JFK assassination conspiracy theories and how they work
[NOTE: Yesterday I noticed that there is a new entry in the JFK assassination conspiracy rolls. And then later, commenter “John Tyler” posted a link to it, wondering what to make of it. I gave a perfunctory answer, but then it occurred to me that it might be good to re-post some thoughts of mine on the subject of the JFK assassination and theories about it. The following is a slightly-edited version of two previous posts, one that first appeared here in June of 2011 and one in August of 2019. I think the information is valuable for its general discussion of how JFK conspiracy theories tend to work, and why some people find them persuasive.]
I’ve mentioned that Vincent Bugliosi’s book on JFK assassination conspiracy theories entitled Reclaiming History is very long, in part because it attempts to deal with every single one. Most people are not going to read the whole thing. But the first 500 pages or so are quite doable, often riveting, and present a ton of facts that in my opinion should be exceedingly convincing to those who attempt to take it all in objectively.
The rest of the book can be considered as a reference—and a handy one at that, since it is also available though Kindle, and a great deal of it is posted online for free at Google Books.
Since Bugliosi has pondered virtually every aspect of the Kennedy assassination and its conspiracy buffs, he’s pondered how they go about their business, and he has this to say (see pp. 951 ff) [emphasis mine]:
It is remarkable that conspiracy theorists can believe that groups like the CIA, military-industrial complex, and FBI would murder the president, but cannot accept the likelihood, even the possibility, that a nut like Oswald would flip out and commit the act, despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence that Oswald killed Kennedy, and not an ounce showing that any of these groups had anything to do with the assassination.
It is further remarkable that these conspiracy theorists aren’t troubled in the least by their inability to present any evidence that Oswald was set up and framed. For them, the mere belief or speculation that he was is a more-than-adequate substitute for evidence. More importantly, there is a simple fact of life that Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists either don’t realize or fail to take into consideration, something I learned from my experience as a prosecutor; namely, that in the real world—you know, the world in which when I talk you can hear me, there will be a dawn tomorrow, et cetera—you cannot be innocent and yet still have a prodigious amount of highly incriminating evidence against you…
…[T]he evidence against Oswald is so great that you could throw 80% of it out the window and there would still be more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt…
The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists display an astonishing inability to see the vast forest of evidence proving Oswald’s guilt because of their penchant for obsessing over the branches, even the individual branches. And, because virtually all of them have no background in criminal investigation, they look at each leaf (piece of evidence) by itself, hardly ever in relation to, and in the context of, all the other evidence.
Bugliosi is describing something I’ve noticed as well. There is indeed a mountain—or a forest, or whatever comparison you like—of solid evidence implicating Oswald, from a multiplicity of sources, such that it could not be planted simultaneously. There are countless witnesses to actions before and after the assassination, and that involve the murder of Officer Tippit as well. There are fingerprints. There are mail orders for firearms and fake IDs written in Owald’s handwriting and photos that are NOT faked (and that his widow attested to having taken herself—did she frame Oswald as well?).
There is an absence of all of this evidence for everyone else. All that is left is “well, this person talked to that person once” or “this person was acquainted with that person” or “this group had reason to want Kennedy dead,” and on and on and on. Tiny discrepancies—common to all prosecutions of all crimes that do not involve a video of the perpetrator committing the act and an uncoerced confession—are found and focused on. Witnesses might disagree on a detail here and there. Sometimes some change their story. Not every single fact is completely nailed down. But, as Bugliosi points out, the evidence for Oswald as the sole perpetrator is so enormously overwhelming that it has been proven not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond a doubt.
However, doubting remains, and is extremely prevalent. A poll from 2003 indicated that 70% of Americans believe there was a conspiracy. The persistence of such ideas reflects, among other things, the fact that people are reluctant to believe that an insignificant individual such as Oswald could have committed an act that changed history. But it happens all the time—and, by the way, it was one of Oswald’s motivations: he wanted to change history and to turn his own insignificance into significance. They also play on the now-rampant – and rather justified – distrust of government and government agencies and institutions. .
Yet another reason for the prevalence of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists is that understanding a huge and unwieldy body of evidence is time-consuming and somewhat boring as well as difficult. Much easier to attempt to poke a hole in a fact or two (often misunderstanding or misinterpreting what a certain piece of evidence signifies) and/or at times to rely on outright lies or misrepresentations of what happened.
Bugliosi makes an especially interesting point in his introduction, one I hadn’t really thought of before, which is that although most of the people who believe in the various conspiracies are probably sincere in their beliefs, many of those who actually write the conspiracy books are not. They are lying and they know it, but they count on their readers not to realize this.
The Kennedy assassination involves an almost unimaginable amount of data and evidence, so much so that most of us have forgotten many of the details although we may think we remember them. Authors of conspiracy books—who generally are exceedingly familiar with these details—are counting on their readers’ faulty or incomplete memories.
On pages xxviii-xxix of the introduction to his book, Bugliosi points out:
The conspiracy theorists [most of those who originate and profit off them, that is] are so outrageously brazen that they tell lies not just about verifiable, documentary evidence, but about clear, photographic evidence, knowing that only one out of a thousand of their readers, if that, is in possession of the subject photographs. Robert Groden (the leading photographic expert for the conspiracy proponents who was the photographic adviser the Oliver Stone’s movie JFK) draws a diagram on page 24 of his book High Treason of Governor Connally seated directly in front of President Kennedy in the presidential limousine and postulates the “remarkable path” a bullet coming from behind Kennedy, and traveling from left to right, would have to take to hit Connally—after passing straight through Kennedy’s body, making a right turn and then a left one in midair, which, the buffs chortle, bullets “don’t even do in cartoons.” What average reader would be in a position to dispute this seemingly common-sense, geometric assault on the Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory?…But of course, if you start out with an erroneous premise, whatever flows from it makes a lot of sense. The only problem is that it’s wrong. The indisputable fact here—which all people who have studied the assassination know—is that Connally was not seated directly in front of Kennedy, but to his left front.
Bugliosi goes on to add that Connally’s jump seat was also three inches lower than Kennedy, and his head was turned to his right (which is clear from the Zapruder film) at the time the bullet hit. The proper trajectory of the bullet was therefore exactly as the Warren Commission stated. None of these facts are all that difficult to ascertain, and there is little doubt that conspiracy author and consultant Groden is (or should be) well aware of them. And this is just a single point on which conspiracists prevaricate; there are countless others.
Bugliosi continues [emphasis mine]:
I am unaware of any other major event in world history which has been shrouded in so much intentional misinformation as has the assassination of JFK.
The question is why? Bugliosi notes that conspiracy sells, and he is correct. There is no question that some of the motivation to write these things is to make money. But for at least some of the conspiracy authors and promoters there is probably another reason, which is that belief in conspiracies undermine faith in our government as a whole. Earl Warren had this to say about the matter (page xxi of the introduction):
To say now that [the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Departments of State and Defense], as well as the [Warren] Commission, suppressed, neglected to unearth, or overlooked evidence of a conspiracy would be an indictment of the entire government of the United States. It would mean the whole structure was absolutely corrupt from top to bottom, not one person of high or low rank willing to come forward to expose the villainy, in spite of the fact that the entire country bitterly mourned the death of its young president.
To add some thoughts based on events that have occurred since then, Russiagate and then the exposure of Russiagate has only underlined the believability of the idea that the government (“deep state”) did something as crooked and awful as killing Kennedy. In Russiagate, we saw a false conspiracy theory pushed about Trump by certain government agencies (or at least people in those agencies who were quite high up), and then we saw that conspiracy theory about Trump and Russia unravel as evidence was presented for the very real conspiracy against Trump by those agencies. Which theory one believes is true should be based on the facts and the clarity and abundance and convincing nature of the evidence, and I think it’s clear that Russiagate was false and the Russia Hoax was conspiracy to promote a false conspiracy (something like the authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). But most Democrats probably still disagree with me, and see the reverse (Russiagate was true and its undermining was false) as quite obvious. I think the evidence is absolutely overwhelming for the side in which I have come to believe, but the others of course disagree, whether they’re even aware of that evidence or not.
And the entire episode only fosters the general idea of government conspiracies on conspiracies on conspiracies.
From my reading of Oswald’s testimony and demeanor, he was well aware that he would be championed and/or exonerated by those who would want to believe him innocent. His famous “I am a patsy” remark was a brilliant statement along those lines. Bugliosi’s book explains that Oswald maintained a resistance to police interrogation that was impressive; he virtually never lost his imperturbable demeanor during the time he was in custody. When confronted with clear evidence of his guilt, he calmly and arrogantly denied whatever implicated him, no matter how powerfully it did so. When asked, for example, to explain a fact that pointed strongly to his guilt, he merely answered, “I don’t explain it” (page 255).
Perhaps Oswald correctly surmised that others would do his explaining for him.
[NOTE II: I’ve limited this post to the question of JFK’s assassination, but the same arguments are true for Ruby’s killing of Oswald – absolutely overwhelming mountain of evidence, and good explanations for whatever may superficially look like a flaw in the argument.
And regarding the book Reclaiming History, to those who point out that Bugliosi has written some rather sketchy books on other topics, my answer is that while this indeed may be so (I haven’t read those), on this one – which I have read – he is both exhaustive and accurate. That is because it is in his wheelhouse, the prosecution of a criminal act, whereas the sketchy ones are not (one, for example, is about Bush being guilty of war crimes, which is not in Bugliosi’s field of expertise as an LA deputy district attorney). I have read Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, about the Manson murder case which he had prosecuted; it is an excellent book on the subject.]
I may be mistaken, but I think the inaccurate schematic drawing Bugliosi discusses has as its origin one of Josiah Thompson’s earlier efforts, quite possibly an honest mistake. Thompson has long been one of the more circumspect and temperate consipiracy theorists.
Art Deco:
Whatever its origins, it was repeated by those who either knew or should have known better.
There is indeed a mountain—or a forest, or whatever comparison you like—of solid evidence implicating Oswald, from a multiplicity of sources, such that it could not be planted simultaneously. …
There is an absence of all of this evidence for everyone else. All that is left is… tiny discrepancies… Not every single fact is completely nailed down. But, as Bugliosi points out, the evidence for Oswald as the sole perpetrator is so enormously overwhelming that it has been proven not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond a doubt.
I think the word that summarizes this is “consilience”. The facts are what they are and anyone can construct any narrative they wish by being selective about known facts. But a consilient narrative explains the vast majority of the known facts with a single narrative in a way that non-consilient narratives cannot. (Leaving aside for now lies, bad faith, and sensationalism.)
One of my hobbies is Jack the Ripper, and in that case, there is very little known. It too has attracted conspiracy-mongering; at the time there was much less public awareness of this type of crime than today and so it’s not surprising that people would be attracted to explaining them.
Innocent conspiracy theorists (not bad faith) generally do one of the following: selectively include or exclude victims to fit a timeline or a pattern, focus on individual pieces of evidence and ignore others that impeach the narrative, and look under the streetlight for their car keys because the light is better there (i.e. try to tie it to historical figures who are well documented).
Aside from lies and bad faith, some “facts” have appeared in books copied from other books but have no provenance. And it’s even more complicated that we no longer understand the Victorian sense of humor and fail to appreciate that thousands of people spent tens of thousands of hours writing fake Ripper letters* and carrying out sick practical jokes on the police. Anyone with a pet theory can easily find a “Ripper letter” to support it.
We’ve also lost sight of how violent this time period was and that there were a lot of people getting murdered, and weird people running around loose in the streets. (Not everyone can agree on how many the Ripper killed.)
Even worse, the dumbest and shakiest of all the Ripper conspiracy theories is the one that all the graphic novels and movies are based on, and so the fallacies perpetrated by that one have metastasized into others and led directly to Patricia Cornwell destroying a Sickert painting she thought should have Ripper evidence. (She didn’t even have the decency to cite the other books.)
So what’s the consilient theory? It’s that it was done by some guy you never heard of who died or were locked up before he did it again or could be caught for the others. The police of those days had a few people in mind who might have been the perpetrators… and those people died or were locked up before any conclusive evidence could be found against them. But it could have been some other obscure individual that no one ever suspected except maybe his immediate friends and family.
*The evidence for the only two that are ever taken as genuine is really quite weak: one predicted two murders in the same night which subsequently happened (but it is very unlikely that the Ripper actually planned two murders) and the other was accompanied by a piece of kidney (which no one could possibly prove ever came from any of the victims).
