Who do YOU think killed Kennedy? - Page 2

Knowing our government, everything will be crossed out in black by a Sharpie, wih the exception of one sentence:

...Oswald pulled the....

All this, for the interest of national security.

That's how the material comes now. Legally, they have to show us everything.

Or destroy it before we can.

I hope they release a trailer before that. History channel ran a bunch of documentaries with various theories. None are airtight, but most cannot just be discounted. There's too much evidence to support conspiracy.

Something no one's mentioned the behavior of the Secret Service. It's reported that they did not follow procedures nor checked the streets and building prior to the Presidents arrival. It was standard at the time as it is now. There were also a mimimum amount of security allotted (although this can be attributed to JFK not wanting any) and those who did serve that day were partying til 5 in the morning at some bar.

Immediately afterwards, there was a press blackout and what happened to the body in that time is still being disbuted. Evidence was destroyed and hidden. I don't know what the truth is, but I think the House Commitee's investigation found out and when they knew the truth, they agreed that it all had to be buried. They concluded that it probably was a conspiracy, but offered no real answers. Probably because it's still too dangerous to tell.

2038'll roll around and we'll probably find out. By then, none of it will matter. Communism is dead and Vietnam is done. Some other president'll be killed over terrorism and the fun will begin again.

Tell that to China!

Heh, I don't really see them as communist. They are moving towards free markets in a way old school commies never would. They want to join the 21st century and no matter what the rhetoric is, they won't do anything stupid like start a nuclear war. It's all about money now, rhetoric takes a back seat to the all ighty ollar.

Sides, we want them to stay that way. Can you imagine what a free china would mean for us? More jobs lost the way they're flowing to India. There's a billion people there, as americans, its in our interests that those people are kept down and not in our way. They're doing us a favor by oppressing them.

You folks don't know your history. Look into something called the Assassination Records Review Board, established after Stone's film as a result of all the public hooplah over the movie. The Board ceased to exist as of 1998. They de-classified 4 million pages of government documents on the assassination. And guess what? No smoking gun. No evidence of a conspiracy.

As a result of the JFK Records Act of 1992, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was established to, among other things, supervise the timely release of all classified assassination-related records in the federal government's possession. Composed solely of civilians, primarily educators, the ARRB reviewed all classified assassination records and released all such records except those for which the Board determined there existed a legitimate reason to postpone declassification, such as the protection of sources or methods of information gathering.

There are no assassination records being withheld because of the nature of their contents, but that hasn't stopped Jim Garrison's methodological offspring from claiming otherwise. The reason is very simple; those who cannot support their theories with evidence need an excuse. So they claim they would have evidence, if only the government weren't suppressing it. Which is what Jim Garrison himself said for twenty-five years.


Russo continues:

As I had hoped, Stone's film, while completely misleading, created a hurricane of controversy, and made the Congress see the political benefits of freeing the records. . . . As it turned out, public support for the bill was virtually unanimous, many on the outside of the policy-making loop were convinced that total disclosure would indicate the government's role in JFK's assassination, while the politicians they implicated were convinced the released material would vindicate them. The legislation (the so-called JFK Act) passed easily in 1992.

In 1994, the JFK Review Board (mandated by the new law) was seated, and within a year, the documents began flowing. The board ceases to exist on September 30, 1998, and by then, it is estimated that over three million pages will have been released.(4)

Since that time, of course, some may have noticed that Oliver Stone hasn't said a word about those files. That's because they prove his JFK monologue to be little more than hot air; there were no documents withheld because they were "smoking guns" proving the existence of a conspiracy. The House Committee documents, for example, were withheld because Congress customarily seals investigative files from its committees, theoretically to protect those who served as sources of information; and also because HSCA Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey needed to keep the files untouched, to preserve the chain of evidence, in the event the Department of Justice chose to follow-up the HSCA's investigation with a renewed federal investigation.

The simple fact is that government bureaucracies routinely classify all of their records unless compelled to do otherwise.

All the italicized text was taken from here: http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100files.html

Yet they are still ruled by a communist party.

Just playing Devils Advocate here.

Your comments are clear and make sense. I would say the same, but like I said, I'm just sturring the pot.

