was the point?

[Jack Nessan]

As Fate would have it, I've been reading about the Mafia in books entirely unrelated to the JFKA. The Mafia is fascinating. Utterly and completely brutal, violent and amoral - except in the context of their own internal morality and code of honor. If Marcello or Trafficante or Marlon Brando had wanted JFK dead, JFK would have been dead. Neat and clean, ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing. The idea of the Mafia making use of Oswald, either as a gunman or a patsy, is one of the few things that might have caused Carlos Marcello to collapse in giggles (right after he told Guido to slit your throat for suggesting it). No, sorry, Marcello undoubtedly had the motive and means, but Dealey Plaza looks nothing like a Mafia hit ("And that's how we KNOW it WAS a Mafia hit, Lance, you dolt!").

As Fate would also have it, yesterday I was reading about Marcello and his supposed confession. This led me briefly down a rabbit hole with which I wasn't familiar and you may not be. The rabbit hole is named Hank Killam. I won't bore you with the story, which you can read for yourself. Here it is in about 200 words, but there are all kinds of materials about it, including a file in the John Armstrong Collection at Baylor: https://ricksblog.biz/history-the-pensacola-connection-to-the-jfk-assassination/. What had me giggling like Carlos Marcello was the absolutely goofy connections that keep popping up again and again in the JFKA. My guess is that this all means absolutely nothing, but look at this:

1. Killam was a low-level criminal type in Dallas, nothing too exciting.
2. But wait, his wife Wanda just happened to work for Jack Ruby and had, off and on, for 15 years.
3. At the time of the JFKA, Killam was working as a house painter.
4. But wait, his friend and fellow house painter was a guy named Carter, who just happened to be living at 1026 N. Beckley at the same time as Oswald.
5. Shortly after the JFKA, Killam left Dallas for Pensacola, muttering that he knew too much and was a "dead man" but no longer cared.
6. His family knew he had drug and mental problems and was going to have him institutionalized.
7. But wait, on the morning of his death his mother heard him receive a call at 4 AM and be picked up by a car.
8. In the wee hours of that morning, he went through a second-story plate glass window of a department store and was found dead on the sidewalk.
9. But wait, he had only one injury - a 3" slash to his jugular - yet blood was found 4' into the room.
10. The police called it a suicide, the coroner called it an accident, the family wanted him exhumed, and there ya go.

Again and again, YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP! It's like some cosmic jokester was in charge of the JFKA. Anyway, there's a lead for you: Hank Kellam, Key to the JFKA. I tell ya, these mystery deaths make you wonder how Michael Paine lived to be 90 and Ruth lived to be 92.

Oh, Dan's quote about a motive ... I would disagree that only LBJ had a motive. Half the country had quite plausible motives. Right-wing loonies. Big money oilmen. The Mafia. The Joint Chiefs. The assorted folks enraged by the Bay of Pigs. Various foreign interests. This is precisely why there are 25 or more superficially plausible conspiracy theories. Articulating "motive" and "means" is child's play. Fitting Oswald and Dealey Plaza into the theory is the difficult part.

LBJ had unfettered access to JFK. For God's sake, JFK was going to visit the LBJ Ranch the very day of the assassination. Does anyone seriously think that if LBJ were involved in eliminating JFK the hit would have involved Oswald or looked anything like Dealey Plaza??? It's absurd and entirely ad hoc because you can't avoid the reality that it did involve Oswald and Dealey Plaza.

No LN motive, Dan says? I have articulated it before and have no problem doing so again. Oswald was an intelligent and interesting guy, well-read but uneducated, who viewed himself as a deep thinker destined for great things. Alas, there was little prospect of that in the U.S. He went to the USSR with an entirely naive view of Soviet Marxism and thought he would be greeted as a celebrity and groomed for a high-profile political role. He got slapped in the face with the reality of Soviet Marxism and his grunt-level job in a Minsk factory. He came crawling back to America, thinking that at least his status as a former defector would open a lot of doors. Not only did it not open any doors, but he could barely find minimum wage work and even Marina ridiculed him. He vented his free-floating anger with an attempt on right-wing bigot Walker, but that was a dud. What was left? Cuba, where the real Marxists would be found and he would achieve recognition at last. He embarked on a frenzy of activity to establish himself as a friend of Cuba and headed off to Mexico City with high hopes. Alas, another slap in the face. Back to more grunt-level, minimum wage work at the TSBD - humiliatingly thanks to Ruth Paine. Then Fate spoke at last, or so it seemed. JFK would be passing right in front of the TSBD! Was this perhaps Destiny speaking, his ticket to a place in history or at least to Cuba? He goes to the Paine house still ambivalent. He'll take one last shot at repairing his marriage. Marina rebuffs him. Eff it, Destiny has spoken. He's going to carry out the JFKA, pretty much without regard to what happens to him thereafter. Boom-boom-boom, and he is utterly astonished to find himself alive, outside the TSBD, and getting on a bus.

