kennedy assassination

[Graham]

Great posts, JD, Vila and Stan.

From my own personal viewpoint, and weighing up all the available evidence or at least the evidence that I've had access to) I don't think it will ever be proved that JFK's assassin was anyone other than Oswald. There always will be doubt, of course.

It's just that I find it very difficult to accept that the assassination was conceived, planned and carried out by just one man - Oswald. This guy was the original American weirdo, and unless he had talents way beyond his 'legend' as someone of limited intelligence, etc., I can only conclude that there was someone else behind the scenes.

Not that it really matters. JFK was killed. Had he not been, then as JD suggests, history may well have taken a somewhat different course. I feel moved to ascend into my attic and dig out the load of JFK Assassination books I bought in the 1960's, but in all honesty even if I did, I doubt I'd find anything perceptive to add to your arguments, guys.

Perhaps there is a parallel to the Ripper Case - in which, as we all know, people for the last 120 years have looked to see things that are not necessarily there.

Graham

[sdreid]

Hi Graham,

I'm with you in the sense that it's extraordinary if Oswald kept it all to himself. It's the same feeling I have about Hauptmann in the Lindbergh case.

[Magpie]

The problem I have with all the shooting "demonstrations" is that no matter what head substitute they use, it is alway sitting passively on some sort of platform, able to fly in any direction--unlike Kennedy's head, which was firmly anchored to a 180-odd-pound body, rife with sinews, muscles and nerves that also reacted to the impact....

[Graham]

Hi Graham,

I'm with you in the sense that it's extraordinary if Oswald kept it all to himself. It's the same feeling I have about Hauptmann in the Lindbergh case.

Hi Stan,

Yes, hard to see how a dork like Oswald could keep his trap shut - unless, of course, there was nothing for him to say other than, "I done it all on my own!"

Hauptmann was given the opportunity to make a statement even as he was strapped in the electric chair, yet he said nothing. And as far as I can recall he said very little all the time he was in custody. If - as I have always suspected - he was covering for someone, then he must have had nerves of steel.

Yet there are many instances of people keeping quiet even under torture - I'm thinking here of Yeo-Thomas, the 'White Rabbit' of WW2, who I believe never said one incriminating word to his Gestapo interrogators regarding his activities.

Rather them than me....

Graham

[Stephen Thomas]

The inherent weakness of conspiracies is that it relies on humans. Humans can rarely keep their mouths shut and if indeed there had been anything to it, I have no doubt something would have surfaced by now.

Well I read most of the JFK Assassination books available in the UK for 20 years or more and my impression was, and still is, that there were loads of people who couldn't keep their mouths shut who got their mouths shut for them, oops my electric fire just fell in my bath (or whatever), starting with that Oswald fellow (oops I just got shot dead by that Mafia fellow) etc.

Is there anybody here who isn't American who believes in the 'lone nut' explanation?

[Doctor X]

The problem I have with all the shooting "demonstrations" is that no matter what head substitute they use, it is alway sitting passively on some sort of platform, able to fly in any direction--unlike Kennedy's head, which was firmly anchored to a 180-odd-pound body, rife with sinews, muscles and nerves that also reacted to the impact....

Same thing happens with attached heads.

It also happens in life.

Graham: Hauptman kept claiming he got the money from "some guy."

Stephen Thomas: I would recommend Gerald Posner's take on the "death list" which, for some strange reason, never has any of the authors of the various conspiracy books on it!

My favorite claimed "Silenced Victim" is the morbidly obese lawyer who died of . . . a heart attack! As a colleague put it: "He was out of breath walking up a courthouse step!" Another was a hooker who was known to have stolen money from a mobster.

--J.D.

[Graham]

JD,

I think that Hauptmann saying that he got the US gold bonds from 'some guy' is tantamount to keeping his trap shut. However, it does make me wonder that, when faced with execution, he still refused to name names. Either he had no names to name, or he was, as I said earlier, possessed of nerves of steel. The Governer of New Jersey, no less, believed in his innocence and tried to help him, but Hauptmann kept schtum.

Re: JFK, I always thought that Posner was not the man to be believed for anything.

Graham

[Stephen Thomas]

Hi Doctor X

Do you happen to be an American?

Or should I say a US Citizen?

[sdreid]

Hauptmann claimed he got the gold certificates from a guy who was already dead named Isidore Fisch. Gold certificates were paper currency that was redeemable in gold until that practiced was suspended. That made the ransom money obsolete and those notes were supposed to be turned in to be replaced by the new paper money.

[Graham]

Hauptmann claimed he got the gold certificates from a guy who was already dead named Isidore Fisch. Gold certificates were paper currency that was redeemable in gold until that practiced was suspended. That made the ransom money obsolete and those notes were supposed to be turned in to be replaced by the new paper money.

Hi Stan.

Isidore Fisch skipped the USA before Hauptmann came to trial, and died in Germany shortly afterwards. He seemed an unlikely master-criminal, but you never know. If Hauptmann was as street-wise as he liked to make out, I think he'd have redeemed those certificates for dollars as soon as he'd received them - yet he used some to buy gas for his car and that was how he was traced by the police. Dumb, or what?

Do you know of any definitive book about the Lindbergh Case written since Ludovic Kennedy's 'The Airman And The Carpenter'?

Cheers,

Graham

[Stephen Thomas]

Re: JFK, I always thought that Posner was not the man to be believed for anything.

Graham

Hi Graham

Shouldn't that read 'Posner was not the man to be believed for nothing'?

[Graham]

Hi Graham

Shouldn't that read 'Posner was not the man to be believed for nothing'?

Something like that.

Graham

[sdreid]

Do you know of any definitive book about the Lindbergh Case written since Ludovic Kennedy's 'The Airman And The Carpenter'?

No I don't but there must be one.

Fisch died 74 years ago this Saturday.

[Magpie]

I read a good Lindbergh book last spring--"Lindbergh, The Crime" or something.

I can't remember the author, but it was quite good.

[Doctor X]

Re: JFK, I always thought that Posner was not the man to be believed for anything.

Think again.

Of course, you are free to rebut him and, particularly, similar works and reconstructions that follow. Otherwise. . . .

--J.D.