[HN Gopher] JFK Assassination Records - 2021 Additional Document...
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JFK Assassination Records - 2021 Additional Documents Release
Author : cf100clunk
Score : 178 points
Date : 2021-12-15 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.archives.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.archives.gov)
| depingus wrote:
| The title "CONTACT OF LEE OSWALD WITH A MEMBER OF SOVIET KGB
| ASSASSINATION DEPARTMENT" caught my eye. "Assassination
| department" invokes images of bored assassins sitting in cubicles
| doing busy work. Unfortunately, all the pages are redacted (or
| poorly scanned).
|
| https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/do...
| basch wrote:
| Sounds ripe for a Coen Brothers / Armando Iannucci hybrid
| series. Burn After Reading / Fargo meets The Death of Stalin.
| Something like The Office, dealing with the administrative
| support side of an Assassination Department. An IT-esque
| Department troubleshooting BondQ gadgets remotely. Fishy
| expense reports.
| mzs wrote:
| That's not redacted, it's just a dither.
| dathinab wrote:
| For me it looks like neither.
|
| Instead it looks like the paper was scanned in one of this
| plastic sleeves you can put documents in if you don't want to
| punch holes in them or give them additional protection. Older
| versions of this sleeves tend to not be perfectly clear but
| instead have a pattern similar to that you can seen in the
| scan.
|
| Through in the end it's just speculation.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| They really hit their targets.
| scop wrote:
| Unlike up and to the right, they want their targets going
| back and to the left.
| t3rabytes wrote:
| > all the pages are all redacted
|
| I'm not sure if I'm missing a joke here, those are easily
| legible.
| chromaton wrote:
| Zoomed out, it all looks grey, but zoomed in, you can kind of
| read it.
| [deleted]
| setr wrote:
| this blackout is really weird -- if you're at 100% its
| unreadable, and as you zoom in it becomes more readable,
| peaking around 250% zoom... and if you go further it
| becomes more unreadable, and after like 450% it becomes
| totally unreadable again.
|
| The overlayed pattern is also very specifically designed,
| and quite peculiar
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Looks like redactions got pwned by aliasing.
| sparky_ wrote:
| Indeed, this looks like a poor quality scan on an old
| monochrome Xerox machine or the like, not an actual attempt
| at redacting content. It's readable in Preview on macOS at
| the right zoom level.
| nextstep wrote:
| Oliver Stone has a new documentary this year with more
| information from newly declassified documents:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_Revisited:_Through_the_L...
|
| Most interesting is the similar almost-assassinations that were
| tipped off in the months leading up to Dallas. Similar story,
| with a CIA asset like Oswald thinking they were tipping off
| secret service but were likely being setup as the fall guy. More
| information on why the Secret Service didn't acknowledge (and
| buried) these very similar events in the 1963 FBI investigation
| and for the Warren commission is probably in the documents that
| the Biden again delayed declassifying this year.
|
| But anyway, it is amazing how many Americans still seem to think
| there's some doubt that this was a coup. The US is a very well-
| propagandized nation. The country has an agency that specializes
| in regime change, and a president that was very actively trying
| to reel in this agency was shot in the head. And then the guy
| they pinned it on was shot in broad daylight as well. And then
| the president's brother was running for election, loudly talking
| about opening up the investigation to his brother's death and he
| was also shot. But it's somehow crazy talk to think any of this
| might be connected!
| kreeben wrote:
| Disappointing that this has been on HN for 20 minutes and we
| still haven't found who did it.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| Post on Reddit, then.
| cruano wrote:
| Because reddit's amateur vigilante efforts have such a good
| track record, just remember when they found the Boston bomber
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Reddit's amateur sleuths have solved 9 of the past 5
| presidential assassinations.
| duxup wrote:
| Well maybe the right out of context text blurb hasn't yet been
| found?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| To be fair it looks like there's almost 1500 documents
| xwdv wrote:
| Nothing a good grep search can't handle, or maybe fuzzy
| finder.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Feed it into GPT-3
|
| Though I don't think it has that much attention?
| stagger87 wrote:
| You are confused as to what GPT-3 does.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Local fiddler asks question to super Ai 100 ways and is
| eventually told "Jackie Kennedy". Finally, the case is
| closed.
| smegsicle wrote:
| tbh you can clearly see her digging the weapon out of her
| purse before pulling him in for the kill
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| Prompt text:
|
| _Sherlock Holmes received the following documents:
| [insert all 1500 documents here] then exclaimed, "A-ha, I
| have deduced who did it! It was _
| omnicognate wrote:
| By the time it got to the end of the prompt it wouldn't
| remember the Sherlock Holmes bit.
| gpderetta wrote:
| To be fair so wouldn't most humans!
| anyfactor wrote:
| This reminds me of several instances where people asked
| me if I could build them an AI option/crypto trading bot
| and they will share profits 50/50.
|
| I guess saying GPT-3 instead of AI or machine learning
| gives more marketing hype points. Like calling a landing
| page a "SAAS". (It's a joke, I hope you don't offended by
| it).
| oneoff786 wrote:
| That's an excellent deal if they're providing the
| capital. Make a bot that tries to mimic s&p500 exposure.
| basch wrote:
| Why not one with considerably more risk? Sounds like an
| opportunity to moon shoot. Bot fails, friend loses money.
| Bot wins, everybody wins.
| jtmarmon wrote:
| I'm certain it reads faster than I do. Comprehension,
| that's another issue...
| worik wrote:
| It was Robert Anton Wilson
| mindcrime wrote:
| Or Anton LaVey. Those "Anton" characters are always up to no
| good!
| munk-a wrote:
| I remain strongly in the camp that it was Jimmy Carter - sure,
| everyone says he was just chilling out on a peanut farm but
| that's just a cover story man.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| That sounds like a character in an espionage role playing
| game.
|
| "I'm a contract assassin for the CIA. They use me for
| domestic operations where they can't operate. My cover is
| that I'm a peanut farmer. My code name is The Telephoto Lens,
| because I'm great at those long distance shots. My secondary
| skill is the ability to invoke a temporary peanut allergy in
| any person without a saving throw, which presents all sorts
| of opportunities for covert killings."
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| It was not Jimmy Carter but the killer rabbit who attacked
| him. Carter prevailed where Kennedy failed.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I know this is a joke but I had to know what he was up to at
| the time. He was serving his first term in the Georgia State
| Senate.
| [deleted]
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Fully in the camp that a sniper fired a shot, and then a
| bodyguard accidentally capped the president from behind. Never
| revealed out of government shame. Hopeful to learn more.
| tehjoker wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. The Zapruder film shows him shot from
| the front. Jackie Kennedy goes and grabs a piece of brain or
| skull from the back of the car.
| sgt101 wrote:
| It looks like he's shot from the front because it looks like
| there's a splash of matter from his face - like you'd get if
| you threw a water balloon at him.
|
| But rifle bullets aren't water balloons. They don't splash on
| human flesh - they do on concrete or steel - but not flesh.
| They go through and what you are seeing is ejecta from a
| bullet passing through JFK's head and exiting, leaving a high
| pressure mess behind and a small hole for it to leave by.
|
| God knows what Jackie was doing, maybe getting something,
| maybe trying to get to the guard. God knows.
| tehjoker wrote:
| That's one interpretation. He also slumps backwards rather
| than forwards. In JFK Revisited, Oliver Stone looked into
| the hospital staff that saw him at Parkland Hospital and
| all of the accounts he was able to find had the back of
| JFK's head blown out with an exit wound.
| jrm4 wrote:
| For some reason, I'm remembering peoples' take on this being
| that she was scared and running away, and I'm weirdly glad to
| see that someone else understood this. It's all morbid and
| strange, but some weird part of me feels that its important
| that we see this distinction; this wasn't cowardice, she was
| trying to "fix it."
| madspindel wrote:
| > Jackie Kennedy goes and grabs a piece of brain or skull
| from the back of the car.
|
| Sorry, not from the US but why would she do that?
