The Lone-Gunman Theory: An Extremely Fragile House of Cards

[Lance Payette]

Do you think that there is a way for folks to try to separate the JFKA from their worldview, make it a “less critical cog” in their thinking. Perhaps they could try to just consider the JFKA an arbitrary abnormality. I know that when I simply opened my mind and thought that maybe there was a chance that the investigators, etc actually involved in the investigation and reporting got it (mostly) right, I began to consider things differently and eventually converted from believing that there “must have been a conspiracy” to seeing that there really doesn’t appear to be any credible evidence of a conspiracy. But I believe that I do remain open to being able to objectively consider any new evidence of a conspiracy that might arise.

At the risk of sounding like an insufferable know-it-all - which I am, of course, but I hate to sound like one  - I think it's virtually impossible in this day and age. These days, it's a combination of (1) strong confirmation bias combined with (2) the ability to live in an echo chamber of folks who continually reinforce that confirmation bias thanks to the internet and all forms of social media. Across the entire spectrum of political, religious and weirdness beliefs, huge numbers of people are essentially cultists. They would literally have to be deprogrammed the way someone is deprogrammed out of the Moonies or Scientology - no easy task. The cult comes to define these individuals and serves as a very comforting substitute family.

I started out my religious journey in a fundie organization that many people would describe as cult-like, to the extent of entering a graduate seminary. I dropped out after a year because the light bulb went on that fast: No one in his right mind could believe this stuff. We're all just pretending in order to fit in. Why did I have that epiphany? I really don't know. Maybe I've been blessed or cursed with the "ultra-rational gene." That epiphany didn't cause me to abandon the entire enterprise but launched me on a l-o-n-g quest for what I actually could and did believe. So now, like any rational person, I worship a little plastic figurine of Sai Baba that I keep on the dashboard of my car. 

I truly have no answers. Across the entire spectrum of political, religious and weirdness beliefs, I have somehow deprogrammed myself (or at least kid myself that I have) through intense study and thought and the good old rational gene eventually kicking in. I have no real clue as to what is going on with someone like Michael or his LN-fanatic counterpart. But these days there are Michaels everywhere, not just the JFKA community by any means. As a veteran of perhaps 40 internet forums - eventually banned from all of them and proud of it, by God!  - I've been down this road again and again with Gee-Whiz True Believers of every stripe. (The Ed Forum, to its credit, was the only one from which I self-banned to wild applause.)

Ones like Michael are the most puzzling because he is clearly very intelligent, very educated and capable of rational and non-wacky thought in other areas. But when it comes to the JFKA, he posts stuff that is literally the equivalent of "The earth is flat" or "King Charles is a reptilian alien." When he is called out on this, he just digs in his heels even deeper. When his absurdities are factually exposed, he just moves on to the next absurdity without missing a beat. Maybe it's some combination of conspiracy-prone mindset, confirmation bias, huge ego, self-amusment and hidden agenda that has hardened into a one-man MTG Cult. Those whose minds are simply not tracking in the channels of normality are more obvious and not nearly as interesting.

"Stay thirsty, my friends."

[Lance Payette]

I would add, while my wife is making the oatmeal: The JFKA debate is essentially a religious debate. There will NEVER be a definitive answer. There will ALWAYS be uncertainty and ambiguity. The LN narrative has X% probability of being correct. Each one of the myriad conspiracy theories has X% probability of being correct. You simply have to go through your own little Bayesian analysis and reach some level of conviction: OK, I my conviction is that the LN narrative (i.e., my version of it) has a 60% probability of being correct, while Oswald and some tiny cadre of fellow Castroites has a 26% probability and a Mafia hit with Oswald as a participating patsy has 14% probabilty. Then you study to revise these percentages as best you can and live with the inevitable uncertainty and ambiguity.

In any religious debate, what drives the Gee-Whiz True Believers (of every stripe) absolutely mad is the suggestion that there can be any uncertainty and ambiguity: No, we KNOW the LN narrative is correct! No, we KNOW the CIA did it! And we will shout you down if you believe otherwise because the LN or CT narrative defines who we are and how we view the world. Been there, done that.

Apologies to Sai Baba. I confused him with the Most Interesting Man in the World.

