Kennedy Assasination Poll

[Dan Gould]

Since the anniversary is upon us, what do you say?

I was willing to entertain conspiracy notions til I read Posner's Case Closed which I feel not only destroyed the conspiracy theories but established beyond and to the exclusion of all reasonable doubt that Oswald did it, alone. Now I see there's another "new, blockbuster" book accusing LBJ-some guy who was a lawyer at LBJ's firm after the assasination. I saw the guy's website, and all I can say is, weak, very weak.

[king ubu]

Hey, you omitted "All of the above"...

I didn't do it, for sure B)

ubu

[king ubu]

Please let me add that I was born to late...

And apologies if I should have hurt anyone's feelings!

ubu -_-

a simple twist of fate

[7/4]

Hey, you omitted "All of the above"...

I didn't do it, for sure B)

ubu

You protest too loudly!

[JSngry]

I don't think we'll ever know who actually shot the man, but I've got a gut feeling that the Mob was, at the very least, not unaware of the assassination beforehand. I just can't buy the Oswald acting alone scenario. I've heard too many "stories" floating around these parts for too long, stories that, while they individually might be full of holes, cumulatively make believing that the assassination shocked organized crime as much as it did the rest of the country something that I can't muster. I can't PROVE anything, obviously, it's just a hunch.

[catesta]

I don't think we'll ever know who actually shot the man, but I've got a gut feeling that the Mob was, at the very least, not unaware of the assassination beforehand.

That sums it up best for me.

I always felt certain people knew the plan, but how much of a direct part they played is difficult to say.

[connoisseur series500]

I believe Oswald had taken orders from someone on this board. :rsmile:

(Just kidding, of course.)

I don't know enough about the conspiracy theories. Since with all the research and scrutiny nothing else has defnitively been found then I can only assume that Oswald did it solo.

Edited November 21, 2003 by connoisseur series500

[Alexander Hawkins]

The BBC is airing a show sometime (perhaps tonight?) in which they're going to venture a new theory...Don't know what, though - sorry!

[Dan Gould]

Well, now we know who voted for the Mafia

I really recommend Posner's book. It does a remarkable job of establishing Oswald as the killer, the lone killer.

The same way that it was fate that brought the motorcade under Oswald's window and gave him the opportunity to plan the assasination, I think fate also allowed Ruby to be in that garage, pistol at the ready. When he carried out his own murder, it provided so much fodder for mafia-conspiracists. I don't have any doubt that without Oswald's murder, the mob theory would crumble. The other factor of course, is the more innocent time. Nowadays, Oswald would have a flak jacket on for all public appearances.

[7/4]

N.Y. Times

Freed From Conspiracy

By THOMAS MALLON

Published: November 21, 2003

In considering John F. Kennedy at this 40-year remove, the ultimate "what if" may involve what America might be like had the country been denied the president's violent death, with its long psychic burden, instead of the rest of his life.

Without Kennedy's murder, we would probably have had to endure the aftereffects of only one assassination instead of three. Whether or not President Kennedy had continued to flourish politically, it seems unlikely that his brother Robert would have run for the White House in 1968 and attracted his own assassin's bullets. Martin Luther King's killing, standing in sharper relief, might have made some terrible symbolic sense, like Lincoln's: a singular bloody sacrifice exacted as the price for our transformation into a different and better country.

President Kennedy's killing gave us nothing in the way of symbolism; it imposed only shame. Dec. 7, 1941, and Sept. 11, 2001, made Americans feel personally vulnerable, forced them into empathetic identification with people like themselves who went down with the Arizona or fell from the twin towers. The death of Kennedy, a man whose power and glamour rendered him quite unlike us, made Americans feel more like the perpetrator than the victim. An addled, angry, but otherwise ordinary man murdered the president; two days later, compounding the sense of shame, another addled, angry, but otherwise ordinary man killed any chance for us to feel clear about what had been perpetrated in Dealey Plaza.

Those who will gather at conferences and flood Internet newsgroups this weekend to insist upon a conspiracy in Kennedy's murder often say that they are crusading to make their fellow citizens face the truth that their president was killed by rogue elements of their own government. And yet, it can be said that those who accept the overwhelming evidence of Oswald's lone guilt (a distinct minority) are trying to accept an even more daunting truth: that the world is sometimes convulsed by hapless men in fortuitious circumstances. It is more frightening, not less, to think that a figure like Kennedy can be murdered by a 24-year-old warehouse clerk, as opposed to, say, the C.I.A.

Oswald spent part of Nov. 21, 1963, playing with the 2-year-old son of his host in suburban Dallas. The child's parents were separated, and Oswald thought that the boy, the same age as John F. Kennedy Jr., needed more fatherly attention. Some would cite this tenderness, and its lack of logical consistency with the next day's killing, as exculpatory. In fact, the incident evinces only the mysteries of the human personality operating inside fate.

