Oswald was actually arrested for shooting a police officer. My favorite conspiracy theory holds that Tibbet's role was to have to kill Oswald for resisting arrest so he couldn't testify.
Of course when you find the website which reports that Oswald was killed by Jakob Rubenstein you know what those people's trip is.
Lee Harvey Oswald certainly had a history ripe for conspiracy theories, and the US government claims were obviously nonsense. This is what has fueled the conspiracy theories.
In case you have forgotten:
Oswald worked in air traffic control at a US airbase in Japan where the super secret U-2 was flying flights over the Soviet Union and China.
Oswald left the military early to support his mother, but went to the Soviet Union and asked to stay there.
While waiting for the Soviet Union to decide, Oswald went to the US embassy in Moscow and threatened to tell the Soviets what he knew (presumably about the U-2, which was not very much).
Oswald stayed in the Soviet Union for several years, and married the daughter of a KGB officer.
The Soviet Union shot down a U-2 over Russia and put the pilot on trial while Oswald was in the Soviet Union.
Oswald returned to the US with his Russian wife.
Oswald was apparently not arrested, although he was questioned a few times by the FBI.
The CIA, which was operating the U-2, has long claimed it had no interest in Oswald.
These facts have long seemed to not make any sense in the Cold war atmosphere of the late 50s and early 60s, leaving the conspiracy nuts lots of room operate.
The theory I like best is that Oswald was a counter intelligence dangle sent to the Soviet Union by the CIA. Shortly before Oswald went to the Soviet Union, a defector told the CIA that he had seen technical specifications for the U-2. The idea of sending Oswald to the Soviet Union was that he knew a very small amount about the U-2. If the Russians had the technical specifications, they would not be interested in Oswald. On the other hand, if they knew little about the U-2, they would want to question Oswald. They apparently never questioned Oswald about the U-2, although they now claim they never realized he might know something about it.
The Garrison investigation suggests that Oswald may have been used by the FBI to infiltrate communist leaning organization.
It would have been terribly embarrassing to admit in 1963-4 that some low level CIA operative/FBI informant had assassinated the president of the US.
Dean: You missed an important factor. Not only do so many have to act in concert. And keep it a secret. But also do so for very lengthy periods of time.
The longest-kept secret I can think of was Ultra, the Allies' ability to decipher the German's Enigma code. That did stay a secret for over 30 years. The fact that to discuss it would land one in jail under the Official Secrets Act might have something to do with the closed mouths. But then, maybe it was just patriotism.
My personal opinion is that the Kennedy assassination was a byproduct of the world going from black and white to color. Some people couldn't handle it and went off their rockers. At the same time, some colorization caused small bugs in the universe, allowing, in this case, a bullet to do that which was statistically improbable. You will also notice in this period that Marilyn Monroe had six toes on each foot, no one nuked anyone else, and American culture suffered a Blue Screen of Death in the early 1970's.
It's these glitches which are the real cover-up, not some dinky assassination.
The theory I like best is that Oswald was a counter intelligence dangle sent to the Soviet Union by the CIA ...yadda...
I really do love it when you set yourself up like this, for once again you demonstrate a weak knowlege of history.
You do know, don't you, that Oswald was dishonorably discharged from the Marines? That the USSR was going to deport Oswald, until he tried to commit suicide? Or that Oswald was a devout supporter of Castro, repeatedly trying to enter that country? Or that Oswald literally came within inches of assassinating a "right wing" general in Texas? That's one helluva career for a CIA plant...
Yes, Oswald was an aviation electronics operator. Basically a radio technician. He knew how to twiddle the knobs and (probably) repair equipment by replacing components. That's not much info to pass onto the Soviets, which is probably why they ignored him.
What I will agree with is that at least the local authorities knew that he was some sort of nutjob whom they didn't take seriously. And that was embarrasing both to the locals and the Feds.
