John F. Kennedy: Conspiracy Theory thread.

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A discussion sort of sprung up over in the "Atheism" thread so rather than continue to clutter that thread with debate about JFK, which was occurring between I(the Skeptic) and Chandos(who seems to be trying to maintain a non-committal approach but is still denying the facts of the case it seems)

Chandos the Red said:

I did not miss that. But it is one thing to say "I am not taking sides" and then abstain from discussion but it is another thing to say "I am not taking sides, BUT(followed by advocating conspiracy theories)..."

1)No doubt. I have always said there are a LOT of reasons why otherwise intelligent people will believe absurd things. My explanation about how we as pattern seeking animals seek out 'balanced' explanations is only foundation. There are a lot of reasons that make up the flimsy floor boards, crumbling sheet rock and shoddy paint job on such a belief.

2)Why are you specifying the Warren Commission here? That seems to be some more 'tactical linguistics'...

Correct but what does this have to do with anything being discussed here?

Irrelevant. Prosecutors NEVER bring forth charges against dead people. Recently here in my area there was a guy named Clemmons who ambushed and killed four police officers who were getting ready to start their shifts and were gathered at a local coffee shop. Clemmons was shot and injured by one of the officers he killed and when Seattle police finally caught up with him and he tried to flee, the officer shot him and killed him.

No charges were ever filed against Clemmons for the murder of the four cops.

No. He was shot by a known wannabe named Jack Ruby. Jack Ruby was to the Mafia what Oswald was to the U.S.S.R.. Ruby was someone who wanted desperately to be seen as a 'big shot' but who was laughed at and barely tolerated by everyone who knew him. He WAS a criminal who rand a shady establishment and ran his mouth constantly trying to maintain his big shot persona but the Mafia wanted nothing to do with him for the most part. He no doubt had a customer at one time or another who WAS a 'made man' or some such but that is about as far as you can go with that line of speculation.

As some historians have said, the JFK assassination is not the tale of a lone nut-case. It is the tale of TWO nutcases(Oswald and Ruby). To understand why Ruby shot Oswald you have to understand who Ruby WAS. The JFK assassination was the 9-11 of that decade. Immediately following the assassination everyone in the country was overcome with hyper-patriotism and sorrow and anger. Ruby publicly stated how he wanted to kill Oswald(and do it "For Jacky(Jaqueline) Kennedy").
It is debatable whether Ruby even knew that Oswald was being transferred the day he was at the police station. He was there to take care of some unrelated matters of his own.

"I hope I killed the son of a *****, It will save you guys a lot of trouble."- Jack Ruby, talking to the arresting officer immediately after shooting Oswald


"Well, you guys couldn't do it. Someone had to do it. That son of a ***** killed my President." - Ruby, talking to the DA Alexander

According to ALL who knew Jack Ruby, including his own Rabbi, Ruby would be the absolute LAST person anyone would trust in any sort of conspiracy. He talked too much and could not keep a secret for even a few minutes!
He was also known by all as being very emotional(would probably be diagnosed as bipolar or some such today) and erratic.

And the nail in the coffin of THIS particular conspiracy angle is that Oswald had 48 hours to talk to the police if that is what he was going to do and it would make absolutely no sense to 'silence' Oswald while supplying the police with someone who most certainly WOULD tell them everything they could possibly want to know(if Ruby was a co-conspirator).

There were a few things that were not released to the general public for decades and the reason for doing so is completely understandable. There were a LOT of people questioned about the whole affair(ever read the WC report? That alone is like thousands of pages!) and some of them knew and worked with the President. As much as conspiracy advocates want to cock an eyebrow over this and speculate about nefarious secret plots, it is a lot simpler than all that. Sometimes people's privacy or even identities themselves have to be protected.

The flaws in the House Select Committee on Assassinations are legendary. Remember this was right after the whole Watergate episode so people were predisposed to find the government guilty of shadowy plots against the people and such.

The debunking of the acoustics evidence was done by a CONSPIRACY ADVOCATE(who happened to work in the relevant field and was able to easily figure out what had gone wrong in the HSCA's handling).

Edit: I seem to recall now that in actuality the NAS themselves debunked this 'evidence' in the early 1980s. I am not sure about the details of the pro-conspiracy guy's debunking of the acoustic evidence only a few years ago. I think this was in regards to how many shots were fired or something.

Your link above is not working so I cannot examine whatever may be there.

EDIT: I went to www.history-matters.com/ to see if that might work better(putting nothing after the '/') and lo and behold, that site is a pro-conspiracy website and nothing more. Their scholarship is freaking horrible! It took me all of five minutes of reading to find a dozen things I could debunk off the top of my head!

