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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
No worries at all, skinny.

I read Meninger's book many years ago - but a lot of the ballistics stuff in there went straight over my head, I must admit. The doco made the whole argument a lot more accessible and convincing.

The most important part for me was the different behaviour of the two bullets in question. One - a full metal jacket as shot from Oswald's rifle - passed through both JFK and Connally and came out sill in relative good condition.

The other one - a hollow point as used in the Agent's AR-15 - fragmented on impact n JFK's head.

SBS have kindly made a website where you can review the evidence and witness statements: http://www.sbs.com.au/thesmokinggun/

I hope people outside of Australia can view it too. Th full doco is now on the SBS website (but I do think it is geo-blocked): http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/
 
When you play the vid, a voice says 'this content is currently unavailable'.

Yup, appears to be blocked.
 
I've always been a fan of the CIA/Mafia/LBJ theory - all that seething resentment from those in power and those seeking power.

But, these two use new forensic techniques to make the one-person-shooter theory seem very plausible (to me.) There is a really nice video reenactment at the link that won't be available forever. They talk about the accuracy of the type of rifle used and the stability of the bullet.

The Nova episode is on tomorrow night.

JFK single-bullet theory probed using latest forensics tech

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57611764/jfk-single-bullet-theory-probed-using-latest-forensics-tech/

(CBS News) Father-and-son team Luke and Michael Haag have used the latest technology to re-examine the idea that one bullet hit President John F. Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally. The duo is featured on the PBS series "Nova" in a documentary called "Cold Case JFK."

Using 3D laser scanners -- a technology that's come into play in forensics in recent years -- the Haags documented the crime scene of Kennedy's assassination and their proposed trajectory of the single bullet in an effort to debunk popular conspiracy theories, such as the Grassy Knoll shooter theory, that have persisted in the case.

"(We can envision) crime scenes more thoroughly, more completely than we ever have had the capability to do. So we walk away from the crime scene with more information and we can then examine the crime scene over and over again later on, on a computer. So as we get new hypotheses, things about -- people talking about where a shooter might have been at a new revelatory type place, we can go in to that software, take some calculations, take measurements, angles, and it's all right there," Michael Haag said.

So what did they learn in their research? Luke Haag said it's "easily" demonstrable that one bullet can go through two people "if you understand how this particular unusual bullet behaves and what does after it leaves Kennedy's body."

The 6.5 millimeter Carcano bullet made by Olin Winchester is "extremely stable," Luke Haag said. "People didn't understand then and don't understand now. It will go through a lot of material, and then when it comes out it starts tumbling ... and that's how it hit Connally."

Luke Haag explained, "It's like a badly thrown football. It normally flies true and straight. When this bullet emerged from Kennedy -- or any ballistic medium ... it's now yawing and tumbling. The entry wound in Connally is very important because it's the consequence of a yawed bullet, so it had to be a destabilized bullet from somewhere."

Asked if he believes it was just one bullet, Michael Haag said, "As far as the neck wounds to the president and the wounds to John Connally, absolutely."

Lee Harvey Oswald didn't have to be a good marksman to have accomplished the assassination, according to Michael Haag. "I've shot this drill these distances with a firearm that my dad acquired that is exactly the same as Oswald's rifle with ammunition of this type," he said. "These are not really tough shots."

As for the rifle itself, Luke Haag said the firearm has been disparaged as dangerous and inaccurate. "It's not," he said. "If the bore in the rifle is good, it's a good shooter and it was a good shooter, unfortunately for President Kennedy."

The 50th anniversary of the assassination prompted their reconstruction. He said on "CTM, "This is the classic shooting reconstruction case. Originally, it was a firearms identification case primarily. Do we have one gun or two guns, if it's one gun, is it that gun -- the gun in the Sixth Floor Museum? If it's that gun, whose gun is it? Those questions were all answered.

"But the question about multiple shots, the behavior of the bullet that goes through Kennedy and becomes the single bullet theory became controversial because, again, people didn't evaluate it. They didn't understand it, and they hadn't looked at it then and few have looked at it now."

Turning to the ongoing skepticism surrounding Kennedy's assassination, Luke Haag said, "We want to think there's more to it than a loner loser deranged Marxist who hated his country and took an opportunity. There's got be more to it than that. (Vincent) Bugliosi has a wonderful statement, 'A peasant cannot strike down a king.' Think about it -- a nobody did."

For more with Luke and Michael Haag, watch their full interview above.

© 2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
 
This sort of jives with the "Hickey theory"

Shot 1 - LHO misses, fragment strikes JFK in the chest without doing any real damage

Shot 2 - LHO shoots Kennedy though the throat and the same bullet strikes Connally.

