What evidence of a conspiracy would we expect to find?

[Lance Payette]

While looking for something else, I stumbled upon this very thorough overview of the Mafia-did-it theory. A little more about Jack Ruby than I would like because I just can't picture the Mafia relying on him, but a piece that is worth reading. The author, Nicholson Baker, is not just some internet schmoe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker.

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/dallas-killers-club

[John Corbett]

While looking for something else, I stumbled upon this very thorough overview of the Mafia-did-it theory. A little more about Jack Ruby than I would like because I just can't picture the Mafia relying on him, but a piece that is worth reading. The author, Nicholson Baker, is not just some internet schmoe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker.

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/dallas-killers-club

The reason I briefly became a CT back in the 1980s was because I got hoodwinked by a TV investigative reporter named Jack Anderson who put together a theory that the assassination was a collaboration between the Mafia and the CIA who had a shared interest in getting rid of Castro. I accepted what he was spouting on the face of it without doing proper due diligence. At the time I was woefully uninformed about the assassination which made it easy for me to be duped by Anderson's piece. The more I looked into it, the less convincing it became. What neither Anderson nor any other proponent of the Mafia/CIA partnership in the JFKA is how did either of these entities knew to place Oswald in the TSBD 6 weeks before the JFKA when the motorcade had not even been planned nor the route selected. The JFKA was a crime of opportunity and the evidence points to one man and only one man. When somebody presents some actual evidence Oswald was working with others, I'll start paying attention. Until then, all this conspiracy stuff is just so much hot air. 

[Kevin Balch]

Mafia hits are usually crude affairs done up close and personal. The most sophisticated one I know of was the one on Bugsy Siegal. The Mafia also decides on hits of any significance by consensus. So many of the Mafia figures were wiretapped and under surveillance that any attempt to get consensus would have easily been detected. A proposed assassination of Tom Dewey was vetoed because it could not get consensus and would bring down a lot of heat on everybody.

Intelligence organizations like to use organized crime for their extensive networks and moral ambiguities. The OSS used Lucky Luciano’s outfit to guard the NY docks from German saboteurs and to resist Mussolini in Italy. Mafia connections were probably the link to Jack Ruby. But which intelligence agency?

By the way, Hoffa still went to prison.