And...? I DID read what you wrote very closely. MY original statement was that most conspiracy theorists seek to characterize JFK as a Liberal martyr who was about to pull the plug on Viet Nam and so was killed by Conservative war hawks. I contested this by providing good evidence that Kennedy was actually a Conservative Democrat.

And here we are...

Straw man. I never said that being "friends" with Nixon made anyone a Conservative. I cited his positions on several issues including he AND his brothers campaigning for us to go to war in Viet Nam for years before he was even elected, his stand offish and sometimes opposed stance to the civil rights movement, his saying he "had more in common with Nixon than he did with anyone in his own party", etc.

You CAN make a case that he was 'center-right' and I would not object to that but my point remains: he was NOT a progressive or Liberal.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk1.htm

Debatable whether either of his brothers could be called "real Liberals" but your above is an irrelevant conclusion fallacy and way too ambiguous.

Oh I agree. Nixon was more a 'centrist' than probably most in his party('center-right' to be precise and that explains why he and JFK got along so well). I think you are building and knocking down another straw man here as my posts in this regard were not even to say that JFK was a hard core Conservative or that Nixon was either. My only point in regards to this is that JFK was NOT a 'Liberal progressive' as the Oliver Stone crowd would like to think. Perhaps I should have spent more time clarifying this in my earlier posts though.

Let's not stray off track too much.

 

I personally think Elvis shot JFK after being abducted by aliens and brainwashed with massive amounts of drugs which he remained addicted to the rest of his life. The aliens were obviously pissed at the attempt of JFK to launch men to the moon where the aliens have a secret base (which has been visited by some very notable people like Elvis, Shirley MacClaine, and most of the members of scientology -- who are actually spies for the aliens) and was viewed as an act of war. The aliens then planted both Oswald and Ruby in an effort (successful) to fool the police, but they weren't counting on crashing in Area 51 and allowing the information to be released to a National Enquirer reporter in Roswell.

Prove me wrong.

 

It is a lot more plausible than the things a large chunk of humanity believes in and base their life around.

 

You mean like naturalism and materialism?

 

Don't forget, Bigfoot acts as a double-agent for the aliens too.

 

You seem to be bent on crafting a straw man here, with whom you can do battle, since I still believe the case is unsolved.

This entire point is irrelevant. It has nothing to do with the Oswald situation, or is it "tactical linguistics?" Plus, you keep bringing Watergate into this, which IS irrelevant.

Jack Ruby was a known mafia associate, and his lack of status in the mob makes him a better fit than a well-placed associate who would instantly draw quick attention to the mafia. As I have commented, I don't subscribe to any of these "theories" (I use the term to abuse it ), and I can knock them down just as easily as you can. As I have commented the case is unsolved. Thereby, it falls to you - the one who believes the government story of events - to prove that only Oswald was involved.

Mafia people - well-placed ones - have taken credit for the crime, and you just ignore them. It is documented that they have and you still maintain your blinders.

Which historians? I would like to take a look at their "tales" as well.

Yes, the ramblings of "nutcase." There is little point in presenting that as any concrete evidence, since it is as unreliable as:

"I'm just the patsy," Oswald's public statement on his side of the story, one of the few he made, iirc.

We finally come down to it. Nice try here, but that is absolute . That was a story portrayed by Oliver Stone for a movie version of events, based on only one theory that is a part of American mythology. Some conservatives embrace all kinds of stupid talk about "liberals" most of the time. There is nothing to support that as "fact," only the opinion of conservative pundits. I'm sure there are a few liberals out there who believe this, but to claim that it is the major CT, put forth only be liberals, is more of a personal bias and propaganda by political opponents. The ultimate straw man. Please note that I'm not including you personally as one of those political pundits.

Some liberals point to the infamous hate posters of JFK - "The Wanted for Treason" posters that were circulated that day in Dallas. But that is an exchange of political propaganda. Conservatives during that time, DID portray JFK almost exactly as you describe him, not liberals. You may want to go back and read the poster, rant that it is.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wanted_for_treason.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_(film)


Many consevatives were screaming that Kennedy was "a liberal," selling out America in 1960. You may want to go back and take a look at the political history of the election of 1960, and what conservatives were saying about Kennedy, not just liberals.

The interesting thing about the rhetoric in the poster is that it is almost the same as has been used by the "tea potters" against Obama (or at least some of the old familiar themes). Just change "communist" to "terrorist." Some things never change.

