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."

https://youtu.be/Q7ERXm9OwuE?t=250

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.

> 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.

Why would an expert rifleman not be able to get off three accurate shots in 6.5 seconds? What am I missing?

On a low-tier bolt-action platform that was the Carcano.

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.

End rant!

> President wants to reign in CIA

> Gets assassinated

> CIA-linked people magically take presidency for decades

Nothing suspicious here at all, conspiritards!

Yup

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.

> The fact that they continue to release more stuff over and over gives very legitimate credence to the notion they are hiding something.

"If they are innocent they would not to fight the charges so much"

This is a false equivalence.

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.

If they are innocent then why does it seem we will have to wait 100 years before we get all the govt documents ?

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.

you should always assume the government is guitly of something by default. the governement does not benefit from the principle of supposed innocence.

> that they continue to release more stuff over and over gives very legitimate credence to the notion they are hiding something

Wat? This is how declassification works.

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.

There are some documents they're putting on ice for another 5 years; I wonder if they're ones that relate to him?

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."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Jowers_trial

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 the judge being removed from the case: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/08/us/judge-in-king-case-rem...

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

Here is the FBI failing to prove the bullet came from the same gun: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/12/us/tests-of-gun-in-king-k...

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.

He had been proposing levying the mutual-assistance form of economic sanctions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34013751 , after all.

I do like, unbeknownst to OP, that this statement could be speaking for either side at this point.

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.

> I guess I don't understand your distinction here on purely logical terms, why the uneven burden of proof?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

It's possible that "yep, it was a conspiracy" will be confirmed if new data is found/released. That's something it's possible to prove.

It's not possible to prove there wasn't a conspiracy.

I think it’s more “I’ll believe you if you say what I already believe, otherwise you must be a liar”.

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.

"convince anyone" of what?

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.

There is no mainstream/official view.

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.

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.

I have to admit, it would take a lot to convince me the CIA wasn't involved.

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.

>Jack Ruby was a supporter of the president

So he claimed, yes.

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.

> Jack Ruby was a supporter of the president who impulsively killed Oswald

Jack Ruby was once again let to die in a prison before he could testify in a proper court. So many convenient ends disappear...

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.

Do you have links to the conclusive details? I would like to read them.