It would go a long way to quell any suspicions of the JFK hit job, if the govt would make public everything they have on it.
After almost 60 years, why and what on earth could the govt. wish to keep secret about the JFK assassination??
Everybody of any importance who was around back then is long dead.
And I cannot imagine that anything being kept secret, if revealed, would surprise or shock anybody.
That the USA / Cuba / Russia had operatives in the USA/Russia/Cuba/Mexico/ the Mob ??
Geez,that would be a surprise , not.
That Hoover was being blackmailed because he supposedly was gay?
Geez, what a surprise,. not.
It’s sort of like the UFO mystery and govt. “cover ups.” UFOs are real or they are not. Pretty simple. Or more precisely, the US govt has , or not, hard evidence that UFOs exist or not.
What is the big deal about making all of this public?
The govt. aids and abets conspiracy / cover up theories because they insist on maintaining stuff top secret that does not appear to be in need of being kept secret.
Geez, I wonder if the govt. has still “top secret’ info on the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 or Lincoln in 1865..
Jackie Kennedy was upset that her husband was killed by some “little communist” and was not a martyr for Civil Rights (i.e. was not assassinated by some KKK type Redneck). The Left could never accept the fact that a true believing Communist killed JFK and not either the CIA, LBJ, or the Military Industrial Complex, etc.
I find your points convincing about Oswald’s guilt, but Tink Thompson’s arguments in Six Seconds in Dallas and Last Second in Dallas and Thomas Lipscomb’s argument about the windshield support the conclusion that Oswald was not the *lone* assassin. I’m inclined to suspend judgment on that question.
And Then moving forward we got this:
https://youtu.be/6k8GEByOH1g
My feeling is that many of the conspiracy theories are created on purpose by leftists that don’t what it to have been done by an unhinged Marxist. He had lived in the Soviet Union and married a Soviet citizen. He came back the US. Then he tried to go to Cuba via Mexico or back to the USSR.
Lefties don’t want this to be the guy so it must be someone else. Only a right winger or the, at that time, not now evil government would have killed the bestest, most handsomest president ever.
Then with Kennedy dead they like to pretend he would have stopped the war in Vietnam, another thing with no evidence.
All done on purpose to support the narrative of the socialist true believers.
One problem with many conspiracy theories is that they seek the holy grail of a piece of evidence that incontrovertibly proves the conspiracy. This is what leads to crackpot analysis and shading of evidence IMO.
OTOH, a conclusion that Oswald is the shooter does not require the conclusion that he acted alone (“I’m a patsy.”).
P.S. To me, Ruby’s killing of Oswald, along with Ruby’s mob connections, screams that the assassination was a mob hit and used Oswald for some purpose. It’s hard for me to imagine a reasonable motive for Ruby outside of that.
Neo, does Bugliosi’s book deal with possible mafia connections?
“the evidence for Oswald as the sole perpetrator is so enormously overwhelming that it has been proven not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond a doubt.”
If the proof is beyond “a reasonable doubt” the only doubt remaining is doubt based on emotion, illogic, or just stupidity, etc,
The point of the legal standard is that if there is any doubt based in reason derived from the evidence, then there is “reasonable doubt”.
There can never be a situation when all doubt is removed if the phrase “all doubt” includes illogically based doubts (which encompass emotion and stupidity generated doubts).
I write this only because I think our esteemed blogger does a disservice to the legal standard by asserting that the evidence against Oswald “was proven not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond a doubt.”
The Left could never accept the fact that a true believing Communist killed JFK and not either the CIA, LBJ, or the Military Industrial Complex, etc.
See Richard Grenier’s 1991 assessment of the purveyors of Kennedy Assassination literature. The left qua left wasn’t really interested in the subject and the political perspectives to be found in that subculture do not map to the left-right access very well. IMO, it’s a psychological type, not a political type, that is emotionally invested in these theses.
@JohnTyler: I wonder if the govt. has still “top secret’ info on the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 or Lincoln in 1865..
Jack the Ripper operated in 1888 and those files are still not made public by the government of the United Kingdom.
That said, it’s not that they can’t be accessed, and those who have seen them have said there’s little there that’s relevant which isn’t already known to the public. Donald Rumbelow reviewed them for his book back in 1975, and described what was in them–namely evidence pointing to some obscure individuals who died or were locked up before they could do it again or have anything proved.
“It is remarkable that conspiracy theorists can believe that groups like the CIA, military-industrial complex, and FBI would murder the president, but cannot accept the likelihood, even the possibility, that a nut like Oswald would flip out and commit the act, despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence that Oswald killed Kennedy, and not an ounce showing that any of these groups had anything to do with the assassination. ”
I really have no opinion at this point on JFK’s assassination. But the above quote struck me coming as it does a few days after Durham is indicating that Russiagate may extend much further than before and may include CIA, FBI, etc if not co-conspirators, then maybe willing bystanders. The rot is so deep. Was it there even 60 years ago?
pikkumatti:
Read the sections about Ruby in Bugliosi’s book and see if you still think that. There is really no foundation for what you’re saying, if you familiarize yourself with the details of what happened with Ruby, why he did it, and how he accidentally got the opportunity to shoot Oswald.
To me, Ruby’s killing of Oswald, along with Ruby’s mob connections, screams that the assassination was a mob hit and used Oswald for some purpose. It’s hard for me to imagine a reasonable motive for Ruby outside of that.
Why does it scream that at you?
Around about 2008, a retired Secret Service agent who had investigated the assassination offered his entry into the literature on the subject. Asked by an interviewer about the possibility that Oswald was employed by others, he said he found the idea amusing. Oswald’s whole life demonstrated he was erratic and untrustworthy and couldn’t work for others, and he could not imagine anyone with a task they wanted accomplished would hire LHO to do it. He was speaking of clandestine services abroad, not Santo Trafficante. However, it’s difficult to imagine Trafficante would not have trusted contractors to do this sort of thing. Where is the evidence which suggests a fee-for-services relationship between Oswald and Trafficante or Oswald and any other Sicilianate mob figure?
D8:
I repeat: if you’re at all interested in the subject, you owe it to yourself to read the first few hundred pages of Bugliosi’s book. Oswald acted alone. There are many many reasons why this is so, including (for example) the fact that the parade route was only decided on and published very shortly (a couple of days) before the assassination, and Oswald’s job was something he had gotten through a friend about six or seven weeks earlier. It was sheer coincidence that he would have the opportunity to kill JFK, and it only became possible a day or two (I forget the exact time frame, but it was very short) before the killing occurred.
What about, not a full-blown conspiracy theory, but the possibility that a Secret Service agent accidentally fired the second shot and that was covered up? Is that dealt with in the book?
Physics — a force from in front of the car smashed into JFK’s head and blew major parts of his brains on the hood. Physics really does matter.
Headshots create bigger holes going out than coming in. Physics.
A recently returned veteran from Vietnam said that a bullet was fired from behind him and passed over his head toward the car (from the Grassy Knoll).
Oswald’s ability to use a poor quality and balky rifle to fire off 3 shots in six seconds at a moving target (with 2 hits) while shooting through a tree and place the 3rd shot perfectly on target has never been established. US Army expert snipers were unable to replicate the performance for the Warren Commission despite using a better rifle and firing at fixed targets. Oswald’s 1955 performance on the rifle range as a Marine was poor even when tested immediately after 3 weeks of extensive training. In 1959, four years later, it was worse. And four years later was 1963. Without some evidence of extensive training and improved expertise in the period immediately before Nov 22, there is enormous doubt he had the ability.
stan:
What you just wrote is a classic case of what I’m talking about.
Someone said they perceived something that contradicts all the actual physical evidence. People misperceive things all the time, and they lie at times, too (although misperception is more common, I think).
The shots Oswald made have been conclusively proven to have been easy to do with the rifle he used and the skills he had actually demonstrated as a Marine. Read Bugliosi’s book.
The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists display an astonishing inability to see the vast forest of evidence proving Oswald’s guilt because of their penchant for obsessing over the branches, even the individual branches. And, because virtually all of them have no background in criminal investigation, they look at each leaf (piece of evidence) by itself, hardly ever in relation to, and in the context of, all the other evidence.
I expect we are going to see this phenomenon recapitulated in the comments here.
Frederick:
Absolutely.
shadow:
Seriously, if you’re interested in the subject, take some time to read at least the first few hundred pages. It’s actually fascinating reading. The rest of the book deals one by one with specific conspiracy theories. The link I gave to the online version probably allows you to look up a particular topic in it, too, by searching. That’s what I recall, anyway.
This may seem off topic, but it’s not. Verb. sap.
Rokeach brought together three men who each claimed to be Jesus Christ and confronted them with one another’s conflicting claims, while encouraging them to interact personally as a support group. Rokeach also attempted to manipulate other aspects of their delusions by inventing messages from imaginary characters. He did not, as he had hoped, provoke any lessening of the patients’ delusions, but did document a number of changes in their beliefs.
While initially the three patients quarreled over who was holier and reached the point of physical altercation, they eventually each explained away the other two as being patients with a mental disability in a hospital, or dead and being operated by machines. The graduate students who worked with Rokeach on the project have been strongly critical of the morality of the project because of the amount of dishonesty and manipulation by Rokeach and the amount of distress experienced by the patients. Rokeach added a comment in the final revision of the book that, while the experiment did not cure any of the three Christs, “It did cure me of my godlike delusion that I could manipulate them out of their beliefs.”
If Tom O’Neil is correct in his book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties, then Bugliosi’s credibility is questionable at best. You can listen to the Joe Rogan interview – podcast #1459. (Much easier to listen to if you speed it up.) They touch on Jack Ruby and JFK assassination in the interview.
Oswald’s wife said he did not practice with the rifle. Army experts said the bolt action was faulty. To have used it quickly and effectively would have required a great deal of practice.
In addition, rifle experts said the poor quality rifle had additional problems with the sights.
All per Warren Commission.
I think it would be fair to say I am more open to conspiracy theories than most commenters here. And I feel no shame in that.
For my money too many who dismiss JFK conspiracies did so because they dismiss conspiracies in general, not because they made an open-minded consideration of the evidence. There are peculiar aspects of the assassination which ought to arouse skepticism of a simple lone-nut explanation.
I spent some years pondering the assassination. I was a “buff.” At first what interested me was the hope of cracking the case, or at least finding the book which did.
But after several years the assassination became a crucible for critical thinking. What is evidence? How does one reason from evidence? How does one assess arguments about evidence. Etc.
I read about six feet of books on the subject. I learned a fair amount about the assassination and its attendent theories. I like to think I learned something about critical thinking too.
For anyone interested in that journey, I say it’s worthwhile to dig in and think for yourself.
physicsguy:
Did you see what I wrote about Russiagate in the post?
I do agree that it makes people even more wary of the government.
But it does not change the evidence in the JFK assassination. As I’ve said to just about everyone else here, read the Bugliosi book if you have any interest in the subject. It is amazingly thorough and full of information of which most people are unaware, and definitely deals with the theories about agency involvement.
That said, my JFK journey pretty much ended with Bugliosi’s “Reclaiming History.” It’s as good and convincing a book as neo says. Riveting too.
Bugliosi collected just about all the arguments about the assassination I knew and many I didn’t. Then he systematically set about settling them.
Monumental. It was an epic one-man-against-the-world effort on par with Bobby Fischer taking on the Soviet chess machine and winning.
If the universities were truly interested in critical thinking, a great course could be assembled based on Bugliosi.
The Warren Commission, which he tries to defend, disagreed regarding Oswald and his ability to shoot. The Marine Corps records are part of the evidence. The commission specifically set up the test for expert riflemen and they failed to replicate the shooting.
stan:
Just read the book on the subject. It deals with it in great depth and uses his Marine records, evaluations of the weapon, everything that’s pertinent.
huxley:
Agreed about the book – monumental is the right word. It was so big it was physically unwieldy. But fortunately, a great deal of it is the theory-by-theory part, so I think that people can get the basic idea if they read the first 500 pages. Five hundred pages sounds like an awful lot, but I found it quick and fascinating going, really revelatory. I thought I knew a lot of details, but the details there were far more numerous than what I’d already known, and very important to learn.
stan:
Read the book and then see what you think. It doesn’t ignore anything, and it is highly convincing. Oswald was fully capable of doing exactly what was done.
Nurses and doctors at Parkland Hospital said that JFK’s wounds entered from the front — neck and head.