You do know, don't you, that Oswald was dishonorably discharged from the Marines? That the USSR was going to deport Oswald, until he tried to commit suicide? Or that Oswald was a devout supporter of Castro, repeatedly trying to enter that country? Or that Oswald literally came within inches of assassinating a "right wing" general in Texas? That's one helluva career for a CIA plant...
I have heard all of that before. Oswald was given a hardship discharge from the Marines (which is an honorable discharge) to care for his sick mother. When the Marines found out Oswald had gone to the Soviet Union instead, they changed his discharge to dishonorable.
A counter intelligence dangle is not exactly a CIA plant. Oswald was certainly no James Bond. It is conceivable that a counter intelligence dangle might not even know he was being used that way, but I doubt this was true in Oswald’s case.
Oswald was certainly angry and felt the FBI was harassing his family. Oswald did deliver a note to the Dallas FBI office ten days before the assassination. Exactly what this note said is not known, because the FBI destroyed the note after the Kennedy assassination and did not tell the Warren commission about the note. Years later when the FBI confessed to destroying the note, there were various accounts of what it said. At the time Oswald was living in a rooming house in Dallas and his wife and children were living about 15 miles outside Dallas. The FBI had twice visited the house where his wife was living to question her about Oswald. The note apparently asked the FBI to stop harassing his wife, and requested they asked him directly anything they wanted to know. Some accounts have claimed the note was threatening the FBI.
All of this adds to the conspiracy theories. Clearly if the note had been threatening, people would have asked why the FBI didn’t do something about Oswald. There was fear that people would claim Oswald was a Soviet agent, and this might start World War III. The Soviets were also afraid of this possibility. Everyone tried to minimize Oswald having lived in Russia, but this just made the conspiracy theories worse.
For those in doubt about the shooting itself I recommend the ABC documentary with Peter Jennings. They put a lot of effort into it - not always true of network TV.
The wonderful thing about conspiracies is that you can never prove there wasn't one. And any attempt to do so is labeled another conspiracy to coverup the first.
I buy the accepted one shooter version. The one question I have is about Oswald's actions after the shooting. He may have arranged an escape from Dallas but something went wrong - his contact didn't show up and Oswald freaked out.
I think that you're overcomplicating things. Remember occam's razor: never unnecissarily multiply entities. There's no need to assume that Oswald — or anyone — fired the gun at all. It's not common for a gun to go off on its own, but it does happen with some probability, however low. There's a mathematical theory which states that over an infinite period of time, every event with non-zero probability will happen infinitely many times.
So, if we just invoke the weak anthropic principle — if the gun didn't randomly go off on its own and shoot Kennedy, we wouldn't be here wondering how it happened — we can see that Lee Harvey Oswald is completely extraneous in the explanation of how JFK was shot, there's no need to worry about a "free willed actor" any more than we need to worry about why the lightning strikes where it does. If you pluck a blade of grass at random from a field, it could ask why out of all the millions of blades of grass it should be so unlucky as to be selected, but we know the truth — there was no reason. So why, out of all the millions of times and places that gun could have shot, did it happen to shoot JFK then? There was no reason, just like there was no reason to pick that particular blade of grass.
If Lee Harvey Oswald didn't exist, people would have had to create him.
Dean
I agree. I also agree with the following from the movie Bull Durham:
Well, I believe in the soul... the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.
I think there's so many conspiracy theories about Oswald because it's 'inconceivable' that a Socialist would do such an un-humanitarian thing as to assassinate the founder of the Peace Corps.
Over the years I have read a number of books about the assassination from the Warren commission report onwards. I have always been amazed by the elaborate lengths people go to "prove" their beliefs. The best book I have read on it is "Case Closed" by Gerald Posner. He uses a number of first sources, tests and other information to basically trace the story of a horribly disillusioned man who wanted to make a mark in a world he was incapable of dealing with. As happens with such cases, his mark is destruction.
