I am just curious… I must be the only one in the country who was oblivious to the documentary the History Channel has been running all week about Kennedy (I am just not big on TV…).
People where I work seem to be enthralled, claiming it provides undisputable evidence that Lyndon Johnson engineered the whole assassination. The new angle seem to be provided by testimonies of retired CIA and FBI agents, as well as medical staff who had kept silent until now…
Aside from the fact that a new theory seems to spring up every other year or so, my question is: if this new one is so fullproof, how come the media isn’t all over it? I would imagine it would be huge news, right?
But I haven’t seen the doc. So, what do those of you who have think? Another one for the collection, or is there any substance to this one?
Just watched Matthew White’s 1998 movie to-night on Arte (German/French channel).
No such dramatic final conclusions, but:
Hoover was asked by Johnson to conclude fast on his lone shooter theory.
Hoover manipulated the Warren commission, having enough “files” to blackmail anyone. His FBI confiscated the famous 8mm amateur movie, then inverted shots to mask that the second bullet–the fatal one–hit JFK from the front, and violently pulled his head back, and not by any backlash “bounce effect”.
Same Warren commission had to approve the farce of the “magic bullet”, getting through JFK’s throat, then the Texas Governor’s chest, exploding one rib, twisted to finally lodge itself into his thigh… and looking like new after these three wounds it inflicted.
The 1979 Stokes Commission conclusion: there was a conspiration. It was not Soviet, nor Castrist Cuban, but probably domestic. The Stokes Commission ended, and could not pursue its investigation… because of Congress budget cutdowns. Stokes expressed he was confident the FBI would pursue on the Martin Luther King, Jr, murder while the Justice department would re-open the JFK case.
I haven’t seen the documentary, and I don’t have any opinions on who is responsible. However, I think the Zapruder film clearly shows that the headshot came from the front (not where Oswald was). Ergo, I do not believe he acted alone.
I watched most of last night’s installment. I noticed that, on at least two occasions, the narrator referred to the assassination as having happened 25 years ago. That means this documentary must have been made in the late 80’s. So … there can’t be anything new here.
I think the History Channel is being a bit irresponsible in that they are not making clear the age of this documentary, nor are they telling us anything about who made it. Considering the nature of the claims being made, I think it’s pretty important that viewers know the source as well as the production date.
I read Gerald Posner’s “Case Closed”, among other major books on the topic. I found it to be the most thoroughly researched and carefully thought out. He concludes that Oswald acted alone. The book didn’t fully convince me of that, but it did make me believe that it certainly possible that Oswald acted alone and it did convince me that there was no massive, Olive Stone-style conspiracy.
Having said that, I also read (and highly recommend) the 2-volume series of audiotapes of the LBJ presidency, including tapes that were made in the months immediately following the assassination. Fascinating stuff. There’s certainly no evidence whatever from those tapes that LBJ was in any way involved. But, his behavior was beyond insensitive and he was politickin’ & jockeying for position merely HOURS after the death of JFK. A fascinating man, LBJ.
Well, I have been thorougly confused for all these years. The explanation of LHO shooting from that tower just doesn’t add up but I haven’t a clue who did it. Very easy to figure a CIA-right wing thing as has been hinted for so long by Norman Mailer et al.
But this week summoned up my annual JFK musings. I remember vividly how enthralled some people were of him and it never ceases to amaze me how popular worldwide he was. My mother used to tell me these wild stories about how he had a phenomenal photographic memory plus full recall, great speaking ability, etc. etc. much of which was not true once I looked into it. But she was a Kennedy believer, like so many others. It was almost like superstition.
When I read analyses of his term and his doings, I am not impressed with JFK at all as a President though his war experience proved him a hero to me. Sometimes I think that there was a headiness to the first few years of the sixties, that was a postwar climax of industrialisation and peacetime realignment that resulted in many new kinds of products, ways of thinking, artistic/design movements and even musical styles (think Beach Boys, Beatles, Bossa Nova, all incubated in a relatively short period of time and hatched to a social outburst). The multiple jolts of the Cuban Missile crisis, the assassination then Vietnam was like a national rollercoaster of emotion, accompanied by wild musical fads.. Like a chicken-egg metaphor, I can’t figure out if Kennedy was that great, or the times and events pumped up the perception of him.
I am sure many of my age and older consider these musings tired. But the one question I will offer is: if I was the age I am now, then, would I think he was a great leader or would it just be the partisan analytical view that I consider a mature kind of evaluation process. In other words, would I seek to understand him by asking “okay, he’s a Democrat, so he must be pandering to this or that group, controlling this or that influence and pushing for a certain agenda.”
Since its beyond me to figure out who killed him, I at least wonder about the above…As for TV shows, I believe Frontline did some rather gruesome reporting with autopsy-type simulations that made me very uneasy a few years back or more.
To elaborate a bit more on my earlier post:
A number of conspiracy theorists suggest that LHO was a “patsy” not directly involved with the assassination.
If he were a self–proclaimed patsy, why would he leave the TSBD moments after JFK was shot? Why would he take a bus, then a cab (when the bus got stuck in traffic, and on his minimum wages) home, then go to a theatre and not pay his way in?