There are, of course, conspiracies in American life: Watergate was one; Enron seems to be another. And conspiracy theories have oozed through the history of the republic from the days of anti-Masonry onward. But it was Kennedy's murder, coupled with Oswald's, that left our era more inclined to reach for conspiracy as the explanation for certain events — from Roswell to the moon landing to Whitewater — that we cannot understand, or for some reason wish to believe never happened, or inflate with a significance they cannot possess. Few recent political pronouncements have been more depressing than Senator Edward Kennedy's declaration that the Iraq war was "a fraud" that had been "made up in Texas." Even opponents of the war must have winced at the remark's inescapable echoes.

Had President Kennedy's killer somehow listened to the better angels of his nature and retracted his rifle, unfired, back through the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, he would probably have gone on to perform some other act of violence — just as he had tried, seven months before, to kill Gen. Edwin Walker. And yet, one likes to imagine Lee Harvey Oswald freed from the role fate picked out for him. One can picture him at 30 years of age, around the time of the Weathermen and Kent State. Oswald would already be quite bald, and surly with bafflement over both the New Left and the increasing independence of his Americanized wife.

He had always been very much the son of his paranoid mother — she once told an interviewer that her son had been selected to perform, for "security reasons," a "mercy killing" of Kennedy. Were he around today, still only 64, Oswald would, I feel sure, be a spirited peddler of conspiracy theories involving everything from Waco to Halliburton. But he would be finding fewer takers for them, in large part for his not having done what in reality he did do, almost certainly alone, 40 years ago tomorrow.

Thomas Mallon is author of ``Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Murder of John F. Kennedy.''

[John Tapscott]

Voted for Oswald acting alone, since he was the one who most likely pulled the trigger, but I still can't shake the idea that somehow the Cuban Government was behind it all.

[GA Russell]

It is undisputed that

1) govt marksmen were unable to fire that model gun three times in the short time the shots occurred.

2) an extraordinary number of witnesses were dead within five years.

3) the event occurred in the state Kennedy's successor was unusually influential.

4) David Ferry died on the eve of his testifying against Clay Shaw. Jim Garrison admitted that day that Ferry was crucial to his case.

5) Barry Goldwater's poll numbers were on a steady rise till the day Kennedy died. From then on they were on a steady decline.

It appears to me that

1) the Warren Commission was not a serious attempt to determine what happened. Even Gerald Ford, who was on the Commission, has stated that its product ruled out certain possibilities rather than determined which possibility happened.

1a) Therefore, the govt didn't want the public to know the truth. Why not?

2) Oswald recognized Ruby as he approached, and knew instantly what was coming.

[BERIGAN]

excellent article 7/4!

I have watched some of the PBS series on Kennedy, and watched the 2 hour Special last night on ABC as well...I unlike Dan, did not read the Posner book, but did see the 48 hours several years ago that went into many of the points mentioned in the ABC show....the same older gentleman proved you could fire the same type of manual rifle fast enough to get the 3 shots off in less than 10 seconds. (Remember always hearing that that was impossible???)

Even though I was born 4 years after his assignation, I have always felt a very deep sadness watching the anniversary specials on JFK......what a complete waste.

I always thought that there had to be some sort of conspiracy, and I still do to a point, but I have come to the conclusion that Oswald could have at least been the only shooter, even if he was working for someone else.

The ABC special did a great job of debunking Oliver Stone's JFK. Showing clips from the movie, then showing what really happened. The magic bullet that we always here of as looking immaculate, was actually flattened. Zapruder Film is broken down frame by frame and you do see Connelly flinch and his coat bow just after JFK grabs his throat.

Another of the old wife's tales that won't die is that Oswald was not a good shot, yet his military record shows a different story. He was more than adequate a marksman from 200 yards, and JFK was only 88 yards away. His own brother thinks he acted alone. Oswald was the only employee missing from the warehouse when they did a role call.

I also for the first time felt that Oswald wasn't really a stupid person at all(Except for his most stupid act)

They had a clip of him from a radio show making the argument for cutting trade restrictions with Cuba. And the man he debated on the show said recently that he had made the best arguments he had ever heard anyone make in Castro's defense.

[Dan Gould]

It is undisputed that

1) govt marksmen were unable to fire that model gun three times in the short time the shots occurred.

2) an extraordinary number of witnesses were dead within five years.

3) the event occurred in the state Kennedy's successor was unusually influential.

4) David Ferry died on the eve of his testifying against Clay Shaw. Jim Garrison admitted that day that Ferry was crucial to his case.

5) Barry Goldwater's poll numbers were on a steady rise till the day Kennedy died. From then on they were on a steady decline.

It appears to me that

1) the Warren Commission was not a serious attempt to determine what happened. Even Gerald Ford, who was on the Commission, has stated that its product ruled out certain possibilities rather than determined which possibility happened.

