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March 28, 2024, 10:23:37 PM

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JFK discussion here!

Started by Cerys, February 17, 2013, 04:28:26 PM

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biggytitbo

I think Oswald could have done the shooting. It was a moving target and all but it was fairly close and technically it should have been possible. The fact he was cold, had not fired a rifle or that rifle for many months if not years counts against him. Plus the scope was defective. But even considering that, I don't think it's out of the question that he could have pulled it off.


But i ddint think he did the shooting for several reasons, the two main ones been -

- The last 2 shots were almost certainly too close together for him to have fired them. 

- The FBI went to a lot of trouble to analyse the cast of his face taken by the Dallas police to do the then standard nitrate tests to test for gun shot residue. Everyone one of these tests, including neutron activation analysis came out negative indicating that Oswald hadn't fired a rifle that day.
They even did control tests using oswalds rifle to see if it did deposit gunshot residue onto the cheeks of shooters and in everyone of their tests it did, in copious amounts. There was none on Oswald's cheek.

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: dallasman on February 17, 2013, 09:49:37 PMTo me, the evidence against Oswald and what we know about him, makes a compelling case for the "lone nut theory" while making his involvement in a far-reaching conspiracy very unlikely.

I think basic logic essentially dictates that LHO either acted or alone or was part of a conspiracy so vast that it engulfed a significant percent of the US' population, and as option 2 is basically impossible (unless we're living in a world which is basically They Live with an older and slightly less rowdy Roddy Piper twatting about, doing whatever it is a retired Roddy Piper would do), I tend to favour Oswald.

Add to this, basically none of the motives behind the infinite number of groups and individuals who have been accused of of orchestrating the thing that have been banded about hold any weight whatsoever. Kennedy wasn't a pacifist. Kennedy wasn't a radical. Kennedy wasn't an ultra-liberal. Kennedy wasn't a threat to the establishment. Kennedy didn't try to end the Federal Reserve. Kennedy (probably) hadn't stumbled across evidence of alien contact with Eartn and wasn't on the verge of making this big.

The only ones that vaguely make sense or can be justified by the historical record, really, are the Mafia or some pissed off Cubans (whether they were pro-Castro or pissed off expats), and even then, they would've have to have had their tendrils in so many  governmental pies and agencies that, again, this reasoning falls down .

Hilariously, those two options are now apparently considered incredibly passe by the overwhelming body of JFK assassination conspiragoons I encounter online and IRL. I've seen clips on YouTube posing those theories lambasted as CIA propaganda designed to throw researchers off the scent of the real assassins, the Jews/Illuminati/New World Order/six ft tall gekkos.

acrow



eh? eh?

also, i remember reading this book online once. i can't remember if it was a novel or "non-fiction", but i remember it dealt with oswald and mk-ultra and maybe body doubles and all sorts of crazy shit and it was awesome.

any ideas?

dallasman

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 17, 2013, 10:08:42 PM
The FBI went to a lot of trouble to analyse the cast of his face taken by the Dallas police to do the then standard nitrate tests to test for gun shot residue. Everyone one of these tests, including neutron activation analysis came out negative indicating that Oswald hadn't fired a rifle that day.
They even did control tests using oswalds rifle to see if it did deposit gunshot residue onto the cheeks of shooters and in everyone of their tests it did, in copious amounts. There was none on Oswald's cheek.

There was on both his hands, though. And those tests were considered unreliable even back then, so a negative result on the cheek by no means rules him out as a possible shooter. There's also the fact that he brought his rifle to work that day, while leaving behind his wedding ring and his life savings.

biggytitbo

Not the old vast conspiracy chestnut. It would have been a very small group of people.

The secret is the cover-up and as John Newman areas in his book on Oswald, the plot was brilliantly designed to get many agencies to participate in the cover-up completely unwittingly. Oswald was an overt communist at the height of the Cold War in the most right wing part of the US, in a city run by the old boy network. He seemingly killed one of their boys - Tippit, the notoriously corrupt Dallas police are going to nail him whatever it takes - innocent or guilty.

The FBI and the Warren Commision participated in the cover up because they bought Johnsons line that unless the public were convinced that Oswald acted alone it might end in a nuclear war that would kill hundreds of millions of people. This might sound insane now, but think about the atmosphere of the times. Only a few years earlier  the world was on the brink of nuclear annihilation.

