"...Forty years later, suspicions of a conspiracy endure: Seven in 10 Americans think the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the result of a plot, not the act of a lone killer — and a bare majority thinks that plot included a second shooter on Dealey Plaza. " http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/JFK_poll_031116.html i believe that: ====>>there was more than one sniper ====>>Edgar J. Hoover's railroaded the Warren Commission into reaching a pre-conceived conclusion---lone assasin with the magical bullet. ====>>CIA. mafia and Cuba had something to do with the assasination plot what is your take?
Whooo boy. I can't even name all the books I've read on this subject, as it was a particular fascination for me when I was much younger. The problem with identifying who was responsible is similar to that facing investigators of the Jack the Ripper mystery; not a lack of evidence, but too much evidence leading in too many directions. Aside from motvies, which there are for all of the usual suspects, there are substantial reasons for believing that any or all of several groups were involved, way too much to go into here; for example. the mafia connection stuff includes a ton of Ruby connections, the infamous " If you want to kill a dog, you don;t cut off the tail, you cut off the head" comment in response to how to adress Bobby's crusade against organized crime, the supposed Marseilles open contract, and much, much more. For the CIA, Feds, Defense, etc. there is much more in terms of the coverup, including the freakishly convenient deaths of key witnesses days before they were to testify before the Congressional inquiry in the 70's ( TWO of whom, I believe, were shot dead...accidentally...by hunters...in their backyards...ahem...), what would have been neededto push for the Warren Commissions dubious findings, of which the Magic Bullett, while being the best known, is not the only huge inconsistency by a long shot. For one thing, were it not for a traffic cops's accidentally open radio, the comission and initial investigation would have dismissed all eyewitness accounts of the number of shots and reduced it to the manageable number of three, and much, much more. All kinds of eyewitness accounts of men (with badges) being in place as or within seconds of the shots being fired in th area surrounding the grassy knoll, clearing the crowds, but then being gone minutes later...police bullying of witnesses, according to several accounts, into contradicting their versions of what happened with the more easily explained Oswald angle, the whole Oswald angle itself, etc. It goes on and on. Like nature vs. nurture, most people usually resolve it somewhaere in the middle of all of these and more...the Cuban ex-patriates usually spicing things up in there somewhaere. I honestly doubt it will ever be resolved. Cerainly I would say that the only clear factual interpretation of the facts is that it could not have been Oswald, at least not acting alone, and likely not being a shooter at all. He probably weas just what he said he was.
How did he manage to get off the shots in marksman-level time, through foliage for two of them, on a moving target, with a reasonable grouping despite using a poor quality, single breach manual re-slot Italian rifle from a poor angle while increasing accuracy on a decreasing target, after passing on a much better approach angle? All this despite being, according to his military training officers, a terrible to poor shot? Just for beginners...
Anybody who is a JFK Assasination buff should check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=sr_1_28/002-9465397-3618427?v=glance&s=books Author is Gary Cornwell, who chaired the House Select Committee on Assassinations, who did their own investigation in the late 70s, which got little pub. Their conclusion was that their was a good probability (the specific % escapes me) that there was indeed a conspiracy (2nd gunman). One of the main things they based their findings on, was an acoustical recreation of the shots. The original shots happened to be caught on an audio tape (via a CB radio on a police motorcycle). The HSCA recreated the scene and did their own gun firings and recorded the results and then compared them with the tape of the original shootings. The end result, based on their advanced acoustical setup and testing, suggested that one of the shots did come from an area other than the school book depository.
I'm with you, MacBeth. I've got a shelf full of books and articles that I've read on this subject while I was in college and you're right. The problem isn't that there is a lack of evidence, it's that there is too much evidence. That's why there are so many theories that lead in so many different directions. And that's why IMO we will never know for sure who killed him and why. But is sure wasn't Oswald... I'll have to revisit this thread when I have more time.
