JFK Assassination Forum

I think kindly Larry H. would say “Well, it could be” to virtually any conspiracy theory, so I hardly consider that much of an endorsement. (Unfortunately, the "many leads" that Hancock and Boylan have uncovered don't lead very convincingly to Oswald or Dealey Plaza.)

Here in the real world, I just don’t think the KGB-did-it scenario survives the threshold test.

1. Yes, Russian hardliners regarded the Cuban missile crisis (CMC) as a humiliation. However, Khruschev remained in power for nearly a full year after the JFKA.

2. I just read a long, Harvard-published, almost hour-by-hour piece about the CMC by Marvin Kalb, who was CBS’s chief Moscow correspondent at the time. He says that Berlin, not Cuba, was Khruschev’s real obsession and that the prevailing sentiment was that Cuba was too far away and too unimportant to allow it to become a line in the sand.

3. Thanks to the behind-the-scenes agreement to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey, the CMC was less a humiliation for Russia than those who weren’t in the know might have thought. In some ways, moreover, it made the Russians appear pragmatic and even reasonable.

4. The negotiations made pretty clear that JFK was not eager for any kind of actual confrontation that posed the threat of war. He was someone the Russians could work with. KGB intelligence presumably would have known that the Joint Chiefs were itching for nuclear war and had told JFK that 40,000,000 American deaths would be an acceptable cost. Would the Russians really have wanted to replace JFK?

5. Could the Russians have known what they would have with LBJ as President? Had he ever said or done anything that would have given them comfort that they would fare better with him than with JFK?

6. In all of the various KGB file releases, smuggled documents, defectors, former KGB officers, etc., has there been any solid indication that the KGB was behind or even encouraged the JFKA? I don’t believe there has.

7. Unless the KGB was being run by Curly, Larry and Moe, would they seriously have recruited an erratic former defector with in-your-face Cuban and Marxist sympathies to carry out this revenge hit? Isn’t this self-evidently ridiculous? Oswald with his M-C and Dealey Plaza were the best the supermen of the KGB could do?

It just makes no sense at all – does it? LBJ (as well as RFK and Jackie) didn't suspect the Russians were behind the JFKA. He knew people would make this connection, and the Joint Chiefs would encourage it, for precisely the reasons set forth in #7.

As always, it seems to me, this theory takes a handful of known facts – Oswald had defected to Russia, Oswald went to the Soviet Embassy in MC, Oswald was a Marxist, Oswald was obsessed with Cuba – and weaves them into a completely speculative “coulda happened” but pretty much preposterous KGB-did-it theory.

For that matter, what did the KGB supposedly DO? Plant Oswald in the TSBD? Put all the facts together on 11-21 or thereabouts and suggest it would helpful if he shot JFK? Tell him in MC they certainly wouldn’t be unhappy if shot JFK? I really just don’t even understand what those who think the KGB was behind the JFKA are even talking about in terms of WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED in this theory.

This is one of my absolute favorite Russian movies from 1967: "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style." You can quickly see how slavishly the Russians copied the Three Stooges. In fact, Russian movies of the era 1950-1975 in general are SO FAR from what you probably picture as grim Soviet propaganda that it's jaw-dropping. The Three Stooges make their appearance at 16:12 and dominate the rest of the movie.

Yes, it was traveling backward because that is the only way the lead core could have struck JBC's wrist and deposited the lead fragments there. That is also the only way the base gets flattened as opposed to the nose.

Ballistic gel tests show that a Carcano bullet will start tumbling after exiting from soft tissue which is all CE399 did when it passed through JFK's torso.

   A "Pristine" bullet breaking bones and traveling backward?  That only happens in the "Looney Tunes".   And this in the face of SA Landis finding a bullet in the BACK Seat area of the JFK Limo, which would tie to the shallow JFK BACK Wound?