If it got out that a soviet defector had killed the president of the USA as part of a soviet plot it could end in nuclear war. And shortly before the assassination Oswald had visited the Russian embassy in Mexico City, and allegedly met with the soviets head of assassinations in the Western Hemisphere. Johnson knew this, Hoover knew this. 

Johnson used his threat of nuclear war to essentially bully everyone into falling into line and getting something out there that showed, at all costs, that Oswald was simply a lone nut.

The CIA took part in the cover up simply because they were up to the nuts in Oswald and had been for years. They were terrified that some of their dirty laundry would come out so they simply shut up shop. They even refused to cooperate with the various investigations over the years, the Warren Commision and the HSCA and actively even fed them lies and disinformation.

Thus it's perfectly reasonable that many people could have taken part in the cover up without having anything at all to do with the conspiracy itself, simply because it made total sense for them to do so.



dallasman

...and furthermore, about the tests you cite, here's some WC testimony from the Feds who carried them out. This is referring to tests done with Oswald's rifle:

     CUNNINGHAM:     
We fired the rifle. Mr. Killion fired it three times rapidly, using similar ammunition to that used in the assassination. We reran the tests both on the cheek and both hands. This time we got a negative reaction on all casts.
    EISENBERG:    So to recapitulate, after firing the rifle rapid-fire no residues of any nitrate were picked off Mr. Killion's cheek?
    CUNNINGHAM:    That is correct, and there were none on the hands. We cleaned off the rifle again with dilute HCl. I loaded it for him. He held it in one of the cleaned areas and I pushed the clip in so he would not have to get his hands near the chamber—in other words, so he wouldn't pick up residues, from it, or from the action, or from the receiver. When we ran the casts, we got no reaction on either hand or on his cheek. On the controls, when he hadn't fired a gun all day, we got numerous reactions.

Cunningham had explained earlier why a false negative could arise with the rifle (3H492):

    EISENBERG:     A paraffin test was also run of Oswald's cheek and it produced a negative result.
    CUNNINGHAM:    Yes.
    EISENBERG:    Do your tests, or do the tests which you ran, or your experience with revolvers and rifles, cast any light on the significance of a negative result being obtained on the right cheek?
    CUNNINGHAM:    No, sir; I personally wouldn't expect to find any residues on a person's right cheek after firing a rifle due to the fact that by the very principles and the manufacture and the action, the cartridge itself is sealed into the chamber by the bolt being closed behind it, and upon firing the case, the cartridge case expands into the chamber filling it up and sealing it off from the gases, so none will come back in your face, and so by its very nature, I would not expect to find residue on the right cheek of a shooter.

biggytitbo

Quote from: dallasman on February 17, 2013, 10:33:09 PM
There was on both his hands, though. And those tests were considered unreliable even back then, so a negative result on the cheek by no means rules him out as a possible shooter. There's also the fact that he brought his rifle to work that day, while leaving behind his wedding ring and his life savings.


Why would he take his life savings to work with him? He used to keep some money in an old wallet in a drawer at the Paines because nobody takes their life savings to work and he wouldn't leave it at his lodging house because his landlady used to snoop around his room.


As for his ring, if you believe Marina he took it off all the time because he didn't like wearing it. Alternatively they'd been rowing constantly so he may have taken it off during an argument.


The standard paraffin test as unreliable yes. But the other tests they did are still used today and are very reliable.

biggytitbo

Quote from: dallasman on February 17, 2013, 10:38:27 PM
...and furthermore, about the tests you cite, here's some WC testimony from the Feds who carried them out. This is referring to tests done with Oswald's rifle:

     CUNNINGHAM:     
We fired the rifle. Mr. Killion fired it three times rapidly, using similar ammunition to that used in the assassination. We reran the tests both on the cheek and both hands. This time we got a negative reaction on all casts.
    EISENBERG:    So to recapitulate, after firing the rifle rapid-fire no residues of any nitrate were picked off Mr. Killion's cheek?
    CUNNINGHAM:    That is correct, and there were none on the hands. We cleaned off the rifle again with dilute HCl. I loaded it for him. He held it in one of the cleaned areas and I pushed the clip in so he would not have to get his hands near the chamber—in other words, so he wouldn't pick up residues, from it, or from the action, or from the receiver. When we ran the casts, we got no reaction on either hand or on his cheek. On the controls, when he hadn't fired a gun all day, we got numerous reactions.

