I've always found weird that Oswald being paid by some powerful organization is considered a fringe conspiranoia, like Elvis is still alive, when some facts (Kennedy was the POTUS, Oswald was himself killed later before he could speak) made it the default hypothesis.
You can say that it was impossible to gather enough proof, that the evidence led nowhere, but saying that it's ridiculous is... suspicious.
Reminds me of more recent events... <ducks and hides under the desk>
I wonder how many people know about Dorothy Kilgallan. Her story really makes one think. She was a famous investigative reporter who got involved, contemporaneously, in trying to understand what happened after JFK's assassination. She told people she had a big file on what she was discovering. Then she died from an "overdose" of alcohol and barbiturates.
Told people and never shared anything? Look at modern news cycle and you'll see the same thing all the time. It's a pretty consistent story arc that every time a suspicious event occurs, someone will claim to have proof then never put up. I'm thinking in particular of Michael Avenatti who spent months very confidently asserting he was going to bury Donald Trump then getting fired and later arrested and jailed and never proving a damn thing.
She directly interviewed Jack Ruby and leaked information in the Warren Report before Congress could report it. They got mad. She had the credentials, and wasn't a flake like Avenatti.
of course, statistically, for everyone high-profile assassination there will be people who a. don't agree with the prevailing narrative and b. die under strange circumstances. but how would you determine the mean and variance for such a thing?
Why would somebody make loud claims they had something big without at the same time making use of that big thing? For a comparison, if you just brandish a gun without using it, you're just putting yourself in danger - which she likely did.
Conspiratorial thinking happens when people feel like they are not getting honest answers. The media feeds this when it fails to ask the right questions.
That's probably one way conspiracy theories happen. They also happen because it's been an evolutionary advantage to look for patterns and reasons even though sometimes there are none. Creating or subscribing to a conspiracy theory also can create a sense of belonging for an individual within a smaller group that subscribers to the theory that they'd never get in the main stream. There is a great documentary about the flat earth society that drives that point home well.
They also happen because when people are deeply committed to being “in-the-know” at the expense of sounding rational, it’s a fairly cheap way to feel like you know something that the sheeple don’t ;)
They don't have to be crazier, but you have to have enough out there to make people wonder what's what. Eventually people will lose all confidence in official sources --which seems to be happening slowly.
> Unless one of those people is my cousin Charlene
The GP's statement can be reworded as a kept secret implies at most one living person knows it. Leaked secrets aren't counter-examples to the GP's statement.
Assuming Charlene isn't a murderer or a ghost (i.e. all of her secrets involve one of the parties being dead), she reinforces the GP's implicit point that it's very difficult to keep a conspiracy a secret unless one of the conspirators ensures all of the other conspirators die off shortly after.
In between the "we had Mutual Assured Destruction[0] drills at school" generation and the "we had active shooter drills at school" generation, there must have been a (relatively) well adjusted "we had no such drills at school" generation?
[0] get under your desk, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.
Yeah, born in 1971 and graduated HS in 1989 and was in between the nuclear war drills and the active shooter drills.
Of course we did see The Day After on live TV and caught the tail end of the cold war.
Someone born in 1980/1981, graduated in 1999 would have been 4 or 5 by the time the Reagan-Gorbachev summit happened and then would have only had a few months in HS after Columbine happened. So optimum sanity was probably the cohort born around 1976-1980 or so.
> Soon after the shooting at Columbine High School in April 1999, schools began implementing active shooter drills. Soon, districts across the country followed suit. By the 2005-06 school year, 40 percent of public schools drilled students on lockdown procedures.
Probably started almost immediately after you graduated.
1982 through 1992, at least, had neither. There were fire evacuation drills twice a year, and a schoolbus evacuation drill a couple of weeks after school started in the fall.
We just grew up with AIDS, the ozone hole, global warming, the gulf war, Panama, Somalia, gang shootings on the freeway, the massive earthquake that was supposed to crack California off and set it adrift in the sea...
Growing up in the 80s in the southern US we had earthquake drills and tornado drills. I feel lucky that those were the biggest threats I felt as a child.
I heard Jeffrey Epstein had some weird conspiracy theories as well. It would have been fun to make fun of him for those—such a bummer he suffered from depression and killed himself. Double bummer that the security cameras monitoring his cell went out just as he killed himself. Such bad luck.
But in this very case, there is two theories: on that someone killed him, the other that he was given the means to kill himself.
If the first case is true, i can't imagine this had gone quietly, and that the legists didn't see a thing. So i'd say at least 8 people were necessary, but closer to 20 if you count the administrative demand (putting the right guardians and the right legists at the right timing etc)
The second case is much more probable imho, and only demanded the intervention of one, maybe two people. It's easier for them to keep quiet if only one was involved, and if two were, they only have to trust each other, so the information will probably never get out.
And in the second case, anyone rich and powerfull could have done it. Gislene, Prince Andrew... Or current powerfull politicians and businessmen.
The issue with what's called "conspiracy theories" is that they involve a lot of different people being on the payroll. And because of the way trust works, i don't see how a conspiracy of more than 6 people directly involved work (just look at history, the "French connection" but also the testimonies of captured bank busters and criminal groups).
In the same way, i don't think you can think "CIA" when looking at the murder of JFK. If you say "one or two high-ranked CIA officers and one of their mafia informant + Oswall", i still wouldn't really care, but i wouldn't think this is a conspiracy theory. Am i making sense?
Absolutely. And I agree with your assessment that you can't just say "CIA". I usually think things like this are 1 - 10 bad apples.
HOWEVER, I think you do get loads of cowardly leaders who later learn the truth and turn a blind eye (perhaps they think it's the lesser of two evils to just let past lies be and focus on their positive agendas). See the Catholic Church for an example.
Eventually those lies fester and turn into infections and you have to deal with them. A lot of leaders just hope to get out so they aren't the ones that have to clean up the messes of their predecessors.
Or in other words, 1% bad apples, 88% Switzerlands, and 1% Churchill's. (The 10% is reserved for my uncertainties)
Some time ago Joe Rogan thought this joke video[1], showing a Boston Dynamics robot being trained for the military which goes rogue and attacks his human handlers when they try to have it shoot a robotic dog, was real. He was talking to Lex Friedman about how the video tricked him, but that the scary thing was how close the video was to reality. Friedman tried to explain to him how things that seem human like, such as the movement that the actual Boston Dynamics robots make, doesn't mean they're anywhere close to actually thinking like a human.
The thing is, when someone is outside of a field, it's easy to misunderstand things and assume a capability that's not there. If you've never dealt with the CIA or FBI, it's easy to imagine that they're some all powerful organization that's able to kill off any politician they like at a moments notice with no scrutiny and silence anyone who even raises any questions. If you are familiar with the organizations, this point of view is as naive as someone who says, "Oh, you program? I came up with the idea for a game where the player can do anything they want and AIs will just generate the content for them. You think you can program that?"
And the issue with conspiracy theories is that any fact that gets presented just gets funneled into the preffered hypothesis. For instance, you mention "Oswald was killed before he could speak." But that's not true, he was answering questions from reporters before he was shot[2]. And the guy who killed him, Jack Ruby, wasn't. So supposedly these powerful agencies want him dead so he won't tell anyone what happened, but instead of shooting him when they find him and saying he was resisting arrest, they arrest him alive, let him talk to reporters, hire an unhinged local criminal to kill him, and then let the unhinged guy they hired live and don't worry about him talking? The more you look at the details of what actually happened, the less they support the conspiracy theory.