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| " _Eschew flamebait._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Clarification: is this snark or flamebait? I might be
| missing something, but it seems like a reasonable
| question. I recall the first time I heard she'd done
| that, my own incredulity was similar (having never been
| in a life-or-death crisis, I didn't have the frame-of-
| reference to get that a person may not be thinking
| rationally "Doctors can't put brain parts back in" and
| might grab whatever they see come off a loved one).
| runnerup wrote:
| I suspect the minimized version, "Why would she do that?"
| would have been well received. I don't think anyone
| understands why the "I'm not from the US" clause is there
| and I personally assigned a reasonable probability that
| it was a short-hand stand-in for the following sentiment
| :
|
| "The US has so much gun violence that they must have some
| kind of expertise that leads them to know that its a good
| idea to save skull fragments in case the doctors need
| them. Lol, just kidding, that was sarcasm; I just wanted
| to bash the US for their high rate of gun violence."
|
| Of course I accept that this may be mis-interpreting it.
| The only other meaning I can parse is: "I imagine that
| everyone in the USA learned about this event in great
| detail in their school lessons/etc. I haven't so....could
| someone explain why she grabbed the skull fragment?"
| [deleted]
| Ancapistani wrote:
| People react to sudden, extreme stress in way that seem odd
| after the fact.
|
| This doesn't seem inconceivable at all.
| trutannus wrote:
| Shock, likely.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Pre-shock, even.
| Narretz wrote:
| She was in shock, and tried to do something to help her
| husband. It's not even that far fetched. If your hand was
| cut off, you'd want to save it for possible reattachment.
| swearwolf wrote:
| Some combination of shock and instinct. Probably more shock
| since she later reported that she didn't remember doing it
| at all.
| IE6 wrote:
| It's really impossible to speculate until you've been in a
| situation like that and most of us probably have not. I
| would suspect it was a panic response and not some deeper
| nefarious action.
| swamp40 wrote:
| Because people do weird things under extreme stress.
| khazhoux wrote:
| She reached for it within the fraction of a second that the
| bullet struck JFK's head. It was an instinctive action.
|
| In fact, we humans usually can't rationally comprehend
| catastrophic injury to the body, while in that state of
| immediate shock. Think of the image of the soldier carrying
| his detached arm.
| pplante wrote:
| That is one of the most out there conspiracy theories I have
| heard.
| michaelwilson wrote:
| So you haven't heard the one about Ted Cruz's father being
| behind it?
| the-dude wrote:
| Wasn't Bush Sr _present_ ?
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| In Dallas, and he said he couldn't remember why he was in
| Dallas. It's not like anyone ever said he was in the
| grassy knoll or something though
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Not enough of a nutter to argue passionately about it, but
| it's not that out there. There were secret service men right
| behind him in a car that suddenly lurched forward after the
| shots were made (so a physical force could have caused the
| accident not just an itchy trigger finger on a guard). His
| wound implies behind shot from behind but placing the snipers
| behind hasn't made sense ever.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| FWIW, I don't believe this is what happened, but as I
| understand it the Secret Service agents had recently been
| issued a new carbine - an AR-15.
|
| At any rate, George Hickey was the agent usually identified
| as the person who would have negligently discharged his
| rifle, and photos of the event clearly show him with an
| AR-15.
|
| Allegedly, the Secret Service changed their procedures
| shortly thereafter to require their agents to carry with an
| empty chamber. I have no idea if that's true.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > Secret Service agents had recently been issued a new
| carbine - an AR-15
|
| Perhaps I'm being too pedantic, but the firearm Hickey
| was carrying wasn't a carbine. It was a Colt model 601
| rifle, the first variant of the AR-15 that Colt produced
| after purchasing the AR-15 patents from Armalite.
|
| BTW, this "Hickey did it" theory was popularized by Bonar
| Menninger in his 1992 book "Mortal Error." Hickey later
| sued the publisher for defamation, but the lawsuit was
| dismissed.
| daneel_w wrote:
| If it were true it would've been a fatal accident, but not a
| conspiracy. Covering it up afterwards, out of embarrassment,
| would've been the conspiracy - and keep in mind that the US
| govt. has covered up some pretty crazy things in the past.
| But I hear you, it's definitely a wild theory.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| But covering for some low-ranking secret service agent's
| accident seems like a lower priority than covering up
| something malicious like the Gulf of Tonkin affair, which
| has been revealed.
| kyaghmour wrote:
| Do you understand what it would've done to the US'
| standing vis-a-vis the USSR in the world if it were
| revealed that someone who is tasked with protecting the
| most important part of the executive branch accidentally
| killed them in exactly the type of event where they
| should've been keeping them safe? What image would that
| have projected to the rest of the world about America's
| abilities? Espc. in light of the then just happened Cuban
| missile crisis, etc.
| cardiffspaceman wrote:
| Don't you think this sort of thing already wrecks US
| standing?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_F
| ide...
| kipchak wrote:
| I would figure a lot higher percentage of people are
| aware of JFK's death than failed attempts on Castro.
| sneeds wrote:
| Do you think the video is edited or where was the body guard
| that you think shot him?
| kritiko wrote:
| In the car behind him - there's a 1992 book about this theory
| if you are curious:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortal_Error
| vanusa wrote:
| It wasn't a "video", back then they only had ... never mind.
| sneeds wrote:
| I dont even know what you are trying to say.
| [deleted]
| vanusa wrote:
| The commenter thinks the Zapruder film was a "video" is
| what I'm saying.
| jstanley wrote:
| In what way is it not a video?
| shard wrote:
| As a generalization: Video, going back to before the
| digital era, refers to images recorded on magnetic
| videotapes, such as VHS or Betamax. This is in contrast
| with film, which is images recorded using light sensitive
| silver halide crystals. Video tapes are viewed by
| scanning the magnetic strips and displaying on a monitor
| with scan lines. Films are viewed by shining a light
| through the developed film and displaying the whole image
| on a reflective screen.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| Not quite. Video is generally an electronic medium for
| moving pictures and can be sent over cables or radio
| waves from the camera to the TV, without touching a tape.
| A video signal can be recorded on a tape, but isn't
| necessarily.
| shard wrote:
| Yes, you are right. Looks like you squeezed in your
| comment before I was able to put the "as a
| generalization" disclaimer on it! :)
|
| I was thinking more of the situation where some people
| might be confused with the Zapruder recording, that it
| could be on videotape instead of film, which is why I
| didn't try to cover all the corner cases.
| mongol wrote:
| It was film. Video is an electronic signal stored on tape
| (originally)
| sneeds wrote:
| Yeah, the commenter is me and that is what I am saying.
|
| Video can refer to non-digital media, see:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/video
|
| And even if it didn't, what did you think I meant? Do you
| think I believe that someone shot that on a smartphone?
| And how is that even relevant to the question? The
| question was if the OP thinks, that what we see was
| edited.
|
| Are you mentally disabled or something? Then please keep
| out of my responses until you have taken your meds.
| omniglottal wrote:
| Don't be rude. @dang enforces rules against this.
| vanusa wrote:
| _Video can refer to non-digital media,
| see:https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/video_
|
| It still doesn't say that video includes "film". You can
| make a video recording of a film of course, but that's
| different.
|
| _And even if it didn 't, what did you think I meant? And
| how is that even relevant to the question?_
|
| It seems you were confused about something that used to
| be a very obvious distinction, that not too long ago no
| one would trip up on (the difference between "video" and
| "film"). It's not especially relevant of course, it was
| just weird.
| floor2 wrote:
| Your stance on this is intriguing to me. I'm treating
| this thread as a neat little obscure, pedantic fact that
| I learned today- that historically the word "video" had a
| distinct meaning from "film".
|
| Because never once in my 40-some years as an English
| speaking American have I ever seen this distinction. The
| two words are functionally synonyms in common usage, or
| perhaps the common usage would be something like "film"
| is a subset of "video".
|
| Perhaps it varies with geography or industry? Maybe
| Americans use the terms interchangeably but Brits don't?
| Or maybe within the entertainment or photography
| industries experts use the terms with more precision than
| the average citizen?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think you're just not old enough. Back in the 1960s,
| film and video were distinct mediums. For one thing, film
| had a _lot_ higher resolution. For another, they ran at
| different frame rates. There were tricks to convert film
| to video (3:2 pulldown), but nobody went from video to
| film - the resolution was so limited, it would look
| terrible.
| wavefunction wrote:
| I assume all the times I've watched it, it's been from
| video format. I really doubt they were playing the 8mm
| every time live and broadcasting. So... I guess it's now
| a video and not film.
| ladberg wrote:
| Are you trying to say they didn't have video in 1963?
| vanusa wrote:
| I'm referring to the fact that the "video" in question
| was an 8mm color film:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapruder_film
|
| Obviously "video" existed then in the sense that there
| was television -- but consumer video cameras didn't
| appear until around 1979 or 1980.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| yes, he's saying they only had film in 1963
| khazhoux wrote:
| A quick search (wikipedia) shows videotape existed in
| 1956, at $300/hr.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| thanks, I wasn't aware, although whether or not they had
| what vanusa was saying seemed obvious.
| vanusa wrote:
| Right - something for studios, not the man on the street.
| tantalor wrote:
| What do you think TV is?
| the-dude wrote:
| TV is a video you can't rewind. Not the real thing.
| kyaghmour wrote:
| There's a documentary about that fwiw:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn97UF_kfYo
| fatbird wrote:
| Here's video by CBS where they easily and repeatedly reproduce
| Oswald's shots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs.
| Contrary to a lot of assertion, it wasn't that difficult.