Shot 3 - a different type of bullet strikes (by Hickey or someone else) strikes JFK in the head with awful consequences.

Interestingly, Connally insisted for the rest of his life that he was hit by the second bullet. That way, it sort of makes sense. Sort of... 8)
 
At the time (well, on the 25th anniversary) I thought 100% certain conspiracy theory.

But every TV doc I have watched has been 100% biased either way, for or against conspiracy.

These days I am coming round to the idea that the Oswald lone gunman theory is plausible.

One pro-conspiracy theory program showed an interview with a guy saying "from what I remember Oswald was not a great shot", that is hardly proof that Oswald was not a good shot.
 
Did anyone else see the JFK programme on CH 5 on Weds?

It painted a plausible set of events:

LHO fires 2 shots from the book depository. The first hits the pavement then ricochets up and hits JFK but in a fairly minor way. There is a witness supporting this. JFK realises he's been hit and says so. LHO fires again and the bullet hits JFK in the back of the neck, exits his throat & hits Connally who is turning round to look back after the first shot and JFK's reaction.

The third and certainly fatal shot is fired accidentally by a secret service man in the car following as the car possibly jerks. There is a photo [I think only one] of just such a man with a rifle in the car following and there are several witnesses who testify that they smell gunpowder at street level. Too far to smell gunpowder from LHO's shots from some distance & 6 floors up. The man with the rifle is named but I don't recall it. He never speaks about it.

The third shot was a different type of bullet which exploded & fragmented on impact. LHO's were normal bullets. When you look at the Zapruder film it does seem feasible. They compared shots at a firing range using using the same bullets, with a watermelon as target and showed the markedly different results. The normal bullet goes straight through leaving a hole. The exploding type, as would be expected, creates a lot more damage.

What follows is a very rushed autopsy in a chaotic room full of shouting military & secret service people in which normal autopsy procedures are not are adhered to. The body is then whisked back to Washington pronto.

The makers had access to papers available under freedom of information measures, from a re-investigation in Clinton's time. There was a medical guy at the autopsy who started picking fragments of metal out of JFK's brain who was taken to one side and told never to talk about it. He was told it would be the worst mistake he would ever make, or words to that effect. There was another witness with a similar story.

I can't claim to be an expert & there may be others out there with details which would throw this explanation out of the window, but as I say, it gave a fairly convincing scenario & one which I think is new. The fatal shot was a tragic accident by a secret service guy & the conspiracy was in the cover-up by the security service & military keen for it not to get out. Of course, in this scenario one has to accept the unlikely & freakish fact of the 3rd accidental shot hitting JFK in the head.....
 
hunck said:
Did anyone else see the JFK programme on CH 5 on Weds?

That seems to be the doco I was referring to which premiered here on November 3 on SBS.
 
The Cuban assassin with a deadly secret: 'I shot JFK’
Investigative writer Anthony Summers makes a compelling case for a new suspect in the frame for the assassination of President John Kennedy in Dallas in 1963
By Neil Tweedie
8:12PM GMT 15 Nov 2013

Suite 850 of the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth. It is the morning of November 22 1963 and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, is preparing for his short flight to Dallas.

Kennedy needs to woo Texas if he is to beat off Barry Goldwater, the Republican senator likely to be his opponent in the presidential race of 1964. But there are plenty of people in the Lone Star State happy to disappoint him, Right-wingers appalled by his apparent accommodation of Communist rule in Cuba and his administration's policy on civil rights.

Dallas is a hotbed of extreme conservatism, the only major city in America to have voted for Richard Nixon over Kennedy in 1960, and now here the president stands, with a copy of today’s Dallas Morning News. It carries a black-edged advertisement ''welcoming’’ the president, placed by a group calling itself the American Fact-Finding Committee. The ad consists of a list of accusatory questions: why is the Kennedy administration approved of by the US Communist Party? Why is the CIA being asked to arrange coups against Washington’s anti-Communist allies? And so on.

Jack Kennedy turns to his wife, Jackie. “We’re heading into nut country today,” he says. And then, pacing the room, he thinks aloud. “It would not be a very difficult job to shoot the President of the United States. All you’d have to do is get up in a high building with a high-powered rifle with a telescopic sight, and there’s nothing anybody could do.” Just over two hours later Kennedy is killed in the way he prophesied. :shock:

The shots echoing around Dealey Plaza that fine autumn day, scattering birds perched atop the Texas School Book Depository, resonate still. This Friday in Dallas, the 50th anniversary of the assassination will be marked with the tolling of church bells, a ceremonial flypast and readings of Kennedy speeches. America will remember its Camelot, and a milestone will have been reached.

