Cont: JFK Conspiracy Theories VIII

[Major Major]

Meanwhile, the FBI had proof that the Soviets had had nothing to do with Oswald and were in a panic over his actions. This was courtesy of CPUSA Secretary for Relations with Foreign Communist Parties Morris Childs, who had been there at the time and seen their panic and denials.

Oh yes, Childs had been an FBI asset for about ten years at that point.

 

[Major Major]

For what it's worth, Quora has been trundling out old JFK conspiracy theories, most already debunked and some weirdly irrelevant.

For example:
https://www.quora.com/Who-killed-JFK-Who-covered-it-up-and-why

 

[Major Major]

And Tucker Carlson has been doing it on Fox:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgXq8S02NJc&t=1s

 

[Axxman300]

Meanwhile, the FBI had proof that the Soviets had had nothing to do with Oswald and were in a panic over his actions. This was courtesy of CPUSA Secretary for Relations with Foreign Communist Parties Morris Childs, who had been there at the time and seen their panic and denials.

Oh yes, Childs had been an FBI asset for about ten years at that point.

The documents show the FBI and CIA knew Oswald was not a Soviet or Cuban asset. The CIA immediately ran audits once they learned he'd been in New Orleans to make sure he wasn't in any way connected to Mongoose or JMWAVE. And CIA's Mexico City Station assessed he was too unstable for the Soviets to use as an asset, which the KGB agreed (on their side).

There are at least four memos from Hoover demanding FBI field offices shake down their Criminal Informants (CIs) hoping to find information. The first FBI reports all came in stating nobody had ever heard of him, outside of the Dallas office, who obviously never took him to be a serious threat. Both the FBI and CIA tried to link him to either Castro, or the Soviets, but could not.

What we're left with is the truth. Lee Oswald, a self-described Marxist, who defected to the Soviet Union only to return because he wasn't treated like a celebrity. And after working low-paying jobs decided to kill General Walker, but failed, tried to get an immigration visa to Cuba at the Embassy in Mexico City. Upon learning he had to wait at least six months, he went to the Soviet Embassy, where he stormed into a conference room, waving the same .38 pistol he'd later shoot Tippet with after the assassination, demanding thr Soviets expedite the visa process. Oddly, the Soviets let him live, and gave him his gun back, and threw him out. Oswald returned to Texas, eventually landing a job at the Texas Schoolbook Depository, and would shoot JFK from the 6th floor.

That's it. No grand conspiracy, No deep political intrigue. Just a sad sack seeking attention.

 

[Allen773]

Part of the problem was KGB defector Anatoliy Mikhailovich Golitsyn. Golitsyn had persuaded CIA counterintelligence direstor James Jesus Angleton that all subsequent defectors would be false defectors, sent to lull the CIA into complacency about the Soviet Threat. Angleton oversaw the effort to break Nosenko and get him to confess. "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested."

Angleton suspected or believed that everyone was a Soviet spy with a handful of exceptions, such as his close friend….Kim Philby.

Truth is more farcical than fiction. Who needs conspiracy theories when the truth is already so fascinating? But I suppose many people prefer to think of history, politics, geopolitics, and so forth as fictional narratives of Good vs Evil—with them always being on the side of “Good.” But history is no simple morality play.

 

[bknight]

I give you: Yuriy Ivanovich Nosenko

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10106-10300.pdf
(CIA version)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/01/russia
(Guardian version)

Nosenko, a KGB agent, defected in February, 1964. The CIA was divided over the possibility that he was a KGB plant, because he claimed to have been Oswald's KGB-minder during his time in Russia, and that the KGB never tried to recruit him. They held him in a remote location for three years, where he was "aggressively" interrogated.

The CIA and FBI thought the timing was convenient.

This is one incident that at face value doesn't support that the Soviets did anything overt, maybe subtlety. It certainly wasn't overt being SECRET from the public for years. The kind of overtness I'm referring is an article in Pravda or something of that nature.

 

[Axxman300]

This is one incident that at face value doesn't support that the Soviets did anything overt, maybe subtlety. It certainly wasn't overt being SECRET from the public for years. The kind of overtness I'm referring is an article in Pravda or something of that nature.

They didn't have to. We had our suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald: Loser.

They may have acted covertly because they knew that key players in D.C. and Langley certainly believed the USSR was in some way connected. We were just 13 months out of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Washington was still twitchy.