| swearwolf wrote:
| Me too. All the shadowy conspiracy theories seem way too
| complicated, but a simple screwup and the desire to bury it out
| of embarrassment seems so completely in line with every
| organization I've ever worked in.
|
| For those of you who aren't familiar, the Secret Service team
| had been working hard in the year prior to the assassination,
| and decided to blow off some steam by going out drinking the
| night before the parade. Because they were all quite hungover,
| they assigned a relatively new team member, who hadn't gone out
| drinking with them, to hold the brand new AR-15 they had just
| been assigned. After the first shot was fired, that agent stood
| up and began to aim the AR-15, and was immediately knocked back
| down by the car lurching forward. The theory is that he
| accidentally squeezed off a round at that moment, which by
| chance struck Kennedy in the head and killed him.
|
| Supporting evidence:
|
| - The type of bullet that hit Kennedy's head was a frangible
| one, which is designed to explode upon impact, whereas Oswald's
| ammunition was non-frangible.
|
| - The third shell found at the book depository was in a
| different place, and was bent. It could have been used as a
| chamber plug to keep the chamber safe from dirt and moisture.
|
| - A ballistic expert determined that the fatal shot was most
| likely to have come from the left rear seat of the Secret
| Service followup car.
| nextstep wrote:
| This would make sense if you ignore all of the facts of the
| case and also have no understanding of how the government
| works.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I think you mean from the front. Guy riding shotgun turned
| around and you see his arm extended.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Probably yeah. I'm like toes deep invested in this one.
| bborud wrote:
| So essentially Hanlon's Razor.
| java-man wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the reason for withholding the documents
| after 50 years was (possibly) some agent or agents being still
| alive. So, who died?
| briffle wrote:
| George H.W. Bush.. If you believe some VERY fringe dark places
| on the web.
| yucky wrote:
| Not as fringe as you might think.
|
| I think the two biggest red flags on it are that he claimed
| to one of his biographers to not recall where he was when he
| found out JFK had been killed. An odd thing for anybody to
| say who was not just alive at the time, but especially
| someone involved with government. As it turns out, he checked
| out of the Dallas Sheraton that morning, down the street.
|
| Second, and even more interesting is that the initial
| telegraph that went to DC to confirm the President had
| expired, was sent to J Edgar Hoover (understandable) and some
| unknown CIA person named George Bush.
|
| 10 years later, he then became the first CIA Director with
| "no previous CIA experience". Doesn't mean he was involved,
| but those are interesting facts.
|
| edit: checked out that morning.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > he claimed to one of his biographers to not recall where
| he was when he found out JFK had been killed.
|
| The theory I heard was that he had suspiciously given two
| contradictory answers, perhaps one saying he didn't
| remember, and one saying that he did remember (providing a
| location that wasn't Dallas). Given the passage of time,
| and the fact that he visited many locations as part of his
| political campaigning, it's perhaps reasonable for him to
| have eventually forgotten the name of the particular place
| he was when he heard the news.
|
| Here is a discussion which tries to source the claim that
| he once stated he was in Tyler, Texas on the day of the
| assassination:
|
| https://www.metabunk.org/threads/george-h-w-bush-cant-
| rememb...
| yucky wrote:
| >it's perhaps reasonable for him to have eventually
| forgotten the name of the particular place he was when he
| heard the news
|
| If he had been any place other than a block from the
| assassination, that might make more sense. Especially
| when coupled with the telegraph..
| conductr wrote:
| I'm sure it was a chaotic day for him too. Where were you
| when you heard? Heard what? That he was shot, that he
| died, or perhaps other updates he may have received
| during the day.
|
| Are you asking specifically or generally? Maybe he knew
| he was in Dallas but didn't remember the name of the
| hotel.
| rectang wrote:
| He was stowing away in the wheel well of the presidential
| limo. But he didn't fire the shot -- he gave a secret sign to
| Oswald to proceed.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| So why not retract the names and release the documents? It
| doesn't make much sense.
| yupper32 wrote:
| If some powerful people know which agent(s) were in the area,
| and it's confirmed that an agent did it, they can put the
| pieces together.
|
| It still doesn't make much sense, though.
| rectang wrote:
| JFC -- JFK assassination? I see that these additional records are
| being released according to a presidential memorandum. They won't
| resolve the "controversy", though, since there's an industry of
| grifters which will keep it alive no matter what because their
| profits depend on it.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| Are you implying the JFK assassination wasn't actually
| controversial and that fringe groups are making a mountain out
| of a molehill? That seems like a bold claim.
| rectang wrote:
| There's "controversy" because of the trauma to the collective
| national psyche. People want to believe that larger forces
| are at work, commensurate to the mythos of a national leader.
|
| But if you just examine the facts of the case, it's obvious
| what happened -- a tiny, pathetic little man assassinated a
| president -- with a confidence approaching 100%. (But not
| getting to 100% -- it's important to always maintain your
| scientific skepticism.) See for example _Case Closed_, Gerald
| Posner's nearly 30-year-old book.
| https://www.posner.com/case-closed
| ALittleLight wrote:
| In the first two pages of these documents it seems like
| there's evidence Oswald met with someone involved in the
| KGB assassination program and a Soviet chauffer reported
| Soviet involvement with the assassination before and after
| the event. How does that with your description?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Why wouldn't the government have revealed that
| information at the time, or 20 years ago? On the other
| hand, I suppose I have to ask myself why would it have
| taken them nearly 60 years to fabricate these documents?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I don't know. I wish the government would also realize a
| summary of the important information and why it was
| classified for so long. Looking at this stuff a lot of it
| seems random or meaningless but then I wonder why they
| didn't declassify it on schedule.
| basch wrote:
| Maybe its the other way around. Him pursuing them, them
| rebuking.
|
| https://thehill.com/regulation/court-
| battles/534727-woman-ac...
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Could be, but I think there are a lot of things about the
| assassination that belie the description of it as an open
| and shut simple affair. Potential involvement with the
| KGB is one of those things.
| colechristensen wrote:
| One method of achieving goals like this are to find the one
| man, groom him, and enable him to do what you want him to
| do.
|
| The FBI runs sting operations like this all the time where
| they find dumb big talkers, encourage their little group
| over beers, and then sell them guns or explosives or
| whatever and arrest them.
|
| It is a standard covert operations strategy, get a
| vulnerable person to do it for you and your actions leave
| very few fingerprints.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| Then you assassinate the patsy so he can never tell
| anybody about his 'friends' who talked him into it.
| palmetieri2000 wrote:
| Not saying you're right or wrong but please provide
| supporting evidence for the claims you've made. It sounds
| very armchair espionage to me...
| tehjoker wrote:
| " FBI entrapped suspects in almost all high-profile
| terrorism cases in US "
|
| https://www.rt.com/usa/174484-hrw-fbi-sting-entrapment/
| palmetieri2000 wrote:
| Wow! Really interesting and pretty condemning for the
| extensive modern use in the US, I just wrote a comment
| about if some of these stings would or should be
| considered entrapment replying to another user so I wont
| repeat myself but thanks for that.
| lazlee wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Big_(police_procedure
| )
| jldl805 wrote:
| Why are the conspiracy theorists "big final pieces of
| evidence" always unrelated wikipedia articles? It's just
| like you guys are admitting you don't know how to
| evaluate sources for credibility and you don't even know
| it.
| palmetieri2000 wrote:
| To be fair that wasn't the user I asked for sources, we
| should see if they have something still. Also that wiki
| link was fairly interesting, particularly the Hart case
| in 2014 in which the Canadian Supreme Court found that
| using the confession drawn from the Mr. Big technique was
| inadmissible (although their was a later exception in a
| relation to a violent case that already had supporting
| evidence). To me, this would actually support the point
| the others were making a bit at least... If we can
| believe that this would have been more common prior to
| 2014, at least in Canada then MAYBE that could indicate
| that it was/is commonplace in the US which AFAIK does not
| have a ruling like in the Hart case.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| There you go, the FBI is known for it's entrapment plots
| that are very...borderline to say the least. Motherjones
| had a small series covering how that
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/fbi-
| terrorist-i...