Back to JFK

From the Boston Globe:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Getting Closer to the Truth About the Death of JFK
Author: By Max Holland
Date: FRIDAY, September 18, 1998

Page: A27

Section: Op-Ed Page


For the federal government, and all Americans, it has been a long, torturous road from the 6th floor of 411 Elm St. in Dallas to the second floor of 600 E St. in Washington. But now these two red brick buildings are irrevocably connected in history as the federal government writes the last chapter of its part in the tragedy which, 35 years ago, struck dumb an entire nation.
Four-eleven Elm Street is more commonly known by the name of its former tenant, the Texas School Book Depository Company. The nondescript building at 600 E St. has no such claim on the national consciousness, though over time the work of one tenant there will do as much or more to shape history -- if reason ever prevails over our paranoia with respect to the assassination of President Kennedy.

For the past four years, five presidential appointees have labored almost anonymously, yet tirelessly, in Suite 208 to make public every significant artifact and document related to Nov. 22, 1963, and its aftermath. Within a matter of days the Assassination Records Review Board, as the appointees are collectively known, will publish its final report and shut down for good on Sept. 30.

Unlike every previous federal effort, however, the review board will not assert a single conclusion, in keeping with its mandate. It will report only what it managed to find. It's up to others to make sense out of the four-million-page collection, assembled at the cost of $8 million to the taxpayers.

While there are 10,000 stories in those documents, including many peripheral to the assassination, it is not premature to ask how, if at all, they affect our understanding of the emotional and political Grand Canyon that opened beneath our gaze in 1963.

Many of the documents have lain open for months already. Whether by accident or design, the review board has shed new light on the genuine Rosetta stone to that weekend in Dallas, namely, the response of Robert F. Kennedy to his brother's murder.

The version heretofore propagated was congenial to the Camelot metaphor, though independent of it. Roughly described, the preferred account has been that Robert Kennedy, attorney general at the time, was so profoundly devastated by the loss that he paid little heed to who was responsible for the assassination. ``Jack's gone and nothing is going to bring him back'' was RFK's refrain whenever he was intermittently pressed on his apparent uninterest in the Warren Commission's investigation.

The truth turns out to be considerably more complicated and interesting. Through the review board's efforts, you can piece together as never before the genuine, underlying reason for Robert Kennedy's uncharacteristic response. His pain was compounded by guilt. Because what occurred in Dallas was roughly what Robert Kennedy hoped and planned to have happen in Havana.

While a dozen documents retrieved and declassified help to build this case, the single most striking is an Oval Office memorandum of conversation dated Jan. 4, 1975, almost 12 years after Dallas. There are only three men in the room that Saturday morning as the discussion begins: Gerald Ford, president for a mere five months; Henry Kissinger, who held unprecedented power as Ford's secretary of state and national security adviser, and Brent Scowcroft, the note-taker (and later a national security adviser in his own right). The urgent, 9:40 a.m. meeting was called because the season of inquiry spawned by Watergate had not exhausted itself. But now the target was not a president but the sacrosanct Central Intelligence Agency, which was hanging in the fire after press reports of ``massive'' wrongdoing.

Kissinger is conveying to Ford the gist of his just-concluded breakfast conversation with former CIA Director Richard Helms, who had been summoned from Tehran to brief the White House about the alleged misdeeds. ``What is happening,'' Kissinger tells the president, ``is worse than in the days of McCarthy. You will end up with a CIA that does only reporting, and not operations.

``Helms said all these stories are just the tip of the iceberg. If they come out, blood will flow. For example, Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro.''

The suggestion has already been made (this memo was opened in July) that the document does not really mean what it states in plain English, that it must be carefully put into context. Yet it is precisely the context that makes this document dispositive. Unless the White House could devise a mechanism, the CIA's days as an instrument of presidential power were numbered. But the president had to have all the facts to act effectively. It is inconceivable that Richard Helms told Henry Kissinger anything less than the full, hard truths as Helms knew them and as Kissinger needed to know them. As Allen Dulles once explained the need-to-know principle, ``I would tell the president of the United States anything . . . I am under his control. He is my boss.''

