I’m an absolute sucker for conspiracy theories. I know that they’re far-fetched at best, and absolutely insane at worst, but I can’t help myself from getting sucked in whenever I read them. We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, an event that inspires more theories than perhaps any other in history. Some are wilder than others but I find them pretty fascinating. Here are five of the most popular theories:
1) The CIA had Kennedy killed. The CIA was running amok during Kennedy’s time in office. Scandals such as the Bay of Pigs fiasco embarrassed the agency and Kennedy was fed up with them. The theory goes that the CIA was scared Kennedy was going to abolish the agency so they preemptively decided to take him out. This one seems pretty hard to support as any links between Oswald and the CIA are tenuous at best.
2) The mob killed him. Kennedy’s brother Robert was extremely aggressive in prosecuting organized crime as the attorney general. Furthermore the mob was angry with Kennedy for failing to take out Fidel Castro who had shut down mob-run casinos in Havana. Jack Ruby, the man who shot Oswald two days after the assassination, had mob connections as did Oswald himself.
3) The sniper on the grassy knoll. In the famous Zapruder film, some believe that you can see the President hit by shots fired from the knoll. Dallas police officers also recalled encountering people with Secret Service credentials on the knoll despite the fact that at that time there were no agents actually in Dealey Plaza by the knoll. While this theory remains very popular, the National Academy of Sciences debunked it by saying the sounds likely were not gunshots but rather an idling motorcycle engine.
4) Secret Service agent George Hickey accidentally shot the President. This theory states that agent Hickey’s weapon went off during the commotion and fired the bullets that killed the President. This theory is prominent in Bonar Menniger’s book, “Mortal Error”, and is backed up by several people recalling the smell of gunpowder on street level at the time of the assassination.
5) The lone gunman theory. This theory goes that Oswald was a disturbed individual who had radical political and social views that caused him to snap and assassinate the President. The Warren Commission concluded that this was what actually happened, but today the majority of Americans believe that the assassination was part of a greater conspiracy.
Frankly I lean towards either the lone gunman theory or the Hickey theory. I base that opinion on more gut feeling than anything else as most of the information is very circumstantial. The theories are fun to think about but it’s possible that we will never know for sure. More documents related to the assassination will be released in 2017 so I guess we’ll have to wait till then.
Ok my little 3 second attention span goldfish, read this in its entirety.....and then think before responding. Let's begin.
Oswald was the typical antisocial loner with mental problems and had gone to the USSR hoping to work for them and they rejected him because he had been an American soldier: they thought he was a spy. When he got back to the US, he was interrogated by the CIA because they thought that he was now a Soviet spy. But the reality was that he was an aging unemployed loser who's wife had left him, and who desperately wanted to be a communist because he felt so rejected in America. So, being of sound mind?, he decided to take it upon himself to do something radical. Most likely, he had help from Castro given Kennedy had just tried to assasinate Castro, and so Fidel wanted revenge. Given the timing, only a short time after the Cuban Missile Crises, the government realized that telling the full story to the American public might lead to calls for war (nuclear war) with Cuba and ultimately the USSR, so they just stonewalled everyone hoping that people's grief and rage would die down before doing something very very very rash....and people did calm down. The CIA didn't kill Kennedy because he gave them more power than any other president in history so they loved him. Jack Ruby killed Kennedy partly because Ruby had serious self control issues but mostly because he had known Oswald and was extremely angry at him for shooting Kennedy.
The mob then had Ruby whacked because the last thing they wanted was a trial and ensuing spotlight shone on the fact that Ruby had been the one (in cooperation with the CIA) to try to overthrow Castro...it would be an diplomatic disaster. Oswald had used Ruby to get the connections to Castro, and the mob was involved only because they had lost their business in Cuba (see "the Godfather" for for a general idea). Oswald said he was just a patsy because in fact he was: Castro had offered logistical support, but Oswald, in his delusional mindset, had conflated this to mean he was part of the overall Soviet agenda. In fact, he was not, and the Russians were horrified because war seemed a likely possibility. The Soviets hated us but everyone understood that nuclear war had no winner. You also have to understand that the borders were very porous in those days and the Gulf of Mexico / Florida were hotspots for American/Cuban trasits of all types: mafia, intelligence agencies, drugs, you name it. So the underworld was very murky....but everyone in it knew each other.
