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Who killed JFK?

  • Lee Harvey Oswald

    Votes: 32 28.3%
  • Mafia

    Votes: 7 6.2%
  • CIA/FBI

    Votes: 41 36.3%
  • Cubans

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • KGB

    Votes: 1 0.9%
  • The Illuminati/Masons/Lizards

    Votes: 10 8.8%
  • all of the above

    Votes: 21 18.6%

  • Total voters
    113
I have a question: the route of JFK's motorcade, was it published in advance? If it was, that seems to me to be a security blunder. If not, then you would need several snipers covering different routes, proving it was a conspiracy. As I understand it, LHO had been working where he was for quite a while, and if the route had not been published at that time, then surely he's off the hook? Unless it was a last-minute decision to kill JFK. Sorry if this has been covered in the thread before.
It’s fairly common to know a route like this in advance. Road closures would be in place and publicised in advance and anyone in the area watching in advance would no doubt have seen Secret Service agents checking it out.
 
Blimey Orson, I must admit I hadn't thought of that. I wonder who chose the route? JFK or his agent? Or the local chief of police? Or the head of the Dallas mob?
 
Blimey Orson, I must admit I hadn't thought of that. I wonder who chose the route? JFK or his agent? Or the local chief of police? Or the head of the Dallas mob?

The Warren Commission Report (see link in Yithian's earlier post) details who was involved in proposing, refining and finally specifying the route.
 
I believe such things were common practice at the time as there was no reason do suspect trouble and do otherwise.

The fact that the route was public is not a matter of suspicion. The determination of the route may be.
 
But supposedly Oswald was a patsy .....so what could he know..? And Ruby was dying anyway..so why not spill his guts..? Doesn't really make sense to me.
I think Ruby kept quiet out of fear for his life. Ruby intimated Lyndon Johnson was in someway responsible for the assassination. If he started making noises about how he was going to 'tell all', I don't think it would be too much trouble for Johnson, the most powerful man in the country, to have him 'silenced'. Ruby knew this, so kept his mouth shut.
 
He even corrected erroneous information that was being given out. I think the police said that Oswald was a member of the "Free Cuba Committee" (I think!), but Ruby pointed out that it was actually the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." How would Ruby know such a little known fact at the time?

I've always considered this to be highly suspicious. Add this to the fact there are many witnesses that either place Oswald in Ruby's Carousel Club, or claimed to have seen the two men together, and you've got a strong case that a relationship existed between the two men before the assassination.
 
I've always considered this to be highly suspicious. Add this to the fact there are many witnesses that either place Oswald in Ruby's Carousel Club, or claimed to have seen the two men together, and you've got a strong case that a relationship existed between the two men before the assassination.
Yes, the one thing that made me doubt Ruby knowing about any conspiracy was a programme I saw which stated he was in a bank just before he killed Oswald. I think it said he left the bank and about three minutes later strolled into the basement and shot Oswald there. Which implies it couldn’t have been planned and was merely chance he was there at the right time and therefore it must have been an impulsive act. Not sure how true this is though.
 
On the Trail of Delusion—A Review
written by Gerald Posner

A review of On the Trail of Delusion—Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser by Fred Litwin. NorthernBlues Books, 466 pages (September 30th, 2020)

When Quillette asked if I might review Fred Litwin’s On the Trail of Delusion about the failed JFK assassination probe of New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, I initially hesitated. I did not believe there was much new information that another book could add to the historical record. In Case Closed, my 1993 re-examination of the assassination, I relied on documents from Garrison’s own investigation as the backbone of a 30-page chapter (“Black is White, and White is Black”) in which I exposed the extent of his abusive prosecution. In its review of Case Closed, Publishers Weekly wrote, “About New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, the hero of the movie JFK, [Posner] is merciless, laying out an endless trail of his lies and exaggerations.” Australia’s Sunday Herald Sun noted that “Previously undisclosed files cited by Posner also play havoc with the romanticised portrait of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that director Oliver Stone presents in his 1991 film JFK.”

Continued at length (and with interest after a throat-clearing start): https://quillette.com/2020/11/22/on-the-trail-of-delusion-a-review/
 
Strange but true: on another thread here, I was just commenting about a presidential motorcade and your post just popped up. :)
 
I was 8 years old when Kennedy was killed. I wasn't in school that day because my family was in the middle of moving into a new house. We were standing in the yard when our neighbor ran over screaming that the president had been shot.

I've watched and read about lots of theories. Some are more convincing than others, altho I really do think, in the end, it was Oswald. But I have to add--there are quite a few things that still make me wonder sometimes...:oops:
 
Oh my God.

