JFK Assassination Forum

This is the first post of several that I will present in this thread.

In numerous surveys done in the U.S. and Europe over the years, including fairly recently, the percentage of people who have said they believe JFK was killed by a conspiracy has ranged from 56% to 85%, with about 6% to 10% undecided. Even in the 1970s, surveys found that a sizable majority of Americans did not buy the Warren Commission's lone-gunman story. I think one of the reasons for the rejection of the single-assassin scenario is that it does not hold up when analyzed with logic and critical thinking.

Truth is not subject to popular opinion. It does not require a majority opinion. Most of the people surveyed are woefully uninformed about the evidence in the case which overwhelmingly points to Oswald as the assassin and there is not a scrap of credible evidence that points to anybody else. I challenged you to produce such evidence earlier this week and you passed on the opportunity.

   

Let us begin by looking at the key issue of motive.

Motive is not a key issue. It is entirely unnecessary to prove Oswald's motive. It can be fun to guess but nobody really knows because he didn't tell anybody his motive.

-- The lone-gunman theory is unable to provide a believable, credible motive for its alleged lone gunman. By all accounts, Oswald liked JFK. No one ever claimed to hear Oswald voice any intent to harm JFK. If Oswald's motive was to make a name for himself in history, why did he vehemently deny shooting JFK? If Oswald had killed JFK to make himself famous, one would logically expect that he would have proudly taken credit for JFK's death and announced his justifications to the world, but he did no such thing.

After Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, she made no effort to deny her guilt but proudly defended her action. She openly voiced two motives for her assassination attempt: (1) her anger over Ford's alleged destruction of the environment, and (2) her desire to draw attention to the Manson family.

After Leon Czolgosz was arrested for assassinating President William McKinley in 1901, he staunchly defended his action and made no secret of his motive. He said he viewed McKinley as an oppressive leader and was convinced it was his duty to kill an "enemy of the good people--the working people."

When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theatre in 1865, he loudly made his motive clear seconds after he did the shooting, shouting to the shocked audience "sic semper tyrannis," i.e., "thus always to tyrants."

None of these cases are the least relevant to the JFK assassination. You seem to believe all assassins think alike.

But Oswald behaved in a completely different manner. At every opportunity, whether under police interrogation or when speaking with journalists, he fiercely denied shooting anyone, and he told the police--and his brother--that the evidence against him was fraudulent, even going so far as to claim he was a patsy.

I guess he never got a copy of the assassin's rule book.

Furthermore, according to the lone-gunman theory, Oswald tried to shoot right-wing extremist General Edwin Walker in April 1963. Now why, oh why, oh why would the same allegedly pro-Soviet and pro-Cuban Marxist who supposedly tried to shoot the ultra-conservative General Walker turn around and shoot the center-left JFK, who was publicly trying to make peace with the Soviets, especially given the fact that JFK had publicly disgraced Walker and had relieved Walker of command? That makes no sense.

Why would you think a senseless person would act sensibly. It doesn't matter if Oswald's actions makes sense to anybody else. It made sense to him.

-- The conspiracy theory of the assassination can provide concrete, documented motives for its suspects.

Motives without out evidence does not establish guilt. I'll bet there are lots of people in this country who wish Thomas Crooks had been a better marksman. Does that make them complicit in the attempt on Trump's life.

It has been amply documented, including with filmed interviews, that certain CIA officers who worked with the anti-Castro Cubans, along with some of the anti-Castro Cubans themselves, viscerally hated JFK and regarded him as a traitor. And we have two credible anecdotal accounts of CIA officers proudly admitting to close associates that they played a role in JFK's death.

Credible to whom?

One of the best books on evidence that some CIA officers and anti-Castro Cubans were involved in the assassination is former HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi's 1993 book The Last Investigation.

Oh, goody. Another JFKA conspiracy book. How many of these have been written? They can't seem to agree on who the bad guys were.

There is even stronger evidence of motive for certain Mafia elements. The historical record is clear, and no reputable scholar denies, that the Kennedy administration was waging an intense war against the Mafia, and that the Mafia viewed JFK and RFK as threats to their very existence.

OK, so JFK had enemies. What president hasn't. That doesn't mean they were behind the assassination. There have been 3 assassination attempts on Trump. Should we believe that the people  who hate Trump were behind  these attempts or should we believe they were acts committed by deranged individuals? In lieu of any evidence to the contrary, I choose to believe the latter.

Wiretaps recorded some Mafia leaders expressing a wish to see JFK dead before the assassination, and two informants reported that they heard Mafia leaders talking about a plot to kill Kennedy in the months leading up to JFK's death. Moreover, after the assassination, a government informant heard Mafia kingpin Carlos Marcello admit to playing a role in the assassination.

Now all you need is evidence connecting these Mafia figures to the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Three of the best books on the evidence that certain Mafia elements were involved in the assassination are Anthony Summers' 2013 book Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (updated version), Lamar Waldron's 2013 book The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination, and Dr. David Kaiser's 2008 book The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Are we supposed to believe every conspiracy book that comes down the pike? What makes these books more credible than all of the others?