I wasn't aware that the belief he was paid by a powerful organization is regarded as absurd. I don't think that's silly. I do think it's far fetched to believe that the CIA as an organization orchestrated it. That was the main one I've heard.
Why would that be hard to believe? The CIA regularly does terrible things. I'd argue that the CIA is probably the most powerful drug cartel in the world- and the only reason that would be contentious is that we'd be arguing about which cartel is actually the most powerful, not whether or not the CIA is involved in drugs and arms trafficking.
Because there's a gigantic gulf between "is involved in drugs and arms trafficking" and "assassinated the US President?" Note that there are many people who have no problem believing the former and a big problem believing the latter. That's because they're vastly different claims.
Yup that would basically be my response lol. Could it be conceivable one or two lone actors in the CIA did it? Maybe? But on an organizational level the risk to "reward" is so high it just seems absurd to consider.
Especially risky since the conspiracy has them not just assassinating a president, but killing multiple people (you see at least a couple of others mentioned in this discussion), while relying on multiple highly unstable people outside the organization to put the plot into motion and trusting they won't reveal anything. All because people think Kennedy would curtail their operations somewhat.
But then a decade later you have the Church Committee directly investigating abuses from all of these agencies, which results in President Ford issuing a congressional order that explicitly forbids U.S. involvement in assassinations (going further than what people claim Kennedy was trying to do), and these agencies do...nothing.
Risky? I'd say it was very low risk considering the lack of ubiquitous technology that we have today. No cell phones, no cameras, and a very centralized media.
Unstable people are easily discredited. The CIA literally coined the term "conspiracy theory" in response to people not trusting the narrative as a means to preemptively discredit any unwanted suspicions. That's totally something a legitimate organization would do.
And stating that Kennedy would "curtail their operations somewhat" is a gross understatement. Kennedy was costing the Dulles brothers lots of money. Bay of Pigs, literally averting the takeover of a country that the CIA attempted to kick into motion- that's a bit more than curtailing somewhat.
And the Church committee was toothless. No legislation resulted from it- simply an executive order. The Church committee is also credibly accused of limiting the scope of it's inquiry in order to protect the CIA. And of course the agencies did nothing - they didn't need to do anything, they continue to operate without real oversight to this day. Spying on the Senate, then lying to Congress...zero repercussions. The Bushes, Clinton- all presidents that had interesting CIA connections.
The biggest issue they have now is competing with other Intel agencies, foreign and domestic.
Again, there is a gigantic gulf between regime change in countries largely outside of American public consciousness and assassinating the US President.
Cuba is outside of American public consciousness? Could you expand on why you believe there is a massive difference between the two? If an organization takes no issue with overthrowing democratic governments (like Guatemala), what makes their own government unique?
We pay the CIA to forward American interests. Most of their actions, even the most nefarious ones I'm aware of, have a somewhat believable rationale as to how they fit into that overall priority - often extremely imperfectly in both ends and in means. So if someone could put forth a theory for how assassinating JFK would benefit CIA or the US then sure. But largely the CIA implication is just "big shadowy CIA is responsible for all the unexplainables."
> So if someone could put forth a theory for how assassinating JFK would benefit CIA or the US then sure
There are plenty of theories where the CIA benefit from his assassination.
> Shortly before Hunt's death in 2007, he authored an autobiography which implicated Lyndon B. Johnson in the assassination, suggesting that Johnson had orchestrated the killing with the help of CIA agents who had been angered by Kennedy's actions as president. [0]
Some think he was removed due to his immanent withdrawal from Vietnam. [1]
Nonetheless, if you are the head of an organization that deposes governments by assassination, is it really _that_ far fetched to think you are above the law and would use the tools and your disposal and experience to dispatch anyone in your way?
Yes because in one case your actions are in service of your country and in the other you will be declared a traitor and executed as such.
Edit: Did you read the "JFK decided to withdraw" link? He allegedly decided to withdraw 1000 of 17,000 Americans in Vietnam. This one step forward two steps back military strategy is par for the course for the duration of the Vietnam War. Doesn't substantiate at all why CIA would be so upset about it as to assassinate POTUS. Per your own link, it was a minor enough move that they didn't feel the need even to consult or notify South Vietnamese President Diem.
I wonder if there's a tally anywhere... I suspect that if you look at attempted vs successful regime changes, the CIA isn't actually that good at it (at least in cases where the US avoided more overt actions, like sending in the military)
Not that far-fetched. Just look at their history of shady and unethical shit. Their planning/proposal of Operation Northwoods, carrying out of MKULTRA, Iran Contra Affair, engineered coups across Central and South America, Mosaddegh, Lumumba, etc.
Also, why did they postpone the unsealing of the still sealed records after the initial seal order expired? It's probably not much to chew on, but it definitely gives the appearance of "hiding" something untoward.
I believe that Oswald was there to prevent the assassination from happening. And that there were two Oswalds, making him the perfect fall guy. MrChrillemannen on Youtube has video about 'the two oswalds', Lee Oswald and Harvey Oswald - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8pDhviTo8 . The bad one was likely the one who shot JD Tippit, went to the embassies in Mexico, Cuba Helsinki, Russia, etc.... The good one wanted to stop the assassination, was the real hero, was anti-Cuba.
He was one of many who knew the truth and were silenced for it. His own words are "I'm a patsy". Sadly, since we can't get his testimony, we won't ever know the truth.
If this is true, then he is a true hero. Judyth Vary Baker, his ex gf from new orleans, believes this.
People who dismiss plausible theories about uncertain events are afraid of what it would mean if those theories were correct.
UFOs are very likely something other than aliens. But ridiculing people who say 'maybe aliens' is a defensive mechanism for those who really, really don't want to entertain the idea that maybe aliens are in fact paying us a visit.
If I said UFOs were actually Santa Clause I wouldn't be ridiculed. Because that's silly, not scary.
Ditto the big scary government stuff. I'll pick one at random that I heard:
"Covid vaccines and the aggressive / mandatory campaign was cover for mass sterilization because the planet is overpopulated with humans"
Dismissing that is a lot easier than thinking about what happens if a government decides to sterilize you against your will. Or that a government would arbitrarily deny any freedom.
Of course when we say government we mean us. Are we really capable of these things? Well, historically, obviously we're capable of some seriously heinous shit.
I think he's referring to the Epstein/Maxwell situation, in which two lone child traffickers trafficked children with no customers or collaborators (at least not any who have been charged with anything).
At least, that's the closest recent situation I can think of.
I had something in mind, but it works better as a fill in the spaces game. FWIW, it wasn't Epstein's death, I don't know if it's being called a conspiracy theory, maybe because nobody is very vocally demanding the truth.
Mr. West is not in his best moment. He's not well known here in Spain. I mean, everybody knows he's a singer and was married to the exotic lady, but I don't think I've heard him sing.
He's anti-semite now. A lot of supposed conspiracy theory types have racial or anti-<some group> sentiment and the conspiracy is just an outlet fot that nastiness. Of course, i am not saying you are, i was just curious. A lot of people have conspiracy theories based solely on critical thinking as well.
The White House and DOD still use handwritten routing slips at the highest levels to track memo packages, sign-offs, comments, and orders given in response.
