JFK Conspiracy Theories: It Never Ends II

[bynmdsue]

Not certain, but wasn't the photo with Hickey half-way up in the seat shown to have been at the time of or after the head shot? I think that pic is a section of a larger pic where you can actually see the Kennedy car.

In the uncropped photo Clint Hill can be seen on the back of the President's limo and the scenery is clearly no longer Dealey Plaza.

 

[bynmdsue]

As someone noted, it's the idea that you either need a rogue SS agent getting to his rifle and drawing a bead on the POTUS while the SS agents on the running boards and in the car with him just sort of sat there a bit number and did nothing... guys who were trained to throw themselves in front of threats? Or, that the entire SS was in on it and that somehow the driver of their car and all the people nearby on the streets wouldn't have noticed a rather noticeable sight nor have heard a rather loud gun and looked to see the guy who fired it within twenty feet of them.

Grassy Knoll at least has shadows going for it. This one requires that the entire population on the Plaza was in on it, ranking it as one of the largest in the IVC (Impossibly Vast Concpiracy) category, matched only by the tens of thousands of silent people who were in on 911.

Well, it's supposed to be a tragic accident. When the shooting started Hickey picked up the rifle and stood up, the car lurched, he lost his balance and in an amazing one-in-a-million shot he managed to shoot the president right in the head. So keep your booger hook off the bang switch folks!
And of course nobody saw this happen nor does it appear on any film but somebody said they smelled gunpowder!
I still don't understand how this one got dragged back out for the 50th. There are other less crazy ones they could have promoted. Not any more correct but less crazy. Seriously, this one's kind of embarrassing.

 

[Robrob]

Well, it's supposed to be a tragic accident. When the shooting started Hickey picked up the rifle and stood up, the car lurched, he lost his balance and in an amazing one-in-a-million shot he managed to shoot the president right in the head. So keep your booger hook off the bang switch folks!
And of course nobody saw this happen nor does it appear on any film but somebody said they smelled gunpowder!
I still don't understand how this one got dragged back out for the 50th. There are other less crazy ones they could have promoted. Not any more correct but less crazy. Seriously, this one's kind of embarrassing.

What other ones are less crazy? I thought this one was at least possible (in the sense the others all require a thousand moving parts).

 

[SpitfireIX]

It's funny, while this idea is at least superficially plausible - almost no JFK CT ever presents it. Not wild enough?

Something like that. Once I saw something by a CT claiming that the scenario in Mortal Error would be reasonably possible, if not for "the overwhelming evidence that JFK was killed by a conspiracy", or words to that effect.

 

[Henri McPhee]

This is a quote from a recent article with regard to the smell of gunpowder, I think by Colin McLaren, from the Australian Herald Sun newspaper:

"Patrolman Earle Brown was on duty. He had been allocated the south end of Elm Street and was standing with the crowd. He could see along Elm Street to Houston Street and, like the rest of those gathered, he watched with anticipation as the motorcade approached. His vantage point would prove the ideal location to see the tragedy unfold, looking straight down at the convoy of vehicles. He heard three shots and observed the President's limousine momentarily slow down before rapidly speeding up, ' ... then I smelled this gunpowder ... at least it smelled like it to me'. As the motorcade drew near, he noticed a Secret Service agent in the follow-up car. 'He had this gun and was swinging it around, looked like a machine gun, and the President was all sprawled out ...'

Alongside the patrolman stood two co-workers, mail clerks Royce Skelton and Austin Miller. Royce heard the first two shots as the President's car was travelling towards him. 'I thought that they were dumballs [sic] that they throw at the cement because I could see smoke coming up from the cement ...' Austin Miller believed the shot or shots ' ... sounded like it came from the, I would say from right there in the car ...' Miller also said he ' ... saw something which [he] thought was smoke or steam ...'

Railway switchman Walter Winborn was also standing on the Elm Street overpass. He saw smoke, ' ... it looked like a little haze ... but it was a haze there ... at least ten feet long and about two or three feet wide ...'

Motorcycle cop Bobby Hargis, who was riding alongside the President's car, said ' ... I was staying pretty well right up with the car,' which puts the police officer among the closest persons to the President at the time of the assassination attempt. Hargis believed the shots had come from 'behind' him, ' ... sounded like the shots were right next to me ...'

Officer Martin, on motorcycle duty on the left side of the President's convertible, was close to Mrs Kennedy. He recalled, ' ... you could smell the gunpowder ... you knew he wasn't that far away. When you're that close you can smell the powder burning ... Why, you can smell the gunpowder ... right there in the street.'