Cunningham had explained earlier why a false negative could arise with the rifle (3H492):

    EISENBERG:     A paraffin test was also run of Oswald's cheek and it produced a negative result.
    CUNNINGHAM:    Yes.
    EISENBERG:    Do your tests, or do the tests which you ran, or your experience with revolvers and rifles, cast any light on the significance of a negative result being obtained on the right cheek?
    CUNNINGHAM:    No, sir; I personally wouldn't expect to find any residues on a person's right cheek after firing a rifle due to the fact that by the very principles and the manufacture and the action, the cartridge itself is sealed into the chamber by the bolt being closed behind it, and upon firing the case, the cartridge case expands into the chamber filling it up and sealing it off from the gases, so none will come back in your face, and so by its very nature, I would not expect to find residue on the right cheek of a shooter.


He lied under oath.

George Oscar Bluth II

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt

QuoteGeorge de Mohrenschildt (in Russian: Георгий де Мореншильд) (April 17, 1911 – March 29, 1977) was a petroleum geologist and professor who befriended Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1962 and maintained that friendship until Oswald's death, two days after Oswald's assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. He was acquainted with the Bush family; George H. W. Bush had roomed with de Mohrenschildt's nephew, Edward G. Hooker, at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.[1] He was also acquainted with the Bouvier family, including Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the president's wife, when she was still a child.

Interesting.

dallasman

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on February 17, 2013, 10:20:01 PM
The only ones that vaguely make sense or can be justified by the historical record, really, are the Mafia or some pissed off Cubans (whether they were pro-Castro or pissed off expats), and even then, they would've have to have had their tendrils in so many  governmental pies and agencies that, again, this reasoning falls down .

Hilariously, those two options are now apparently considered incredibly passe by the overwhelming body of JFK assassination conspiragoons I encounter online and IRL. I've seen clips on YouTube posing those theories lambasted as CIA propaganda designed to throw researchers off the scent of the real assassins, the Jews/Illuminati/New World Order/six ft tall gekkos.

Yeah, that seems to be the general way it's heading. HSCA head Blakey was apparently convinced the Mob was behind it, but people like James Files may have rendered that line of thinking too embarrasing by now. Mossad were a popular group to drop into the mix a few years ago, I seem to recall.

biggytitbo

Yes George was so friendly with the Bouvier family that he virtually became a surrogate Uncle for the young Jacqui kennedy. The idea that this man would also then become best friends with Oswald was always a fairly amazing coincidence.

dallasman

Well, Biggetybo, with your last couple of posts we're already way into whack-a-mole territory, factoid-wise. And since you can always skip past the more troublesome questions or casually dismiss any counterarguments like this...

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 17, 2013, 10:44:27 PM
He lied under oath.

...I think that's it for me, at least for today (I've got some TV to watch). Thanks for clarifying your position, though. Always interesting to see what's cooking on the conspiracy front. Hope for some more colourful theories if/when our friend Steven reports back.

gabrielconroy

biggy, are you saying you believe Oswald was working in some way with the Soviets? That this second gunman was a Soviet-affiliated assassin?

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 17, 2013, 10:38:16 PM
Not the old vast conspiracy chestnut. It would have been a very small group of people.

I actually quite like that breakdown. It's tidy, relatively simple, stretches plausibility on its own terms, and a bit further when you consider that despite it being simple, there are so many variables involved that it would've had to have been executed to total pin point perfection by everyone involved, whether they were doing so consciously or unconsciously, wittingly or otherwise, but overall that's nice. Still leaves us bereft of a motive, though.

As annoying as I find returning to the topic of the JFK assassination, I think it is a really interesting topic and it excites my imagination to consider the possibilities of the case (which is a shame, because my brain should really be dedicated to consideration of things that actually matter and are actually occurring in the world around me presently that I can actually control on some level and actually matter). I find studying the conspiracy theories around the event pretty fascinating too, actually - their evolution and sociological implications in particular. What started out, in essence, as a book or two consisting of entirely reasonable criticisms of the Warren Report has turned into a multimillion dollar global franchise that gives rise to dozens of books and films every year, almost every one naming particular individuals, or some force in society, as the culprits.

biggytitbo

Quote from: dallasman on February 17, 2013, 11:15:41 PM
Well, Biggetybo, with your last couple of posts we're already way into whack-a-mole territory, factoid-wise. And since you can always skip past the more troublesome questions or casually dismiss any counterarguments like this...