This truth about Robert Kennedy's bottomless melancholy, which never fully lifted during the reminder of his life, has at least three implications. For one, it helps explain his uninterest in the Warren Commission. Months before that federal panel presented its conclusion -- indeed, probably no later than Christmas 1963 -- he had reached the unavoidable conclusion, relying on his own crack investigators: Oswald, though enamored of Castro, had acted alone and Jack Ruby was a self-appointed vigilante. None of RFK's bete noires -- not Castro, Jimmy Hoffa or the Cosa Nostra -- had anything to do with the Dallas murders. Consequently the Warren Commission was not going to tell him anything he did not already know.

Conspiracy books usually treat John and Robert Kennedy as innocent babes who would not have thought about dirty tricks -- much less assassination plots -- against Castro. But the reality is very different. See:
An earlier article by Max Holland that focusses on Bobby Kennedy's attitude toward Castro and the assassination.
An article by ARRB member Anna Nelson on recent document releases, including one "smoking gun" memo that ties JFK to dirty tricks against Castro.

Indeed, in some respects the Warren Commission's investigation represented a threat, first to the Kennedy administration's image and then to RFK's own political viability. That is the only conceivable reason why Kennedy, when specifically asked by Earl Warren, did not share his knowledge of anti-Castro plotting with the Warren Commission. One is left with the bleak, sobering fact that Robert Kennedy and other high-ranking officials, no less than the CIA, realized that the national interest (as apart from the truth) would not be served by having the Warren Commission delve into and probably expose the plotting.

Rock-solid intelligence proved Castro had nothing to do with Oswald. Therefore, whatever the US government was trying to do was irrelevant to the issue of Oswald's culpability. The same need-to-know principle that compelled full disclosure in 1975 dictated in 1964 that the chief justice and Warren Commission staff be kept in the dark insofar as possible. And so they were.

Robert Kennedy's anguish and predicament turns out to be the metaphor for understanding the aftermath of the assassination. The entire, vast apparatus of the federal government had been put in motion to find out who had murdered a president. But once the facts pointed overwhelmingly in one and only one direction, the truth was portioned out to protect individuals and bureaucracies.

It's not the civic portrait (a government of laws, not men) depicted by high school textbooks. But it is the legacy left behind by the Assassination Records Review Board, and it ought to shift the entire axis of public understanding. Will Americans ever come to terms with this portrait of imperfection, and understand that for all the omissions, their government did not fail in its one supreme duty -- which was to tell the people who had killed their president.

Who can confirm for me that one of the suspected "other" gunmen--specifically, I believe it was one of the "hobos with nice shoes"--was Woody Harrelson's dad?

mmmmildly important "mystery," I'd say...

And almost every single pro-conspiracy piece of evidence in this thread has been either debunked or logically explained away.

Look at it this way. No conspiracy theory can account for all the facts of the case, leaving the conspiracy theorist groping for some nebulous, indeterminate plot against the president.

All the facts of the case can, however, be explained by supposing Oswald acted alone.

The conspiracy might be more appealing, but it just doesn't fit as well as the realistic possibility.

Again, read Posner's book and then definitively explain to me how there was a conspiracy. The book was updated just this year with additional info.

The rational explanation for a lot of things is the chaos that ensued after the shooting. have you seen the footage of reporters and cops swarming the book depository? They were all over the place, poking things around, moving things, smoking, drinking...who knows who left what where? It was a total madhouse, and if it were in court today every bit of that evidence would be thrown out for tampering. The crucial moments of the investigation took place amid mass hysteria. Why do people latch onto these things as legitimate and then spend so much energy trying to disprove them when common sense can dispel so many of them? Pictures of a cigarette pack? What does that prove, really, under those circumstances?

The magic bullet diagram doesn't represent the real positions of the people, and the idea is clearly absurd. Why do people still try to disprove that theory when other, more modern, scientific examples exist that are based on the way things really were?

Jack Ruby walking into the police station - yeah that would seem to suggest that a larger organization was behind the whole thing, but that has nothing to do with Oswald being the shooter. it only suggests that he was a hired gun who got duped into a plan that was much larger than he could fathom, and by the time he maybe began to figure it out, it was too late. Hence, "I'm just a patsy."