Patrolman Joe Smith also smelled gunpowder, ' ... a distinctive smell of gun smoke cordite,' as he moved along Elm Street towards the grassy section of Dealey Plaza.

In my investigator's brain, alarm bells had started to ring. As I trawled through the many hundreds of pages related to the witnesses' observations from the overpass and on the street closest to the President's vehicle I could sense a pattern forming, and detectives love finding evidence of similar facts. Not only is it corroboration, but it helps to understand exactly what happened at a crime scene. Here was sworn testimony from a supervisor, several police officers and two mail clerks telling me, the reader, that smoke or gunpowder was on the street in or around the President's vehicle. Extraordinary! I delved deeper and kept reading, remembering the old adage, where there's smoke, there's fire."

 

[Dcdrac]

you have presented no plausible evidence at all HM just cribbed from other websites, and what you have cribbed has been debunked ages even decades ago, repeating it ad infinitum is not going to change that fact.

 

[turingtest]

...I think the political background to the murder must be taken into consideration. It's no good having tunnel vision and not being able to see beyond your nose about all this. Officialdom never admits a mistake, even though they do make mistakes. The CIA would never admit it publicly...


The case against Oswald is woefully lacking in substance.

I think you have this exactly backwards- in solving a particular crime, tunnel vision is precisely what is necessary. You have to focus, and follow the evidence to the conclusion; what you're doing is letting your conclusion dictate the evidence. As a result, you're all over the map, dragging in extraneous matters like the deaths of British politicians, Charles DeGaulle, the Mafia, and the smell of gunpowder (which even you admit you don't know the significance of- it's just something else to throw in the pot). And what you end up with is an amorphous mess that is the definition of "woefully lacking in substance"- it's an all-over-the-place "answer" that is indistinguishable from (and about as useful as) "goddidit!"

 

[bynmdsue]

I don't think it was a tragic accident.

It's not just one person who was able to smell gunpowder as bynmdsue says. There was a Senator sitting besides LBJ in a car behind Kennedy who appeared on TV to say that he definitely was able to smell gunpowder. I don't know enough about ballistics to know the forensic significance of all that, or if it is scientifically correct to say the smell could not have come from the book depository because it was too high up, and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction.

Okay then, we'll stack your handful of nosewitnesses who thought they may have smelled something and put them against all the photographs and motion pictures of the motorcade that don't show a man with a rifle standing up in the followup car at the time of the headshot.

Oh wait, I bet the CIA doctored all those too.

 

[Robrob]

Something like that. Once I saw something by a CT claiming that the scenario in Mortal Error would be reasonably possible, if not for "the overwhelming evidence that JFK was killed by a conspiracy", or words to that effect.

I think that encapsulates the entire JFK conspiracy POV.

 

[Garrison]

Okay then, we'll stack your handful of nosewitnesses who thought they may have smelled something and put them against all the photographs and motion pictures of the motorcade that don't show a man with a rifle standing up in the followup car at the time of the headshot.

Oh wait, I bet the CIA doctored all those too.

Also would there actually be a smell of gunpowder with modern firearms?

 

[JayUtah]

Also would there actually be a smell of gunpowder with modern firearms?

Cordite combustion products have a smell, but it isn't altogether distinct from, say, car exhaust.

 

[patchbunny]

Cordite combustion products have a smell, but it isn't altogether distinct from, say, car exhaust.

I would wonder too,if after hearing gunshots and seeing the impacts, if people didn't imagine they smelled it.

 

[Garrison]

Cordite combustion products have a smell, but it isn't altogether distinct from, say, car exhaust.

Thanks, I guessed that the smell would be quite different and that those saying they smelled gunpowder were probably more familiar with fireworks than firearms and unconsciously filled in that sensory detail.

 

[Henri McPhee]

There is a photo of Hickey holding a rifle in a following car, unless I'm seeing things and having strange beliefs. I think Hickey should have been closely questioned about that instead of just being fixated on Oswald.

You people are in a minority in America. Most people think others were involved in the JFK murder. Oliver Stone seems to have made an interesting JFK movie which I have never seen. That's a bit surprising for Hollywood, which mostly promotes the glamour of the German and American Fourth Reich with these naff James Bond movies, as though the EU province of the UK was still an important country.

What our newspapers and little TV news stations gain in good humor and absence of scurrility they may lose in refraining from useful and pointed criticism. They all seem to think that people with senile dementia are fit for work. I don't think they know how the other half lives, or are in touch with all classes.

The CIA has immunity from criticism. If the CIA bumped off the President then it's a shocking crime and they should be made to pay. It's just like there is no gun control in America.