Royell rightly chided me and other former members of the Ed Forum for even mentioning the silly place, but you simply MUST read the currently active thread, "DiEugenio Essays on the Ruth Paine Case," https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/31729-dieugenio-essays-on-the-ruth-paine-case/. If THAT doesn't make you embarrassed to be part of a CT community, NOTHING will. We're not talking about mere "conspiracy-prone mindset" on that thread. We're talking flat-out lunacy on the part of folks who are embarrassments to the HUMAN RACE. Hint: The last couple of pages are about whether Michael and Ruth should have been "waterboarded" as DiEugenio suggested or merely criminally prosecuted and put to death.

Mike Majerus, author Phantom Shot, went to law school at Georgetown in DC and attended all the HSCA hearings. He said when Marcello came into the hearing room nobody would look him in the eyes. In general, he said everyone was actually just afraid of him.

[Lance Payette]

Mike Majerus, author Phantom Shot, went to law school at Georgetown in DC and attended all the HSCA hearings. He said when Marcello came into the hearing room nobody would look him in the eyes. In general, he said everyone was actually just afraid of him.

While we tend to picture Marcello more in his later Godfather role, in his early days he was perfectly capable of personally slitting your throat if the linguini was overcooked.

[Lance Payette]

LP--

My take is if "The Deep State" or globalist elite militarists even wanted to remove JFK, they would do so in the manner Nixon, Carter and Trump (2016)were deposed. The manipulation of media, partisan animosities and prosecutorial agencies.

(Set aside JFK was an ardent anti-communist, came from a wealthy family, and cut income taxes on the upper brackets. And Vietnam was just not that important to anybody in 1963.)

So...the JFKA perps were people without institutional power. Not powerful people. They had recourse only to shooting JFK, and not even in private, but when JFK appeared in public. The way any nuts would.

My guess is the JFKA perps were motived by intense ideological, nationalistic and personal animosities for perceived betrayal--the BoP vets come to mind. A long shot: Individuals angered at the Kennedy Administration-backed  deposing and assassination of the Diem brothers in Vietnam. Or G-2'ers involved in revenge shooting for the many attempts on Castros life during the Kennedy Administration.

What tales the perps told LHO...who knows? LHO wanted passage to Cuba. LHO may have thought he was involved in a CIA false-flag event.

So why the WC cover-up?

Some WC'ers (Dulles) may have suspected LHO's co-conspirators were CIA assets (Diaz and Del Valle come to mind). There were thousands of CIA assets in the US at the time, Cuban exiles and others involved in Cuba. A story that LHO was assisted by CIA assets...not a good look. There was the whole Kostikov WWIII idea too.

And in fact, LHO's accomplices escaped, and LHO dead in two days. To this day no one has afforded us a convincing explanation of who perped the JFKA, while LHO is the only suspect known beyond reasonable doubt to be in DP in 11/22.

Ruby shooting LHO remains an intriguing clue---and suggests someone was worried LHO would talk. 

But who?

One of the sidelights to my reading about Hank Kellam (as mentioned above) was a couple of stories his wife Wanda told about Jack Ruby. Wow. I'm not sure we give enough credit to what a violent, volatile, erratic character Ruby could be (surely with some mental problems). I still laugh at whoever it was - I had thought it was Trafficante, but it wasn't - who was testifying before some committee, probably the HSCA, and was hit with the question, "What if I told you Jack Ruby was working for the Mob?" His response: "I'd say the Mob needs a new Personnel Director."

[Lance Payette]

Two final points:

1. Think about the consistency or lack thereof in your conspiracy arguments. For example, everyone loves Joseph Milteer’s mysterious “foreknowledge” of the JFKA. But wait, Milteer was a notorious, national-level, high-profile, right-wing, KKK bigot who was so indiscreet that he blabbed to a nobody like Somersett in the latter’s kitchen. As I pointed out on the Milteer thread, if you think HE had advance knowledge of the specifics of the JFKA, you’re pretty well locked into a conspiracy theory that simply doesn’t mesh with most of the preferred suspects. No one in his right mind this side of the Dixie Klan would have brought Milteer into the loop. You can’t simply assemble a bunch of free-floating factoids (“What about Milteer!”)  and pretend it’s a coherent theory.