Summers was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2012 and has twice won the Crime Writers' Association's award for top non-fiction works. In recognition of his scholarship, Summers was made a Fellow of the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin.

Waldron is a respected journalist and historian. His historical research and non-fiction books have won praise from Publishers Weekly, Vanity Fair, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, and major publications in Europe. His research has been the subject of two prime-time specials on the Discovery Channel, produced by NBC News. He has been featured on CNN and the History Channel.

Kaiser is a respected historian. When Kaiser wrote his JFK book, he was a professor of history at the Naval War College. He later held professorships at Harvard University, Williams College, and Carnegie Mellon University. He earned his B.A. and Ph.D. in history from Harvard. He is now retired. (On a side note, Kaiser concluded that the HSCA's acoustical evidence was valid.)

Really smart people are perfectly capable of coming up with really stupid ideas.

Quote from: Lance Payette on Today at 01:34:11 PM
Anyone who has not caught MTG making substantial errors needs to make an appointment with Dr. William Niederhut, Harvard-trained psychiatrist, for in-depth counseling.

Perhaps a Freudian reply?

I'll let people read our exchanges and decide if you've ever caught me making substantial errors. I think objective readers will see (1) that your knowledge of the JFK case is poor, and (2) that I've caught you making numerous substantial errors, not to mention a number of hilarious gaffes.

On those somewhat rare occasions when you do venture out from behind your silly "conspiracy theorists have warped brains" talking point, you usually get your clock cleaned and prove your knowledge of the case is badly lacking.

Most of the time, as you've done here, you ignore troublesome facts and resort to evasive posturing and ad hominem attacks. I would just note that you didn't say one blessed word about the behavior of hollow point bullets vs. FMJ bullets.

I am on the conspiracy side mostly because of the the nature of the JFK/JBC wounds and the timing difference in the shots that came “close together” whether 1 and 2 or 2 and 3.

But sadly, all the techniques you point out are widely used among those on the conspiracy side.

One of my favorites is what I call the “Cleanup Squad” that has for decades murdered inconvenient witnesses and got away with it every time. According to the book “Hit List” there are around 40 victims. However, with that many victims you would think there is a clear arrow pointing to who was behind the JFKA. But the list of victims points everywhere.

Fortunately for all of us, I have already applied logic and critical thinking to the JFKA. See if you recognize anyone. In fact, I may have had MTG in mind when I originally wrote this.

It is hilarious that you would cite that silly drivel as "logic and critical thinking." I note that you did not say one single word about any of the facts in my post.
 
To save any newcomers some time, Lance Payette argues that conspiracy theorists suffer from a mental disorder, from defective brains, from warped thinking, etc. He says it's not really their fault but that their brains are just wired to conjure up conspiracies where there are none. Seriously, that is his position.

Here are just a few of the people who must suffer from warped thinking because they believe JFK was killed by a conspiracy:

* Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), chairwoman of the U.S. House of Representatives' Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.

* Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., one of JFK's nephews, a famous environmental lawyer, and currently the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

* Dan Hardaway, former HSCA investigator who investigated Oswald's activity in Mexico City for the HSCA.

* Edwin Lopez, former HSCA investigator who investigated Oswald's activity in Mexico City for the HSCA. He and Hardaway found evidence that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City a few months before the assassination.

* Dr. Roger McCarthy, a ballistics expert with Failure Analysis, which assisted with the
American Bar Association's mock Oswald trials in the 1990s.

* Dr. David Kaiser, a former professor of history at the Naval War College, Williams College, Carnegie Mellon University, and Harvard University.

* The late G. Robert Blakey, a professor of law at Notre Dame University who served as the chief counsel for the HSCA.

* The late Gary Cornwell, the former deputy chief counsel for the HSCA and a prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice Organized Crime and Racketeering Section for seven years.

* The late Dr. Joseph Dolce, an Army wound ballistics expert who played a leading role in the
WC's wound ballistics tests.

* The late Senator Richard Schweiker.

* Senator Christopher Dodd, who served on the HSCA when he was a member of the
House of Representatives.

* The late Senator Richard Russell, who served on the WC.

* The later Senator Sherman Cooper, who served on the WC.

* The late Representative Hale Boggs, who served on the WC.

* The late Robert McNeil, formerly of the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS.

* The late Ambassador William Atwood, former Special Assistant to the U.S. delegation to the
United Nations.

* President Lyndon Johnson. (We now know from the Johnson White House tapes that
Johnson rejected the single-bullet theory. We also know from former Johnson aides and
associates that privately Johnson said he believed Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy.)

* The late Dr. Milton Helpern, a renowned forensic pathologist and formerly the medical
examiner for New York City. Helpern said the SBT was impossible.

* The late Dr. John Nichols, a forensic pathologist and formerly a professor of pathology
at the University of Kansas. Nichols, too, said the SBT was impossible.