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/terror-
| factory-...
|
| Not saying this has anything to do with JFK, but the
| comment you replied to got the part about the FBI right.
| palmetieri2000 wrote:
| Man... that shit is wild. I'm from a country with a
| different legal system to the US and I cant help but feel
| like this would be a form of entrapment here(probably not
| using the term right from a legal perspective). Is the
| logic in the US that the individual could/should refuse
| to participate at each and every step? Ensuring they
| aren't 'entrapped' despite being presented with a
| manufactured scenario designed to entice crime because
| they voluntarily preceded? Especially in the second link
| where the individual was described as 'dim', if we
| replace the undercover FBI agent with say, a supportive
| non-radical religious figure in the Mosque, does this
| young man go on to try to make a bomb?
|
| Really interesting links thanks!
| regnull wrote:
| The facts are, Nikita Khrushchev was humiliated by the outcome of
| the Cuban missile crisis. Oswald lived in USSR, came back to the
| US to discover that nobody really cares, and was eager to gain
| some sort of celebrity status. He was also nuts. Could the Soviet
| Union know about his plans and give him some help? Possibly. This
| would also explain the secrecy around the documents. Any decisive
| knowledge that a foreign country had a major role in an
| assassination of an American president would lead to a war
| between two nuclear nations. We probably wouldn't know until the
| last documents are declassified.
| nextstep wrote:
| The facts are that Oswald was working for US intelligence his
| entire career and was not the one who actually pulled the
| trigger to kill Kennedy. The official position of the US
| government is that there was a plot amongst many individuals
| ie. a conspiracy to assassinate the president.
| hsnewman wrote:
| Ahh, America's start of the conspiracy nuts.
| donclark wrote:
| Why do we not have an answer from 4chan yet?
| vmception wrote:
| What a flurry of activity
|
| I skimmed a couple and they seem to provide no insight, which is
| pretty common in these declassifications
| coding123 wrote:
| https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/do...
| mrtnmcc wrote:
| The CIA chronology document is a nice overview.
|
| https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/do...
| criddell wrote:
| I've tried to read a couple of random documents and the only
| question that has been raised in my mind is _why were these
| withheld in the first place_? It all seems very mundane.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Never really got into the JFK conspiracy thing. Though
| considering how blatant and obvious so many "conspiracies" are
| now, it makes me wonder if my initial dismissal of older ones has
| more to do with social conditioning than their veracity.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| You spend so long researching this and learning about the CIA and
| Allan Dulles and Fair Play for Cuba, you kind of forget that some
| people still actually believe Lee Harvey Oswald was just some
| crazy guy acting alone.
|
| Edit: I don't mean to be too snarky, I encourage anyone to do
| their own research. Its just with things like this... there are
| always few dozen "smaller" conspiracies attached or related to
| it, that I truly believe a rational person would easily accept:
| that the CIA, for example, used certain people as actors to help
| rally Cuba antagonism, that JFK was himself considered a threat
| by the establishment at the time, that the CIA has deep
| connections to crime (for practical purposes). All these things,
| are believable and motivated by real things, and fit reality
| better than the official narrative. I think it's understandable
| though, when confronted with the "big" conspiracy, to hesitate,
| to be like "Well c'mon lets not be crazy." But really, I implore
| the diligent, tell me how this thing is NOT the sum of its parts.
| D-Coder wrote:
| There were so many people involved, they should have just
| waited a year for the election and voted him out.
| cafard wrote:
| The son of a bank president, a one-time McCarthyite, an eager-
| enough Cold Warrior. He green-lighted the Bay of Pigs, he
| green-lighted the overthrow of Diem in South Vietnam. Where was
| his threat to the establishment?
| akomtu wrote:
| I heard JFK was seriously considering to disband CIA, and the
| organization had to defend itself.
| y4mi wrote:
| > _Edit: I don 't mean to be too snarky, I encourage anyone to
| do their own research_
|
| And yet you encourage people to dive into misinformation in
| order to somehow magically figure out what of the provided
| information are outright lies or just misinformed ideas.
|
| If you equate "Doing your research" to reading articles,
| opinions or even quoted declassified files then you're another
| victim of our current misinformation crisis.
|
| And I honestly doubt that anyone but the most dedicated
| historians still actually study this assassination while
| crosschecking everything, reading everything indepth to make an
| attempt too actually figure out the context it had back then
| etc.
|
| It is a lot of work to actually gain knowledge on something,
| however we've somehow started to consider reading documents
| which have at best entertainment value as doing research...
| mc32 wrote:
| The above can be true without a conspiracy happening. I.e., the
| establishment saw JFKs Cuba missile crisis actions in addition
| to his plan to withdraw from foreign military actions as
| extreme policy disagreements without having them actually want
| to rub him out.
|
| So both things can be true. They hated him and did everything
| in their power to undermine him AND some crazy thought he was
| such a threat he shot him... without the establishment having
| been involved in the action in any way.
|
| Of course it's also possible but less likely the establishment
| thought he was such a danger they HAD to take him out... but
| there raises the question, with Trump, whom they hated just as
| much, did they adjust their MO?
| VRay wrote:
| > Trump, whom they hated just as much
|
| Does anyone in power actually hate Trump? So far as I could
| tell, all he did for most of his tenure was slash taxes and
| carefully shepherd the market upward while playing a lot of
| golf
| subpixel wrote:
| He also put immigrant children in cages and molded the
| Supreme Court to criminalize abortion and made the prospect
| of a Putin-style 'President for life' an actual possibility
| in the near future.
|
| But as much as those things make some people hate him, they
| give many other people, including some very powerful
| people, reason to like him.
| mc32 wrote:
| He put them in the same accommodations as Obama and Biden
| currently uses.
| keyboardCowBoy wrote:
| Regardless of what Brandon says, you can still come to
| this country illegally.
|
| Cages...Cages...You mean the ones the Obama
| administration built?
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| No one has ever denied that detention facilities were
| created and used as they are in every nation to deal with
| undocumented immigrants. Your reply ignores all context
| in regard to HOW they were used during the last
| administration.
|
| Splitting up families punitively was a change in policy.
| Giving away children with no paper trail to christian
| adoption agencies is abhorrent in the extreme.
| Purposefully worsening conditions punitively in regard to
| food, sanitation, and medical care rather than housing
| people temporarily and humanely should not be policy.
| Locking people up with no means of redress for extended
| periods of time is also criminal, processing times were
| purposefully extended during the last administration.
|
| Many would call me a conservative. That does not mean I'm
| willing to support traitors who attempted to co-opt the
| democratic process while aligning themselves with a
| nation state that is our enemy.
|
| You know all of this and came here to argue in bad faith.
| I'm not commenting to reply to you, but merely to expose
| the lie of omission contained in your comment.
|
| I see more and more obvious astro-turfing here, mainly
| for these factually unsupported, and frankly insulting to
| anyone who has done a modicum of research, talking
| points.
|
| I don't want to discus politics on this site, I hate that
| I have been goaded into replying to a bad faith comment
| but if no one corrects the record and a lie is shouted
| long enough and loud enough it becomes something that
| people believe.
| mc32 wrote:
| The generals wanted to keep their wars going and they
| wanted to maintain foreign presence or increase them. They
| wanted to have a say in just about every conflict that goes
| on. Trump wanted to get out of that business.
|
| He also thought it was time to reform NATO. He also thought
| he could appease them by increasing their budget and
| creating a space force. Never the less, they kept sniping
| and undermining him.
|
| Congress of course, despite lack of evidence continually
| wanted to impeach him over collusion with Russia and so on.
|
| Do yeah I think the establishment hated him just as much
| because he didn't go along with their historical agenda.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Given that a lone gunman without military training successfully
| put a bullet in Reagan because he thought it'd get an actress
| to notice him, I don't know why people have a hard time
| believing that a lone trained Marine could take out an under-
| defended target.
| [deleted]
| Natsu wrote:
| You can still get a lot of conspiracies out of that one, too,
| especially among those who believe that Mark Felt (AKA Deep
| Throat)'s pardon was backdated.
|
| It's too bad I don't know how much data is still available,
| but network analysis of some past conspiracies (or claimed
| conspiracies) and released FBI, etc. docs could prove
| interesting.
| pwned1 wrote:
| And visit Dealey Plaza and look at the shot for yourself.
| It's so _easy_ , especially with a scope. And then stand on
| the grassy knoll and realize that it would be the _dumbest_
| place to put an assassin.
| joejohnson wrote:
| I've been to Dealey Plaza. The shot would have been far
| simpler to the left before the motorcade turned, and the
| car would have been going even slower then. The angle from
| the window toward JFK at point in the parade where was shot
| makes it much harder to triangulate the sounds of the
| bullets.
|
| But all of this discussion is rather silly because the
| government itself has accepted that more than two bullets
| entered the president and the governor and they could not
| have all come from the book depository window.
| fatbird wrote:
| Where does the gov't itself accept this?
|
| Here's video by CBS and Dan Rather showing their tests
| where they easily reproduced the shooting that Oswald did
| under nearly identical circumstances, repeatedly:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs
| phkahler wrote:
| And then realize that his head was blown backwards. The
| exit wound was in the back. Photos of it were doctored. The
| umbrella guy. The magic bullet was intact. His wife tried
| to climb out the back of the car. A later look by Congress
| overturned the conclusion of the Warren commission that he
| acted alone. Most footage you find online now is not the
| actual footage, but a reenacted clip from a movie.
|
| But it's easier to blame one guy than deal with all the
| unanswered questions if you don't accept that idea. Reality
| is that we will never know.