My theory is that JFK authorized the fake moonlandings. Just look at some footage. (if you can find it) This angered some people in Washington that saw it as potentially ridiculing to the US. Granted they've done a good job of covering up the fact that the moonlandings didn't really take place. How's that for a conspiracy?
If you buy the shortest time bit, then the shots didn't hit with increasing accuracy. Most of the theories that give Oswald the very short time say it was the second shot that missed completely. That "Case Closed" guy (not T_J) says it was the first one that missed (or, more likely, hit one of the tree branches in the way) in order to give Oswald more time to make the shots (because the time he would've had was a major source of contention over the years). But that's just his explanation (based on my memory of reading the book). Either way, I suppose it would still have to be quick, just not quite as quick as many of the attempts to recreate the event have been (when firing a rifle like that, two or three seconds can be a long time). The amazing thing is that the government and the hundreds of people (and Oswald had to be involved in some way since he had to be complicit in his own murder as it played out) could cover this all up so well for so long and yet, they can't keep anything else secret for five minutes it seems. Nixon's people could've even break into an office without immediately getting caught. These guys killed a President and have kept it quiet for forty years. I sure don't have the answer, but I also can't dismiss that Oswald could've done it by himself. The more interesting thing to me is that the belief in a conspiracy has grown with the public over the years. Part of that, I'm sure, is just the sheer industry that has grown out of the assassination and some assassination buffs' willingness to play fast and loose with the facts in order to sell books rather than a true attempt to get to the bottom of the story (like any field of inquiry there are bad and good researchers, etc), as well as the general growth in distrust of our government over the intervening years.
Well, first, I think the story was that you can hear more than three shots on the recording rather than being able to pinpoint where a shot came from in that echo chamber that is Dealey Plaza. I always thought that tape was interesting. For one, they never proved that the open mike was on one of the motorcycles that was with the President's limo. And if you listen to the tape, you can't hear squat, certainly nothing that sounds like gunfire, or a motorcycle revving up or sirens on the motorcycle accompanying the President's limo to Parkland. It sounds like a whole bunch of static for the most part to the naked ear. Another analysis of the tape placed the open mike at the Trade Center and supposedly, the person who did this analysis heard a slight ringing every once in a while on the tape which was consistent with the copy of the Liberty Bell that was in front of the Trade Center at the time. People would often knock on it as they walked by, making a slight ringing noise. But either way, It's interesting to me that they could hear anything on that static-filled dictabelt recording.
1) Yeah, the second shot is usually attributed to be the one who kicked up the cement onto the bystander...who's name I have forgotten. But between #s 2 and 4, you're talking about a difference in space of more than 50 feet, but even more, you're talking an increasingly limited angle of sight, and a more accute firing angle. That's really hard to argue. 2) There was at least one shot, usually credited as the second, which ricocheted off the pavement more than 15 feet from the vehicle. There have been dozens of serious attempts by credited experts to recreate the accuracy in the allotted time, and not one has succeeded, depsite using marksmen, which Oswald most certainly was not. But the biggest factor which stimulated public outcry/re-examination of the assassination/Warren Commission, the Zapruter ( sp?) film, wasn't released until decades after the event. Prior to that, and let it be said, prior to Watergate, the vast majority of the American public swallowed whatever the government told it whole, irrespective of how credible it was. Remember, Watergate was disbelieved by more than 75% of the US publi, with the bulk of the information being out there, right up until the very end of the investigation, a matter of several months.
Yeah...so accurate that none of the dozens of proffessional marksmen who have attempted to equal it have been able to sonce, and some of them didn;t even account for the vegitation in the way...
FBI weapons expert Robert Frazier got off three accurate shots with Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in 4.5 seconds -- recycling the mechanism and reaiming the rifle twice. In fact, the Warren Commission never said that Oswald had only 6 seconds to get off three shots. This is a convenient misrepresentation by conspiracy authors. Most people today who believe that Oswald did the shooting by himself believe that he made the first shot at about Zapruder frame 160, giving him about 8.4 seconds to get off all three shots. i got that stuff off a website
It's possible that someone did it since I was up on this...admitedly, it's been a while...does your on-screen one say whether they accounted for the foliage? Still, even if true, prior to that dozens of pros couldn't do it, and Oswald was a poor shot.