The Russians didn't make public noise about innocence because that would make them look guilty, especially since no one was pointing the finger at them. And in 1963/64 the Soviets had no track record for this level of evil-doing. They kept a low profile, and the world moved on.

The conspiracy theories didn't start to take hold until late 1960s.

 

[Pacal]

Part of the problem was KGB defector Anatoliy Mikhailovich Golitsyn. Golitsyn had persuaded CIA counterintelligence direstor James Jesus Angleton that all subsequent defectors would be false defectors, sent to lull the CIA into complacency about the Soviet Threat. Angleton oversaw the effort to break Nosenko and get him to confess. "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested."

The way Golitsyn worked Angleton was quite remarkable. Angleton spent years and years looking for the hidden secret mole because he believed Golitsyn the result was that much of the CIA's intelligence work was seriously disrupted etc. The climax of the Mole search came when one CIA inverstigator concluded that Angleton was the Mole!!! Why? Well one of the reasons was all the damage Angleton's various investigations for a Moloe etc., was doing!

Golitsyn made all sorts of claims. Such has his "Monster Plot" nonsense about a secret, nefarious seemingly flawless plot to infilitrate Western intelligence etc., agencies and society to cause a collapse.

It assumed that the KGB etc., was composed of stunningly intelligent, almost omnipotent managers carrying out decade aftre decade a carefully thoughtout and flawlessly exectuted plan to subvert the West.

Part of this plan was that the Sino-Soviet split was utterly fake and part of the "Monster Plot". Other parts of the plan were that reports of economic and social problems in the Soviet Union were disinformation and that the Soviets were far more powerful than thy seemed. And of course their were Soviet Agents every where, including under beds it seems. Yep the adversary was utterly evil and vastly powerful - all knowing etc. Very paranoid.

Golitsyn fed this crap to Angleton for year after year. Eventually Angleton was removed and Golitsyn set aside has a teller of fantasy tales. Golitsyn wrote several books outlining his fantasies even after the Soviet Union collapsed.

 

[Pacal]

Duplicate

 

[Major Major]

The way Golitsyn worked Angleton was quite remarkable. Angleton spent years and years looking for the hidden secret mole because he believed Golitsyn the result was that much of the CIA's intelligence work was seriously disrupted etc. The climax of the Mole search came when one CIA inverstigator concluded that Angleton was the Mole!!! Why? Well one of the reasons was all the damage Angleton's various investigations for a Moloe etc., was doing!

Golitsyn made all sorts of claims. Such has his "Monster Plot" nonsense about a secret, nefarious seemingly flawless plot to infilitrate Western intelligence etc., agencies and society to cause a collapse.

It assumed that the KGB etc., was composed of stunningly intelligent, almost omnipotent managers carrying out decade aftre decade a carefully thoughtout and flawlessly exectuted plan to subvert the West.

Part of this plan was that the Sino-Soviet split was utterly fake and part of the "Monster Plot". Other parts of the plan were that reports of economic and social problems in the Soviet Union were disinformation and that the Soviets were far more powerful than thy seemed. And of course their were Soviet Agents every where, including under beds it seems. Yep the adversary was utterly evil and vastly powerful - all knowing etc. Very paranoid.

Golitsyn fed this crap to Angleton for year after year. Eventually Angleton was removed and Golitsyn set aside has a teller of fantasy tales. Golitsyn wrote several books outlining his fantasies even after the Soviet Union collapsed.

And Golitsyn also explained that the "Prague Spring" and the entire dissident movement were part of the plot.

Angleton's subordinate Tennet "Pete" Bagley is still publishing books supporting these theories.

 

[HSienzant]

I don't remember anything overt that the Soviets did to convince the world (US) LHO wasn't an agent for them or working for them in any way.
Of course I'm old and memories fad with time, as I have stated in many of these threads. Memories are the least important bit of any investigation.

This is one incident that at face value doesn't support that the Soviets did anything overt, maybe subtlety. It certainly wasn't overt being SECRET from the public for years. The kind of overtness I'm referring is an article in Pravda or something of that nature.

I don't know if this is what you're getting at, but from the earliest days after the assassination, extreme-leftist publications tried to blame a right-wing conspiracy and paint Oswald as a patsy. They apparently weren't happy a leftist was the assassin, and tried to flip the narrative. They have succeeded in muddying the waters for six decades now.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32204484.pdf

"For example, 'Progressive Labor', the official publication of the Progressive Labor Party, issued a special supplement dated November 27th, 1963, which contained an article which attempted to raise doubts as to whether Lee Harvey Oswald actually killed President Kennedy. The article also attempted to establish that Oswald possibly had been framed."

