JFK Assassination Documents to be released this year

[FISHY1118]

Herlock we appreciate your passion. The single bullet however was debunked in 1963 by Connallys attending personal physician who was an expert in gunshot wounds. The proof was in the bullet hole location of Kennedys shirt and Connallys jacket bullet hole and entrance wound. There was no Yaw or tumbling in the bullet that hit Connally. It was proven to be a seperate bullet. The bullet that hit Connally also tunneled as it exited his check. Unlike the supposed single bullet theory which was never proven because Humes ( in the interest of haste?) decided not to trace the Kennedy entrance wounds. Believe whatever you want but the actual evidence gives another story.

From people who were there on the day v the warren commission months later.

I know which side I'm on PD .

The single bullet theory is just malarkey.

[Lewis C]

Most people don't want to talk about the same thing all the time; variety keeps things interesting.

cough, cough...JFK thread..cough, cough...Lechmere thread...cough, cough, the Diary thread.

c.d.

Well that at least is three things. Then there has also recently been discussion of William Bury, the Stride murder, the Eddowes murder, and other things. There are a few posters who seem primarily interested in one thing, but I think that most do not.

[Lewis C]

Thank you Lewis for your reply. Please accept my apology because after reviewing that section of the thread I see now I clearly took you out of context. You were actually replying to another poster who said the lone gunman theory is central to this website.

Again, thank you,

Paddy

It's quite alright, Paddy.

[Paddy Goose]

Hi Paddy,

My only point was to correct a statement about the central focus of this web site. I wasn't saying that it's wrong for this site to have a JFK thread, or even more than one such thread. ...

Thank you Lewis for your reply. Please accept my apology because after reviewing that section of the thread I see now I clearly took you out of context. You were actually replying to another poster who said the lone gunman theory is central to this website.

Again, thank you,

Paddy

[FrankO]

As to the weapon, I'd favor something common and semi-auto, like the M1 Garand, which would be faster firing than a bolt-action.

That's what I've been thinking, too, Fiver. After all, the Carcano is at the root of thinking there was a conspiracy. Had it been a faster firing rifle, they would at least have avoided something that would have been easy to avoid.

[Fiver]

Am I the Napoleon of assassination planning or am I just a normal person applying common sense and logic? How could it be believed that people with such resources at their disposal, people who had experience of political assassination, invasion, combat in all its forms, spy craft and coup d’etat came up with such a convoluted, difficult to maintain, cumbersome, cast of hundreds, reliant on luck, childishly inept plan ever (and please don’t say “it worked” because it didn’t or we wouldn’t still be talking about conspiracies) when it would have been child’s play to come up with a better, more efficient and massively safer (for the conspirators) one.

One point you don't cover is location. Dealey Plaza is a bad location - the target is moving and there are obstacles obscuring at least some of line of sight.

As opposed to outside the Texas Hotel in Ft Worth.

* Clear line of sight from all directions.
* Target is standing still on a raised platform for several minutes.
* Target is surrounded by a crowd, which will both distract security and delay any attempt at pursuit.

As to the weapon, I'd favor something common and semi-auto, like the M1 Garand, which would be faster firing than a bolt-action.

[c.d.]

Most people don't want to talk about the same thing all the time; variety keeps things interesting.

cough, cough...JFK thread..cough, cough...Lechmere thread...cough, cough, the Diary thread.

c.d.

[Lewis C]

Good afternoon Lewis,



I sense your frustration, but the thread is correctly placed under the category "Other Mysteries." Also, the thread inevitably touches on politics, which is a prohibited subject here. But how can it not?

Having said that, I would like to share three books I have read which increased my knowledge and shaped my opinion by exploring the human element.

Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery by Norman Mailer, 1995

Marina and Lee: The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald's Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Priscilla Johnson McMillan, 1977

American Confidential, Uncovering the Bizarre Story of Lee Harvey Oswald and His Mother by Deanne Stillman, 2023

Hi Paddy,

My only point was to correct a statement about the central focus of this web site. I wasn't saying that it's wrong for this site to have a JFK thread, or even more than one such thread. Many forums have sections for discussions about things that aren't the site's central focus, and I have no problem with that. Most people don't want to talk about the same thing all the time; variety keeps things interesting.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Exactly. The Conspiracy requires nigh-infinite resources combined with nigh-infinite stupidity. They repeatedly choose to take greater risks, expand the number of people in on the plot, and reduce their chances of success.