| pwned1 wrote:
| The front right of his head exploded, which pushed the
| head backwards. It's all on the zapruder film, very
| clearly. The front of his head explodes. There is
| actually a second video from across the plaza where you
| can see the exact same spray pattern as in the zapruder
| film.
|
| There's no "magic bullet," when you line Kennedy and
| Connally up correctly. The path is a straight line and
| the bullet never hit any bone until Connally's wrist,
| where it was significantly slowed down. And lead _was_
| discharged from the back of the casing and the bullet is
| deformed.
|
| The JFK assassination committee in the 70s absolutely did
| not _overturn_ the conclusion of the warren commission.
| That tells me you didn 't even read it. They concluded a
| conspiracy solely on an audio recording that was later
| shown to be from a different time period than the
| assassination. The committee otherwise pretty much
| confirmed the conclusions from the warren commission.
|
| Here's my conclusion after reviewing both sides very
| thoroughly: there is no evidence that anyone other than
| Oswald shot the president.
|
| Stabilized zapruder film:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=102YMXW3BxA
|
| Nix film of assassination (no rear exit wound):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMxiGj9bo0U
|
| "Magic" bullet theory explanation (and correct
| alignment): http://dyingwords.net/the-magic-bullet-in-
| the-jfk-assassinat...
| mikeyjk wrote:
| As a young boy I was convinced this was a conspiracy.
| Until I saw the PBS documentary and a 90s website
| debunking the JFK movie (which I really enjoyed). Helped
| set me on my journey of learning and appreciating
| critical thinking skills.
| jollybean wrote:
| This is a good point.
|
| Our classical line of conspiracy thinking may be "If the CIA
| was involved it means they killed him"
|
| But maybe we are growing in our understanding that the world is
| very complicated, and that any number of actors could have been
| indirectly involved, with any number of motives, and that the
| 'final straw' may have been something a bit more simple, but
| facilitate by the complex web of weirdness.
|
| It's very easy to believe that the CIA etc. wanted Castro's
| head and an invasion, and that they were upset JFK wasn't
| supportive, and that they took a lot of clandestine steps
| towards 'something'. It's even easier to believe that there
| were even rogue actors within the agency that either went to
| for for ideological purposes or maybe even by accident.
|
| ... and then the dominoes fell in an ugly way.
|
| It'd be nice if some day we got to the bottom of this.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| > It's very easy to believe that the CIA etc. wanted Castro's
| head and an invasion, and that they were upset JFK wasn't
| supportive, and that they took a lot of clandestine steps
| towards 'something'.
|
| This is the part I never understand about this approach
| though - The Bay of Pigs invasion happened on Kennedy's
| watch, as did his push back on the Missile Crisis and the
| embargo so this narrative that he was soft on Cuba or
| something just isn't the case.
| jowday wrote:
| IIRC the CIA and other parties were upset Kennedy didn't
| commit further to the invasion. Kennedy's refusal to
| provide direct air support after the CIA backed forces lost
| the initiative is usually cited as a major point of
| contention.
|
| More conspiratorial theorists like to speculate that the
| CIA hoped to lure the US into a full-scale invasion of Cuba
| by escalating the Bay of Pigs invasion. By refusing to
| provide direct air support, Kennedy essentially stopped
| that from happening and doomed the invasion and ruined
| Allen Dulles' reputation. I have no clue how valid these
| theories are, but it's what's usually cited.
| joejohnson wrote:
| This isn't some speculative scenario about how JFK felt
| toward Dulles; JFK fired Dulles after the Bay of Pigs!
|
| But the failed invasion of Cuba was not an isolated
| incident. JFK was undermined by an intelligence community
| he did not control many times, another famous one being
| the CIA-backed military coup against Charles de Gaul
| which also failed. But the French foreign minister to the
| US has record of a conversation with Kennedy where he
| says he is not fully in control of his country's foreign
| policy.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_putsch_of_1961
| [deleted]
| jl6 wrote:
| I'm someone who has not spent much time looking into this. Can
| you tell me, based on your research, on balance of
| probabilities, who did it and why?
| duxup wrote:
| A weird dude acting alone seems entirely plausible and not
| surprising historically.
| rkk3 wrote:
| Yeah but this "weird dude" has the backstory of being a US
| Marine, who defected to the USSR and then defected back to
| the US... Why assume they stopped being a state actor.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| To be clear, he was married to a KGB agent. So if you
| really think he had to be a state actor then the only state
| that makes sense is the Soviet Union.
| philwelch wrote:
| That sounds exactly like the life decisions a weird dude
| would make.
| [deleted]
| tehjoker wrote:
| There's some evidence that he gave U2 spy plane secrets
| to the USSR. They didn't trust him and put him to work in
| a toy factory. He later came back to the US with a
| Russian bride that was related to a KGB officer. Unlike
| everyone else who came back, he was not debriefed by the
| CIA. They just welcomed him back.
|
| Compare that with how they treat Chelsea Manning.
| pwned1 wrote:
| Oswald shot himself in the arm to try to get out of the
| Marines too. You examine his life and he was a loser his
| entire adult life. He couldn't keep a job. He believed in
| Marxism and defected to the Soviet Union expecting to be
| some hero there. The KGB was rightly skeptical and put him
| in some horrible factory job. He was disillusioned. Came
| back to the US expecting to be a media sensation. No one
| cared. He then believed that Cuba got communism "right" and
| tried to go there, but the Cubans wouldn't let him in.
| About all he could handle was menial labor and got a job
| moving books around a warehouse, when opportunity to get
| the fame he always wanted presented itself...
| pbaka wrote:
| Except Oswald was not such a loser, as he was a double
| agent while in the SSSR [1], and he was staying at the
| home [2] of George de Mohrenschildt [3], who used to be
| member [4] of the Nazi Gehlen SS Division which was
| incorporated the CIA and german BND after WWII [5], and
| who was expulsed in 1957 by Yugoslavia for having spied
| on military installations there [6].
|
| Most interestingly, the day of his "suicide", de
| Mohrenshild had given an interview to a certain
| journalist named Jay Epstein (! - supposedly no
| relations), during which he claimed "that in 1962, Dallas
| CIA operative J. Walton Moore and one of Moore's
| associates had handed him the address of Lee Harvey
| Oswald in nearby Fort Worth and then suggested that de
| Mohrenschildt might like to meet him." - which he had
| also told the Warren commission.
|
| Oh, and he personnaly knew G.H.W. Bush before he became
| the director of the CIA, the latter having been the
| roomie of de Mohreshild's nephew [7].
|
| I know that the sound of hooves generally means horses
| are coming, and the "six degrees of separation" theory...
| Yet, don't you get the distinct impression we're in the
| middle of the savannah and insted those sounds might be
| zebras ?
|
| [1] https://knrasm.typepad.com/.a/6a0154328936da970c0168e
| 5939b50...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt
| #Dallas...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt
| - a German noble from Bielorussia, where Oswald had
| "defected" in 1957
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt
| #House_...
|
| [5] https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/germany/g
| ehlen.h...
|
| [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt
| #cite_n...
|
| [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mohrenschildt
| #Later_...
| andrepd wrote:
| That's certainly your reading of things, but I'm not sure
| it's supported by strong evidence.
| elif wrote:
| an official narrative is necessarily plausible
| marpstar wrote:
| Agreed, but worth noting that "plausible" is subjective.
| WTC 1 & 2 collapsing after being hit by jets may be
| plausible. WTC 7 collapsing after simply being in the area
| of the other towers... much less plausible.
| ATsch wrote:
| I don't find it particularly implausible that one
| building near a massive building collapse happened to not
| have adequate fire protection
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Relevant gif of collapse of WTC7:
| https://c.tenor.com/0PG_F9eZVmEAAAAC/wtc7-building.gif
| pwned1 wrote:
| I love clips like this that completely remove all
| context. The building was on fire for hours. If you watch
| the entire collapse, you see parts of the building
| collapse at different times. The fires were so intense,
| flames were shooting out of the windows like a blowtorch.
| Gigantic chunks of the other two towers pierced the
| building like swords.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I've seen the video of the fires but I haven't seen an
| angle that shows parts of it collapsing at different
| times. Would you mind sharing?
| orangepurple wrote:
| The best part of this is that even if one believes jet
| fuel burning for many hours led to the collapse of at
| least one of the buildings (I don't buy this argument),
| in the basements of the collapsed towers where the 47
| central support columns connected with the bedrock, hot
| spots of "literally molten steel" were discovered more
| than a month after the collapse. Such persistent and
| intense residual heat, 70 feet below the surface, in an
| oxygen deprived environment, cannot be explained by
| combustion. On the other hand, thermite contains its own
| supply of oxygen and does not require any external source
| of air. Consequently, it cannot be smothered, and may
| ignite in any environment given sufficient initial heat.
| It burns well while wet, and cannot be easily
| extinguished with water--though enough water to remove
| sufficient heat may stop the reaction.
| jl6 wrote:
| Eh, I find it far more plausible (in an Occam sense) that
| "literally molten steel" was a flawed observation than
| the alternative of invoking the enormous conspiracy
| machinery that controlled demolition implies.
|
| The jet fuel would have burned for ten minutes and then
| been exhausted. The consequent fire it started is what
| burned for hours.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I don't know if ground zero at WTC7 burned for months,
| but ground zero below the twin towers definitely did. The
| claim being hours vs the claim being months is obviously
| significant.
| rurban wrote:
| It isn't called Ground Zero for a reason. Do some
| research and check what that name means. Then the months
| long fire does make sense
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > It isn't called Ground Zero for a reason. Do some
| research and check what that name means. Then the months
| long fire does make sense
|
| It really isn't clear what this means / You're saying
| this relates to a nuclear weapon somehow?
