JFK's assassination: your thoughts

[JayUtah]

Honestly Jay, you are out of your league; if you had a modicum of knowledge in regards to the Warren Commission you would not act like you do.

Meaningless posturing and bluster. As I've said, I can't yet find a JFK conspiracy theorist who can argue the historical points without getting all wrapped up in a you-know-what match about who is smartest person in the room.

Please, for the love of some deity, stop this personal attack nonsense.

Second, terms of the contract are absolutely meaningless... again, you show your lack of knowledge.

Ha ha! That's priceless. You're the one claiming a contract exists and that on the basis of this contract Clay Shaw acted on behalf of the CIA to carry out or otherwise facilitate the murder of Kennedy. Now you're the one trying to sweep under the carpet your complete and utter inability to show us the contract or describe its terms. This is your argument, not mine. If you're telling us that you can't describe the contract, then that's tantamount to admitting you don't know if a contract existed or mandated the actions you attribute to Shaw. You just torpedoed your only argument.

Of course the terms of a contract are not meaningless. In fact the terms of a contract are the contract. That's what a contract is.

The FBI and CIA completely disavows various operations; the idea of "plausible denial" stays intact.

Well, since you're now waving your hands vigorously about "disavowals" I guess it's safe to say you really don't have any more information about Shaw's purported contract with the CIA and so now you're trying to make excuses for why you can't provide the information we requested.

Very well, I accept your implied concession that no more information will be forthcoming.

Helms specifically says that Shaw provided information to the CIA.

No one disputes that Clay Shaw was an informant to the CIA. You're the one trying to carry that inferentially beyond what all the documentary evidence says was the case. You, like Garrison, are trying to make Shaw out to be something he was not. You can't trump up a case against Shaw any more than Garrison could. Garrison's case was laughed out of court, based on the same handwaving, flawed logic, and speculation that you're trying to employ.

Your complete misunderstanding and total lack of reading of the WC report shows in your questions.

Pointless bluster. You say that on the basis of a contract Clay Shaw supposedly had with the CIA, Shaw was somehow instrumental in setting up the CIA's assassination of Kennedy. But you can't find the contract, you can't describe it, and you can't deal with all the documentary evidence that shows specifically why no such contract would have existed.

My questions were designed to show you how the evidence you offered does not match the conclusions you proposed to draw from it. And since you've been reduced to ad hominem, bluster, and vague handwaving, I'd say my questions were successful. You are unable to answer them, so now you're trying to make it seem inappropriate of me to ask them so that the refutation will seem empty to a third party. Pure trollism and posturing. No science, history, or logic at all in you arguments.

If you would have read ALL of the Commission report, hearing testimony, executive sessions, evidence... you would never have had asked the questions you did.

Vague handwaving. "...act like I do" and "...asked the questions I did" beg the question that I'm doing something disingenuous or inappropriate without your actually having to cite examples of it. You're not arguing the history at all. Your entire argument has devolved into nothing more than trying to poison the well. Are we going to have a repeat of your last meltdown? Where was it you told us you didn't really have any interest in the actual questions in JREF threads, but you just like stirring things up? Was that in this thread or another thread?

You can't BS your way through this.

If you've read the previous 200+ pages of this thread in which I have participated regularly since long before you joined the forum, perhaps you'd see how silly it is for you to try to tell the readers that I'm the one faking my way through it. So far you're just following the same rhetorical path of the one troll (Robert Prey) we've already buried. You really don't seem to have any information or insight. Your argument is just thinly-veiled (and rather arrogant) question-begging.

 

[JayUtah]

IMHO....
Having stood where Oswald stood...and tramped back and forth through the Plaza, I am certain that:
Oswald - if he ever even fired a shot, did not act alone.
The "kill" shot came from the area of the grassy knoll

Have you ever fired a rifle before at a moving target? I grew up around rifles, hunting, and target shooting. I too have stood where Oswald stood and I too have stood upon the Grassy Knoll. And from my prior experience with firearms and from my personal experience in Dealey Plaza, my opinion is that the Depository window was the best-chosen sniper's nest, and that only a great fool who wanted assuredly to get caught while almost just as assuredly missing the shot would attempt to fire from the Grassy Knoll.

Perhaps you could expand a little bit on what led to your conclusion?

The warren commission was pages and pages of fiction weaved through precious little fact.
IMHO....

Well this seems to be the only kind of opinion we get from JFK conspiracy theorists. Rather than tell us who did it and why, they seem to obsess over telling us just how badly the Warren Commission got it wrong. I'm really not interested in pointless bashing of prior investigations unless someone is willing to show us how much better the job should have been done, and thereby arrive at a more credible suspect.

 

[JayUtah]

If there was a conspiracy involving...

Okay, so we start off kind of talking about the Kennedy assassination, which is a topic of interest to me. There seems to be a lot of discussion surrounding it, but so very little meritorious historical scholarship.

What do you think about our government?