Suspicious behavior at the very least for someone who is completely innocent.
So was he part of some conspiracy?
Lets look at LHO who modern FBI profilers say fits the assassin profile to a T, 20 years before criminal profiling became a form of crime detection. (Amazing that the conspirators would find a patsy who would conform to a future profile). Oswald was a loser throughout his life, born and moved into foster homes in the formative years, uprooted from his southern living and moved to NYC during his school years, HS dropout, etc… He had nothing going for him when he enlisted at age 16-17. Got out pleading hardship, went to Russia, tried to commit suicide when he wasnt accepted there as a defector, given a menial job, came back to the USA with no press coverage (“the Big Defector”), got menial jobs (equipment greaser), got fired from a few, had problems with his wife, was separated from her in Nov 1963…married, 2 kids, 24 years old
When I think of Oswald I think of Timothy McVie…
LH Oswald got his job at the TSBD (as a book packer) by word of mouth from Mrs. Payne, a friend of his wife who heard about the job opening from another friend in Oct 1963. A conspiracy implies that this did not happen by chance but by sinister machinations.
BTW, this was before the actual route for the motorcade was decided…
Gov. John Connolly suggested that the Trade Mart be the location for the lunchtime JFK speech, which dictated the motorcade route.
So if Connolly HAD suggested an alternative site AND Mrs. Paynes had NOT mentioned the job opening at the Texas School Book Despository, LHO would NOT have been in a position to shoot JFK.
But they did.
Were they conspirators…?
The linch-pin for me was this:
One of the biggest arguments for conspiracy is that JFKs body was “whisked away” from Dallas and a US Govt controlled “autopsy” was performed on the president, covering all evidence of a multiple shooting. The body was altered…
So who was this master-mind who sealed the fate of the patsy LHO and ordered JFK’s body to be illegally removed from Dallas?
Jackie Kennedy, by her own statement…who just wanted to get the hell out of Dallas on that tragic day..
Unless she were part of the conspiracy, the Cabal who orchestrated the assassination was taking a helluva chance in leaving a body in Dallas where a autopsy might show a front shot…
So therefore I have to ask: Would a conspiracy to shoot the president take that kind of risk? Have LHO as a patsy when a Dallas autopsy might show he was shot from the front?
Then there are the films. Argue what you will that the Zapruder film was altered. What guarantee would the Conspiracy Cabal have that ALL of the films and camera shots would be confiscated and altered to support their POV? The Nix and Zapruder films match; still shots match…
So not only do we have Mrs. Payne, Gov. Connolly and Jackie Kennedy in a conspiracy, we have who-knows how many photo experts who can analyze and alter any image on stand-by…Plus the autopists in Bethesda MD…
So lets look at the Zapruder film…
Z.186 is appr the first shot, the miss
Z.227-228 is the second shot that goes thru Kennedy’ throat and hits Gov. Connolly (who might have been one of the conspirators). Watching the video in real-time, it is fully believable that 1 shot hit 2 people. Despite Oliver Stone, the bodies were aligned that would allow it…
Z312-313 the JFK fatal shot…
There is a forward movement in JFKs head between Z312-313. He was obviously shot from the rear at this point. The “back and to the left” movement can easily be attributed to 2 things: Newtons 2nd Law of Motion and the fact that JFK wore a back-brace which would help pull his frame backward. From the 6th floor of the TSBD the final shot at a target moving away from you would be relatively simple; a shot at a target moving left to right is hard. If the limo had slowed down just a bit more than it had (it did slow down during the assassination) it is conceivable that assassin #2, shooting from the grassy knoll on the right(couldnt be front or left), might have hit Mrs. JFK.
This would have thrown the entire “single shooter from the rear, lets make Lee Harvey Oswald the patsy” conspiracy plan right down the tubes…
Would a conspiracy to shoot a president leave as much as I stated above to “chance”?
Or could a single loser accomplish as much?
Part of the JFK mystique is that it would be impossible for a lone gunman to take down a Kennedy.
As far as I am concerned, it was…Oswald wanted a place in history.
Consider these contributions he made to our national life:
1-The pursuit of nuclear peace with the Nuclear Test Band Treaty.
2-The Equal Rights revolution, laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights Act that LBJ later on achieved.
3-The Peace Corps and later on the Americorps, which are illustrations of his “Ask not what your country…” call to volunterism.
4-The Space Program
5-The general sense of optimism about the future of America, which is so painfully missing these days.
I don’t know… Just those don’t sound too bad to me…
We’ll never know. From what i know of LBJ, he would have covered up even if he didn’t have anything to hide, paranoid SOB he was. Ditto for J. Edgar Crossdresser Hoover. Interestingly, several good things that Kennedy would have agreed with but would have blocked anyway for pollitical reasons, were able to pass under LBJ, for example, civil rights.