“This is the moment when the Kennedy assassination tumbles over that dusty border dividing current affairs from history,” says Anthony Summers. He is standing in an outbuilding next to his riverside home in rural Co Waterford, Ireland, squeezed between shelves crammed with files marked “JFK”, the product of research that began in the 1970s and continued until this year.

Summers, who began his journalistic career on World in Action and later reported for Panorama, is author of widely praised books on Frank Sinatra, J Edgar Hoover and Marilyn Monroe. The Kennedy assassination was one of the first literary mountains he attempted to conquer, his efforts resulting in the 1980 book Conspiracy.

That book has now been reworked and republished with the title Not in Your Lifetime, a reference to an answer given by Earl Warren, chief justice of the United States, who headed the original inquiry. In 1964, when asked if all the information uncovered by his investigation would one day be made public, he replied: “Yes, there will come a time. But it might not be in your lifetime.”
Why – if, as the Warren Commission concluded, the chief executive of the US was murdered by an alienated misfit called Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone?

Summers has been trying to fill in the gaps created by this secrecy on and off for nearly 40 years. His work has led him to conclude that the US intelligence services concealed their connections with, or manipulations of, Oswald, and that there are reasonable grounds to suggest that Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy, most likely involving the Mafia and Right-wing Cubans seeking the overthrow of Fidel Castro, both with axes to grind.

And now, he has a name, of a man who fits the bill as Kennedy’s killer, who is said to have confessed his involvement in the assassination before being killed in a commando-style raid on Cuba.

“I have tried to write a book for the sane citizen that is open both to the lone assassin theory and something more complex,” says Summers. “The evidence that Oswald fired is pretty strong but also full of weaknesses. Why, if it was Oswald alone, do 1,171 CIA documents on the subject remain classified in the year 2013? There is no doubt something was and still is being concealed.

Summers initially avoided the story, regarding it as a graveyard of journalistic reputations. But then he was asked to prepare a Panorama report on the work of the US House Committee on Assassinations, which in 1979 concluded that Kennedy had “probably” been the victim of a plot, a second gunman being involved. “As I dug, I was struck by how poorly the story had been covered in its early days,” he remembers. “This was the post-Eisenhower era, and there was still trust in government.”

But what of Summers’s research? Who was this candidate for ''second trigger’’? The answer comes from an interview conducted in 2007 by Summers and Robert Blakey, formerly chief counsel to the House Committee on Assassinations, with 81-year-old Reinaldo Martinez Gomez, a Cuban exile living in Miami.

Martinez told them of a friend from student days called Herminio Diaz Garcia , an introverted but exceptionally brave man. Diaz, a crack shot, had worked as head of security at a casino in Havana run by the Mafia boss Santo Trafficante. He was also a political assassin, responsible for as many as 20 deaths, and at the time of the Kennedy assassination he was in the United States.

Martinez said that, while detained in one of Castro’s prisons, he had met Tony Cuesta, leader of an anti-Castro raid on Cuba in 1966 that had ended in Diaz’s death. Cuesta, who was badly wounded, told him about the night of the abortive raid and words uttered by Diaz that he would never forget. Said Martinez: “Herminio confessed to Tony Cuesta that he had taken part in the death of the US president.”

Years later, in Florida, Martinez heard the same from another source, an old friend and fellow Cuban exile, Remigio Arce. “Listen,” said Arce, “the one who killed the president was our little friend.”

Summers believes Martinez, who has since died, was telling the truth. “Martinez struck me – after two days of tough interviewing of a man in his eighties – as someone with nothing to gain, who appeared to be credible. Diaz ticks the boxes. He was a known political assassin, a marksman and had worked for Santo Trafficante, one of the two prime suspects in the assassination, together with fellow Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, named by the House Assassinations Committee. He was also involved with one of the more extreme anti-Castro groups.

“The Mafia had every motive to do away with President Kennedy because they were being pursued as never before by the government. At the same time, a large part of the anti-Castro movement felt betrayed by Kennedy. It [Diaz] is an important development that should be taken seriously.”

So where does Oswald fit in? “There is a subterfuge by the CIA in regard to Oswald’s visit to Mexico City a month before the assassination. Surveillance tapes that record Oswald’s visit seem to have been wilfully destroyed. I am absolutely not one of those who believe the CIA killed President Kennedy. But I am sure that they have hidden something.

“Oswald postured as a Left-wing, pro-Castro activist. The evidence suggests that, wittingly or unwittingly, he was being used by one of the US intelligence agencies as a low-level operative in the secret black propaganda war against Castro. Oswald had effectively declared himself a traitor when he defected to the Soviet Union and said he had offered information about his time on a U2 spy plane base, yet the CIA claims he was not questioned when he returned to the United States. That claim is not credible.”