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No, it isn't what you said. This is what you said:

Kennedy was "comfortable" with his brothers, Ted and Bobby who were members of his own "PARTY," and liberals. And you are using Nixon, clearly, as proof that Kennedy was not a "liberal." In fact, you seem quite emotional on the point.

This is just more . But we may need another thread for this one, Dr.

 

Chandos:

Wow. I guess if all you are going to do is offer irrelevant conclusions, bald assertions and BS then I will have more time to respond in the "Atheism/Dead horse thread.

Let me know if you decide to address any (preferably important)points in between now and whenever I get around to a quoted reply to your above.

 

"Preferably important" points? Nice try at deflection, Dr.

Hey, there are no hard feelings here. All I ask is that you defend those "preferably important points."

 

That is exactly my point! the case is NOT unsolved at all! It has been conclusively proven by every means imaginable that Oswald shot JFK just as the Warren Commission concluded. So when you assert that you believe the case to be unsolved, you are siding with the conspiracy theorists because that is exactly what most of them are saying!

Watergate IS relevant because that is where the Conspiracy theories took root. It was a time of extreme distrust when Nixon was busted for the break in and this lead to everything from JFK conspiracy nonsense to UFO cover-up stories etc. becoming widespread. This also illustrates why those few irrational conclusions by the HSCA came to be.

Not at all and you have to make up your mind here: Was he well enough established and trusted by the mob to be entrusted with the task of offing Oswald or not? How would offing Oswald help the mafia and why would they do such a silly thing? Ruby would have to know enough to expose the whole thing if he knows enough to accomplish the mission in the first place so they would be trading Ruby for Oswald who would have already been talking to police if he were in fact a patsy or something or could expose the mafia anyway.

This has been done ad nauseum. Gerald Posner's Case Closed was probably the first. The History Channel's Beyond the Conspiracy was a fairly recent and comprehensive debunking of CTs and proof that Oswald most likely acted alone. I don't "believe the government's story of events" I accept that they are true based upon the evidence.

Funny notion of what being non-committal is .

I have met three people face to face in real life who have claimed to be the bastard son's of Elvis Presley and that he is alive and well. Numerous former air force pilots and officers have come forth to claim that they witnessed extra-terrestrials being escorted to various 'hangar 18' type locations.

I do not believe these people and all for the same reasons. They have a lot to gain by asserting such and nothing to lose and their claims are equally and demonstrably false.

Gerald Posner, John McAdams, various other historians who have studied and written about JFK(too many to remember here).

Out of context quote-mining. O.J. Simpson tried the same tactic and he was also guilty. Oswald had just managed to do what he had so often only talked about. He was fearing for his life at this point(not to mention his freedom) and, as prison guards same about men in prison "Everyone here is innocent".

Well then I guess we can ignore the above rant.

been there, done that. All of this ranting above is irrelevant to the points I made. Conservatives accuse EVERYONE they are opposing(even McCain for crying out loud!) of being a "Liberal" because of the way they have taken over the media and used it to shift the definitions of "Liberal", "Conservative" and "Moderate" in the right's favor. This has the effect of insuring that the most 'Liberal' a candidate can possibly be and still have a chance to be President is Center-left. most fall squarely into the 'center' or even center-right.
This is a topic for a different thread though so let's try and stay on topic here.

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In conclusion I take it you are not going to address the rest of the points in my OP here? Such as how you are "not committed" to either side and yet you tried to link to a pro-conspiracy site that is on par with Answers in genesis or "Dr. Dino"(Kent Hovind) or Alex jones' nonsense?

 

No, I'm siding with the Congressional Report, which leaves the case unsolved. I not sure if CTs claim that or not.

No, just no. From the Kennedy event, they started almost immediately. That's common knowledge for anyone who has family that lived through it.

Since you are beginning with the wrong conclusion that the CTs stem from Watergate, your point doesn't illustrate anything about the HSCA. Also, you obviously are ill-informed about the UFO CTs, which go back to at least the famous 1947 Roswell Incident, near Area 51. UFOs and Watergate have nothing to do with each other.

The mafia has taken credit for this crime over-and-over again, and that is documented fact. The larger point is that the mafia can't be trusted with telling the truth about hardly anything, so I'm not so sure about their involvement.

From the little I know of him, Gerald Posner is a pretty good journalist. He now writes for the Dialy Beast.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/author/gerald-posner/

I know more about him through his politics, (since he was former supporter of Al Gore, then suddenly GWB, and then doing another about face, and savagely attacking GWB and his neocon agenda in 2006), than I do about his book, which I have never read. I cannot comment on his book either way, since I have not read it. I know the book has both defenders and its detractors. I saw the HC program, but it's been so long ago that I don't remember the details. But I don't recall being that overly impressed with it. However, Posner's book is supposed to be pretty good work. Nevertheless, there are scores of books out there on the subject and some of them are supposed to be quite impressive as well, which refute both Case Closed and the WC.

