Conspiracy or not? The Kennedy Assassination

Nrdsb4 · November 22, 2013, 11:11am

Lots of coverage in Dallas going on. Yesterday our temps were in the 70’s and felt warmer due to the humidity (it was almost 90 degrees on Sunday). A cold front came in last night and now we are in the 30’s with wind chills in the 20’s and rain/sleet forecast for the day. So I wonder what kind of turnout they will get for the ceremonies in Dealey Plaza later today. I understand that a few eyewitnesses had planned to attend, but I don’t know that this weather would be good for a very elderly individual.

coureur · November 22, 2013, 11:23am

Yes, there is a natural tendency to conclude there must have been a big conspiracy because Kennedy was such a huge, powerful figure and Oswald was so small and inconsequential. People think “That’s it? That all it took? The most powerful man in the world was killed so easily by that little twit? No, that can’t be all there is. There must be something bigger behind him.”

But sadly it looks like that is all it took. The only thing that is half-way convincing to me of a conspiracy is Ruby murdering Oswald. The looks suspiciously like a mob hit to silence him. But even in that case there are little details that to are are convincing that it really was very likely just an impulsive act of collective revenge on Ruby’s part. One of those key little details is Ruby’s dogs. Jack Ruby was known to be a dog lover, devoted to his pets. And when he left to go down to the police station he left his dogs locked in his house with no arrangements for anyone to care for them - as though he intended to be gone for only a short while. I can’t imagine any dog lover, no matter how depraved he might be in other ways, who would intentionally leave his own dogs to suffer and starve.

As for conspiracy theories in general. I do believe it’s possible to have a small conspiracy - Lincoln’s assassination for example. But grand Oliver Stone-style conspiracies with many tentacles reaching in all directions are nonsense. It’s impossible for conspiracies that large and complex to hold together and pull it off. Stone had LBJ plus elements of the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, Cuban expatriates, mafia, Dallas police, and the Parkland hospital staff acting together with precise timing, all playing their roles to perfection, to both kill the president and frame Oswald. And after they pulled it off the conspiracy never cracked. Nobody came forward and nothing ever leaked out. They got away with it. Yeah, right.

collegealum314 · November 22, 2013, 11:56am

But sadly it looks like that is all it took. The only thing that is half-way convincing to me of a conspiracy is Ruby murdering Oswald. The looks suspiciously like a mob hit to silence him. But even in that case there are little details that to are are convincing that it really was very likely just an impulsive act of collective revenge on Ruby’s part. One of those key little details is Ruby’s dogs. Jack Ruby was known to be a dog lover, devoted to his pets. And when he left to go down to the police station he left his dogs locked in his house with no arrangements for anyone to care for them - as though he intended to be gone for only a short while. I can’t imagine any dog lover, no matter how depraved he might be in other ways, who would intentionally leave his own dogs to suffer and starve.

Yeah, that was one of the primary reasons the 1978 HSCA hearing concluded there was a conspiracy–that is, Ruby taking out Oswald made it look like a mob hit. They added that they thought that Ruby was stalking Oswald. He may have been waiting for an opportunity to get oswald, so he may not have known ahead of time when he would be able to get at Oswald so he may not have made arrangements ahead of time for the dogs. Plus, if this was really a mob hit that Ruby had to participate, then couldn’t he have contacted someone from the jail to get them to take care of the dogs?

I see your point. However, people did get away with conspiracies back then, not Oliver Stone level conspiracies, but ones with many participants. For instance, LBJ pal and infamous conman Billy Sol Estes was being investigated for fraud by a guy named Marshall from the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Shortly after, he committed ‘suicide’ by shooting himself five times with a shotgun and inhaling carbon monoxide. Marshall was shot on a somewhat isolated farm, and a stranger that day was asking at a nearby gas station for directions to the guy’s farm. A sketch by a police sketch artist from a description given by the gas station attendant looked exactly like a convicted murderer Malcolm Wallace, who was a known associate of Billy Sol Estes. Despite the bizarre circumstances, it was officially deemed a suicide, only later changed to homicide after testimony by Estes twenty years later. I’m not saying LBJ was connected with this sordid business. I’m just saying that money and power can scare people into going along with a conspiracy and keeping their mouth shut.

collegealum314 · November 22, 2013, 12:26pm

So I’m really on the fence on whether there was a conspiracy or no conspiracy. There are compelling arguments on both sides.

