WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination approaches, a clear majority of Americans (61%) still believe others besides Lee Harvey Oswald were involved. But this percentage is the lowest found in nearly 50 years.http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx The lowest percentage in 50 years isn't really noteworthy, as there are fewer people living who can recall the event, and to younger people it is ancient history. I personally wouldn't have any problem with the "Oswald acted alone" conclusion, except for the fact that someone went out of his way to keep Oswald from going to trial.
There was a documentary on PBS "NOVA" that looked at the Kennedy assassination using modern forensic science that wasn't available in the 60's. They did answer a lot of questions about the ballistics, which pointed to Oswald as the lone shooter. An interesting show.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
There was a documentary on PBS "NOVA" that looked at the Kennedy assassination using modern forensic science that wasn't available in the 60's. They did answer a lot of questions about the ballistics, which pointed to Oswald as the lone shooter. An interesting show.
The Dallas PD did a good job that day. Sometimes I wonder if modern technology is a help or a hindrance to police work, or if it makes much difference at all. I'm talking about just the police end of things, finding the shooter in the first place. Technology certainly helps in making sure they have the right guy, or all the guilty parties. One of the more interesting conspiracy theories was laid out in Charles McCarry's novel, Tears of Autumn. I think there may have been a B-movie made from the story. I don't know if the author ever intended his plot to be taken seriously or not.
There was a documentary on PBS "NOVA" that looked at the Kennedy assassination using modern forensic science that wasn't available in the 60's. They did answer a lot of questions about the ballistics, which pointed to Oswald as the lone shooter. An interesting show.
I was a believer of the multiple gunman theory for years...until I read Gerald Posner's book Case Closed, watched the 1967 CBS shooting demonstration, and the Discovery channel investigation...my conclusion? Oswald did it alone... it's real hard to comprehend that an insignificant loser like Oswald took down the most powerful man in the world... but that's the truth
"Arguing with liberals is like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock out the pieces, crap on the board, and strut around like it is victorious." - Author Unknown
I was a believer of the multiple gunman theory for years...until I read Gerald Posner's book Case Closed, watched the 1967 CBS shooting demonstration, and the Discovery channel investigation...my conclusion? Oswald did it alone... it's real hard to comprehend that an insignificant loser like Oswald took down the most powerful man in the world... but that's the truth
The PBS Documentary did much to end doubt about the bullet questions. Rounds they fired went through 3 feet of pine boards and the bullet was barely distorted at all. At the time, many believed the round that went through Kennedy then through Conley and ended up in Conley's thigh, would have been distorted. There was also a question of the direction that Kennedy's head moved when being shot. They answered many of those questions as well, and were left with Oswald as the lone shooter view.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
I was a believer of the multiple gunman theory for years...until I read Gerald Posner's book Case Closed, watched the 1967 CBS shooting demonstration, and the Discovery channel investigation...my conclusion? Oswald did it alone... it's real hard to comprehend that an insignificant loser like Oswald took down the most powerful man in the world... but that's the truth
Why would, as you say, "the truth" be locked away for half a century?
What purpose would it serve to maintain secrecy about the investigations?
If there is nothing to hide, they shouldn't be hiding it.
The ballistic evidence indicated that Oswald could not have fired the fatal head shot. First, his ammunition was a military round that was designed to pass through bodies without shattering. Goal was to take you out of the fight, but get you home alive to survive the war if you were hit. The fatal head wound was caused by a hollow point round designed to shatter on impact and create massive damage. It is believed this round was accidentally fired from a secret service AR15 from the vehicle in back of the Kennedy limo. It is believed that the agent located Oswald's shot from the window of the book depository and grabbed the rifle to return fire. As he raised the rifle he disengaged the safety, and the driver of his car either braked or sped up causing the agent to lose his balance and accidentally discharge the weapon which hit the president. The round used in that weapon fit the trajectory of the fatal head shot from the position of the agent in the following car, and the round was a smaller diameter that fit the entrance wound where Oswald's ammunition was to large a diameter to fit the entrance wound. This is where the conspiracy was believed to have begun. If the agent accidentally discharged the weapon and the bullet hit the president, there would be no bigger embarrassment to the country. With Oswald in custody, they had a suspect, motive and weapon. Bystanders along the route smelled gun powder at street level which would have been impossible to detect from the book depository window distance and height implying a shot from the ground, second shooter, second weapon.
Absolutely fascinating theory which at least in my mind has the greatest plausibility. Warren Commission never followed up on this theory and it was discovered that much evidence "disappeared" or was destroyed. Most likely Oswald was a lone gunman, but his ammunition could not have created the massive head wound, and did not match the trajectory of the fatal entrance wound which was a flatter trajectory, more at ground level and coming from the left rather than Oswald's perch to the right. I believe the agent that had the weapon in hand passed away in 2005. Oswald always insisted he did not kill the president, and he was probably right.
