JFK Assassination Records – 2021 Additional Documents Release | Hacker News Reader

JFK Assassination Records – 2021 Additional Documents Release

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209 pointscf100clunk316 comments

You spend so long researching this and learning about the CIA and Allan Dulles and Fair Play for Cuba, you kind of forget that some people still actually believe Lee Harvey Oswald was just some crazy guy acting alone.

Edit: I don't mean to be too snarky, I encourage anyone to do their own research. Its just with things like this... there are always few dozen "smaller" conspiracies attached or related to it, that I truly believe a rational person would easily accept: that the CIA, for example, used certain people as actors to help rally Cuba antagonism, that JFK was himself considered a threat by the establishment at the time, that the CIA has deep connections to crime (for practical purposes). All these things, are believable and motivated by real things, and fit reality better than the official narrative. I think it's understandable though, when confronted with the "big" conspiracy, to hesitate, to be like "Well c'mon lets not be crazy." But really, I implore the diligent, tell me how this thing is NOT the sum of its parts.

Given that a lone gunman without military training successfully put a bullet in Reagan because he thought it'd get an actress to notice him, I don't know why people have a hard time believing that a lone trained Marine could take out an under-defended target.

And visit Dealey Plaza and look at the shot for yourself. It's so easy, especially with a scope. And then stand on the grassy knoll and realize that it would be the dumbest place to put an assassin.

And then realize that his head was blown backwards. The exit wound was in the back. Photos of it were doctored. The umbrella guy. The magic bullet was intact. His wife tried to climb out the back of the car. A later look by Congress overturned the conclusion of the Warren commission that he acted alone. Most footage you find online now is not the actual footage, but a reenacted clip from a movie.

But it's easier to blame one guy than deal with all the unanswered questions if you don't accept that idea. Reality is that we will never know.

The front right of his head exploded, which pushed the head backwards. It's all on the zapruder film, very clearly. The front of his head explodes. There is actually a second video from across the plaza where you can see the exact same spray pattern as in the zapruder film.

There's no "magic bullet," when you line Kennedy and Connally up correctly. The path is a straight line and the bullet never hit any bone until Connally's wrist, where it was significantly slowed down. And lead was discharged from the back of the casing and the bullet is deformed.

The JFK assassination committee in the 70s absolutely did not overturn the conclusion of the warren commission. That tells me you didn't even read it. They concluded a conspiracy solely on an audio recording that was later shown to be from a different time period than the assassination. The committee otherwise pretty much confirmed the conclusions from the warren commission.

Here's my conclusion after reviewing both sides very thoroughly: there is no evidence that anyone other than Oswald shot the president.

Stabilized zapruder film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=102YMXW3BxA

Nix film of assassination (no rear exit wound): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMxiGj9bo0U

"Magic" bullet theory explanation (and correct alignment): http://dyingwords.net/the-magic-bullet-in-the-jfk-assassinat...

As a young boy I was convinced this was a conspiracy. Until I saw the PBS documentary and a 90s website debunking the JFK movie (which I really enjoyed). Helped set me on my journey of learning and appreciating critical thinking skills.

>> The front right of his head exploded, which pushed the head backwards.

That is the oldest line of BS ever. There isn't a bomb in his head, so energy and momentum need to be conserved. A shot from the back will never result in the head being pushed backward. Part of his brain went out the back - exit wound, that's what Jackie was climbing over to get.

It seems likely he was shot from both directions.

His head isn’t a solid mass with which a bullet makes an inelastic collision either.

I’ve been to Dealey Plaza. The shot would have been far simpler to the left before the motorcade turned, and the car would have been going even slower then. The angle from the window toward JFK at point in the parade where was shot makes it much harder to triangulate the sounds of the bullets.

But all of this discussion is rather silly because the government itself has accepted that more than two bullets entered the president and the governor and they could not have all come from the book depository window.

Where does the gov't itself accept this?

Here's video by CBS and Dan Rather showing their tests where they easily reproduced the shooting that Oswald did under nearly identical circumstances, repeatedly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs

> Scientific Acoustical Evidence Establishes a High Probability That Two Gunmen Fired at President John F. Kennedy

[0](https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-repor...)

That analysis has since been discredited by an investigation empaneled by the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10264.html).

The key error in the HSCA investigation was timing; their analysis stemmed from a mistaken belief in both the timestamp of the recording and the position of the motorcycle doing the recording.

You can still get a lot of conspiracies out of that one, too, especially among those who believe that Mark Felt (AKA Deep Throat)'s pardon was backdated.

It's too bad I don't know how much data is still available, but network analysis of some past conspiracies (or claimed conspiracies) and released FBI, etc. docs could prove interesting.

This is a good point.

Our classical line of conspiracy thinking may be "If the CIA was involved it means they killed him"

But maybe we are growing in our understanding that the world is very complicated, and that any number of actors could have been indirectly involved, with any number of motives, and that the 'final straw' may have been something a bit more simple, but facilitate by the complex web of weirdness.

It's very easy to believe that the CIA etc. wanted Castro's head and an invasion, and that they were upset JFK wasn't supportive, and that they took a lot of clandestine steps towards 'something'. It's even easier to believe that there were even rogue actors within the agency that either went to for for ideological purposes or maybe even by accident.

... and then the dominoes fell in an ugly way.

It'd be nice if some day we got to the bottom of this.

> It's very easy to believe that the CIA etc. wanted Castro's head and an invasion, and that they were upset JFK wasn't supportive, and that they took a lot of clandestine steps towards 'something'.

This is the part I never understand about this approach though - The Bay of Pigs invasion happened on Kennedy’s watch, as did his push back on the Missile Crisis and the embargo so this narrative that he was soft on Cuba or something just isn’t the case.

IIRC the CIA and other parties were upset Kennedy didn’t commit further to the invasion. Kennedy’s refusal to provide direct air support after the CIA backed forces lost the initiative is usually cited as a major point of contention.

More conspiratorial theorists like to speculate that the CIA hoped to lure the US into a full-scale invasion of Cuba by escalating the Bay of Pigs invasion. By refusing to provide direct air support, Kennedy essentially stopped that from happening and doomed the invasion and ruined Allen Dulles’ reputation. I have no clue how valid these theories are, but it’s what’s usually cited.

This isn’t some speculative scenario about how JFK felt toward Dulles; JFK fired Dulles after the Bay of Pigs!

But the failed invasion of Cuba was not an isolated incident. JFK was undermined by an intelligence community he did not control many times, another famous one being the CIA-backed military coup against Charles de Gaul which also failed. But the French foreign minister to the US has record of a conversation with Kennedy where he says he is not fully in control of his country’s foreign policy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_putsch_of_1961

A weird dude acting alone seems entirely plausible and not surprising historically.

Yeah but this "weird dude" has the backstory of being a US Marine, who defected to the USSR and then defected back to the US... Why assume they stopped being a state actor.

That sounds exactly like the life decisions a weird dude would make.

There's some evidence that he gave U2 spy plane secrets to the USSR. They didn't trust him and put him to work in a toy factory. He later came back to the US with a Russian bride that was related to a KGB officer. Unlike everyone else who came back, he was not debriefed by the CIA. They just welcomed him back.

Compare that with how they treat Chelsea Manning.

So maybe he was a CIA asset on top of being a weird dude. Many such cases ;)

Oswald shot himself in the arm to try to get out of the Marines too. You examine his life and he was a loser his entire adult life. He couldn't keep a job. He believed in Marxism and defected to the Soviet Union expecting to be some hero there. The KGB was rightly skeptical and put him in some horrible factory job. He was disillusioned. Came back to the US expecting to be a media sensation. No one cared. He then believed that Cuba got communism "right" and tried to go there, but the Cubans wouldn't let him in. About all he could handle was menial labor and got a job moving books around a warehouse, when opportunity to get the fame he always wanted presented itself...

Except Oswald was not such a loser, as he was a double agent while in the SSSR [1], and he was staying at the home [2] of George de Mohrenschildt [3], who used to be member [4] of the Nazi Gehlen SS Division which was incorporated the CIA and german BND after WWII [5], and who was expulsed in 1957 by Yugoslavia for having spied on military installations there [6].