I informed you at the beginning that I haven't ever done any real research on the subject to make a good enough conclusion for myself. And I don't have the time to read the top 5-10 books on the subject. Nor do I feel inclined to. I'm just not interested enough in the subject.

Yes, and it turns out that many of them ARE innocent, given new evidence techniques (but please don't get me started on our crappy "criminal justice system.") And as you point out, always doubt someone with a vested interest in his side of the story and prison guards are no different (job security is a beautiful thing).

I have no idea what you're ranting about in this instance. But it appears irrelevent. And I really don't give a flip if you believe me or not over my own opinion of CTs.

 

Huh, that poster was quite entertaining. Funny how much things have changed since.

 

The case is NOT unsolved though and only CTers say such.

You are misunderstanding me here.

Certainly there were a very small minority of people suggesting conspiracies from right after the event but no one took them seriously and the conspriacy ideas did not take root in the larger public imaginations until the Watergate event.

Again, yes UFO claims have been around for decades before the the Watergate break-in. Again, they were a staple of a small and highly irrational minority. After the Watergate event all of these ideas exploded in popularity.
The Roswell CT had more steam back in the late 40s and the 1950s though(than the JFK CTs did in 1960s) largely because of the Hollywood sci-fi deluge(The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Thing From Another World, etc.) of "flying saucer" movies(this term and concept of alien spacecraft being rooted in a misunderstanding of an eyewitness UFO report).

Again, are you dodging the point I made here or what? No one is saying that people affiliated with the mafia have not claimed such. AGAIN, I have met people who claimed to know a great many impossible things(Elvis still being alive, etc.). There have been former government employees claiming to have taken part in the alleged Roswell cover-up when no such cover-up ever took place.

Not only that but the fact that they are even claiming such a thing goes against the conspiracy angle itself! If the Mafia killed the President, then had Oswald killed because of what he may have said then why would they then turn around and go public with such claims or allow any of their own to do so?

Betraying your pro-conspiracy affinity. There is no other rational explanation for your not being impressed with it. The documentary, unlike most other documentaries went into extraordinary detail examining, trying to corroborate and ultimately debunking the conspiracy theories. They even managed to Duplicate the shot that CTers called the "magic bullet"(the one that went through JFK's throat and hit Connelly) with astounding accuracy considering how nearly impossible it is to replicate4 ANY shot! The managed to nail 5 of 7 impact points with a single bullet in as close to identical conditions as could be achieved.
But perhaps you could watch the film again and tell me what specifically you were not impressed with. I doubt you will or can but that would be far more impressive to me than the above callous dismissal.

Yeah right. I have yet to see one and I have been studying this issue for years, as BOTH a pro-conspiracy advocate AND a skeptic.

That much is obvious.

Alright then. Take care.

Not many of them at all it turns out. Even Barry Shreck's infamous "innocence Project" has resulted in the freeing of GUILTY persons who then went on to re-offend, suing the exact same M.O. as they were "wrongly convicted of the first time around. That tells me that DNA evidence CAN be misused by people with an agenda and we simply do not know all there is to know about DNA and how it can be misunderstood or how factors can lead to wrong conclusions.

You misunderstand again. The joke inside of prisons comes first FROM PRISONERS and this joke is "Hey we are ALL innocent in here.". A sarcastic acknowledgment that the reverse is true and they often say this in regards to some new guy coming in and trying this tactic or some investigative journalist pushing this story angle.

I am referring to your trying to link in your above post to a pro-conspiracy site(full of abysmally bad scholarship) to support a point/claim you were making, as if it were some unbiased source of information. What you did was the equivalent of someone saying "Hey I am not taking sides on the Creationism/evolution debate but I found this information compelling(followed by a link to the Answers in Genesis web site)...".

 

Again, you are ill-informed. The HSCA ruled that the case remains unsolved, but agreed that Oswald was certainly involved. Take the time to look at their conclusions.

No, Watergate had nothing to do with it. And it is time I confronted this once and for all. The rise of investigative journalism, including the Gonzo journalism of HS Thompson in the early 70s, helped to promote various CTs and the rather senational aspects of the modern media we have today, which mostly thrives on sensational misinformation. Journalism was transforming itself around the time of Watergate and the rise of many of these Cts can be seen as a media phenomenon in which Watergate was certainly a piece, but hardly the driving factor.

