Cont: JFK Conspiracy Theories VIII

[Allen773]

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.

The only one of those you named who I have any doubt as to whether he acted alone was James Earl Ray—there is some suspicion about his brothers possibly helping him, and in killing MLK he may have been trying to collect a bounty that some white supremacist businessmen in certain cities were raising (Kansas City or St. Louis IIRC, and probably some Southern cities). I’m sure these were some of the same men involved with the Klan and White Citizens’ Councils, which themselves had allies and members in local law enforcement in many places, especially the South—and Memphis is obviously in the South.

But white supremacists/segregationists being prominent in American politics and broader society isn’t exactly a conspiracy theory. And in any case the aforementioned businessmen, local cops and sheriffs’ departments, and so forth wouldn’t have been necessarily involved in Ray’s plot themselves—just providing monetary incentives or turning a blind eye to any racist who was willing to murder the nation’s most prominent black civil rights leader. And there were (and are) a lot of racists in America, unfortunately, and some of them are armed.

Moreover, I bet King would have encountered many more real or potential threats to his life than JFK or RFK, and was certainly less protected than the President. The FBI didn’t exactly like him (understatement). But your broader point about the lone assassin with nothing to lose being much more dangerous and harder to detect than a conspiracy is taken. I fully agree.

 

[pgwenthold]

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,

As has been noted, their basis for concluding there were two gunmen has crumbled. The dictabelt stuff does not support a second shooter, not at all.

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.

I am not sufficiently familiar with the HSCA report, can you point me to where they drew that conclusion and upon what basis they did?

I have never heard anyone attribute these conclusions to them previously.

 

[Axxman300]

Looks like I'm diving back into the records because I missed this one:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...arren-commission-critic-mark-lane/1018691001/

Mark Lane had a "relationship" with the KGB...

Mark Lane, the New York attorney who challenged the findings of the commission that investigated the JFK assassination had a “trusted relationship” with the Soviet KGB, according to a KGB informant for the CIA.

Lane’s relationship with the KGB, which was revealed in new files released from the investigation of the assassination of President John F Kennedy, was disclosed by a little-known Soviet informant code named Shamrock. That source, a KGB official who worked in the Soviet delegation office at the United Nations, contacted the CIA on Jan. 16, 1967, and agreed to share information with both the CIA and FBI, an April 4, 1967, FBI memo shows.

Shamrock’s name was made public for the first time among the more than 35,500 files connected to the Kennedy investigation that were released late last year.

Well written and short piece.

 

[Allen773]

I love the self-contradictory narrative of so many JFK conspiracy theories.


“The US military and national security state are all-powerful and can get away with anything.
Also, this one charismatic young President was such a threat that ‘they’ had to LITERALLY KILL him.”

Seems a tad inconsistent in my view.

 

[JayUtah]

It's kind of a standard two-step.

"How did NASA fake all the moonwalking and other evidence so convincingly?"
"They're NASA; they're really smart and they can do anything."
"Except, apparently, figure out how to actually send people to the Moon."

 

[smartcooky]

I love the self-contradictory narrative of so many JFK conspiracy theories.


“The US military and national security state are all-powerful and can get away with anything.
Also, this one charismatic young President was such a threat that ‘they’ had to LITERALLY KILL him.”

Seems a tad inconsistent in my view.

"Also, they are so all-powerful and fiendishly clever that they were unable to cover it up, thereby leaving all these clues"

 

[Hans]

"Also, they are so all-powerful and fiendishly clever that they were unable to cover it up, thereby leaving all these clues"

Or just kill or silence all the folks exposing their secrets.

 

[Axxman300]

Or just kill or silence all the folks exposing their secrets.

Yup, and then you have to kill the killers, and then kill their killers, and then those killers until eventually everyone in North America is dead.

 

[Allen773]

Yup, and then you have to kill the killers, and then kill their killers, and then those killers until eventually everyone in North America is dead.

No, the conspiracy theorists just assert that the CIA and military-industrial complex controls the media and has “blacked out” anything that contradicts the “Official Story” of (insert whatever event or subject that conspiracy theorists are obsessed with here).