Most interestingly, the day of his "suicide", de Mohrenshild had given an interview to a certain journalist named Jay Epstein (! - supposedly no relations), during which he claimed "that in 1962, Dallas CIA operative J. Walton Moore and one of Moore's associates had handed him the address of Lee Harvey Oswald in nearby Fort Worth and then suggested that de Mohrenschildt might like to meet him." - which he had also told the Warren commission.

Oh, and he personnaly knew G.H.W. Bush before he became the director of the CIA, the latter having been the roomie of de Mohreshild's nephew [7].

I know that the sound of hooves generally means horses are coming, and the "six degrees of separation" theory... Yet, don't you get the distinct impression we're in the middle of the savannah and insted those sounds might be zebras ?

[1] https://knrasm.typepad.com/.a/6a0154328936da970c0168e5939b50...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt#Dallas...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt - a German noble from Bielorussia, where Oswald had "defected" in 1957

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt#House_...

[5] https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/germany/gehlen.h...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt#cite_n...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt#Later_...

Gehlen was FHO, not SS. His postwar organization employed SS members, but that's something different. To say it was an "SS Division" is just nuts.

There's no information that I'm aware of that connects de Mohrenschildt to Gehlen, and the article you linked to doesn't provide any either.

That first document is fake. This is the problem with the conspiracy crowd. They have to fake things to make their argument.

That's certainly your reading of things, but I'm not sure it's supported by strong evidence.

To be clear, he was married to a KGB agent. So if you really think he had to be a state actor then the only state that makes sense is the Soviet Union.

Then why was a Soviet defector who was married to a KGB agent welcomed back into the United States with open arms? Just one of many facts that don't jive with the official narrative.

What doesn’t jive? What basis is there for the government to refuse a US citizen entry to the country? Being married to someone doing something illegal isn’t a crime. “Defecting” (in quotes because I’m not aware of Oswald having anything of value for the USSR) isn’t a crime.

I suggest you learn some history so you can understand the manner in which "subversives" and suspected Communists were treated in the 1960s. The FBI and was kidnapping, assassinating and doing a variety of other nasty things to "subversives" and suspected Communists. But we are to believe that Oswald, who openly defected to the Soviet Union, was suspected of giving Soviets classified information about the U2 spy plane, and renounced his US citizenship in the US embassy would be welcomed back to the US without sanction or retribution?

>In 1971 in San Diego, the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former members of the Minutemen anti-communist paramilitary organization, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.[10][11][12]

>The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. Many of the tactics used in COINTELPRO are alleged to have seen continued use including; discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; illegal violence; and assassination.[13][14][15][16] According to a Senate report, the FBI's motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order".[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

an official narrative is necessarily plausible

Agreed, but worth noting that "plausible" is subjective. WTC 1 & 2 collapsing after being hit by jets may be plausible. WTC 7 collapsing after simply being in the area of the other towers... much less plausible.

I don't find it particularly implausible that one building near a massive building collapse happened to not have adequate fire protection

Relevant gif of collapse of WTC7: https://c.tenor.com/0PG_F9eZVmEAAAAC/wtc7-building.gif

I love clips like this that completely remove all context. The building was on fire for hours. If you watch the entire collapse, you see parts of the building collapse at different times. The fires were so intense, flames were shooting out of the windows like a blowtorch. Gigantic chunks of the other two towers pierced the building like swords.

I've seen the video of the fires but I haven't seen an angle that shows parts of it collapsing at different times. Would you mind sharing?

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK_iBYSqEsc

Simulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAkTbyENZ5s

That's it? Alright. That's not what I visualized when you said "parts of the building collapse at different times." I thought you were talking about exterior parts. Though it's technically fair to say the inside collapsing before the outside is "different parts."

In regards to the simulation, it's actually great evidence for the opposite side of the argument - NIST was not able to simulate a collapse that appeared at all similar to the actual collapse.

The best part of this is that even if one believes jet fuel burning for many hours led to the collapse of at least one of the buildings (I don't buy this argument), in the basements of the collapsed towers where the 47 central support columns connected with the bedrock, hot spots of "literally molten steel" were discovered more than a month after the collapse. Such persistent and intense residual heat, 70 feet below the surface, in an oxygen deprived environment, cannot be explained by combustion. On the other hand, thermite contains its own supply of oxygen and does not require any external source of air. Consequently, it cannot be smothered, and may ignite in any environment given sufficient initial heat. It burns well while wet, and cannot be easily extinguished with water—though enough water to remove sufficient heat may stop the reaction.

Eh, I find it far more plausible (in an Occam sense) that “literally molten steel” was a flawed observation than the alternative of invoking the enormous conspiracy machinery that controlled demolition implies.

The jet fuel would have burned for ten minutes and then been exhausted. The consequent fire it started is what burned for hours.

I don't know if ground zero at WTC7 burned for months, but ground zero below the twin towers definitely did. The claim being hours vs the claim being months is obviously significant.

It isn't called Ground Zero for a reason. Do some research and check what that name means. Then the months long fire does make sense

> It isn't called Ground Zero for a reason. Do some research and check what that name means. Then the months long fire does make sense

It really isn't clear what this means / You're saying this relates to a nuclear weapon somehow?

A simple nuclear destruction device, demanded by the city construction policies. As in Chicago with the Sears Tower.

Architects could tell you lots of stuff

In that gif, you can see the sky through the windows on the top floor on the left side; the building is already collapsing when that gif starts. In slightly longer versions of that clip, you can see the change occur in those windows: https://youtu.be/PK_iBYSqEsc?t=15

Your gif starts approximately 8 seconds too late.

WTC7 collapsed several hours after the other. If it was a controlled demolition, why wouldn't they bring it down at the same time as one of the other towers fell? The debris cloud from the larger towers would have covered their crime, and I don't think anybody would really find it very suspicious that one building was evidently crushed at the moment another was falling next to it.

Therefore it makes more sense to me that WTC7 fell exactly as the official story describes. It was damaged and burned for hours, then the penthouse fell through knocking out much of the interior and the facade came down moments later.

But then a man like Jack Ruby killing Oswald under such circumstances doesn't make any sense:

Who Was Jack Ruby? https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/who-was-jack-ruby...

Why Jack Ruby Killed JFK's Assassin https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/jack-ru...

Weird dudes tend to have weird lives. And if someone is going to kill them we are by default talking about other weird people.

Any such event is going to involve more of the same people.

Weird dudes probably have utterly mundane lives in equal if not greater numbers.

The Texas Monthly article you've cited makes a pretty strong case that (1) everyone in Dallas wanted to kill Oswald and (2) Ruby's involvement in a conspiracy theory is what really doesn't make sense.

And yet Ruby "died" in jail while he wanted to testify away from Dallas. The series of inception-like coincidences you have to pull to explain this brings the credibility of a man acting alone to zero.

And Oswald was far from your regular crazy loner. He was intelligence (OSI) and probably counter-intelligence as well, from all that we know about him being able to travel back and forth to Russia in the iron curtain era.

Could you give any examples? It is definitely true that people are often portrayed as "weird dudes acting alone", however it is much rarer that that is actually true.

The assassination of James Garfield and attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan are both very clear evidences of "weird dudes acting alone." I don't know enough about McKinley's assassin to know if he would also qualify, although that was part of an era where anarchists assassinating notable political figures was relatively common. I also don't know enough about Teddy Roosevelt's attempted assassination.

Indeed, if you look at attempted or successful assassinations of US presidents, excluding JFK, only Lincoln's assassination involved a conspiracy.

Also the assassinations of MLK and RFK. But at this point there are so many "weird dudes acting alone" that that in itself becomes suspicious.

I don't think not being part of an organized conspiracy and being a weird dude acting alone are the same thing. Especially in recent years the term "stochastic terrorism" has come up a lot, where people become part of a group where acts of violence are not explicitly ordered but nontheless tacitly encouraged. I think most so called "lone wolf" attacks fall into that pattern.

Why is that suspicious? There are a huge number of people in America.

The unabomber?

The Unabomber was also an unknowing MK Ultra test subject... so there is that.