You have “ifs” too. You just don’t acknowledge them.  You will notice that all my “ifs” relate to evidence being true.  All your “ifs relate to evidence being false.…. but with your implicit “ifs” stated:

If the 45+ witnesses for the 1……2…3 shot pattern were wrong and if the 23+ witnesses who said JFK did not smile and wave after the first shot but acted like he was hit by it were wrong, and if the 20+ witnesses who put the first shot time after z180 were all wrong and the first shot missed the entire car so that CE399 was the second bullet Oswald fired at JFK, it struck high on JFK's back about two inches right of his spine and exited from just below his Adam's apple.

That isn't an "if".

It began tumbling as it exited and if JBC, sitting in front of JFK, was positioned so that his right armpit was at least 4 inches left of JFK’s midline, it entered JBC's back near his right armpit traveling almost sideways making an elongated entrance wound (if Dr. Shaw was wrong in describing the wound as elliptical in shape and was a small tunnelling wound in the underlying tissue). It exited JBC's chest just below his right nipple, taking out a section of rib and continued tumbling. It struck JBC's right wrist traveling almost backward, depositing small lead fragments from lead core which was exposed at the base of the bullet. From there, if the laws of physics were momentarily suspended and instead of deflecting away from the point of contact with the radius the whole bullet continued through the wrist making a small, initially unnoticed transverse slit in the volar side, it made a shallow penetration into JBC's left thigh before working it's way out and was discovered at Parkland Hospital on a gurney.
… so long as everyone knows that you are assuming all that evidence to be wrong…

None of the above "ifs" are mine. You inserted them.

Seriously? You NOW have this Magic Bullet traveling, "....almost backward"? These are the contortions this bullet is now making? This is right in line with expanding the extended firing time for the 3 shots from 6+ seconds to now 10+ seconds. This "story" continues changing and only getting more and more ludicrous.

Yes, it was traveling backward because that is the only way the lead core could have struck JBC's wrist and deposited the lead fragments there. That is also the only way the base gets flattened as opposed to the nose.

Ballistic gel tests show that a Carcano bullet will start tumbling after exiting from soft tissue which is all CE399 did when it passed through JFK's torso.

Since some are perhaps not familiar with Greg Doudna's off-Broadway production "The Walker Follies," here it is in a nutshell from one of Greg's recent posts at the Ed Forum:

The reconstruction in the staged shot is that Walker was signaled by man No. 1 who was standing in the southwest end of the church parking lot away from his car with its engine running and headlights turned on a short distance away, standing near the wooden stockade fence over which Kirk Coleman would climb and look seconds later after the shot. Walker could see man No. 1 through the north-facing window right next to where Walker was sitting at his desk. When signaled by man No. 1, Walker would drop to the floor. In the alley, after man No. 1 signaled to them, Surrey and Oswald have a rifle and one of them--since Surrey is in command, was more experienced with shooting, and was protective of Walker's safety, probably was the actual shooter, rather than Oswald—fires a single shot through the west-facing window at where Walker's head would have been if Walker were sitting normally at his desk--then hands the rifle to Oswald who runs off with it in the other direction, while Surrey takes a few steps out into the parking lot and is seen by Coleman walking to his parked car to drive away normally.

Your first sanity check: Could you read that without giggling? If you could not - indeed, you giggled, tittered, chuckled and guffawed - you pass. MTG apparently did not pass. Did not pass big-time.

If Walker - whom, you hopefully understand, is an active participant in the Follies - wants to stage an assassination attempt, WHY THE HELL is ANY of this elaborate scenario required??? And MTG takes this nuttiness even further and has hitting the window frame somehow EVIDENCE it was a staged attempt. I mean, WHAT???

If Doudna and MTG, both of whom are educated and intelligent, are actually serious, they have more loose screws than ACE Hardware. And people like Tom Gram think Greg is really onto something here. WHAT???

I keep waiting for folks who posit these silly scenarios to say "Hey, of course, I'm just goofing around, playing with ideas just for fun." But they never do.

Why do I mostly not engage with MTG's dark "facts"? Because his underlying theories are irrational to the point of "this guy belongs in an institution."

Why do people not understand that the THRESHOLD inquiry is:

DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER OUT HERE IN THE REAL WORLD?

The problem with the lunatic fringe of conspiracy theorizing, which is where MTG and Doudna are solidly ensconced, is that they DON'T EVEN CARE if it makes sense.