No amount of document release is gonna convince anyone. "It's in the one they didn't release" or "there are some they're pretending don't exist".
Just something like a bottle nose bullet vs tapered is going to affect penetration and ricochets. The range from the book depository to the limo was not really that far, at the point of impact the bullets had significant amounts of energy. They could easily go through bones yet bounce off steel and repenetrate.
I think the Oliver Stone film did too good a job convincing people bullets magically stop when they hit something. Rifle bullets are often very angry and like to make it everyone else's problem.
I do see them quoted as saying "these were not hard shots to make," but no expert riflemen at the FBI could get off 3 accurate shots in the 6.5 seconds it would take to make the Commission's report true.
I've seen "experts" try to tell me that shooting a melon makes it recoil in the direction of the shooter, to attempt disprove the fatal headshot from the front. Again, this flies directly in the face of experience with anyone who has shot guns for fun. This just does not happen. So was it faked? Was it a one time thing? Who knows! It was an "expert," but it sure as heck doesn't square with my experience. And it sure as hell doesn't explain Jackie picking up pieces of John's skull from the trunk lid.
But this really gets to the heart of why we can't agree on anything any more: you can always find an expert who tells you what you think should be true.
If you want to believe that the magic bullet caused several wounds in 2 people, bouncing off bones at sharp angles, then exit the second victim -- it wasn't recovered in Connelly -- and wind up on the gurney of the FIRST victim, in almost pristine form, without even being covered in blood, then I can't help you. It doesn't require credentialed expertise in firearms or ballistics to know that's horse puckey.
Myself, I think Occam's Razor applies here, but not in the way you do. I find it far MORE believable that there was a conspiracy, with multiple shooters, than I do the AMAZING number of ballistical miracles it would take to make the lone gunman story work.
Why would an expert rifleman not be able to get off three accurate shots in 6.5 seconds? What am I missing?
There is a ton of circumstantial evidence backing this theory? up too. The goal seemed to be to gain control over a Government organization that since the 30s had grown to act with basically no oversight. They were an international group with enormous power and wanted to keep that power and expand it. The Kennedy administration was trying to provide that oversight and roll it back.
The Bay of Pigs and the continued oversight along with the belief that Kennedy was somehow a Catholic communist sympathizer with connections to Russia. It's really fascinating to read those accusations in hind sight.
Then consider that after Kennedy, Nixon was very friendly towards the supranational intelligence service and after Carter, the CIA Director was even Reagan's VP, then became President himself for four years.
He lost the next election to someone with clear CIA ties from the drug running happening in Arkansas as he was governor. The story behind the movie American Made is incredible. So, Bill Clinton then became President for 8 years with many of this same group from the Defense Dept and CIA who had been in executive power for decades. Rumsfeld, Bush, Clintons, etc. Bipartisan even...
So what do you get after the Clintons? Another Bush who had control for 8 years.
Then consider how history might have been different if Kennedy was able to reign in the CIA, work with the Soviet Union to avoid escalation in Vietnam and then maybe the executive branch would not have been captured by CIA linked people for over the next few decades.
Anyway, we will all likely never know the full story but all of this seems more than plausible to me.
End rant!
> Gets assassinated
> CIA-linked people magically take presidency for decades
Nothing suspicious here at all, conspiritards!
It seems clear they don't want us to know something.
Now, it could be more or less political, or personal, or something ultimately mundane, but the conspiracy theorists can make it anything they want of it.
I suggest there might have been something really complicated wherein nobody could point the finger fully at any group, but that the CIA was doing something sketchy, funding the wrong people, Johnson new about it but only in superficial terms, someone somewhere took it too far, it got out of hand and that the truth is just too damaging to the state (and various agencies) itself so they want to keep it hidden.
"If they are innocent they would not to fight the charges so much"
If an innocent person held some information in their literal pocket, that they could very simply reveal to the world, at no cost to themselves, which proved their innocence of some crime unambiguously - but refused to do so and instead chose to stand trial for some offence - it would be entirely rational to be suspect.
This is why in some cases 'pleading the 5th' can be considered as evidence towards guilt.
The government is more than aware of the vast conspiracies surrounding the incident, not only do they have a responsibility towards transparency in any event, it's even more important in this case.
There's a 100% chance they are hiding something - otherwise they wouldn't hide it.
So the question boils down to only what they are hiding: mundane administrative information? or 'The CIA did it!'? I suggest it's more towards the former than the later, but not all the way. I'm put it at 90% chance there were at least some shenanigans, but I don't think it was as bad as 'the CIA ordered his death' kind of thing. But there were shenanigans.
Many of the documents they've given us are 50% redacted. There's so many redactions it's almost hard to follow the content of said documents. They managed to release something while also releasing nothing.
Wat? This is how declassification works.
Henry Kissinger is 99. Plenty of people from that era are still alive.
More importantly, if there's information on specific CIA informants in there, their networks and the people they recruited may well have survived them.