The lsd could well have broken him in a way that led to the murder and mayhem, but he was destined to be an asshole. His brother's description of his life is a tragedy of misanthropic disaster - how not to raise a child.

> The lsd could well have broken him in a way that led to the murder and mayhem

"the LSD" way to minimize being the subject to hundreds of hours of interrogations, experiments and abuse by the CIA as a child.

Murray was (among other qualifications) formerly a military intelligence officer, conducting horrendous, abusive, and unethical psychological experiments at Harvard, and Kaczynski was a 17 year old victim of his.

MKUltra was also a series of horrendous, abusive, and unethical psychological experiments conducted (in secret) by the CIA.

Ethically, Murray wasn't, unfortunately, much of an outlier; lots of psychological experimentation in the US during the 50s, 60s, and 70s was horrifying. Although Murray's background and professional history is suggestive, there is no evidence that he or his experiments on Kaczynski were actually part of the MKUltra program.

Sirhan Sirhan & RFK. Here there is no elaborate story of defections to the USSR or meetings with the KGB head of assassinations or anything. Just a dude who really wanted to kill RFK for his support of Israel, who put his mind to it, and then did it.

You're sure there wasn't a bird on his shoulder, so to speak?

There always is

Yes, Sirhan Sirhan, the man who conveniently "forgot" everything leading up to and including the shooting itself.

Strangely enough, years later his attorney's argued that he was framed. Even RFK's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes that Sirhan Sirhan was framed and did not actually conspire to kill RFK. He actually wants Sirhan Sirhan released [0].

[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Robert... [1] https://justiceforrfk.com/index.html

Multiple witnesses saw him approach RFK with a revolver and fire it three times at him. Nobody really denies that. What his son (and others) allege is that one of RFK's bodyguards used the assassination attempt as cover to actually assassinate him.

Nobody argues that Sirhan conspired to kill RFK and shot a revolver at him, and very few people question the leadup to that attempt.

Point taken, however, that RFK's assassination is not an unquestioned case of a single deranged individual.

> RFK's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Now one of the most prominent and vocal anti-vaxxers.

The guy who shot John Lennon and the guy who shot Pope John Paul II?

How about: A weird dude acting alone killing a weird dude acting alone?

> A weird dude acting alone seems entirely plausible and not surprising historically.

*A weird dude that could break the laws of physics with 3 bullets and a rifle.

3 shots in anywhere from 8-19 seconds depending on who you ask. Either way it's doable. Not really that physics bending.

I don't know that "doable" is exactly the right adjective. 3 shots from a bolt action rifle at a moving target ~260 feet away, with 2 of the 3 shots on target. It's not impossible in that timeframe, but it's not easy either.

As I described above with my link to the video of CBS, in 1967, testing the difficulty of those shots, they had multiple marksmen hit with two shots, and one hit all three, firing the same rifle from the same height at a moving target, within six seconds. It really wasn't that difficult for a practiced shooter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs

That matches what I was saying, in my opinion. We were shown their best performances, and they were experts with recent practice. The test was also a bit easier than the real-life scenario to me. No other occupants, the real car does change speed a couple of times, etc. It's possible, but you would have to assume Oswald kept his skills pretty current. The Marines have 3 levels of high proficiency for marksmen. In his prime, Oswald hit the mid level once, and the lowest level once.

Edit: I can see I'm in the minority here, but I still feel this way. The Marines didn't even test with moving targets until very recently. It's possible, but it does require above-average and recently used skill. If it were trivial, all 3 of the testers would have gone 3/3 on all their runs (only the best runs were shown). Only 1 of the 3 made all three shots.

Former competitive shooter here. This is easy, nearly any bolt action rifle resting on something is incredibly accurate. And this is not a long shot - that would be 600 yards and up. And still possible at that range.

To understand why people find this unremarkable consider the record sniper shot is 11,000+ feet and someone thought the odds where good enough to make the attempt at those ranges. This is a worse gun and worse marksman but under 1/40th that distance. As to timing they get as long as they like to make the first shot and make two more in ~8 seconds one of which can miss.

It’s both fairly pedestrian and nobody would be talking about it today if he had missed all three. 4 presidents out of 44 where successfully assassinated in office. Ronald Reagan was shot and suffered a punctured lung, but survived.

Andrew Jackson survived an attempt due to a misfire. Gerald Ford was similarly fortunate as the assassin’s gun failed to fire.

Franklin Roosevelt was shot at but only a bystander died, Harry Truman pardoned an assassin who stormed where he was staying.

Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning for reelection but wasn’t the current president at the time. He was hit, but the bullet first hit his eyeglass case and his speech so he survived.

That’s 9 attempts serious enough made history, and presumably several others failed earlier.

A much, much, much worse rifle, scope and marksman, in a much higher stress situation.

A human sized target at those distances make the rifle and scope practically irrelevant. People can reliably do longer distance shots at targets that size with a hand handgun.

It takes some skill, but nowhere near what would qualify as a serious marksmen. According to the US army the average soldier can hit a man sized target at 900 feet about 10% of while at 300 feet it’s closer to 50/50 which is roughly where 2 out of 3 shots puts him. People talk about the car being a moving target but people where beside the car, it was barely moving.

Another thing worth considering is just general probability. Was he likely to hit that on the first try, vs ever. Eg imagine he had ten attempts to take those three shots. If that raises the possibility he could do it, then it’s worth considering. I’m the grande scheme of things there is some survival bias — there’s plenty of assassination attempts that did NoT work and we hence never talk about them. The Andrew Jackson one in particular blows my mind (what it’s consequences might have been). Anyways just got me thinking.

It is not easy for a random man off the street, but any properly trained sniper could do it while drunk and with one hand tied behind their back.

Not with that rifle. and Not with Oswald, who was apparently a poor shooter based on the army files we have about him. And let's not forget the pristine bullet... surely there's no problem anywhere.

I live in Dallas, walking distance from Dealey Plaza, have been up to the sixth floor plenty of times, and have fired similar rifles. There are often Xs on the street marking where he was hit you can see from up there. It's my opinion that those were really not difficult shots for a moderately accomplished marksman, certainly not the impossibility that the Oliver Stone movie made it look like. Moving target, but it was moving at a slow and constant speed.

As far as Oswald's service records show, he wasn't great, but wasn't bad. I guess there's no way to know how much he practiced afterward.

That’s pretty straightforward for anyone with some experience behind a bolt gun.

This is a similar (I think slower) pace than you'd see at CMP bolt gun matches. It's typical for even average participants to at least get all the rounds on target.

Trajectories matter. And the shot from that angle is the least likely to hit the car. From where Oswald was supposed to be located a frontal hit before the car turns around the book repository would be the best shot. Makes no sense. Also, you would be ignoring dozens of witness testimonies that mentioned that they heard shots coming from other places. But sure, believe what you want.

The "Magic Bullet" people seem to be running off of incorrect assumptions about how the shot was laid out and how the car was designed. If you take the actual angle of the shot and the actual layout of the presidential car (which did not have normal seating arrangement!) the "crazy" bullet path devolves into a straight shot.

Hell, even early 2000s Discovery channel was able to figure this out!

This is the video where Discovery Channel recreated the shooting. (I have no opinion on it's accuracy.)

https://youtu.be/mODFnl8e83M

CBS and Dan Rather successfully reproduced the shooting by putting marksmen on a tower of the same height, firing at a moving target with the same rifle. Several hit with two bullets; one hit with three bullets. All fired three rounds within six seconds.

Video of their tests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs

Regarding the "magic bullet", PBS showed how the path lines up when you correctly locate Connelly in the jump seat, which was lower and offset, turn Connelly slightly in his seat, and have JFK leaning forward a bit, as he was known to do because of back pain. The magic bullet trajectory isn't very magical.

From this episode of Nova, IIRC: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/cold-case-jfk/

The path of the bullet isn't the most eyebrow raising to me because bullets take some wonky paths when they collide with bodies. What's a bit concerning is after taking that wonky path, hitting ribs and wrist bones, the bullet came out practically un-deformed and in relatively pristine condition.