2. Oswald’s actions on 11-21 make sense only if the JFKA was a last-minute, what-the-hell decision. He bummed a ride to the Paine home to either make peace with Marina or retrieve the only rifle he owned on 11-21, clunky as it was. They don’t make sense in any other scenario. We know from the cash in his pocket and what he left Marina that he had plenty of money to buy a quality rifle. In 1976, I bought a pristine Remington 30.06 with a 4X Weaver scope for $75. If the JFKA had been anything other than a last-minute decision, Oswald could have obtained a far better assassination weapon with NO problem and no paper trail and have avoided the need to go to the Paine home (with all of the associated risks) at all. If he were actually part of a conspiracy even a week in advance, SURELY either he or the conspirators would have made sure he had a more plausible assassination weapon to get the job done and safely had it in the TSBD well in advance; what sort of Three Stooges conspiracy would have trusted in him bumming a ride with Frazier the evening before the assassination, successfully sneaking the Carcano out of the garage, pretending he was carrying curtain rods, and successfully sneaking it into the TSBD only hours in advance? If he were a completely innocent patsy, the conspirators could have planted a better rifle in the TSBD and left a phony bill of sale or other incriminating evidence in his room on Beckley (ammunition! a gun cleaning kit!) FAR more easily and with less risk than whatever you think they did to retrieve the Carcano from the Paine garage and plant it in the TSBD. These other scenarios simply make no sense.

[Benjamin Cole]

LP--That's true. Jack Ruby appears to have been an unstable person. Although, obviously capable of a mob-style hit, at close range, while wearing a fedora.

OTOH, if we assume the True Perps of the JFKA wanted LHO dead and quickly, they may have had to resort to what tools were available in the time and place. Who was available who could penetrate DPD security?

Jack Ruby does seem like more of a tangential mobster than a CIA asset, although he may have been an FBI informant at one time.

 I do not know what motivated Ruby. He may have been stalking LHO, or just curious.

Like everything about the JFKA, Ruby can be woven into a tapestry, as elaborate as you wish to weave.

[Lance Payette]

OK, we have Ben's theory, which is basically my LN+ with some acknowledged loose ends.

We are also offered the Mafia and LBJ, both with the objective of simply killing JFK. The question I raised in my original post is what Oswald and the TSBD are doing in a scenario where anyone as sophisticated as the Mafia or LBJ simply wanted JFK eliminated.

Did the Mafia or LBJ need a patsy, with the incredible level of complexity and risk this would add to the hit? Do professional hits require a patsy? No, your guy simply walks into the County Records building looking like any other citizen with his disassembled weapon in a nice briefcase, ascends to the roof during the noon hour, takes the shot, disassembles the rifle in seconds, and walks out and blends into the chaos. People can speculate it was the Mafia or LBJ for the next 100 years, but no one will ever know.

I just don't think you can make these other scenarios work, except on an ad hoc basis: "Well, they DID IN FACT use Oswald - fantastically unlikely as this may seem." This is what old William of Ockham was talking about when he said that you don't unnecessarily add layers of complexity when a simpler explanation will do.

"Oswald shot JFK" is neat and tidy. If you want to expand upon this, you need to think in terms of "small, very small" - not "fantastically elaborate, convoluted and risky."

[Dan O'meara]

OK, we have Ben's theory, which is basically my LN+ with some acknowledged loose ends.

We are also offered the Mafia and LBJ, both with the objective of simply killing JFK. The question I raised in my original post is what Oswald and the TSBD are doing in a scenario where anyone as sophisticated as the Mafia or LBJ simply wanted JFK eliminated.

Did the Mafia or LBJ need a patsy, with the incredible level of complexity and risk this would add to the hit? Do professional hits require a patsy? No, your guy simply walks into the County Records building looking like any other citizen with his disassembled weapon in a nice briefcase, ascends to the roof during the noon hour, takes the shot, disassembles the rifle in seconds, and walks out and blends into the chaos. People can speculate it was the Mafia or LBJ for the next 100 years, but no one will ever know.

I just don't think you can make these other scenarios work, except on an ad hoc basis: "Well, they DID IN FACT use Oswald - fantastically unlikely as this may seem." This is what old William of Ockham was talking about when he said that you don't unnecessarily add layers of complexity when a simpler explanation will do.

"Oswald shot JFK" is neat and tidy. If you want to expand upon this, you need to think in terms of "small, very small" - not "fantastically elaborate, convoluted and risky."

The conspiracy I am advocating couldn't be less sophisticated.
And obviously a patsy was required. In fact, two patsies would be preferable.
The function of a patsy is to focus the spotlight of investigation elsewhere. In the case of Oswald, the investigation was solely focused on him to the exclusion of almost any other possibility. It worked like a dream.
Before the investigation had barely begun, Hoover was dictating the result of the investigation - Oswald was to be shown to be the sole assassin. This sounds like some kind of sick joke but it is a reality.

The assassination itself was sloppy and unprofessional. It relied on as much luck as it did proficiency with a rifle (two of the three shots missed the target from very close range for a rifle shot).

Killing the President wasn't like taking out a man who was in the way.
It was an attack on the office of President.
It was an attack on America; it's armed forces, it's intelligence agencies, it's law enforcement and its citizenry.
To imagine the mafia would draw that kind of heat on its operations is naive, to say the least.
This wasn't just a shooting on a street in Dallas.
It directly affected every single person in America at the time, not to mention its global impact.