I just find it absolutely amazing that after 160 pages that there has yet to be any real conspiracy presented by Baloney-Man. No other shooter identified. No other weapon claimed. Just Oswald is innocent and we should do our homework to find the supposed real shooter/shooters.
As someone who was born a few years after the shooting, I grew up with my elders suspecting Oswald was helped. They did not know by who, or how, but things did not compute.
As a history buff, I find the Kennedy shooting fascinating and all the conjecture surrounding it fascinating as well. We all saw the Zapruder film and I had a 9th grade English teacher bring in her then twenty year old copies of Life magazine with the stills. We watched in school a highlight reel on laserdisc of all things of Cronkite and CBS coverage.
I always tended to think that Oswald acted alone. The fact that even twenty years out that nothing ever concrete came out to change the story. My uncle had the scratchy paper record in Gallery magazine that supposedly had the four shots that were presented to the HSCA and of course you could not make out ANY shots, let alone four of them.
The Nova special in 1988 introduced me to Badgeman and such and I thought it was really well done.
It really was not until about 1998 that I became truly satisfied that it was just Oswald. With the internet, I could fully run and see the other films shot at the same time. I checked conspiracy sites, read essays and such and never got the sense that there was anything about a sinister conspiracy to be had.
After asking Hank the other day on what changed his mind I sat down an read two sections of the WC Report, the Texas trip chapter and the walkthrough of the shooting.
It's clear that they did not nail everything down. They do not even reach a definitive conclusion on which shot missed or have the timeline correct on how far apart the total shooting sequence was. Nor do they really explain just why the Single Bullet Works. You can understand why there were doubters.
On the other hand, they nailed a lot of it and came to conclusions based on the same eyewitness testimony that is so misconstrued on this thread by certain posters. I had no idea that they had so many witnesses, including members of the press, that saw the rifle in the window for instance. It was honest about what people saw or did not see or hear and pieced together what they could.
If they had access to the same 3d modeling that we have now through Dale Meyers work, and able to sync all the films together to piece together the entire event, maybe it would seem easier for most to understand. Just having Connally's correct position in the car just puts everything into place.
It is truly amazing just how much primary source material exists on this case and if it was anyone else besides the President of the United States, there would be no question by most thinking people that it was Oswald and just Oswald.
Nearly fifty years on and there is no leading theory ever presented to debunk. Despite the logistical errors made by the Dallas Police, they had this case solved within 90 minutes of the shooting.
My parents were young adults through the Watergate era. I certainly understand why there is such mistrust in general and all about the Kennedy legend, which has done nothing but grow since his death.
As a society, we really do not want to acknowledge that the people or events that we hold so dear can be undone by something so incredibly simple. As Jackie said, it really was some silly little communist that changed everything.
(sorry for the ramble)