Oswald was OF COURSE able to pull off the assassination because he was an expert marksman in the military: three shots in a few seconds is no big deal to a sniper. Go find one and ask them. People reporting "other" US intel on the grassy knoll and whatnot saw US Secret Service agents who were trying to protect the president. Obviously, they failed. All the details of the shooting (back and to the side....back and to the side....back and to the side) are deliberate distortions of people who want to believe in a conspiracy. Facts are, when people get shot, shit flies randomly everywhere and overthinking it isn't worth it.
Now, here's where it gets twisted. Since the gov't wasn't talking, people assumed all sorts of things. It is very scary to think that the most powerful man on earth can be killed by some borderline crazy individual, and so people choose not to believe the truth. Or, they let their imaginations run wild. Others simply will believe anything but the truth when it comes to politics and there's nothing you can do to reach them. The government of course took advantage of the fear and loathing that this conspiracy held over people's minds in order to increase their influence: people fear the gov't and the gov't takes advantage of that. Remove the fear, and you see it for what it is.
Sorry, there's no master plan here, just a bunch of pathological people. If you want the best explanation of that period of history, the Discovery channel did a great documentary dismantling this conspiracy theory (and others) point by point in great detail. I already talk to much here, so you do the homework. If you want to be well informed, look it up and decide for yourself. Exploring alternate explanations is a good thing but ultimately, you have to face reality. Viewing things through the mindset of a skeptical conspiracy theorist is a useful tool.....but you have to accept when your thesis is wrong.
Move on with your lives. 911 wasn't a gov't job (they were just lazy and incompetent), we actually did land on the moon, Elvis is dead, and no there are no evil lizard people running the world no matter what David Icke or prisonplanet say.
But I do believe in aliens :)
Don't listen to UFO, he's probably a government agent.
You absolutely must read the following book. But I warn you: keep a box of tissues handy, because this is conspiracy porn of the highest order:
Dr. Mary's Monkey: How the Unsolved Murder of a Doctor, a Secret Laboratory in New Orleans and Cancer-Causing Monkey Viruses are Linked to Lee Harvey ... Assassination and Emerging Global Epidemics
On a side note, the EO11110 theory bears a strikingly similar psychological profile to the desperation of gold standard kooks trying to grab for straws before their whole flawed belief system crashes in the face of how things actually are. It's just a metal, and the gold standard is far more worthless than the fiat standard (and fiat currency is backed not only by our guns....it's backed directly by the entire economy and is more a part of it than any silly metal, so put that in your pipe and shmoke it). Short Paulson's fund when he starts hawking Au.
Sorry, I'm no fun. The simple reality is that I believed this stuff once and had to think my way out of that black hole. I only hope that someone in that sad, deluded state of mind reads what I wrote and takes in hope the realization that.....yes, reality is what it looks like and we are not in The Matrix
Besides, everyone knows the Fed had him killed for Executive Order 11110.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11110
The only one I even think twice about is the CIA one. And if the CIA did it, nobody will ever find out.
And who was the head of the CIA at the time? Daddy Bush. Hmmm....
Errr Bush was in the 70s, McCone was the man at the time
God damnit. I'm a conspiracy junkie too. I predict that there are going to be some long rants that I can't avoid.
To an answer your question...no way he acted alone. Even John Kerry doesn't think Oswald acted alone, as he said last month.
Maybe we'll actually find out when the records are finally unsealed in 2017.
I'm with DB Cooper. I mean, we haven't even found you yet after your epic jump.
I did it.
Jim Garrison's former law partner is an old drinking buddy of mine (true story). The only thing I can confirm unequivocally is that Garrison had a prosthetic crank, and it was enormous.
You guys are all insane,but i do believe in aliens :)
Hahahaha! Brilliant.
