JFK Assassination Forum

I'm very sorry that you're so gullible (and such a jerk) that that you disbelieve all of the evidence against Oswald.

Oh boy... I don't disbelieve "all the evidence" against Oswald. Evidence is evidence. It either exists or it doesn't. But not every single piece of evidence is also proof.

Evidence can be manipulated and misrepresented. Completely wrong and unjust conclusions can be attached to a piece of evidence and that's what frequently happens in a circumstantial case like this one.

I can't believe I need to explain this to you.

Let me give you an example;

Captain Westbrook testified that a unknown police officer showed him a jacket under a car. In radio traffic the jacket was described as being white. According to Westbrook, the jacket was removed from under the car and given to another unidentified patrol officer, who I presume was to take it to DPD HQ. In any case, the jacket disappeared for several hours. As no attempt was ever made to identify both patrol officers, there clearly was no solid chain of custody for that jacket.

Then, several hours later a grey jacket shows up and is presented to the evidence room. It has the markings of no less than seven officers on it, but none of those officers were ever called to testify about their part in the chain of custody.

Now, you explain to me how you can claim that the white jacket found under the car is the same as the grey jacket presented to the evidence room. Can you do that?

I sure as hell have a possible explanation, which you probably are not going to like, but let's see how you can get this mess sorted out. Tell me what reason does gullible old me have to accept the jacket story at face value?

First you call me a jerk and now you are sorry for me?

Make up your mind will ya!

I'm very sorry that you're so gullible (and such a jerk) that you disbelieve all of the evidence against Oswald.

ME: Please list twenty points of evidence that indicate Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK.

GROK: Here are twenty points of evidence, drawn from the official findings of the Warren Commission, FBI investigations, and supporting forensic and ballistic analyses, that indicate Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

1) Oswald purchased the 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (the identified murder weapon) by mail order on March 12, 1963, using the alias “A. Hidell.”

2) Handwriting analysis confirmed that the mail-order coupon and related forms for the rifle were written by Oswald.

3) The rifle was shipped to Post Office Box 2915 in Dallas, which was rented in Oswald’s name.

4) Oswald’s palm print was found on the barrel of the rifle in a position consistent with it having been disassembled.

5) Microscopic fibers recovered from the rifle matched the shirt Oswald was wearing when arrested on November 22.

6) A photograph taken by Marina Oswald in the backyard of their Dallas home in March 1963 showed Oswald holding the same rifle (and the pistol later used to kill Officer Tippit).

7) The rifle remained in Oswald’s possession and among his personal belongings from purchase until the day of the assassination.

8 ) On the morning of November 22, Oswald carried a long, heavy package wrapped in brown paper into the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), telling a coworker it contained “curtain rods.”

9) A brown paper bag, matching the size and description of the package Oswald carried, was found near the sixth-floor sniper’s nest; it bore Oswald’s fingerprint and palm print on the inside.

10) Oswald’s fingerprints and palm prints were found on cardboard boxes stacked as a gun rest in the southeast corner window of the sixth floor (the sniper’s nest).

11) Oswald was seen by a coworker in the vicinity of the sixth-floor southeast corner window approximately 35 minutes before the motorcade passed.

12) Three spent cartridge cases recovered from the sniper’s nest were fired from Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to the exclusion of all other weapons.

13) The nearly whole bullet found on Governor Connally’s stretcher (CE 399) and two large bullet fragments recovered from the presidential limousine were ballistically matched to Oswald’s rifle.

14) Eyewitness Howard Brennan observed a man matching Oswald’s description firing a rifle from the sixth-floor window and later identified him in a police lineup.

15) Oswald was the only TSBD employee unaccounted for immediately after the shooting; he left the building within minutes and was never seen inside again.

16) Roughly 45 minutes after the assassination, Oswald shot and killed Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit with four shots at close range.

17) The .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver used to kill Officer Tippit had been purchased by Oswald under the same alias “A. Hidell” and was in his possession when arrested.