And of course, Mark Lane picked up that mantle with his writing of the below "Brief for the Defense" that was published less than a month after the assassination:

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/OI-ALB.html#s1

As I've pointed out in the past, Lane was guilty of logical fallacies and falsehoods throught that article. In his very first point, he quotes Henry Wade accurately, saying:
"First, there was a number of witnesses that saw the person with the gun on the sixth floor of the bookstore building, in the window—detailing the window—where he was looking out."

But Lane doesn't attack that point, which Wade is using to narrow down the shooting location to one particular window of one particular floor of one particular building. Wade mentions Oswald not at all in that first point.

Instead, Lane attacks a strawman, changing Wade's claim and attacking instead this statement:
"A number of witnesses saw Oswald at the window of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository."

A statement that was used by Wade to locate the shots as originating from the Texas School Book Depository was instead changed by Lane to put Oswald in that window, and Lane said there were no witnesses that put Oswald in that window.

One of the few leftists to push back against this revisionist leftist history was I.F.Stone. You can see what he thought about it here:
http://ifstone.org/weekly/IFStonesWeekly-1964oct05.pdf

 

[HSienzant]

This is one incident that at face value doesn't support that the Soviets did anything overt, maybe subtlety. It certainly wasn't overt being SECRET from the public for years. The kind of overtness I'm referring is an article in Pravda or something of that nature.

Here's an even better one from the Russian commentator Zorin on 11/24/63 at 2:40 pm Dallas time:

https://kenrahn.com/JFK/History/WC_Period/Soviet_broadcasts/22-26Nov/USSR/CommentAssTheory.html

"The Moscow television observer (Zorin--ed.) commented that there is every reason to believe that the president was assassinated by a large organization and not by one individual, as certain authorities are trying to make out..."

And at 1pm Dallas time on 11/23/63 by the same man:

https://kenrahn.com/JFK/History/WC_Period/Soviet_broadcasts/22-26Nov/USSR/ZorinComment.html

"...There are already some people who, in the very first hours after the President's death, are trying to make out that this was the act of a fanatic. I shall say quite plainly that this version is more than dubious. To anyone who knows how security measures for protecting the President are organized, it is clear that preparations for an attempt on his life are beyond the means of a single fanatic. No, what we have here is a political crime carefully prepared and planned..."

The Russians were spinning conspiracy tales from very early on.

 

[smartcooky]

Polite snip

"...There are already some people who, in the very first hours after the President's death, are trying to make out that this was the act of a fanatic. I shall say quite plainly that this version is more than dubious. To anyone who knows how security measures for protecting the President are organized, it is clear that preparations for an attempt on his life are beyond the means of a single fanatic. No, what we have here is a political crime carefully prepared and planned..."

In actual fact, the exact opposite is true. With a group involved in a conspiracy, there are many personalities in play. The more people who are involved in a conspiracy, the more chance there is that one of them won't be able to keep him mouth shut. The more the members of the group have to communicate with each other, the more chances there are to intercept those communications and to gather intel.

But the lone fanatic is a different proposition - he's the one factor that is the most difficult to prepare for. He does all the planning himself, he tells no-one what he is doing, and communicates with no-one else... James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, John Hinkley Jr, Mark David Chapman, Robert John Bardo.

 

[pgwenthold]

In actual fact, the exact opposite is true. With a group involved in a conspiracy, there are many personalities in play. The more people who are involved in a conspiracy, the more chance there is that one of them won't be able to keep him mouth shut. The more the members of the group have to communicate with each other, the more chances there are to intercept those communications and to gather intel.

But the lone fanatic is a different proposition - he's the one factor that is the most difficult to prepare for. He does all the planning himself, he tells no-one what he is doing, and communicates with no-one else... James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, John Hinkley Jr, Mark David Chapman, Robert John Bardo.

Exactly. I have heard that claim before, that an assassination this big couldn't have been carried out by just a lone nut.

And, as you note, the exact opposite is true. An assassination this big could ONLY be carried out by a lone nut, because as the size of the group goes, so goes the chances of being discovered.