And yet it’s a point that’s simply ignored or brushed under the conspiracy carpet Fiver. Every one of us can come up with a vastly more reliable, vastly easier to carry off, far less complex, massively less likely to be discovered, and far less reliant on sheer luck plan yet we are expected to believe that these people who had influence over the military, the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, the police, the medical profession, politicians and members of the public sat around and thought “how can we create ourself a plan that’s insanely complex to carry out, involves hundreds of people that we are relying on not to talk, leaves us reliant on luck and it has to be a plan that we have a reasonable chance of being exposed and vilified for being part of a plot to murder JFK?”

Why would anyone believe this?

[Fiver]

One of my main questions in terms of conspiracy Scott is why would the conspirators go to all of the complex trouble of setting up a corrupt autopsy to give fake findings (involving highly respected doctors apparently willing to betray they’re country, involving fake photos, involving fake x-rays and with not one single person breaking ranks and spilling the beans over he years) when they would have known full well that the body would have been taken first to Parkland with the obvious chance of ambulance men, porters, nurses and doctors seeing the ‘true’ wounds? It makes no sense at all. As I’ve described it in the past, it’s like a bank robber leaving the bank with his bag of cash, running past cctv cameras and members of the public before jumping into the getaway car and only then putting on a mask.

Exactly. The Conspiracy requires nigh-infinite resources combined with nigh-infinite stupidity. They repeatedly choose to take greater risks, expand the number of people in on the plot, and reduce their chances of success.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Let’s, for a time, put aside all the talk of ballistics, of angles, of what time it might or might not have looked like Kennedy was first hit on the Zapruder film, of which witness was or wasn’t correct in their statements, and just consider the situation that required the conception of a plan to assassination Kennedy. We can’t state exactly which plan any conspirators ‘might’ have used because there are numerous different versions of a conspiracy to assassinate the President, so we can only put together a bit of a list of what was required and decided on by an unnamed group of conspirators.

I’ll begin by making a few points. 1) these conspirators must have been extremely powerful in terms of the influence that they had over or within the institutions of the USA. 2) There was no logical reason why Kennedy had to be killed in Dallas. Dead is dead. People aren’t bothered about things like ‘symbolism’ in the real world. 3) The conspirators would have needed to be assured that the plot, and their individual roles in it, never came to light. 4) It’s an established and accepted fact that the more complex the plot; the more people that are involved, the greater the chance of that plot being revealed. And as a general, but important, point, I’d add that in terms of plans in general it’s always a case of..the less complex the better…less to do, less to go wrong. And let’s abandon all previous attempts to portray this endeavour as a kind of ‘you win some, you lose some,’ effort. Nothing could have been bigger, more far-reaching, more potentially catastrophic than this. Think of Watergate then multiply by a thousand. This is a plot that simply couldn’t unravel or be revealed to the public. Ever.

I can’t see anything that I’ve said in the above two paragraphs which anyone could find controversial or misleading? So what did the alleged Kennedy’s conspiracy entail?


- They had to, in a short space of time, find someone who could place himself on the motorcade route and in such a place that would have allowed him to either fire a rifle or to set up the scene to look like someone else was firing from there. This would of course rely on luck because it’s simply a fact that any of his co-workers could have interrupted him at any time. He had zero control over that situation.

- Quite a complex series of actions in ordering and receiving a rifle and revolver from Klein’s. They also had to link Oswald to the name Hidell.

- They also had to ensure that Oswald either brought the rifle into work that morning or that he carried a larger-than-usual package which would allow law enforcement to assume that it was a rifle.

- They had to place a gunman on the Grassy Knoll to make a shot and then leave the scene without anyone seeing him. Remembering of course that this was directly in front of a car park (used by the Sheriff’s office and court house employees) It was also directly in front of a railway control tower with a man in it. And with police officers on the scene within seconds, they had to come up with a way of avoiding capture or at least of being seen. This appears to be close to impossible.

- They would have had to have ensured that, in quick time, every single camera and movie camera was prevented from leaving Dealey Plaza to avoid any incriminating (for the conspirators) photographs or film footage leaking out to the public and the Press.

- They would have had to have applied incriminating prints to the rifle.

- They left three cartridges to they would have been hoping and praying that no more that three bullets were found.

- They would have had to have set up the Tippit murder and made sure that the person that actually did it resembled Oswald enough to allow numerous witnesses to falsely identify him.

- They would have had to have faked the results on the revolver that Oswald had on him to make it appear that it was the one that killed Tippit.

- They were relying on luck that Oswald conveniently acted in such a suspicious and incriminating way after the murder - passing his correct bus stop, jumping of the bus into a taxi, his complete silence in the taxi, getting the taxi to drop him a distance from his room, walking in one direction first and then turning back, ignoring Earlene Roberts, getting changed, picking up a pistol, not paying for a cinema ticket etc.