The most plausible explanation I've heard is that after going through JFK's neck and most of Connally's chest without striking bone, it was significantly slowed down so that when it hit Connally's rib and wrist, it was with less than full force so the copper jacket held up better. Warren Commission tests on comparable bullets showed them staying relatively intact even when striking solid wood.

This is a situation, I think, where people's intuitions don't line up well the reality of full metal jacket ammunition, which by design is supposed to deform or fragment less than softer slugs.

I think that's a reasonable enough explanation to change my mind.

I'm no expert, but I thought a bullet deforms due to hydraulic pressure, not necessarily due to contacting a rigid object like a bone.

Are you possibly confusing it with the concept of hydrostatic shock which is more about the wound channel irrespective of bullet deformation?

My favorite theory is that the killing blow was actually done by the secret service, but not because they had a grand scheme to kill him and blame all on Lee, but because the senior members of the SC were hangover and gave rifle duty to a junior that had just completed training. During the commotion of the first shots, he accidentally fired from the second vehicle when it accelerated and killed the US president.

It wasn't really pristine though, its was quite bent along its length. Probably hit bone sideways, etc.

The images I saw didn’t look deformed at all, but maybe they were not at the best angle

It doesn't look bent much at all (maybe we're talking about different rounds)

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/images/ce-399-bu...

One reasonable explanation I've heard for all the secrecy was that it was indeed Oswald, but in the heat of the moment one of the Secret Service guys shot JFK by mistake, and it was decided it was best to avoid the embarrassment.

> and it was decided

I love how these stories always go all passive-voice at key moments.

> not surprising historically

When considering history through the lens of bulletpoints in a child's textbook, maybe.

Its a plausible narrative if you are entirely ignorant of the actual facts of the case and the numerous investigations that followed.

As long as you believe the historical hoaxes.

The above can be true without a conspiracy happening. I.e., the establishment saw JFKs Cuba missile crisis actions in addition to his plan to withdraw from foreign military actions as extreme policy disagreements without having them actually want to rub him out.

So both things can be true. They hated him and did everything in their power to undermine him AND some crazy thought he was such a threat he shot him… without the establishment having been involved in the action in any way.

Of course it’s also possible but less likely the establishment thought he was such a danger they HAD to take him out… but there raises the question, with Trump, whom they hated just as much, did they adjust their MO?

> Trump, whom they hated just as much

Does anyone in power actually hate Trump? So far as I could tell, all he did for most of his tenure was slash taxes and carefully shepherd the market upward while playing a lot of golf

He also put immigrant children in cages and molded the Supreme Court to criminalize abortion and made the prospect of a Putin-style 'President for life' an actual possibility in the near future.

But as much as those things make some people hate him, they give many other people, including some very powerful people, reason to like him.

He put them in the same accommodations as Obama and Biden currently uses.

The generals wanted to keep their wars going and they wanted to maintain foreign presence or increase them. They wanted to have a say in just about every conflict that goes on. Trump wanted to get out of that business.

He also thought it was time to reform NATO. He also thought he could appease them by increasing their budget and creating a space force. Never the less, they kept sniping and undermining him.

Congress of course, despite lack of evidence continually wanted to impeach him over collusion with Russia and so on.

Do yeah I think the establishment hated him just as much because he didn’t go along with their historical agenda.

I’m someone who has not spent much time looking into this. Can you tell me, based on your research, on balance of probabilities, who did it and why?

Downvoting for your arrogant tone ("some people still actually believe ...") in regard to a topic that is genuinely murky and has a lot of conflicting indications (and about which there's still a lot of misinformation kicking around).

Even though -- after having done my own share of diligent research on this topic -- I eventually came to the (disappointing) conclusion on the question of whether or not there was a deep state conspiracy behind the events of that day -- I don't fault anyone for what they believe on the topic (pro or con).

It's just what they believe, given the murky historical record and the fog of public belief and opinion about the matter. That doesn't mean (as you imply) that they're idiots or tools.

You are right, I was being a little snarkey. I apologize and I agree its a murkey thing, but I dont think generally people approach it with with the same kind of critical patience you have, and its not like tin foil hat types are the hegemonic voice on these matters.

Genuinely curious what you and GP consider diligent research?

Going to the library, reading books, that sort of thing.

Oh and thinking about what you read and asking yourself it can actually be true.

The son of a bank president, a one-time McCarthyite, an eager-enough Cold Warrior. He green-lighted the Bay of Pigs, he green-lighted the overthrow of Diem in South Vietnam. Where was his threat to the establishment?

I heard JFK was seriously considering to disband CIA, and the organization had to defend itself.

Even the most senior politicians have admitted it is unwise to cross the intelligence agencies, and they have six ways from Sunday to extract revenge on their political enemies.

> Edit: I don't mean to be too snarky, I encourage anyone to do their own research

And yet you encourage people to dive into misinformation in order to somehow magically figure out what of the provided information are outright lies or just misinformed ideas.

If you equate "Doing your research" to reading articles, opinions or even quoted declassified files then you're another victim of our current misinformation crisis.

And I honestly doubt that anyone but the most dedicated historians still actually study this assassination while crosschecking everything, reading everything indepth to make an attempt too actually figure out the context it had back then etc.

It is a lot of work to actually gain knowledge on something, however we've somehow started to consider reading documents which have at best entertainment value as doing research...

There were so many people involved, they should have just waited a year for the election and voted him out.

LHO was just a deluded gunman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM98e17SaBI

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4724389/user-clip-deluded-gun...

But sometimes I wonder, is the world really this small?

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/01/us/a-life-that-started-ou...

https://www.king5.com/article/news/nation-now/russian-born-o...

The title "CONTACT OF LEE OSWALD WITH A MEMBER OF SOVIET KGB ASSASSINATION DEPARTMENT" caught my eye. "Assassination department" invokes images of bored assassins sitting in cubicles doing busy work. Unfortunately, all the pages are redacted (or poorly scanned).

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/do...

They really hit their targets.

Unlike up and to the right, they want their targets going back and to the left.

> all the pages are all redacted

I'm not sure if I'm missing a joke here, those are easily legible.

Zoomed out, it all looks grey, but zoomed in, you can kind of read it.

this blackout is really weird -- if you're at 100% its unreadable, and as you zoom in it becomes more readable, peaking around 250% zoom... and if you go further it becomes more unreadable, and after like 450% it becomes totally unreadable again.

The overlayed pattern is also very specifically designed, and quite peculiar

Looks like redactions got pwned by aliasing.

looks like a greyscale image converted to 1-bit color with dithering. looks exactly like that, to me, actually

Indeed, this looks like a poor quality scan on an old monochrome Xerox machine or the like, not an actual attempt at redacting content. It's readable in Preview on macOS at the right zoom level.

Sounds ripe for a Coen Brothers / Armando Iannucci hybrid series. Burn After Reading / Fargo meets The Death of Stalin. Something like The Office, dealing with the administrative support side of an Assassination Department. An IT-esque Department troubleshooting BondQ gadgets remotely. Fishy expense reports.

That's not redacted, it's just a dither.

For me it looks like neither.

Instead it looks like the paper was scanned in one of this plastic sleeves you can put documents in if you don't want to punch holes in them or give them additional protection. Older versions of this sleeves tend to not be perfectly clear but instead have a pattern similar to that you can seen in the scan.

Through in the end it's just speculation.

This is a super interesting read about people back in the 60s (...it was written in 1967, so they're contemporaries) who were already poring over documents, convinced there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/06/10/the-buffs

I believe people (including LBJ and RFK) were convinced within a few minutes.

But not before?

Just kidding :)

It was a shame he died. I wonder what things would look like had he not.

Indonesia would be completely different. JFK was planning to meet with Sukarno shortly before he was assassinated. Then we got Suharto, New Order, the rest is history (over 1,000,000 communists, atheists, feminists, etc killed, and the third world is set back).

Stephen King has some ideas in his 11/22/63 ;-)

I just finished watching 11.22.63 which is based on that novel and it's so good

my dad is convinced that LBJ ordered the hit. I've never waded into the assassination conspiracy theories but he gets pretty animated about it.

Vietnam war likely wouldn't have happened, certainly not in the same way.

