JFK Assassination Documents to be released this year

[Doctored Whatsit]

If I were a professional hit-man, would I choose a concealed area, like a building where I wouldn't be clearly visible, and from which I had an exit arranged, or a relatively open space where people who wanted to see the President were roaming about, and indeed armed police checking security, with no ability of mine to control their movements?

If I wanted to shoot the President, would I choose a clear shot from the rear, as he was at the back of the car, or from the front where I could not be sure that I would be able to even see the President because of the people in the front two rows of the car?

I am not a hit-man, but if I were, I would shoot from the rear.

[The Rookie Detective]

LHO wasn't hired to kill the president.


He was hired to miss.


He was a diversionary distraction used to draw focus away from the professional sniper located in the opposite direction.


The shots taken from LHO's location were relatively easy compared to any shots fired from the south; which is precisely why there were multiple shooters.


I wonder if there were any police officers, who were ex-military and had served as a sniper, but had gone into law enforcement.

That way, a parked police car would not raise any suspicion.

It would also give the shooter an easier escape route via a police vehicle.

Who would stop a police car?

[Sherlock Houses]

Ah, the old myth that JFK was going to end the Vietnam War. He'd been sending troops in at a rate of 100,000 a year and said he was considering pulling them out at a rate of 1000 a year.

Do the math.

This is totally untrue. In 1961 there were 3,000 troops in South Vietnam. In 1963 there were 17,000 troops there. After Kennedy’s murder US involvement and interference in the Vietnam war escalated unbelievably, so much so that by 1968 there were 548,000 (!!) troops there thanks to Lyndon Johnson.

[Fiver]

History suggests otherwise.

That's a textbook example of circular reasoning on your part - nobody caught any Conspirators, therefore the Conspirators mist have been brilliant. You flat out ignore the possibility that there were no Conspirators to catch.

Real assassination conspiracies do exist. The Senators that killed Caesar. The Pazzi conspiracy. The Gunpowder Plot. The Lincoln assassination. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Operation Valkyrie. How many of those failed, in whole or in part, because someone got cold feet? How many of those failed, in whole or in part, because someone did something stupid or suspicious? How many of those worked out for the plotters?

Now lets look at the theorized JFK Conspiracy. For starters, it requires more Conspirators than all of those other Conspiracies combined. And that nobody gets cold feet, or does something stupid or suspicious.

If the JFK Conspiracy succeeds most of the plotters get absolutely nothing. If it fails, they get executed for murder and treason. But if you expose the Conspiracy, you can destroy your rivals and become a hero.

Sounds like a tough choice.

Now lets look at known assassination attempts on targets in a moving vehicle. I've mentioned Franz Ferdinand. That only succeeded due to the blind luck of the car stopping at point blank range on the wrong street in front of the only assassin who hadn't fled the city. Napoleon III - three bombs. Alexander II of Russia - two bombs and the vehicle had stopped moving and the target got out of the vehicle. Heydrich - submachinegun and bomb at a point where the vehicle would have to slow down. De Gaulle - lots of men with submachine guns.

Heydrich was the only success on a target that was in a vehicle that was still moving. And all of these ended up with the conspirators dead or serving long prison sentences.

Attacking a target in a moving vehicle with a bolt-action rifle is a bad plan, unless that's the only option you have.

If there was a Conspiracy, that wasn't the only option they had.

[Fiver]

This is totally untrue. In 1961 there were 3,000 troops in South Vietnam. In 1963 there were 17,000 troops there. After Kennedy’s murder US involvement and interference in the Vietnam war escalated unbelievably, so much so that by 1968 there were 548,000 (!!) troops there thanks to Lyndon Johnson.

That will teach me to go from memory instead of double checking the facts. Thank you for the correction.

But it doesn't change my point. If there were 17,000 US troops in Vietnam in 1963, then withdrawing 1000 a year meant JFK intended to remove the last of the troops in 1980.

LBJ only did mild escalation at first, taking the total to 21,000. Only after the Gulf of Tonkin incident was there a massive expansion.

So what do the plotters get from killing JFK? He had little more than a year left to serve and no guarantee of re-election. LBJ had no guarantee of re-election, either. How could the Conspiracy know there would be a Gulf of Tonkin Incident? Why could they be certain that JFK wouldn't have escalated if it happened while he was President? What do the Conspirators get from escalating the war in Vietnam?

[Fiver]

They're also expert on ballistics without ever having handled a firearm, and on surgery without ever having touched a scalpel.

That is the position of everyone on the pro-Conspiracy side - that all the actual investigators who were experts in surgery, in ballistics, in fingerprinting, in handwriting analyisis, in photo analysis, etc. got it wrong or were deliberately falsifying the evidence.

