Moderated JFK conspiracy theories: it never ends III

[JayUtah]

Yes, I advanced the notion that conspiracy theorists over time have to one-up the previous theories in order to compete with them. But that's just a corollary to the inflationary nature of conspiracism theorized by others.

 

[Hans]

Yes, I advanced the notion that conspiracy theorists over time have to one-up the previous theories in order to compete with them. But that's just a corollary to the inflationary nature of conspiracism theorized by others.

'One upmanship' is common in archaeological or cosmological types of conspiracy with 'writers' never questioning other whacky idea while spending enormous amounts of time bashing orthodox thought. Sometimes such writers don't even realize that the idea they are building on contradicts their own main premise.

As Jay noted conspiracy writers - especially the ones who do it for ego and money just make up stuff with wild abandon - and later believers come along and, well, ACTUALLY believe it.

 

[pgwenthold]

It has been suggested - by JayUtah, I think - that some of the conspiracy publishers may do this intentionally (present "smoking gun" misinformation) to make their product more appealing.

Problem is, the misinformation often becomes gospel among the true believers.

OK, the 5/6th of a page claim I can see as an example of inflationary exaggeration. But to mess up something so blatantly obvious as the fact that you can't get there from here takes royal incompetence.

 

[JohnG]

Not so fast... Mrs. Kennedy never said anything of the sort. Most of her recollection of the shooting was a blur and disjointed. There are *hearsay* claims by others - decades after the fact - that Mrs. Kennedy did this, or said that, but those claims would never suffice as evidence in a court of law, of course.

She *never* said anything remotely akin to the claim she retrieved a piece of skull or brain from the trunk of the limo, and of course, there's no evidence of any such item on the trunk in the Zapruder film (more evidence, no doubt conspiracists will argue, that the Zapruder film was altered).

And of course, that's all the conspiracists have in this case - hearsay, supposition, innuendo, conjecture, quotes out of context, and logical fallacies.

Hank

It always looked to me that Mrs. Kennedy (in a shocked, horrified fugue state) was simply trying to help the secret service agent climb onto the back of car.

 

[grmcdorman]

It has been suggested - by JayUtah, I think - that some of the conspiracy publishers may do this intentionally (present "smoking gun" misinformation) to make their product more appealing.

Problem is, the misinformation often becomes gospel among the true believers.

OK, the 5/6th of a page claim I can see as an example of inflationary exaggeration. But to mess up something so blatantly obvious as the fact that you can't get there from here takes royal incompetence.

Or blatant dishonesty; I suspect the latter from some of the conspiracy authors.

 

[LSSBB]

Yes, I advanced the notion that conspiracy theorists over time have to one-up the previous theories in order to compete with them. But that's just a corollary to the inflationary nature of conspiracism theorized by others.

It's a very competitive growth market. They have to innovate to be successful. Consider it Conspiracist R&D.

 

[turingtest]

Or blatant dishonesty; I suspect the latter from some of the conspiracy authors.

Mostly this, I think. Most of those CT authors have been to Dallas and know better; they count on the fact that most of the folks who buy their "theories" (and, not incidentally, their books) have not and don't.

 

[HSienzant]

It always looked to me that Mrs. Kennedy (in a shocked, horrified fugue state) was simply trying to help the secret service agent climb onto the back of car.

It's always been my impression she sees the state of her husband's head after the head shot and wants to get as far away as she can, as soon as she can. She isn't looking at the Secret Service agent when she initially bolts. She's looking at JFK's head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU83R7rpXQY

Hank

 

[Willy Ekerslike]

It's always been my impression she sees the state of her husband's head after the head shot and wants to get as far away as she can, as soon as she can. She isn't looking at the Secret Service agent when she initially bolts. She's looking at JFK's head.

Yes, that's exactly how it looks. And there can be no other explanation, as it all happens within a couple of seconds, and agent Hill grabs her and ushers her back into the seat where he can, belatedly, do his job and secure the car.

 

[BStrong]

It's always been my impression she sees the state of her husband's head after the head shot and wants to get as far away as she can, as soon as she can. She isn't looking at the Secret Service agent when she initially bolts. She's looking at JFK's head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU83R7rpXQY

Hank

That's my take as well.

For the most part, if someone isn't trained to deal with a violent encounter they do one of two things 1) freeze in place, or 2) bolt in any direction away from what they perceive to be the threat.

Her reaction is a textbook example of the latter.

 

[turingtest]

That's my take as well.

For the most part, if someone isn't trained to deal with a violent encounter they do one of two things 1) freeze in place, or 2) bolt in any direction away from what they perceive to be the threat.