I’m not claiming anyone conspired to kill JFK. So debunking CIA, Mob, Castro, whoever doesn’t interest me. Bugliosi was focused on shooting down conspiracy theories. Fine. Whatever. The most obvious evidence is that the kill shot came from the front. Physics. And the rifle with flawed sights and balky bolt in the hands of someone who was not an expert and had not practiced is not much of an argument to depend on. Lots of snipers believe that Bugliosi was far too glib in simply asserting it was easy for Oswald to do the shooting.
Sorry. This is all silly. No point in having a discussion like this. Lots of experts have disputed his conclusions. Your religious faith in his expertise is rather curious. But clearly, your mind is made up and there isn’t any point in bringing up contrary evidence. Since his arguments aren’t being discussed, there isn’t anything to engage with.
Your faith is duly noted.
neo:
My Irish friend is a very bright fellow, who knows more American history than I, but he never dug into the JFK assassination, so he assumed it was one of those complicated controversies never to be settled.
He picked up my copy of “Reclaiming History” on a visit and read through the first section in a day. He too thought it riveting, as well as convincing.
So, yes, the book need not be as forbidding as its size. The first section is a breeze to read. Then one can pick and choose specific issues from the table of contents or the index.
I checked book today and found no index entry for “windshield.” Sadly, Bugliosi died in 2015 and isn’t around to present his case on the issue.
Stan: “Oswald’s wife said he did not practice with the rifle.” She didn’t want to be named as an accomplice. He was dead and couldn’t refute anything she said.
http://www.22november1963.org.uk/lee-harvey-oswald-marksman-sharpshooter
Eva Marie, wrong. Learn the facts about her interviews. She lied about a lot of things. But on this issue she was doing everything she could to help the FBI confirm the story they wanted to tell. She was not in jeopardy of being charged.
In his book, “A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza,” Craig Roberts concurs saying, “I analyzed the scene as a sniper,….(and concluded)…it would take a minimum of two people shooting. There was little hope that I alone, even if equipped with precision equipment, would be able to duplicate the feat described by the Warren Commission,”
A 1998 report by U.S. Attorney John Orr indicates the bullet that hit JFK in the head was a different type of bullet than CE399 and other bullets fired from the Mannlicher Carcano rifle found in the TSBD. Orr’s important report convinced the Department of Justice, the FBI, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) to conduct further tests of CE567, bullet fragments from the limo.
Stan: “She lied about a lot of things.” Exactly. – Not that I think that Bugliosi is credible. It’s just that Marina Oswald isn’t credible as well.
In his book, “A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza,” Craig Roberts concurs saying, “I analyzed the scene as a sniper,….(and concluded)…it would take a minimum of two people shooting. There was little hope that I alone, even if equipped with precision equipment, would be able to duplicate the feat described by the Warren Commission,”
Well, don’t hire him, because an employee of the Texas School Book Depository made it happen after shooting some practice rounds at a firing range. There were three shots, all from behind. One hit the pavement, one hit the President and Gov. Connolly in series, one went into the President’s skull weakening the skull’s architechture and transferring enough kinetic energy that the skull exploded.
“Nurses and doctors at Parkland Hospital said that JFK’s wounds entered from the front — neck and head.”
The question then is; did these (mythical??) nurses and doctors in fact say this?
And that’s the problem. How does one ascertain this?
If the statement is true (not saying that it is) , then JFK was shot by two gunmen; one in front and by Oswald.
Did the Warren Commission interview any of the “shot-from-the-front” nurses?
Do these “shot from the front” nurses even exist??
How does anyone not in the loop know what to believe?
A bookwriter, if that is their goal, can make any case they choose. Not saying that Bugliosi was not totally objective and honest; I never read his book.
If he was, great.
If not, we would not know it.
Still think the entire JFK files should be made public. One would think that would settle the story once and for all.
Will admit, not that long ago, I never would have believed that our govt. would conspire to kill a US President.
Not saying that they did or not re: JFK.
But today, I certainly believe that elements of the US govt would have no problem doing exactly that. But it would be in the form of a “heart attack,” or stroke or other medical malady that caused a president to relocate into new digs, six feet under.
Nurses and doctors at Parkland Hospital said that JFK’s wounds entered from the front — neck and head.
You mean there was a gremlin in the well in front of the jump seat shooting at him generating that neck wound? In re the head wound, Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist who has been pushing the multiple gunman hypothesis for 50-odd years, will aver that all the shots came from the rear. Again, the front spatter landed on the Governor and his wife.
Physics — a force from in front of the car smashed into JFK’s head and blew major parts of his brains on the hood. Physics really does matter.
Again, you’re mistaken here.
My money has been and still is on a hit job encouraged by Castro for JFK’s attempts to have him assassinated. Oswald was an unstable character and definitely on the payroll of Cuba and Moscow and in contact with their intelligence agencies. I’ve always thought that LBJ did everything he could to bury this because if it came to light, then he would have to go to war with the Cubans and possibly the Soviet Union. Let’s just say that LBJ wasn’t known for his honesty or scruples.
An extended excerpt from the preface of Edward Jay Epstein’s book, “Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald”
—
This book is about Lee Harvey Oswald and his relations with the intelligence services of three nations. The bullet that killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, also exploded in the inner sanctums of five intelligence agencies that had dealings with or surveillance of Oswald only weeks before the assassination. These were the Soviet Union’s KGB, Cuba’s Dirección Generale de Inteligencia (DGI), and America’s CIA, Office of Naval Intelligence and FBI. The KGB’s involvement with Oswald traced back to 1959, when he defected to the Soviet Union and offered to supply military secrets of “special interest” he had acquired during his service as a radar operator in the U.S. Marines. Less than eight weeks before the assassination Oswald had met with a Soviet intelligence officer in Mexico City. Cuba’s DGI had dealings with Oswald in September 1963 when he applied at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City for a visa to go to Cuba. At that time he furnished documentary evidence of his activities in the United States on behalf of Castro and offered his services to the “Revolution.” On October 15 Havana ordered its embassy in Mexico to grant a Cuban visa to Oswald as soon as he obtained a Soviet entrance visa. Following the assassination, the DGI instructed its officers around the world to remain within their respective embassies and to segregate and seal all DGI files. The CIA had surveillance equipment that electronically monitored Oswald’s contacts with both the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City. It had a file on him which dated back to his defection in 1959. When it was determined that Oswald had contacted a known Soviet intelligence officer who was then handling Soviet espionage operations against the United States, the CIA field office notified headquarters in Washington and, on its instruction, informed FBI agents stationed in Mexico of Oswald’s activities. Headquarters also alerted the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). The Office of Naval Intelligence had been interested in Oswald’s activities ever since 1959, when it had received a telegram from the naval attaché in Moscow warning that Oswald might be supplying military secrets to the Soviet Union. Marines who had served with him were interrogated, the damage caused by his defection was assessed, and codes and signals that he had had access to were changed. In October 1963 the CIA had urgently requested a photograph of Oswald to compare with those of individuals entering and leaving the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City. The ONI did not comply with the request, nor did it forward its file on Oswald to the CIA. The FBI had, at the time of the assassination, an open security case on Oswald. On November 18 it had intercepted a letter Oswald had written to the Soviet Embassy in Washington stating that he had traveled to Mexico under an alias and had “business” with the Soviet Embassy in Cuba. In November Oswald had also delivered a threatening note to the FBI office in Dallas. And the agent handling the case in Dallas knew that he was working in a building on the President’s route. Ever since he had redefected to the United States in June 1962, files had been kept on his subterranean activities.
Epstein, Edward Jay . LEGEND: THE SECRET WORLD OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD . EJE PUBLICATIONS, LTD. Kindle Edition.
But on this issue she was doing everything she could to help the FBI confirm the story they wanted to tell.
It was good of you to act as her confidante.
Oswald was an unstable character and definitely on the payroll of Cuba and Moscow and in contact with their intelligence agencies. I
Thanks for the ex cathedra.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161614209X?ie=UTF8&tag=lrc18-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=161614209X
Physicist and ballistics expert says Grassy Knoll for the head shot.
Art Deco, I cited the Warren Commission evidence. Please cite your evidence that a book dep employee did what army experts could not. If he didn’t use the same rifle, don’t bother.
Years ago I watched a show (I think on PBS) that recreated the Oswald shot without much difficulty. Oswald may have been lucky to hit his target but that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have done it.
If there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, I always thought that there would be simpler ways of doing it, particularly if the CIA or other intelligence agencies were involved.
Unfortunately one of the big casualties of the last few years of governmental malpractice has been the almost complete destruction of the credibility of almost all government institutions. It’s not that hard to believe now that there could be a conspiracy to kill a president.
I believe the refusal to believe that Oswald killed Kennedy is that so many people had invested so much hope in Kennedy’s promise. A promise I think that was largely based on myth.
I have read Gerald Posner’s Case Closed, in which he comes to the same conclusion that Bugliosi did. It’s another 600 pager, and I found it quite convincing.
I have read Helter Skelter, and agree, it is a very good work of nonfiction.
Dr. William Perry of Parkland Hospital tried to resuscitate Kennedy. At 2:16 Central Time in a press conference, he said that the throat wound was an entrance wound.
I have no evidence regarding whether Dr Perry was a gremlin, but I rather doubt it.
stan:
Whenever I post about this topic, people come on – as you have – with the same old “what about this, what about that,” using “facts” that are easily and thoroughly refuted in Bugliosi’s book and many others. It’s a waste of time to try to deal with every one, and I keep saying “read the book” but clearly you haven’t and my guess is that you have no intention of doing so.
It isn’t difficult to read the book or to even do a search for any word you want to research within it. For example, go to the site and search for “rifle.” There are many discussions in the book of Oswald’s rifle and the shots. One lengthy discussion begins on page 490, although there are others. Go to the site, go to page 490, and start reading and keep going.
Better yet, start the book at the beginning and read it. But if you don’t want to do that, you can research any specific topic there by doing a search there in the box at the left of the page.
However, most of the people who come to such threads as this one, and tout various conspiracy theories about the assassination, don’t also feel the need to snarkily insult me, as you do here. You wrote:
Do you really think that is convincing, given the fact that I am referring you to a host of facts, and that Bugliosi has actually dealt with the “facts” from “experts” such as those you cite, and that it is YOU who seem unwilling to look at contrary evidence that challenges your own belief system? My “faith” is not the least bit “religious,” as I believe should be quite obvious. When I refer you to a book that deals with reams of very specific evidence that counters JFK assassination theories point by point by point, this is not what you’d call a “religious” faith.
The Bugliosi book is about 1500 pages long, with all the footnotes. As I’ve said, it’s the first 500 pages that are essential reading, and the rest of it is a point-by-point refutation of the dissenting theories. I’m not about to reproduce a 1500 page book here, when it is freely available for you to peruse online.
I’m an agnostic on the Kennedy assassination in that I’ve never reached a conclusion on whether Oswald acted alone. But that he was involved seems certain.
I do find it a bit problematic that Oswald could have under the conditions cited, pulled off that feat.
That said, if major parts of Kennedy’s brain landed on the vehicle’s hood… upon what basis would Dr. William Perry of Parkland Hospital have attempted to resuscitate Kennedy? That kind of wound is decisive beyond doubt. One look would have been all that Dr. Perry would have needed to ascertain the futility of efforts at resuscitation.
At 2:16 Central Time in a press conference, he said that the throat wound was an entrance wound.
It’s a downward trajectory from the entrance wound in the back to the exit at the throat. If you fancy the throat wound is an exit wound, the gunman has to have been located in the limousine shooting upward at the President.
upon what basis would Dr. William Perry of Parkland Hospital have attempted to resuscitate Kennedy?
Mrs. Kennedy later said she knew immediately that he was dead as she could see the inside of his skull. The Connollys were splattered with brains (as they testified in front of a select committee of the House) and you can see the head blow up on the Zapruder film.
Art Deco, I cited the Warren Commission evidence. Please cite your evidence that a book dep employee did what army experts could not.
No, your references (accurate or no) were to features of Oswald’s gun which would have made it more challenging to hit targets. There’s no doubt he hit the targets.
“JohnTyler on February 15, 2022 at 4:01 pm said:
It would go a long way to quell any suspicions of the JFK hit job, if the govt would make public everything they have on it.”
Personally I don’t think it would do anything to quell suspicions (though I think they ought to do so). The conspiracy mongers would simple denounce any such release of government records as just another coverup and a brazen attempt to manipulate the verdict of history. They would decry anything that contradicted their theories and loudly proclaim that the Real True Secret Records (that would prove they were !RIGHT! all along!!) were still hidden in a secret vault somewhere.