I'm not claiming to be an expert, I'm believing them. You're the amateur claiming to know more than the experts.

[Patrick Differ]

Oswald was likely a CIA asset. There were 4 men who benefited directly - LBJ who was under investigation for fraud and would be convicted, Allen Dulles head of CIA who got fired over Bay of Pigs, Hoover who was being forced into retirement and Nixon as payback from the MOB to rectify stealing the Election for Joe Kennedy. It had less to do with Vietnam and more to do with vendetta.
The CIA hired the MOB to teach them how to assassinate leaders across the globe like Patrice Lamumba. Castro was an obvious high level target for the MOB and their interests.
When JFK fired Dulles ( JFK said Dulles thought he was a GOD), his fate was sealed. As RFK amped up his attacks on the MOB they felt betrayed as they felt they handed him the Election. Oswald and Ruby knew each other and their connection was the Chicago Mob. Oswalds uncle ran book with Ruby. They couldn't let Oswald talk.
I've personally been to Dealy Plaza and stood behind the grassy knoll fence. It was a very easy no miss shot without obstruction. What strikes you though is the distances and angles. IF you know Geometry at all you realize immediately that the magic bullet theory is total BS. The road actually veers left in a curve away from the school book depository. There is also a tree in front and below the 6th floor window. There is also the freeway sign, all obstructions for Oswald or whoever shot from that area. The grassy knoll fence and wall is only about 50 ft from the road, the Zapruder film captures that shot and when you stand there you get that holy crap moment
it is too obvious.
The men who benefited were capable of pulling it off and the proof is what happened afterwards. LBJ made a fortune in kickbacks from the Military but was forced to turn the reigns over to Nixon. The MOB killed off their players and became powerful again. Hoover was made Director for Life eventhough he was past mandatory Federal Retirement age. Dulles was put on the Warren Commission and ran the cover up.
FInally, when the actor Gary Oldman played Oswald in Oliver Stones film JFK, he thought Oswald did it, before the role. After the role however he said it was impossible. The issue was the shots themselves, the gun, and the angles of trajectory. They brought in 100 shooters to figure out the Zapruder film. The result was 3 shooting teams. Walter building, school book depository and grassy knoll. Oswald and Ruby were the Patty's. It was a professional hit.

[Patrick Differ]

Dal Tek building not Walther

[cobalt]

JFK was not the only President assassinated in November 1963. The South Vietnamese President Diem (and his brother) were dispatched in a military coup at the beginning of the month, a coup that could not have been entertained without US complicity. JFK was reportedly shocked at these events although his government recognised the new regime within a week. The reasons for the coup are many and various but one stands out to me: the Diem regime had made noises about seeking a rapprochement with Communist controlled North Vietnam on the basis that the united Vietnam would adopt neutral status. Thus, two Presidents showing a willingness to parley with their Communist opponents were executed within a month.

HS has made long lists of elements of luck in the JFK assassination which he contends no well organised coup would have relied on. I can't discount what he says but I think he overlooks the ability of state trained assassins to work to a flexible plan and adapt swiftly to any unexpected change in circumstances. Any loose ends can be tidied up by controlling the narrative once power has been transferred.

If Oswald was the lone gunman then he was favoured by a large slice of luck himself. Not many US citizens could expect to shoot the POTUS and walk out of the front door to catch a bus. And fewer would expect to survive police arrest after shooting dead one of their colleagues. And all this luck was bestowed on a man who apparently had no real exit plan at all. In fact Oswald seemed to have no real motivation, something recognised at the time. He did not go down in a blaze of glory in a police shoot out; but neither did he acknowledge killing the President; he passed up the opportunity to make a political speech at his midnight media conference as well.

[Herlock Sholmes]

And if this plan to include a second gunman wasn’t insanely risky enough we get the icing on the cake. Well, in actual fact, it’s more icing than any cake could hope to cope with. We have the absolutely barking mad addition of the murder of Officer Tippit into the mix. Some actually, and with a straight face, suggest that he was killed by someone else. That Oswald picked up his pistol and took a route that just happened to pass the Tippit murder scene. And that around 10 People ID’d Oswald. Were some of those witnesses a bit flaky? Were there the odd discrepancy? Absolutely, as in all case where witnesses are involved; especially in such circumstances. But was this part of a plan?

One suggestion has been that the plan was for Tippit to ‘eliminate’ Oswald. Why any plotter would have gone to this ridiculous length rather than just having a car waiting for him where they could have eliminated him at their leisure away from the prying eyes of the public is beyond reason? Also, this would have required, for plausibility, for Oswald to have drawn his gun or they would have been faced with witnesses saying that they had seen Tippit randomly murder a man who was simply walking along the street. So how could they have ensured that he drew his gun for believability? The answer of course is that there is know way that they could have. It would have also have required Tippit to have known which route that Oswald would have taken. Oswald lived nearby, he’d have known the way to the cinema. Wouldn’t he have thought it strange that the plotters were telling him which route, street by street, to use to get there? Or did they just leave Tippit to drive around looking for him?