LOL Garrison was discharged from the military for mental issues and his key witness in his Kennedy case gave most of his testimony from information conjured up during a session of hypnosis. Combine this with Garrison's long and well documented record of making arrests without evidence or due process. Clay Shaw was a major in the Army before his business career, and there was basically no evidence to show that he was involved beyond the ramblings of a small handful of mental patients with no actual evidence at all, let alone proof.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shaw
It bothers me that an entire generation has grown up choosing to believe a fiction instead of using their brains. Chalk it up to the 60's maaaan
It's been proven that it was physically impossible for a single shooter to have hit both Kennedy and John Connally with a single shot. While yes a bullet can travel through one solid object (person) and leave the object at a different angle than it entered it is not possible for the bullets entrance hole in the next solid object to be similar than the previous entrance hole. Even with a full metal jacket round the bullets shape will deform. The angle at which the rounds were fired from the library are too extreme for the flight path to have entered Kennedy in the neck and shoulder region while on the move and then have hit Connally so high up in his chest and then have been able to hit him in the thigh as well. That would have required the bullet to hit Kennedy, then come close to travelling parallel with the ground and then after leaving Conally's chest turn sharply downward to hit him in the thigh.
Secondly, according to physics an object in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by another force. The shots from the library would have come from the rear for Kennedy's head to travel in the motion it did on the second impact the energy source (bullet) would have had to come from the direction Kennedy was facing. The only way his head could have moved in that direction while being hit from behind is for his head to first have traveled forward and then once it reached the stretch limit of his neck it could have snapped backwards due to his muscles ability to retain energy and act like a spring to jerk the head backwards. However at the time of the second impact there was no initial forward motion. According to the laws of motion it would be physically impossible for Kennedy to have been shot from behind on the second impact.
You are free to believe what ever you like, however there are explanations and theories given that can not under any circumstances be verified by physics. The chances that one person was able to pull this off is so close to zero that any rational person can assume it is impossible. Even if there only was one shooter (Oswald) the shooter would have had to have help from people with inside knowledge.
I always thought that our shape shifting reptilian overlords from Niburu carried out the assassination so they could take control of the worlds gold and use it to power their nazi spaceships so they could fly back to their base on the dark side of the moon because their current base inside our hollow earth was under siege by mole people, who were under the control of the annunaki.
I must admit that the weird side of youtube is pretty entertaining and if the theories were turned into sci-fi movies and or tv shows it would be awesome.
3 shot is a few seconds with a bolt action rifle is most definitely a big deal. Particular with the level of accuracy required to make those shots count.
They tried to recreate it a couple of years ago and some of the best shots on earth had trouble doing it.
Some people think LBJ was behind it.
I think this is one of those things where we'll never know exactly what happened. Personally, I think it's Oswald on his own based on having been to Dealey Plaza. The grassy knoll, in my unprofessional opinion, makes for a terrible shot and terrible cover.
@ hpm - no, it's two shots in 12 seconds. There was plenty of time to line up the first shot. Average of 1.5 seconds to chamber a round and 4.5 seconds to line up the shot for the next two. Plenty of people I've talked to who have the same USMC sharpshooter designation as Oswald did aren't particularly impressed with the shot. My dad had this designation and he used to laugh that "a lot of non-Marines couldn't make that shot so they think it's impossible." Under 400 yards with a scope from a location he picked himeself? If he hit multiple 600 yard shots with irons only, or if he had only done light training in the Air Force with pea shooters, then yeah I could see people being skeptical. And it's not like all three landed perfectly, say two in the heart and one in the head....they were scattered.
@ heister - ever deer hunt and find the bullet from your neck shot in its back knee? It goes in, deforms, bounces off shattering bones, maybe fragments depending on the type of round used. It's a total mess. Also, sometimes on head shots, the bullet slows down after initial entry and bounces off the back of the skull instead of penetrating, thus generating a forward movement as the momentum shifts. A dude I grew up with who shot a lot of people during his service time said he saw all sorts of weird shit when his targets got hit, body parts flew in every direction and it wouldn't surprise him if the head had gone back, forward, to the side, or simply exploded.
It fits within the conceptual framework I laid out above that there is a chance that Oswald had another shooter involved, again, likely supplied with support from Castro. Even more reason for the gov't to clam up...tensions were still high after the '62 crisis and J Q moron public would have wanted war. Why the US never just whacked Castro outright is beyond me, it's not like he had any significant protection after about 1980 and no one really could have stopped us.