- And at no time did Oswald claim to have been set up by any conspiracy or did he mention any conspirators. He even had the opportunity to spill the beans on national television but luckily for the conspirators he held his tongue.

- They then had to fake photographs, x-rays and the Zapruder film. All after the event.

- In double quick time ( 4½ hours or less) they found compliant doctors, nurses, technicians, porters, ambulance men, police, military men etc who were all ok with betraying the Presidents family, the late President and the people that they had sworn to serve so that they could perform an autopsy presenting a false verdict.

- Then they managed to to get together some of the country’s most eminent men (led by a man who saw JFK as close to a son) and told them that they were part of a corrupt commission where they would have to spend months of their lives to come up with a fictional report with findings that were given to them beforehand. They wouldn’t have know if one day the lie would be exposed and their reputations ruined.

There was more to be added of course but the above gives a feel of the breadth and scope of this alleged plot; requiring actions a long time before, during and a long time after the event. Remember, they just needed Kennedy dead. They didn’t want their plot to fail. They didn’t want their plot revealed. And they had a virtual army of highly trained men at their disposable. I have absolutely no military or intelligence network knowledge but could I, an ordinary bloke on a message board, come up with a more reliable, less likely to fail, less reliant on luck, less like to be uncovered plan to assassinate Kennedy? Surely not when such an incredibly complex plan was conceived and executed? Ok, here goes…


Firstly of course I would have found a willing and competent assassin and promised him wealth, a new identity and a flight abroad, a place to live etc. Perhaps a former sniper?

I would provide him with the best rifle available (with all serial numbers and means of traceability removed of course)

I would find a high building in whatever city Kennedy’s was visiting (and whichever was chosen) Either a hotel or a disused office in a building. The building would have a rear fire escape.

Just before the visit I would put the assassin in situ. Either in the hotel room or making visits to the office building so that he didn’t stand out. Before this though I would have given the assassin a simple disguise. A beard, some glasses and a walking stick (with limp) Simple enough.

On the day of the assassination the man is in place, wearing surgical gloves so as to leave no prints on the gun (he would have worn these earlier too so as to leave no prints in the room)

One headshot and Kennedy is dead.

Panic ensues.

The assassin leaves the unidentifiable rifle, exits the room, goes down the fire escape and walks the short distance to a waiting car. If seen…it’s a bearded man with glasses, a walking stick and a limp. From the shot to getting in the car around a minute or so.

He’s told that he’s being taken to a remote airstrip. Out in the desert he killed and buried.


Kennedy is dead….tick

The assassin cannot be questioned….tick

The assassin can never be questioned….tick

The rifle can’t be traced….tick

The plotters cannot be connected to the assassination….tick


Am I the Napoleon of assassination planning or am I just a normal person applying common sense and logic? How could it be believed that people with such resources at their disposal, people who had experience of political assassination, invasion, combat in all its forms, spy craft and coup d’etat came up with such a convoluted, difficult to maintain, cumbersome, cast of hundreds, reliant on luck, childishly inept plan ever (and please don’t say “it worked” because it didn’t or we wouldn’t still be talking about conspiracies) when it would have been child’s play to come up with a better, more efficient and massively safer (for the conspirators) one. The answer is that very obviously they wouldn’t have and THIS is what needs to be considered rather than indulging in endless technical nitpicking and the constant search for non-existent links. What’s the point of obsessively trying to work out how something occurred when reason tells us it couldn’t have occurred in the first place with relying on idiocy as an explanation.


Herlock’s Maxim No 2 - “ A theory is weakened if it relies on the suggestion of acts of egregious stupidity by those involved at the time.”

A correction. My third point should say…The assassin can never be traced….tick

[Paddy Goose]

Good afternoon Lewis,

Nothing about the JFK assassination is central to this web site. The Whitechapel murders case is what is central to this web site.

I sense your frustration, but the thread is correctly placed under the category "Other Mysteries." Also, the thread inevitably touches on politics, which is a prohibited subject here. But how can it not?

Having said that, I would like to share three books I have read which increased my knowledge and shaped my opinion by exploring the human element.

Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery by Norman Mailer, 1995

Marina and Lee: The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald's Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Priscilla Johnson McMillan, 1977

American Confidential, Uncovering the Bizarre Story of Lee Harvey Oswald and His Mother by Deanne Stillman, 2023

[cobalt]

Lewis C said:

''The questions on your first 2 lines can be answered by reading the link that I provided.''