Physicist and ballistics expert says Grassy Knoll for the head shot.
Whoever he is, he’s stuck with two problems: the front spatter hit the Connollys and the residue of the bullet was found in the windshield.
About the Grassy Knoll, David Belin had this to say in 1979: “Here is a gunman that nobody ever sees, he’s shooting downward, he misses not only the president but the presidential limousine, he makes one shot then disappears. The evidence for him was a puff of smoke”. (NB, there was a police motorcycle nearby emitting exhaust; there’s your smoke).
Geoffrey Britain:
See my post to “stan” at 6:56 above. It contains instructions on how to access the online version of the book and how to do a search in it for any topic that interests you. It also contains specific instructions to find the part of the book that features Oswald’s rifle, his marksmanship, and how it was extremely believable that he pulled off that feat. I believe it will answer your questions.
On the question of the Parkland doctors’ resuscitation efforts on JFK, from one of the doctors who worked on him that day:
In other words, they were well aware that he was dead, but they felt a desperate need to do everything possible anyway.
By the way, the same doctor assisted a few days later in the surgery to try to save Oswald.
If you fancy the throat wound is an exit wound,
Entrance wound.
if not for lipscombs reputation, I would dismiss it utterly, now bob baer did some freelance research and he confirmed that there was no echo, that would have been indicative of the grassy knoll, that oswald did the shot, but he may have done it for another party, from his analysis of the bus ticket he was holding
Said it elsewhere, I think. When two or more unlikelihoods need to be congruent for something to happen, reducing it to random is like multiplying fractions. You get to a very low value very fast.
There were lots of people in those days–I was eighteen–who talked of how awful Kennedy was, how he was taking orders from the Pope, and some about how shooting him would be a good idea. I suspect those who actually would have shot at him were a pretty small bunch.
So, of a very small bunch, one of them got job in a place overlooking the usual parade//procession route. How many crap jobs needing little skill were available in Dallas at that time? But Oswald, likely determined to shoot if possible or certainly would jump on the opportunity, gets a job in a sniper’s nest.
Do we know when the parade was publicized? When it was decided prior to being made public? Before or after Oswald got the job. No idea.
The probability theory for non-majors in stat 101 is that unlikely things are unlikely to happen and when they do, it’s worth looking into. That is the fuel for the conspiracy theory. Then, somebody who could be seen to have influence benefits. Slam dunk. IMO, why there are no legs to the Las Vegas shooter’s act. Nobody can be seen to benefit except him and he must have expected to be dead and so…..
Oswald didn’t fire three shots in that time. He fired two. The first shot, no matter how long he took to line it up, started the clock. Then he had two more in just a few seconds. Dry firing a bolt action rifle–presuming it’s well-lubed–can make up for deficient design–see the Enfield, “five rounds rapid”, a beautiful design–or a chronic problem in the mechanism which can be overcome by muscle memory.
I looked out the window. If we couldn’t have taught our guys–I was Infantry–to make that shot with iron sights–then I recalled Oswald had a scope–somebody would have been in trouble.
Then Ruby “Just happens” to show up and just the right time.
Too many just-happens gets crossways with people’s intuitive understanding of probability theory.
After that, the door’s open.
No anti-US intel operative would have wanted to put Oswald on the payroll. Too unsettled. Okay. Fine. But how about sending him back with instructions to make trouble as the opportunity presented. Like what? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe at three in the morning, drop a burning railroad flare into a gas station’s underground tanks. You’ll think of a lot of things. I have confidence in you. Then comes the parade….be still my heart!!!
But bottom line is too many just-happens and the door is open.
Then Ruby “Just happens” to show up and just the right time
There’s nothing suspicious about Jack Ruby running errands. (In this case, buying money orders).
Oswald didn’t fire three shots in that time. He fired two.
No, he fired three shots.
Do we know when the parade was publicized? When it was decided prior to being made public?
It was a motorcade. The route was published in the local paper. Yes, he was employed at the Depository at the time.
miguel cervantes:
Read the book. Go to the link, and see the discussion of echoes and the grassy knoll beginning on page 848 till about 858 (a couple of pages are missing, but you’ll still get the drift).
I’m not sure what the “analysis of the bus ticket” is referring to. Oswald took a bus after the shooting and got out when it was caught in traffic and then got off and got a cab. After that:
He had the driver drop him off near his house, quickly changed clothes there and got a pistol to carry, and went out. While on the street not that far away, this happened:
Many witnesses for all of this. Not sure what if anything it has to do with a bus ticket, but I put it up here anyway because I think a lot of people don’t remember the details (which is understandable).
Richard Aubrey:
You might do well to read Bugliosi’s book, too. It’s quite possible that all your questions will be answered – even ones you might not know you have.
But I can answer several right now, because the answers are well-known and easy to find:
So it was sheer coincidence that he got that job there, and it was Mrs. Paine who told him about it (he had chronic money troubles).
As far as the publication of the motorcade route goes, it was very shortly before JFKs’ visit. See page 1444 here. The motorcade route was only selected on Nov 18, and was published in the newspaper for the first time on Nov 19. Read it. Bugliosi points out many things that make Oswald’s recruitment for the job by others extremely unlikely, to say the least, but one is the fact that it would have to be accomplished no more than three days prior to the event. There’s plenty more, too, that indicates a last-minute plan on Oswald’s part (read through page 1445 there).
Seriously, folks, neo is not exaggerating.
Bugliosi relentlessly pounds flat just about all the bumps in the Warren Report raised by the Report’s skeptics.
Like I said, I read about six feet of JFK books. I figured the odds were high that some conspiracy lay beneath it all, though I doubted it would ever be settled.
But Bugliosi convinced me. I was shocked.
Which is not to say that anyone should take my word or neo’s for it. However, if anyone wants to come to terms with the JFK assassination, I consider Bugliosi’s book required reading, if for nothing else, he puts everything in one place with immaculate notes and cites.
In my lifetime, there have been assassination or assassination attempts on the following major figures: two Kennedys, Ford (twice), ML King, Reagan and Wallace. The ones on leftists have produced numerous conspiracy theories. The ones on non-leftists have produced none. So who’s the paranoid side?
Art. Missed the point on the shots. The first shot took no time. then the clock started and in the ensuring few seconds he fired two shots. I’ve done the same with an Enfield, admittedly before the assassination, on the range with some friends. Not a problem. In fact, three rounds isn’t a problem if you know what you’re doing.
I agree that Oswald’s job was the result of coincidence. But a coincidence is a just-happen. And that a presidential assassin should be the beneficiary of such a coincidence, instead of working at a gas station is another just-happen. Or why not some pacifist working in the Depository. As many of them around as presidential assassins, I should think.
The point is, a PRESIDENTIAL ASSASSIN, an extremely rare type, got the job.
So we can’t put Oswald into the Depository anticipating the parade. Still, two just-happens.
I’m pretty sure Ruby wasn’t locked up by the feds to prevent him running errands. So he was running errands. It’s allowed. Dallas is a big town. He just-happens to be running errands where he can get to Oswald during the few moments the guy is vulnerable. Not before and not too late.
My point is, when a series of unlikelihoods happen, and need to happen, to cause a Big Thing, conspiracy–which is to seek a pattern in events–is a likely thought.
Now, calculate the just-happens with Oswald’s travels.
So you quantify the just-happens and we’re down to one in a bazillion to be random.
I’m willing to believe it’s random. But I’m not going to sneer at somebody who says….too many coincidences. Because we are built to seek patterns and in some cases impose them.
It was said that the head of the John Birch Society was introduced at an event as “a noted conspiracy theorist.” He thanked the guy who was, he remarked, “a noted coincidence theorist.”
Pick one.
My point is, when a series of unlikelihoods happen, and need to happen, to cause a Big Thing, conspiracy–which is to seek a pattern in events–is a likely thought.
I think you need to consult an actuary. Ruminating isn’t educating yourself.
According to the Warren Report “From a medical viewpoint, President Kennedy was alive when he arrived at Parkland Hospital; the doctors observed that he had a heart beat and was making some respiratory efforts.”
Here’s the link to the second chapter of the Warren Report: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-2.html
Art Missed again. The normal reaction to what seems like too many coincidences going in one direction to cause a Big Thing is to wonder if random is the right answer, especially when somebody is seen to benefit.
Take Arrowair 1285. Official cause, icing. On a day when nobody reported icing. 250 of our guys killed. Canadian Air Safety Board voted five icing, four onboard disabling incident. Okay. Then some clown in DC wanted to seal the records for seventy years.
The Canadians in charge of keeping bombs off aircraft had had a rough year. AirIndia blew up west of Ireland earlier, killing 349. Didn’t need another black eye.
Okay. Something nefarious happened wrt the Canadian official finding. Okay. Or maybe not. But the seventy years seal? Over icing?
You put it together.
Richard Aubrey:
Read Bugliosi’s book. It’s online – most of it, anyway. It’s also on Kindle. It’s also in print. Take your pick. It’s basically required reading for anyone interested in the topic.
Great post, neo!
About 20 years ago, as part of a joke, I created a detailed conspiracy involving a close friend to share with other, mutual friends. Two things surprised me when I was finished. How easy it was to create the narrative and how believable it was. I meant it in jest, but when I read the fable I had created it was incredibly credible.
When one starts with a conclusion connecting dots backwards to form a desired narrative is not hard. Especially with someone as famous as a U.S. President.
Is the desire to implicate the mob? Well, there’s Sam Giancanna’s mistress. The Chicago election fraud. John’s brother’s persecution of mobsters. Joe Sr.’s corruption. Jack Ruby’s connection…
Castro? Russians? Marilyn Monroe? LBJ?
Imagine if Donald Trump had been assassinated in office. Nearly any famous person you can think of has some connection to him. You could spin a hundred, credible narratives and quickly connect myriad dots to spin a complex, believable tale. It was Russia. It was the FBI. It was BLM. It was China. It was the WHO. It was the Clintons. It was the CIA. Famous people are connected to a lot of people and organizations and have long histories of complicated relationships.
I haven’t researched the JFK assassination much; read a couple books and saw a fun movie; but there can be no doubt Lee Harvey Oswald had a motive and there is a preponderance of evidence putting him at the crime scene and fleeing it, as well as ownership of the murder weapon. Any contravening theory ought to explain why Oswald acted as he did on that day; before and after the assassination. Really odd behavior for an innocent man.
Richard Aubrey:
Most events in life require an enormous sequence of coincidences. That doesn’t mean the coincidences aren’t coincidental.
In order for me to meet my husband-to-be, an extraordinary number of coincidences had to occur. So what? Doesn’t mean the CIA was involved
Oswald had a job in the Book Depository. He had earlier tried to assassinate General Walker and failed. When the motorcade route was published three days before Kennedy’s visit, it occurred to Oswald that he might be in a good position to kill him. A day or two later he got his rifle out of storage and figured out a way to transport it to work without arousing too much suspicion. It’s simple and logical and doesn’t require anything that strains credulity or needs more explanation.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Indeed, especially the murder of Officer Tippit by Oswald, which many people witnessed.
Thank you Neo for this (to me) always interesting topic (but not interesting enough to read a 500 page book). 🙂 And thanks to all the commenters and to stan for the link.
Wesson:
I understand. The thing is, once I started the book I couldn’t put it down (I read it originally in hard copy book form).
Nor do you have to read 500 pages. If you’re interested in any one topic, just do a search for the word at the book site, and you’ll find where the book discusses the topic, and you can read the part about just that.
Richard Aubrey:
I forgot to mention that Oswald had actually been looking for a job for a week or two before he happened to get the one at the Texas Book Depository. None of the other companies he made very serious application for, and interviewed with, were prospects for a presidential motorcade route. Some were also single-story buildings. Why would he have been looking for those jobs if he was some sort of assassin for a group and needed a proper venue for the assassination? Plus, in early November, about 2 weeks prior to the assassination, he told his wife he didn’t like the Texas Book Depository job and actually applied for a different one (which he didn’t get, so he stayed at the book depository). Does this sound like a hired assassin whose work depended on his being in that building?
And why on earth didn’t he have any money? He was dirt poor and living in squalor. I’m not saying he should have been living high on the hog, but he was really really poor and basically lived in a rented closet. Is the idea that he was killing JFK for these groups for free? Or, if he was getting paid later, wouldn’t there have been some sort of minimal advance so he wasn’t living that way?