...I think that's it for me, at least for today (I've got some TV to watch). Thanks for clarifying your position, though. Always interesting to see what's cooking on the conspiracy front. Hope for some more colourful theories if/when our friend Steven reports back.


He did lie under oath. The FBI did the controls tests that showed each subject received copious amounts of gunshot residue from firing oswalds rifle. They tried to deep six the report but Harold Weisberg got hold of it years later. Look it up.

biggytitbo

Quote from: gabrielconroy on February 17, 2013, 11:16:41 PM
biggy, are you saying you believe Oswald was working in some way with the Soviets? That this second gunman was a Soviet-affiliated assassin?
No I'm saying it could easily have looked that way to some people and Johnson used the spectre of that to get the various agencies to fall into line.


Remember that Hoover had this report about Oswald been at the soviet embassy and talking to the Russian head of assassinations.

gabrielconroy

So do you have a view on who this proposed second gunman was, and what his and Oswald's motive was?

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: acrow on February 17, 2013, 10:31:41 PM
i remember reading this book online once. i can't remember if it was a novel or "non-fiction", but i remember it dealt with oswald and mk-ultra and maybe body doubles and all sorts of crazy shit and it was awesome.

Alas, I think I know the one you're talking about, but I can't place its name currently. I'll get back to you.

My favourite JFK conspiracy book is Crossfire by Jim Marrs. It's basically an epic compendium of almost every variation of the JFK assassination conspiracy theory, and the factoids contained within there has ever been (stops short of blaming Mossad, but yes, that's still very much bouncing around as a possible force behind the assassination), so it's a useful guide to the kind of (easily debunkable) claims you can expect to encounter coming from a JFK conspiracy theorist. Marrs' prose is delightfully excitable and overly dramatic, and so inexorable is his tossing out of potential theories and factoids that you soon come to believe that Oswald was shot from several hundred different angles in a conspiracy that involved several hundred thousand accomplices, two of whom may have been your own parents.

Pepotamo1985


George Oscar Bluth II

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 17, 2013, 10:49:05 PM
Yes George was so friendly with the Bouvier family that he virtually became a surrogate Uncle for the young Jacqui kennedy. The idea that this man would also then become best friends with Oswald was always a fairly amazing coincidence.

And his nephew knew George H.W. Bush!

There's a whole load of stuff around the assassination that's far more interesting than micro-analysis of the shooting itself, George is one of those things.

Equally, I note that Marina Oswald is still around...

Revelator

I clicked on this thread thinking it would be a debate on whether Kennedy was a good president or not. I'm somewhat crestfallen to find that is not the case.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on February 17, 2013, 11:33:09 PM
Alas, I think I know the one you're talking about, but I can't place its name currently. I'll get back to you.

My favourite JFK conspiracy book is Crossfire by Jim Marrs. It's basically an epic compendium of almost every variation of the JFK assassination conspiracy theory, and the factoids contained within there has ever been (stops short of blaming Mossad, but yes, that's still very much bouncing around as a possible force behind the assassination), so it's a useful guide to the kind of (easily debunkable) claims you can expect to encounter coming from a JFK conspiracy theorist. Marrs' prose is delightfully excitable and overly dramatic, and so inexorable is his tossing out of potential theories and factoids that you soon come to believe that Oswald was shot from several hundred different angles in a conspiracy that involved several hundred thousand accomplices, two of whom may have been your own parents.


Odd that you don't have any scorn for the flakiness of the official accounts. After all, there's been at least 3 official investigations into the assassination and from those we have a hole in Kennedy's head in 2 different places, a hole in the back that's in two different places, different x-rays, different medical evidence, 3 different single bullet theories, all of them mutually contradictory, 3 completely different shooting sequences and 2 complety different final verdicts.


Cerys

And that's just stuff that you've come up with!

B'dum tish

Pepotamo1985

Sorry mate, but you're using diversionary tactics.

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 18, 2013, 07:22:08 AM
Odd that you don't have any scorn for the flakiness of the official accounts.

Erm,

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on February 17, 2013, 11:17:05 PM
entirely reasonable criticisms of the Warren Report.

Odd that you haven't tackled the glaring question of who or what orchestrated the assassination and what their motive was.

