Matthews on the assassination:  "I think we know what happened. No one’s come up with any evidence that really supports an alternative theory. They have questions, of course; they always will. I think part of it is in Shakespeare, the grand protagonist must be felled or challenged by a great protagonist, it can’t be petty, it can’t be a John Hinckley. All of the assassins throughout history have basically been pretty pathetic people. So the reality is so much different than the dramatic notion we all carry with us that it must be an Iago figure. It can’t just be some guy disillusioned from the Soviet Union who carries a torch for Castro.

I’ve written about this in a number of books. Oswald had a very consistent left-wing fanaticism about him. It’s not hard to figure. I always say to people who have some big conspiracy theory: Just tell me this: How come he had that job at the book depository way before they had the parade route that day? I’ve been working around government a long time, so I don’t have this spooky notion of the government or the CIA. I don’t think some dark forces are at work."

People think great events need a great cause or force behind it. It couldn't be this pathetic Oswald changing history so dramatically. But history can turn on small things, it doesn't have to be major forces. The problem with the conspiracy crowd is they can't accept this, that history changed so much because some nobody with a $20 rifle was behind it.

Link/source: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/xxxx-st-chris-matthews-jfk-50-years-assassination-20131122-story.html

One JFKA CT narrative is that President JFK had decided to withdraw from South Vietnam, and so the military-industrial complex, along with the CIA, had JFK waxed, maybe through the cat's paw of angry anti-Castro exiles who felt betrayed after the Bay of Pigs.

The narrative has never really been compelling, as JFK had barely indicated tentative plans to withdraw from SV, and even if there were less boosts on the ground, US aid would still pour into in SV, in the form of naval and airpower, intel, diplomatic support, war materiel and money.

In his defense there are a lot of conspiracy people here who believe things that are simply not possible; so, he's not alone. Was the Oliver Stone movie or the Garrison thesis any more unbelievable, any more illogical? Millions of people saw Stone's movie - it was widely praised; thousands of people hear Garrison's claims - he is still heralded for his work by some.

We have people who come here day-after-day for years saying "There's no evidence Oswald shot Tippit" or "There's no evidence Oswald owned the rifle." That's almost as illogical as the claim that Ruby didn't shoot Oswald.

In his interview with Gil Toff in 1971 Jack Dougherty told Toff that he was alone in the Domino Room eating lunch while Oswald was up in the 2nd Floor Lunch room eating his lunch...

Truly helped destroy Dougherty's credibility by calling him retarded and defaming him as his supervisor and undermining his statements...

It seems obvious to me that the reason Truly did that is because Dougherty refused to go along with the framing of Oswald and told the truth that Oswald was up in the 2nd Floor Lunch Room in his interviews...And that was difficult to do damage control for by the conspirators and was resolved by destroying Dougherty's credibility...

Domino Room is out Zeon...And, if you recall, Lovelady said he looked in there before going out on the front steps with Shelley and Stanton...

That is a very good point. I had forgotten about that map.

Yes, initially federal investigators acknowledged the bullet strike that Foster had observed and that Dallas police sources had initially confirmed, and they tried to determine when it was fired.

Of course, the main problem was that they were already chained down by the three-shot scenario. They soon realized that none of their supposed three shots, nor a fragment from those shots, could have hit the grass near the manhole cover. And that's why the WC ended up lamely dismissing the bullet strike.

The WC's lone-gunman theory would have been much more credible and defensible if the Commission had posited that the supposed single shooter fired four shots, one shot before the Z133 break in the Zapruder film, one shot while the limo was passing beneath the oak tree at (the split-second break in the oak tree's foliage), one shot at around Z234-236 (which would have aligned with Connally's choice of impact frame), and one shot at Z312. This would have given the alleged lone assassin a plausible amount of time between shots (4 shots in 379 frames or 20.7 seconds), and would have given the WC one more missed shot. Ah, but the three shell casings conveniently and suspiciously left behind in the sixth-floor sniper's nest prevented the positing of such a scenario.

Yes, and federal investigators and WC staffers soon realized this, which is one of the reasons the bullet strike had to be denied, even though it was well documented.

The argument that every single one of the witnesses was mistaken and that this was all just a giant misunderstanding is unserious and discrediting. Anyone who peddles this line needs to explain what else could have hit the grass in such a way as to make Officer Foster believe that a bullet had hit the grass.

Yes, the theories that WC apologists have offered to explain the bullet strike in the grass require wildly implausible scenarios. Their attempts to explain the bullet strike are even worse and zanier than their attempts to explain the Tague wounding -- and that's saying a lot.