It is possible, says Summers, that Oswald was saved from prosecution by agreeing to penetrate the pro-Castro movement.
“What may have happened is this: Oswald appears to be the assassin and is named in the media. If FBI and CIA were involved with Oswald in some capacity before the shooting – not in any way to do with the assassination – then the instinct would be to run for cover – ''For Christ’s sake, we’ve got to distance ourselves from this!’’ In covering that connection up, the agencies gave rise to the suspicion that they were concealing something much more sinister.”

He could go on – the botched autopsy in Washington, the connections of Jack Ruby, Oswald’s assassin, with the Mob, but discussion of the events surrounding that day in Dallas eats time. “So many aspects of the original investigation were messed up,” he says. “One would like to think there would be a better investigation of the shooting of a homeless man than there was in the killing of the President of the United States.”

The case refuses to go away, even after half a century. Summers, though, has had enough.
“After November 22 I don’t want to hear about the JFK case again. It is a nightmare to work on, not only a labyrinth but a labyrinth with lots of turnings off the labyrinth. The best answer is that we don’t know the answer, and probably never will.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... t-JFK.html
 
well for me thats case closed...

everything now fits in nicely....

even allowing Ruby to hit Oswald amongst all those secret service chaps...

couldnt have Oswald saying i only fired twice !
and the pristine bullet is now answered..
The missing brain ... tick
the missing photos ...tick
The missing witnesses... tick

and who has the clowt to cover this up

well

tick tick

we have a conspiracy....
 
The accidental Secret Service shot does have a certain appeal as a theory, what with it being a million-to-one chance, not to mention highly ironic. But surely with people standing all around the motorcade, it would have been obvious that that was what had happened at the time? I know there was the confusion of the situation and the shock of the actual death to take into account, but people would still have been pretty clear on what was happening right in front of them, wouldn't they? I can see doubts creeping in about shots fired from the high vantage point of the book depository, away from the direct view or attention of the crowds, but a headshot fired (accidentally) right in view?! :?:
 
Zoffre said:
But surely with people standing all around the motorcade, it would have been obvious that that was what had happened at the time?

Several witnesses (including people in the cars following the secret service car) reported smelling gun smoke. That wouldn't be possible if the only gun that was fired around there was from the 6th floor - so people did notice something was going on.

A counter argument is that people riding in the car with Hickey surely would have noticed his gun going off - but then again, they might have been part of the conspiracy to cover that little "mishap" up...

And Kennedy's brain DID go missing - does anyone really think someone would accidentally dispose of the President's brain after he's been shot? Surely, that points at somebody trying to cover up something... 8)

Later Edit: Then again - maybe it was LBJ after all -or LBJ hired LHO and Hickey finished the job accidentally...

http://disinfo.com/2013/11/lbj-man-killed-kennedy/
 
In The Independent:
The ten weirdest JFK assassination conspiracy theories: From aliens to sugar addictions...

Ranging from the bizarre to the utterly implausible fifty years on the killing of President Kennedy continues to inspire outlandish conspiracy claims

The Independent. Rob Williams. 21 November 2013


whole industry of conspiracy theories has grown out of the events in Dallas 50-years ago.

Click on the gallery above to see our collection of the ten weirdest assassination conspiracy theories.

The more mainstream theories involve the suggestion that there was a second gunman or that the Cubans, CIA, Mafia or FBI were involved in the shooting of the President.

All have varying degrees of plausibility, depending on your perspective and 50-years on mystery continues to surround some of the events that day in Dallas.

The widely derided Magic Bullet theory for instance, the disappearance of the President's brain, the unusual approach to the autopsy. Aside from these questions, however, there are some very strange fringe theories.

Was JFK killed by the Freemasons? Did Lyndon Johnson do it? Did Lee Harvey Oswald do it because he was addicted to refined sugar?

Click on the gallery above to see our collection of the ten weirdest assassination conspiracy theories.
 
I think it's time to dust off this tiny little gem of a film:

The Umbrella Man, by Erroll Morris.

It's been linked to before, I'm not sure where, but certainly deserves repetition.

It has something to say about the Kennedy assassination, conspiracies in general - and also, I suspect, life in general.
 
Many thanks for that, good old Errol Morris, he won't let you down. Says something about the fractal nature of conspiracies, doesn't it?
 
Two things that had been pointed out to me this week:

Kennedy wore a back brace that day. Instead of slumping over when the bullet hit his throat, the brace kept him in an upright position for second shot.

If Oswald had not insisted in putting on a sweater, he would have made it to the transfer car minutes before Jack Ruby arrived.
 
Happy Deathday, JFK. May your golden heart perpetuate in perpetuity. Raising a glass in your honour.
 
