Posted on 11/23/2003 6:40:47 AM PST by GaryL
CNN reporter Kelly Wallace stands in Dallas' Dealey Plaza and points to the Texas School Book Depository window where, she says, Lee Harvey Oswald is "thought'' to have shot President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 -- 40 years ago Saturday. Then she and the anchor chat about the various conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination and conclude that the truth will probably never be known.
That's nonsense. And worse, it's popular nonsense. The truth is known. Oswald, acting alone, murdered JFK. We know this with as much certainty as we know anything in history. And just as we don't speak of the "alleged Civil War'' or the "supposed sinking of the Titanic,'' so to give credence to the lingering and numerous wild theories about the assassination of JFK is an unwise pandering to folklore and uncritical thinking.
Rather than continue to ask if there is any validity to these imaginings, we should wonder why they are so popular in the first place.
Several answers come to mind. People equate skepticism with independence. If the government says the sky is blue, a certain slice of the population would begin to doubt it. People also seek meaning in their lives. The idea of random tragedy, of a lone lunatic being able to destroy a man such as John F. Kennedy, is difficult to accept. They would rather cling to enticing accidents of history -- did you know that Richard M. Nixon was in Dallas the day before the assassination? -- than face a world where bad things happen for no reason at all.
Credulous media coverage by shallow reporters makes the situation worse. Balancing unequal arguments seems like fairness to them. Thus the Warren Report is weighed against Oliver Stone's fevered fantasies, just as science is pitted against UFO fanatics or, occasionally, the historical record of World War II is forced to justify itself to Holocaust deniers.
There is a human need to see order in chaos. We see it in every corner of human experience. It's what causes us to see animal figures in the stars. But the beauty of Western Civilization is that we have a commitment to empirical reality, and dry fact tells us that, despite the desires of our hearts, Elvis is not alive. The Jews don't run the world. And Kennedy was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.
The Italians have a word, "dietrologia,'' which translates as the tendency to find shadowy motives behind the obvious. That is what is going on here. Oswald was a skilled marksman. He shot Kennedy at what amounted, for him, at close range. The endless skepticism and analysis are a waste of time, and, worse, they distract attention that might otherwise be devoted to the actual trials and triumphs of Kennedy's short-lived, long-ago administration. Forty years is long enough for wild speculation to be indulged. It's time to stop humoring the conspiracy buffs.
They seem to be as lazy as can be. There doesn't seem to be much investigative reporting going on to me. What's happened to them?
OReilly was all over some guy the other day, a "reporter" for some fluff magazine, who was defending Jacko. OReilly said, "don't you know you're supposed to be skeptical, that's your job?" Or words very close to that.
.....The deconstruction of conspiracy theory seems to be a cottage industry in literary circles........
J.F.K.'s.....Lee Harvey Oswald.... 'is' .....Harry _ Potter...?
The Warren Commission.....is......Harry Potter's School of.............??
The Media............is....................??
Rabbi says,.........it,......is........Tradition!
Thanksgiving Holiday Tradition,........no?
The DPD detectives universally believe that Oswald did it, that they had sufficeint evidence to convict him AND get the death penalty - THAT'S a pretty strong belief STILL voiced to this day in interviews of those detectives.
Bang.
Shot down.
The Kennedy assassination records have never been closed to official government investigators. They are only sealed from the public at large. I would open my IRS records for an IRS audit, but I would not post them here on FR for everyone to look at.
I don't believe any of the stories we were fed by the government about the reasons for the records to have been sealed.
The stated reason is to protect the privacy of the Kennedy family.
1. If there is nothing for the government to hide, why did they have to be sealed? This is not a privacy issue, these are historical public records, developed and collected at the public expense. We own them and we have a right to them.
It IS a privacy issue. The 2000 census return forms are "historical public records, developed and collected at the public expense. We own them [as well] and we have a right to them" too you know. Just as with the Kennedy records, they will be released when the people involved are dead. After that they will be available to their descendents and the American people.
2. If we buy into the notion that the records were sealed to protect the family, then why only a period of 75 years?
Because all of the direct relatives of JFK are expected to be dead by then.
Why not forever?
WTF? What point would that serve? You just got finished arguing the opposite.
IMO, 75 years is a convenient period of time for all of the principals involved in the assassination to be dead, as well as most Americans who were alive at the time.