As a nephew of someone who happened to be a very close associate of Lyndon Baines Johnson, this is my take on the whole thing. John and his brother Robert were allegedly involved in Marilyn Monroe's death, and LBJ used this "fact" to garner overwhelming support in favor of Kennedy's assassination. His true intentions however were most likely that he wanted to make sure that he [1] was not implicated in the "Billy Sol affair" and [2] could become president. Incidentally, if it were not for the fact that Hoover had been pulled into the scheme, Oswald might have gone down in history as a hero. Why? Because he was reporting the progress of the "plans on the ground" to the FBI on a regular basis. Unfortunately for him, Hoover was burying these reports, just as Oswald himself was being designated as the most convenient fall guy. In truth, I believe that he was a patriotic (if naive) "agency man" who gathered much useful intelligence for US interests, including a detailed report concerning operational matters relating to an electronics factory in Minsk, key Cuban assets, and of course details about a plan to take the president's life! It's a very sad twist of fate, but it just goes to show how cronyism can tarnish even the most prestigious institutions. As for official recognition of "the truth", that will probably never happen. It would only open a can of worms that nobody wants to deal with...
You have to remember that Monroe was considered a "national treasure" at the time. Her death was a huge shock to pretty much everyone, and any evidence tying the Kennedy's to her death (and LBJ ostensibly had a recording of it) would have been an "ace in the hole" for anyone trying to plan JFK's murder. Members of the so-called "Suite 8F Group" such as D.H. Byrd (who also happened to own the Texas School Book Depository) could have been easily swayed by such "facts". And keep in mind that these men were already not very happy about proposed changes to "oil depletion allowance", among other things.
if jfk and is bro were guilty in marilyn's death then you could only blackmail those who don't want any harm to come upon jfk ... why would those people collaborate killing jfk then?
if jfk and his brother were guilty in marilyn's death then you could blackmail them. having a president who is susceptible to blackmail is a threat to the country. killing jfk would remove that threat.
Okay but then it would be the Soviets who had detailed information on JFK murdering her, and that was being actively used as leverage against JFK. Then it would make more logical sense for the US government/CIA to remove JFK. The movie script here needs to get updated to make it a bit more plausible. Make it so that the USSR was blackmailing him to pull out Vietnam or something.
I have a good one too, but it's totally bupkiss. Nonetheless, it's a fun one.
Joe DiMaggio had JFK killed.
DiMaggio's family hails from Sicily and had a lot of mob connections in the East Bay. JFK was famously barred by Joe from attending Marilyn's funeral, due to his jealousy and implications he held that JFK was responsible in part for her death. Via mob connections and his time playing with/against Ted Williams, Joe manages to get Oswald, a Marine like Williams, to do the deed.
I haven't researched the subject in years, but perhaps you could start with the death of Henry Marshall at the USDA? The information he was gathering was related to the business schemes of Estes, Johnson, Clint Murchison (Sr), and others. (Estes was eventually sent to federal prison over related charges, but the investigation basically stopped there.) From Wikipedia:
"In 1962, after information came to light that Estes had paid off four Agriculture officials for grain storage contracts, President John F. Kennedy ordered the Justice Department and FBI to open investigations into Estes' activities and determine if Secretary of Agriculture Orville L. Freeman had also been compromised (Freeman was cleared). Congress conducted hearings on Estes' business dealings, including some that led to Vice President Johnson, a long-time associate of Estes."
Just a reminder that someone claiming to be the nephew of an "associate" of a historical figure, with extraordinary claims and zero evidence, is not a very good source.
Take it as you will. It's nothing more than anecdotal hearsay, naturally. But it doesn't take a lot of digging either to find that it jives with the much of what has been revealed over the decades.
The JFK assassination is the only conspiracy theory that I actually believe has a lot of merit. After reading a few books on the (underground) politics of the era here is what I believe to a good degree of certainty happened:
* The hit was ordered by the Chicago mafia boss at the time, Sam Giancana
* CIA wasn't directly involved but caught a whiff of the plot and let it happen anyway because they were very unhappy with JFK
here is why the mafia was unhappy with JFK:
* JFKs father made his fortune as a bootlegger during the prohibition era and was very friendly with the mobsters
* the OG mobsters wanted JFK as a president because they were going to have some influence on him through his father.
* the mafia and specifically Sam Giancana helped JFK getting elected in Chicago which was kind of a flip state
after getting elected JFK was not having any of it and completely cut off the mob and actually went against them in a couple of ways
Firstly his brother Robert Kennedy was made attorney general and went after the mob hard. He made his goal to put Jimmy Hoffa behind bars. Hoffa was mobbed up and it was the main financier of the mobs building casinos by providing loans to them through the Teamsters Pension Fund.
The mafia had built many casinos in Cuba. After the revolution, Fidel Castro nationalised the casinos taking away the big cash flows from the mob. The mafia wanted JFK to invade Cuba and take down Castro so they could take control of the casinos back.
here is why CIA was against JFK:
* The bay of pigs invasion was orchestrated by the CIA by training Cuban anti-Castro dissidents that fled the country after the revolution and sending them to fight during the invasion.
* During the invasion JFK promised that he would provide air support to the troops but at the last moment he flinched leaving the ground troops helpless which doomed the operation
What I believe happened:
* Oswald was set up as a patsy for the assassination. His handler from the mob was a guy named Jack Ruby.
* Jack Ruby was a known mobster and the right hand man of Sam Giancana
* When Oswald was captured and during his transport after the initial interrogation Jack Ruby killed Oswald live on television (you can find it on youtube) so he would not blow the whistle
From my understanding the main falling out in the relationship of JFK, the CIA and the mob was when he intentionally botched the invasion to avoid an all out war. This is what lead to his assassination
This is way more likely than my idea of what would be likely, thank you!
Like i said before, i don't think "The CIA" was involved. Maybe one agent and his handler not forwarding the memo "fast enough", or someone receiving it in time but not really believing it (or faking to not believe it). The way organizations work is diffusing the blame, then if the blame is too strong, cut a head.
There is zero evidence that Joseph Kennedy was ever involved in bootlegging except the much, much later claims of various extremely unreliable mafia figures.
Interesting, had always heard this rumor. From doing some reading it looks like he actually made his money in insider trading and stock market manipulation
They confirmed the existence of a conspiracy with the Warren Report, and the endorsement of the idea that there was a single-shooter, explained by the so-called magic bullet. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that The Most Serious People in the government signed their names to something that any 12 year old who's shot a .22 caliber rifle would know is utter, complete, and irredeemable nonsense. All the rest is window dressing. That's all you need. And, after sealing the deal, there's only one organization which could have been responsible, by sheer power (to get SCOTUS and POTUS to go along with it), and motivation (standard MIC motivation of endless war in SE Asia).
I used to buy into some of this JFK stuff when I was a X-Files watching teenager. What really burst the bubble for me was a documentary I watched where a team of snipers and forensic scientists re-created the exact shot with mannequins with bones and ballistic gel. They didn't even have to try that hard. Using the same rifle and ammo, the first shot they tried resulted in almost the same exact trajectory. I can't find a clip of that exact documentary (circa 2004-2006), but there are others who have done the same. You don't have to look hard to find very comprehensive and scientific explanations for the exact trajectory of that specific shot. But you do have to look very hard to find an actual explanation for why it is impossible that is beyond the level of "golly gee folks, I done shot lots of guns in my life and let me tell you, it ain't possible."
