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

[Charles Collins]

I think what Charles says is on the right track. Across the entire spectrum of Weirdness, as well as political and religious beliefs (both being their own species of Weirdness!), confirmation bias is surely the most difficult pitfall to avoid.

In many areas - the JFKA, UFOs, crop circles, poltergeists, whatever - I don't think I have any confirmation bias at all. I merely find these subjects interesting, but I don't particularly care what the explanation turns out to be or have any great need for a particular explanation to be true.

With something like the survival of consciousness after death, or the existence of a deity - well, yes, I do have much more of a visceral or emotional involvement and thus a stronger confirmation bias. I try to be doubly careful in reaching convictions in these areas, which is why in discussions and debates with Gee-Whiz True Believer fanatics I am often accused of being a skeptic or debunker when this is not true at all (except in the sense in which everyone should remain a bit skeptical of his own most cherished beliefs). Based on truly vast amounts of study and a fair amount of experience, I have arrived at quite strong convictions in these areas - but not to the point of losing rationality or being unable to see the countervailing arguments.

It's really difficult for me to see how someone would have a strong confirmation bias insofar as the JFKA is concerned. But people clearly do - on both sides of the debate, LN and CT alike. What would be the deep need for the LN narrative or any conspiracy theory to be true, to the extent of this need overwhelming the ability to think rationally? The answer has to be that the JFKA is a critical cog in one's worldview. The explanation for the JFKA must to be "X," and "X" will inevitably mesh with one's overarching worldview. It is in fact the overarching worldview that is determining what "X" will be. I think this has to be the explanation when we see a fanatical LNer or CTer who is wedded to his position like a religious fundie and who regards anything to the contrary as practically a personal insult. You're not just challenging his position on the JFKA; you're challenging who he is, what he thinks the world is all about.

And yet ... can confirmation bias really be the explanation when we see someone as intelligent and educated as Michael say the preposterous things he says in regard to the JFKA? As far as I can tell, he says nothing comparably preposterous in his writings about Mormonism, Intellgent Design, the Civil War or the Shroud of Turin. He has to know at some level that the conspiracy he posits is a complete fantasy, impossible in the real world.

I'm thoroughly puzzled. If I were to give him and those like him more credit than "they simply lose the ability to think rationally when it comes to the JFKA," I would say that making these preposterous claims must serve some agenda that isn't clear to me. "I'm just going to shovel so much conspiracy sh*t that sooner or later they'll have to reopen the investigation." Maybe, but this seems a stretch as an explanation for the amount of time and effort that Michael puts into his conspiracy sh*t.

It's a puzzle! Michael, of course, would say he simply follows the evidence and applies the same critical-thinking skills to the JFKA that he applies to his other interests and that the LNers and even I are the ones being ruled by our confirmation biases. He even categorizes me as a fanatical LNer because there can be no shades of gray in the war of Good (CT) versus Evil (LN) in which he sees himself as being engaged.

I remember a debate on some religion forum where atheists made the argument that only magical-thinking dolts believe in a deity. Wait, I said, many of the greatest philosophers, scientists and other academics who have ever lived, right up to the level of Nobel Laureates, have been and are devout theists. Do you seriously think they abandon the critical-thinking skills that have carried them to the pinnacles of their fields and turn into magical-thinking dolts when it comes to their assessment of theism versus atheism? "Yes, we do," came the predictable answer. "They are victims of their confirmation biases." (But the atheists, you see, are not! They are immune to confirmation biases! And on it goes ...)

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.

[Tom Graves]

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.

An anomaly-replete arbitrary anomaly that the KGB has "made hay" from -- e.g., Comrade Oliver Stone's self-described mythological ("to counter the myth of the Warren Report") film, "JFK" -- from Day One in its 1959-on effort to get us to tear ourselves apart.

[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.

[Lance Payette]

Michael continues to demonstrate that he is not the sharpest tool in the epistemological shed.

Let’s take a silly example:

“If Fred’s claim that he fell off the edge of the earth last Tuesday and had to hang on by his fingernails until rescued by his wife is true … the spherical earth theory collapses.”

See the problem?