Bullets two and three? I guess there's a lot of dispute about when bullets were fired, but in my understanding the first shot missed, the second shot went through Kennedy's throat and several other things, and then Mrs. kennedy had time to lean over and investigate why the President's hands were at his neck before the third shot came.

back and to the left - I've looked over the pictures again and what you can clearly (as is possible) see is a cloud of matter (exit wound) at the President's forehead, followed by a large piece of his forehead falling down in front of his face (exit wound). There is a slight move foreward (impact), followed by the snap backward. It seems completely reasonable to me that if a brain surgeon can turn a person into a puppet just by touching parts of the brain, a bullet plowing its way from back to front (IMO) could cause such a lurch. The "jet effect" theory is considerably more nasty, but also plausible.

Pristine bullets? I don't know, that bullet does show some damage in the picture, and was someone saying that this type was made not to deform? but hell I've heard of pieces of straw going through small birds during a tornado. Stranger things have happened.

And then a whole snowball of eyewitnesses, rumors, and supposed insights into people's characters. This thread has been very educational for me, I've learned a lot more about the assassination. Thank god Al Gore invented the internet so we could have these discussions. Personally I'm more convinced that Oswald was the shooter, but that some greater organization was behind setting it up and then making sure that he would take the fall.

a little off-topic, but a couple weeks ago I saw a music vid that had some people dancing around with JFK and Jackie Kennedy masks on (just paper masks), as well as other faces. The sound was off so I didn't hear the song. it was pretty creepy, but in a really good way. Anyone know that song/video?

Highly engaging read, so far. Seriously. Some great posts.

I'll be dead by 2038..can you guys hurry it up a bit?

At the end of the day it still comes down to one thing.....

Who killed Kennedy?

Again, I don't believe Oswald did it; and I don't think we'll ever really know the whole truth as to who all was involved that did.

Shit, I dunno, was it....

Colonel Mustard in the Spare Bedroom with the Sack Full of Doorknobs?

Is there any real reason why people should still worry deeply about this?

There's enough crazy shit going on for real right now that we really don't need to invent cockamamie conspiracy stories about dead presidents to keep ourselves entertained.

How old are you? 18? 19?
When stuff like this isn't questioned, when people roll over and just accept suspicious behavior by their leaders, that's when these things will happen again.
The idea is to learn from history, not ignore it.
Now go turn off your Xbox and open a book.

Gee, way to tell me off, dingus. Thanks anyway, but try saving your advice till I ask for it. Otherwise it'll probably be as irrelevant to my life as this whole discussion is to anything going on in the world today.

But really, if you want to waste your time on fruitbat conspiracy theories and misty-eyed "what-if" stories about the first dead Kennedy, you go right ahead and change the world like that.

Why bother, right? What's the use? Why question anything? Why try to learn anything? It's irrelevant today. Nothing exists before or beyond today.
Those are the excuses of a lazy mind.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go put on my tin foil hat and wait for the mother-ship to arrive. You are so going to be screwed when the invasion hits!

Doesn't affect us today? The implications are that if there are political and/or industrial forces that can carry out the assasination of an American President and get away with it, then how can we know if anything we're told is true or not. Perhaps it was just one guy, or maybe there's a small group of people who control this country X-files style. How can you even begin to know unless you question it. This is more important today than ever due to the war on terrorism and all the shady things the government is doing right now.

I also understand that people don't care unless it directly affects them. Well, stuff like this usually reverberates down the line. A corrupt government is going to hit you in the balls sooner or later so it important that we do our best to police those in power.

Weak. If you can't get the Al Gore thing right, nobody should bother to hear your assassination "facts" either.

After reading his autobiographies I am firmly in the "LBJ Killed Kennedy" camp.

But that's just me.


1) He (LBJ) had stated with conviction since the age of 6 years old that he would be Prez before he died.

2) All males in his family died young, therefore he expected to die young. (he did)

3) LBJ is the one who screwed up the Bay of Pigs to make Kennedy look bad, but Kennedy's approval numbers never really took a big hit.

4) He knew if Kennedy stayed alive, he would win re-election and therefore LBJ would die before getting a shot at Prez. (very close to true, it turns out)

5) LBJ and Gov. Connelly were very good buddy's, and LBJ repeatedly begged the Gov to ride with him, NOT the Prez during the motor cade.

