Ask not. . .
Posted on November 23rd, 2008
by Scott McConnell |
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Happened to surf by Oliver Stone’s “JFK” last night and stuck with it. I had seen the movie when it came out, even wrote a NY Post column about it — have no idea what I said. But in 1991 I was a good deal less inclined to credit the possibility of malign US government conspiracies. Now, after the (second) Iraq War, we’re probably all a little more cynical.
I know there’s a ton of books out there on both sides, (I remember my stepfather was very excited by getting to know Mark Lane in the early sixties). I know there was a fairly authoritative “Case Closed” book published in 1993. What do others think of this? As portrayed in Stone’s movie, the second “magic bullet” theory does seem pretty unlikely.
Filed under: Courts, Events, Uncategorized
I suggest you watch The Men Who Killed Kennedy documentaries that were on the History Channel.
I am not a believer is conspiracy theories in any way, but if you watch the Zapruder film, the Warren Report is proved meaningless. That first bullet hits Kennedy but Connelly is NOT HIT. Watch it. Just google it. When Connelly is finally hit, a split second later Kennedy’s head explodes. I don’t know what this means and can’t speculate about who was responsible, but the Warren Report and the magic bullet were simply not true.
1) My recollection is that Stone lies about the actual geometry of the car, particularly the angle and placement of the jump seat. This has a huge, material effect on the plausibility of one bullet passing through Kennedy and into Connally.
2) I’ve been to the Sixth Floor Museum, where you can stand at the next window over from the Famous One. The corner window is a glassed-off exhibit. If you took it into your head to shoot at a moving vehicle, it would be one of the best possible places to do it from. The car was on an exit ramp moving down and away from the corner window. The route basically holds the car in line with the window for several seconds - it’s not a cross-shot at all. The complicating factor is that there used to be a tree branch across part of the line of sight that is no longer there. Still, it’s an easier shot than legend tends to allow.
Not long ago I saw Vincent Bugliosi interviewed about a book he wrote defending the Warren Report. All I remember was him pointing out that all of these folks deriding the so-called “magic bullet” theory have successfully shifted the onus onto the Specter hypothesis–they’ve never produced their hypothetical second bullet, because none was ever found, in what may have been the most pored over crime scene in American history.
I watched a bit of JFK myself last night. I think it’s a work of lunatic genius, but I’m conflicted over liking deliberately dishonest history. This wouldn’t be half as bad if that history wasn’t so recent and momentous.
One thing that is almost never remarked on now is how a former defector to the Soviet Union and admirer of Castro assassinated a US president and countless conspiracy theories implicating the Mafia and CIA are born (I think Sailer may have mentioned this not long ago) yet not one (that I know of) implicating the Soviets or Red Cubans. People forget that after the assassination the US government was terrified they were going to find a Soviet plot behind it, or that public sentiment would make that assumption and demand war.
I believe that Gerald Posner’s “Case Closed” does exactly that. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
“I am not a believer is conspiracy theories in any way”
I’ll bet this isn’t true. This is a pet peeve of mine.
We all believe in “conspiracy theories”. Anytime two or more people formulate and execute a plan of action, that’s a conspiracy, by definition.
For instance, people dismiss those who disbelieve the official story about 9/11 and postulate some other version - the Mossad, or the U.S. government or some combination thereof because “it’s a conspiracy theory”… but if 19 Arab men + a few others from around the world developed a plan and executed it (the official story) - that’s a conspiracy. It’s just a conspiracy we believe in rather than one we dismiss.
The truth is Americans, as a rule, don’t like the idea that members of their government could be involved in such an conspiracy however we widely accepted that foreigners (and maybe foreign governments) could be. This is completely inconsistent and irrational.
Tocqueville is exactly right. Read Posner’s book and if you didn’t know for sure before that all the conspiracy theories were bunk but smelled like the product of kooks or the self-interested, you will thereafter.