 

[Henri McPhee]

There is a bit about Oliver Stone's JFK murder beliefs in a recent British Daily Mail newspaper article. This is a quote from that article:

"Director Oliver Stone has written an editorial defending the conspiracy theories about President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
The left-leaning director has been a vocal critic of the government's official report about the fatal shooting in Dallas, and he has used the 50th anniversary as another opportunity to show the public how they have been misguided.
'Although polls from 1964 on clearly signal the public's distrust of the official story, the mainstream media have never given up telling us how superstitious or illogical the common people are in this belief,' he wrote in an op-ed for USA Today.
The Academy Award winner has been interested in the subject for decades and made his blockbuster hit 'JFK' in 1991.
He takes major issue with the 'single bullet theory' which the government-backed Warren Commission reached as their verdict on how the President was killed: they say one bullet hit Kennedy in the back, exited his body through his throat, hits Governor John Connally who was sitting in front of Kennedy, and proceeds to break two different bones in Connally's body.
'Now, I've been in the infantry and I've seen enough combat to tell you that in all the craziness of war, this "Alice in Wonderland" scenario defies physics and common sense. The American people are not stupid,' Stone wrote."

 

[Mark F]

Oliver Stone seems to have made an interesting JFK movie which I have never seen. That's a bit surprising for Hollywood, which mostly promotes the glamour of the German and American Fourth Reich with these naff James Bond movies, as though the EU province of the UK was still an important country.

The Oliver Stone movie "JFK", except for getting some of the names and dates correct contains nothing of any value. It has however filled several generations of American's full of absolute twaddle about what really happened in Dallas because few viewers understand the movie is almost entirely fiction.

 

[BStrong]

The .223 bullet is a nasty bullet, that breaks up and tumbles inside the wound, as intended.. it's a workaround to the Geneva Convention prohibition of expanding bullets. The "lead snowstorm" would be an expected result.
Such a bullet could have done what happened to JFK's head.
But...
No one in the Secret Service car responded to a shot from their car by one of their own.
As bodyguards that kill their principals are frowned upon in the trade, the swarming of the shooter by his compatriots would have been noticed at the time.
And the bullet when it exited JFK's head hit the windshield chrome sideways, leaving an indentation that a 6.5mm bullet fits.

The original issue ammo for the 15/16 platform was a 55 grain FMJ, and the projectile didn't exactly fragment, in tissue it breaks in half at the cannelure.

Some of the lead core can break off, but the "snowstorm effect" is not an observed effect in that standard FMJ projectile.

The very earliest 15's had rifling of 1 in 14, later changed to 1 in 12.

The "tumbling" effect referenced is better described as yaw, and it's an observed projectile characteristic in most of the reduced power assault rifle calibers, including the combloc 7.62 x 39 and 5.45 x 39.

Soft point rounds are a different story, and as the jacket peels away from the lead core, the core can fragmentl and spread through the wound channel.

 

[BStrong]

There is a bit about Oliver Stone's JFK murder beliefs in a recent British Daily Mail newspaper article. This is a quote from that article:

"Director Oliver Stone has written an editorial defending the conspiracy theories about President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
The left-leaning director has been a vocal critic of the government's official report about the fatal shooting in Dallas, and he has used the 50th anniversary as another opportunity to show the public how they have been misguided.
'Although polls from 1964 on clearly signal the public's distrust of the official story, the mainstream media have never given up telling us how superstitious or illogical the common people are in this belief,' he wrote in an op-ed for USA Today.
The Academy Award winner has been interested in the subject for decades and made his blockbuster hit 'JFK' in 1991.
He takes major issue with the 'single bullet theory' which the government-backed Warren Commission reached as their verdict on how the President was killed: they say one bullet hit Kennedy in the back, exited his body through his throat, hits Governor John Connally who was sitting in front of Kennedy, and proceeds to break two different bones in Connally's body.
'Now, I've been in the infantry and I've seen enough combat to tell you that in all the craziness of war, this "Alice in Wonderland" scenario defies physics and common sense. The American people are not stupid,' Stone wrote."

If they believe Stone, they are.

 

[Dcdrac]

Oliver stone while he has made some good films and some truly awful ones is not a forensic historian nor a ballistics expert.

 

[BStrong]

Oliver stone while he has made some good films and some truly awful ones is not a forensic historian nor a ballistics expert.

I salute him for his service, but after that he's just another blowhard.

99% of the time in a shooting war the only troops that have hands-on experience with the subject matter are snipers, and Stone wasn't/isn't.

That "up and to the left" crap is based on Hollywood fiction, not the reality of GSW effect.