In addition to Occam's razor, I remember a biography I read of the historian Hegel by Walter Kaufmann. In it, Kaufmann cited a quote by Hegel about reading to much into history. He cited an example of a town in which a wayward cinder started a fire that destroyed the town and because of that, changed the history of the region. He cautioned that it was easy for a person (historian) to try and find a more elegant explanation for what was then a matter of chance.
I believe that this is one of our basic human flaws and strengths, to try and impose solutions on the world of our own making. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.
I hate to break it to people, but using the best ballstics evidence available, and best reconstructions available, it really does appear that Lee Harvey Oswald all by himself shot and killed the President of the United States in 1963.
I've never been a conspiracy theorist. I know of a lot of folks on the right because of my deep involvement with gun ownership and gun rights. So I'm continually getting half-cocked and full-crazed emails and lengthy attachments trying to prove how the world is run by the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and on the "Bilderburgers" (of whom, I'm not quite certain who they are supposed to be).
Since I save my fantasies for great old film noir classics and some of the better animation art I've seen, I never get deep into the conspiracy stuff. Which is one of the reasons I came to agree with Dean that Islam is not some sort of worldwide conspiracy. (Which is not to imply that I don't think a lot of Moslems are a bunch of grade-A shits for the hatred that a lot of them preach, practice and act upon.)
But all things considered, I think Kennedy's assassination was the job of a single high-quality rifleman who had been bearing the same kind of deep-seated grudges that characterized the gunman in that mass killing recently in Virginia.
A real straight trajectory is more or less exactly what you will get from a military caliber rifle fired at a target only a couple of hundred yards away. Even an old guy like me can do with the .30-06 ammunition used in the Garand semiautomatic rifles of my era in the US Army more than 50 years ago. A few years ago, a Korea war era buddy invited me to shoot with him at the Oconomowoc Sportsmens Club gunrange west of metro Milwaukee. I found that I could put rounds into a 24-inch wide paper target a couple of hundred yards out from the firing line. And I've been anything but a marksman for a long time.
So yes, I think Oswald did it.
Another factor. As somebody mentioned here, any conspiracy to kill the president of the United States, even in 1963, would have had to be the biggest and best-kept secret in human history, involving just about the whole of the Dallas Police Department, the US Secret Service, probably the FBI, all the members of the Warren Commission, and on and on and on...
Trying to find a link to The History Channel documentary a few years back exploring the LBJ - Billie Sol Estes USDA cotton fraud scheme, the federal investigation thereof, and pending indictment of a sitting vice president, I found this. I never could find a link or reference to the THC documentary I saw a few years back, but it followed the same set of facts.
My cousin and I are both experienced riflemen. We've shot thousands of rounds through scoped bolt action rifles. Many years ago, we happened to meet in Dallas, and curious, we went to Dealy Plaza and the museum. We had always thought the conspiracy stuff was pure bullshit. Then we stood in that window. It hit us both. No way that shooter with that carbine manually cycled those rounds and reacquired that moving target through a scope through that window of time and opportunity. We were stunned; embarrassed to be thinking what we where thinking until we both realized we'd come to the same conclusion. Still, neither of us bought the complicated mob-commie-anticommie conspiracy stuff. Too complicated.
The THC documentary mentioned above offered the first theory that really made sense to me. And it was relatively straightforward and simple, arising from a tightly knit group of Texas insiders that the DOJ had just cracked open, discovering hundreds of millions in fraudulent USDA payments spanning several decades involving LBJ and his closest cronies.
The Spector of Confusion is a legacy thing of sorts. What I most want to know, though... are Arlen and Phill related?
Arnold: Conspiracy thinking is a perennial in both left-wing and right-wing circles. They usually latch on to one or two or three groups to blame it on: Jews and Freemasons are perennial favorites, but also Catholics, Muslims, and also certain royal families or "secret societies" are very popular.
Rich families are a big one. The Bilderburgers (sp?) were once very popular in this genre but since they are no longer important they are no longer a target. The Rockefellers were also once a favorite target of the conspiracy theorists. To a lesser extent, the Kennedy clan. If Rupert Murdoch or Donald Trump had some kids who were just about as big as him, they'd be the subject of this sort of madness too.