Well, duh. That's the whole point that that is a time period for the immediate family members to no longer be with us. Do you seriously think that the present generation would overthrow the government if they found out LBJ was involved, but your children would not -- that they would simply flip over to watch "Terminator 12" on the other channel after hearing that LBJ was involved way back when on the news? Get real.
Why have they chosen 70 years as the time to keep census records sealed? Why not forever? Same reason here.
Gee, they did a PRETTY GOOD job of tracking Oswald on the streets there in Oak Cliff GIVEN that description ... WHAT do you want to bet the man who watched Tippet get shot IDENTIFIED Oswald in a lineup?
(CONVICTIONS are NOT made on the basis of 'descriptions' but by IDENTIFICATION of the guilty by a sworn WITNESS'S testimony. It ALSO helps that they recovered Oswald's .38 on him and they later matched hammer-marks to that "bored out" .38)
Oswald was a stable individual who lived his entire life observing the laws of this land and earning a living to provide a loving home for his lovely wife whom he met and married in Fort Worth.
You're right - he had no motive or motivation WHATSOEVER to 'go off' the deep end.
It sounds like some on this thread would eliminate all that excess baggage and just execute suspects based on the detectives conclusions about their guilt...
MORE: mcadams.posc.mu.edu/organ1.htmThe Oswald Agenda
By Jerry OrganIt's interesting to speculate on how much of Dealey Plaza would have survived if not for the assassination. The old Art-Deco Bryon Colonnade might have been deemed an eyesore and replaced with a strip mall. The Depository would have been just another worthless and antiquated warehouse, long-ago demolished in favor of a parking lot.
The saviour of Dealey Plaza wasn't a committee of cultural elitists and architectural experts. No politicans or businessmen saw potential in such a cause. Even the saviour didn't have preservation on his mind when he approached the Depository early on the morning of November 22, 1963. Destruction and mayhew were his goals.
Oswald had no Motive?
Over the years, critics have made much of the Warren Commission's "failure" to assign a specific motive to Lee Harvey Oswald. However, the Commission acknowledged it "has functioned neither as a court presiding over an adversary proceeding nor as a prosecutor determined to prove a case, but as a factfinding agency committed to the ascertainment of the truth." The Commission differentiated itself from a court with a prosecutor advancing a motive for the accused. Suggesting a singular motive would have meant speculation, which was not in the Commission's mandate of strict factfinding.A review of Oswald's background and writings comprise Chapter VII of The Warren Report called "Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives." The Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 noted the conclusions of this chapter, adding: "Politics was the dominant force in his life right down to the last days when upon being arrested for the assassination, he requested to be represented by a lawyer prominent for representing Communists."
Socialist to Revolutionary
Oswald was a self-proclaimed Marxist since adolescence who deflected to the USSR in 1959 on his own initiative, offering to trade on his military experience with the Marines. Oswald's ideal of a Soviet utopia was immediately soured by bureaucratic indifference, causing Oswald to adopt revolutionary Marxism as opposed to institutionalized Leninism, perhaps inspired by some Cuban students he befriended while living in Minsk. By the time Oswald and his Russian-born wife Marina leave the USSR in June 1962, Oswald sees in the Castro revolution a truer form of socialism -- one not corrupted by Soviet Communist Party Officials and their perks.Ironically, Oswald, as he planned the assassination of Dallasite General Walker ' an outspoken critic of Castro -- might have been expecting the act would ensure for him a prominent position in Havana, where he planned to eventually defect. The nighttime attempt on Walker on April 10, 1963 failed when Oswald's bullet was deflected by a window frame.
That summer, while living in New Orleans, Oswald was very active in defending Castro through leafletting and debating on radio. Oswald apparently tried to infiltrate some anti-Castro elements, perhaps to gather intelligence to impress Havana. All this effort turned out to be for nothing when Oswald was rejected at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City in early October -- a dejected Oswald wrote the Soviet embassy in Washington about the episode in a letter mailed November 12.
Oswald may have read David Harker's September 1963 interview with Castro that appeared in major US newspapers, quoting Castro as saying: "United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe."
Jean Davison, in the 1983 book Oswald's Game, suggests Oswald could have read in The Militant -- the Socialist Workers' newspaper which he subscribed to -- of Castro's suspicions of US -- sponsored assassination attempts against him by the US, and acted in retaliation. Oswald would show Castro what a great revolutionary he missed out on.
Oswald Liked Kennedy?