Another suggestion is someone else killed Tippit in an attempt to frame Oswald. Why they would have needed this ‘added’ evidence against a man who was ‘bang to rights’ is anyone’s guess but this would have meant them finding a killer that looked at least something like Oswald to at least make some of the witnesses believable. So the plan must have for Oswald to have taken a set route with the real killer hiding away somewhere out of sight where he could watch out for him passing. Just after he passed, enter Tippit (stage left) to park up for our now passing killer to shoot him with all of those witnesses at various spots.

So what if someone had seen Oswald two streets away at the time that Tippit was shot? What if there were only three or four witnesses and not one had ID’d Oswald because they were observant enough to spot a guy who just looked a bit like him?

Whichever way we look at the Tippit murder, and if we avoid getting bogged down in timings (which present no problems) and witnesses (which present no real issues) we are left with yet another huge slab of unlikeliness. In the first place no plotters on earth would factor in the Tippit incident. It wasn’t just pointless, it was an act of adding yet more layers of unnecessary risk on top of what was already the riskiest plot ever. It’s yet another case of our plotters being a bunch of remarkably powerful imbeciles. The only explanation that makes sense, as is usually the case, is the simple one. An armed Oswald was stopped by the police officer after hearing a radio bulletin. The officer pulls his gun and the man that has already killed the President shoots him. A short time later he’s arrested with the murder weapon on him.

How far can we go in accepting that these plotters can, on one hand, have control over various powerful institutions and its members and yet they repeatedly make decisions that we wouldn’t expect from the local village idiot. That these airheads actually sat down and based a plan to kill Kennedy based largely on luck. That they took such a blasé attitude to the huge and obvious risks and their momentous ramifications. Common sense and reason tells us that they wouldn’t have.

….

There are no sane plotters on the planet that would have given a single seconds consideration to using a complete drop kick like Oswald as an assassin or a dupe. There are no sane plotters on this planet that would have looked at Dealey Plaza and said “that Grassy Knoll looks like a good spot.” There are also no sane plotters on the planet that would have signed off on the most insanely risky, reliant on luck farce that was this alleged plot. Therefore…there was no plot. There couldn’t have been. It’s impossible.

[cobalt]

The HS argument against Tippit being tasked with being Oswald's executioner is reasonable. But if the the Tippit murder does nothing for the Conspiracist side it does little for the Conventional Narrative either.

There is no real explanation as to why Tippit decided to pull alongside his quarry. If he was about to make the arrest of the century he might have been expected to make a quick call on his radio. And if Oswald was Tippit's killer and also the assassin of JFK then we have to ask where he was headed at the time. The Texas Theatre? Well that might have provided provided some short term cover but he had to emerge at some point and face the music of his rifle being discovered inside the TSBD. Killing Tippit and heading to a cinema only delayed the inevitable. Surely boarding a Greyhound bus after leaving the TSBD and getting the hell out of Dallas would have been the obvious choice for any assassin whatever his competence. Oswald chose not to do so. Once arrested he acknowledged neither responsibility nor political martyrdom, so why was he hanging around Dallas?

The notion that conspirators would shoot Oswald on the 6th floor is clearly idiotic which is why it never happened. Ideally he had to killed either fleeing the scene, or even better fleeing LE whilst armed with a revolver. Since Oswald never 'fled' the scene that was not possible, although a bus he caught was later entered by LE. Once armed with his revolver Oswald was fair game but his decision to seek sanctuary in the cinema probably saved his life at the hands of the Dallas police.

[Fiver]

Then there’s the obvious issue of the number of bullets fired. If the bullets found didn’t match up to the number of cartridges found on the 6th floor then the only explanation would have been - 2nd gunman. Just one stray bullet and it’s game over. Would a child allow this kind of risk in a game. I’ll say it again - this was the supposed assassination of the President of the USA.

This is a key example of the Conspiracy being utter idiots. The number of shell casings has to match the total number of shots fired and cannot be more than the Mannlicher-Carcano can fire. Oswald's rifle had a clip that could hold 6 bullets. One was still in the rifle and there were three spent shell casings in the sniper's nest.

Apparently the same Conspiracy that could afford to bribe or intimidate dozens didn't have enough of a budget to afford a full clip for the Mannlicher-Carcano.

And nobody in the Conspiracy was smart enough to know how to count.