None of the conspiracy theories make any sense, even on that very basic common sense level. But I’m pretty sure the people touting those theories don’t even attempt to explain these things – they just ignore them, and figure the people who believe what they are saying either will ignore them too or simply are unaware of them.
There’s a difference between paying an assassin and taking advantage of and nurturing someone’s natural proclivities. The plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer, the suspected guiding of the Jan 6th crowd at the capitol are 2 possible examples of the latter.
Quoting from above: “[Oswald’s] famous “I am a patsy” remark was a brilliant statement along those lines. Bugliosi’s book explains that Oswald maintained a resistance to police interrogation that was impressive; he virtually never lost his imperturbable demeanor during the time he was in custody. When confronted with clear evidence of his guilt, he calmly and arrogantly denied whatever implicated him, no matter how powerfully it did so. When asked, for example, to explain a fact that pointed strongly to his guilt, he merely answered, “I don’t explain it”
Was that “brilliance” or was it coaching?
Eva Marie:
Oh, so you don’t like the source – you think Bugliosi “isn’t credible”? You believe that because you read the book, and you found errors in it? No? Why don’t you read the book or parts of it, and see what you think? You think you can dismiss it without reading it?
For your “coaching” question, go to page 217. For why it is absurd to believe Oswald was chosen by some agency to be the assassin, read pages 1444 to 1459. It’s not that long.
By the way – Oswald was so poor he didn’t have a private phone. Do you think his handlers wouldn’t have given him one, so they could get in touch with him? He only had access to a single group phone at work, at which workers could make one call a day and speak for one minute, and his employer there said Oswald never used it. Likewise, there was a phone in his rooming house, with no privacy at all (in a public part of the rooming house), and his landlady said Oswald never used it. There was no internet. How did they get in touch with him – carrier pigeon? Did you think he went out to secret meetings with them that were somehow prearranged – although, as it turns out, his landlady said he spent all his free evenings after work watching TV in the rooming house and never left. Every weekend he went to the city where his wife and kids lived and spent the entire weekend with them. He didn’t have a car of his own. He rode to work every day with a friend. When he took the rifle to the Book Depository, the friend asked him what was in the bag and he said “curtain rods.” Did you think this was the sort of person any agency would choose to be a hitman? In addition, they would have had to have contacted him no earlier than November 18, because that’s when JFK’s motorcade route was decided.
And on and on and on like that. Literally thousands of factual reasons why conspiracy theories for Oswald are no-go.
I read Helter Skelter first and I loved it. Then I read And the Sea Will Tell and Reclaiming History. (I love mysteries. I’m less fond of the true crime genre but I read a fair amount of those as well.) Then I found out he wrote The Betrayal of America and I stopped reading anything else by him including his OJ book. I also read Legend by Edward Jay Epstein which I highly recommend. I’m going to read Chaos by Tom O’Neil next because he has a completely different perspective on the Tate/LaBianca murders. If I find that book credible then I plan on rereading Helter Skelter with a more critical eye.
I don’t know if Bugliosi is credible. I read several reviews of the Betrayal of America this afternoon. If they represent his book accurately then no, he isn’t credible. Now it’s possible that he’s credible about a subject I’m not too familiar with and not credible about a subject I’m more familiar with. But I now view his books with suspicion – including The Prosecution of George W Bush for Murder.
By the way – Oswald was so poor he didn’t have a private phone. Do you think his handlers wouldn’t have given him one, so they could get in touch with him? He only had access to a single group phone at work, at which workers could make one call a day and speak for one minute, and his employer there said Oswald never used it. Likewise, there was a phone in his rooming house, with no privacy at all (in a public part of the rooming house), and his landlady said Oswald never used it. There was no internet. How did they get in touch with him – carrier pigeon?
Good point.
Was that “brilliance” or was it coaching?
It wasn’t either. Oswald might be classified as a narcissist with delusions of grandeur (about which his wife chuckled at him). He was, however, as generically intelligent as the average pharmacist, and that’s about a standard deviation and a half north of the median for the criminal population. In addition, he was a stone-cold killer, and that’s also an unusual type. In Europe, the vast majority of homicides are derived from domestic arguments and bar fights; you have that sort in this country, with most of a subvariant the late Tom Wolfe called ‘another Bronx piece of sh!t’; you also have what might be called ‘slum honor killings’. Oswald was willing to murder two perfect strangers with whom he had no personal disputes, and he wasn’t in the process of a robbery, burglary, or sex offense when he did it. Police officers don’t see that very often.
He was dirt poor and living in squalor.
I don’t think there was anything squalid about where he was living. It was affordable housing for a man with a low-level wage job. It wasn’t a slum residence
http://www.jfktourdallas.com/oswalds-house-on-beckley.html
Art Missed again. The normal reaction to what seems like too many coincidences going in one direction to cause a Big Thing is to wonder if random is the right answer, especially when somebody is seen to benefit
No, you’ve framed the problem incorrectly. Any configuration of banal events viewed post hoc is one of an unimaginably large number of possibilities. It doesn’t mean there was an actor in the natural world directing the sequence of events. Philosophy is not my thing and I have a crude understanding of statistics, but I think the fallacy you’re trading in here has a distinct technical term.
In my lifetime, there have been assassination or assassination attempts on the following major figures: two Kennedys, Ford (twice), ML King, Reagan and Wallace. The ones on leftists have produced numerous conspiracy theories. The ones on non-leftists have produced none. So who’s the paranoid side?
Oh, perhaps. The thing is, the assailants contra Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George Wallace were apprehended on the spot. There wasn’t any confusion or uncertainty about the number of gunmen. Two of these assailants had a schizophrenia diagnosis. A third was strange enough to have devoted her life to Charles Manson. The last had no discrete diagnosis; she was just a hopeless mess of a person.
neo. coincidence leading to…something, is not the issue. You didn’t; need to meet your husband.
I didn’t need to meet my wife.
Indeed, my life and the lives of some others were greatly affected by my having braces on my teeth. Without braces, I’d have been someplace else at some other time and…might have been dead fifty years ago. Instead, it was…….. But none of that needed to happen. It just did and could have gone another way if my jaw structure had been slightly less …prog–in–your-face. Whatever that is.
My point is not that the assassination was a conspiracy. My point is that normal views of probability theory are strained by all the things that had to happen for the killing to happen.
Ten thousand–more or less–guys in Dallas might have gotten the Depository job. So it’s one over—what, how many guys looking for a job? as a fraction. And it had to be before, not after, the parade. One over….five?
How many places in greater Dallas sell money orders?
What are their hours? Limited to maybe three hours a day forcing Ruby to be in the only spot in Dallas selling money orders which just happens…. No? One over….
And to put a belt of sweetener in it, the guy in question is a commie start to finish with a passport to prove it. How many of those are there around who just….coincidentally…happen to have all the other stuff happen…just right? None?
I have a friend who is trying to help somebody get a job at Home Depot. Guy showed up for the interview and the person to interview him wasn’t there. But…officially, the interview happened and thus can’t be rescheduled. Nothing similar, likely or unlikely, got in the way of Oswald’s getting the job. No shakeup in HR or whoever was doing the hiring. His road was smooth, in addition to everything else.
My point is, when you reach one over a bazillion in order for this to be random, I will sympathize with those who raise an eyebrow.
And that’s not including all the supposed beneficiaries.
My point is not that the assassination was a conspiracy. My point is that normal views of probability theory are strained by all the things that had to happen for the killing to happen.
They aren’t. You’re misunderstanding this.
Art. Get a grip. Coincidences happen. But the coincidences involved in getting JFK shot and then Oswald are, in a sense, mutually supporting.
Each needed to happen. If even one had not happened, we wouldn’t be looking at conspiracy theories because, either JFK was unruffled, or Oswald lived to tell the tale, one way or another and it could be investigated.
It’s not like the coincidences leading me and my wife to meet and marry. If things had gone another way, we’d have met and presumably married others.
The JFK coincidences, including the low probability ones like Oswald getting the job he got, HAD to happen for this one big thing to come off.
One chance in a thousand Oswald gets a job in a sniper’s nest. One chance in five he gets it before the shooting. Pick your own numbers but if you want to insist that Oswald was bound to get the job, and nobody else, we have a conspiracy. So leave it at one in a thousand. Didn’t have to happen.
Given the-unknown-employee turnover at the Depository, combined with Oswald’s employment timing up to that date and the accidental connections which put him in the running, say one chance in five of getting the job before the parade. Okay, that’s one chance in five thousand.
And, let us say that maybe five places were available for Ruby to buy money orders. But let’s say there are two he preferred. Now we’re up to one over ten thousand. Let’s say that the only one Ruby ever used was the one convenient to killing Oswald when the latter came out of the cop shop. So we’re at one in five thousand. Say it’s one chance in eight–banker’s hours in the South at the time were skimpy–that Ruby was there at a convenient time. So that’s one chance in forty thousand, if we use one-hour blocks as units for the calculation. What if it were half hours–that being how long it took Ruby to take care of business? He’d need the right one of sixteen. So that’s one over eighty thousand chance that it was random. Because every one of those HAD to happen for this to go down as it did. Lose even one and….zilch.
I don’t put much stock in Oswald being anybody’s operative. By all accounts, he was too flaky. But he was a nutcase commie which increases the chance he’d take a shot if it were offered, and it was.
So use your own numbers but recall, they all have to happen and you’re going to get to a very low value making this random.
So I call it random. Once chance in eighty thousand. Somebody says, “What about the other 79,999?”. I say, don’t be silly.
So we get heavy works like the ones Neo refers us to and….it’s not a conspiracy. Not in no way whatsoever. It’s just a one over eighty thousand accident. I happen to believe that. But.
People are not built to believe one over eighty thousand when it’s a Very Big Deal benefitting some unknown entity. Or known entity.
One man, acting alone, and his name was Lee Harvey Oswald.
Case closed.
@Richard Aubrey: Ten thousand–more or less–guys in Dallas might have gotten the Depository job. So it’s one over—what, how many guys looking for a job? as a fraction. And it had to be before, not after, the parade. One over….five?
Your denominator’s wrong because you’re selecting out events after the fact. Essentially you’re looking at the record of 200 dice rolls and saying “what are the odds that just happened”? The same as any other way it could have happened.
There are any number of ways Kennedy or any other President could have been murdered at any time by any number of people. Friends, acquaintances, family, staff, strangers; at the White House, at his own house, on a plane, at any parade or public event in any city where he ever participated.
For your Depository example, there’s no law of nature that says Presidents can only be murdered from there, in the City of Dallas. There’s lots of place in lots of cities where someone like Oswald could have got a job that give him something like the same kind of opportunity.
If any of Oswald’s “lucky” breaks had gone wrong, somebody else might have had one, if not with Kennedy then with another President.
Murders are already rare, assassins extremely rare, and Presidents even rarer, but there are millions and millions of opportunities. A low probability combined with a large number of events becomes a high probability.
Out of nearly 50 presidents, 4 have been murdered. That’s 8%. An average human lifetime would cover maybe 10 – 20 presidents? A very naive application of probability suggest a 60% – 80% chance of a President being murdered in an average human lifetime.
Another way to put it is that while my chance of winning Powerball very small, the chance of someone winning is very high, and to point at an individual winner and say “what are the odds” is not enough to justify looking for conspiracies.
Well, after reading all the very interesting comments re: JFK hit job, I conclude with 100% certainty that;
1. Oswald was the lone shooter
OR
2. Oswald was not the lone shooter.
And there you have it.
If you add up the the two possible outcomes of this statement, it equals 100%.
So I must have it right.
If sometime in the future evidence is released that confirms statement # 1, I will not be surprised.
If sometime in the future evidence is released that confirms statement #2, I will not be surprised.
But Neo has got it right; no matter what evidence is produced in the future, there will be many who claim the evidence released is bogus/incomplete, whatever.
Frederick. In addition to the dead POTUS are those wounded or shot at. Most dangerous job in the country.
And it could have happened some other way. But, it didn’t.
The reason the Depository is important is that any other reasonably useful spot from which to shoot…didn’t exist because of people standing around if not a lousy angle or something. From the level, you could anticipate seeing the passengers’ shoulders and head. Maybe less if firing from what certain troops called the “chrome” position level with the street. From above, maybe the upper torso as well. So anybody with hostile intent not having a high position handy might have put it off until some more advantageous time. Or maybe there wasn’t anybody like that except Oswald.
Far as we know, nobody else was shooting at the motorcade. Which leaves us contemplating the fact that the only presidential assassin in Dallas had the best spot from which to shoot.