Also, I think the HSCA investigation was pretty flawed, in particular their use of the Clinton witnesses and flimsy acoustic evidence. Also, their conclusion that the third shot came from a second assassin located on the grassy knoll, but missed, is pretty bizarre. I think the Warren Report is pretty good - definitely not perfect and a bit messy in places but pretty decent.

mook

biggy, i think you're missing the biggest conspiracy here - just why hasn't the grassy knoll been developed upon?

biggytitbo

What's a diversionary tactic is using the piss easy device of finding some loons and make out they're somehow representative of 'JFK conspiracy theories/ists'.

Why not discuss there work of Josiah Thompson, or John Newman, or Jim DiEugenio or Jim Douglas or Anthony Summers?

I see you praise the Warren Commission. You do know the Warren Commision didn't do any of its own investigative work, unlike the authors mentioned above who actually bothered to get on the ground and do some digging.

The Warren Commisons findings revolve on fraudulently presenting the medical evidence, a nonsensical theory made up by Arlen Spector and the babblings of Marina Oswald.

Its utter nonsense.


The HJSCA is nonsense too, but at least it made some cursory attempt to investigate any other lead other than Oswald did it.

Edley

#56
Edit: misread.

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 18, 2013, 02:02:40 PM
What's a diversionary tactic is using the piss easy device of finding some loons and make out they're somehow representative of 'JFK conspiracy theories/ists'.

What's diversionary is is claiming I ever did anything like that.

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 18, 2013, 02:02:40 PM
Why not discuss there work of Josiah Thompson, or John Newman, or Jim DiEugenio or Jim Douglas or Anthony Summers?

Six Seconds in Dallas is great stuff, and makes a decent case. Was lucky enough to pick it up at a boot sale when I was a yoof for 50 pence. I now see it's going for $350 on Amazon. Might be forced to sell up.

Newman's Vietnam book is a streak of piss but his work on Oswald's CIA connection is pretty good.

Jim DiEugenio I'm not fully familiar with, but the stuff I've read by him seems to not only vindicate Jim Garrison's entire 'probe' in principle and practice but deify Garrison as a person, so I don't think I'm missing out on anything there. Big Jim was a homophobic nutjob with pederast tendencies who abused his power and concocted evidence in an attempt to wrongly convict entirely innocent people, and ruined dozens of lives in the process.

Douglass' book 'JFK and the Unspeakable' is embarassing. He depends on long-discredited factoids and bullshit 'witnesses' to build his 'case' and commits the cardinal sin of portraying JFK as a radical liberal and pacifist. I'd almost rank it with Crossfire as a legit lol-inducing pamphlet.

In regard to Summers, I respect the dude and have already implied that I'd lend some credence to his conclusions - that the Warren Report was flawed, and it's possible that the Mafia and/or Cubans were somehow involved at some level.

biggytitbo

You've been wading in here with silly generalizations from the beginning:

Quoteso it's a useful guide to the kind of (easily debunkable) claims you can expect to encounter coming from a JFK conspiracy theorist.

Yes because JFK conspiracy theorists are all the same aren't the Pepomato? Jim Fetzer and Anthony Summers - exactly the same. THey're both wackjobs who believe anything.

The problem is there are extremists wackjobs on both sides who've spent 50 years polluting the river with shite so its virtually impossible to see the bottom any more. That doesn't mean there aren't many many perfectly rational people, proper historians and journalists like Gerald McKnight and Summers, who've done good work exposing the obvious lies of the Warren Commission.

This leaves us in a position where there much we will probably never be able to know for sure, but with some basic facts that can now be demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt - most importantly that the single bullet theory did not happen.

No SBT, no Oswald as lone assassin.

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: biggytitbo on February 18, 2013, 05:17:16 PM
You've been wading in here with silly generalizations from the beginning

Probably should've been clearer on that point, but my use of 'kind of' is a bit of a caveat, no? I wasn't trying to characterize anyone who has doubts about LHO as the lone assassin as part of an easily deflectable echo chamber. My point was that, such is the vast scope of the conspiracy Marrs espouses, and all the players he names, and all the factoids he trots out happily, Crossfire is very useful for getting acquainted with the vast array of utter guff you can expect to encounter when you meet a typical JFK assassination conspiracy proponent, who hasn't come into contact with the saner, more rational stuff that has flowed from the pens of Summers or Thompson.