Talk about dodging! You drag Elvis into this, and I'm the one who's "dodging?" Give me break, already. All the above comments have nothing to do with my point about the mafia. That is, unless you are trying to say in a rather awkward manner, that the mafia is unreliable. Good, then you agree with my comment about them being just that. Otherwise, I would believe that the case is solved if I believed they were telling the truth.

Yes, I'll get right on that, just so that you can be "impressed."

Yes, for some the obvious MUST be stated, it would appear.

Really? Cops say it all the time. You should talk to one....

Yeah right.

I still don't know what you are ranting about. Which claim? Which link? And John McAdams? Talk about "bad scholarship" and a "biased" link!

 

I read Don Dellillo's Libra in University. It gave me a headache. It convinced me that Kennedy is dead and that we should all just move on and not think about it anymore. There has been too much muddying of the waters for anything substantive to come of it.

 

For me it was the pictures where you could see his brain. I figured at that point he was probably dead.

 

Can't really say one way or another that I totally agreed with Stone's ideas of what happened to JFK, but when I was watching the movie and they showed the brain, it instantly made me add that one to my collection. Brainssss......

 

The HSCA's finding in this regard has been conclusively debunked and this finding WAS driven by Watergate and the new conspiracy theory-oriented thinking. There was immense public pressure at the time to find that a conspiracy was at least possible, if not probable. The case has long since been solved and conclusively demonstrated that Oswald killed JFK via the shots fired from the TSBD window where he worked.

You are again ill-informed. Prior to Watergate you will find almost no mention of these conspiracy ideas in mainstream media. After Watergate you find conspiracy theories, "gonzo journalism", etc. erupting all over the place.

I did not drag Elvis into this and you are again trying to dodge the point I made(which would be ironic if it were not so transparent!). Elvis is irrelevant here except as a retort to your anecdotal evidence that someone affiliated with the mafia has probably claimed responsibility(even though such is next to impossible) for JFK's assassination. The point you are dodging is that people claiming to be in on popular conspiracy ideas, be it Elvis still being alive, JFK's death, UFO cover-ups or what have you is NOT good evidence for such conspiracies being real. If a conspiracy theory about Ronald Regan being assassinated by the Democratic party's higher ups(and made to look like simple old age and Alzheimer's) became popular tomorrow then people allegedly affiliated with the mafia, the secret service, etc. would be coming out to claim responsibility or insider knowledge.

Then you need to work on reading comprehension.

In other words you will dodge this also because you cannot answer it. *chuckle*

And...? Are you seriously not understanding anything I say or are you doing this intentionally? Because either way you have to be either oblivious or dishonest.

That doesn't work kiddo. In order for McAdams to be considered a poor scholar you will have to demonstrate such. Otherwise your above is no better than someone saying "Stephen Hawking? Pfft! Like HE knows anything about the universe....".
Just to inform you though McAdams was not too long ago one of the prominent advocates FOR conspiracy theories about JFK on the net. He is a historian and did not become a debunker of such CTs until he had compiled the massive amounts of research you see at his site and gave it an honest look(you should try that sometime...).

But I will take this post as your concession then.

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Stone's film was easily the most historically inaccurate movie ever made. He is well aware of the falsehoods and mistakes he made in the film but has not yet responded to any of them(some of these he discovered right on the set of the film(i.e. that there existed no rifle capable of emitting the "plume of smoke" from the grassy knoll) but still kept the falsehoods in which makes him a liar at the very least).

 

No, McAdams is a political hack, and not much of an historian. He goes around spouting nonsense through "free market" think tanks, and intentionally trying to debunk JFK CTs. Nice try though - I especailly liked the "kiddo" part.

No, cops say it all the time. I Iived with one. You are obviously just ignorant of this.

Again, you are quite clueless on this matter. This type of journalism started BEFORE Watergate. Really! Do some real research for a change.

I never said they were real, only that they were a possibility. Take a look at your own "reading comprehension." I suggest some night classes. Have a nice day, Doc.

 

Hey! HEY! HEY!

I dragged Elvis into this. Elvis and aliens were behind the whole Kennedy assassination (both of them). Someone else has the credit for bringing bigfoot to the dance.

I hate it when someone else takes credit for my work.

 

Wow, T2, I didn't realize you took it so personally when other people take credit for your inane bull****! I myself am also guilty of this, having made a Roswell reference in another thread without properly crediting you with the idea. To balance the scales a bit and make ammends, I will be sure to credit you with all my inane bull**** from now on.

Chandos, Dr Skepticus, I think you guys should do the same. Really, it's the least we can do.