There weren’t enough commie nutcases, or CIA operatives, for that matter to have tried anything else that we know about.
If Oswald hadn’t gotten the job, there’s a good possibility he wouldn’t have bothered. Or if he’d gotten the job after the motorcade. Or if he’d tried from some other location, either missed or been stopped. He could have tried some other location but where could he set up and not be noticed?
It’s Ruby who gets me. Completely unconnected to the whole thing, who just-happened [a verb I made up] to be doing some unsurprising business in a location at a time and place convenient to Oswald’s transfer. Even if we presume it was his favorite financial institution–used to be you could get a money order at a drug store–it just-happened to be close enough. And it just-happened to be coordinated with the timing and any external requirement for THAT TIME ONLY would have to be explained.
There were reports that the cops, or somebody, made a public announcement that the transfer would be at this time and place. That’s so dumb I have a hard time believing it…but you never know.
The Powerball metaphor fails. It’s designed for somebody to win. Can’t not happen. This took some effort to accomplish that which is not supposed to happen.
However, I’m getting the vibe: Demonstrating the unlikelihood of something happening at random makes one a conspiracy theorist.
I say again, the value of the math–pick your own numbers–required to make this random offends the intuitive understanding of probability theory and thus leads to conspiracy theories.
So I’m off by a factor of eighty. Still leaves one in a thousand.
How easy would it be two sell one in two hundred, for that matter?
the only presidential assassin in Dallas had the best spot from which to shoot.
You don’t know he was the only “presidential assassin” until after the fact. There are more people who could have been had they had the same opportunity. It’s not like there’s only every been one assassination attempt on a President… There are also other cities besides Dallas, with other locations from which to attempt….
I say again, the value of the math–pick your own numbers–required to make this random offends the intuitive understanding of probability theory and thus leads to conspiracy theories.
The “intuitive understanding of probability theory” is simply wrong. Look how many people are surprised when there’s a 20% chance of rain and it rains.
How easy would it be two sell one in two hundred, for that matter?
Stuff that happens 1 in 200 times happens once in 200 times. If there’s thousands or millions of times and 1 in 200 of them it will happen, and happen a lot.
Art. Get a grip.
You’re not very self-aware here.
Coincidences happen. But the coincidences involved in getting JFK shot and then Oswald are, in a sense, mutually supporting.
You’re not very coherent, either.
Frederick. Once in 200 is one thing. But once in two hundred which clears the way for the next, without which the next thing could not have happened, a one in ten chance, we’re now at one in 2000.
And I hit the Powerball the second time this week–which can only be the second because there was a most unlikely first–somebody’s going to wonder about my uncle who works in the lottery bureau.
The point is not what I believe. The point is how small a value pointing at random makes people look for a pattern instead. I submit that value was passed in this case.
Richard Aubrey, here’s the story of a woman who won the lottery “on four occasions between 1993 and 2010 [and] collected winnings in excess of US$2 million in state lotteries, to a grand total of US$20.4 million.”
https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/this-stanford-phd-reportedly-figured-out-texas-lottery-won-20-million-playing-over-over-for-years.html
@Richard Aubrey: The point is not what I believe. The point is how small a value pointing at random makes people look for a pattern instead. I submit that value was passed in this case.
You can only create that “small” value by focusing on what did happen as opposed to what could have happened, illegitimately excluding other possibilities from consideration.
Probability is fundamentally a comparison of what does happen relative to what can happen and that is where your argument goes wrong.
For example, September 24 – 28, 1963 JFK toured 11 states. Can you make the case that it was absolutely impossible for anyone to have shot him at any point on that tour? If you can’t, then you have to take your 1 / whatever odds that the Dallas attempt worked and now you have apply that same probability to all those events.
Let’s say, for simplicity’s sake, he saw one crowd per state. Let’s take your 1 / 2000. Applied to 11 events that 1 / 2000 of being shot becomes 5.5 in 2000.
It doesn’t take many more whistle-stop tours to turn an unlikely possibility of being killed at any given public event into a high probability of being killed at one public event not known before the fact.
Like Powerball, if enough people play somebody “wins”. If Kennedy had been killed while speaking at the Lincoln Monument in Spokane, Washington by a deranged manure-spreader, from any of the tall buildings which overlook that location, we’d be having the same conversation about that guy and how unlikely it was and how conspiracy theories are perfectly understandable.
Eva Marie:
Yes, it is indeed possible that he (or any person) is credible on one thing and not on another. It’s not about “credibility” – it’s about whether he’s correct or not on a certain fact, a certain conclusion, a certain subject. Sometimes people have a bias on one subject but are objective on another.
By the way, did you read my entire post? I mentioned Bugliosi’s Bush book in it in NOTE II at the end of the post. In that note, I discussed why Bugliosi is very credible on the topic of JFK and less so on the topic of whether Bush is a war criminal.
Paul in Boston
My money has been and still is on a hit job encouraged by Castro for JFK’s attempts to have him assassinated.
Paul in Boston, I also lean towards Castro having something to do with it. I would have said “manipulated,” but your “encouraged” also fits. Other good reads on Castro are Georgie Ann Geyer’s Guerrilla Prince, and Castro’s Secrets by Brian Latell. LBJ also thought that JFK’s assassination was payback for those failed assassination attempts on Castro.
Also interesting is Thomas Mallon’s Mrs. Paine’s Garage: and the Murder of John F. Kennedy. Some interesting connections in that book.
I haven’t read this, but it has been on my to-read list for TOO long: James Piereson’s Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism.
Although I didn’t think so at the time, in later years I disliked the Democrat smear on Texas- all that “right wing hatred” in Texas killed JFK. Considering that Oswald was a Marxist who took a potshot at right-wing General Walker, that is a rather inaccurate portrayal of Texas.
I think we would have the same conversation.
But the counter-conspiracy vibe is so strong in this one that the point keeps getting missed.
Beyond a certain value ascribed to randomnity, the mind looks instead for patterns. Indeed, it must. If everything is random, we never know when to duck. We are built to look for patterns.
But the possibilities of being shot at in other venues was a possibility but….didn’t happen. Something happened to make this different. For example, could a guy with a rifle, even if hidden in a tool box, get up to the top of the tower in Spokane overlooking the dais for JFK’s speech? Sort of hope not and if it did, indeed, happen, we’d be looking for….something besides professional lawmen overlooking such a great spot purely by accident. He got access because? So forth. As is rumored about the unfortunate incident at the Ford theater did one guard go out for a smoke? I have no idea. But if the guy watching the Lincoln tower in Spokane had to run to the Port A Potty and just the right moment. Could still be randomnity but, as I say, beyond a certain value, you have to give the conspiracy folks some slack.
In my view, the most interesting thing about JFK in Dallas is the assassin had the best spot in town. He had access. Could presume nobody’d bother him. He was paid to be there. Had the best shot angle as a gimme, too. Down, into the car. Aaaand, he was right. Might it be that, of all JFK’s speeches that year, it was the best of the best places from which to shoot, all things considered?
But let’s take Epstein. To get off suicide watch, two professionals–head of facility and head shrink–must sign off independently. One could be wrong sometimes. The other sometimes. But this time it was both…on the same guy. Now, that can happen. And maybe the guards goof off in every shift and supervision doesn’t bother them.
But then multiply the two professionals wrong by the possibility that the recording medium for that tier for that night was damaged and lost. Sure, we can ascribe a factor to that and get one in….what? Recall all three have to happen the same night to the same guy. Two out of three won’t work. But randomnity can happen and that proves no conspiracy, right?
Regarding Ruby and odd coincidences after an assasination attempt; what about poor Archduke Ferdinand and Sophie?
(from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand#Fatal_shooting )
But let’s take Epstein.
That’s an invalid comparison.
@Richard Aubrey: But randomnity can happen and that proves no conspiracy, right?
That’s a straw man and you can do better. I don’t think anyone here is saying a conspiracy is impossible if any sequence of low-probability events could explain it. Rather what we are saying is low-probability events are not enough by themselves to justify conspiratorial thinking, and I’m also saying that what’s “low-probability” is being incorrectly calculated when it’s being used in this argument.
There have been real conspiracies, obviously. It wasn’t chance that a bunch of Roman senators showed up to the Senate with knives on the same day, and they didn’t all trip and fall simultaneously and just happen to stab Caesar. One could assign a probability to this happening by chance, but no one does, because there is a great deal of evidence that it was a real conspiracy including that the perpetrators took responsibility publicly. No one is appealing to low probabilities to justify the existence of a conspiracy.
They are doing this with JFK because there’s almost no other argument available. The evidence for Oswald acting alone is too strong, so they have to make fallacious arguments about probability, or just make up facts they like better, or strain out gnats while swallowing camels.
Richard Aubrey:
You’re being illogical.
You write:
I didn’t need to meet my husband – and Oswald didn’t need to kill Kennedy. But both things occurred as the result of a set of very improbable circumstances.
What you are doing is taking an event and working backwards to say that each step was improbable if by chance. That is true of the vast majority of events – and yet they happen. The number of improbable things that had to happen for me to have met my husband was enormous, beginning with the chances of our being born as ourselves – of that particular sperm among all the others meeting that particular egg. And then just take it from there – a chance meeting while looking for apartments in a town to which we’d both arrived just a few days before.
I have already told you how Oswald got his job. Let me repeat: he applied to many jobs around that time, most of them highly inappropriate for any future motorcade route and some in buildings only one story high. The job he got was recommended to him by his wife’s landlady, who had heard about an opening. Was this woman a co-conspirator? And when he got the Texas Book Depository job, he could have been assigned to either of two buildings, one of which would not ever be a candidate for a motorcade. He happened to have been assigned to the building he was assigned to by his boss – was his boss a co-conspirator?
Two weeks before the assassination, Oswald told he wife he didn’t like his job, and applied to another company for a job. He didn’t get it, but he might have. How do you explain this? You don’t, not in any way that conforms to logic.
I’ve filled my comments here with information such as that, plus I’ve recommended that you and others read a section of the book easily accessed on online. Go here, and then read pages 1444 to 1459. It’s not that long.
“Yes, it is indeed possible that he (or any person) is credible on one thing and not on another.”
This is true. But I’m not smart enough for that. My operating principle is this. If I find that a person or writer has misrepresented a fact, embellished a truth, omitted pertinent information, I start to treat them with much more caution. It doesn’t mean I discard everything they say or write but I’m much more cautious. If a person is much more knowledgeable, has a larger experience base, then they can be more forgiving of untruths. I can’t be.
Richard Aubrey:
One more thing – you write that Oswald had the best spot in town, the best place from which to shoot.
That doesn’t seem to be the case. There were quite a few other nicely-positioned tall buildings in Dealey Plaza, one (for example) right across the street from the Texas Book Depository.
In addition, Oswald may not even have been in the best position possible in his own building. From Oswald’s position, his sight was partially obscured by an oak tree for a while, and a branch of that tree may have deflected his first shot and caused it to miss.
Paul in Boston; Gringo:
Go here, and then read pages 1444 to 1459. It’s not that long. It should disabuse you of any notions that Castro or any other agency had anything to do with Oswald’s act.
Eva Marie:
I approach everything I read with caution. I don’t blindly trust any writer. Period. But I evaluate every argument on its strength and its merits, not its author.
Bugliosi’s JFK assassination arguments and reasoning are, quite simply, ironclad. No one is able to refute them. Certainly no one here has even begun to do so.
Neo. But Oswald would not have been welcome in those other buildings. He worked at the Depository. In those days, some places had time cards you passed through the clock at the door, in and out. Some places had colleagues you knew and who were familiar with your moving around on your work.
This was the Depository, not the other buildings. Welcome, could expect privacy, especially if he locked the door, good shot angle, easy escape, people used to carrying stuff around–I worked in a college book store–strong back more useful than fifty credits in English lit–so his rifle goes in without a second glance in some innocent container.
As I say, it’s certainly possible all the factors just fell into line as a matter of random happening. If they had not, had even one not occurred, Oswald would have been out of luck. So to speak. Ditto Ruby.
Like my friend’s protoge looking for work at Home Depot sixty years later: I get screwed over and this clown has a friend who slides him right in. Not fair. So, I suspect that a number of guys who’ve had bureaucratic obstacles, useless ones, involved in getting a job might be jealous, sixty years ago. Which might lead to suspicion.
Point is not what I believe about the thing. Point is whether the randomnity value has been exceeded in the minds of a lot of people.