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| In that gif, you can see the sky through the windows on
| the top floor on the left side; the building is _already
| collapsing when that gif starts_. In slightly longer
| versions of that clip, you can see the change occur in
| those windows: https://youtu.be/PK_iBYSqEsc?t=15
|
| Your gif starts approximately 8 seconds too late.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| WTC7 collapsed _several hours_ after the other. If it was
| a controlled demolition, why wouldn 't they bring it down
| at the same time as one of the other towers fell? The
| debris cloud from the larger towers would have covered
| their crime, and I don't think anybody would really find
| it very suspicious that one building was evidently
| crushed at the moment another was falling next to it.
|
| Therefore it makes more sense to me that WTC7 fell
| exactly as the official story describes. It was damaged
| and burned for hours, then the penthouse fell through
| knocking out much of the interior and the facade came
| down moments later.
| miles wrote:
| But then a man like Jack Ruby killing Oswald under such
| circumstances doesn't make any sense:
|
| Who Was Jack Ruby? https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-
| politics/who-was-jack-ruby...
|
| Why Jack Ruby Killed JFK's Assassin
| https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/jack-
| ru...
| duxup wrote:
| Weird dudes tend to have weird lives. And if someone is
| going to kill them we are by default talking about other
| weird people.
|
| Any such event is going to involve more of the same people.
| tptacek wrote:
| The Texas Monthly article you've cited makes a pretty
| strong case that (1) everyone in Dallas wanted to kill
| Oswald and (2) Ruby's involvement in a conspiracy theory is
| what really doesn't make sense.
| ATsch wrote:
| Could you give any examples? It is definitely true that
| people are often _portrayed_ as "weird dudes acting alone",
| however it is much rarer that that is actually true.
| andrewla wrote:
| Sirhan Sirhan & RFK. Here there is no elaborate story of
| defections to the USSR or meetings with the KGB head of
| assassinations or anything. Just a dude who really wanted
| to kill RFK for his support of Israel, who put his mind to
| it, and then did it.
| inostia wrote:
| Yes, Sirhan Sirhan, the man who conveniently "forgot"
| everything leading up to and including the shooting
| itself.
|
| Strangely enough, years later his attorney's argued that
| he was framed. Even RFK's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
| believes that Sirhan Sirhan was framed and did not
| actually conspire to kill RFK. He actually wants Sirhan
| Sirhan released [0].
|
| [0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article
| /Robert... [1] https://justiceforrfk.com/index.html
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _RFK 's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr._
|
| Now one of the most prominent and vocal anti-vaxxers.
| andrewla wrote:
| Multiple witnesses saw him approach RFK with a revolver
| and fire it three times at him. Nobody really denies
| that. What his son (and others) allege is that one of
| RFK's bodyguards used the assassination attempt as cover
| to actually assassinate him.
|
| Nobody argues that Sirhan conspired to kill RFK and shot
| a revolver at him, and very few people question the
| leadup to that attempt.
|
| Point taken, however, that RFK's assassination is not an
| unquestioned case of a single deranged individual.
| tata71 wrote:
| You're sure there wasn't a bird on his shoulder, so to
| speak?
| beebeepka wrote:
| There always is
| jcranmer wrote:
| The assassination of James Garfield and attempted
| assassination of Ronald Reagan are both very clear
| evidences of "weird dudes acting alone." I don't know
| enough about McKinley's assassin to know if he would also
| qualify, although that was part of an era where anarchists
| assassinating notable political figures was relatively
| common. I also don't know enough about Teddy Roosevelt's
| attempted assassination.
|
| Indeed, if you look at attempted or successful
| assassinations of US presidents, excluding JFK, _only_
| Lincoln 's assassination involved a conspiracy.
| thaufeki wrote:
| Also the assassinations of MLK and RFK. But at this point
| there are so many "weird dudes acting alone" that that in
| itself becomes suspicious.
| ATsch wrote:
| I don't think not being part of an organized conspiracy
| and being a weird dude acting alone are the same thing.
| Especially in recent years the term "stochastic
| terrorism" has come up a lot, where people become part of
| a group where acts of violence are not explicitly ordered
| but nontheless tacitly encouraged. I think most so called
| "lone wolf" attacks fall into that pattern.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| The guy who shot John Lennon and the guy who shot Pope John
| Paul II?
| criddell wrote:
| The unabomber?
| rkk3 wrote:
| The Unabomber was also an unknowing MK Ultra test
| subject... so there is that.
| inasio wrote:
| One reasonable explanation I've heard for all the secrecy was
| that it was indeed Oswald, but in the heat of the moment one
| of the Secret Service guys shot JFK by mistake, and it was
| decided it was best to avoid the embarrassment.
| _jal wrote:
| > and it was decided
|
| I love how these stories always go all passive-voice at key
| moments.
| hutrdvnj wrote:
| How about: A weird dude acting alone killing a weird dude
| acting alone?
| tata71 wrote:
| > not surprising historically
|
| When considering history through the lens of bulletpoints in
| a child's textbook, maybe.
| adam12 wrote:
| > A weird dude acting alone seems entirely plausible and not
| surprising historically.
|
| *A weird dude that could break the laws of physics with 3
| bullets and a rifle.
| fatbird wrote:
| CBS and Dan Rather successfully reproduced the shooting by
| putting marksmen on a tower of the same height, firing at a
| moving target with the same rifle. Several hit with two
| bullets; one hit with three bullets. All fired three rounds
| within six seconds.
|
| Video of their tests:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs
|
| Regarding the "magic bullet", PBS showed how the path lines
| up when you correctly locate Connelly in the jump seat,
| which was lower and offset, turn Connelly slightly in his
| seat, and have JFK leaning forward a bit, as he was known
| to do because of back pain. The magic bullet trajectory
| isn't very magical.
|
| From this episode of Nova, IIRC:
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/cold-case-jfk/
| bumby wrote:
| The path of the bullet isn't the most eyebrow raising to
| me because bullets take some wonky paths when they
| collide with bodies. What's a bit concerning is after
| taking that wonky path, hitting ribs and wrist bones, the
| bullet came out practically un-deformed and in relatively
| pristine condition.
| fatbird wrote:
| The most plausible explanation I've heard is that after
| going through JFK's neck and most of Connally's chest
| without striking bone, it was significantly slowed down
| so that when it hit Connally's rib and wrist, it was with
| less than full force so the copper jacket held up better.
| Warren Commission tests on comparable bullets showed them
| staying relatively intact even when striking solid wood.
|
| This is a situation, I think, where people's intuitions
| don't line up well the reality of full metal jacket
| ammunition, which by design is supposed to deform or
| fragment less than softer slugs.
| bumby wrote:
| I think that's a reasonable enough explanation to change
| my mind.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| I'm no expert, but I thought a bullet deforms due to
| hydraulic pressure, not necessarily due to contacting a
| rigid object like a bone.
| momdad420 wrote:
| 3 shots in anywhere from 8-19 seconds depending on who you
| ask. Either way it's doable. Not really that physics
| bending.
| tyingq wrote:
| I don't know that "doable" is exactly the right
| adjective. 3 shots from a bolt action rifle at a moving
| target ~260 feet away, with 2 of the 3 shots on target.
| It's not impossible in that timeframe, but it's not easy
| either.
| fatbird wrote:
| As I described above with my link to the video of CBS, in
| 1967, testing the difficulty of those shots, they had
| multiple marksmen hit with two shots, and one hit all
| three, firing the same rifle from the same height at a
| moving target, within six seconds. It really wasn't that
| difficult for a practiced shooter.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs
| tyingq wrote:
| That matches what I was saying, in my opinion. We were
| shown their best performances, and they were experts with
| recent practice. The test was also a bit easier than the
| real-life scenario to me. No other occupants, the real
| car does change speed a couple of times, etc. It's
| possible, but you would have to assume Oswald kept his
| skills pretty current. The Marines have 3 levels of high
| proficiency for marksmen. In his prime, Oswald hit the
| mid level once, and the lowest level once.