Her reaction is a textbook example of the latter.

IIRC, the idea that she was reaching for a piece of JFK's skull came, not from anything she herself ever said, but from some eyewitness (possibly Hill) saying that's what it looked like to them. CTists, of course, have glommed onto that so they can ask the question "how could a piece of his skull have flown backwards as a result of a shot from the rear?"

My personal opinion is the same as above- it was a "GTFO!" reaction, which makes more sense than her thinking "oh, there's a bit of John's skull- he might need that."

 

[HSienzant]

Sometimes, it's fun to read McAdams's site and see some of the really, really STUPID things that conspiricists have asserted.

One of my favorites that I was just reading about the claim (via Garrison and others) that the motorcade route was changed "at the last minute."

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/route.htm

McAdams says, according to Garrison's book, Garrison noticed that the motorcade route in the morning paper showed it going down Main and then onto the Stemmons Freeway to the Trade Mart. So why did it all of a sudden get changed to go down Houston and then turn onto Elm? Could it be so that it could go past the SBD? Hmmmm? Suspicious!

But not. In fact, there is a VERY good reason why the motorcade turned down Houston onto Elm - YOU CAN'T GET ON THE STEMMONS FREEWAY FROM MAIN!!!!!!

There's no on-ramp!

So if you are on Main and want to get on the freeway, you have to bump over to Elm...

And, in fact, that claim about the route change surfaced in the first few days after the assassination and was dealt with by the Warren Commission.

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0030b.htm (and next few pages).

But of course, no conspiracy claims ever die. They just get recycled for a new generation.

Even today, Dr. Fetzer still argues that the motorcade route changed (#13 in the below).

The arguments therein are almost too funny for words:

Smoking Gun *13: The motorcade route was changed at the last minute and yet the assassination occurred on the part that had been changed.

Think about it. As Chief of Police Jesse Curry confirmed in his JFK Assassination File (1969), which I discuss elsewhere in this volume, it was not until 18 November 1963 that the final motorcade route was settled at a meeting between representatives of the Police Department and the Secret Service, when it was agreed that the motorcade would take a right off Main Street onto Houston and a very sharp left onto Urn en route to the Trade Mart, where JFK~ was scheduled to present a luncheon speech. At the turn from Houston onto Elm, remarkably, the motorcade was considered over and local security was no longer provided. This appears to be such a transparent pretext for disavowing responsibility for the President's security by the Dallas Police as to be indicative of what is known in the law as "consciousness of guilt" in failing to take or in taking measures that ordinarily would or would not be taken--save for knowledge of the circumstances of a crime

Indeed, the revised motorcade route was never published in the newspapers, which raises a fascinating question, namely: How did the alleged assassin even know that the President would pass by the Texas School Book Depository in order for him to shoot him? In an interesting study, "The Mathematical Improbability of the Kennedy Assassination," The Dealey Plaza Echo (November 1999), pp. 2-6, Ed Dorsch, Jr., has calculated that the probability of Oswald and JFK coming within 100 yards of each other at random during his Presidency is approximately 1 in 1 hundred billion! This suggests an encounter by the two was almost certainly no accident, yet Oswald had no reason to know he would only have to show up for work to have the chance to shoot JFK -- and his wife even said that he had overslept! A more plausible explanation is that their proximity was not a matter of chance but was coordinated by plans about which Oswald had no knowledge and over which he had no control


http://www.assassinationscience.com/prologue.html

Hank

 

[Hans]

If the route was not known to the public where did all those bystanders come from?

 

[HSienzant]

If the route was not known to the public where did all those bystanders come from?

Exactly! Conspiracy theorists don't deal with reality.

Numerous people (including some of the darlings of the conspiracy crowd, like Jean Hill) were on Elm Street to see the President. They knew the parade route. So there's no reason to presume Oswald didn't.

The argument that the odds of Oswald ever being within 100 yards of the President is absurd, no doubt those odds applied to most of his coworkers and most of the citizens of Dallas.

What are the odds that all those people would ever be within 100 yards of JFK on the SAME DAY? If the odds are one hundred billion to one for Oswald, it must be many times greater for all those people combined.

Yet they lined Main Street to see him pass.

According to Fetzer, that could never happen. Not in a billion billion lifetimes.

Hank

 

[Hans]

Exactly! Conspiracy theorists don't deal with reality.

Numerous people (including some of the darlings of the conspiracy crowd, like Jean Hill) were on Elm Street to see the President. They knew the parade route. So there's no reason to presume Oswald didn't.