The one thing Posner doesn’t really address however—consciously, because it was drowned out by theories of the kooks and weirdos that were his subject, but maybe also because it’s probably unknowable too boot—is the one theory that to my mind is most suspicious; to wit, that Oswald was used by either the Soviets or even more likely Castro.
After all that’s where Oswald’s sympathies lay which should have raised far more suspicions than all this other crap. Oswald had lived in the SU, and had even been to the Cuban embassy shortly before the shooting. And we didn’t know then about Castro’s particular reason for trying to zip JFK, namely revenge for the Kennedy brothers’ attempts on him via the CIA and the Mafia. (Which Castro certainly knew about.)
I don’t believe it; along the way Posner establishes clearly it seems to me that not only was it Oswald, alone, acting unsupported. But if you want a theory that at least makes some modicum of sense the Soviets/Castro one appears to me to be the only one with any possibility at all.
(And there was that Soviet defector who popped up on the CIA’s door so fortuitously right after the assassination who said that the Soviet’s had done it, and would then send another defector to contradict him, which, amazingly, then happened to a tee. Because sure enough shortly thereafter in walks another defector who, miraculously, in all the whole big wide KGB world, says he was the guy who handled Oswald’s KGB file and he knows that the KGB had nothing to do with the assassination. Amazing.)
Still, I don’t believe it, but it’s a strange world and I could see how the Soviets and the Cubans could have done it a la how the Israeli’s used that addled girl in LeCarre’s book “The Little Drummer Girl.” But they’d hardly have picked Oswald to do it I wouldn’t think, and then as per Posner there’s the fact that there’s no real evidence they did either, so….
Cheers,
After all these years, there has been nothing presented from a ballistic or forensic perspective that contradicts the Warren Commission’s findings that a single gunman did it all with 3 shots. “JFK” is fantasy, convincing by the virtue of its own straight-faced intensity; rather than debating whether its assertions undermine the WC, one should first find out whether those assertions are even at all true, which most of them are not (i.e. pretty much every single thing they say about the rifle, the bullets, and the timing–Stone arbitrarily cut about 2 seconds of possible shooting-time away from the assassin, to make it seem more likely as a conspiracy.)
Having said all that, the thing that I wonder about the most is whether the lone gunman really was Lee Harvey Oswald. Forensic evidence is one thing, the shots even coming from his own rifle is one thing, but is there proof beyond a reasonable doubt he pulled the trigger? There was only one Olympic Park bomber, and the authorities got the wrong guy. There was (probably) only one anthrax letter-mailer, and the authorities got the wrong guy–possibly twice. There was only one Zodiac killer, and the authorities never even got him. And all of those cases were DECADES after JFK, with far less urgency and panic coming in to play on the agents responsible for solving it.
Maybe, just maybe, a lone gunman did it and vanished into the crowd, and Oswald was in the wrong place at the wrong time with heavy circumstantial evidence against him–got killed–and the authorities convinced themselves there was no further need to search and/or that it was in the nation’s best interest to declare the matter closed.
I don’t really believe that more than about 5%, but since nearly all of the other “theories” about the case have been stuck at 0% forever, I think it’s the only one really worth intellectual exploration.
Anyone who’s done a lot of hunting isn’t likely to dismiss the single bullet theory. I’ve had shots fly off in all sorts of directions, including back toward me, after a round tumbles through the target. That’s what tumbling bullets do.
I also had the same experience as Jim Henley mentioned when visiting the Sixth Floor Museum. It was a very easy shot to make. I could have hit Kennedy’s car with a thrown rock from that window.
Scott,
I think you should go out and pick up a copy of Charles McCarry’s The Tears of Autumn.
In addition to being an excellent novel, with a very interesting take on the exact relationship between the Cubans and Oswald, he paints a portrait of JFK that is eerily remiscent of George W. Bush.
One thing that is almost never remarked on now is how a former defector to the Soviet Union and admirer of Castro assassinated a US president and countless conspiracy theories implicating the Mafia and CIA are born (I think Sailer may have mentioned this not long ago) yet not one (that I know of) implicating the Soviets or Red Cubans.