| 988747 wrote:
| It is not easy for a random man off the street, but any
| properly trained sniper could do it while drunk and with
| one hand tied behind their back.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I live in Dallas, walking distance from Dealey Plaza,
| have been up to the sixth floor plenty of times, and have
| fired similar rifles. There are often Xs on the street
| marking where he was hit you can see from up there. It's
| my opinion that those were really not difficult shots for
| a moderately accomplished marksman, certainly not the
| impossibility that the Oliver Stone movie made it look
| like. Moving target, but it was moving at a slow and
| constant speed.
|
| As far as Oswald's service records show, he wasn't great,
| but wasn't bad. I guess there's no way to know how much
| he practiced afterward.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The "Magic Bullet" people seem to be running off of
| incorrect assumptions about how the shot was laid out and
| how the car was designed. If you take the actual angle of
| the shot and the actual layout of the presidential car
| (which did not have normal seating arrangement!) the
| "crazy" bullet path devolves into a straight shot.
|
| Hell, even early 2000s Discovery channel was able to figure
| this out!
| nradov wrote:
| This is the video where Discovery Channel recreated the
| shooting. (I have no opinion on it's accuracy.)
|
| https://youtu.be/mODFnl8e83M
| vanusa wrote:
| Downvoting for your arrogant tone ("some people still actually
| believe ...") in regard to a topic that is genuinely murky and
| has a lot of conflicting indications (and about which there's
| still a lot of misinformation kicking around).
|
| Even though -- after having done my own share of diligent
| research on this topic -- I eventually came to the
| (disappointing) conclusion on the question of whether or not
| there was a deep state conspiracy behind the events of that day
| -- I don't fault anyone for what they believe on the topic (pro
| or con).
|
| It's just what they believe, given the murky historical record
| and the fog of public belief and opinion about the matter. That
| doesn't mean (as you imply) that they're idiots or tools.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| You are right, I was being a little snarkey. I apologize and
| I agree its a murkey thing, but I dont think generally people
| approach it with with the same kind of critical patience you
| have, and its not like tin foil hat types are the hegemonic
| voice on these matters.
| clavicat wrote:
| I hope they catch the real killer.
| 0KnowledgeGoof wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29571215
|
| @dang, if this comment violates the site rules and deserves to be
| flagged, then this whole topic violates site rules. You show
| preference to a particular narrative and are not impartial. Look
| up Fred Hampton -- a genuine conspiracy admitted by the FBI. Is
| the establishment's villainization of the left not on topic in
| this thread?
| dboreham wrote:
| This one makes interesting reading:
| https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2021/do...
| pwned1 wrote:
| After dumps of millions and millions of records, still no one can
| point to anything even close to a "smoking gun" that anyone other
| than Oswald killed the president.
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| There are a lot of goofy theories about the JFK assassination,
| but I don't think you can dismiss all of them. The theory that
| makes the most sense to me is that Oswald was part of it, but
| that he also was set up to be the fall guy.
|
| There is evidence that Oswald was recruited by US intelligence
| when he was a teen in the Civil Air Patrol, and that he had
| gone to the Soviet Union as a false defector (the Soviets did
| the same to the US). He was part of operation to kill JFK, but
| then he was set up to be the fall guy behind his back. He
| claimed he was a patsy before he was he was killed.
|
| If he wasn't working for the government than some of his
| actions and associations before the assassination are just
| baffling. It's also a mystery why he was able to return to the
| US without any issues after defecting.
|
| https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/1290
| https://jfkfacts.org/was-oswald-a-cia-operative-or-not/
| xtracto wrote:
| (I'm not American btw)
|
| I find it very plausible that although most of those things
| happened, there was no actual conspiracy to _kill_ JFK. Like,
| there might have been a lot of chit-chat in those circles
| against JFK and all of what he was doing, but there was no
| concrete conspiracy to kill him. At the same time, there is
| this unstable person that seeing and hearing everything that
| happens around him, believes he will be doing a "greater
| good" if he killed the president.
|
| Then, the he was silenced mainly because of all the other
| stuff that he was part of.
|
| It's akin to the time when Trump was president (or Obama for
| all that matters): There was a lot of chat in the internet
| and elsewhere about how bad he was as president, how he was
| damaging the country, yada yada. It would only take one crazy
| person in the middle of a crazy clique to really go on with
| it.
| pwned1 wrote:
| I think it's completely legit to question Oswald and his
| history. It is just weird. I agree. Was he part of a larger
| conspiracy? I don't know. I sort of doubt it after reading a
| lot about his early life. But I have no doubt he pulled the
| trigger and killed the president. I think it's possible that
| the gov't tried very hard to cover up the fact that he was
| under surveillance because of his strange past. But I'm not
| sure we'll ever know. I know that after so many docs have
| been released, there is no smoking gun.
|
| When it comes to the patsy argument, read about his
| interrogation and the cops who interrogated him. The notes
| are very illuminating. Oswald clearly behaved in a guilty
| way. Very smug. Remember that his entire life he thought he
| was destined for something big. He even called his diary "My
| Historical Diary." He was a loser that needed to do something
| to be relevant.
| onychomys wrote:
| This is a super interesting read about people back in the 60s
| (...it was written in 1967, so they're contemporaries) who were
| already poring over documents, convinced there was a conspiracy
| to kill Kennedy.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/06/10/the-buffs
| dboreham wrote:
| I believe people (including LBJ and RFK) were convinced within
| a few minutes.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Some believe LBJ was in on it.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| LBJ got caught on a hot mic talking to Richard Russell saying
| he thought there was more than one shooter.
| tomrod wrote:
| But not before?
|
| Just kidding :)
|
| It was a shame he died. I wonder what things would look like
| had he not.
| abraae wrote:
| Vietnam war likely wouldn't have happened, certainly not in
| the same way.
| rpadovani wrote:
| Stephen King has some ideas in his 11/22/63 ;-)
| cruano wrote:
| I just finished watching 11.22.63 which is based on that
| novel and it's so good
| sterlind wrote:
| my dad is convinced that LBJ ordered the hit. I've never
| waded into the assassination conspiracy theories but he
| gets pretty animated about it.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Perhaps nothing. He wasn't regarded as effective during his
| time in office...maybe he would have just run out the clock
| on his first term and failed to be re-elected
|
| Comments here about Vietnam are way off base...the US
| mostly fully committed already during his Presidency and
| there wasn't much pressure at that point to back
| off...quite the contrary
| robobro wrote:
| Indonesia would be completely different. JFK was planning
| to meet with Sukarno shortly before he was assassinated.
| Then we got Suharto, New Order, the rest is history (over
| 1,000,000 communists, atheists, feminists, etc killed, and
| the third world is set back).
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Uh, no.
|
| Indonesia solved its Communist problem the only way they
| could, with rifles. Pre-corona, Indonesia was doing
| amazingly well politically and economically.
|
| Japan had another method, their society simply rejected
| the increasing violence of Communist protesters. (Note
| that Japan has a current problem with some shadow network
| involved in their defense committees.)
|
| There is nothing good about Communism, so stop being
| useful idiots. It has failed in every country where it
| was tried. (China is in the process of admitting it's
| Marxist anti-poverty narrative was a lie, with 1/3 of
| their adult population earning less than $140/month, and
| half of those earning nothing.)
|
| Young men: if you don't have a purpose in life, talk to
| an older man about that. If you're playing video games in
| your mom's basement all day, there's much more to life.
| 0KnowledgeGoof wrote:
| The US is the most powerful empire the world has ever
| known. What proportion of communist governments failed
| without the US putting fingers or entire hands on the
| scales?
|
| Meanwhile, capitalism is failing many in the present.
| Ideology is no substitute for evidence.
|
| To be a leftist is to want the good of all. But to be a
| leftist is also to be a target of established powers.
|
| Leave out the "mom basement gamer" ad hominem please.
| It's fine to critique violent revolutionaries and whether
| the ends justify the means.
|
| I just don't buy that the world has been a fair
| laboratory for economic experiments.
| xtracto wrote:
| Fascinating read. Every time I read these sort of old articles,
| I wonder who the people named in there were. For example:
|
| > was being saved by Marjorie Field, the wife of a prosperous
| Beverly Hills stockbroker,
|
| Who was Mrs Field? Apparently she had a really large house and
| a lot of free time. Who was her husband? What was her legacy?
| eternalban wrote:
| That was a very interesting read. Thanks.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Take one of the private tours at Dealey Plaza, it will make your
| head spin.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| What's not mentioned enough is that Lee Harvey Oswald lived in
| Soviet Union for like three years.
| pwned1 wrote:
| Vincent Bugliosi's book on the assassination is highly
| recommended. It destroys the conspiracy narrative. It's so
| impressively thorough.
| nextstep wrote:
| Here's a great book on why you shouldn't believe anything
| Vincent Bugliosi says:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAOS:_Charles_Manson,_the_C...