Just in terms of ballistics, the 6.5mm round nose bullet fired by Oswald is not necessarily going to behave like a tapered point 5.56mm or .22LR. Even if I've put a million rounds of .22LR down range into paper targets I'm not magically a forensics expert on a larger bullet's trajectory bouncing around a metal car and through bodies.
I own a 6.5 Carcano and can confirm that the this chambering does exhibit non-standard terminal ballistics when using the old bottle-nosed, flat-base surplus bullets. Also, a lot of these late-19th century surplus rifles (including my 1891 Truppe Speciali) have less than stellar bores, having seen hard use in two world wars. Mine was shot out pretty bad when in service and often keyholes rounds, for example. All kinds of weird things could be possible at impact in that case. That said, it's still a remarkably well-designed cartridge with many features considered modern now, so can be flat-shooting and very accurate. Some detailed analysis of Oswald's Carcano could lend some insight into whether this is relevant.
I would also be interested in a detailed analysis of Oswald's rifle. I don't know how conclusive it would be but it would be interesting. Since it was a surplus rifle there's no telling what sort of wear and tear it had. Same with any ammo recovered at his house or if any was found in the book depository.
Just something like a bottle nose bullet vs tapered is going to affect penetration and ricochets. The range from the book depository to the limo was not really that far, at the point of impact the bullets had significant amounts of energy. They could easily go through bones yet bounce off steel and repenetrate.
I think the Oliver Stone film did too good a job convincing people bullets magically stop when they hit something. Rifle bullets are often very angry and like to make it everyone else's problem.
All I see on that link is them talking about proving that it was possible. When I search, I can't find the actual test, or demonstrating that they can pass a bullet through one block of gel, and then bounce it off 2 "bones" in another block of gel, at 45-degree angles, and cause more wounds, and stay in one piece. If veterans were to comment and say, "Yeah, this kind of thing happens all the time," I might be more sympathetic. But I can't find their actual demonstration, so I don't know.
I do see them quoted as saying "these were not hard shots to make," but no expert riflemen at the FBI could get off 3 accurate shots in the 6.5 seconds it would take to make the Commission's report true.
I've seen "experts" try to tell me that shooting a melon makes it recoil in the direction of the shooter, to attempt disprove the fatal headshot from the front. Again, this flies directly in the face of experience with anyone who has shot guns for fun. This just does not happen. So was it faked? Was it a one time thing? Who knows! It was an "expert," but it sure as heck doesn't square with my experience. And it sure as hell doesn't explain Jackie picking up pieces of John's skull from the trunk lid.
But this really gets to the heart of why we can't agree on anything any more: you can always find an expert who tells you what you think should be true.
If you want to believe that the magic bullet caused several wounds in 2 people, bouncing off bones at sharp angles, then exit the second victim -- it wasn't recovered in Connelly -- and wind up on the gurney of the FIRST victim, in almost pristine form, without even being covered in blood, then I can't help you. It doesn't require credentialed expertise in firearms or ballistics to know that's horse puckey.
Myself, I think Occam's Razor applies here, but not in the way you do. I find it far MORE believable that there was a conspiracy, with multiple shooters, than I do the AMAZING number of ballistical miracles it would take to make the lone gunman story work.
Thank you for replying. I didn't realize it was bolt action. I'm somewhat familiar with bolt action rifles and I understand some of the tradeoffs they make compared to other platforms. Speed is indeed one of them.
> And, after sealing the deal, there's only one organization which could have been responsible, by sheer power, and motivation.
There is a ton of circumstantial evidence backing this theory? up too. The goal seemed to be to gain control over a Government organization that since the 30s had grown to act with basically no oversight. They were an international group with enormous power and wanted to keep that power and expand it. The Kennedy administration was trying to provide that oversight and roll it back.
The Bay of Pigs and the continued oversight along with the belief that Kennedy was somehow a Catholic communist sympathizer with connections to Russia. It's really fascinating to read those accusations in hind sight.
Then consider that after Kennedy, Nixon was very friendly towards the supranational intelligence service and after Carter, the CIA Director was even Reagan's VP, then became President himself for four years.
He lost the next election to someone with clear CIA ties from the drug running happening in Arkansas as he was governor. The story behind the movie American Made is incredible. So, Bill Clinton then became President for 8 years with many of this same group from the Defense Dept and CIA who had been in executive power for decades. Rumsfeld, Bush, Clintons, etc. Bipartisan even...
So what do you get after the Clintons? Another Bush who had control for 8 years.
Then consider how history might have been different if Kennedy was able to reign in the CIA, work with the Soviet Union to avoid escalation in Vietnam and then maybe the executive branch would not have been captured by CIA linked people for over the next few decades.
Anyway, we will all likely never know the full story but all of this seems more than plausible to me.
It's funny that we are here again. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a US/Russia semi proxy war. The fun part is neither Europe, nor the population of Russia wants into this. This is a conflict between two groups of people who happen to control gigantic national resources.
The fact that they continue to release more stuff over and over gives very legitimate credence to the notion they are hiding something.
It seems clear they don't want us to know something.
Now, it could be more or less political, or personal, or something ultimately mundane, but the conspiracy theorists can make it anything they want of it.
I suggest there might have been something really complicated wherein nobody could point the finger fully at any group, but that the CIA was doing something sketchy, funding the wrong people, Johnson new about it but only in superficial terms, someone somewhere took it too far, it got out of hand and that the truth is just too damaging to the state (and various agencies) itself so they want to keep it hidden.
If an innocent person held some information in their literal pocket, that they could very simply reveal to the world, at no cost to themselves, which proved their innocence of some crime unambiguously - but refused to do so and instead chose to stand trial for some offence - it would be entirely rational to be suspect.
This is why in some cases 'pleading the 5th' can be considered as evidence towards guilt.
The government is more than aware of the vast conspiracies surrounding the incident, not only do they have a responsibility towards transparency in any event, it's even more important in this case.
There's a 100% chance they are hiding something - otherwise they wouldn't hide it.
So the question boils down to only what they are hiding: mundane administrative information? or 'The CIA did it!'? I suggest it's more towards the former than the later, but not all the way. I'm put it at 90% chance there were at least some shenanigans, but I don't think it was as bad as 'the CIA ordered his death' kind of thing. But there were shenanigans.
I think the point is rather: if they keep releasing stuff, it means they held stuff back the last time they released more stuff. It's natural to assume there is even more stuff still being held back.
It's not even that we're "baselessly" (God, the news has made me hate that term) assuming that there's more documents that they're hiding.
Many of the documents they've given us are 50% redacted. There's so many redactions it's almost hard to follow the content of said documents. They managed to release something while also releasing nothing.
Well, releasing ALL the documents would be a good start. Seeing as how it is over 50 years after the fact, when all of the principles are now dead, that should not be too much to ask.
> Seeing as how it is over 50 years after the fact, when all of the principles are now dead, that should not be too much to ask.
Henry Kissinger is 99. Plenty of people from that era are still alive.
More importantly, if there's information on specific CIA informants in there, their networks and the people they recruited may well have survived them.
Not to mention locations of safe houses, organizational / reporting structures of CIA stations, techniques for cultivating assets, etc. There are plenty of above-board reasons for not doing a full and complete release of all docs.
To paraphrase Pulp Fiction, "When you conspiracy theorists get together, you're worse than a sewing circle."
