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Comment by beepbooptheory | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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?

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...

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

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

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.

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.

> 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...

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.

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