To paraphrase Pulp Fiction, "When you conspiracy theorists get together, you're worse than a sewing circle."
I suspect the remaining redactions are because they're waiting for certain people to pass away. Probably not major players but there could be people who were in their 20's or 30's in 1963 who had some knowledge of what happened. Once they've all died off it will be forever impossible to prove anything because anything really damning would never have been written down or the records would have been destroyed years ago.
"The Loyd Jowers Trial (officially the King family vs. Loyd Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators) was an American civil suit brought by the family of Martin Luther King Jr. against Loyd Jowers, following his claims of a conspiracy in the assassination of the civil rights leader in 1968. The jury would eventually decide in 1999 that there was a conspiracy perpetrated by Jowers and other conspirators."
There’s a very good podcast, The MLK Files, investigating the conspiracy surrounding his killing - one of those black policemen was interviewed on the podcast, along with many other people.
Some other inconvenient facts about his assassination are the facts that the rifle claimed to be used in the killing is physically incapable of firing the bullet that killed MLK, a fact recorded in the FBI ballistics report along with a note that the gun should never be re-tested.
The other interesting fact is the man convicted of the killing adamantly denies pulling the trigger, but acknowledges being part of the conspiracy- which is why he pled guilty. Prior to the killing he escaped from jail, and was provided a fake US passport by other conspirators to help him smuggle items from Canada to the US.
And this is only scratching the surface, there is so much more documented information on the killing, like the relationship between Hoover’s #2 and his known relationship with the Dixie Mafia that dominated Memphis at the time.
Since you seem to have a familiarity with Jowers, I’d encourage you to listen to the podcast. Jowers testimony is discussed, but it is far from the only piece of evidence examined. It’s not even the main evidence cited, there are a lot of other witnesses whose testimony was never examined or who were threatened into silence.
These are the sorts of facts that would heavily benefit from a reputable citation. The closest thing to your assertion on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_... is that it'd be hard to sight because of some missing metal shims, which may've been lost while in FBI posession rather than in Oswald's.
In a later appeal Ray’s lawyers argued that the bullet didn’t match the gun, and attempted to have that sustained in court. The government witness was questioned by the judge. This judge was removed from the case shortly after questioning the government witness because he “lost his impartiality”. The new judge in the case threw out the motion without any explanation.
Here is the judge being removed from the case: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/08/us/judge-in-king-case-rem...
Here is that same judge explaining that he believes Ray did not kill King - he also claims the Memphis Homicides Unit official report on the case come to the same conclusion, that Ray did not kill MLK: https://youtu.be/HcJ_szc3TEA
Here is the FBI failing to prove the bullet came from the same gun: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/12/us/tests-of-gun-in-king-k...
In reading over the case, you should note that Ray was never tried in open court, despite his many attempts to do so.
Also notable is from the testimony of the store owner who sold Ray a gun, which Ray came back later to return for another, claiming he was told it was the “wrong gun.” It was wrong in the sense that it was the wrong caliber to match the rifle used to kill King, but the conspirators didn’t realize it was also the wrong rifling.
Again, this is only a very small sample of the massive amounts of evidence that points towards a conspiracy.
Since you sound interested I’d encourage you to listen to the MLK Tapes podcast, they examine all available evidence and weigh the credibility of every piece, with the balance of probability being that MLK was murdered by Memphis’s Dixie Mafia with assistance from the FBI and the Memphis Police Department.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
It's possible that "yep, it was a conspiracy" will be confirmed if new data is found/released. That's something it's possible to prove.
It's not possible to prove there wasn't a conspiracy.
The House Subcomittee on Assassinations in the 1970's determined the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, they just didn't determine who did it.
I'm not sure what you consider mainstream of official, but I don't think there is a real mainstream or official view. I have read lots of Cold War histories and there isn't a clear historical consensus on who killed JFK. Certainly not on who actually pulled the trigger.
The question of who killed JFK is a historical question now. In the past it was a whodunit, or a murder mystery, but that this point it is definitely a question of history that will forever be debated by historians.
Is there link to a good source on this. That's pretty much my understanding and it would be nice to have a good reference to counter the lone gunman idea.
Bullshit. "Everyone knows" there was one shooter: Oswald, and he was killed.
So he claimed, yes.
Jack Ruby was once again let to die in a prison before he could testify in a proper court. So many convenient ends disappear...
A little too convenient, don't you think?
Ruby was not afraid of the consequences? He couldn't wait for the judicial system to pronounce the death sentence? (which was very likely if Oswald was indeed the killer). If he loved the president so much, didn't he want to know if there were others involved, so they could be punished as well?
I think it is very unlikely that Jack Ruby's actions were borne of impulsiveness.
But the "benefit of the doubt" isn't necessary here. The theory that CIA recruited Oswald specifically to assassinate JFK has been conclusively proven wrong. The magic bullet theory has been conclusively proven wrong. That the USSR had evidence that the CIA assassinated JFK has been conclusively proven wrong. This has been studied in tedious amount of detail.