kennedy assassination

[Gman992]

Well, Oswald was a Marine, trained in ambushing targets. If he shot JFK when he was coming towards the Book Depository, everyone would've probably see him pull the trigger, and then all they had to do was to just seal off the book despository. And, yes, finally who asked one of these most important questions about the shooting---if there was a gunman on the grass knoll to JFK's right, why wasn't there a an exit wound on JFK's left side? The bullet would've made a small hole on Kennedy's right face, pushing through to punch out the left side of his face. Additionally, if you look at the Zapruder film, the back of JFK's head is still on! I just don't like it when people argue that the back of his head was missing when clearly half of his front is gone. Of course, I won't even mention that Oswald probably didn't even use the scope, and aimed with the ole' iron sights.

[sdreid]

Yes, the idea that unarmed people would run at what they thought was a hostile man with a loaded firearm is ridiculous. Those people are arguing against their own case. Jackie would have been hit if the shot had come from the right which is where the grassy knoll is and where's the exit wound on the left side of the President's head? Zapruder was close to in line with the knoll when the head shot hit and from the angle you see in the film it would have entered almost directly into the side of Kennedy's head.

[jimornot?]

Hi Rick,

I see where you're coming from, but the idea that there were 2 shooters operating totally independently, and at precisely the same time, beggars belief.

And I was always under the impression that the Mannlicher found at the TSBD could not be made to fire the requisite number of shots in the requisite time.

Finally - how often have you heard a car backfire??

Graham

hi Graham

late to this, sorry.

I recall seeing a documentary in which someone was filmed using the actual (???) rifle and meeting the shot / time deadline with a little time to spare.

I think it is telling that some people apparently ran towards the grassy knoll after the shooting - why would they do that?

atb

viv

[Jonathan H]

The idea that Oswald was not a good enough shot, or that his cheap, mail-order Italian rifle could not fire that quickly was based on a fallacy by the FBI and the Warren Commission.

They made an assumption that the first shot which hit JFK in the back was Oswald's first shot. That meant that the head shot AND the shot which missed had to be squeezed into a very narrow time frame.

Conspiracy Buffs rightly criticised this as being too tight. Howveer, due to most of these amateur Sherlocks being leftists, and unable to accept that a fellow leftist had killed their hero [Oswald was not at all a leftist like them] they assumed a monolithic plot -- even though their information cof govermental/investigative mistakes or conondrums, came from the Warren Report itself.

The much likely scenario is that Oswald's shot which missed was the first one fired. It was fired earlier than the FBI had assumed.

That leaves Oswald with ample time to four three shots. The fact that the had shot is on the side and not dead centre is another example of Oswald's dodgy marksmanship as an ex-Marine should have done better than that.

With his last chance for infamy Oswald nearly missed again, but he was 'saved' by the President's painful back-brace which kept him upright, rather than falling away to possible safety like the governor sitting seriously but not fatally wounded in front of him.

[Rick Mattix]

"And I was always under the impression that the Mannlicher found at the TSBD could not be made to fire the requisite number of shots in the requisite time."

It's difficult and probably unlikely but I've heard of it being done by others.

My guess would be that if there was another shooter, or a team of them, they're probably as dead as Oswald.

[rain]

Hi rain

The grassy knoll is actually about ten yards of sloping grass leading up to a car park, so it's possible there could have been a car backfire.

Mind, I still believe there was also at least one shot from there or somewhere close by, but that's just me

thanks for the info on the layout-

who would be driving around right when kennedy is passing by?

also kind of a coincidince that when a car back fires, kennedy falls back.

the odds of that happening are, well pretty high.

[Phryne Fisher]

would a car back fire on a grassy knoll?

Hi rain

The grassy knoll is actually about ten yards of sloping grass leading up to a car park, so it's possible there could have been a car backfire.

Mind, I still believe there was also at least one shot from there or somewhere close by, but that's just me

[rain]

Hi Rick,

I see where you're coming from, but the idea that there were 2 shooters operating totally independently, and at precisely the same time, beggars belief.

And I was always under the impression that the Mannlicher found at the TSBD could not be made to fire the requisite number of shots in the requisite time.

Finally - how often have you heard a car backfire??

Graham

would a car back fire on a grassy knoll?

[Graham]

Hi Rick,

I see where you're coming from, but the idea that there were 2 shooters operating totally independently, and at precisely the same time, beggars belief.

And I was always under the impression that the Mannlicher found at the TSBD could not be made to fire the requisite number of shots in the requisite time.

Finally - how often have you heard a car backfire??

Graham

[Rick Mattix]

Another thing to consider is that even if there was more than one shooter that doesn't necessarily mean a conspiracy. As two disssenting members of the House Assassinations Committee pointed out in 1979, it would be possible to have two gunmen simultaneously operating on their own and independently of one another. How probable that is I don't know but Dallas wasn't a hotbed of popularity for JFK.

On the evidence of more than one gunman I'm not persuaded either way. Some folks armed with Mannlicher-Carcanos have duplicated the supposedly impossible number of shots attributed to Oswald within the limited amount of time, there's considerable difference of opinion on the uniformity of reaction by human bodies or anything else to the impact of bullets (so one can read just about anything into the movements seen in the Zapruder film), and it's still disputed whether the tape-recorded "other gunshots" are just that or whether it's a vehicle backfiring.

[Rick Mattix]

One problem with the large volume of JFK assassination literature and the stuff that's widely repeated throughout it is the extremely tenuous and largely coincidental stuff. In many, if not most, of the mystery deaths mentioned the connection is something remote that if this stuff is on the level then probably anyone who was in Dallas that November 22nd is likely to die mysteriously and violently sometime or another.