And, in The Independent today:
JFK assassination: Ten unanswered questions on the 50th anniversary

View Gallery

50-years on the American public remains unconvinced by the official explanation of what happened to President John F. Kennedy in Dallas 1963

Independent. Rob Williams. 21 November 2013


On the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas the debate about the facts of his killing, the accuracy of the official record of what happened and the validity of the many and various conspiracy theories surrounding his death show no sign of abating.

Click on the gallery above to see our list of some of the unanswered questions surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Fifty years ago today this momentous political and historical event shocked America when during a trip to Texas the President was shot as his motorcade drove through Dealey Plaza.

The iconic images and footage of the incident, crucially the famous film shot by Abraham Zapruder with a home-movie camera, continue to be analysed by those dissatisfied with the conclusion of the Warren Commission that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman who fired three shots.

Aside from the conspiracy theories a range of questions, in particular relating to the relationship the CIA and FBI may or may not have had with Lee Harvey Oswald remain unanswered.

There remain thousands of pages of documents relating to the investigation of Kennedy’s death that are off-limits to researchers.

Perhaps some of the puzzles surrounding Kennedy's death will be answered by the documents when they are finally released.

A review board is charged with releasing the records by 2017 unless it can be proven that doing so would prove a danger.

Click on the gallery above to see our list of some of the unanswered questions surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
 
This is a broadcast from radio station KLIF 1190 kHz, a pop music station in Dallas.

Three hours long with commercials and the hit songs of the day as news from the Kennedy assassination came in.

http://youtu.be/3Mo2pl59XDU
 
I knew a jaffa had to be involved.

JFK’s Irish driver in Dallas was secret member of anti-Catholic Orange Order
New details on William Greer’s past revealed on anniversary of assassination
By JAMES O'SHEA, IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Friday, November 22, 2013, 7:19 AMUpdated Friday, November 22, 2013, 9:18 AM

William "Bill" Greer from County Tyrone, John F Kennedy's driver on the day of his assasination 50 years ago, was an anti-Catholic Orange Order man.
William "Bill" Greer from County Tyrone, John F Kennedy's driver on the day of his assassination 50 years ago, was an anti-Catholic Orange Order man.

JFK’s Irish driver on the day of the assassination was a secret member of the anti-Catholic Orange Order it has been revealed.

County Tyrone native William Greer has been cited in several conspiracy books for his alleged role and for not speeding away from the scene after the first shot.

Now conspiracy theorists have a new angle given his anti-Catholic background. Some researchers have claimed anti-Catholic elements were behind Kennedy’s killing. As the first Catholic president he had aroused tremendous opposition from some extreme Protestant leaders.

Greer’s Orange Order ties were revealed by the Unionist Belfast Newsletter newspaper on the 50th anniversary of the shooting.

As part of his initiation to the arch purple degree Greer would have sworn that he “should strenuously oppose the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome, and scrupulously avoid countenancing (by his presence or otherwise) any act or ceremony of Popish worship; he should, by all lawful means, resist the ascendancy of that Church, its encroachments, and the extension of its power.”

Greer had emigrated to the US at the age of 19 and joined the Navy and later the Secret Service. He had worked for both Truman and EIsenhower before taking over as Kennedy’s driver.

Drumbonaway, Tyrone Orange lodge secretary Edgar Kirkpatrick said he was shocked to see Greer’s name on their membership when asked to check by the News Letter.

“I have it all here in the lodge books. We have the records right the way to when the lodge was formed. We don’t have any Greers nowadays but I always remember my father talking about Richard Greer (Bill’s father) who was a servant man around here working for the farmers.

“But I didn’t know about his son at all until I read up in the books. There were a lot of people emigrating around that time and I notice from the lodge records that they were bought presents by the lodge – the man got a walking stick and the lady got an umbrella,” Kirkpatrick said.

“I couldn’t believe he’d come from here and went on to drive for Kennedy,” Mr Kirkpatrick added.
Greer has been sharply criticized for his actions that day in not immediately speeding up.

Kenneth O'Donnell (special assistant to Kennedy), who was riding in the motorcade, later wrote: "If the Secret Service men in the front had reacted quicker to the first two shots at the President's car, if the driver had stepped on the gas before instead of after the fatal third shot was fired, would President Kennedy be alive today?"

He also stated that after the death of the president "Greer had been remorseful all day, feeling that he could have saved President Kennedy's life by swerving the car or speeding suddenly after the first shots."

After his father’s death from stomach cancer Greer’s only son Richard was asked by an American author: “What did your father think of JFK?”

He stated: “Well, we’re Methodists – and JFK was Catholic.”



Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/JFKs-I ... z2lPqa1H3A
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JFK driver’s family deny his Orange Order membership meant he was anti-Catholic
Nephew responds to story outlining Bill Greer’s past as Orangeman
By PATRICK COUNIHAN, IrishCentral Staff Writer
Published Sunday, November 24, 2013, 7:35 AM
Updated Sunday, November 24, 2013, 8:43 AM

The family of JFK’s Tyrone-born driver Bill Greer have denied any suggestion he was anti-Catholic despite his membership of the Orange Order.
The family of JFK’s Tyrone-born driver Bill Greer have denied any suggestion he was anti-Catholic despite his membership of the Orange Order.

The family of JFK’s Tyrone-born driver have denied any suggestion he was anti-Catholic despite his membership of the Orange Order.

Special Agent Bill Greer was a committee member of an Orange lodge in his native County Tyrone before he moved to the United States.

The Belfast News Letter revealed his Orange Order links and has now defended JFK’s driver against claims that he was a ‘secret member of the anti-Catholic’ order.

Irish Central has reported that some American researchers have claimed anti-Catholic elements were behind President Kennedy’s killing.

But Greer’s nephew Ken Torrens has rejected any suggestions that his uncle could have harboured anti-Catholic feelings.

The 88-year-old Torrens told the News Letter: “Every time I was talking to uncle Bill he said to me ‘can you lot not get away from that Catholic and Protestant thing you have over there? It’s disgusting. Why don’t you get a grip on yourselves?’ That’s what he said.”

The paper says that Torrens’ late mother Ellen was Bill Greer’s sister and the Torrens family made several visits to Greer’s home in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.

After he retired from the Secret Service in the late 1970s, Greer returned to Northern Ireland and asked his nephew to take him back to his native Stewartstown to renew old acquaintances, almost 50 years since he emigrated to the US.

Torrens added: “I took him to the wee home where he was born. He asked me to take him to where his friend called Kirkpatrick lived and we drove down the lane.

“A big tractor was coming along and this guy was perched up on the top. Bill said to me ‘I think that’s him. The man said to him ‘do I know you?’ and Bill said ‘you should do’.

“The man said ‘you’re not Billy Greer from America are you?’ and then the two of them danced around and around like a couple of idiots.”

The uncle and nephew did discuss the Kennedy assassination but no information was forthcoming.

Torrens said: “When I asked him if they’d got the right man, Lee Harvey Oswald, he said to me, ‘no comment’.

“He said ‘you’re my nephew but I’m not allowed to talk about it. Maybe some day I’ll be able to tell you’.”



Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/JFK-dr ... z2lZfDwWiZ
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Full text at link.

Inside the minds of the JFK conspiracy theorists

09:36 22 November 2013 by William Saletan
For similar stories, visit the Mental Health Topic Guide

Driving into a conspiracy? (Image: REX/Courtesy Everett Collection)

To believe that the US government planned or deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks, you'd have to posit that President Bush intentionally sacrificed 3,000 Americans. To believe that explosives, not planes, brought down the buildings, you'd have to imagine an operation large enough to plant the devices without anyone getting caught.

To insist that the truth remains hidden, you'd have to assume that everyone who has reviewed the attacks and the events leading up to them - the CIA, the Justice Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, scientific organisations, peer-reviewed journals, news organisations, the airlines, and local law enforcement agencies in three states - was incompetent, deceived or part of the cover-up.

And yet, as Slate's Jeremy Stahl points out, millions of Americans hold these beliefs. In a Zogby poll taken six years ago, only 64 per cent of US adults agreed that the attacks "caught US intelligence and military forces off guard". More than 30 per cent chose a different conclusion: that "certain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military, and economic motives", or that these government elements "actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks".

How can this be? How can so many people, in the name of scepticism, promote so many absurdities?

The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren't really sceptics. Like the rest of us, they're selective doubters. They favour a world view, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn't about God, values, freedom, or equality. It's about the omnipotence of elites.

Conspiracy chatter was once dismissed as mental illness. But the prevalence of such belief, documented in surveys, has forced scholars to take it more seriously. Conspiracy theory psychology is becoming an empirical field with a broader mission: to understand why so many people embrace this way of interpreting history. As you'd expect, distrust turns out to be an important factor. But it's not the kind of distrust that cultivates critical thinking.

In 1999, a research team headed by Marina Abalakina-Paap, a psychologist at New Mexico State University, published a study of US college students. The students were asked whether they agreed with statements such as "Underground movements threaten the stability of American society" and "People who see conspiracies behind everything are simply imagining things". The strongest predictor of general belief in conspiracies, the authors found, was "lack of trust".