The spherical earth theory is established to a level of scientific certainty by a vast body of evidence. No rational person is going to give credit to Fred’s claim, or the claims of 100 like him. Even if Fred and Mrs. Fred are entirely sincere, every rational person is going to conclude they are mistaken and is going to favor an alternative explanation that is consistent with a spherical earth.

The LN narrative is supported by a very large body of evidence, analysis and logic. It is not established to a level of scientific certainty, but it is well-established and has survived as the verdict of history. (Even the LN narrative has a fair amount of wiggle room. For example, some of us lean toward Oswald having fired only two shots or the SBT not necessarily accounting for Connally’s wrist wound. There could be quite a number of fairly significant variations in the LN narrative without the narrative as a whole “collapsing.”)

All of Michael’s “smoking guns” have been considered by the WC and HSCA and God knows how many serious researchers. The LN narrative has survived because (1) it is supported by a very large body of evidence and makes by far the most real-world, Occam’s Razor sense, and (2) of the various problem areas (Michael’s smoking guns), not one of them has no explanation that cannot be fitted within the LN narrative.

To “collapse” the LN narrative, you would need something that was genuinely material to the narrative, was established to a level of certainty, with no need for assumptions or speculation, and was flatly IMPOSSIBLE to fit within the LN narrative.

Cliff Varnell at the Ed Forum, to his credit, recognizes this. He insists that the alignment of the holes in JFK’s clothing, the back wound and the throat wound is IMPOSSIBLE to square with the SBT and thus the LN narrative collapses. Cliff does not want to talk about anything else. He has chided Michael for Michael’s efforts to explain away the SBT because (Cliff says) his “alignment” argument SETTLES THE CASE FOR CONSPIRACY, PERIOD.

Ironically, Michael cites the “alignment” argument in his latest post.

But then you look at what Cliff does for an explanation. Everything does line up “rather closely” for there to have been two separate shots, one from the front and one from the back – a remarkable coincidence, yes? We also have the problem of where the bullets went – yes? Cliff hypothesizes CIA-issued ice bullets that melted before exiting the body. Well …

For the “alignment” to be truly IMPOSSIBLE, we would have to know PRECISELY the angle at which the bullet hit the clothing, how the clothing was arranged at that nanosecond (taking into account JFK’s back brace and the bunching of the coat and shirt that is apparent in several photos), how JFK’s body was oriented at that nanosecond, and what the bullet did as it traveled through his body. We don’t know those things with the requisite level of precision to declare the alignment IMPOSSIBLE.

Hence, given the strength of the LN narrative as a whole, most rational people are going to conclude that, yes, the alignment is a bit of a mystery but that the most plausible explanation is one consistent with the LN narrative (typically, bunching).

According to Michael, the LN narrative “COLLAPSES!” if any one of about 100 conspiracy nuggets is true. Yet all of those nuggets have been known for decades and the LN narrative remains intact. The rational majority has concluded for each nugget that there is either an explanation that is consistent with the LN narrative or that there is some flaw in the claim on which the nugget is based.

Hence, Michael’s nuggets, individually and collectively, go nowhere. He’s really just listing 100 “Fred says he fell off the edge” claims. What remains the Holy Grail for CTers is something that is genuinely material to the LN narrative, is established to a level of certainty, with no need for assumptions or speculation, and is flatly IMPOSSIBLE to fit within the LN narrative. As history has shown, the LN narrative is not fragile at all.

[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.

What makes Odio's account so deadly to the lone-gunman theory is the phone call she received from Leopoldo soon after the visit, when Leopoldo told her that "Leon Oswald" was a crazy sharpshooter who thought anti-Castro Cubans should have killed JFK after the Bay of Pigs. The phone call was the main reason she and her sister were so disturbed when they saw Oswald on TV after he was arrested.

The phone call was clearly an attempt to frame Oswald for the assassination weeks before it occurred. This is why lone-gunman theorists have to find any excuse, no matter lame, to reject Silvia Odio's account.

Even if one wants to swallow the WC's spurious claim that the three men who visited the Odio sisters were Loran Hall, William Seymour, and Lawrence Howard, this does not explain the phone call. It is pretty hard to argue that Silvia "misunderstood" what the caller said, much less that she just made up the account of the call.

BTW, when the FBI showed Silvia photos of Hall, Seymour, and Howard, she said none of them looked like the three men who came to her apartment.