And we end up trying to take down the whole government. See, this is why I can't take this brand of JFK conspiracism seriously at all. When the motivation is very clearly a broad hatred and distrust of the Establishment, I can't imagine that a great deal of actual study and scholarship has gone into the conspiracy theories. The line of reasoning here is that there "must" be a conspiracy because Evil Government, and that's what they'd do. That's not history. That's just badly-expressed politics with a thin veneer of pseudo-history. That's a fundamentally dishonest approach, so I'm not interested.

 

[JayUtah]

Since you have to ask what Executive Session it was, show your absence of knowledge.

Nice try at accusing me of ignorance. I didn't ask what executive session it was; I asked you to provide the date of the executive session your quote came from. It's your burden of proof to document your own evidence, regardless whether someone else knows or doesn't know it. How are we supposed to read your mind and determine which of the many statements Dulles made in the executive sessions were the ones to which you refer?

I ask questions like this to distinguish between arguments that claim to be based on primary sources (and whose authors can almost always cite those primary sources, since they recently read them), and arguments that are borrowed from secondary sources. As has been brought up many times in this thread, JFK conspiracy proponents here habitually rely on secondary and tertiary sources, which often selectively quote from or paraphrase the primary sources. These proponents often prop up the ubiquitous bluster in which they frame their arguments by the belief that these cherry-picked and paraphrased references to primary material can stand up to scrutiny.

Sadly we have seen far too often that conspiracists who claim a superior understanding of the primary sources can typically only discuss them as far as the secondary sources do, and universally represent the view and scope presented in the secondary source. Hence asking for primary source citations when primary sources are alluded to is a necessary and important step.

Since you have failed to give even a cursory reference for your quote, we have little faith that you actually know whether any such quotation exists and whether it says what you claim it says. No one is obligated to take your vague hearsay at face value.

I would rather have you deny that it ever took place and then I will be happy to show you where it did.

Please simply provide the information I asked for, to prove you really did read it in context in the primary source, and kindly do not try to shift the burden of proof or rewrite my argument to be something it is not.

Instead, I will stay with your tact and never provide the exact link.

Suit yourself. I promise that your bald-faced unwillingness to provide a citation for a quote you allege, and which forms the only leg of your argument, hurts no one but you.

Please, please say that Dulles never said it.

No, kindly do not beg me to provide a different argument. Please simply deal with the post I made, not the post you fervently wish I had made instead.

That would make my day but until you provide a modicum of understanding, you are not worth the time spent on this subject.

Flounce.

I find your stance quite amusing as you provide absolutely zero in the way of supportive documentation.

You mean aside from the oversight committee report that shows the DSC division of the CIA did not enter into any contracts with its informants or deal with them in any other than a voluntary capacity. That was a properly quoted and referenced quotation from a primary source. Either you did not care to read it or you are willfully misrepresenting my activity in this thread. Either way, you were unable to deal with its findings, therefore you shifted gears to wave your hands wildly about disavowals.

You provide quips and fallacious comments but nothing that advances the subject.

I'm perfectly willing to let the readers be the judge of how true this statement is. You label my comments "fallacious" but you are unwilling to give any examples of them or a logical analysis to show the alleged fallacy. You insinuate that I am responsible for "advancing the subject." But you are the one arguing that Shaw had a nefarious role with the CIA. You are attempting to make that point. I am disputing it, and asking you questions designed to test your line of reasoning. I am at a loss to determine how scrutiny of a proposition to test its strength does not advance a subject.

But I suspect what you really mean is that you want to shift the burden of proof, or at least play the tedious JFK conspiracist game of baiting anyone who disputes any of the conspiracy theories into accepting a burden to defend the Warren Commission as a necessary consequence. We're onto that rhetoric, so don't bother. No one here will allow you to shift the burden of proof.

 

[RoboTimbo]

IMHO....
Having stood where Oswald stood...and tramped back and forth through the Plaza, I am certain that:
Oswald - if he ever even fired a shot, did not act alone.
The "kill" shot came from the area of the grassy knoll
The warren commission was pages and pages of fiction weaved through precious little fact.
IMHO....

It's good to have opinions. They don't mean much when they contradict reality but it's good we all have them.

 

[SUSpilot]

IMHO....
Having stood where Oswald stood...and tramped back and forth through the Plaza, I am certain that:
Oswald - if he ever even fired a shot, did not act alone.
The "kill" shot came from the area of the grassy knoll
The warren commission was pages and pages of fiction weaved through precious little fact.
IMHO....

I've done the same, and found no reason to doubt the commission's findings.

 

[Pooneil]

Have you ever fired a rifle before at a moving target? I grew up around rifles, hunting, and target shooting. I too have stood where Oswald stood and I too have stood upon the Grassy Knoll. And from my prior experience with firearms and from my personal experience in Dealey Plaza, my opinion is that the Depository window was the best-chosen sniper's nest, and that only a great fool who wanted assuredly to get caught while almost just as assuredly missing the shot would attempt to fire from the Grassy Knoll.

Ya, I've done that too. A head shot from the Grassy Knoll that didn't stop in JFK's, which the head shot did not do, would have hit Jackie. Because JFK was slumped down from the back shot. Or if greatly deflected, would have struck the inside of the car. Since those things did not happen, there is no reason to believe the shot was fired from the knoll.