Keeping the same safe houses or reporting structures in place for 60 years seems like it would be terrible OPSEC. The IC is very good at coming up with plausible sounding explanations for why they have to keep secrets that the masses will believe without question but that don't stand up to deeper reflection.
I suspect the remaining redactions are because they're waiting for certain people to pass away. Probably not major players but there could be people who were in their 20's or 30's in 1963 who had some knowledge of what happened. Once they've all died off it will be forever impossible to prove anything because anything really damning would never have been written down or the records would have been destroyed years ago.
I don't think they'll release the truth until after Felix Rodriguez passes. He's still killing people in 2013. Batista wasn't enough to satisfy his thirst for murder.
I disagree. There are enough facts already to conclude that powerful forces have tried to obfuscate facts surrounding the assassination. What that means is unclear because that’s how muddying the waters works. But only a fool would buy the official narrative. It may be very close to the truth but there are too many unexplainable aspects to not think there is more to what happened that the average person believes. That may be different now since people trust journalists and government less. It’s clear the let Oswald get shot. And the bullet? It’s a joke.
The more interesting event to me is that the balance of evidence on MLK’s assassination shows that he was murdered in an operation coordinated between the FBI and the Memphis police and mafia.
To those downvoting because they think this comment is baseless:
"The Loyd Jowers Trial (officially the King family vs. Loyd Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators) was an American civil suit brought by the family of Martin Luther King Jr. against Loyd Jowers, following his claims of a conspiracy in the assassination of the civil rights leader in 1968. The jury would eventually decide in 1999 that there was a conspiracy perpetrated by Jowers and other conspirators."
Regardless of the merits of the MLK assassination conspiracy theory, this trial definitely discredits the theory more than it helps. It's clear that it was designed to be a public spectacle. Jowers had continuously changed his story prior to this trial. The FBI certainly didn't pay the equivalent of nearly a million present-day dollars to a random restaurateur, to help them kill a completely unguarded civilian.
Claiming he was unguarded conveniently ignores some very relevant details. Like the fact MLK was guarded by a contingent of black Memphis policemen every time he visited Memphis. On the visit he was murdered, those policemen were pulled from that guard duty for reasons never explained.
There’s a very good podcast, The MLK Files, investigating the conspiracy surrounding his killing - one of those black policemen was interviewed on the podcast, along with many other people.
Some other inconvenient facts about his assassination are the facts that the rifle claimed to be used in the killing is physically incapable of firing the bullet that killed MLK, a fact recorded in the FBI ballistics report along with a note that the gun should never be re-tested.
The other interesting fact is the man convicted of the killing adamantly denies pulling the trigger, but acknowledges being part of the conspiracy- which is why he pled guilty. Prior to the killing he escaped from jail, and was provided a fake US passport by other conspirators to help him smuggle items from Canada to the US.
And this is only scratching the surface, there is so much more documented information on the killing, like the relationship between Hoover’s #2 and his known relationship with the Dixie Mafia that dominated Memphis at the time.
Since you seem to have a familiarity with Jowers, I’d encourage you to listen to the podcast. Jowers testimony is discussed, but it is far from the only piece of evidence examined. It’s not even the main evidence cited, there are a lot of other witnesses whose testimony was never examined or who were threatened into silence.
> Some other inconvenient facts about his assassination are the facts that the rifle claimed to be used in the killing is physically incapable of firing the bullet that killed MLK, a fact recorded in the FBI ballistics report along with a note that the gun should never be re-tested.
These are the sorts of facts that would heavily benefit from a reputable citation. The closest thing to your assertion on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_... is that it'd be hard to sight because of some missing metal shims, which may've been lost while in FBI posession rather than in Oswald's.
The gun in the FBI’s possession was the correct caliber but had the wrong rifling - it could not have fired the bullet they claimed it to.
In a later appeal Ray’s lawyers argued that the bullet didn’t match the gun, and attempted to have that sustained in court. The government witness was questioned by the judge. This judge was removed from the case shortly after questioning the government witness because he “lost his impartiality”. The new judge in the case threw out the motion without any explanation.
Here is that same judge explaining that he believes Ray did not kill King - he also claims the Memphis Homicides Unit official report on the case come to the same conclusion, that Ray did not kill MLK:
https://youtu.be/HcJ_szc3TEA
In reading over the case, you should note that Ray was never tried in open court, despite his many attempts to do so.
Also notable is from the testimony of the store owner who sold Ray a gun, which Ray came back later to return for another, claiming he was told it was the “wrong gun.” It was wrong in the sense that it was the wrong caliber to match the rifle used to kill King, but the conspirators didn’t realize it was also the wrong rifling.
Again, this is only a very small sample of the massive amounts of evidence that points towards a conspiracy.
Since you sound interested I’d encourage you to listen to the MLK Tapes podcast, they examine all available evidence and weigh the credibility of every piece, with the balance of probability being that MLK was murdered by Memphis’s Dixie Mafia with assistance from the FBI and the Memphis Police Department.
So they sued the guy claiming the conspiracy existed, not the government, because the government would have mounted a real defense? That trial sounds like a farce, as the two parties were in agreement and just wanted that conclusion on the record.
No, there's a significant difference between "prove something happened" and "prove something didn't happen". If there's a document in there detailing a conspiracy by the CIA to kill JFK, and it gets released someday, a lot of people are going to be convinced. It's less true in the other direction.
I guess I don't understand your distinction here on purely logical terms, why the uneven burden of proof? The Warren Report is just that, a report written by humans. Even if you firmly want to believe it, if you read it you'd understand its not really doing anything differently than the tin-foil heads and their books (of the better ones at least). It did not create the reality of its hypothesis along with it, it can't really know what Oswald was thinking.
Have you seen the documents they released in the past? There are so many redactions. They are undoubtedly hiding something deemed too sensitive for the public.
That the mainstream/official view (Lee Harvey Oswald did it alone) is correct, and that there is no conspiracy to hide that it was actually orchestrated by the CIA/KGB/Mafia/Illuminati/etc.
The House Subcomittee on Assassinations in the 1970's determined the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, they just didn't determine who did it.
I'm not sure what you consider mainstream of official, but I don't think there is a real mainstream or official view. I have read lots of Cold War histories and there isn't a clear historical consensus on who killed JFK. Certainly not on who actually pulled the trigger.
The question of who killed JFK is a historical question now. In the past it was a whodunit, or a murder mystery, but that this point it is definitely a question of history that will forever be debated by historians.
>> The House Subcomittee on Assassinations in the 1970's determined the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, they just didn't determine who did it.
Is there link to a good source on this. That's pretty much my understanding and it would be nice to have a good reference to counter the lone gunman idea.
why repeat "Illuminati" when it happened in Texas among Oil and Army personnel. Isn't it equally obvious that some mystic intellectuals are being blamed by literal gun-wielders?
That it wasn't the CIA, or the Russians, or the lizard people, or that JFK isn't secretly still alive in hiding. Take your pick, there are a lot, some more absurd than others. One or more might even be true, but they aren't going to release the proof of that.
I don't know why the mockery is required. There are some very weird "coincidences" with his assassination and the idea of a political ruler being assassinated in a conspiracy is something that has happened countless times. I think it's in bad faith to lump CIA based theories (they have killed countless people and overthrown so many governments) with shit like lizard people
No mockery; whichever theory someone subscribes to, no matter how plausible, nothing's going to prove a negative here. If you believe there's a secret about who did it being kept here in the docs, you believe they'll never release that specific document or documents.