For example, does it matter whether Oswald was a crack shot? Sometimes you get lucky. Prove it didn’t happen here. Forget looking at USMC marksmanship standards. Waste of time.
Epstein does indeed count. It could certainly be a matter of random error…thus nobody should be thinking EDKH. Right?
Or this: TWA 800. The feds came up with three mutually contradictory explanations for the explosive residue. Better they’d stuck with one, but they got flustered. Why?
Suspicion comes when you get stupid or nonexistent answers to relevant questions.
Personally, I think Oswald was a virulent commie nut case who got lucky in so many ways that some folks get suspicious. But cometh Ruby. If a lot of people wanted to kill Oswald, the line behind Ruby dissolved pretty quickly. Maybe he was one of those guys who’s forever taking cuts. What…you mean nobody else tried? Fancy that.
I’m very late to this party, but…
Let me give you a couple of personal anecdotes…
The first time I visited Dallas, I, like many tourists, visited Dealey Plaza. I stood one window over from the actual “snipers nest” and from there I observed the mark on Elm Street where the limousine was at the time of the shooting. (The actual snipers nest is a museum display that the public cannot directly access.)
There is a tree that is kind of in the way now, but in 1963, it was a tiny sapling that was nowhere within the target line-of-sight. Target motion analysis showed that the direction the limo was moving meant that the target motion was “in the line of sight”. From that distance and at that angle, it was an easy shot. I believe I could have done it myself *with iron sights* and I am not a trained marksman.
I also visited the “grassy knoll”, specifically, the picket fence at the top. (The original, not the one that’s there now.) In my opinion, an assassin *could* have made the shot from there, but it was a much harder shot. Target motion was “across the line of sight” and slightly uphill, meaning the shooter would have had to lead the target. It was also further away.
Anecdote two: There has been a lot of theories about the “pristine bullet”. Well, I’ve seen photos of the bullet and it’s not really pristine, but still, you would think it would have been massively deformed after passing through two people. I thought so too until…
Me and a friend of mine went target shooting on his dad’s farm. The rifle was a high power “war surplus” rife similar to the Caracano. We were shooting at paper targets stapled to a railroad tie. A railroad tie is an approximately foot square piece of lumbar that has been treated. Our shots went clear through that tie.
After we were done shooting, we looked and on the other side of the tie you could see where the bullets went through the tie and buried themselves in the ground. My friend and I dug up a few of those slugs and…
…every single one of them was *pristine*. I mean *reload-them-back-into-a-casing-and-shoot-them-again* pristine. This, after having passed through a railroad tie and about 18 inches of earth.
I have not read Bugliosi’s book, but I have read many others and I am personally convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and shot JFK from the sixth floor of the depository.
YMMV, but who cares.
One other personal anecdote related to the death of JFK:
I was nine years old when it happened. I was raised in a Catholic and very Democrat family, so JFK’s election and murder was a big deal to us. I remember watching most of the news coverage at the time and the entirety of his funeral. One of the things that sticks out in my memories is that during the ceremony at Arlington, the bugler playing “Taps” hit a sour note.
Interestingly, when I recount that experience at family gatherings, no one else seems to remember that. I would love to find a YouTube of that ceremony so I could tell if I’m the crazy one or my siblings 😉
Richard Aubrey:
I’m not saying that Oswald himself could have entered those buildings. I’m saying he didn’t necessarily have the best possible vantage point from which to shoot Kennedy.
You also would do well to read the passages I suggest.
Of course some people will come to illogical conclusions about just about anything. That’s no surprise. So I’m not sure why you’re harping on this coincidence stuff. Jut about every event is the result of a series of coincidences. That doesn’t keep the things from happening just that way.
Oh, never mind. Here it is…
https://youtu.be/qbNfOpTx5CQ
I’m not the crazy one after all. 🙂
Roy:
I remember it as well.
My earliest memory is sitting on the couch with my Mom, watching TV, and something really, really bad had happened. Mom and I have always figured it was JFK that I remember.
Neo. I’m harping on the coincidence stuff because so many of them are necessary in a required order that the randomnity value is too low for a lot of people.
And see Roy above.
I am a trained marksman, fired expert with a number of weapons. The shot from the Depository is easy. And Oswald’s choice of that location had to do with his job and thus made any minor deficiency compared to other buildings moot. He could get there. The others….
At one point, back better than fifty years, all the ammo I could get for my personally owned rifle was steel jacketed. Not sure why that was developed, copper jackets are easier on the barrel. There was a difference in such bullets as we recovered. Copper-jacketed lead slugs tend to deform more than the steel jacketed ones. So that’s a possible consideration.
As I say, what I believe about the subject is not the issue. The issue is the randomnity value. Which is too extreme for a lot of people. That doesn’t mean they know what happened; they simply don’t believe coincidences lined up as they did.
Should say my definition of “randomnity factor” is the mathematical value reached by multiplying each necessary factor’s likelihood by the next necessary factor’s likelihood. Most of the time, these are subjective. As in….how do you assign a likelihood to Ruby’s showing up? The only guy in Dallas who wanted to shoot Oswald….or the only one who figured out how to do it…or the only one running errands who had a hot idea?
Roy, that trumpet solo of Taps definitely hit an off key note. Coincidentally or not- for Neo viewers- among the videos showing below this one was the Bee Gees singing Blowing in the Wind in 1963.
So, there are a lot of other people that remember that off key note. I feel vindicated.
I often wondered about and felt sorry for that poor soldier. It was “Taps” for crying out loud. It’s a simple tune and he had probably played it hundreds of times, so how could he possibly screw it up. I guess there is a lot of pressure when the entire world is watching.
I’ll bet he got a major butt chewing after it was over.
Roy:
I always thought the broken note expressed the grief so many people were feeling. I thought it was perfect for the occasion. It never occurred to me that he’d get into trouble for it. I always felt it fitted the occasion and might even be purposeful. I was pretty young, but that was my gut feeling at the time – it was like the instrument was breaking out into a sob.
I was in the sixth grade listening to the account of the parade over the radio with our class, in a small Texas town. Having the President come to your state, even though the favored city itself was hundreds of miles away, was a big event in those days.
I have no memory of what was said on the broadcast when the shot hit, but definitely remember the look of total shock on our teacher’s face.
I think this is the same sort of thing the later generation of school kids experienced when the Challenger exploded while they watched live on tv.
The 9/11 destruction, which was orders of magnitudes more deadly and shocking, is not the same, because schools were not “tuned in” ahead of time to some normally benign event.
However, when the planes hit the towers, I was en route to the laundromat for our weekly washing and remember the same totally shocked look on the attendant’s face, who had been watching the news.
There was some other large-scale military-honors funeral about that time. No idea whose it was. The Taps had a break in it which somebody referred to as a “sob”. French music word was “sanglot”, iirc. Might be for dramatic effect.The break at the Kennedy funeral didn’t sound like that.
Epstein does indeed count. It could certainly be a matter of random error…thus nobody should be thinking EDKH. Right?
No, he doesn’t.
The man died. A coroner has five choices: homicide, suicide, accident, natural causes, undetermined. In Epstein’s case, a judgment of ‘undetermined’ would be to abstain from declaring in favor of homicide, suicide, or accident. Epstein had no known illness that might have killed him and no evidence has been adduced that he suffered a cardiac event or a stroke or a pulmonary embolism. Neither have the authorities contended he suffered a skull fracture or broken neck from a fall. A judgment of ‘undetermined’ is one of abstention between two possibilities, homicide or suicide.
The impediments to a judgment of suicide would be that the highest point on an ordinary adult bunk bed from which to secure yourself might be about 69 inches off the ground. Bed sheets issued to inmates are commonly disposable and made of paper. (Not sure if this has been definitively determined in his case). His hyoid bone was broken, which is an indicator (though not a categorical indicator) of strangulation.
A set of events occurred which were system failures: the security cameras malfunctioned, two guards were sleeping on their shifts, and the same two guards falsified logs. Another event occurred which was a discrete decision by one party to do something not ordinarily done and which has not been explained: transferring his cell mate and leaving him alone.
There were no obvious systems failures, intentional or due to negligence in the Kennedy assassination. The decision to travel in an open vehicle during the motorcade was that of the President himself. You could argue that the Dallas police should have taken extra precautions in transferring Oswald, but that’s not analogous to the situation at the federal jail in Manhattan. It’s not going the extra mile to stay awake during your shift, write true entries in logs, or keep your security cameras in working order.
And there’s nothing out of the ordinary about Ruby’s activities. He puts his dog in the car and goes downtown to do some midday errands, something we can assume he did several times a week as he worked evenings. He’s also carrying a pistol, something we can also assume he did as a matter of course. Ruby often acted as bouncer at his nightclubs and stories of him hauling people out the door with his own hands are numerous.
There was nothing unusual about Lee Harvey Oswald’s employment at the Book Depository. The sequence of events as to how and when he obtained the position has been alluded to earlier in the thread. Not mentioned was Gerald Posner’s calculation that 12 disparate individuals made decisions which led to his employment there, among them the man who hired him, the men who turned him down for other jobs, Ruth Paine (the Quaker lady housing his wife and children, gratis), and the people who alerted Ruth Paine to the open positions. And, of course, he was engaged there weeks before the motorcade route was selected and published.
And, of course, Oswald’s vantage point did not present a unique opportunity.
— French music word was “sanglot”, iirc.
https://www.worldwarmedia.com/2016/12/19/real-time-radio-broadcast-announcing-d-day-to-french-resistance/
Chanson d’automne
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.
Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure
Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.
Verlaine
I am shocked and appalled at people who believe that reading a single book by a deeply partisan advocate is sufficient to make an informed opinion. Shocked. No sensible person would make up his mind after only seeing the prosecution’s case. Especially when the defense is arguing that the prosecution has presented obviously false evidence.
Bugliosi’s book has been exposed as having hundreds of examples where he is guilty of misrepresenting the evidence.
The lack of curiosity is disturbing. The failure to recognize the possibility of an author being flawed or dishonest is disturbing.
This is just sad.
Bugliosi’s book has been exposed as having hundreds of examples where he is guilty of misrepresenting the evidence.
By whom?
And why does Vincent Bugliosi count as a ‘deeply partisan advocate’?
Neo, I hadn’t really thought of it that way. Perhaps you are right.
—–
Stan, for Pete’s sake, take a pill. Just because Bugliosi’s book is the one mentioned here doesn’t mean that’s *all* any of us have ever read on the subject.
So you’re convinced there was a nefarious conspiracy to kill JFK and then cover it up. That’s okay. You’re entitled to your own opinion just like we all are. But there really is no point in getting all “shocked and appalled” because other folks looked at the same evidence and came to a different conclusion. After all, the event happened 58 years ago. Other than an intellectual exercise, there’s not a thing any of us can do about it now.
I am shocked and appalled at people who believe that reading a single book by a deeply partisan advocate is sufficient to make an informed opinion.
stan:
I’m only a bit shocked, though not at all appalled, that you haven’t read Bugliosi. Read him or don’t.
As I said, I read six feet of JFK assassination books over ten years carefully. I was hardly persuaded by “reading a single book.” I was persuaded because Bugliosi made an extraordinarily strong case with cites and answered just about all of my questions and doubts.
I had been largely pro-conspiracy. I read Bugliosi because I try to hear all sides and I heard his book was strong.
Later I was disappointed by Bugliosi’s partisan attacks on GW Bush. But people can be right about this and wrong about that. It does reduce Bugliosi’s credibility for me, but I can still read what he writes and make up my mind on the merits of his arguments.
The sad fact I’ve found to be true is that to get to the bottom of things one must usually get one’s hands dirty with specifics, as opposed to making decisions on the basis of general principles like ruling out Bugliosi because of other things he’s written or, on the other side, a dislike of conspiracies.
The price of having an “informed opinion” is informing oneself.
This is getting weird.
I’m trying to explain why people think there are too many things which had to be done apurpose to assassinate JFK and it’s being addressed as if I’m a conspiracy theorist.
The only guy in greater Dallas who wanted to kill Oswald did so. Or were there more who weren’t in a position to? Beats me, but the point is it LOOKS suspicious.
The Depository was the best place from which to shoot BECAUSE Oswald was welcome there. Any arguments as to angles in minutes or something are irrelevant.
Right. Kennedy wanted the top down. So? It meant a clearer shot with less chance of deflection–unless the deflection corrected what might have been a miss. Does enclosed mean Oswald wouldn’t have fired? It’s irrelevant.