But the survey instrument that was used in the experiment to measure "trust" was more social than intellectual. It asked the students, in various ways, whether they believed that most human beings treat others generously, fairly and sincerely. It measured faith in people, not in propositions. "People low in trust of others are likely to believe that others are colluding against them," the authors proposed. This sort of distrust, in other words, favours a certain kind of belief. It makes you more susceptible, not less, to claims of conspiracy.

Once you buy into the first conspiracy theory, the next one seems that much more plausible.

A decade later, a study of British adults yielded similar results. Viren Swami of the University of Westminster, working with two colleagues, found that beliefs in a 9/11 conspiracy were associated with "political cynicism". He and his collaborators concluded that "conspiracist ideas are predicted by an alienation from mainstream politics and a questioning of received truths". But the cynicism scale used in the experiment, drawn from a 1975 survey instrument, featured propositions such as "Most politicians are really willing to be truthful to the voters", and "Almost all politicians will sell out their ideals or break their promises if it will increase their power". It didn't measure general wariness. It measured negative beliefs about the establishment. ...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... pJPecR91Bw
 
So what does the author of the article expect when it is discovered there are actual conspiracies such as Hillsborough? Of course that didn't happen in the US so perhaps he is unaware.

JFK doesn't interest me. I was alive at the time but there was no particular reaction in my household beyond what you would expect for a major news item. It seems to me that this whole 'I remember where I was when Kennedy died' thing is part of the cult, at least as far as the UK was concerned.
 
Cochise said:
JFK doesn't interest me. I was alive at the time but there was no particular reaction in my household beyond what you would expect for a major news item. It seems to me that this whole 'I remember where I was when Kennedy died' thing is part of the cult, at least as far as the UK was concerned.
Same here.
[JFK] .. was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time (18:30 UTC) on Friday, November 22, 1963
...
At 1:00 p.m., CST (19:00 UTC), after all heart activity had ceased and after Father Oscar Huber[79] had administered the last rites, Kennedy was pronounced dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_assassination
The shooting was at 18.30 UK time, so probably too late for the early evening TV news. I was 18, still at school, studying for A-levels the following summer, so foreign news was not high on my list of priorities. (Although I had followed the Cuban Missile crisis a year earlier - that could have affected the whole world.)

Probably I'd have got home from school, had supper, but then what? Homework? or would I leave that for later in the week end?

I didn't keep a diary back then, but I did sometimes record my astronomical observations in an exercise book. But the nearest that gets me is 9th of November, when I observed Jupiter and Saturn. The next entry is not till 18th December.

So the news came through here on Friday evening. No doubt the morning papers went gaga over it, but I don't even remember that!
 
William Saletan's article is the usual kind of officialist and pretentious drivel. One might as well write an article titled « Inside the minds of JFK lone nut theorists ». Detailing how one can come to embrace all kind of ludicrous theories just to entertain their own beliefs in the reliabilty of their favourite poitical system.

As for this part :

Viren Swami of the University of Westminster, working with two colleagues, found that beliefs in a 9/11 conspiracy were associated with "political cynicism". He and his collaborators concluded that "conspiracist ideas are predicted by an alienation from mainstream politics and a questioning of received truths". But the cynicism scale used in the experiment, drawn from a 1975 survey instrument, featured propositions such as "Most politicians are really willing to be truthful to the voters", and "Almost all politicians will sell out their ideals or break their promises if it will increase their power". It didn't measure general wariness. It measured negative beliefs about the establishment. ... 

They just stated a truism. If you believe that politicians are dishonnest and unreliable, you are less prone to believe them ! A hell of a discovery ! And does Saletan really believe that politicians are not ready to sell out their ideals or break their promises if it will increase their power ? Had he been following the news on the past decades, he would know that the answer is positive for many, if not the most of them, and in any case for the most prominent of them.
 
Cochise said:
So what does the author of the article expect when it is discovered there are actual conspiracies such as Hillsborough? Of course that didn't happen in the US so perhaps he is unaware.
Perhaps he just conveniently forgot all those times when it was actually happening. After all, there are plenty of US-based actual conspiracies to go around: Iran-Contra and Watergate to name but two, plus more CIA-backed coups than you can shake a stick at! :p
 
The Astounding Conspiracy Theories of Wall Street Genius Mark Gorton

Mark Gorton is a prominent financier and a respected entrepreneur. He founded the music sharing site Limewire, and he runs Tower Research, a famed high-frequency trading firm. Gorton also believes that the "ruthless" secret cabal that assassinated JFK and planned 9/11 could be coming to kill his family.

Mark Gorton does not have a reputation as a crackpot. Quite the opposite. He's been favorably profiled in the New York Times for his business acumen and charitable deeds. His experience as the head of Limewire—which disrupted the music industry and then lost a $100 million lawsuit as a result—was closely followed by the press. And when Michael Lewis's blockbuster new book about high frequency trading was published recently, prominent media outlets turned to Gorton to learn what HFT firms are really like. The Huffington Post even dubbed him "the new face of Wall Street." He is a very respected and very wealthy man.