"Stay thirsty, my friends."

[Michael T. Griffith]

Still more examples:

-- If Silvia and Annie Odio were not mistaken, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

In September 1963, two Hispanics using the "war names" of Leopoldo and Angelo visited the apartment of Silvia Odio in Dallas, Texas. Leopoldo and Angelo were accompanied by an American whom they introduced as "Leon Oswald." Silvia's sister Annie was in the apartment at the time and witnessed the meeting. "Leon" the American said virtually nothing. Leopoldo did most of the talking. He wanted Silvia, whose father had been deeply involved in anti-Castro efforts, to help in the anti-Castro cause. Silvia declined because she did not want to be involved with a group that would commit violence. The three men sat a few feet from Silvia, so she got an up-close prolonged look at them.

Within 48 hours after the visit, Leopoldo phoned Silvia and told her that the American, "Leon Oswald," was an expert marksman and a former Marine. He said Oswald believed the Cubans should have shot JFK after the Bay of Pigs:

"He said that the Cubans, we did not have any guts because we should have assassinated Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs." (10 HSCA 27)

Disturbed by such talk, Silvia told Annie about the troubling phone call.

Silvia Odio wrote to her father about the encounter and also told several of her friends about it.

Soon after the assassination, Silvia and Annie independently recognized Oswald on TV as the "Leon Oswald" who had visited Silvia's apartment two months earlier. They were both very frightened and worried about their safety. They feared that the two anti-Castro Cubans and the American had been involved in JFK's death.

David Slawson, the WC attorney who interviewed Silvia Odio, said Silvia was "checked out thoroughly” and that “the evidence is unanimously favorable, both as to her character and reliability, and as to her intelligence." WC attorney William Coleman agreed with Slawson about Silvia Odio. Both Slawson and Coleman went so far as to suggest in an internal memo, based on the evidence they had uncovered, that Oswald, despite his public posture as a Castro sympathizer, was actually an agent of anti-Castro exiles. We now know that WC chief counsel J. Lee Rankin and WC attorney Wesley Liebeler also believed Silvia Odio was credible.

Silvia Odio and her story posed a serious problem for the WC, since her sister Annie was in the room when Leopoldo introduced the American as "Leon Oswald." The WC asked the FBI to check into the matter. The FBI provided a fraudulent explanation for the Odio incident. The FBI explanation was based on a fabricated story told by Loran Hall, who said that he and two associates were the ones who visited the Odios, and that one of his associates looked a lot like Oswald. This gave the WC an excuse to conclude that the Odio incident was a case of mistaken identity.

Forced into a corner by the force and character of Odio's account, WC apologists have resorted to the lame claim that she was prone to hyper hysteria and panic attacks to the point of being mentally ill, even though she was educated and earned a good income, even though her sister Annie backed up every essential part of her account, and even though the WC attorneys who investigated the matter believed she was credible.

-- If JFK's coat and shirt did not significantly bunch, and bunch in nearly perfect correspondence with each other, just before the back-wound bullet struck, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

WC defenders have floated the zany and demonstrably false bunched-clothing theory because the holes in the back of JFK's coat and shirt are over 5 inches below the collar and place the back wound far too low for the single-bullet theory to be even theoretically possible.

Photographic evidence proves that JFK's coat was not markedly bunched, and was barely bunched at all, just before the bullet struck. I discuss this issue at some length in my online article "JFK's Clothing Proves the Single-Bullet Theory Is Impossible,"  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MAgWA0frOLVeWY6ok9nzdrgpRN4Wv1AL/view.

-- If the Dallas law enforcement officers who reported encountering phony Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza soon after the assassination were not mistaken, the lone-gunman theory collapses.

Dallas police officer Joe Smith and Dallas police sergeant D. V. Harkness both reported encountering men who identified themselves as Secret Service agents, but we know that no Secret Service agents were in Dealey Plaza after the shooting.

Naturally, lone-gunman theorists reject these accounts. They offer weak, unconvincing explanations for these officers' straightforward accounts. I discuss this issue in detail in my online article "The Man Who Wasn’t There: Were There Phony Secret Service Agents in Dealey Plaza?," https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xIXl_HXM5_y_L5sLRGv1XO_vLUc8sHdC/view.