LBJ got caught on a hot mic talking to Richard Russell saying he thought there was more than one shooter.

Some believe LBJ was in on it.

That was a very interesting read. Thanks.

Fascinating read. Every time I read these sort of old articles, I wonder who the people named in there were. For example:

> was being saved by Marjorie Field, the wife of a prosperous Beverly Hills stockbroker,

Who was Mrs Field? Apparently she had a really large house and a lot of free time. Who was her husband? What was her legacy?

After dumps of millions and millions of records, still no one can point to anything even close to a "smoking gun" that anyone other than Oswald killed the president.

There are a lot of goofy theories about the JFK assassination, but I don't think you can dismiss all of them. The theory that makes the most sense to me is that Oswald was part of it, but that he also was set up to be the fall guy.

There is evidence that Oswald was recruited by US intelligence when he was a teen in the Civil Air Patrol, and that he had gone to the Soviet Union as a false defector (the Soviets did the same to the US). He was part of operation to kill JFK, but then he was set up to be the fall guy behind his back. He claimed he was a patsy before he was he was killed.

If he wasn't working for the government than some of his actions and associations before the assassination are just baffling. It's also a mystery why he was able to return to the US without any issues after defecting.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/1290 https://jfkfacts.org/was-oswald-a-cia-operative-or-not/

I think it's completely legit to question Oswald and his history. It is just weird. I agree. Was he part of a larger conspiracy? I don't know. I sort of doubt it after reading a lot about his early life. But I have no doubt he pulled the trigger and killed the president. I think it's possible that the gov't tried very hard to cover up the fact that he was under surveillance because of his strange past. But I'm not sure we'll ever know. I know that after so many docs have been released, there is no smoking gun.

When it comes to the patsy argument, read about his interrogation and the cops who interrogated him. The notes are very illuminating. Oswald clearly behaved in a guilty way. Very smug. Remember that his entire life he thought he was destined for something big. He even called his diary "My Historical Diary." He was a loser that needed to do something to be relevant.

(I'm not American btw)

I find it very plausible that although most of those things happened, there was no actual conspiracy to kill JFK. Like, there might have been a lot of chit-chat in those circles against JFK and all of what he was doing, but there was no concrete conspiracy to kill him. At the same time, there is this unstable person that seeing and hearing everything that happens around him, believes he will be doing a "greater good" if he killed the president.

Then, the he was silenced mainly because of all the other stuff that he was part of.

It's akin to the time when Trump was president (or Obama for all that matters): There was a lot of chat in the internet and elsewhere about how bad he was as president, how he was damaging the country, yada yada. It would only take one crazy person in the middle of a crazy clique to really go on with it.

Fully in the camp that a sniper fired a shot, and then a bodyguard accidentally capped the president from behind. Never revealed out of government shame. Hopeful to learn more.

That is one of the most out there conspiracy theories I have heard.

So you haven't heard the one about Ted Cruz's father being behind it?

Wasn't Bush Sr present ?

In Dallas, and he said he couldn't remember why he was in Dallas. It's not like anyone ever said he was in the grassy knoll or something though

Not enough of a nutter to argue passionately about it, but it’s not that out there. There were secret service men right behind him in a car that suddenly lurched forward after the shots were made (so a physical force could have caused the accident not just an itchy trigger finger on a guard). His wound implies behind shot from behind but placing the snipers behind hasn’t made sense ever.

FWIW, I don’t believe this is what happened, but as I understand it the Secret Service agents had recently been issued a new carbine - an AR-15.

At any rate, George Hickey was the agent usually identified as the person who would have negligently discharged his rifle, and photos of the event clearly show him with an AR-15.

Allegedly, the Secret Service changed their procedures shortly thereafter to require their agents to carry with an empty chamber. I have no idea if that’s true.

> Secret Service agents had recently been issued a new carbine - an AR-15

Perhaps I'm being too pedantic, but the firearm Hickey was carrying wasn't a carbine. It was a Colt model 601 rifle, the first variant of the AR-15 that Colt produced after purchasing the AR-15 patents from Armalite.

BTW, this "Hickey did it" theory was popularized by Bonar Menninger in his 1992 book "Mortal Error." Hickey later sued the publisher for defamation, but the lawsuit was dismissed.

If it were true it would've been a fatal accident, but not a conspiracy. Covering it up afterwards, out of embarrassment, would've been the conspiracy - and keep in mind that the US govt. has covered up some pretty crazy things in the past. But I hear you, it's definitely a wild theory.

But covering for some low-ranking secret service agent's accident seems like a lower priority than covering up something malicious like the Gulf of Tonkin affair, which has been revealed.

Do you understand what it would've done to the US' standing vis-a-vis the USSR in the world if it were revealed that someone who is tasked with protecting the most important part of the executive branch accidentally killed them in exactly the type of event where they should've been keeping them safe? What image would that have projected to the rest of the world about America's abilities? Espc. in light of the then just happened Cuban missile crisis, etc.

Don't you think this sort of thing already wrecks US standing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fide...

I would figure a lot higher percentage of people are aware of JFK's death than failed attempts on Castro.

That doesn't change that the US was highly sensitive of their image during the cold war.

Do you think the video is edited or where was the body guard that you think shot him?

It wasn't a "video", back then they only had ... never mind.

I dont even know what you are trying to say.

The commenter thinks the Zapruder film was a "video" is what I'm saying.

In what way is it not a video?

As a generalization: Video, going back to before the digital era, refers to images recorded on magnetic videotapes, such as VHS or Betamax. This is in contrast with film, which is images recorded using light sensitive silver halide crystals. Video tapes are viewed by scanning the magnetic strips and displaying on a monitor with scan lines. Films are viewed by shining a light through the developed film and displaying the whole image on a reflective screen.

Not quite. Video is generally an electronic medium for moving pictures and can be sent over cables or radio waves from the camera to the TV, without touching a tape. A video signal can be recorded on a tape, but isn't necessarily.

Yes, you are right. Looks like you squeezed in your comment before I was able to put the "as a generalization" disclaimer on it! :)

I was thinking more of the situation where some people might be confused with the Zapruder recording, that it could be on videotape instead of film, which is why I didn't try to cover all the corner cases.

It was film. Video is an electronic signal stored on tape (originally)

I assume all the times I've watched it, it's been from video format. I really doubt they were playing the 8mm every time live and broadcasting. So... I guess it's now a video and not film.

Are you trying to say they didn't have video in 1963?

yes, he's saying they only had film in 1963

What do you think TV is?

TV is a video you can't rewind. Not the real thing.

A quick search (wikipedia) shows videotape existed in 1956, at $300/hr.

Right - something for studios, not the man on the street.

thanks, I wasn't aware, although whether or not they had what vanusa was saying seemed obvious.

Just as an fyi, that's pretty massive tape used in a broadcast studio.

The first consumer video camera (camera that recorded to tape rather than film) wasn't until the BetaMovie in 1983 with VHS coming months later. Heck, _home_ video recorders were still 15-20 years off at the time.

I'm referring to the fact that the "video" in question was an 8mm color film:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapruder_film

Obviously "video" existed then in the sense that there was television -- but consumer video cameras didn't appear until around 1979 or 1980.

In the car behind him - there's a 1992 book about this theory if you are curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Error

There's a documentary about that fwiw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn97UF_kfYo

That doesn't make sense. The Zapruder film shows him shot from the front. Jackie Kennedy goes and grabs a piece of brain or skull from the back of the car.

> Jackie Kennedy goes and grabs a piece of brain or skull from the back of the car.

Sorry, not from the US but why would she do that?

Edit: the parent comment originally said "why would she do that? To keep a souvenir?" and has since been edited.

Stealth-editing a comment to deprive replies of their meaning is not a nice thing to do, so please don't do that.

-- original reply: --

"Don't be snarky."

"Eschew flamebait."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Clarification: is this snark or flamebait? I might be missing something, but it seems like a reasonable question. I recall the first time I heard she'd done that, my own incredulity was similar (having never been in a life-or-death crisis, I didn't have the frame-of-reference to get that a person may not be thinking rationally "Doctors can't put brain parts back in" and might grab whatever they see come off a loved one).