They aren't actually. I'm well aware of the problem of 'Godwin's Law' in argument and have no desire to take the blog off course, but I used the Holocaust as an extreme example of how it would be possible for persons in power to control a narrative. Your link to the UN in December 1942 makes no reference to Death Camps which I specified in my original post. That concept was only established in January 1945 when the Red Army of the USSR liberated Auschwitz. Earlier Soviet attempts to publicise the Death Camp at Majdanek had been less successful.

I think my point stands, that had a rapprochement between the western allies and Nazi Germany occurred in 1945, then our knowledge of the holocaust would be far thinner. The horrors of Nazi occupation could not be entirely obliterated but the concept of the Death Camps- crucial since they establish intent and industrial organisation to commit genocide- could have been dismissed as Communist Propaganda. Or conspiracy theories.

HS thinks, quite logically, that the fewer persons involved in a conspiracy the better. I'm not so sure myself. I think there are times 'the more the merrier': collective guilt swears every man to silence. Rogue elements in side the CIA? Embittered Cubans? Mafioso with a grudge? No, I think the extent of the conspiracy to kill JFK was far wider and goes far deeper than that, to the very heart of the American military industrial complex which flourishes, up to a fashion, today. To break that silence is to abdicate power and open yourself up to the law. US citizens who participated in lynchings in the not so distant past knew that much.

''I know of no one who thinks that Nazi Germany was challenged and defeated due to its policy of exterminating the Jewish people.''

You should get out more.

''And again, even if that were true, it wouldn't be relevant to what we were talking about.''

I refer you to my opinion above about control of political narrative. I think it is very pertinent at this precise time in relation to events in the Middle East.

''Nothing about the JFK assassination is central to this web site. The Whitechapel murders case is what is central to this web site.''

Embrace parochialism if you wish.

[Fiver]

It would be highly unlikely to find any admission by the CIA or FBI in documents beyond tbe documents that admit to knowing who Oswald was. Oswald was being monitored by the FBI before the Assassination. Both agencies knew who he was before the assassination.

Agreed. A competent Conspiracy wouldn't have documented their Conspiracy in the first place. And any Consipracy that was that stupid and inept has had over 60 years to destroy incriminating documents.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Let’s, for a time, put aside all the talk of ballistics, of angles, of what time it might or might not have looked like Kennedy was first hit on the Zapruder film, of which witness was or wasn’t correct in their statements, and just consider the situation that required the conception of a plan to assassination Kennedy. We can’t state exactly which plan any conspirators ‘might’ have used because there are numerous different versions of a conspiracy to assassinate the President, so we can only put together a bit of a list of what was required and decided on by an unnamed group of conspirators.

I’ll begin by making a few points. 1) these conspirators must have been extremely powerful in terms of the influence that they had over or within the institutions of the USA. 2) There was no logical reason why Kennedy had to be killed in Dallas. Dead is dead. People aren’t bothered about things like ‘symbolism’ in the real world. 3) The conspirators would have needed to be assured that the plot, and their individual roles in it, never came to light. 4) It’s an established and accepted fact that the more complex the plot; the more people that are involved, the greater the chance of that plot being revealed. And as a general, but important, point, I’d add that in terms of plans in general it’s always a case of..the less complex the better…less to do, less to go wrong. And let’s abandon all previous attempts to portray this endeavour as a kind of ‘you win some, you lose some,’ effort. Nothing could have been bigger, more far-reaching, more potentially catastrophic than this. Think of Watergate then multiply by a thousand. This is a plot that simply couldn’t unravel or be revealed to the public. Ever.

I can’t see anything that I’ve said in the above two paragraphs which anyone could find controversial or misleading? So what did the alleged Kennedy’s conspiracy entail?


- They had to, in a short space of time, find someone who could place himself on the motorcade route and in such a place that would have allowed him to either fire a rifle or to set up the scene to look like someone else was firing from there. This would of course rely on luck because it’s simply a fact that any of his co-workers could have interrupted him at any time. He had zero control over that situation.

- Quite a complex series of actions in ordering and receiving a rifle and revolver from Klein’s. They also had to link Oswald to the name Hidell.

- They also had to ensure that Oswald either brought the rifle into work that morning or that he carried a larger-than-usual package which would allow law enforcement to assume that it was a rifle.

- They had to place a gunman on the Grassy Knoll to make a shot and then leave the scene without anyone seeing him. Remembering of course that this was directly in front of a car park (used by the Sheriff’s office and court house employees) It was also directly in front of a railway control tower with a man in it. And with police officers on the scene within seconds, they had to come up with a way of avoiding capture or at least of being seen. This appears to be close to impossible.