Can you specify the coincidences? This conspiracy has been written about to death, and the mainstream theory that Oswald assassinated him is the only one that makes any sense.
One of the more mainstream/less out there ones is that the mafia supposedly had nothing to do with the assassination but a known member of the mafia just happened to kill Oswald before he could stand trial. The idea being that Oswald was hired by the mafia, and they had Jack Ruby kill Oswald to prevent him from revealing their involvement.
That's interesting, but Jack Ruby was a supporter of the president. He impulsively killed Oswald; he didn't know where Oswald was going to be until shortly before he left to kill him.
oswald being assassinated before his trial and all notes regarding his interview by the police being gone is more than a little sus for a lone crazy gunner theory
Jack Ruby was a supporter of the president who impulsively killed Oswald. Given the timeline he would not have been able to plan it in advance. This is obviously one of those things that have been infinitely followed up on and done to death.
Ruby was not afraid of the consequences? He couldn't wait for the judicial system to pronounce the death sentence? (which was very likely if Oswald was indeed the killer). If he loved the president so much, didn't he want to know if there were others involved, so they could be punished as well?
I think it is very unlikely that Jack Ruby's actions were borne of impulsiveness.
I agree that Oswald shot kennedy, but it's really weird how a man who defected to russia and was a communist seemed to integrate so easily into republican social circles in texas. Connection to Mohrenschildt is a little sus as well. I'm not even saying I know what happened exactly, I just don't give people like HW Bush or other confirmed spooks the benefit of the doubt. Deception and assassination is literally their job. The only thing that would be unusual about CIA involvement in this would be that it's a US leader assassinated as opposed to leader of some other country
I agree it's weird. It's very possible that Oswald was involved in some shady (non-assassination related) business for the government, which in turn has made it more difficult to get documents declassified.
But the "benefit of the doubt" isn't necessary here. The theory that CIA recruited Oswald specifically to assassinate JFK has been conclusively proven wrong. The magic bullet theory has been conclusively proven wrong. That the USSR had evidence that the CIA assassinated JFK has been conclusively proven wrong. This has been studied in tedious amount of detail.
I don't think parent's post was trying to propagate that conspiracy theory (they're saying even producing the document didn't stop the tinfoil hat people).
Assuming some government agency actually did kill Kennedy, how long would they have to wait until admitting what happened would carry no consequences? I feel that it really wouldn't be that long. 100 years? Less?
Why on earth would they literally ever do that? There are always numerous procedural backdoors on how to avoid that if you play by the book (can't release from archives if it ain't archived for reason XYZ for example), and endless options if you don't.
If you as chief just take a single copy of some strong evidence and burn it, that's about it, who is gonna stop you. People on top of these power pyramids have usually more massive ego than their body can actually take so its easy to feel righteous about such acts.
Out of all the possible reasons, killing one's own president is confidently on top of the list of reasons to never ever disclose.
Not that I subscribe to any particular theory since we don't know and probably never will, but there are way too many weird coincidences and events to make the lone shooter theory anything but a fringe, unprobable one.
But given how massively CIA et al fucked up long term almost everything they took upon, this would have to be their best-executed mission by far. That doesn't mean somebody else wasn't more competent/lucky.
A story from my former soviet-enslaved country in east europe - after iron curtain fell, secret services were intensively burning all the heaps of incriminating paperwork gathered in prior decades on themselves and their collaborators, and bribes were done to get ones that evaded this. Very few remained. That's how you easily erase past, no other digital copies on distributed tapes. Now most apparatchiks are in politics or organized crime, often both.
Unfortunately some of it won't be released, particularly the note Oswald passed to Special Agent Hosty a few days before the assassination. Allegedly it was a threat to stop hassling his family but we'll never know. Hosty was ordered by his superiors to destroy it, and promptly flushed it down the toilet.
Or the letter in Oswald's handwriting (no name on it) to James Jesus Angleton (head of CIA wetworks), released in the past couple of years, asking him for clarification on what he was expected to do while in Dallas.
Never, as long as the CIA still exists. The institutional reputation of the agency is very low right now among large swaths of the population. Imagine what would happen if it was revealed that they had a hand in killing a sitting US president? No matter how long ago it was, their reputation and credibility (and the reputation and credibility of all the institutions and people who continue to uphold them as patriotic defenders of democracy) would be forever tainted (even beyond what it is today).
I'm not so sure. All the current employees of the CIA are absolved, simply because they were not even alive at that time. All the principles have been long dead. I think they could credibly claim "mistakes were made" and move on. It's a perfect opportunity to sort of wipe the slate clean.
Something to keep in mind is that any intelligence service gets blamed for their failures, but gets no bump in reputation for their successes. This means that the more activities any service does, the worse their reputation will be. Because no one has a 100% track record.
I mean the Cia peddled cocaine in America for extra spending money. I really don't think their reputational issues are because they have too many visible failures.
... not relevant to the JFK assassination, but it kind of shows you how they would go about researching subjects they weren't already knowledgeable in.
JFK was a proponent of interventionist foreign policy and neoliberal-ish economics just like every US president after him. The US establishment had no reason to kill him. He was one of them through and through.
The Kennedy speech came shortly after the failed "bay of pigs" operation - on April 27. There might have been some tensions between the various branches of government on that occasion, so it can have more than one interpretation. Here is the full text:
Focusing on who pulled the trigger is a distraction from what the consequences were and how policy was affected.
What's important is what happened after and that should be the real focus - that's why most people have no idea who Charles J Guiteau and Leon Czolgosz are.
The JFK assassination, and other historical events, seem like they could be such great applications for the kind of AI systems we have now. It really seems as if something like ChatGPT could "read" every document related to the JFK assassination and put together the pieces for us.
I'm already convinced it was some combination of anti-Castro Cubans, Italian-American mafia, and members of the CIA that were involved in a conspiracy to kill JFK. That seems pretty clear just from reading the Wikipedia pages, but I'd love to have an AI system assemble the full story in detail. There's a lot of unanswered questions, like how far up the chain did things go. Who was involved in the cover up, and much more.
At the very least, we probably need a system that is trained on just the raw source material so that it is not biased by all the existing theories.
I think it's important to point out that ChatGPT would do a terrible job here.
The whole problem with ChatGPT is that there's no underlying system of reasoning. For instance, it doesn't know how to weight the trustworthiness of the NYT versus CIA documents versus some random person writing screeds online.
You'd be much better off loading all the relevant documents into a traditional search engine, and trying to find the most salient bits yourself.
To give a concrete example of ChatGPT's shortcomings, I asked it to adjust a pasta recipe to use 50% more pasta, and in addition to increasing the amount of salt, garlic, etc, it increased the amount of time expected for the pasta to reach al dente from a full boil. It knew to increase the quantities, but it wasn't able to apply commonsense and realize pasta will reach al dente in the same amount of time at a full boil regardless of the quantity.
I do think ChatGPT's descendents might become capable of deeper reasoning.
A better use of ChatGPT might be to digest and summarize all the documents and then allow a human investigator to interrogate it to more quickly grasp the information and make their own inferences.
It's an interesting question as to how trustworthy a summary can be from a system that lacks basic reasoning ability. You can ameliorate the problem to some extent by using ChatGPT to find primary sources to verify key assertions.