The thing is, the conspiracy buffs stay constant from generation to generation. So they're very wont to say "My granddad was obsessed with the Bilderburgers (sp?) so so am I! Look, you can see the connection!"
That's all it is.
Once you recognize conspiracy-theory thinking for what it is, you begin to simply grin.
As you must know, at one point the Rockefellers were felt by many conspiracy theorists to be primary drivers behind all world events. Now today we look at Senator Jay Rockefeller and can only laugh. Not that he's not a Senator and not powerful in the sense that any Senator might be.
Here's my yardstick: in a world of democratic election, thinking that any one force or society or family is "secretly driving events" is stupid. Yes, wealthy powerful people have an influence. So what?
The Bilderburgs used to be a very influential family like the Rockefellers. They aren't anymore. That's all you need to know.
6.21.2007 9:00pm
Commenting on Dean's World is a privilege, not a right. Dean is your host, you are his guest, and you should behave in that fashion. Dean is not your babysitter, nor is he your punching bag. Please remember this. In general, you are free to disagree with anyone on any subject you wish, but abusive behavior will not be tolerated.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.
In this case though, the "accepted version" requires a very special round of ammunition.
Not seeing it. Explain.
It was a mildly difficult shot. That is all.
Of course when you find the website which reports that Oswald was killed by Jakob Rubenstein you know what those people's trip is.
In case you have forgotten:
Oswald worked in air traffic control at a US airbase in Japan where the super secret U-2 was flying flights over the Soviet Union and China.
Oswald left the military early to support his mother, but went to the Soviet Union and asked to stay there.
While waiting for the Soviet Union to decide, Oswald went to the US embassy in Moscow and threatened to tell the Soviets what he knew (presumably about the U-2, which was not very much).
Oswald stayed in the Soviet Union for several years, and married the daughter of a KGB officer.
The Soviet Union shot down a U-2 over Russia and put the pilot on trial while Oswald was in the Soviet Union.
Oswald returned to the US with his Russian wife.
Oswald was apparently not arrested, although he was questioned a few times by the FBI.
The CIA, which was operating the U-2, has long claimed it had no interest in Oswald.
These facts have long seemed to not make any sense in the Cold war atmosphere of the late 50s and early 60s, leaving the conspiracy nuts lots of room operate.
The theory I like best is that Oswald was a counter intelligence dangle sent to the Soviet Union by the CIA. Shortly before Oswald went to the Soviet Union, a defector told the CIA that he had seen technical specifications for the U-2. The idea of sending Oswald to the Soviet Union was that he knew a very small amount about the U-2. If the Russians had the technical specifications, they would not be interested in Oswald. On the other hand, if they knew little about the U-2, they would want to question Oswald. They apparently never questioned Oswald about the U-2, although they now claim they never realized he might know something about it.
The Garrison investigation suggests that Oswald may have been used by the FBI to infiltrate communist leaning organization.
It would have been terribly embarrassing to admit in 1963-4 that some low level CIA operative/FBI informant had assassinated the president of the US.
The longest-kept secret I can think of was Ultra, the Allies' ability to decipher the German's Enigma code. That did stay a secret for over 30 years. The fact that to discuss it would land one in jail under the Official Secrets Act might have something to do with the closed mouths. But then, maybe it was just patriotism.
It's these glitches which are the real cover-up, not some dinky assassination.
You do know, don't you, that Oswald was dishonorably discharged from the Marines? That the USSR was going to deport Oswald, until he tried to commit suicide? Or that Oswald was a devout supporter of Castro, repeatedly trying to enter that country? Or that Oswald literally came within inches of assassinating a "right wing" general in Texas? That's one helluva career for a CIA plant...
Yes, Oswald was an aviation electronics operator. Basically a radio technician. He knew how to twiddle the knobs and (probably) repair equipment by replacing components. That's not much info to pass onto the Soviets, which is probably why they ignored him.