That is absolutely chilling. :(
 
I believe such things were common practice at the time as there was no reason do suspect trouble and do otherwise.

The fact that the route was public is not a matter of suspicion. The determination of the route may be.
No reason? Except that there were death threats out on JFK from right-wing Texans. Plus a plot to assassinate JFK in Chicago had just been busted.
 
On the Trail of Delusion—A Review
written by Gerald Posner

A review of On the Trail of Delusion—Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser by Fred Litwin. NorthernBlues Books, 466 pages (September 30th, 2020)

When Quillette asked if I might review Fred Litwin’s On the Trail of Delusion about the failed JFK assassination probe of New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, I initially hesitated. I did not believe there was much new information that another book could add to the historical record. In Case Closed, my 1993 re-examination of the assassination, I relied on documents from Garrison’s own investigation as the backbone of a 30-page chapter (“Black is White, and White is Black”) in which I exposed the extent of his abusive prosecution. In its review of Case Closed, Publishers Weekly wrote, “About New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, the hero of the movie JFK, [Posner] is merciless, laying out an endless trail of his lies and exaggerations.” Australia’s Sunday Herald Sun noted that “Previously undisclosed files cited by Posner also play havoc with the romanticised portrait of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that director Oliver Stone presents in his 1991 film JFK.”

Continued at length (and with interest after a throat-clearing start): https://quillette.com/2020/11/22/on-the-trail-of-delusion-a-review/
Posner is a hack. Ignore.
 
This is my opinion only.

What ties JFK death, the CIA, The FBI, Jack Ruby, and the death of Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Kilgallen all together which is UFOs.

JFK was pushing the CIA on UFO information just before he died.

Marilyn Monroe knew too many secrets.

Dorothy Kilgallen was the only journalist to talk to Jack Ruby before he died.

Before JFK died, Dorothy Kilgallen was pushing her Pentagon connections on UFOs.

FBI Hoover hated Kilgallen, but came up with a New Orleans Mafia connection to Jack Ruby.

Too many moving parts.
 
"I'm not saying it was aliens ... but it was aliens"?*
This is my opinion only.

What ties JFK death, the CIA, The FBI, Jack Ruby, and the death of Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Kilgallen all together which is UFOs.

JFK was pushing the CIA on UFO information just before he died.
Fair enough.
Marilyn Monroe knew too many secrets.
Loads of secrets. Mafia connections, the Hollywood powers, drug providers etc. etc. Yeah, even pillow talk. But JFK chatting after a sweaty bedroom-olympics session about extraterrestrials? That's a bit of a stretch, eh?
Dorothy Kilgallen was the only journalist to talk to Jack Ruby before he died.
She was a journalist, getting paid to find a story, join the dots etc. So scoring an interview with the killer-of-the-killer-of-The-President isn't off the average journalist's wish-list.
Before JFK died, Dorothy Kilgallen was pushing her Pentagon connections on UFOs.
She was a journo (see above) who wants to promote her importance with connections to top-level government. If she'd a thing about UFO's then she'd do that. Nothing to do with the assassination, surely?
FBI Hoover hated Kilgallen, but came up with a New Orleans Mafia connection to Jack Ruby.
So that asshole Hoover found/created a 'connection' with Ruby and organised crime (no news there) but set Kilgallen on to him? Even though he 'hated' her?
Too many moving parts.
Too many degrees of separation.

1) What has Marilyn Munroe have to do with UFO's?
2) Hoover was the Feds, not the CIA. Both renowned for despising the other. The CIA might've been caught up in the whole thing, fair point.
3) The CIA being 'pushed' by the Prez ... set a eager journalist with connections onto the Prez? Do-able but what was the end game? And WTF has it to do with UFO's?

Not too many moving parts but so many loose ends that it's all over the place.

* Second removed, perhaps, but you think JFK was iced 'cause he was going to blow the gaffe on US/Alien
 
I think you have a point - so long as you replace "UFOs" with the Mafia. My opinion is that RFK bumped off MM (accidentally, or on purpose) because she threatened to expose the Kennedys.

JFK got bumped off because he messed with the Mafia, Hoover and LBJ.

Dorothy Kilgallen was bumped off because she got too close to the truth of it all.

Here's a couple of interviews for those who have the time and inclination to listen to some very good research on the matter:

Mark Shaw

Mike Rothmiller
https://theunexplained.tv/episodes/edition-559-mike-rothmiller

Sure, both have books to sell - but their arguments make sense to me.
 
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I think you have a point - so long as you replace "UFOs" with the Mafia. My opinion is that RFK bumped off MM (accidentally, or on purpose) because she threatened to expose the Kennedys.