Ill just leave this quote here for you and your Dad to discuss later.
In fresh tests of the Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action weapon, supervised by the Italian army, it was found to be impossible for even an accomplished marksman to fire the shots quickly enough
@UFOInsider: Fun fact--JFK, CS Lewis, and Alduous Huxley all died on the same day (Nov 22). Coincidence?
Whoops, wrong number. Run the numbers again though: lots of time to lind up first shot. 4 seconds for each additional shot. Even assume 2 seconds to chamber a round and 2 seconds to line up a shot. If he was changing his frame of reference or going for multiple targets, then the difficulty goes up, but he's simply snapping back to take aim at the exact same target. Again, if iron sights at 6, yeah that's tough. A scope at 175 feet to 265 is really not beyond reasonable, and again...they didn't all land dead on.
I have no idea how impressive or not the USMC designation is, I'm not a soldier. As for comparing the Italian army to the US military...well, I have no idea. My honest perception is that they are vastly inferior. The larger point is that Oswald wasn't some hack. He put plenty of time into getting good at shooting. So, while I wouldn't make that shot I'm not really mystified by Oswald's performance.
....and yeah, Marines tend to be blowhards when they compare their abilities to other services so maybe what he and the others said was tongue in cheek? I dunno.
@ ITF - they were abducted by aliens :D
I'm simply saying that he was well above the average person in shooting ability, as evidenced by the credential. And what's to say that he didn't continue to practice without getting an even tougher credential? Plenty of guys spend more time in the range than they need and could probably qualify for all sorts of credentials....and most Marines I know tend to like shooting and spend a lot of time practicing when they can.
Again: 200 feet with a scope on a target moving 11 MPH or whatever, and basically only getting two out of three to really count? I'd venture to guess that the young men out in the field in the middle east make incredible shots all the time that aren't as famous, but I'm just not convinced that this was "completely impossible". The one where the sniper picked off a Taliban at 1 mile or whatever....THAT was an impossible shot. 200 yards though? Really? I just don't agree.
@UFOInsider 's username is starting to make so much more sense.
CBS employed 2 professional shooters and neither could get the shots off in time.
I'm curious, just because I don't understand guns all that well:
Is it possible for an expert marksman who lives with that type of long gun to get those shots off where another expert marksman who doesn't regularly use that type of weapon can't?
I shoot plenty of bolt action rifles. Its quite difficult to fire, chamber, fire, chamber, fire in under 9 seconds let alone actually aim at anything stationary. When you add in a moving target, that is at a pretty extreme angle the shot becomes almost impossible. The point I was making about the physics are the extreme changes in angle that would have to happened in the single shooter situation. Documentaries have been done on how the bullet would have had to have traveled for that to be realistic. Not only would the bullet need to have changed angles drastically in the bodies but would have also had to travel in a curved path in the air to reach Conally and match the impact with the back of the seat.
Imagine shooting at a moving target like that in Halo or Call of Duty or whatever. It would be dang hard. Not saying impossible, I'm just saying I suck at those games.
Here it is, it was History Channel.
http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Jennings-Reporting-Assassination-Conspiracy…
There's another that does a pretty goob job of summing things up, when I find it I'll post as well. I absolutely love conspiracy theories and some are real (re: Operation Overlord). Hey, in a few years the whole file will be declassified and I can't wait to see what's in there!
I once (thought I) saw some fat, powerfully nonathletic, college kid make a halftime half court shot, in the process earning himself free Pizza Hut for a year (I don't imagine the year ended well from a cholesterolic perspective). After observing many of the all-time greats miss from half court, I began to understand that I had witnessed an elaborate conspiracy. An obvious lie to convince the sheeple to eat more Pizza Hut (when common sense and functioning taste buds would advise otherwise).
Agreed, I've voiced my opinion on this and Patrick keeps deleting those comments
Just for the record (as a former jarhead) Sharpshooter =/= Expert. There are three levels of marksmanship in the Marines, and in ascending order they are Marksman, Sharpshooter, and Expert. It more than strains credulity that an expert could pull that off with a bolt action rifle, much less a sharpshooter.
Think Oswald no-scoped Kennedy?
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