And if you challenge them in any way, they accuse you of being a dupe or asset, mock you for “wanting to work at Langley”, etc. Because obviously the JFK assassination, 9/11, etc, were “inside jobs”, and only a “bootlicker” would disagree.

 

[Axxman300]

You don't have to work at Langley. The CIA has satellite offices all over the place.

 

[Allen773]

The CIA has satellite offices all over the place.

A-ha! I KNEW IT!

You see, everyone, I actually met Axxman back in the 60s when I was an investigative journalist for The Daily Bugle. We were tracking Spider-Man in Europe—there were rumors that he was in Vienna at the time, and J. Jonah Jameson insisted that we expose “that menace Spider-Man.”

When I was over there, I was introduced to Axxman because my local contact thought I should be connected to “someone from the American Embassy here.” “Cultural attache”, yeah right.

 

[Axxman300]

Actually my cover was Department of Agriculture. I had a few memorized speeches on nitrates guaranteed to put the best KGB agents to sleep.

 

[Allen773]

See, this is why conspiracy theories can often make great historical fiction. They engage with many of the same parts of the brain from which imagination and creativity (read: art) come from, which in turn help us find meaning (and moral and ethical principles and guidelines) in novels, plays, mythology, parables, religious faith, spirituality, and so on.

But the basic mistake that many, many people—including to some extent and in some situations, those of us who are generally pretty skeptical and well-educated and well-informed, if we’re being honest—make is to confuse all of that with empirical evidence, ie. the world of material facts and data. These are just not the same things.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

After all these years there is still some info coming out.

This is an interview with a man (a retired university professor) who was a friend of Oswald in the summer of 1963. Considerable insight into Oswald's character from someone who spent a lot of time with him and Marina.

In this interview, Gregory recalls these incidents and, as a scholar and skilled researcher, debunks the vast array of assassination conspiracy theories by demonstrating that Lee Harvey Oswald indeed killed Kennedy and acted alone—that the Oswald he once called a friend had the motive, the intelligence, and the means to commit one of the most shocking crimes in American history. 

Worth a listen IMHO.

 

[Allen773]

After all these years there is still some info coming out.

This is an interview with a man (a retired university professor) who was a friend of Oswald in the summer of 1963. Considerable insight into Oswald's character from someone who spent a lot of time with him and Marina.




Worth a listen IMHO.

Interesting! Thanks.

A lot of the comments are (depressingly) what you’d expect on any online comments section about the JFK assassination (ie. “Oswald was a patsy!” “CIA/Mafia, etc. did it” “Single bullet theory/Warren Commission is a joke!” “Wake up, sheeple!”

 

[Allen773]

Perhaps I’ve missed something, but have any JFK conspiracy theorists—particularly the “Oswald was an innocent patsy” crowd) put forward the names of any other individual(s) for who actually shot JFK, Connally, and/or Tippit?

And I mean actual human names; ie., who pulled the trigger, not “who/which organization ordered it.” We all know who shot Oswald.

 

[Axxman300]

After all these years there is still some info coming out.

This is an interview with a man (a retired university professor) who was a friend of Oswald in the summer of 1963. Considerable insight into Oswald's character from someone who spent a lot of time with him and Marina.




Worth a listen IMHO.

I'm getting that book. Thanks for posting.

 

[Axxman300]

Perhaps I’ve missed something, but have any JFK conspiracy theorists—particularly the “Oswald was an innocent patsy” crowd) put forward the names of any other individual(s) for who actually shot JFK, Connally, and/or Tippit?

And I mean actual human names; ie., who pulled the trigger, not “who/which organization ordered it.” We all know who shot Oswald.

Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt.

Now the YouTube algorithm is serving me up lots of JFK conspiracy videos.

And the answer to your question per:



is Roscoe White!

(I did NOT listen to the whole hour-and-a-half!)

 

[Allen773]

Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt.

The buffoons the Nixon campaign hired for their skullduggery (and who got caught in the act at the Watergate by undercover cops, something that famously eventually led to Nixon and many in his administration’s downfall)? Fascinating choices for the alleged, successful, and successfully covered-up “Deep State” coup against the President!