- They would have had to have ensured that, in quick time, every single camera and movie camera was prevented from leaving Dealey Plaza to avoid any incriminating (for the conspirators) photographs or film footage leaking out to the public and the Press.

- They would have had to have applied incriminating prints to the rifle.

- They left three cartridges to they would have been hoping and praying that no more that three bullets were found.

- They would have had to have set up the Tippit murder and made sure that the person that actually did it resembled Oswald enough to allow numerous witnesses to falsely identify him.

- They would have had to have faked the results on the revolver that Oswald had on him to make it appear that it was the one that killed Tippit.

- They were relying on luck that Oswald conveniently acted in such a suspicious and incriminating way after the murder - passing his correct bus stop, jumping of the bus into a taxi, his complete silence in the taxi, getting the taxi to drop him a distance from his room, walking in one direction first and then turning back, ignoring Earlene Roberts, getting changed, picking up a pistol, not paying for a cinema ticket etc.

- And at no time did Oswald claim to have been set up by any conspiracy or did he mention any conspirators. He even had the opportunity to spill the beans on national television but luckily for the conspirators he held his tongue.

- They then had to fake photographs, x-rays and the Zapruder film. All after the event.

- In double quick time ( 4½ hours or less) they found compliant doctors, nurses, technicians, porters, ambulance men, police, military men etc who were all ok with betraying the Presidents family, the late President and the people that they had sworn to serve so that they could perform an autopsy presenting a false verdict.

- Then they managed to to get together some of the country’s most eminent men (led by a man who saw JFK as close to a son) and told them that they were part of a corrupt commission where they would have to spend months of their lives to come up with a fictional report with findings that were given to them beforehand. They wouldn’t have know if one day the lie would be exposed and their reputations ruined.

There was more to be added of course but the above gives a feel of the breadth and scope of this alleged plot; requiring actions a long time before, during and a long time after the event. Remember, they just needed Kennedy dead. They didn’t want their plot to fail. They didn’t want their plot revealed. And they had a virtual army of highly trained men at their disposable. I have absolutely no military or intelligence network knowledge but could I, an ordinary bloke on a message board, come up with a more reliable, less likely to fail, less reliant on luck, less like to be uncovered plan to assassinate Kennedy? Surely not when such an incredibly complex plan was conceived and executed? Ok, here goes…


Firstly of course I would have found a willing and competent assassin and promised him wealth, a new identity and a flight abroad, a place to live etc. Perhaps a former sniper?

I would provide him with the best rifle available (with all serial numbers and means of traceability removed of course)

I would find a high building in whatever city Kennedy’s was visiting (and whichever was chosen) Either a hotel or a disused office in a building. The building would have a rear fire escape.

Just before the visit I would put the assassin in situ. Either in the hotel room or making visits to the office building so that he didn’t stand out. Before this though I would have given the assassin a simple disguise. A beard, some glasses and a walking stick (with limp) Simple enough.

On the day of the assassination the man is in place, wearing surgical gloves so as to leave no prints on the gun (he would have worn these earlier too so as to leave no prints in the room)

One headshot and Kennedy is dead.

Panic ensues.

The assassin leaves the unidentifiable rifle, exits the room, goes down the fire escape and walks the short distance to a waiting car. If seen…it’s a bearded man with glasses, a walking stick and a limp. From the shot to getting in the car around a minute or so.

He’s told that he’s being taken to a remote airstrip. Out in the desert he killed and buried.


Kennedy is dead….tick

The assassin cannot be questioned….tick

The assassin can never be questioned….tick

The rifle can’t be traced….tick

The plotters cannot be connected to the assassination….tick


Am I the Napoleon of assassination planning or am I just a normal person applying common sense and logic? How could it be believed that people with such resources at their disposal, people who had experience of political assassination, invasion, combat in all its forms, spy craft and coup d’etat came up with such a convoluted, difficult to maintain, cumbersome, cast of hundreds, reliant on luck, childishly inept plan ever (and please don’t say “it worked” because it didn’t or we wouldn’t still be talking about conspiracies) when it would have been child’s play to come up with a better, more efficient and massively safer (for the conspirators) one. The answer is that very obviously they wouldn’t have and THIS is what needs to be considered rather than indulging in endless technical nitpicking and the constant search for non-existent links. What’s the point of obsessively trying to work out how something occurred when reason tells us it couldn’t have occurred in the first place with relying on idiocy as an explanation.


Herlock’s Maxim No 2 - “ A theory is weakened if it relies on the suggestion of acts of egregious stupidity by those involved at the time.”