I suspect the minimized version, "Why would she do that?" would have been well received. I don't think anyone understands why the "I'm not from the US" clause is there and I personally assigned a reasonable probability that it was a short-hand stand-in for the following sentiment :

"The US has so much gun violence that they must have some kind of expertise that leads them to know that its a good idea to save skull fragments in case the doctors need them. Lol, just kidding, that was sarcasm; I just wanted to bash the US for their high rate of gun violence."

Of course I accept that this may be mis-interpreting it. The only other meaning I can parse is: "I imagine that everyone in the USA learned about this event in great detail in their school lessons/etc. I haven't so....could someone explain why she grabbed the skull fragment?"

The comment originally read "why would she do that? To keep a souvenir?"

People react to sudden, extreme stress in way that seem odd after the fact.

This doesn’t seem inconceivable at all.

Shock, likely.

Pre-shock, even.

She was in shock, and tried to do something to help her husband. It's not even that far fetched. If your hand was cut off, you'd want to save it for possible reattachment.

Some combination of shock and instinct. Probably more shock since she later reported that she didn’t remember doing it at all.

It's really impossible to speculate until you've been in a situation like that and most of us probably have not. I would suspect it was a panic response and not some deeper nefarious action.

Because people do weird things under extreme stress.

She reached for it within the fraction of a second that the bullet struck JFK's head. It was an instinctive action.

In fact, we humans usually can't rationally comprehend catastrophic injury to the body, while in that state of immediate shock. Think of the image of the soldier carrying his detached arm.

For some reason, I'm remembering peoples' take on this being that she was scared and running away, and I'm weirdly glad to see that someone else understood this. It's all morbid and strange, but some weird part of me feels that its important that we see this distinction; this wasn't cowardice, she was trying to "fix it."

It looks like he's shot from the front because it looks like there's a splash of matter from his face - like you'd get if you threw a water balloon at him.

But rifle bullets aren't water balloons. They don't splash on human flesh - they do on concrete or steel - but not flesh. They go through and what you are seeing is ejecta from a bullet passing through JFK's head and exiting, leaving a high pressure mess behind and a small hole for it to leave by.

God knows what Jackie was doing, maybe getting something, maybe trying to get to the guard. God knows.

That's one interpretation. He also slumps backwards rather than forwards. In JFK Revisited, Oliver Stone looked into the hospital staff that saw him at Parkland Hospital and all of the accounts he was able to find had the back of JFK's head blown out with an exit wound.

Dude, just watch the film. It's so obvious that his head recoils forward and that there's a massive exit wound on his face. Whatever his body does afterward is going to be a combination of simple dynamics and the muscular contractions that would be characteristic of a massive head trauma. If there's a conspiracy to be uncovered, it's not going to be evidenced in the film.

I just did, it didn't look like what you said at all. I did not see his head rock forward. It's difficult to determine if that's a massive exit wound on his face, it could just be blood.

CONTENT WARNING: JFK ASSASSINATION https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdwVUBlK-Y0

I think you mean from the front. Guy riding shotgun turned around and you see his arm extended.

Probably yeah. I’m like toes deep invested in this one.

Me too. All the shadowy conspiracy theories seem way too complicated, but a simple screwup and the desire to bury it out of embarrassment seems so completely in line with every organization I've ever worked in.

For those of you who aren't familiar, the Secret Service team had been working hard in the year prior to the assassination, and decided to blow off some steam by going out drinking the night before the parade. Because they were all quite hungover, they assigned a relatively new team member, who hadn't gone out drinking with them, to hold the brand new AR-15 they had just been assigned. After the first shot was fired, that agent stood up and began to aim the AR-15, and was immediately knocked back down by the car lurching forward. The theory is that he accidentally squeezed off a round at that moment, which by chance struck Kennedy in the head and killed him.

Supporting evidence:

- The type of bullet that hit Kennedy's head was a frangible one, which is designed to explode upon impact, whereas Oswald's ammunition was non-frangible.

- The third shell found at the book depository was in a different place, and was bent. It could have been used as a chamber plug to keep the chamber safe from dirt and moisture.

- A ballistic expert determined that the fatal shot was most likely to have come from the left rear seat of the Secret Service followup car.

This would make sense if you ignore all of the facts of the case and also have no understanding of how the government works.

So essentially Hanlon's Razor.

Here's video by CBS where they easily and repeatedly reproduce Oswald's shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs. Contrary to a lot of assertion, it wasn't that difficult.

A bodyguard firing a handgun from that distance isn't going to blow a fist sized hole in his skull. It was definitely a rifle round.

That’s not a point of contention. This theory identifies the person, with a raised rifle, being jostled by a lurching car.

If I recall correctly, the reason for withholding the documents after 50 years was (possibly) some agent or agents being still alive. So, who died?

George H.W. Bush.. If you believe some VERY fringe dark places on the web.

Not as fringe as you might think.

I think the two biggest red flags on it are that he claimed to one of his biographers to not recall where he was when he found out JFK had been killed. An odd thing for anybody to say who was not just alive at the time, but especially someone involved with government. As it turns out, he checked out of the Dallas Sheraton that morning, down the street.

Second, and even more interesting is that the initial telegraph that went to DC to confirm the President had expired, was sent to J Edgar Hoover (understandable) and some unknown CIA person named George Bush.

10 years later, he then became the first CIA Director with "no previous CIA experience". Doesn't mean he was involved, but those are interesting facts.

edit: checked out that morning.

> he claimed to one of his biographers to not recall where he was when he found out JFK had been killed.

The theory I heard was that he had suspiciously given two contradictory answers, perhaps one saying he didn't remember, and one saying that he did remember (providing a location that wasn't Dallas). Given the passage of time, and the fact that he visited many locations as part of his political campaigning, it's perhaps reasonable for him to have eventually forgotten the name of the particular place he was when he heard the news.

Here is a discussion which tries to source the claim that he once stated he was in Tyler, Texas on the day of the assassination:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/george-h-w-bush-cant-rememb...

>it's perhaps reasonable for him to have eventually forgotten the name of the particular place he was when he heard the news

If he had been any place other than a block from the assassination, that might make more sense. Especially when coupled with the telegraph..

I’m sure it was a chaotic day for him too. Where were you when you heard? Heard what? That he was shot, that he died, or perhaps other updates he may have received during the day.

Are you asking specifically or generally? Maybe he knew he was in Dallas but didn’t remember the name of the hotel.

It's famously a moment when Americans can tell you precisely where they were when they heard. That's probably a bit exaggerated, but not by much. When I've asked people who were of age at the time, they can indeed tell me where they were.

Most Americans sat in front of a TV/radio. Of which was likely the only one in the house. It could be a foggy memory for people in the thick of it.

My memory of 9/11 is a bit foggy as an example. I know I was working, at a hospital at the time. I remember that morning dragged on and I was moving all around the hospital. Poking my head in patients rooms to get a glimpse of the TV. I was in different locations doing different things when 1) overhear someone repeat a headline from the radio (plane crash into building in NYC, probably light aircraft) then a bit later 2) found a TV somewhere and sighed, wow that’s a lot of smoke/crazy accident ... then somewhere else I think in a patients room watching their TV when 3) oh no a second plane! it just hit the other tower!! this is no accident!!! Rest of day complete blur, no memory at all. I assume I went home after my shift, but I couldn't even tell you what my home was during 9/11/2021. I was in college and lived in a different apartment every year, I have no idea what apartment my 2001 apartment was. If I really dug through my memories, thought about timelines, I could probably tell you with confidence but if you randomly asked me where I lived I might mistakenly give you a wrong answer just to appease you or I might say I don't remember which people have a habit of calling politicians "suspicious" when they don't recall things, so that's not a good answer. I'd probably just guess and do damage control later if I guessed wrong and you went on a fact finding mission to prove me wrong.

I was 21 at the time and my memory would be crystal clear if I was at home watching it on my TV but I had a lot of chaos going on as a part of my job and so the events of the day are blurry. That's also a very easy memory to hold, sitting at home all day, when you're moving around talking to people things get mixed up and as time goes on you forget most of it because it was many tiny memories where as sitting at home was one large memory.