| pwned1 wrote:
| I read that book too. Both are fascinating. That's why you
| rely on primary sources. Bugliosi's JFK book is forebodingly
| well documented. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes.
|
| I've spent years reviewing books from "both sides" and none
| are perfect. But on balance, the conspiracy books rarely
| stand up to even the most basic fact checking.
| e15ctr0n wrote:
| Jesse Ventura's book on the assassination is also highly
| recommended. It provides a great alternative to the Lee Harvey
| Oswald narrative. It's so impressively thorough.
|
| _They Killed Our President: 63 Reasons to Believe There Was a
| Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK_ (October 1, 2013, Jesse Ventura
| with Dick Russell & David Wayne)
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17593244-they-killed-our...
| kylebenzle wrote:
| 'During his [Vincent Bugliosi] eight years in the Los Angeles
| County District Attorney's Office, he successfully prosecuted
| 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, best known for prosecuting
| Charles Manson. He is also a best selling author.'
|
| You don't get a 99% conviction rate by being honest, I would
| say this wouldn't be a great choice of person to put ANY faith
| in really. I MUCH prefer Colin McLaren's take, an ex police
| investigator who took on the "case" in his retirement as if it
| were any other cold case in his book, JFK: The Smoking Gun.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Bugliosi [2]
| https://www.amazon.com/JFK-Smoking-Gun-Colin-McLaren/dp/1743...
| pwned1 wrote:
| Sorry, but "he's not honest because I say so" isn't an
| argument. Let's say he isn't honest. Ok. His citations and
| endnotes themselves are hundreds of pages (I think over 1,000
| pages). I've frequently checked many of them, because I was
| curious about this or that topic. Nothing was out of context
| or false. On the other hand, I frequently will look at
| quotations or documents cited by the conspiracists and more
| often then not the quote is either 1) out of context or
| lacking important context, or 2) false.
| jldl805 wrote:
| If you're trying to convince people that you're a rational
| investigator, not batshit conspiracy theorist, making blanket
| dismissive judgements about his lack of honesty based on your
| subjective interpretation of his conviction rate is not going
| to help.
| d1a2n wrote:
| "subjective interpretation" god you guys are so
| pretentious. You try so hard to sound like a smarty pants
| that you'll throw in fancy sounding language for the sake
| of it. The guy has an interpretation, it is subjective
| because it is his, contrast with "objective" interpretation
| which means interpretation you think is correct. But you
| use "subjective" rhetorically to suggest that it is a
| property of his argument that makes it weak rather than a
| label you give it after reflexively recoiling because
| someone has contradicted your scientistic, trust the
| experts, "the government wouldn't lie to me, praise the
| state!" ideology
| jldl805 wrote:
| I'd just say I also wouldn't trust anyone who thinks the
| word "subjective" is a pretentious, smarty pants word,
| lol.
| d1a2n wrote:
| Nah mate it isn't the word, it's the use.
|
| Tell me, triple jabbed?
| timzzy wrote:
| Who cares. Pfizer is getting 75 years (at least) to cover up the
| fact that their "vaccines" aren't vaccines and they cause many
| harmful side affects like myocarditis.
| iesenji wrote:
| ??
| Strilanc wrote:
| I think they're referring to this:
| https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2021/12/09/fda-says-it-
| needs-...
|
| I tried to read through the court doc [1] linked by the site
| to find the 75 years but the legalese is beyond me.
|
| 1: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21150416/fda-
| brief.pd...
| unvaxxdhaha wrote:
| https://www.sirillp.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/11/020-Secon...
| jcranmer wrote:
| Scanning quickly, it seems that the "75 years" is based on
| calculating "this is how many pages of documents that have
| been requested" and "this is the minimum production rate we
| can sustain [for this individual FOIA request, noting that
| there are ~400 other FOIA requests also pending]". The FOIA
| request apparently consists of 329k pages, and the
| production rate is 500 pages/month, and dividing the two
| numbers indicates the "55 year" rate that was originally
| suggested. I didn't continue to see where the numbers for
| the 75 year revision comes from, but that gives you the
| general picture.
| 14 wrote:
| Wow. Talk about a great way to fuel a conspiracy theory.
| Why could they possibly want to wait 75 years to release
| data on covid? Surely other nations are going to release
| independent data on the findings?
| jcranmer wrote:
| It's because the people who are saying that the FDA needs
| to wait 75 years to release the vaccine data are _at
| best_ writing statements that are misleading and at worst
| outright lying.
|
| The implication of that statement is that the FDA isn't
| going to release one iota of data for 75 years. That
| isn't anywhere close to the truth. What happened instead
| is that there's a court battle going on over a FOIA
| request against the FDA. The FDA is swamped with FOIA
| requests (it has ~400 pending right now), and the FOIA
| request in question asked for a gargantuan grab-bag data
| --over 300k pages of data. Redacting responses to FOIA
| requests takes time, and the FDA was proposing to drop
| ~12k pages by the end of the year, and then _no fewer_
| than 500 pages per month.
|
| It should be noted that the FDA's comment that it takes
| ~8 minutes to redact a single page for production, which
| is not unreasonable. So at a guesstimate, that's 20 man-
| years of effort to redact the response to this FOIA
| request. Maybe if you want to get your request finished
| in a reasonable amount of time, you should ask for
| something more than specific than _literally_ everything
| the FDA has on the topic... or maybe instead the
| government 's hiding something because it can't get it
| done by like tomorrow or something.
| ttul wrote:
| When I see a comment like this, my first thought is, "do you
| need any help?"
| president wrote:
| Was what he said not true? Quit bullying people. Whether out
| of ignorance or malice, you are part of the furthering of the
| divide of our society.
| timzzy wrote:
| Do you deny that fact? Show me your sources bro.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Just go away. Really. There are plenty of places on the net
| where you and your junk will be welcomed with open arms but
| I'd love it if we could keep this crap from HN. And take
| your bro talk with you.
| unvaxxdhaha wrote:
| How about _you_ go away? Last I heard this was hacker
| news not covid news.
|
| Fucking fascist piece of shit liberal.
| tomrod wrote:
| The term we non-medical folks need to learn is "Standard
| of Care."
|
| Anyone recommending something outside the clinical
| Standard of Care is suspect unless it is through the peer
| review process, which incentivizes real, impactful
| outcomes as a crab bucket of a reward (i.e. if someone
| publishes something false, I have monetary and fame
| incentive to call it out).
|
| Here is where one can find the Standard of Care:
| https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-
| response/coro...
|
| Is Standard of Care _always_ right? Of course not. But it
| works well and aligns incentives.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Please don't feed the trolls. They live off it.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Kennedy was assassinated. Therefore technically there WAS a
| conspiracy to kill him. In most of these situations and
| especially for a high profile killing like this, there is a
| "team". So it's not fantasy to think there is a conspiracy.
| emerged wrote:
| I did it, but you'll never get me to confess!
| ceva wrote:
| So who is next, its been a while ;)
| [deleted]
| dpweb wrote:
| I think the important thing that it would be impossible to
| disprove a conspiracy, even if there wasn't one, so that idea
| will always be alive.
|
| But I've never heard a reasonable argument in favor of the magic
| bullet theory. This could only be resolved by non-circumstantial
| evidence which may or may not exist. Every release of evidence is
| important however, even if proof of a conspiracy is never found.
| 0110101001 wrote:
| The bullet is only "magic" if you assume the Governor's seat is
| directly in front of and at the same height as JFK's. It isn't.
|
| If you model the actual position of everyone in the car at the
| moment of that shot, it's a straight line from the sniper's
| nest through all the wounds it caused
|
| https://youtu.be/PfSXkfV_mhA
| [deleted]
| munk-a wrote:
| The beauty about conspiracy theories is that #1 the government
| can never release documents that disprove a conspiracy theory
| (because they're the government and clearly those documents are
| an effort to further the cover up) - and independently released
| information that doesn't align with the theory could always be
| a government plant - thus see #1.
|
| Fervently believed conspiracy theories die out with their
| believers or when people get bored.
| tehjoker wrote:
| The reason the conspiracy won't die is because the official
| story is totally implausible. Watch JFK Revisited
| ralmidani wrote:
| To join the conspiracy party, I've wanted to write some Star Trek
| fan fiction where Picard and crew follow some time-traveling
| Romulans and find themselves in Dallas right before the
| assassination. The "Grassy Knoll" shooter was actually a Romulan
| from an alternate timeline where Kennedy survived Oswald's shot,
| accelerated the space race, defeated the USSR in his second term,
| and First Contact didn't take 100 years.
|
| The conundrum for the crew: they learn that the Federation was
| more advanced but more militant. The Romulans presented less of a
| challenge, but the Federation as a political regime was less
| enlightened. Ultimately, the crew decides not to interfere.
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