I think both 'Enders & Patrick have a point about JFK. The interesting thing is that even at the time JFK’s faults were visible, but they didn’t matter. There was a headiness, and a trust in the Presidency and in the government, a trust that came after the government had overcome the Great Depression, brought victory in the War, and successful domestic post-war polcies (such as the GI Bill of Rights, which created suburban America).
With Nixon and Watergate something broke in the American psyche, trust and faith in politics and in the system was lost. That, coupled with the trauma of Vietnam, changed American politics and public debate. Just look at the Presidents that followed: First Jimmy Carter, who promised to bring back the simple, straight and honest politician of the past, but of course you can’t recover innocence once lost. So then came Ronald Reagan, the swaggering cowboy, who promised to make America Number One Again. And then Clinton who seemed to offer both strength AND compassion (which Reaganomics had lacked).
Part of the impulse to go back and ask how great JFK actually was or wasn’t, I think, is a result of how the perception of politics has changed in the US post-Watergate.
I have no thoughts to offer on the assination, but some thoughts on his administration.
Few people ever mention or even remember his tax cuts that gave a big boost to the economy, which is one of his greatest achievements. His selling job to congress and the public was masterful and congress didn’t go into a big spending frenzy.
Ronald Reagan achieved something similar with the democrats (and Bush Sr) screaming “voodoo economics”. Congress immediately broke their side of the compromise and went on one of the biggest spending sprees in history.
I had just joined the US Navy during Kennedy’s administration and I was “nervous in the service”. We even got a medal for being “alive in '65”.
I was amazed that he did as good a job as he did with his pain and his drug/sex addictions.
Life between the 50s and 70s was an emotional roller coaster, indeed.
Oswald, alone. I listened to the Congressional hearings
by the way, which concluded that shots were fired
from two places–this on the basis of a new way
of triangulating sounds of shots recorded on
police radios, I think it was, at the time.
Six months later The National Academy of
Sciences published their findings on the
new method; said it was silly.
One need only look at one area to determine the official story is bunk.
The official story is that LHO fired three shots:
One shot is the magic bullet that entered JFK’s back, exited his throat, entered Connally’s back, exited his rib cage, shattered his wrist, lodged in his thigh. This missile was fully intact and can be viewed, Case Exhibit 399.
One shot struck the concrete curb beside James Tague and either bullet of concrete cut his cheek.
One shot was the JFK head shot.
Theres all kinds of physical damage to the car to account for in addition to the damage to human bodies:
a direct hit to the chrome trim around the windscreen
a star in the windscreen itself
and other fragments documented as retrieved from inside the limo
Bullets travel in a straight line, go to the location where the bullet struck the curb and cut Tagues face. Draw a straight line back to the sixth floor where LHO is located. Consider where JFK, in the limo, would have been in relation to that line. It isn’t even in the ball park for a person who made the other two shots hit the mark. It’s very impressive when looking in person in the plaza.
The problem in this case is that the government has not, and will not, make the entire body of evidence available to researchers. The information trickles out as time goes by. New information serves as a catalyst for new theories that include the new information. Accepting that there are some wild theories, and people who cling to their theories even when major parts of them have been discredited or disproven, the fact that the theories are “new” is a problem related to not having all the facts to consider.
If one looks at a seemingly wild theories from 1970 through the lense of what is now available, they seem very odd. But compare them to what had been made available by the govt. and they seem reasonable. Whether the information has been kept for legitimate, or cover, the effect has been to cause researchers to guess, then duck and cover as time goes by. It’s a shame.
the “perfect” conspiracy:
with thousands of secret operatives available to cover every aspect of the shooting, ie, planning, scheduling, physical evidence, witnesses, forensic evidence, autopsy, film and sound analysis, etc to ensure that any and all of the evidence pointed to a single shooter from the right rear, a plan so secret that not one trace of actual evidence of it has surfaced.
The only theory that seems plausible to me is write a book on some JFK assassination conspiracy and you will make money.
There absolutely was at least one conspiracy - the conspiracy to try to end speculation and discussion as quickly as possible, which included, I believe, the killing of Oswald. Whether or not there was a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, many people believed, at the time, that the Russians/Cubans were involved.
My belief is that LBJ and Hoover probably just wanted the thing shut without inciting World War III. They cared less about the truth than they did about getting on with the business of running the country.
If there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, it was probably on a much, much smaller scale than Stone and Garrison (and others) imagined. I’m thinking a couple of pissed off Bay of Pigs survivors and planners, along with some renegade mafiosi (Roselli and Frattiano?) who were hoping to get back into Havana gambling. Garrison might have been on the right track, but when he started saying CIA, FBI, Secret Service, etc. were involved, he was off-base and starting to sound like a crackpot. Those people may have been involved in the whitewash, but only because they felt it was best for the country to move on - not because they knew and were hiding the truth.
Some fascinating fiction exists about these events: Libra, by Dom DeLillo, is a fictionalized biography of Oswald, and American Tabloid, by James Ellroy, is a fictionalized history of the United States from 1950 to 1963.
Ellroy’s next book in the series, The Cold Six Thousand, deals with the sixties, culminating in the MLK assassination. Another good read.
Got me… Is this supposed to be funny?