I was even younger but , my memories of OJ in the bronco and princess Diana were like this. I can tell you definitely I was sitting at home at the dining room table with my Dad glued to the TV eating junk food. It's simple and was the same activity for multiple hours. These events were blips of history compared to 9/11 but my memory of them is better because it was simple to remember.

For the challenger explosion, another large event, I was in K/1st grade (can never remember which) but I was watching it on tv in my class. It was a big deal because TV in the classroom and teacher on the shuttle, it was the future man! Oh and I grew up near NASA in Clear Lake so there was some hometown pride built in. But then it went bad. Nobody understood. Kids started crying. That's my memory. Except, is it really? That's what I think my memory was. I don't really remember if that happened TO ME. I've seen videos and heard stories of that happening. I may have conflated these into my own personal memory. I don't really know. I feel like 80% confident I actually experienced that. But I wouldn't be shocked if it was all a crossing of my neural wires. Sometimes my early childhood memories are like this. I remember some thing, or think I do, but maybe I'm just remembering a picture I saw of that thing. Or the images I conjured while hearing the story of the thing multiple times through my childhood. Memories are weird like that.

The fact he was checking out of a hotel is a minuscule detail for someone that is constantly checking out of hotels. He probably remembers more about the conversations he had that day with other politicians, CIA, etc. but he wouldn’t discuss that.

I think you're misunderstanding the point. He claimed to not know he was even in Dallas that day. The only reason it came out is because the records of him checking out of the Dallas Sheraton were later tracked down. So the hotel he was at isn't the important part. The claiming to not know what city he was in at all is the issue.

The example you gave of only remembering you were at work on 9/11 or in front of the TV when Challenger blew up proves the point. You remember exactly where you were. What you were doing isn't relevant. You knew where you were. And so did he, so why clam otherwise?

If he had been in Detroit or Philly or something and made the same claim, it's less suspicious, but still a real hard story to swallow. The fact he was blocks away and then received the same message wired to him that J Edgar Hoover received declaring the President had died, well, there is no explaining that away.

I was not yet born, but from my generation every single American can tell you where they were when the World Trade Centers fell. JFK assassination was maybe even more significant to Americans alive then.

And let's be honest, it strains credulity to not remember that you were checked into a hotel a block away from the President being assassinated.

He was stowing away in the wheel well of the presidential limo. But he didn't fire the shot — he gave a secret sign to Oswald to proceed.

So why not retract the names and release the documents? It doesn't make much sense.

If some powerful people know which agent(s) were in the area, and it's confirmed that an agent did it, they can put the pieces together.

It still doesn't make much sense, though.

There are still many documents that are being withheld, and many more that have only been released with massive "redactions" which render them as good as being withheld.

Oliver Stone has a new documentary this year with more information from newly declassified documents: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_Revisited:_Through_the_L...

Most interesting is the similar almost-assassinations that were tipped off in the months leading up to Dallas. Similar story, with a CIA asset like Oswald thinking they were tipping off secret service but were likely being setup as the fall guy. More information on why the Secret Service didn’t acknowledge (and buried) these very similar events in the 1963 FBI investigation and for the Warren commission is probably in the documents that the Biden again delayed declassifying this year.

But anyway, it is amazing how many Americans still seem to think there’s some doubt that this was a coup. The US is a very well-propagandized nation. The country has an agency that specializes in regime change, and a president that was very actively trying to reel in this agency was shot in the head. And then the guy they pinned it on was shot in broad daylight as well. And then the president’s brother was running for election, loudly talking about opening up the investigation to his brother’s death and he was also shot. But it’s somehow crazy talk to think any of this might be connected!

This one makes interesting reading: https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/do...

I think the important thing that it would be impossible to disprove a conspiracy, even if there wasn’t one, so that idea will always be alive.

But I’ve never heard a reasonable argument in favor of the magic bullet theory. This could only be resolved by non-circumstantial evidence which may or may not exist. Every release of evidence is important however, even if proof of a conspiracy is never found.

The beauty about conspiracy theories is that #1 the government can never release documents that disprove a conspiracy theory (because they're the government and clearly those documents are an effort to further the cover up) - and independently released information that doesn't align with the theory could always be a government plant - thus see #1.

Fervently believed conspiracy theories die out with their believers or when people get bored.

The reason the conspiracy won't die is because the official story is totally implausible. Watch JFK Revisited

The bullet is only "magic" if you assume the Governor's seat is directly in front of and at the same height as JFK's. It isn't.

If you model the actual position of everyone in the car at the moment of that shot, it's a straight line from the sniper's nest through all the wounds it caused

https://youtu.be/PfSXkfV_mhA

I believe the jacket JFK was wearing was bunched up as well

The CIA chronology document is a nice overview.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/do...

I've tried to read a couple of random documents and the only question that has been raised in my mind is why were these withheld in the first place? It all seems very mundane.

Practically speaking, if {The Company} only withholds the good bits, people know anything classified is worth a damn.

By classifying mundanity along with the actual secrets, they tip the signal/noise ratio in the favor of {The Company}

Vincent Bugliosi's book on the assassination is highly recommended. It destroys the conspiracy narrative. It's so impressively thorough.

'During his [Vincent Bugliosi] eight years in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, best known for prosecuting Charles Manson. He is also a best selling author.'

You don't get a 99% conviction rate by being honest, I would say this wouldn't be a great choice of person to put ANY faith in really. I MUCH prefer Colin McLaren's take, an ex police investigator who took on the "case" in his retirement as if it were any other cold case in his book, JFK: The Smoking Gun.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Bugliosi [2] https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Smoking-Gun-Colin-McLaren/dp/1743...

Sorry, but "he's not honest because I say so" isn't an argument. Let's say he isn't honest. Ok. His citations and endnotes themselves are hundreds of pages (I think over 1,000 pages). I've frequently checked many of them, because I was curious about this or that topic. Nothing was out of context or false. On the other hand, I frequently will look at quotations or documents cited by the conspiracists and more often then not the quote is either 1) out of context or lacking important context, or 2) false.

If you're trying to convince people that you're a rational investigator, not batshit conspiracy theorist, making blanket dismissive judgements about his lack of honesty based on your subjective interpretation of his conviction rate is not going to help.

Here’s a great book on why you shouldn’t believe anything Vincent Bugliosi says: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAOS:_Charles_Manson,_the_C...

I read that book too. Both are fascinating. That's why you rely on primary sources. Bugliosi's JFK book is forebodingly well documented. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes.

I've spent years reviewing books from "both sides" and none are perfect. But on balance, the conspiracy books rarely stand up to even the most basic fact checking.

Jesse Ventura's book on the assassination is also highly recommended. It provides a great alternative to the Lee Harvey Oswald narrative. It's so impressively thorough.

They Killed Our President: 63 Reasons to Believe There Was a Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK (October 1, 2013, Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell & David Wayne) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17593244-they-killed-our...

Anyone who wants to take a deep dive into one of the more fascinating and under-discussed aspects of the JFK assassination should look into the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer. She was married to CIA agent Cord Meyer and was also romantically involved with JFK. She was murdered in Washington DC less than a year after JFK (a murder that remains unsolved). Following her murder, her sister's husband Ben Bradlee (long time editor of the Washington Post) went to her house to get her diary. Upon arrival he found James Jesus Angleton (then CIA counterintelligence chief) burglarizing the house and searching for the diary. Bradlee retrieved the diary and handed it over to Angleton, who subsequently burned it. During the trial of Ben Crump (a black man who was tried and acquitted for the murder of Meyer), neither Bradlee or Angleton ever mentioned the existence of the diary or their role in destroying it.

Its a fascinating rabbit hole that raises more questions than it answers and is worth checking out for anyone interested in the subject.

Thanks, I read the Wikipedia article. I get the impression that the US politics and intelligence of that era were just such nasty and morally corrupt environments. The affairs, the drugs, the secret service and CIA henchmen acting like criminal cleanup crews. The chief of CIA counterintelligence personally picking a lock like a petty vagrant, to destroy a diary detailing JFK’s drug-filled sexual escapades that were set up by the SS in the White House. Holy shit. No wonder we have so many conspiracy theories from that era.