The ballistic evidence indicated that Oswald could not have fired the fatal head shot. First, his ammunition was a military round that was designed to pass through bodies without shattering. Goal was to take you out of the fight, but get you home alive to survive the war if you were hit. The fatal head wound was caused by a hollow point round designed to shatter on impact and create massive damage.
Avon, The ballistics in the PBS show addressed your bullet questions.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
(CNN) -- Fifty years after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, there are very few down-the-line defenders of the Warren Commission to be found. The investigation into JFK's murder was inadequate, rushed and manipulated by powerful officials.
Just consider a few of the commission's flaws.
-- President Lyndon Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had all but decided what the report would say -- that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman with no conspiracy -- within 48 hours of the shooting.
-- The report was issued on a political timetable. LBJ wanted it out well before his election in November 1964.
-- The FBI was less interested in the full truth and more determined to avoid blame for misreading Oswald's violent character. Hoover later admitted: "We failed in carrying through some of the most salient aspects of the Oswald investigation. It ought to be a lesson to all."
-- Far worse was the behavior of the CIA, which coached some witnesses, hid others and withheld important information. The agency never told the commission it had been keeping tabs on Oswald or why. To this day, the CIA says it did not have a relationship with Oswald and that it is not withholding anything important about the assassination from the public.
-- Even more suspiciously, the CIA maintained its subterfuge and continued to lie to yet another official JFK investigation in the 1970s, this one run by the U.S. House of Representatives. It was a chance to come clean, with lesser consequences, and the CIA didn't take it. The director of that study, Robert Blakey, now denounces the CIA and says he doesn't believe anything the agency told him and his panel. Nation mourns at JFK's funeral 1961: JFK's famous inaugural address Lee Harvey Oswald speaks to the press
-- Both the CIA and the FBI failed to inform the commission about their various arrangements with the Mafia, another prime suspect in Kennedy's killing. They considerably underplayed Oswald killer Jack Ruby's organized crime ties. "The evidence does not establish a significant link," the commission asserted, but in fact, Ruby was in frequent contact with mobsters.
-- A surprising number of first-hand, close-in witnesses from Dealey Plaza on November 22 were never interviewed by the commission. These people had useful information to impart. I interviewed some of them, still living after the passage of five decades, and to this day they cannot understand why the commission was uninterested.
-- The commission dismissed or ignored some compelling testimony that contradicted its preferred findings.
Thus, the Warren Commission failed to find the full truth when the trail was hot, and when most Americans would have welcomed the most thorough possible investigation, even if the process was lengthy and costly. We can never recapture that moment, or reel in the cynicism that has developed because of its inadequacies.
If we could go back in time, maybe it would be possible to figure out why the CIA was so interested in Oswald or why the FBI was so responsive when Oswald demanded to see its agents while he was in a New Orleans jail in August 1963. (Ask yourself whether the FBI would come running if you summoned it while incarcerated on a minor charge.)
It would also be useful to know what really happened when Oswald visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City just two months before the assassination.
With this extensive a list of shortfalls, is it any wonder the Warren Commission is widely derided? So, it may come as a surprise that, despite everything, a large part of the commission's basic conclusion turns out to be correct.
Lee Harvey Oswald almost certainly was the man who killed President Kennedy. Under an alias, he had mail-ordered an Italian rifle from Chicago. The Dallas police found photos of Oswald holding a rifle, taken by his wife. Contrary to theories that float on the Internet, the pictures were not doctored.
Oswald had demonstrated violent tendencies by attempting to kill Major Gen. Edwin Walker in April 1963. Oswald's wife has recalled that he had also made a veiled threat against former vice president Richard Nixon.
Oswald's rifle was found, and his palm print was identified on a box inside the sniper's nest on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The trajectory of the bullets fired from the open window essentially matches the wounds suffered by both President Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally, who was sitting a few inches lower and to the left of JFK in the jump seat in front of the president.
After Oswald's first bullet missed the car entirely, the so-called "magic bullet" that struck JFK in the back was perfectly aligned to do substantial damage to Connally's body. And the final bullet that hit JFK in the head came from up and behind him, not the front. There is a reasonable physiological explanation for the actions of the president's body in the car once his skull was blown apart.
Two Dallas reporters in the motorcade saw a rifle protruding from the window (though not Oswald himself, who was shielded). A depository employee watching the motorcade from the fifth floor window below the one with the gun testified that he heard the sound of a fast-moving bolt action rifle and brass cartridges falling on the floorboards just above his head. A homemade paper bag was left on the sixth floor, and the employee who gave Oswald a ride to the depository on the morning of November 22 testified that Oswald was carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper that Oswald claimed was "curtain rods," but which just as easily could have been a disassembled rifle.