I am too humble to list the weapons with which I fired expert. Should say I did a major deflection change on the 81–don’t ask–which surprised the training cadre. When I’m feeling blue, I remember that.
Point is, Oswald had an easy shot. Any Basic trainee who became a finance clerk could have done it. Don’t need Delta Force snipers.
In any event, the randomnity value, explained earlier, is too low to make this a slam dunk, unorganized, single-guy op EVEN IF IT WERE.
As to Epstein, the guards don’t sleep very much there, as reflected in the records over time. The facility’s suicide records seem to be pretty good. This one time…. And of course they faked the records. Who doubts that somebody who slept through the shift would fake the records.
This one time….the two signers-off suicide watch got it wrong on the same guy.
And see earlier discussions about carotid choke. Don’t need a narrow ligature for that if you do it right.
And the recording’s loss. Happens all the time, right?
Point is….it looks bad, even if Epstein finessed it himself with no help.
The only guy in greater Dallas who wanted to kill Oswald did so.
And you know he was the only guy just how?
This is getting weird.
Well, that’s your fault. You don’t present a concisely structured argument.
@Richard Aubrey:In any event, the randomnity value, explained earlier, is too low
And also explained earlier, you are MAKING that number too low by focusing on only one person.
There are many buildings overlooking places where Presidents–not just JFK– speak that are good places to shoot from, not just the one in Dallas where Oswald worked on that one month where JFK was actually shot, but ALL the buildings in ALL the cities overlooking ALL the places on ALL the occasions ANY President could have been shot.
Many people were employed in those buildings, not just Lee Harvey Oswald.
Some tiny fraction of those people were undoubtedly nutters who could have had guns with them in that building if they wished on a day a President was speaking, but for whatever reason didn’t. Probably all of them were foiled by something different and random.
Once you account for that, you’re stunned that many more Presidents weren’t assassinated, instead of only 8% of them–which isn’t a vanishingly low fraction. And the coincidences don’t need explaining when you have a one-in-million chance and millions of opportunities for it to happen, because 1 in 1 milllion times 1 million is 100%.
Incidentally every argument Richard Aubrey is making applies just as well to the two other Presidential assassinations that were NOT conspiracies: McKinley’s and Garfield’s. That there isn’t a mass-media industry of conspiracy theorizing around these other Presidents suggests something psychological that has nothing whatever to do with the post hoc probability fallacy Aubrey uses to explain the Kennedy mass-media industry.
Lincoln of course WAS assassinated by a conspiracy, but it’s not probability arguments that established this; it’s that the conspirators were identified and put on trial and the evidence that was accumulated as a result.
Richard Aubrey:
Intuition is a notoriously poor guide to probability:
________________________________________
Intuition often seems to fail us when dealing with probabilities. We have strange cognitive biases that have important implications for the way we see the world, make choices, and design things. There are several ways in which probability doesn’t make sense, and yet it’s such an innately useful tool.
https://nicolaerusan.medium.com/probability-why-intuition-fails-us-how-design-and-simulation-can-help-2e25483d714e
Richard Aubrey:
I doubt that there’s a human being on earth who thinks that Oswald was the only man who would have liked to kill Kennedy. If there was someone who thought that, it certainly was not a large number and doesn’t account for the large number of assassination conspiracy theorists.
And as I’ve noted before, lots of people are illogical. But no, it’s not indicative of a conspiracy that SOMEONE such as Oswald killed Kennedy, no more than it’s a conspiracy that I met the particular person who was my husband. If I work backwards, the chances of my meeting that particular person at that particular time were virtually nil. And yet it happened. No conspiracy (although some people think such meetings are planned by an all-knowing all-powerful deity, which is a separate and unrelated thought from what we’re discussing here). However, the chances of my meeting someone and marrying him at some point were fairly high.
Many if not most events, if tracked backwards like that, are highly improbable but happen all the time, and I think most people are aware of that fact. I believe conspiracy theorists are working on other principles, such as for example: distrust of the government, dislike for simple obvious explanations, and a desire to claim esoteric and superior knowledge that the majority lacks.
Also – the Texas Book Depository may have been the best place for OSWALD to shoot from – the best place available to him. But that doesn’t make it the best place to shoot from.
Any event that occurs has to have a huge number of fortuitous and sometimes unlikely things in place for it to happen. Perhaps you and I are merely arguing about what percentage of people understand that principle? I don’t think lack of understanding of that principle is a major motivator for JFK assassination conspiracy theorists at all. I’ve already listed some of the factors I think are operating instead. They apply to many conspiracy theories as well, such as 9/11-truthers.
neo writes, “I didn’t need to meet my husband – and Oswald didn’t need to kill Kennedy.”
This will seem like a joke, but it is the absolute truth:
My wife and I met and fell in love in Dealey Plaza!
And it was an amazing string of coincidences that put us there simultaneously on a summer’s night in 1987.
Rufus:
Wow!
A perfect illustration of my point – I think. 🙂
Richard Aubrey @ 3:43pm,
As a kid in Chicago in the ’70s me and a friend ran rampant in all kinds of office buildings and were rarely questioned or bothered. And we were kids! An adult dressed appropriately appearing to be engaged in some type of appropriate activity had free rein most everywhere. A sniper who cased the Texas School book depository for a few days prior to the motorcade could almost certainly have gotten in, with a gun, and secured himself on the roof or at a window with minimal likelihood of being discovered for 30 minutes, or so.
Security in most all buildings was much more lax then. Even government buildings. No electronic badges to access doors or elevators. Some closed circuit security cameras, but few and easily spotted. One of our favorite buildings to infiltrate was a government building because we discovered a rarely used area on its top floor with a relatively unobscured view of the city.
How much did the city of Dallas spend on protecting and securing boxes of school books?!
Incidentally, once you go past Presidents successfully murdered (4) into those actually shot but not killed (2) and then to those shot at from close range which could have been fatal if hit (3), then compare that to the number of Presidents (45)*, you can see that a President being shot at in a way that can kill** is actually pretty likely (20% of Presidents). I’ll bet that less than 20% of cops and active-duty military are actually shot at.
*Every list seems to count Grover Cleveland as 2 Presidencies but I’m counting individual human Presidents.
**I’m not counting times where the White House was shot at, or people were shot at from so far away that the shooter didn’t know it wasn’t the President. I’m also sticking to shootings, not things like grenade tossings or knife attacks. I’m also not counting Squeaky Fromme, who got no shot off, but I don’t have to because somebody else ALSO shot at Ford from close range and missed.
In fact, applying that 20% pretty naively (we’re only talking about 50 people so it’s not like we could estimate anything very closely), I’d predict that of the next 5 Presidents there’s a 37% chance that one of them will be shot at and a 63% chance that one or more will be. But the probability is 67% that none of them will be killed.
Very naive and not very precise, but it’s those kinds of probabilities–which are really quite high, on the odds of will it rain tomorrow or not–which actually should be governing our intuitions.
Roy,
I just watched the Taps video. Sixth note in.
Unfortunate, and I feel bad for the bugler, but it can happen. My guess is either cold weather, nervousness, or a combination of both.
For folks who have practiced a brass instrument it’s somewhat second nature, but the facial muscle and lip vibration coordination required to play a note clearly are actually extremely precise. The slightest perturbation can cause a sour note. A cold mouthpiece. A slight tremble of his facial muscles due to nervousness or sorrow.
Part of what made Miles Davis stand out in the early part of his career was that he often held single notes for rather long periods of time. It’s harder to do that and sound good than playing short, fast notes. Also, the style of the day, Be-bop, involved short, fast runs and Davis’ slow, mellow, precise playing “the birth of the cool” made him unique.
neo @ 3:06pm,
Yes it is. We were excited to take our children to the spot when we were near while on a vacation but they were a little creeped out. It’s a bit unfortunate because it’s not really appropriate to return there for anniversary celebrations. I thought about surprising my wife with an anniversary trip there once, but I thought it would seem quite odd to passersby and tourists. We do keep several seeds from a live oak tree that is on that spot as a memento.
Regarding Frederick’s comment at 3:15pm,
I highly recommend Sarah Vowell’s book, “Assassination Vacation.”
It’s a fun, interesting, detailed look at U.S. Presidential assassinations as Sarah (and I believe, a nephew) tour the country to relate the historical accounts of those events.
And, speaking of unbelievable Presidential assassination coincidences… You learn that it was very bad luck to be both a U.S. President and in the company of Robert Todd Lincoln!
Frederick @ 3:34pm,
Starting over. I believe Oswald acted alone. My point is that there are enough strange items to make people wonder. Which is why people wonder and why we get conspiracy theories.
The thing about the Depository is that Oswald knew he would have the least amount of trouble getting in. No unpredictable issue like some supervisor asking who he was. He’d had a couple of days to line up his shot. Why take the extra risk? And he was right. Hit square which makes all those arguments irrelevant.
If a lot of people in Dallas had wanted to shoot Oswald, none of them showed up. Maybe they didn’t know time and place of transfer. Or had business elsewhere. It LOOKS bad.
It’s the optics which are the point I’m trying to make. It looked bad , which is to say the official explanation looked disorganized and thus people wanted to find a pattern. Organization. Conspiracy theories result from that.
Oswald had held a number of jobs and had applied to a number of places, yet–cue cello in key of ominous–he had a friend who got him a shot at the Depository. Excuse the phrase.
If you don’t like my randomnity value, figure your own. As I say, they’re subject, frequently subject to the individual’s life experience. Explain why a commie nutcase with an urge to kill the president got The Job which allowed it. One chance in ten? Fifty? Most people will accept a one-in-ten value. But one in fifty? Or multiply it by the likelihood somebody will be running errands near the time and place of Oswald’s transfer and decides to shoot him despite the risk. That could be one over the adult population of Dallas which had or had access to a car.
There is also the idea that it is not meet a giant should be brought low by a pissant. A homeless man shot by another….. Somebody might wonder if the deceased had family and then…oops, there goes the phone.
See MLK. Another pissant assassin but….since it was a giant brought low, that does not satisfy. A conspiracy is needed to make all fit.
My point is that there are enough strange items to make people wonder.
Except there wasn’t anything strange about where he was employed or what Jack Ruby was doing that day.
Richard Aubrey:
I think those of us who disagree with you understand what you’re trying to say, we just don’t agree that that’s what’s going on. I don’t think any of the things you find strange are at all strange and certainly not unusually strange. I think the idea of strangeness is manufactured ex post facto. There is nothing strange about Oswald getting a job in that particular building; there were plenty of other buildings that would have afforded Oswald and any other would-be assassin a good shot, buildings in Dallas that day or innumerable other buildings on many other days. There are plenty of people with the will to kill a president. Presidents have been killed many times, although of course all the elements have to come into place for the attempts to succeed. But they will, with some regularity, especially in the days when security wasn’t nearly as tight as it is today.
I also don’t think that “strangeness” is the reason behind the adoption of conspiracy theories for most people, except to the degree that almost all events are strange (as I’ve explained in previous comments here). I’ve already listed, both in the post and in comments in the thread, what psychological mechanisms I believe are operating instead to spark the need to believe in conspiracy theories around this and many other events.
There’s nothing strange about Oswald getting a job in that particular building. What does raise the eyebrow is that he had a job overlooking what is likely the usual motorcade route in Dallas. As you point out, there are lots of vantage points. However, he wasn’t pumping gas and changing oil in Arlington, a suburb. He wasn’t working in the endless road work they do in Texas. But, having gotten a job in an overwatch position is one over ….where were all the other jobs?
The lone commie nutcase willing to kill a president gets a job where it can be done. We know he’s alone in this since nobody else was shooting at the procession from whatever other positions the route afforded.
Lots of people would like–some find–a situation where they have a friend help them get a job. This friend helped him get a job from which he could kill a president. Not very likely, but it happened.
When, as you point out, various things come together, the randomnity value is quite low and the lower it is, the more heft a conspiracy theory has.
One point is not how many presidents have been shot or shot at, but the number of people who’ve actually done it out of the scores of millions who’ve lived and died in the last two hundred and fifty years.
And then comes Ruby.
What does raise the eyebrow is that he had a job overlooking what is likely the usual motorcade route in Dallas.
It doesn’t raise an eyebrow at all, Richard. The motorcade route was selected weeks after he was hired. There were over 1 million people living in Dallas County in 1963. I have no clue why you’d fancy in a burg that size there would be such a thing a ‘the usual motorcade route’. There are several boulevards which run more or less north-south through Downtown Dallas, Houston Street just one among them.