No, it apparently was done way back then, and some person who wrote a conspiracy book distorted the findings. There was another exercise where the shots were consistently up and to the right, but this was due to a broken sight, and they don't know when it was broken. Here's more from a different site: 9.1.3 Oswald could not have made the shots. False. Two points enter in: Oswald's skill and the difficulty of the shots. Oswald's marksmanship twice passed the Marine Corps requirements. By their standards, he was an average shot, but he was more than qualified to use a gun and hit a target. The difficulty of the shots has been overstated. Dealey Plaza is smaller than it appears in photographs or film. Oswald's longest shot was eighty-eight yards to the target. The limousine was moving slowly past Oswald when the first shot was fired. The car turned slightly to go down the inclined portion of the street, moving slowly up and to the right across Oswald's field of view when the second and third shots were fired. Despite the relative ease of the shots, Oswald hit the presumed target (JFK's head) only once out of three attempts.
Here is an interesting analysis on Frazier's shooting, the time between the shots and Oswalds' accuracy: http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/assassins/jfk/11.html?sect=24 The sequence of shots that apparently came from the sixth floor of the Book Depository is based upon the Zapruder film. It is generally agreed that three shots were fired in a time frame of 5.6 seconds. Remember the conclusions of the Warren Commission: "Three shots, two hits and a miss." In the time it takes to say: "Moses supposes his toes's are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously," Oswald was presumed to have shot President Kennedy twice and, as a bonus, almost killed Governor Connally. The time frame is based on the Zapruder film, which lasts about twenty-six seconds. It contains 500 frames. Life Magazine called it "the only unimpeachable witness to the killing." Because the assassin's view of the motorcade was blocked by a large Texas oak tree on the corner of Elm Street just in front of the TSBD building, it has always been assumed that the earliest point at which Kennedy would have been shot occurred between frames 210 and 313, when the devastating head shot is observed. The speed of the camera was assessed at 18.3 frames per second, so the maximum time that elapsed was 5.6 seconds. Could Oswald have fired that rifle in that time frame and done that damage? Between November 27 1963, and March 16 1964, the FBI had three of its top marksmen carry out an exercise to establish if those shots could have been fired in that time frame. The three experts, using the same rifle Oswald was supposed to have used, fired 3 shots each at a stationary target only 15 yards away, trying to match Oswald's speed and accuracy. Every shot was high and to the right. None of these top marksmen could get off three shots in the time of 5.6 seconds and hit a target at a distance less than one quarter of the distance than the President's limo had been. The shots were fired at a flat trajectory and not from a height of at least sixty feet that would have been the minimum elevation from which the sniper was firing. In a final series of tests, one of the FBI marksmen fired a series of shots at a target set one hundred yards away. Again, he could not get the three shots off in the time frame; his best time being 5.9 seconds, but all of his shots were at least five inches above and to the right of the target. Robert Frazier, the agent, claimed that was the best he could achieve due to an uncorrectable mechanical deficiency in the telescopic sight. . . . . . The final assessment on Oswald's shooting ability, or lack of it, is left to Carlos Hathcock, a retired gunnery sergeant, who has been described as the most famous sniper in American history. He was credited, while on duty in Vietnam, with 93 confirmed kills. He said he attempted to reconstruct the shooting, incorporating all the elements, height, distance, moving target and time frame, but no matter how many times he or his team attempted it, they could never duplicate Oswald's alleged performance. So, in 80% of the Commission's test shootings, America's top marksmen failed to equal Oswald's marksmanship and timing. The best marksmen in the Army, the finest sharpshooters in the FBI, the greatest sniper in American history could not do what Lee the Nailer did. Only one in six was able to match his time, although he missed the target, the rest were well over six seconds. So that leaves us with the incontrovertible conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was probably one of the best marksmen in America. But was he?