1a) Therefore, the govt didn't want the public to know the truth. Why not?

2) Oswald recognized Ruby as he approached, and knew instantly what was coming.

You absolutely do not have a clue.

Read Posner's book.

The ability to shoot that rifle in the time allotted is unquestionable.

Posner demonstrates over and over again the fact that the "extraordinary" number of dead witnesses

A) carries no statistical significance and most importantly

B. there were perfectly normal, "regular" causes of death

Read the book. It demolishes every element of the "conspiracy".

[JSngry]

Well, now we know who voted for the Mafia

Not me, dude, I haven't voted yet!

I run into older cats who played in Ruby's joints and who hung out with/around him for many years before November of 1963. By all accounts, he was not even remotely high on the "hierarchy", if you know what I mean, but he definitely was not the type to suddenly get a bug up his ass to go out and kill the man who killed the President. Just telling you what I've picked up over the years from the type of people who aren't going to be interviewed for publication.

Bottom line, though, barring some major discovery/revelation, we'll never REALLY know the truth. It's time to move on. What happened happened.

Now, Squeaky Fromme - it's not too late for HER!

[catesta]

Well, now we know who voted for the Mafia

Not me, dude, I haven't voted yet!

I did.

[minew]

I voted Oswald alone but would have also voted "all of the above."

Last night's three hour "Frontline" (heavily based on Posner) showed pretty conclusive physical evidence that Oswald fired the three shots from the gun the killed Kennedy and injured Connally.

It also traced Oswalds paths through myriad groups that hated Kennedy or even espoused his murder: Pro-Castro, Anti-Castro, N.O. Mafia, Socialists, Anti-commumnists, et al. A picture emerged of a loner and aspiring/self-starting double agent who was frustrated by his inability to have an impact on events much larger than himself.

No question that he had enough conflicting associations to raise plenty of questions that will never be answered. It seems more likely than not, though, that his act was the product of his Kennedy-hating millieu and personality rather than a coordinated effort.

[BruceH]

Oswald.

[vajerzy]

I remember seeing a documentary on the History Channel called "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" or something like that......they had the conspiracy theory as who did it......now I forget the particulars about this but it appears to me that the two shots came from different places, especially the second shot that blew his head apart.

There was some leaps of faith in the construction of the theory of more than one person. My belief is that Kennedy's assasination is something more than one person. To blame Oswald alone is too "neat and tidy".....I just think there's more.....

We may never know.

[Jazzmoose]

The problem is that it's obvious that this was such an important and altering event in American history that no one wants to believe that one lone nut could have this much impact on the course of history. But he can, and he did. I fought against believing it as hard as anyone else, but the facts support the "lone gunman" theory, and Oswald was that gunman. Sometimes, no matter how hard you want to believe something, you just have to give in to reality...

[Dan Gould]

The problem is that it's obvious that this was such an important and altering event in American history that no one wants to believe that one lone nut could have this much impact on the course of history. 

And speaking of altering event, take a look at this looney tunes "alternate history of the US, had Kennedy lived":

This guy is so far off his nut its pathetic! I mean, he's got Colin Powell as VP BEFORE the Gulf War which is the only thing that made him a national figure.

[Jazzmoose]

Dan, I got as far as Johnson picking Robert Kennedy as his running mate and started laughing uncontrollably.

That would have been like Buchanan and Sharpton teaming up!

[ghost of miles]

Now I see there's another "new, blockbuster" book accusing LBJ-some guy who was a lawyer at LBJ's firm after the assasination.  I saw the guy's website, and all I can say is, weak, very weak.

Dan, would that be Barr McClellan's BLOOD, POWER & MONEY by any chance? The author is the father of Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan. He offered a terse no-comment when asked about the book at a White House press conference.

BTW, where's the CIA in your poll? Or do they go under the O. Stone "warmongers" category?

Two well-done (IMO) fictional recreations of events leading up to the JFK assassination are Don DeLillo's LIBRA and James Ellroy's AMERICAN TABLOID.

Edited November 21, 2003 by ghost of miles

[Dan Gould]

Well, Moose, doncha know that LBJ and Bobby only hated each other after Jack was murdered??!! So, I mean, c'mon, its not that farfetched!

GoM, since I'm sure you'll agree that the CIA is on the side of the warmongering, Oliver Stone conspiracists, yes, they're covered in that catch-all.

[John Tapscott]

I'm not at all convinced that Kennedy would have pulled America out of Vietnam. I think it's far more likely the war would have proceeded as it did. And it's hard to imagine Bobby Kennedy serving as VP under anyone. What's this about the Israelis and Palestinians signing a "final" peace treaty? That's not going to happen because too many meddlers don't want it to happen, ever. This guy dreams in technicolor.