The argument that the odds of Oswald ever being within 100 yards of the President is absurd, no doubt those odds applied to most of his coworkers and most of the citizens of Dallas.

What are the odds that all those people would ever be within 100 yards of JFK on the SAME DAY? If the odds are one hundred billion to one for Oswald, it must be many times greater for all those people combined.

Yet they lined Main Street to see him pass.

According to Fetzer, that could never happen. Not in a billion billion lifetimes.

Hank

Yep its often the common sense stuff that puts paid to some of the sillier CTs

 

[Nakani]

Hello,

I don't spend much time in this part of the forum, so excuse me if this has been discussed already.

There was a program on not to long ago that I thought explained it pretty conclusively. Oswald's first shot rang out causing the secret service to jump into action, one of them grabbed the rifle they keep in the back seat and stood up looking for the shooter. The driver hit the gas to catch up to the president's car causing the agent to lose his balance and he accidentally shot the president.

Some of their evidence was:

-Flat trajectory of the bullet
-The bullet that killed him was the same kind the Secret Service use in their rifles and different than the other two.
-the smell of smoke at ground level.
-a picture of the agent standing up in the car holding the gun.

There was no grand plot to kill JFK, just Oswald acting alone and some guy having a bad day at work.

 

[beachnut]

Hello,

I don't spend much time in this part of the forum, so excuse me if this has been discussed already.

There was a program on not to long ago that I thought explained it pretty conclusively. Oswald's first shot rang out causing the secret service to jump into action, one of them grabbed the rifle they keep in the back seat and stood up looking for the shooter. The driver hit the gas to catch up to the president's car causing the agent to lose his balance and he accidentally shot the president.

Some of their evidence was:

-Flat trajectory of the bullet
-The bullet that killed him was the same kind the Secret Service use in their rifles and different than the other two.
-the smell of smoke at ground level.
-a picture of the agent standing up in the car holding the gun.

There was no grand plot to kill JFK, just Oswald acting alone and some guy having a bad day at work.

That sounds dumber than the BS JFK nuts have. Why is the agent not in the car?

Who smelled smoke at ground level?

Show the picture of the agent standing up in the car... BTW, there is no agent in the car... until after the fatal shot.

 

[JayUtah]

...one of them grabbed the rifle they keep in the back seat...

Nope. The Secret Service protection details never used rifles, and no USSS unit used a rifle until the 1990s.

That's only one of about a half dozen completely silly things about that hypothesis. It's clear the person who formulated it doesn't know any of the pertinent facts, and is hoping his audience doesn't either.

 

[BStrong]

Hello,

I don't spend much time in this part of the forum, so excuse me if this has been discussed already.

There was a program on not to long ago that I thought explained it pretty conclusively. Oswald's first shot rang out causing the secret service to jump into action, one of them grabbed the rifle they keep in the back seat and stood up looking for the shooter. The driver hit the gas to catch up to the president's car causing the agent to lose his balance and he accidentally shot the president.

Some of their evidence was:

-Flat trajectory of the bullet
-The bullet that killed him was the same kind the Secret Service use in their rifles and different than the other two.
-the smell of smoke at ground level.
-a picture of the agent standing up in the car holding the gun.

There was no grand plot to kill JFK, just Oswald acting alone and some guy having a bad day at work.

Howard Donahue eventually developed this particular theory after he was able to duplicate the live fire shooting testing with LHO's rifle, and from his success at making the hits on target in the established time frame decided LHO couldn't have made the shots - he started with that theory and worked backwards to develop his SS negligent discharge theory.

It's woo, no more, no less.

 

[Nakani]

That sounds dumber than the BS JFK nuts have. Why is the agent not in the car?

Who smelled smoke at ground level?

Show the picture of the agent standing up in the car... BTW, there is no agent in the car... until after the fatal shot.

The agent was in the car, the one behind the president's. As for the smoke I have no idea who smelled it, its been a while since I saw the program. I don't know how to post a picture sorry, you'll have to look it up yourself.

Nope. The Secret Service protection details never used rifles, and no USSS unit used a rifle until the 1990s.

That's only one of about a half dozen completely silly things about that hypothesis. It's clear the person who formulated it doesn't know any of the pertinent facts, and is hoping his audience doesn't either.

The rifle was a AR-15.

Howard Donahue eventually developed this particular theory after he was able to duplicate the live fire shooting testing with LHO's rifle, and from his success at making the hits on target in the established time frame decided LHO couldn't have made the shots - he started with that theory and worked backwards to develop his SS negligent discharge theory.

It's woo, no more, no less.

Why do you say woo?