I recently quizzed ChatGPT on a matter it had incomplete information on (The Colorado Coal Strike). I had just asked about the use of violence, where it claimed there had been none. Afterwards this exchange occurred (emphasis mine):
z3c0:
The Colorado National Guard's use of violence against civilians during the Colorado Coal Strike is very well-documented. It is estimated that over 69 people were killed. Why are you revising history?
ChatGPT:
I apologize if my previous answer was misleading. I am a large language model trained by OpenAI, and my knowledge is based on the text that I have been trained on. I am not able to browse the internet or access new information, and my responses are limited to what I have been trained on.
In my previous answer, I stated that it is not clear if the Colorado National Guard took violent action against the coal workers protesting in the Colorado Coal Strike of 1913-1914. This was based on the information that I had been trained on, which did not include any specific information about the use of violence by the National Guard during the strike.
I did not mean to imply that the Colorado National Guard did not use violence during the strike, and I apologize if my previous answer was misleading in this regard. *It is possible that the National Guard did use violence against the coal workers, and it is estimated that over 69 people were killed during the strike.* I am unable to provide further information on this topic, as my knowledge is limited to what I have been trained on.
**
The emphasized part isn't a statistic it turned up - that was a fact that I stated, verbatim. Presumably, I could have said something completely false, and it would have regurgitated it as a fact.
I read this differently, it should have put whatever you said in quotation marks, but it clearly is just saying that it doesn't know and therefore you might be right.
I also think you misinterpreted the response. At first glance I did as well, but now I see that it is more quoting what you said than stating what you said as fact.
I do understand that - my point is that it repackaged my statement as its own, and did not denote its source in any way. If I were to paste only its response after feeding it something incorrect (eg 1069 instead of 69), it very much would appear to be making a false assertion.
But this again is where a confabulation-based architecture just isn't appropriate. I need an AI summarizer that I know isn't filling in gaps from random internet scans, or confidently confabulating over some inconsistency or something. And I say that independent of any particular thing it may have been trained on on the Internet. I say that because the whole point of a summarizer is to not inject anything else into the summary. (If it wanted to point out certain gaps that could be useful, but I do not want them "filled in".)
Even if ChatGPT summarized these documents, you'd still have to go check the original documents, not for the usual reasons of "did the summary drop an important detail I care about" (intrinsic to the act of summarization, always debatable) but for the reason of "is this actually solely sourced from the summarized text or is this one juicy detail actually a confabulation?"
I think this is harder to do generally than it sounds.
The best kinds of facts are gleaned by crunching a lot of inputs / experience. For example, after decades of life, a wise human might have a strong sense that one approach is better than another, or that a certain pattern in life exists. But it's not really possible to point to the specific source of this idea, because it has a widely-spread base.
In the case of specific historic events, however, I would like a clever AI that can cite sources and separate its facts from its opinions.
No question it's hard to do, and I don't expect a human to do it absolutely perfectly, nor will I necessarily hold AIs to that standard either.
To be more concrete and in HN's wheelhouse, I do expect that if I ask a coworker to go study some technology and give me the highlights (which I in fact kind of did today), that when they come back with a key summary of the important API calls, their parameters, and how those parameters relate to our business, that they will not have simply made up a plausible-sounding API call name because the dice rolled in the sentence generator didn't quite land on the actual call name but picked the second-most-likely outcome instead. And then, having made up an API call, simply started confidently confabulating the parameters to this API call, what it does, etc. and potentially spinning off into a world of fiction about this API call and related calls and what prerequisites those have, etc.
The problem with confabulation-based tech is even if it's accurate you can't really ever know that. The tech itself doesn't "know" when it is confabulating, because it is always confabulating. It just so happens with reasonably high probability that if you poke it with a real question its maximum-probability confabulation will more-or-less resemble the truth, because that is the maximum probability of what it saw in its training data. That is, no joke, pretty amazing and cool. But it doesn't leave me wanting to trust the output of any such AI model.
Example: I just prompted ChatGPT with "I'm using a Go library called semago for managing my semaphores. What is an example of how it is used?" There is no such library. But it confabulated an entire library, attributed it to a specific GitHub user who does exist (and a quick scan of the repo says it's not an implausible attribution), and wrote a description of using the API that gives absolutely no hint it does not exist. Now, credit where credit's due, that's pretty impressive that the code snippet is a confabulation of a completely plausible library. Nevertheless, it is a complete confabulation, and the only real clue that it is is precisely that I knew I was prompting one. When one accidentally happens there is no clue in the text whatsoever.
(Then I told it it was wrong, and it helpfully linked me to a non-existent standard library type "sync.Semaphore from the standard library: This is a simple semaphore implementation that is based on the sync.Mutex type. It provides basic semaphore functionality, including the ability to acquire and release permits." which is completely wrong, a GitHub library that does exist but which it completely mischaracterized, and another non-existent GitHub library. I'm not upset, really. This is still impressive in its own way. But it is confabulation.)
(And, full disclosure, I tried to get ChatGPT to describe the historical founding of the 27th state of the United States, "Morgontana", and it resolutely refused. The way in which it did so leads me to believe this is a rules-based special case added in over the underlying confabulation engine, though. Rules-based systems are ultimately a known dead end, though, and the way in which they are a dead end will only be made worse by trying to integrate them into a confabulation engine.)
Absolutely. I'm not against the tech, I'm trying to spread word of what it really is. And that definitely includes finding ways in which it is useful and awesome. When you want confabulation, ChatGPT is definitely ground-breaking, a noticeable improvement over GPT-3 even.
"CiteGPT and will be able to substantiate the claims it makes."
It'll have to be a fundamentally different architecture. "Maximum probability extension" just isn't going to do that. I'm not saying that's impossible. Presumably it is possible. Humans do it, very far from perfectly (I'm below average on this front myself, I think), but we do it at least partially, so it's clearly possible somehow. But it'll have to be something other than just a scaled up GPT model.
This is the same problem as politics in the public discourse in general. Did that reporter drop the details that would actually drive my decision? You ultimately have to go back to the sources, and it all takes a tremendous amount of time.
GPT is biased towards the most popular theories in its training data multiplied by repeated exposure to those theories, not the most correct theories. There's no such thing as an unbiased LMM.
Not a bad idea. Imagine an AI where you give it a book like For Whom the Bell Tolls and it can then answer questions like "What happens to Fernando at the bridge?"
istjohn: What happens to Fernando at the bridge in For Whom the Bell Tolls?
ChatGPT: In the novel "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway, Fernando is a member of the Republican forces fighting against the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. He is sent by Robert Jordan, the protagonist of the novel, to blow up a bridge as part of a mission to support the Republican cause. However, Fernando is captured by the Nationalists and is tortured and killed as a result of his involvement in the mission. The scene at the bridge is a pivotal moment in the novel, as it highlights the brutality and consequences of war.
I'm not sure how well it would do on this question if it only had access to the text itself and no access to analysis and summaries of the book, but I think it would do a pretty good job already. I expect it would just struggle more to contextualize the scene without external resources.
Edit: I was wrong. I tested it on a passage from some fan fiction, and it did not do well. In fact, it did not even know that one of the two characters in the passage existed, despite lengthy dialogue.
It is also wrong about what happens to Fernando. He does not get captured by the Nationalists or tortured, he is mortally wounded at the bridge and they have to leave him behind. No mention of capture or torture. Fernando is also not sent by Robert Jordan, he goes there with Robert Jordan and his squad. It is Robert Jordan who is sent by the general to blow up the bridge because he is the one who has demolition training.