There were plenty of theories along those lines, often suggesting that the assassination was payback for the attempted hits on Castro. They might not be as popular today as they were during the Cold War, but as this thread demonstrates, they’re still out there.
I too saw JFK a couple of times over the weekend and it’s amazing how weak the case was Garrison brought against Clay Shaw. He never had concrete evidence showing that Shaw knew of any kind of plot against the Preisdent outside of insane, drunken ramblings or was involved with it and yet forward with prosecuted him anyway in the hope someone with something more concrete would come forward. It never happened (although Shaw did work for the CIA). Kevin Costner’s ranting summnation (Garrison never made in real life) sounds like it came right of Nationalist Times or The Daily Worker. To jump to the conclusions that LBJ and Bell Helicopter and Brown and Root were behind the assassination did much to descredit those who believe, as the House Committee on Assassinations belived “that some sort of conspiracy was probable.” I think Oswald was one of the shooters both as the Zapuder film showed, so was someone else. Who that was, we may never know but because of this, the conspiracy doesn’t go that high up or that far wide, otherwise it would have been exposed by now. The Feds, at that time were worried about two things: 1). A possible backlash that could lead to World War III; 2). expose of government ties to Mafia and Operation Mongoose; which is why the Warren Commission was determine to pin everything on Oswald, which is the gensis for the “magic bullet” theory.
A shot from the grassy knoll would have killed Jackie too.
I’m surprised that no one mentioned Carl Oglesby’s The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate In fact, applying his thesis one could argue that John McCain’s election campaign marked the final defeat of the South-Western “Cowboy” that has been trying to maintain power since the assassination of JFK…
I’m surprised no one mentioned Carl Oglesby’s The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate Applying his thesis John McCain’s election failed presidential campaign marked the defeat of the South-Western “Cowboy” who supposedly has been trying to dominate U.S. politics and economics since the JFK assassination…
@E- ditto. Watching the Zabruder film in slo-mo tells me everything I need to know about the “official” version of events.
The movie JFK was a load of nonsense. Posner’s book was much better, but he deliberately excludes the real explanation. What actually happened is explained in the book Mortal Error, by Bonar Menninger. This book describes the findings of the late Howard Donahue, who appears to be the only actual ballistics expert who ever analyzed the available evidence.
The first two shots happened much as Posner describes. Oswald fired the first shot much earlier than the Warren Commission thought, and missed not only JFK, but the entire car. The bullet probably hit a tree branch on the way. The second shot was the so-called “magic bullet”, which passed through both Kennedy and Connally. There wasn’t anything magic about it: These bullets have heavy metal jackets, and if they don’t happen to hit a large bone at high speed, they don’t break up.
The shot which hit Kennedy in the head was fired accidentally from the AR-15 rifle of a Secret Service agent in the car behind. He was standing up on the seat of the car, intending to return fire, when he lost his balance while his finger was on the trigger. Unlike the Mannlicher-Carcano bullet, the AR-15 bullet does break up on impact, transferring almost all its energy to the target and doing a lot of damage.
There is no doubt that Posner was aware of this analysis. Mortal Error is listed in his bibliography, and he quotes Howard Donahue’s assessment of the condition of the “magic bullet” in order to debunk the misconception that this bullet was “pristine”. Posner also uses Donahue and Menninger’s information (without attribution) when he states that big game hunters used the Mannlicher-Carcano to kill elephants.
Despite this knowledge, Posner does not even hint at the possibility of an accidental shot in Case Closed. He provides an exhaustive analysis and debunking of practically every crackpot conspiracy theory available, but pretends that Donahue’s analysis does not exist. I can see only one explanation for this: He does not mention it because he knows that he cannot refute it, and he knows that it explains the evidence much better than he does. Posner is a lawyer, and this is one way that lawyers argue: If you know that you can’t win on a certain subject, DON’T bring it up!