If just one of these Grassy Knoll guys would just come forward and tell us where the bullet went that would be a big step forward.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

Has the government been brought down yet? It's almost Happy Hour.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Has the government been brought down yet? It's almost Happy Hour.

They can't tonight, Ancient Aliens is on.

 

[I Ratant]

From the 6th floor window looking down at Elm, the limo is going away from the shooter at a slow rate, and rising in his field of view.
From a kneeling position, it is easy to track the target and shoot.

 

[TheRedWorm]

From the 6th floor window looking down at Elm, the limo is going away from the shooter at a slow rate, and rising in his field of view.
From a kneeling position, it is easy to track the target and shoot.

Also, he hit with 67% of his shots. I'm going to type this again, for the benefit of our new conspiracists:

1st shot: LHO completely misses his target(possibly aiming at JFK's head), and can't see where the bullet hit, so he cycles the bolt and...
2nd shot: Aims for a center of mass shot, fires, and sees JFK start to react to a shot roughly mid-line and maybe a little high on the body, so LHO cycles the bolt again and...
3rd shot: Taking what he has learned from his 2nd shot, LHO carefully aims for the president's head and pulls the trigger, and sees that JFK has been mortally wounded.

Give me a plausible shot by shot analysis for your shooter/shooters.

 

[I Ratant]

LIFE Magazine published a good issue just now on the assassination, with the Zapruder film images from their issue just after the event, and Z-313, which was NOT published in the 1963 issue.
The debris going up and forward from the head is typical of a shot from the rear.
The bullet-sized hole seen in the photos of the back of the head at the autopsy and the massive hole in the forehead confirm the direction of the bullet.

 

[BStrong]

IMHO....
Having stood where Oswald stood...and tramped back and forth through the Plaza, I am certain that:
Oswald - if he ever even fired a shot, did not act alone.
The "kill" shot came from the area of the grassy knoll
The warren commission was pages and pages of fiction weaved through precious little fact.
IMHO....

Being a retired cop, weapons instructor, trained in forensic firearms examination and identification, six years in the Army, on site experience at Dealey and first hand experience in the ugly business of gsw of all types, I believe the WC got it right.

 

[Wolrab]

Being a retired cop, weapons instructor, trained in forensic firearms examination and identification, six years in the Army, on site experience at Dealey and first hand experience in the ugly business of gsw of all types, I believe the WC got it right.

Yeah but you need to see this youtube video, dude.
Yeah but this book by a guy with no experience in any of that will show you you are wrong.
Yeah but this website is just common sense, not all that stuff you were brainwashed to believe.
That about cover the CT responses?

 

[FrederickEason]

Yeah but you need to see this youtube video, dude.
Yeah but this book by a guy with no experience in any of that will show you you are wrong.
Yeah but this website is just common sense, not all that stuff you were brainwashed to believe.
That about cover the CT responses?

You forgot one:

Yeah but that didn't happen, something else happened, no I don't have evidence but I'm going to pretend I do.

 

[Pope130]

Being a retired cop, weapons instructor, trained in forensic firearms examination and identification, six years in the Army, on site experience at Dealey and first hand experience in the ugly business of gsw of all types, I believe the WC got it right.

I agree. Military and civilian small arms instructor, and been to the book depository. Not a difficult shot.

Anyone interested in this question really should go to Dallas and walk the ground. The Plaza is much smaller in real life than it looks in photographs.

 

[Robrob]

Yeah but you need to see this youtube video, dude.
Yeah but this book by a guy with no experience in any of that will show you you are wrong.
Yeah but this website is just common sense, not all that stuff you were brainwashed to believe.
That about cover the CT responses?

Yep. Funny how to this day many of them continue to claim things such as "LHO couldn't have made three shots in that short amount of time." Even though there have been any number of experiments documenting it is quite possible and not even all that difficult.

 

[bynmdsue]

Yep. Funny how to this day many of them continue to claim things such as "LHO couldn't have made three shots in that short amount of time." Even though there have been any number of experiments documenting it is quite possible and not even all that difficult.

The "JFK The Smoking Gun" program on Reelz Channel was harping on the 3 shots on target in 5.6 seconds test and how only one of the marksmen could do it even though Oswald didn't put 3 shots on target himself.

 

[Robrob]

The "JFK The Smoking Gun" program on Reelz Channel was harping on the 3 shots on target in 5.6 seconds test and how only one of the marksmen could do it even though Oswald didn't put 3 shots on target himself.

Did they also make the classic mistake of not starting the clock at the sound of the first shot? LHO started with the first round in the chamber. Shoot, load, shoot, load, shoot. So often the reenactments go, load, shoot, load, shoot, load, shoot.

He effectively had 2.8 seconds for each shot (#2 and 3).

 

[kookbreaker]

I am reminded of the Italian Army duplication where the tester actually aimed to duplicate the shots exactly and was mighty casual about cycling the bolt. They came back with a figure of 18 seconds as some kind of proof. I think even the buffs knew not to run with that nonsense test.