Yes. Take it a step further. If an AI writes a book which experts cannot distinguish as not by a given author, does that mean the book is really by the author?
Just out of curiosity, I asked ChatGPT: "In order of decreasing likelihood, list ten people who are most likely to be responsible for the assassination John F. Kennedy?"
Answer:
1. Lee Harvey Oswald
2. Jack Ruby
3. Lyndon B. Johnson
4. J. Edgar Hoover
5. Carlos Marcello
6. David Ferrie
7. Clay Shaw
8. Frank Sturgis
9. E. Howard Hunt
10. James Files
No idea how well it works, but I remember reading about a product Palantir has/had that would read a bunch of legal documents and try to find connections in them.
Say what you will about Trump (lots of bad stuff to say in that regard), but this was specifically one of his campaign promises and after years of legal / bureaucratic battles we at least have some more records
That said, I don’t understand why these types of requests take so long… this event was quite literally a life time ago. Anyone involved would long be dead or incapable of standing trial.
> Anyone involved would long be dead or incapable of standing trial.
If, for example, some documents include details of spies in Russia never uncovered, even if those folks have retired/died, their network (and its recruited descendants) might well still be operating.
> Fair point, although I find it highly unlikely Russians or any indications of Russian involvement will be in here.
Doesn't have to be. "We asked source X at the Russian embassy if there was any indication they played a role" would still be highly sensitive, even if the answer was "no, not us".
One reason the CIA doesn't release information that has since become public, is because the techniques used to acquire that information are still classified.
I'm not any kind of expert, but at the end of the JFK movie (1991) it says the House Select Committee on Assassinations files are locked until 2029. I think that is the result of the Warren commission...
Bureaucratic inertia. It's not uncommon for orders to go partially unimplemented or even outright ignored by the people carrying it out. Many people have remarked on this. Even Jimmy Carter once remarked that one of his biggest suprises was things he gave an order for were never carried out. Bill Clinton has also remarked on the existence of a sort of "shadow government". It gives rise to conspiracy theories as explanation, but there is a strong bureaucratic intertia in the workings of goverment. It's a big problem, because it makes for a very inflexible goverment overall.
Here Trump changed his mind, and decided to not declassify it all. I know it wasn't you who linked it, but the Tampa Bay Times explicitly contradicts what you said:
“I agree with the Archivist’s recommendation that the continued withholdings are necessary to protect against identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure,” the president said
While Trump promised to do this, he unfortunately later agreed with the Intelligence Community to continue hiding certain information, which Biden has now done as well.
One obvious reason is that these documents can confirm spying operations that were happening and may still be continuing to today.
For example the US was tapping and transcribing all the phone calls to communist bloc embassies in Mexico in collaboration with Mexico’s presidency but unbeknownst to their law enforcement agencies.
Of course we already safely assumed they were tapping communist embassies, but the documents reveal the precise nature of the taps, what they usually did with the information they found, and to what extent the Mexican government was aware.
There must be a lot of review and consideration before deciding to reveal these details, even decades later.
Consider the prospect that those were just populist campaign lies. For gosh sakes "I'm going to release the JFK secrets" is the most tabloidy, QAnon thing one could say. I mean, it's perfect in terms of appeal to his core demo, but why on earth would he want to actually follow through? What would be the point? He can just pretend he didn't say it, and make up some other thing for the next election cycle.
A great way of re-establishing credibility to wipe the slate clean. All the principles have been long dead. It could definitely be a reset for the agency's credibility as a whole.
Trump could have released the files as legally required, but he folded to the demands of (then) CIA chief Mike Pompeo and withheld thousands of documents (which allowed the Biden administration to continue to withhold thousands more, most of which we will most likely never see barring the collapse of the US government and/or the abolition of the CIA).
He shouldn't have trusted Pompeo- both with these documents and the crossfire hurricane documents. But, even if he did release them, I suspect he would have had a lot more than just the National Archives signing off on raids. Unfortunately, Trump has young kids and grandkids- that's a lot of leverage. Or, Trump was also controlled opposition- who knows. It's all rotten to the core- the collapse of the US government is inevitable- I just hope we don't go the way of the USSR, where the KGB rose from the ashes, destroyed countless records and continues to run Russia to this day.
Trump said he would release information but ultimately backed down and didn't, so no I don't think he deserves any credit for lying about about something else.
My prediction: these documents may narrow some unknowns while providing zero evidence that rebuts the conventional story. Conspiracy theorists are emotionally invested in their wacko ideas, so they will continue peddling their warez.
Conspiracy theorists allow their emotions to overwhelm their rationality. It’s a self-imposed mental feebleness. Most of us, by contrast, find balance between the two.
Much of the worst we see in modern US politics are when bad actors knowingly take advantage of this emotionally driven mental feebleness. That’s how you empower extremists.
Your comment shows an lack of intellectual curiosity which I think demonstrates that conspiracy theories have done the job they were created to do - dissuade people from asking too many questions about actual conspiracies. You're applauding yourself for not being "mentally feeble".. for blindly accepting the CIA version of events.
> The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory, which claims the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule.
> The earliest known usage was by the American author Charles Astor Bristed, in a letter to the editor published in The New York Times on January 11, 1863. He used it to refer to claims that British aristocrats were intentionally weakening the United States during the American Civil War in order to advance their financial interests.
What else would you like us to call a theory about an alleged conspiracy? What's your preferred term that accurately encompasses the collection of quite-plausible all the way to batshit-insane possible explanations that have been proposed?
I provided it: "plausible-but-unproven accusation"
You had said "this is itself a conspiracy theory" and then provided evidence that it was false. Therefore it is simply false. But the implication seemed to be that "conspiracy theory" = "something that is false but people still believe"
My point was that, similar to many of the other "-ist"s, a term can have a technically valid meaning yet still be misused in bad faith to shut down debate. (Not at all saying that's what you were doing - just seemed like a relevant place to make the point.)
I think anything that isn't also a term that people like you have spent decades using as a slur would suffice.
The problem isn't the term. It's the connotation. Many conspiracy theories are baseless, some are not. When people like you constantly use the term as an umbrella slur for people who are alleging that things aren't quite as they are being purported (often times they are not even alleging that conspiring is happening) for reasons that the public would not like it no longer becomes useful for it's original intent. See also: retarded.
The problem isn't the term. It's that it's a constant game of cat and mouse with you. Over decades people like you will co-opt it in order to lump people who have legitimate "hey, this press release says X because Y but the facts all seem to say Z" criticism in with "the politicians are lizards" type garbage.
Then the government agencies in the 70s are caught doing a lot of illegal provable (often admitted) conspiracies. These including things such as spying, giving citizen deadly diseases (Tuskegee experiments), blackmailing, bribing and threatening members of congress, etc (see church committee)
It’s easy to see why these conspiracy theories persist.
You seem to really have it out for "conspiracy theorists" as a whole lumped group.
Seems like you are the one allowing "emotions to overwhelm their rationality."
Especially in the context of JFK assasination, which is like the most mainstream of anything that could be called a conspiracy theory.
Did a conspiracy theorist bang your girlfriend or something? I prefer those wackos to people like you that claim balance while being totally incurious about anything contradicting what you've been told by "trusted sources"
You can say that it was impossible to gather enough proof, that the evidence led nowhere, but saying that it's ridiculous is... suspicious.
Reminds me of more recent events... <ducks and hides under the desk>