I'm trying to figure out, what part of the JFK assassination by LHO requires a conspiracy organization? The decision to shoot the president? He couldn't get a rifle on his own? He couldn't bring it to the SBD? He couldn't get to the 6th floor window? Note that they are not claiming he didn't do it, so we don't have to worry about nonsense about whether he could hit the target.

What part of the LHO as the shooter description requires a conspiracy?

 

[Axxman300]

I'm trying to figure out, what part of the JFK assassination by LHO requires a conspiracy organization? The decision to shoot the president? He couldn't get a rifle on his own? He couldn't bring it to the SBD? He couldn't get to the 6th floor window? Note that they are not claiming he didn't do it, so we don't have to worry about nonsense about whether he could hit the target.

What part of the LHO as the shooter description requires a conspiracy?

Nothing.

There is no part of Oswald's actions which required help. He had the perfect weapon. He had the perfect location. He had a track record of going to drastic lengths to seek fame, and he had a record of domestic violence.

I've had the unfortunate luck of being sucked into True-Crime/Web Sleuth Youtube over the past year. There is a distinct pattern that is mirrored in the JFK Assassination:

1. Law Enforcement is labeled incompetent right out of the gate.

2. Conflicting witness testimony is amplified over the larger body of evidence.

3. Law Enforcement is deeply incompetent because they rightly disregard fringe witness testimony, and or investigate the claims to find they don't hold water.

4.Alternative suspects are put forward. Often these suspects mirror the theorist's world view, and embody their bogeyman.

5. Law Enforcement is completely incompetent because they refuse to investigate these CT suspects, even though there is no evidence that these people are involved.

The assassination happened long before the internet, and while the first CT books appeared in 1965, the JFK-CTs didn't start to take hold until the early 1970s, and after Watergate the assassination had become Urban Legend. It is not a coincidence that the JFK Assassination CT became cemented into American pop culture at the same time that UFOs, ESP, and Bigfoot also became subject matter for "serious" investigation. By 1977, when the US Government said the sky is blue, there would be think pieces written in magazines stating that the government is lying about the sky to cover up some deeper plot.

I don't know when the first JFK Assassination thread was started on this board, and I'm too warn out to look up crime stats, but we repeatedly see what one man with a gun can do all by himself. We (the US) have had mass shootings in the double digits since that first thread. They're all lone gunmen.

 

[mikegriffith1]

It's not about ignoring opposing viewpoints, it's about separating the facts from speculation and lies. The problem with the world of JFK-CTs is that they've become dogmatic fantasies that serve as a foundation for a world view that believes there is a conspiracy behind everything.

I've read many JFK assassination conspiracy books, and the overwhelming majority do not express "a world view that believes there is a conspiracy behind everything."

And it's worth mentioning again that a select committee of the U.S. Congress, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that two gunmen fired at JFK, that someone inside the Dallas Police Department HQ building helped Jack Ruby get into the basement to shoot Oswald, that Oswald had a relationship with several radically anti-communist CIA assets, that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City, and that one of the gunmen who fired at JFK was on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza.

The documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board have provided a wealth of additional evidence of a conspiracy in JFK's death.

 

[HSienzant]

I've read many JFK assassination conspiracy books, and the overwhelming majority do not express "a world view that believes there is a conspiracy behind everything."

And it's worth mentioning again that a select committee of the U.S. Congress, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that two gunmen fired at JFK,

That deserves a "Yeah, but..."

Yeah, but that was based on the last day of testimony concerning the acoustic evidence. Prior to that testimony, which many members of the committee felt they had inadequate time to prepare for or question, the voting was for Oswald alone, no evidence of conspiracy. And the acoustic analysis has since been discredited in many ways, not least among them as studying the wrong part of the dictabelt -- about a minute after the shots actually occurred.

that someone inside the Dallas Police Department HQ building helped Jack Ruby get into the basement to shoot Oswald

You will never support this.

that Oswald had a relationship with several radically anti-communist CIA assets

You will never support this.

that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City

You will never support this.

and that one of the gunmen who fired at JFK was on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza.

You will never support this.

The documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board have provided a wealth of additional evidence of a conspiracy in JFK's death.

There is no evidence of a conspiracy in JFK's death. Suppositions, conjectures, interpretations, and hypothesis about what might have happened don't count as evidence of conspiracy.

 

[HSienzant]

Nothing.

There is no part of Oswald's actions which required help. He had the perfect weapon. He had the perfect location. He had a track record of going to drastic lengths to seek fame, and he had a record of domestic violence.