Certainly, there were a lot of weird circumstances.

Consolation · November 22, 2013, 2:50pm

To summarize Stephen Hunter’s theory in The Third Bullet: LHO was a screw-up and a lousy shot, and the rifle he used was very poorly made and outfitted with a basically useless and badly fitted scope. LHO had taken a shot an General Walker a few months before and missed, and he had gone to the USSR Embassy in Mexico to offer his services and/or plea for some kind of deal. The embassy was routinely bugged by the CIA (and vice versa in various locations, they were keeping tabs on each other), so LHO’s existence became known to them. (BTW, Jim Garrison said Clay Shaw was a CIA operative, which the powers that be roundly denounced and pooh-poohed and made fun of at the time. Several decades later it emerged: Clay Shaw was indeed a CIA operative. But this is not in Hunter’s book, so I digress.)

A senior operative at the CIA who has put together a tiny action group of twocontacts LHO with the idea of really shooting Walker, pretending to be KGB. LHO is thrilled that his offer to volunteer at the Mexican Embassy has been taken up. A shooting expert figures out how to fire a bullet of the sort LHO has for his Mannlicher from a vastly superior rifle, in addition altering it so that it is an explosive round. This means that the superior shot can fire immediately after LHO does, and there will be not enough left of the bullet to identify it as having come from a different gun. But suddenly the route for JFK’s parade, by stroke of fortune, is changed to go by the book depository where LHO has a job. The conspirators switch targets. find an office to shoot from where the angle will be indistinguishable from that of the depository–this building actually exits–and voila. LHO duly takes his shots, missing one of them, and the superior shot immediately takes the head shot with the exploding bullet. LHO, realizing that he did not fire that shot, realizes that he was a patsy, and his subsequent moves are explained by this.

The core of all of this is that from a gun fancier’s perspective, LHO was wildly unlikely to have made that shot, and this explains how it could have been done. It is very convincing.

collegealum314 · November 22, 2013, 5:31pm

^That’s fascinating. I’ll have to check that novel out.

jym626 · November 22, 2013, 6:05pm

I thought I read that although he used a cheap gun that probably didn’t have a great scope, that in the military he was actually a pretty good marksman and had gotten a few marksman certificates.

collegealum314 · November 22, 2013, 6:15pm

^It appears that Oswald was pretty good right after his training (in 1956), but a few years later, he regressed and barely got the marksman rating (see below.) Basically, he learned everything for the test and then forgot a lot.

[Was</a> Lee Harvey Oswald an Expert Marksman? : The JFK Assassination](<a href=“http://22november1963.org.uk/lee-harvey-oswald-marksman-sharpshooter]Was”>Was Lee Harvey Oswald an Expert Marksman? : The JFK Assassination)

Oswald’s Marine Rifle Marksmanship Scores
In the late 1950s, US Marines were categorised at three levels of shooting ability, according to the scores they achieved at a standardised test of their accuracy:
Expert: a score of 220 to 250.
Sharpshooter: 210 to 219.
Marksman: 190 to 209.
According to his Marine score card (Commission Exhibit 239), Oswald was tested twice:
In December 1956, after “a very intensive 3 weeks’ training period” (Warren Commission Hearings, vol.11, p.302), Oswald scored 212: two marks above the minimum for a ‘sharpshooter’.
In May 1959, he scored 191: one mark above the minimum for a ‘marksman’.
Colonel Allison Folsom interpreted the results for the Warren Commission:
The Marine Corps consider that any reasonable application of the instructions given to Marines should permit them to become qualified at least as a marksman. To become qualified as a sharpshooter, the Marine Corps is of the opinion that most Marines with a reasonable amount of adaptability to weapons firing can become so qualified. Consequently, a low marksman qualification indicates a rather poor “shot” and a sharpshooter qualification indicates a fairly good “shot”.(Warren Commission Hearings, vol.19, pp.17f)
Folsom agreed with his (not her) questioner that Oswald “was not a particularly outstanding shot” (Warren Commission Hearings, vol.8, p.311).

Lergnom · November 22, 2013, 8:39pm

Oh come on! Hasn’t anyone seen Full Metal Jacket? “What one motivated marine and his rifle can do”? The scene on the bleachers when DI Hartman asks if anyone has heard of Charles Whitman. I’ll pick it up after that:

<pre><code>COWBOY
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Sir, he was that guy who shot all those people from that tower in Austin, Texas, sir!