JFK got bumped off because he messed with the Mafia, Hoover and LBJ.

Dorothy Kilgallen was bumped off because she got too close to the truth of it all.

Here's a couple of interviews for those who have the time and inclination to listen to some very good research on the matter:

Mark Shaw

Mike Rothmiller
https://theunexplained.tv/episodes/edition-559-mike-rothmiller

Sure, both have books to sell - but their arguments make sense to me.
Jack Ruby rather points in that direction, doesn't it? I'm not sure why a Mafia guy would be at all upset by the death of JFK.

The guy impersonating Oswald in Mexico City always seemed like a bizarre aspect of it all to me. Johnson and Hoover even discussed it the day after the assassination.

JOHNSON: "Have you established any more about the [Oswald] visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico in September?"
HOOVER: "No, there's one angle that's very confusing for this reason. We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man at the Soviet Embassy, using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there was a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy."

It doesn't seem to support the idea that Oswald was a lone nut acting on his own.
 
Good point, telegraphed ...
Quite handy to have the guilty/innocent flatlined before they testify in their own trial.
He might've been a 'lone wolf', doing what he did because he was a nutjob. He might've been a patsy, too, set up to doing the job with minimal contact to his 'operators'. He might've been set up as the killer, while the real organisation actually did the job and fragged the president. Thing is, he did what he did, died before testifying, all very useful.

It all adds up to a meat feast of speculation but, really, after all this time the likelihood of any court-approved evidence is unlikely.
 
I was watching an interview with director Brian De Palma, who has made a few conspiracy movies in his time because he used to be a 1960s conspiracy nut. But he admitted, he read dozens of books on the JFK assassination (which features in his work like Greetings and Blow Out), but eventually he found that instead of knowing more about the truth, he ended up more confused than ever, so eventually gave up on the subject.

I don't know what the solution to that would be.
 
I was watching an interview with director Brian De Palma, who has made a few conspiracy movies in his time because he used to be a 1960s conspiracy nut. But he admitted, he read dozens of books on the JFK assassination (which features in his work like Greetings and Blow Out), but eventually he found that instead of knowing more about the truth, he ended up more confused than ever, so eventually gave up on the subject.

I don't know what the solution to that would be.

This is a very valid observation and one I think might be applied to a few topics of Fortean nature.

I think, in the next few years, rather than turning up new material, the great advances will come from meta-analysis of existing work.

The ability to digitise material, gather from disparate sources and analyse not just sources but also methodologies, will allow greater insights than ever before. Advances in machine learning and AI should allow greater application of this kind of work, not to mention expediting it.

The JFK case, and even the likes of the Loch Ness monster, should lend themselves to this kind of study, where vast amounts of historical material can be analysed for value and veracity before being included, or not, in the canon, but weighted accordingly.

All we need are a cadre of PhD students with Fortean interests, access to high performance computers (HPC) and susceptibility to bribery through snacks.

How hard could it be?
 
This is a very valid observation and one I think might be applied to a few topics of Fortean nature.

I think, in the next few years, rather than turning up new material, the great advances will come from meta-analysis of existing work.

The ability to digitise material, gather from disparate sources and analyse not just sources but also methodologies, will allow greater insights than ever before. Advances in machine learning and AI should allow greater application of this kind of work, not to mention expediting it.

The JFK case, and even the likes of the Loch Ness monster, should lend themselves to this kind of study, where vast amounts of historical material can be analysed for value and veracity before being included, or not, in the canon, but weighted accordingly.

All we need are a cadre of PhD students with Fortean interests, access to high performance computers (HPC) and susceptibility to bribery through snacks.

How hard could it be?

The trouble with the accumulation approach is, how do you know what's accurate and what isn't? What mistakes (and lies) have been repeated because of confirmation bias and what is genuinely objective? Or even factual? The further away you get from something, the more obscure it is going to look and the bigger picture just looks like a confusion, as De Palma discovered.
 
... I think, in the next few years, rather than turning up new material, the great advances will come from meta-analysis of existing work. ...
How hard could it be?
It could - and will - be very hard, because it will be necessary to wade through the thickets of documentation generated since the events of interest and determine the evidentiary weight of all the commentary and spin that's been inserted over the last 6 decades.

The JFK assassination - like any number of other strange events - has become encrusted with a thick mantle of speculation and myth-making.

Another thing to bear in mind is that large-scale document analysis using AI / machine learning cannot product results more precise than the documentation that serves as its raw material. There's little consistency in expository precision and nomenclature among all the authors who've written on the subject.
 
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