18) Four cartridge cases found at the Tippit murder scene were ballistically matched to the revolver recovered from Oswald.

19) The same Mannlicher-Carcano rifle had been used by Oswald in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate retired General Edwin Walker in Dallas on April 10, 1963; a bullet recovered from that scene was later matched to the rifle.

20) Oswald’s post-assassination behavior—leaving the TSBD, going to his rooming house to retrieve the revolver, shooting Tippit while fleeing, and resisting arrest—aligns with the actions of the shooter attempting to escape.

These points collectively formed the basis for the Warren Commission’s conclusion (and the FBI’s independent finding) that Oswald fired the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally from the sixth floor of the TSBD, acting alone.

Subsequent reviews, including by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, reaffirmed the physical and ballistic links to Oswald while examining (and ultimately finding insufficient evidence for) any broader conspiracy.

Unlike most CT's who are just contrarians and have limited critical thinking skills, I'm a level headed LNer who just looks at the evidence through an unbiased set of eyes.
So let me analyse these GROK conclusions with my usual honesty!

1. True.
2. True.
3. True.
4. True
5. True but with some caveats, matching fibers are not exclusive evidence but this form of evidence is still used today because the chances of someone else wearing the exact same clothing and touching a very specific object is extremely small. The three types of fibers in Oswald's arrest shirt matched the colour and twist of three types of fibers found on the rifle. "Though such fibers could theoretically have come from another identical shirt, the prohibitive probability is that they came from Oswald’s shirt."RHVB
And just because the fibers matched they didn't necessarily have to come from the 22nd.
6. True and maybe. The HSCA photographic panel who had McCamy and Kirk testify, agreed that the rifle in the backyard photos was exclusively C2766 but the revolver wasn't exclusively matched.
7. Mostly true. Marina saw a rifle in her blanket on the floor of the Paine garage a couple of months before the assassination, and on the afternoon of the assassination the blanket was empty. On the 6th floor of Oswald's workplace Oswald's rifle was discovered, the same floor that witnesses saw a man with a rifle and on the same floor 3 shells were discovered that exclusively matched Oswald's rifle.
8. True, But Frazier keeps insisting that Oswald when seen from behind carried the rifle a certain way even though in his testimony he repeatedly says he never payed attention to the bag. At the London Mock trial Frazier under oath admits that the rifle could have been out in front.
9. True. At least six Police Officers recall seeing a long brown paper bag, others didn't notice a brown paper bag next to brown boxes. In my opinion some less observant Police Officers not noticing and remembering an at the time insignificant object is easy to understand.
10. True. I will add that the rifle rest boxes were moved halfway across the floor and had relatively fresh prints from Oswald, and according to FBI expert Latona these prints were made somewhere within 1 to 3 days.
11. True, and also worth noting is that other workers saw or heard Oswald remaining on the 6th floor.
12. True.
13. True.
14. False with caveats, Brennan didn't identify Oswald in a line-up but he did say at the time that Oswald was the closest match. Later on after he felt safe for his family, he said the man was Oswald. And Brennan's initial description which is no doubt the description on the Police Radio at 12:15 is very close to Oswald. And contrary to CT's who say that this description matches half of Dallas are sadly deluded.
15. True in relation to the warehouse workers. Givens tried to get back in and it's probably more accurate and incriminating to say that Oswald was the only employee that was in the building that immediately fled, as he was in flight from the scene of his crime.
16. True.
17. True.
18. True.
19. True but the bullet wasn't ballistically matched. The recovered bullet has  markings that Lt. Day testified were made at the time, and even though the bullet was described by some as being steel jacketed, Lt. Day testified that copper coated bullets were often described as being steel coated.
20. True True True, and I'll add his provable lies regarding the rifle at the interrogations is powerful consciousness of guilt!!