What a flurry of activity

I skimmed a couple and they seem to provide no insight, which is pretty common in these declassifications

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/do...

Take one of the private tours at Dealey Plaza, it will make your head spin.

The facts are, Nikita Khrushchev was humiliated by the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis. Oswald lived in USSR, came back to the US to discover that nobody really cares, and was eager to gain some sort of celebrity status. He was also nuts. Could the Soviet Union know about his plans and give him some help? Possibly. This would also explain the secrecy around the documents. Any decisive knowledge that a foreign country had a major role in an assassination of an American president would lead to a war between two nuclear nations. We probably wouldn't know until the last documents are declassified.

The facts are that Oswald was working for US intelligence his entire career and was not the one who actually pulled the trigger to kill Kennedy. The official position of the US government is that there was a plot amongst many individuals ie. a conspiracy to assassinate the president.

Never really got into the JFK conspiracy thing. Though considering how blatant and obvious so many "conspiracies" are now, it makes me wonder if my initial dismissal of older ones has more to do with social conditioning than their veracity.

Disappointing that this has been on HN for 20 minutes and we still haven't found who did it.

To be fair it looks like there's almost 1500 documents

Feed it into GPT-3

Though I don't think it has that much attention?

You are confused as to what GPT-3 does.

Local fiddler asks question to super Ai 100 ways and is eventually told “Jackie Kennedy”. Finally, the case is closed.

tbh you can clearly see her digging the weapon out of her purse before pulling him in for the kill

This reminds me of several instances where people asked me if I could build them an AI option/crypto trading bot and they will share profits 50/50.

I guess saying GPT-3 instead of AI or machine learning gives more marketing hype points. Like calling a landing page a "SAAS". (It's a joke, I hope you don't offended by it).

That’s an excellent deal if they’re providing the capital. Make a bot that tries to mimic s&p500 exposure.

Why not one with considerably more risk? Sounds like an opportunity to moon shoot. Bot fails, friend loses money. Bot wins, everybody wins.

Presumably you don’t want your FRIEND to lose too much money even if you’re taking them on a bit of a grift

Prompt text:

Sherlock Holmes received the following documents: [insert all 1500 documents here] then exclaimed, "A-ha, I have deduced who did it! It was

By the time it got to the end of the prompt it wouldn't remember the Sherlock Holmes bit.

To be fair so wouldn't most humans!

I'm certain it reads faster than I do. Comprehension, that's another issue...

Nothing a good grep search can’t handle, or maybe fuzzy finder.

Post on Reddit, then.

Because reddit's amateur vigilante efforts have such a good track record, just remember when they found the Boston bomber

Reddit's amateur sleuths have solved 9 of the past 5 presidential assassinations.

Well maybe the right out of context text blurb hasn’t yet been found?

It was Robert Anton Wilson

Or Anton LaVey. Those "Anton" characters are always up to no good!

I remain strongly in the camp that it was Jimmy Carter - sure, everyone says he was just chilling out on a peanut farm but that's just a cover story man.

I know this is a joke but I had to know what he was up to at the time. He was serving his first term in the Georgia State Senate.

That sounds like a character in an espionage role playing game.

“I’m a contract assassin for the CIA. They use me for domestic operations where they can’t operate. My cover is that I’m a peanut farmer. My code name is The Telephoto Lens, because I’m great at those long distance shots. My secondary skill is the ability to invoke a temporary peanut allergy in any person without a saving throw, which presents all sorts of opportunities for covert killings.”

That seems exceedingly accurate - and now-a-days I can only assume Jimmy Carter is going around building houses just to hide all the bodies he's racked up from the decades of covert ops. A contract assassin - sure... but also a big fan of the telltale heart.

The ability to inflict peanut allergies is golden - thank you for that!

Why do you think he works w/ Habitat For Humanity? There's a body buried under every house!

It was not Jimmy Carter but the killer rabbit who attacked him. Carter prevailed where Kennedy failed.

Why do we not have an answer from 4chan yet?

I did it, but you’ll never get me to confess!

What’s not mentioned enough is that Lee Harvey Oswald lived in Soviet Union for like three years.

JFC — JFK assassination? I see that these additional records are being released according to a presidential memorandum. They won't resolve the "controversy", though, since there's an industry of grifters which will keep it alive no matter what because their profits depend on it.

Are you implying the JFK assassination wasn't actually controversial and that fringe groups are making a mountain out of a molehill? That seems like a bold claim.

There's "controversy" because of the trauma to the collective national psyche. People want to believe that larger forces are at work, commensurate to the mythos of a national leader.

But if you just examine the facts of the case, it's obvious what happened — a tiny, pathetic little man assassinated a president — with a confidence approaching 100%. (But not getting to 100% — it's important to always maintain your scientific skepticism.) See for example _Case Closed_, Gerald Posner's nearly 30-year-old book. https://www.posner.com/case-closed

One method of achieving goals like this are to find the one man, groom him, and enable him to do what you want him to do.

The FBI runs sting operations like this all the time where they find dumb big talkers, encourage their little group over beers, and then sell them guns or explosives or whatever and arrest them.

It is a standard covert operations strategy, get a vulnerable person to do it for you and your actions leave very few fingerprints.

Then you assassinate the patsy so he can never tell anybody about his 'friends' who talked him into it.

Not saying you're right or wrong but please provide supporting evidence for the claims you've made. It sounds very armchair espionage to me...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Big_(police_procedure)

Why are the conspiracy theorists "big final pieces of evidence" always unrelated wikipedia articles? It's just like you guys are admitting you don't know how to evaluate sources for credibility and you don't even know it.

To be fair that wasn't the user I asked for sources, we should see if they have something still. Also that wiki link was fairly interesting, particularly the Hart case in 2014 in which the Canadian Supreme Court found that using the confession drawn from the Mr. Big technique was inadmissible (although their was a later exception in a relation to a violent case that already had supporting evidence). To me, this would actually support the point the others were making a bit at least... If we can believe that this would have been more common prior to 2014, at least in Canada then MAYBE that could indicate that it was/is commonplace in the US which AFAIK does not have a ruling like in the Hart case.

There you go, the FBI is known for it's entrapment plots that are very...borderline to say the least. Motherjones had a small series covering how that

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/fbi-terrorist-i...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/terror-factory-...

Not saying this has anything to do with JFK, but the comment you replied to got the part about the FBI right.

Man... that shit is wild. I'm from a country with a different legal system to the US and I cant help but feel like this would be a form of entrapment here(probably not using the term right from a legal perspective). Is the logic in the US that the individual could/should refuse to participate at each and every step? Ensuring they aren't 'entrapped' despite being presented with a manufactured scenario designed to entice crime because they voluntarily preceded? Especially in the second link where the individual was described as 'dim', if we replace the undercover FBI agent with say, a supportive non-radical religious figure in the Mosque, does this young man go on to try to make a bomb?

Really interesting links thanks!

" FBI entrapped suspects in almost all high-profile terrorism cases in US "

https://www.rt.com/usa/174484-hrw-fbi-sting-entrapment/

Wow! Really interesting and pretty condemning for the extensive modern use in the US, I just wrote a comment about if some of these stings would or should be considered entrapment replying to another user so I wont repeat myself but thanks for that.

In the first two pages of these documents it seems like there's evidence Oswald met with someone involved in the KGB assassination program and a Soviet chauffer reported Soviet involvement with the assassination before and after the event. How does that with your description?

Why wouldn't the government have revealed that information at the time, or 20 years ago? On the other hand, I suppose I have to ask myself why would it have taken them nearly 60 years to fabricate these documents?

I don't know. I wish the government would also realize a summary of the important information and why it was classified for so long. Looking at this stuff a lot of it seems random or meaningless but then I wonder why they didn't declassify it on schedule.

Maybe its the other way around. Him pursuing them, them rebuking.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/534727-woman-ac...

Could be, but I think there are a lot of things about the assassination that belie the description of it as an open and shut simple affair. Potential involvement with the KGB is one of those things.

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