Oswald was the only employee found missing from the depository a short while after the assassination. Most of the ballistics and eyewitness evidence suggests that Oswald shot Officer J.D. Tippit later that afternoon -- hardly the deed of an innocent person. Oswald tried to shoot another officer at the Texas Theatre when he was captured a little while later, shouting, "It's all over now."
Oswald was a deeply troubled man, a castaway who never fit well anywhere and could get along with few. He was someone yearning to be great but without the wherewithal to achieve it. At the end of his rope on November 22, 1963, Oswald had left his wedding ring and most of his money behind for his wife Marina and his two young daughters. He grabbed his rifle and planned to go out in a blaze of history-making glory by striking out at the ultimate symbol of power and success, a president who by pure chance would be passing by his place of low-level employment. Had Oswald not been killed by Jack Ruby, we probably would have learned as much in a few weeks or months.
Yet the story doesn't necessarily end with Oswald. There is no question that many powerful individuals and groups, some with whom Oswald had personal association, possessed the means, motive and opportunity to kill President Kennedy.
Was Oswald encouraged or manipulated in any way? Did anyone overtly or covertly aid him? After the assassination, were the FBI and especially the CIA simply trying to cover up for their incompetence in missing Oswald's nature and intent, or were there more sinister motives?
So much time has passed that we may never know, but our one chance to discover more is in the release of thousands of additional pages of memos relating to the assassination, including hundreds of items from the CIA.
After 50 years, it is absurd that anything is still hidden. Supposedly, the documents will be made public in a few years, but there is no guarantee. The Assassination Records Collection Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, requires that all remaining documents about the Kennedy assassination be released by October 26, 2017.
The next president will rule on any requests from the CIA and other agencies that materials be withheld or redacted after 2017. Under the law, the president can do so only if there is identifiable harm to our national security that outweighs the public interest in disclosure. But it's possible the CIA could succeed in having some memos held back and others substantially redacted.
The right time came long ago for complete disclosure. Transparency cannot bring President Kennedy back, but at long last it can help America to come to terms fully with November 22, 1963 -- and perhaps to prevent similar events in our future.
Don't really care!! It will be generations before the truth comes out....if ever!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
One of the things that is interesting to me, remember how Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union? Over the years, I would be reminded of that and wonder why he was able to do that so easily, but it didn't really register until just recently that, at the time, Americans were not prohibited from visiting places like that, those controls were put in place afterward. Yet today, with all the hysteria over 'terrorism', the Tsarnaev family was able to easily travel between the U.S. and the country they supposedly were seeking refuge from. Oswald certainly fit the pattern of a no-good punk looking to be important from his beliefs, like some of our Americans who grow a beard and put on a headdress and confound their families by running overseas and making anti-western videos. There was a line of thinking that blamed Oswald's mother, at that time blaming the mother was in fashion. Gayness, autism; all kinds of social ills; they were your mother's fault. There was finally a backlash against that Freudian-type stuff after Richard Speck murdered all those nursing students and there were attempts made to blame his mother.
nope....conspiracy theory for me.....Oswald shot by Ruby???.....the grassy knoll.....last nite there was another theory which may be what really happened
the fact that shot in JFK's head was not now they say it happened....forensics show it came from a different direction and know from Oswald;s gun...
all I know is if JFK had lived....this country would be in a better state.....and not so violent......to me the Cuban missle problem he solved...shown what
kind of man he was....and CIA may have ordered it because of that.....remember Castro was a wanted man.....he got to JFK first...
To me, everything has a plausible explanation that fits the Oswald acted alone" theory, except Jack Ruby. When I saw that, as a child influenced by TV,it made sense, of course he was so mad he shot the bad guy, that's what I saw all the time on shows. As an adult, it does not make any sense at all that an otherwise sane man would kill an assassin before law enforcement could fully investigate. It could have happened that way, lots of things that don't make sense at all happen all the time, but it just doesn't seem all that likely.
The Warren Commission never investigated the fact that Oswald traveled to Mexico a few months before the assassination and while there spent a good deal of time at the Cuban Embassy. Furthermore, I would dispute the belief that Jack Ruby was an "otherwise sane man" who just got upset that JFK was assassinated. My personal opinion is that the Kennedy assassinations (BOTH) were a coordinated effort by Castro and the Mob.
George Amedore & Christian Klueg for NYS Senate 2016 Pete Vroman for State Assembly 2016[/size][/color]
"For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground." Lyndon Baines Johnson
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