6) During the film of the shooting, LBJ is the only one who did not immediately duck.

7) Kennedy was going to pull our boys out of Viet Nam, but Johnson was making tons of money by being in bed with the weapons manufactures, and would have crushed economically if we had pulled out.

8) He was a "Disciple of Christ", so, like a lot of people, not really excited about a Roman Catholic Prez (but that was really not a big deal, just more fuel for the fire)

Just my thoughts, but I'm insane.

Yes, you are, but I buy some of those pieces of evidence there. Turns out that LBJ was indeed a nutjob who wanted the war in Nam real bad. It's odd though that he declines a second term when the war starts to go badly. Either he lost his nerve or realized that he fucked up hardcore.

I buy this theory because LBJ is one the few who could've successfully pulled off a coverup. It's a slight flaw in our system as the President would be able to pardon his fellow conspirators, but only so many people could take advantage of something like this.

jesus, what do I have to do, put it in [sarcasm] [/sarcasm] tags for you?

Who killed Kennedy?

Boys influenced by Grand Theft Auto 3.

One quick thing:
Stop the presses! After talking with my local forensic pathologist, I was informed that full metal jacketed bullets (which CE399 supposedly is) do not actually deform much in the human body. When fired at a car door, yes. But only lead tipped or hollow point bullets tend to deform along their longitudinal axis.

Just to correct my own wrong assumptions.

So sorry, but "Case Closed" is not the final word on the assassination. Posner jumps through the same tired hoops that other conspiracy debunkers have had to jump through to reach their conclusions, and many of his indisputable "facts" remain in great dispute despite his arrogant "proof". The real question is what motivates Posner to write this drivel in the first place.

Nice try, but "Case Closed" was soundly debunked and summarily dismissed soon after it was published.

I must admit that as an impressionable teenager, Stone’s JFK left me convinced that Oswald was nothing more than a patsy for shadowy intelligence services.

After researching this incident more thoroughly over the last few years I’m now as certain as I can be that Oswald killed Kennedy, and he acted alone.

Only if he were emplaced in front of JFK's head. Otherwise he didn't act alone.

If the case was closed, then the documents should be readily available to the public to calm everyone down.

I used to think that, but several recent experiments have shown that Kennedy's injuries could have been caused by a shot from the rear.

Joe DiMaggio.

Nice!

If Lee Harvey Oswald returned from the dead and admitted he killed Kennedy alone, there'd still be people who would claim that he didn't.

The same people who've been responsible for every major conspiracy since well, ever. The Knights Templar, which became the Illuminati, which controls the Freemasons. And JFK was killed because he was planning to reveal the truth about area 51 to the american people.

Precisely: it's a load of gangrenous bollocks.

I like my bullocks a little less gangrenous.

Which means you don't know fuck-all about what the "magic bullet" actually did. Tests were run using animal and human cadavers with the exact ammunition fired from the same rifle at the same distance and angle and they did not come out in perfect shape and proportion, as did the "magic bullet". Maybe after a million or so trials they would have, but in the tests the bullets were crushed, flattened, and pushing out of the copper jacket after striking single bones, flesh and even cotton wadding.

That bullet may well have been planted. There's nothing unusual about the police (or other organizations) tweaking up the crime scene in order to make the case against someone that much more concrete. Especially in high-profile cases where the pressure to achieve a conviction is considerable. This kind of practice has been going on for years, and will continue to do so.

With all of the above in mind, the evidence against Oswald is still damning.

The test bullets were flattened by cotton wadding and flesh. Both.

You know exactly what a bullet will do in every single firing, huh? That's some supreme knowledge there.

The tests are available for viewing. Find them.

That's correct. The evidence isn't absolutely conclusive that the bullets came from the TBD, but it's very close. Combine this with the substantial amount of evidence against Oswald already and you’ve got your man.

As for the diagram, at best it's misleading, at worst - downright fraudulent.

For anyone curious about evidence of a "conspiracy," I highly recommend Crossfire by Jim Marrs, and The Killing of a President, by Robert Groden.

Oswald did not act alone at the very less he had the help of JFK. The man was begging for someone to off him. A far as how many others were helping Oswald we will never know.