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

[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.

[Paul May]

No doubt Carlos Marcello had him killed, and if not Dallas it would have been elsewhere. Oswald and another shooter on the knoll killed JFK, Oswald killed Tippit, and Ruby killed Oswald to keep him quiet. That is your small conspiracy. 4 shots 3 hits 1 miss. The rest of the conspiracy stuff is either confusion or untrue.

62 years later, this nonsense still exists. Simply unreal.

[Lance Payette]

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.

Nope, doesn't work.

In a professional hit, a patsy is not required. Your guy does the deed and is gone. It doesn't matter who suspects you, because they are never going to prove it. This would be especially the case with the JFKA, where there were probably 50 diverse and plausible suspects.

A patsy vastly complicates the scenario and invites questions that you don't need. Especially a live patsy. If anyone involved with the JFKA had actually been thinking in terms of a patsy, said patsy would have been some dead Cuban who was planted with the rifle with a "suicide" round in his head. Even I, a rank amateur at planning assassinations, can grasp this.

Whoever and whatever LBJ, the Mafia, the CIA, Army Intelligence, Yada Yada were, they weren't amateurs. They weren't the Three Stooges.

Your mind is stuck in ad hoc gear. Think small, very small - and rational, if that's possible.

[Jarrett Smith]

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."

I don't think Oswald was to be a "patsy", but nobody expected his encounter with Tippit and killing him. Who was the "SS agent" behind the fence? Why was ruby at Parkland? So many questions with no answers.