Critics assert Oswald apparently "liked" President Kennedy, so why would he kill him? But place yourself into the mindset of a Marxist revolutionary; in 1918, there were many among the butchers of the Romanov family who "liked" them as people. Oswald cast aside any admiration for JFK as a person, seeing assassination as an opportunity to advance a greater cause. To Oswald, Kennedy was probably seen as a privileged politician who refused to condemn McCarthyism during the 1960 election, had dragged his feet on civil rights, humiliated Castro in the Missile Crisis, permitted far-right and anti-Castro extremism (as personified by General Walker) to increase, ordered the largest buildup of US Armed Forces in peacetime history, called for a 1,000 ICBMs, etc. This was before the canonization of Kennedy that followed his death ? by the fall of 1963, JFK was receiving a lot of criticism from both the right and left.The Patsy
The JFK movie presented Oswald as a "fall guy." But how does a "patsy" improve his predicament by murdering a police officer, then attempting to murder the arresting officers? A genuine patsy would be anxious to turn himself into the police; betraying whoever he thought set him up would presumably work in his favor.Instead of co-operating, Lee Oswald retrieves the revolver at his rooming house, eludes police as much as possible, then resorts to homicide when his path crosses that of authorities. In the pages of The Militant, all police were painted as thugs ? Oswald didn't think he would survive arrest.
Critics conveniently fail to disclose the full context in which Oswald announced he was a "patsy" as he passed reporters in the halls of the Dallas Police Department:
"They're taking me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm only a patsy."Now, you might ask: What does Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union have to do with the reasons for his arrest at the Texas Theatre? Not a thing. Oswald was already posturing for the political trial he envisioned, becoming the typical political prisoner: victim of police brutality, denied an attorney, and railroaded for being a Marxist.
As soon as Oswald found a like-minded attorney, he would teach the world a thing or two about revolutionary Marxism. Oswald tried unsuccessfully that weekend to contact John Abt, a New York lawyer commended in The Militant for his work with the US Communist Party; Abt happened to be out-of-town at an isolated cottage in Connecticut.
Curtain Rods and a Ring
On Thursday, November 21st, Oswald, catching a ride with co-worker Wesley Frazier, unexpectedly visited his wife overnight at Ruth Paine's house in Irving. Marina knew the rifle was stored in Paine's garage but never suspected that as the reason for the visit. The next morning, Oswald left behind ? in an old wallet kept at the Paine house ? nearly all his savings: $170. Nearby remained his wedding ring.Oswald was observed placing a wrapped package on the backseat of Frazier's car for the trip to work. Frazier also suspected nothing, accepting Oswald's explanation about bringing back "curtain rods," something he failed to mention to Marina and Mrs. Paine the night before, and would later deny to police.
After parking at the company lot two blocks north of the Depository, Frazier saw Oswald take the long, bulky package into the building. The sixth floor was in upheaval; workers were preparing to re-enforce the floor surface with plywood, and had opened up floor space by shifting boxes from along the west wall towards the east wall. Oswald had ready access and some privacy to build the Sniper's Nest and possibly assemble the rifle at intervals through the morning.
He WAS sitting much further to the left you goob! You chose the graphic they posted on the web page as an example of how far the conspiracy theorists have to go to lie to attempt to disprove the single bullet fact. The ENTIRE rest of the web page goes on to prove Connally was sitting to the left, was sitting lower on a jump seat, was turned around (not facing forward like your graphic shows), and had wounds that lined up in a perfect line directly back through Kennedy's wounds and directly back even father to the vicinity of the 6th floor window of the TSBD.
An exit wound is always larger than the entry wound. That much is given. I admit I have a problem reconciling this to my theory. And, it's supposed to take only one contradiction to disprove a theory. On that basis my theory would be proven wrong. However, the seeming contradiction between the appearance of an exit wound from a bullet from behind, and the head appearing to move backward from a shot from the front would seem to indicate there is more at work here.
If JFK was shot from the front, why would there be an exit in the front of his head. However, I don't buy the force of his brains being blown out causing the head to move backwards (and to the left). And, if the head shot was from the back, why did his head not move at least somewhat to the front before moving back and left?
My theory of a gunman behind the corner of the grassy knoll only explains so much. I know there has to be more.
Possibly because it was not Wallace's print?
WHAT the h*ll are you smoking?
We're talking these guys have had 40 years (or so) to REFLECT on this case now ...
I'm still amazed how all you oddballs claiming enlightenment on this case haven't even touched the primary documents involved in this case YET espouse as you do as if you knew every aspect. Ignorance fosters boldness, eh?
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