On Jack Ruby, he's always struck me as one of these two-bit hustlers who's not really on the inside of anything but just happens to know some Mob guys and uses that to try and impress people. There are lots of guys like that on the fringe of the underworld.

[Graham]

Or even Oswald.

Unfortunately, the evidence would seem to suggest that there was more than one shooter.

Graham

[harry]

Whether there was a conspiricy to kill,I believe there to be only one shooter,Oswold.

[algernon]

Hello,
It surprises me a little,that after all these years,the fog of conspiracy still looms large over the JFK assassination.There is more than enough evidence (its overwhelming in fact) putting the hat fairly and squarely on Oswald,and no evidence whatso-ever supporting the issue of any other assassin acting in concert ,or acting independently.No evidence of any organised crime -FBI-CIA-texas oilmen involvement either.Those issues belong in the realm of fantasy.
The view held by some (in conspiracy world) is that Ruby silenced Oswald on orders from "above".It doesnt take much rational thought to put that particular theory precisely where it deserves to be....in the trash can,together one would hope,with a whole pile of JFK conspiracy books.The cottage industry that has grown up alongside the assassination is misleading,and I believe an insult to rational thought.Its been created by people who should know better....but plainly dont /didnt.
I read somewhere recently in a magazine article,how the evidence against Oswald was purely circumstancial...I found it hard to keep a straight face while reading it.But this kind of nonsense is surprisingly accepted by a large majority of Assasination "Buffs".
Its time to put the story to bed.

[Jonathan H]

The reason Katzenbach wrote that was because the organs of the American government were under immense pressure to provide a reactionary response to the murder of the President, at the height of the Cold War, by an American Marxist who was Pro-Castro and had defected to the USSR [and 'defected' back].

Lyndon Johnson did not want to start a nuclear war, or invade Cuba, or launch a McCarthyite witch-hunt against the Left because 'one of its own', an extremist, had committed this act of terrorism [and killed a policeman, nearly offed the governor, and it turned out had taken a shot at fascistic General Edwin Walker too].

Khruschev's son claims his father was in a total meltdown when he learned that Kennedy had been shot by an American Red who had once lived in Minsk. The hot line was activated! LBJ was happy to concur, but needed to sell this to the anti-Communist hysterics in the public who are always legion in the States.

The Warren Report was there to smother the Right that there was no Russian/Cuban/Communist conspiracy.

Ironically, Uber-Red-baiter J Edgar Hoover backed all this because he did not want the Bureau and himself accused of missing this Communist, WHICH THEY HAD as Oswald was well known to Dallas FBI agent James Hosty. As in the FBI cannot be held accountable for mentally deranged assassins, so no Red conspiracy, and no political motive, and no premature retirement for the nation's No. 1 cop.

But many ordinary Liberal and leftist Americans could not cope with the idea that their idol had been cut down by a nominal fellow lefty in such a right-wing city. And then was allowed to be gunned down whilst in police custody! It had to be a fix.

Due to their political bias the 'Buffs' sent the amateur investigation in entirely the wrong direction -- to prove Oswald was a 'patsy'.

The Magic Bullet was not 'magical' [it was mostly intact because it was slowing and tumbling when leaving JFK's throat], no Grassy Knoll gunman, no deliberately botched autopsy, no Oswald imposters, and no Mafia involvement with Jack Ruby [Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marchello were way too cautious to ever such an unstable, loose cannon sitting in prison with their fate in his trembling hands]. By the late 60's, and the lunatic and destructive imaginings of New Orleans DA Jim Garrison who maliciously prosecuted an innocent gay man, Oswald was nothing less than a hero trying to stop the CIA, and everybody else -- but himself -- from killing the President.

What the Warren Commissioners did not know -- except Allan Dulles who kept his mouth shut -- was about the CIA/Mafia attenpts to kill Castro. This this might have supplied a motive for Oswald, if he was 'encouraged' by either Cuban Intelligence agents, or conversely Anti-Castro Cubans posing as such.

Even without knowledge of the plots to kill 'the Beard', exactly this scenario this was speculated on by Coleman and Slawson, the Warren Commission's sharpest suits, who speculated that there might have been a small-scale conspiracy involving Oswald and some hot-heads amongst the Cuban exile community.

Their bombshell sub-Report was not declassified until 1975, the same year the Zapruder Film was first broadcast. The latter received all the attention and the former was mostly ignored.

And mostly still is.

I can't recommend Norman Mailer's book 'Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery' [1995] highly enough.

You get a real sense of an Oswald as an insufferable, dis-satisfied, wife-beating 'punk' who thinks he's the next Hitler or Mao, or should be!

A loser at the end of his tether, unhappy anywhere, his wife and children slipping away, who saw that the motorcade route would pass right under his work window. This kid, poisoned with a lethal grandiosity, grabbed his chance to anarchically throw a big monkey wrench into BOTH the American and Soviet systems which he resented for passing over his 'genius'.

He certainly managed to trigger nuclear alarm on both sides.

Perhaps that's the biggest, inadvertent service the Conspiracy mythology has done?

It has deprived Oswald of the terroristic/politico credibility and immortality he desperately sought with killing Kennedy just as Ruby denied him his chance to pontificate about his utopian musings in court.

Instead Oswald is politically emasculated in popular memory/culture; remembered as either the 'Patsy' or the 'Nut'.