What I will agree with is that at least the local authorities knew that he was some sort of nutjob whom they didn't take seriously. And that was embarrasing both to the locals and the Feds.
Nothing magical about it.
I have heard all of that before. Oswald was given a hardship discharge from the Marines (which is an honorable discharge) to care for his sick mother. When the Marines found out Oswald had gone to the Soviet Union instead, they changed his discharge to dishonorable.
A counter intelligence dangle is not exactly a CIA plant. Oswald was certainly no James Bond. It is conceivable that a counter intelligence dangle might not even know he was being used that way, but I doubt this was true in Oswald’s case.
Oswald was certainly angry and felt the FBI was harassing his family. Oswald did deliver a note to the Dallas FBI office ten days before the assassination. Exactly what this note said is not known, because the FBI destroyed the note after the Kennedy assassination and did not tell the Warren commission about the note. Years later when the FBI confessed to destroying the note, there were various accounts of what it said. At the time Oswald was living in a rooming house in Dallas and his wife and children were living about 15 miles outside Dallas. The FBI had twice visited the house where his wife was living to question her about Oswald. The note apparently asked the FBI to stop harassing his wife, and requested they asked him directly anything they wanted to know. Some accounts have claimed the note was threatening the FBI.
All of this adds to the conspiracy theories. Clearly if the note had been threatening, people would have asked why the FBI didn’t do something about Oswald. There was fear that people would claim Oswald was a Soviet agent, and this might start World War III. The Soviets were also afraid of this possibility. Everyone tried to minimize Oswald having lived in Russia, but this just made the conspiracy theories worse.
The wonderful thing about conspiracies is that you can never prove there wasn't one. And any attempt to do so is labeled another conspiracy to coverup the first.
I buy the accepted one shooter version. The one question I have is about Oswald's actions after the shooting. He may have arranged an escape from Dallas but something went wrong - his contact didn't show up and Oswald freaked out.
I think that you're overcomplicating things. Remember occam's razor: never unnecissarily multiply entities. There's no need to assume that Oswald — or anyone — fired the gun at all. It's not common for a gun to go off on its own, but it does happen with some probability, however low. There's a mathematical theory which states that over an infinite period of time, every event with non-zero probability will happen infinitely many times.
So, if we just invoke the weak anthropic principle — if the gun didn't randomly go off on its own and shoot Kennedy, we wouldn't be here wondering how it happened — we can see that Lee Harvey Oswald is completely extraneous in the explanation of how JFK was shot, there's no need to worry about a "free willed actor" any more than we need to worry about why the lightning strikes where it does. If you pluck a blade of grass at random from a field, it could ask why out of all the millions of blades of grass it should be so unlucky as to be selected, but we know the truth — there was no reason. So why, out of all the millions of times and places that gun could have shot, did it happen to shoot JFK then? There was no reason, just like there was no reason to pick that particular blade of grass.
If Lee Harvey Oswald didn't exist, people would have had to create him.
Far out, man!
Yours,
Wince
I agree. I also agree with the following from the movie Bull Durham:
Or did you write it? Maybe it was those darned entangled photons again.
Again this morning the leaves in my yard had jumped into the trash barrel overnight. And the dishes were clean. For years I had thought it was elves.
/snark
In addition to Occam's razor, I remember a biography I read of the historian Hegel by Walter Kaufmann. In it, Kaufmann cited a quote by Hegel about reading to much into history. He cited an example of a town in which a wayward cinder started a fire that destroyed the town and because of that, changed the history of the region. He cautioned that it was easy for a person (historian) to try and find a more elegant explanation for what was then a matter of chance.
I believe that this is one of our basic human flaws and strengths, to try and impose solutions on the world of our own making. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t.
What a bummer. No "magic bullet" required.
Next up: how the Pope did not invent the "Hail Mary" prayer.