I've had the unfortunate luck of being sucked into True-Crime/Web Sleuth Youtube over the past year. There is a distinct pattern that is mirrored in the JFK Assassination:

1. Law Enforcement is labeled incompetent right out of the gate.

2. Conflicting witness testimony is amplified over the larger body of evidence.

3. Law Enforcement is deeply incompetent because they rightly disregard fringe witness testimony, and or investigate the claims to find they don't hold water.

4.Alternative suspects are put forward. Often these suspects mirror the theorist's world view, and embody their bogeyman.

5. Law Enforcement is completely incompetent because they refuse to investigate these CT suspects, even though there is no evidence that these people are involved.

The assassination happened long before the internet, and while the first CT books appeared in 1965, the JFK-CTs didn't start to take hold until the early 1970s, and after Watergate the assassination had become Urban Legend. It is not a coincidence that the JFK Assassination CT became cemented into American pop culture at the same time that UFOs, ESP, and Bigfoot also became subject matter for "serious" investigation. By 1977, when the US Government said the sky is blue, there would be think pieces written in magazines stating that the government is lying about the sky to cover up some deeper plot.

I don't know when the first JFK Assassination thread was started on this board, and I'm too warn out to look up crime stats, but we repeatedly see what one man with a gun can do all by himself. We (the US) have had mass shootings in the double digits since that first thread. They're all lone gunmen.

Believe it or not, Thomas Buchanan published "WHO KILLED KENNEDY in May of 1964 - just seven months after the assassination, before the Warren Commission investigation was completed. It was hampered by relying entirely on newspaper articles as source material, which led to a lot of really stupid arguments in hindsight. He argued Tippit fired from the Depository and Jack Ruby fired from the overpass - this was before the Grassy Knoll became a thing. Buchanan was a former member of the American Communist Party. and was pushing the Communist line about the assassination.

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbuchananT.htm

 

[Axxman300]

Believe it or not, Thomas Buchanan published "WHO KILLED KENNEDY in May of 1964 - just seven months after the assassination, before the Warren Commission investigation was completed. It was hampered by relying entirely on newspaper articles as source material, which led to a lot of really stupid arguments in hindsight. He argued Tippit fired from the Depository and Jack Ruby fired from the overpass - this was before the Grassy Knoll became a thing. Buchanan was a former member of the American Communist Party. and was pushing the Communist line about the assassination.

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbuchananT.htm

Thanks for the correction. This one sounds really dumb.

 

[Axxman300]

I've read many JFK assassination conspiracy books, and the overwhelming majority do not express "a world view that believes there is a conspiracy behind everything."

I've read most everything written up through 1996. Many of those authors went on to write books about other conspiracy theories.

And it's worth mentioning again that a select committee of the U.S. Congress, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that two gunmen fired at JFK,

Based on really bad acoustic evidence which has been torn to sheds at least a dozen times since then. And they never named the second gunman. Why was that?

More importantly, why did the HSCA request CIA files dating back to 1948?Why did they need to know about CIA operations in a Caribbean in the 1950s? What did they think they'd find that was related in any way to Dallas in 1963? Here's a conspiracy for you: The HSCA was a front for politicians to get a look at JMWAVE, and the "truth" was never the top priority.

that someone inside the Dallas Police Department HQ building helped Jack Ruby get into the basement to shoot Oswald,

Weird, because all he had to do was walk through the garage door, which had no gate at the time. And he didn't know when Oswald was being transferred, only arriving a minute or so before Oswald was escorted through the door. He wasn't supposed to be in the neighborhood that day, but made a point to wire some money via the Western Union office for one of hos dancers, and decided to drop in (as he'd done a few times during Oswald's time in the jail).

Oh, and Ruby loved to talk. He'd have said something.

that Oswald had a relationship with several radically anti-communist CIA assets,

Name them. Detail how he knew them, and how this "revelation" came to light.

that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City, and that one of the gunmen who fired at JFK was on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza.

Why would Oswald impersonate himself? Why would someone impersonate a nobody? The trip to Dallas wasn't on the books at the time he was there. There was no guarantee Oswald would have stayed in Dallas because he was a flake. Why use a guy like Oswald as part of a master plan? Who'd be dumb enough to do that?

The documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board have provided a wealth of additional evidence of a conspiracy in JFK's death.

Gosh, sounds like you read them. Please cite that additional evidence of a conspiracy. I've cited dozens of documents on this page which say otherwise. Put up or shut up.