This week, we were forwarded documents that Gorton was sending out to employees at Tower Research. These documents—embedded at the bottom of this post—are essays by Mark Gorton, laying out his theories on the secret high-level murderous criminal "Cabal" that is responsible for, among other things, the JFK and RFK assassinations, the presidential careers of the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 plot, and the murder of countless witnesses, politicians, and journalists who sought to expose them, including Sen. Paul Wellstone and even Hunter S. Thompson. Everything, according to Gorton, has been an inside job.

It is really something.

The longest and most complete of Gorton's essays is titled "Fifty Years of the Deep State." To give you a taste of what he believes, a few brief excerpts. On the JFK assassination:
  • The assassination of JFK was part of a full scale Coup d'état, the violent takeover of our government by a group of criminals. I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that JFK's assassination was the work of a network of criminals embedded within the political system and power structure of the United States. Key among the players in the Coup of '63 were LBJ; Allen Dulles and the CIA; J Edgar Hoover and the FBI; right wing Texas oil executives including Clint Murchison Sr., H.L. Hunt and D.H. Byrd; the East Coast business establishment centered around Rockefeller interests and the Council on Foreign Relations; Curtis Le May (chairman of the joint chief of staff), other right wing leaders of the military and elements of military intelligence; and the Bush family (both Prescott and George H.W. Bush)...

    LBJ planned to kill JFK from the moment he considered becoming vice president.
And Gorton believes that the plotters of the assassination were ready to literally start a nuclear war as part of the coverup:
  • The contingencies beyond how to blame Oswald were much more serious. If it were superficially obvious that JFK's killing was the result of a conspiracy, Castro was to be blamed, and an invasion of Cuba was to quickly follow. Many anti-Castro Cubans who participated in the Coup were deeply disappointed that the invasion of Cuba never materialized. My studies of the Coup of '63 have led me to believe that even graver fall back strategies were embedded in the plot. If JFK's killing was obviously perceived as being part of large conspiracy, and the US public was not buying the Castro did it angle, the Coup plotters were in truly dire straits. These desperate men who ran the military, the FBI, some of largest companies in the world, and the US government faced the prospect of being hung for treason. I believe that the darkest scenarios envisioned by the Coup plotters involved declaring martial law and blaming the Russians and taking the country to (and possibly over) the brink of nuclear war with Russia...
The coverup, Gorton writes, has been deadly:
  • Over the years, certainly 50 and more likely more than 100 people have been killed to preserve the secrets of the Coup of '63. Many witnesses, reporters, people who knew too much, plot members at risk of being exposed, overzealous law enforcement officials have all been killed. Some of these deaths were clearly violent. Many were made to look like something else.
Another of Gorton's writings, "The Political Dominance of the Cabal" is a point-by-point primer on the Cabal's alleged members and murderous conspiracies.(Example: President Bill Clinton was a "Senior Member of the Dixie Mafia... Associated with dozens of suspicious deaths"; George HW Bush masterminded the savings and loan crisis, Reagan's shooting, and "domestic death squads.") The third document, "The Coup of '63, Part 1" is a JFK assassination-centric shorter version of "Fifty Years of the Deep State."

Yesterday, we called Mark Gorton to ask him about the authenticity of these documents. After a long pause, he said that he was mulling over the "consequences for me" if these documents came to light. Like what? "People killing me and my children," he said. "This has the potential to change my life."

Gorton did confirm that he wrote the essays, though, which he described as works in progress. He even agreed to send us the most recent versions of the documents, which are the versions we've embedded below. In his email to us yesterday, Gorton described his fears:
  • I am concerned because the criminal syndicate that I describe in these documents has a long history of harassing and killing people who describe what they do. They not only kill the people that speak up, on occasion, they also kill their family members. I have a good life and four great kids, and I would prefer not to bring the wrath of a criminal government down upon my head.

    I would ask that you completely read all three documents and think about what they have to say. Having these documents suddenly appear on a blog like Gawker changes my risk profile in life.

    That being said, I do think that the truth needs to be told about what has happened to our democracy. I have written these documents and I have sent them out to a limited audience. If you are interested in publishing this material, I ask that you talk to me and that this be done in a thoughtful manner. I would prefer that my life not be put in jeopardy by a casual, quick, one off, blog post.
We have decided to publish the material. We trust that any shadowy forces will be kept at bay by the public attention we are drawing to this topic.

http://gawker.com/the-astounding-conspi ... 427624/all
 
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