[FISHY1118]

Oswald was likely a CIA asset. There were 4 men who benefited directly - LBJ who was under investigation for fraud and would be convicted, Allen Dulles head of CIA who got fired over Bay of Pigs, Hoover who was being forced into retirement and Nixon as payback from the MOB to rectify stealing the Election for Joe Kennedy. It had less to do with Vietnam and more to do with vendetta.
The CIA hired the MOB to teach them how to assassinate leaders across the globe like Patrice Lamumba. Castro was an obvious high level target for the MOB and their interests.
When JFK fired Dulles ( JFK said Dulles thought he was a GOD), his fate was sealed. As RFK amped up his attacks on the MOB they felt betrayed as they felt they handed him the Election. Oswald and Ruby knew each other and their connection was the Chicago Mob. Oswalds uncle ran book with Ruby. They couldn't let Oswald talk.
I've personally been to Dealy Plaza and stood behind the grassy knoll fence. It was a very easy no miss shot without obstruction. What strikes you though is the distances and angles. IF you know Geometry at all you realize immediately that the magic bullet theory is total BS. The road actually veers left in a curve away from the school book depository. There is also a tree in front and below the 6th floor window. There is also the freeway sign, all obstructions for Oswald or whoever shot from that area. The grassy knoll fence and wall is only about 50 ft from the road, the Zapruder film captures that shot and when you stand there you get that holy crap moment
it is too obvious.
The men who benefited were capable of pulling it off and the proof is what happened afterwards. LBJ made a fortune in kickbacks from the Military but was forced to turn the reigns over to Nixon. The MOB killed off their players and became powerful again. Hoover was made Director for Life eventhough he was past mandatory Federal Retirement age. Dulles was put on the Warren Commission and ran the cover up.
FInally, when the actor Gary Oldman played Oswald in Oliver Stones film JFK, he thought Oswald did it, before the role. After the role however he said it was impossible. The issue was the shots themselves, the gun, and the angles of trajectory. They brought in 100 shooters to figure out the Zapruder film. The result was 3 shooting teams. Walter building, school book depository and grassy knoll. Oswald and Ruby were the Patty's. It was a professional hit.

Good post , of course non of this seemed to bother the warren commission.

But then again, their sole and only purpose and intructions was to show a single shooter and LHO was that man . He would have walked free on day one of a trial .

[Fiver]

A scan of Dealey Plaza leaves us wondering if a worse spot could have been found than behind that picket fence.

I think you underestimate how bad the Grassy Knoll position was.

"When one first stands behind the picket fence, he/she is struck by a number of sensations. First, there is no clear shot at the middle lane of Elm Street [where the limousine was] until the instant of the head shot, allowing for no earlier shots or tracking of the moving target. It turns out that the intended victim is obscured by road signs and a white retaining wall about ten feet in front of the fence.

An even more compelling problem was driven home during the filming of JFK. I was fortunate to be able to stand near the camera as this scene was reenacted. With the street crowd added as it appeared on the day of the shooting, it became clear that, insofar as the first two shots are concerned, a grassy knoll shot was also obstructed by the crowd that lined the sidewalk. The assassin would thus [have] had to shoot through the white wall, the road signs, and bystanders to get to the President." - Gus Russo

Russo was a pro-conspiracy adviser for Oliver Stone's JFK. He believes Oswald was the only gunman, but that Oswald was being used by the Castro regime. Russo also believes that LBJ, the CIA and Bobby Kennedy covered up the Castro connection to prevent WWIII.

But even that doesn't cover the full awfulness of the Grassy Knoll as a firing position. The fence was 5 feet high - too tall to kneel behind, not tall enough to stand and brace behind. The shooter would either have to crouch in an awkward position or fire from a standing, unbraced, much more visible position.

And it was a picket fence. Lateral tracking would require lifting the rifle off of the fence and putting it down somewhere else.

Now let's look at the trees, another obstacle to line of site and traffic.

The only worse firing location I can think of was Jim Garrison's idea that the fatal shot came from a storm drain.

[Fiver]

LHO wasn't hired to kill the president.

He was hired to miss.

He was a diversionary distraction used to draw focus away from the professional sniper located in the opposite direction.

The shots taken from LHO's location were relatively easy compared to any shots fired from the south; which is precisely why there were multiple shooters.

If Oswald was hired to miss, he did a lousy job of it - whether you believe it was one shot or two, both JFK and Connally were shot in the back.

Your plan means the Conspiracy did not put the pro in the best firing position, giving it instead to a man who isn't supposed to hit anything. That makes no sense.

Your plan also means that Oswald has to agree to take the job with the highest risk of being caught and give him no help at all in escaping. Just how stupid would Oswald have to be to accept that offer?