* The late Carlos Hathcock, a Marine sniper who was widely regarded as the greatest
sniper of the 20th century. Hathcock scoffed at the idea that someone who barely qualified in the second of the three Marine Corps rifle qualification categories could have performed the shooting feat alleged by the WC.

* The late Evelyn Lincoln, who was Kennedy's White House secretary.

* The late Dr. George Burkley, Kennedy's personal physician. Burkley said he knew of evidence that JFK was killed by a conspiracy.

* The late Robert F. Kennedy, who was JFK's brother, who served as JFK's U.S. Attorney General, and who later served as a U.S. Senator from New York. Though he publicly endorsed the WC's findings, he privately rejected them and was certain his brother was killed by a conspiracy.

As I've pointed out before, no wound ballistics test has ever duplicated the SBT.

-- Martin Fackler's 1992 SBT wound ballistics test was fraudulent. First of all, not one of Fackler's test bullets passed through a simulated human neck and then destroyed 4-5 inches of rib bone while tearing through a simulated human chest before striking the cadaver radius bones. Not one.

Let me repeat that so the phony nature of Fackler's test can sink in: Fackler made no effort to simulate a human neck, a human chest, and a rib bone. Not one of his bullets hit anything before they hit the cadaver radius bones. Fackler simply shot cadaver radius bones with bullets whose velocity had been lowered to 1100-1300 FPS!

I suspect Fackler rigged the test because he knew full well that if his test bullets first had had to transit a human neck and then tear through a human chest and demolish 4-5 inches of rib bone in the process, the bullets would have emerged markedly deformed, just as they did in the AAT test and in Lattimer's test.

-- In Dr. Joseph Dolce's SBT test for the WC, even 6.5 mm FMJ bullets fired into cotton wadding emerged with more deformity than CE 399.

-- In the 1967 CBS SBT test, 6.5 mm FMJ bullets that merely passed through a 12-inch gelatin block before hitting cadaver wrists never had enough velocity to penetrate the simulated thigh, and some of them never even managed to exit the wrists.  One of the expert forensic consultants for the CBS test, Dr. W. F. Enos, said the CBS test "disproved" the SBT and that the SBT was "highly improbable" (Mal Jay Hayman, Burying the Lead: The Media and the JFK Assassination, Trine Day LLC, 2019, pp. 214, 218).

-- In the 1992 AAT SBT test, a 6.5 mm FMJ bullet was fired into two gelatin blocks. The second gelatin block contained animal bones to simulate the shattering of a rib bone and the smashing of a wrist bone. The bullet transited the first gelatin block and penetrated deep into the second block and struck the animal bones. It emerged markedly more deformed than CE 399.

-- In Lattimer's SBT test, one of the test bullets was split at the nose in several places and was markedly deformed, much more deformed than CE 399, and this wasn't even one of the bullets that had struck all three simulation objects. When interviewed by Stewart Galanor, Lattimer admitted that he had thrown away all the bullets that hit all three simulation objects. Gee, I wonder why.

Also, the historic 2023 Knott Laboratory SBT trajectory analysis, the most sophisticated and data-intensive SBT trajectory study ever done, determined the SBT is impossible, finding that JFK's and Connally's wounds do not line up in a trajectory back to the sixth-floor window.

Knott Lab's experts conducted a high-definition laser scan of Dealey Plaza to generate a point cloud of up to 2 million points per second, to accurately measure point-to-point anywhere in the scene. Using a 3D laser scanner (Leica RTC360), Knott Lab's experts did 36 laser scans of Dealey Plaza, producing a digital reconstruction of the plaza that has 851 million data points. No other SBT trajectory analysis has included such a detailed, accurate digital model of the plaza and of JFK's and Connally's positions in the limousine.

From this point cloud (the digital model of the plaza), Knott Lab's forensic engineers were able to match images from the scene and the Zapruder film using photogrammetry. They modeled the presidential limousine using multiple photographs and established the correct dimensions of the vehicle. Through a process called match moving, they synced frames from the Zapruder film into the digital recreation of the scene. The match moving enabled the alignment of the digital models of Kennedy and Connally in the vehicle to establish their positions frame by frame throughout the incident.

It is worth noting that NASA's Thomas Canning, who did the HSCA's trajectory analysis, had to assume that Connally was several inches farther to the left than the photographic evidence shows he was. Canning's trajectory diagram put one-third of Connally's torso between the seats and had Connally's left shoulder more than halfway to Mrs. Connally's seat (see JFK Exhibit F-144). Even after moving Connally so far to the left, Canning had to admit that the trajectory lines of JFK's and Connally's wounds "do not coincide," a problem that Canning attributed to "experimental error."

Moreover, Canning assumed that Connally was hit at Z190. He did so (1) because the Photographic Evidence Panel correctly determined that the first bullet that hit JFK was fired at right around Z188-190, and (2) because he was forced to assume the single-bullet theory was correct.