JohnM

You just made my point for me. All you did was take potshots at the WC without offering a better explanation of the evidence, or even one as good, or even one at all. You dismiss the WC as politically motivated without ever refuting the substance of their report or even try to explain how their conclusions don't fit the body of evidence. The WC's conclusions were spot on. Decades of study and advances in technology that wasn't available to the WC have allowed us to fine tune what we know, but it still falls within the parameters the WC provided. The WC did not reach a conclusion about the missed shot, allowing for the miss to be either the first, second, or third shot that missed and even allowed for there to have only been two shots with no misses. Most LNs now believe it was the first shot that missed. The WC found that the single bullet struck between Z210 and Z225. There is a clear consensus that the single bullet struck at or about Z222 and that JFK and JBC both show reactions a few frames later. 3-D computer simulations now have shown us the geometry of the single bullet theory works perfectly. Failure Analysis established a cone from which the single bullet could have been fired and the sniper's nest was in the center of that cone. Dale Myers created a virtual 3-D simulation of Dealey Plaza and showed that JFK and JBC were perfectly lined up for the single bullet to work. All the conspiracy advocates have offered us are 2-D diagrams and that ridiculous courtroom demonstration in Oliver Stone's movie, both of which show JBC directly in front of JFK and facing straight ahead. What they proved is that if you start with a faulty premise, you will likely reach a faulty conclusion. Boy, did they ever.

I bet that if there was a church where you could worship the WC, you'd be there just about every day of the week. It's not rational nor reasonable to blindly accept what one source says; it's the appeal to authority fallacy!

You just made my point for me. All you did was take potshots at the WC without offering a better explanation of the evidence, or even one as good, or even one at all.

Now why would I offer a better explanation to a fairy tale story? Would you perhaps like me to write an alternative version of the report? Are you sane?

You hide behind the WC report as if it is a bible, but are unable to defend their findings and conclusions beyond what they have written in the report. And than, like an insecure little boy, you constantly pump yourself up with crap like claiming your evidence weighing skills are superior. You don't discuss the evidence, as is clearly demonstrated by the fact that you have completely ignored my detailed reply, yesterday, to you crappy "two bags are really one" nonsense! Instead you hide behind the WC, constantly attack the person you talk to and talk down to them. It is pathethic. Your "I've been dealing with with the conspiracy hobbyists on and off for 35 years" makes no impression. All it shows is that during all that time you haven't learned a single damned thing. Critical thinking at it's worst!

What they proved is that if you start with a faulty premise, you will likely reach a faulty conclusion. Boy, did they ever.

Hilarious. Did you forget the Katzenbach memo of 11/25/63?

"The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, that he did not have confederates who are still at large and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."

This was written three days after the murder, when they had just begun to collect evidence. If there ever was a faulty premise to start an "investigation" it's this one!

All you keep on showing in just about every post is that you are incapable of independent logical thought. All you do is blindly follow whatever the leader says, because you are in a cult and don't even know it!

Now please explain to me why it should be worth some of my time to continue talking to you, because I can't figure out a reason why! Hell, I can't even figure out why you are here. You've said yourself that it would be a fool's errand to talk to people over and over again and expect a different result. Yet here you are spewing the same BS over and over again. What's that all about?

If you are here to discuss the evidence, then discuss the evidence and don't hide behind the WC every time you get stuck.

ME: If the JFK assassination was a conspiracy by people other than Oswald, how many people would reasonably be expected to have participated in the planning of the assassination, the "patsy-ing" of Oswald, the fabrication and planting of evidence, the shooting, the getting-away, the alteration of photos, film, and X-rays, and the ongoing coverup?