Since I save my fantasies for great old film noir classics and some of the better animation art I've seen, I never get deep into the conspiracy stuff. Which is one of the reasons I came to agree with Dean that Islam is not some sort of worldwide conspiracy. (Which is not to imply that I don't think a lot of Moslems are a bunch of grade-A shits for the hatred that a lot of them preach, practice and act upon.)
But all things considered, I think Kennedy's assassination was the job of a single high-quality rifleman who had been bearing the same kind of deep-seated grudges that characterized the gunman in that mass killing recently in Virginia.
A real straight trajectory is more or less exactly what you will get from a military caliber rifle fired at a target only a couple of hundred yards away. Even an old guy like me can do with the .30-06 ammunition used in the Garand semiautomatic rifles of my era in the US Army more than 50 years ago. A few years ago, a Korea war era buddy invited me to shoot with him at the Oconomowoc Sportsmens Club gunrange west of metro Milwaukee. I found that I could put rounds into a 24-inch wide paper target a couple of hundred yards out from the firing line. And I've been anything but a marksman for a long time.
So yes, I think Oswald did it.
Another factor. As somebody mentioned here, any conspiracy to kill the president of the United States, even in 1963, would have had to be the biggest and best-kept secret in human history, involving just about the whole of the Dallas Police Department, the US Secret Service, probably the FBI, all the members of the Warren Commission, and on and on and on...
Unlikely to the point of impossible.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
My only slight tweak is the notion of "conspiracy."
A conspiracy is simply an agreement between 2 or more people to do an illegal act --even if the act never gets done.
Hunt and Liddy were convicted of conspiracy to commit burglary in Watergate.
So, if Oswald had just 1 confederate, a guy behind the scenes, coaching him on, planning, coordinating -- you got a conspiracy.
Doesn't have to be a big Oliver Stone type deal, to be a conspiracy.
My cousin and I are both experienced riflemen. We've shot thousands of rounds through scoped bolt action rifles. Many years ago, we happened to meet in Dallas, and curious, we went to Dealy Plaza and the museum. We had always thought the conspiracy stuff was pure bullshit. Then we stood in that window. It hit us both. No way that shooter with that carbine manually cycled those rounds and reacquired that moving target through a scope through that window of time and opportunity. We were stunned; embarrassed to be thinking what we where thinking until we both realized we'd come to the same conclusion. Still, neither of us bought the complicated mob-commie-anticommie conspiracy stuff. Too complicated.
The THC documentary mentioned above offered the first theory that really made sense to me. And it was relatively straightforward and simple, arising from a tightly knit group of Texas insiders that the DOJ had just cracked open, discovering hundreds of millions in fraudulent USDA payments spanning several decades involving LBJ and his closest cronies.
The Spector of Confusion is a legacy thing of sorts. What I most want to know, though... are Arlen and Phill related?
Rich families are a big one. The Bilderburgers (sp?) were once very popular in this genre but since they are no longer important they are no longer a target. The Rockefellers were also once a favorite target of the conspiracy theorists. To a lesser extent, the Kennedy clan. If Rupert Murdoch or Donald Trump had some kids who were just about as big as him, they'd be the subject of this sort of madness too.
The thing is, the conspiracy buffs stay constant from generation to generation. So they're very wont to say "My granddad was obsessed with the Bilderburgers (sp?) so so am I! Look, you can see the connection!"
That's all it is.
Once you recognize conspiracy-theory thinking for what it is, you begin to simply grin.
As you must know, at one point the Rockefellers were felt by many conspiracy theorists to be primary drivers behind all world events. Now today we look at Senator Jay Rockefeller and can only laugh. Not that he's not a Senator and not powerful in the sense that any Senator might be.
Here's my yardstick: in a world of democratic election, thinking that any one force or society or family is "secretly driving events" is stupid. Yes, wealthy powerful people have an influence. So what?
The Bilderburgs used to be a very influential family like the Rockefellers. They aren't anymore. That's all you need to know.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.