Thought for 17s

GROK: In a hypothetical scenario where the JFK assassination was a conspiracy orchestrated by people other than Lee Harvey Oswald (i.e., Oswald was an unwitting patsy, with all the physical, ballistic, and behavioral evidence against him fabricated or planted), a reasonable estimate for the total number of participants across all the phases you listed—planning, patsy-ing Oswald, fabrication/planting of evidence, the shooting, getaway, alteration of photos/film/X-rays, and the ongoing 60+ year cover-up—would be in the range of 30–100+ people.

en.wikipedia.org +1

This is not a precise figure from any official investigation (none has ever identified any such conspiracy or quantified participants). It is a pragmatic, operational estimate drawn from how real-world conspiracies function, the specialized access and expertise required for each phase, and the scale argued by both conspiracy proponents and lone-gunman analysts like Vincent Bugliosi (who tallied 42 groups/214 individuals accused across theories precisely to illustrate how any attempt to explain all claimed anomalies requires an impractically vast network).

en.wikipedia.org +1

Phase-by-Phase Breakdown of Why the Number Grows

Planning the assassination (5–15 people): High-level decision-makers (e.g., motive-driven figures from intelligence, organized crime, or political circles) plus a small core cell for logistics, motive alignment, and recruitment. Compartmentalization keeps most unaware of the full picture.

en.wikipedia.org

Patsy-ing Oswald and fabrication/planting of evidence (8–20 people): Requires insiders with prolonged access to Oswald’s life (Paine garage for the rifle, workplace for prints/bag/fibers) plus TSBD employees or visitors for the sniper’s nest setup, ballistic prep (pre-firing casings), and Tippit scene staging. Lab/forensic personnel to ensure clean matches without anomalies. Multiple people needed for timing, alibis, and avoiding detection.

archives.gov

The shooting and getaway (4–10 people): At least 1–2 additional shooters (to match claims of grassy knoll or multiple angles), spotters, radio coordinators for timing/escape, and support for exfiltration amid chaos in Dealey Plaza. Oswald’s independent movements (leaving TSBD, rooming house stop) must align perfectly without his knowledge.

archives.gov

Alteration of photos, film, and X-rays (10–25 people): This is a major escalator. Claims of Zapruder film alteration, autopsy tampering at Bethesda, mismatched X-rays, or forged backyard photos require military pathologists, radiologists, photographers, darkroom techs, chain-of-custody handlers, and supervisors on November 22–23, 1963. No single person could handle the medical, photographic, and evidentiary chain without detection.

en.wikipedia.org

Ongoing cover-up (dozens more, pushing total to 30–100+): Sustained silence over decades demands insiders in the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Warren Commission staff, HSCA, ARRB, and media to withhold documents, manage witnesses, suppress anomalies, and handle re-investigations. This includes file tampering (Oswald’s Mexico City records, etc.), classification of millions of pages, and preventing leaks. Real small conspiracies (e.g., Watergate) unravel fast; a flawless multi-generational one requires redundancy, cutouts, and ongoing enforcement.

digitalcommons.law.uga.edu

Why This Range Is "Reasonable" (Yet Still Implausible)

Pro-conspiracy analyses (e.g., those echoing Jim Garrison, David Lifton, or Oliver Stone) argue exactly this: a small cell (say, 5–12) might handle Dealey Plaza but collapses when you add the institutional layers for autopsy alterations, ballistic ratification, and 60-year document control. Bugliosi and Gerald Posner counter that even 30–100 people makes the plot unsustainable—human error, ego, or one deathbed confession would have surfaced amid exhaustive probes (Warren Commission, HSCA, ARRB, declassifications). No credible evidence of such a network has ever emerged despite millions of pages released.

time.com +1

The House Select Committee on Assassinations (1979) floated a “probable conspiracy” (based on later-discredited acoustics) but explicitly could not identify participants or extent—suggesting it might have been limited but found zero proof of agencies or large groups.

archives.gov +1

Bottom line: In pure hypothetical terms, executing and concealing every element you listed at the level claimed by comprehensive conspiracy theories requires 30–100+ people for operational feasibility. That scale, however, is precisely why most historians and forensic experts view it as extraordinarily unlikely: such a group would almost certainly have left detectable traces, yet none have appeared in six decades of scrutiny. The physical and documentary record remains most consistent with Oswald acting alone.

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