JFK assassination: was any consensus ever reached as to who actually did it and why?

pakula is dope

you're referring, i believe, to chairing the special operations group. as vice president. as you know, that was... unique. not so much an operation as... an organic phenomenon. it grew. changed shape. it developed... appetites. it's not unusual in such cases that things are not committed to paper. that could be very embarrassing!

it's a shame you didn't take similar precautions, dick!

xp re pakula: if you like wide angle shots of soul deadening 70s corporate architecture, he's your go to man

xp re pakula: if you like wide angle shots of soul deadening 70s corporate architecture, he's your go to man

He was your go-to guy for that sort of thing. Rollover is practically a filmed catalog of office interiors and exteriors.

The other thing about the assassination, beyond it exerting a continuing fascination-magnetism in the American psyche, etc., is that it's never one HUNDRED percent easy to dismiss conspiracy theories, because of everything else that it turned out the government really was doing, e.g. COINTELPRO, which is partially on record but still mostly redacted and/or classified. Like, it's a ripe atmosphere for conspiracy theories when you have actual conspiracies going on, and everybody (since the, what, early 70s?) now knows at least the outlines of it.

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, May 8, 2012 7:19 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally. CIA, mafia, they were all off the freaking chain as far as over-extending their reach, and it's not like batshit stuff didn't really happen.

But I agree that the parties involved are no known for their secret-keeping abilities, so single gunman is still the most rational theory that holds any water.

Part of me does love the conspiracy though. Oswald was such a fuckin mook

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, May 8, 2012 7:28 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM, not to mention the Castro assassination plots the CIA kept from the Warren Commission. Oswald may have acted alone, but he wasn't living in a vacuum.

I heard some Robert MacNeil-produced radio hour on WNYC last night, and damn it's gonna be quite a week for geezer hagiography!

even redoubtable lib anchors invite experts to gas off about CAMELOT.

Let's not give the Goodwins more employment.

um you guys Frontline is doing like 2 hours on Lee Harvey Oswald tomorrow night (I think)!

someone less lazy than me can google for the factual information

I understand Arthur Schlesinger is going to be briefly resurrected to do some talk shows.

Surely LIFE will publish souvenir editions of Krassner's "The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book"

:D

"Lemme at that throat wound, Lady Bird!"

ahahah

i still get a kick out of that damn story.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/jfk-warmonger/

^^^ most assuredly do not endorse this dude's views in general or even all of that article but it's kind of nice to see someone stating the obvious in the face of a million sentimental liberals portraying JFK as a closet peacenik who was going to Save Us All. (surely the only thing oliver stone and arthur schlesinger could find to agree on...)

Was reading about Nellie Connally's recollection of 11/22:

• Sen. Ralph Yarborough yelling at everyone, getting pissy because he had to ride in the same car as LBJ.

• The governor not being told of JFK's death until that Sunday.

• Parkland calming down after everyone's gone back to Washington until Sunday when they bring Oswald in. "You brought the man who shot my husband here?"

Fun weekend, it sounds like.

was there ever proven to be anything offically 'fishy' about Nixon flying out of Dallas the same day or was that just, you know, coincidence?

he had to return a movie

The Oswald assassination bothers me a little bit.

yeah it bothered Jackie too.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115632/castros-reaction-jfk-assassination

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DD2KWCimBQ

do any of the books about this talk about how it's weird that zapruder didn't even flinch when the final shot happened? did he have really bad eyesight or something

tripod?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Sitzman

Two recent JFK bits from ye olde Gawker network blogs:

http://io9.com/artist-discovers-unseen-color-photos-of-jfks-final-mom-1465070605

http://gizmodo.com/stabilized-footage-of-the-jfk-assassination-is-unsettli-1465136863

That second one is especially cool but unsettling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqk3sdfXFkc

least zapruder didn't have an iphone

http://i.imgur.com/fVAcL3K.jpg

hey, I have a black umbrella with me today, total coincidence.

http://observer.com/2013/11/who-killed-jfk-and-why-do-we-want-to-keep-reading-about-him-or-her-or-them-the-enduring-charm-of-kennedy-conspiracy-books/

my friend wrote this, it's great and has an absolutely stupendous opening paragraph

thinking i really missed the boat by not writing a kennedy book to release this quarter

^^^

We're reading echoes. ECHOES.

slapping together a whole book of "alternate history" to sell to fantasizing olds is so ugh

Skimming the book to see how Mr. Greenfield maneuvers Kennedy through civil rights (a bill dies in Congress in ’64, but Kennedy manages to sign a voting rights act in his second term) and Vietnam (he withdraws U.S. forces)

of course he does

Known to millions simply by her middle name, Kennedy helped bring the cutting edge of culture into our living rooms during the 1990s through her outrageous segments as an MTV VJ, host of Alternative Nation, and on-the-spot correspondent for MTV News. She interviewed everyone from fame-averse Seattle rock musicians to vapid celebrities and politicians, asking the taboo questions no one else would as she navigated between true artists and phony poseurs. In The Kennedy Chronicles, she gives us a backstage pass at the last golden years of the cable network that defined a generation.

ya done shot the rong Kennedy

I have zero doubt there was a conspiracy, and the truth is probably as nutty as (but different from) Oliver Stone's.

Every time i see a picture of him and Jackie in the limo, I think about how he's the one guy who's missed out on all this.

ha this is great:

The morning he was killed, the president turned to his wife and quipped, “You know, we’re heading into nut country.” Oswald, in addition to being too small, was not even the right kind of nut—a poor, self-educated, left-leaning kook who couldn’t hold down a job in a city of rich, white racists who were furious with the president.

always nice to see the right wing counter-ritual of "oswald was a communist" at these times

I always remember him as a resident of Texas.

also as the guy who mighta gone in this wrecka stowe that morning

http://frontrow.dmagazine.com/2013/11/the-oak-cliff-record-store-that-was-dragged-into-the-jfk-assassination-saga-survives/

wtf that is the second time today someone has made a wrecka stow joke/ref to me

Jeez, right-wingers are still doing this?? Even when I was a child and every union member and FDR fan was a " Communist" I didn't even hear that one. I knew he was a communist but also a really angry and anti-social loner. You're missing a lot of history if you avoid Oswald.

One of my favorite anti-communists, Fred Schwarz, blamed Maoism for it. Sounds crazy now.

TV coverage is blessedly conspiracist-free - think of all the people who would be hurt and offended.

but TV coverage is not pomp or fatuity free, alas

hey that's a great article, thanks Morbs xxxp

here we go, "new footage"

http://www.thewrap.com/jfk-assassination-new-footage-producer-stephen-bowen-lee-harvey-oswald

i wonder if pruitt taylor vince and vincent d'onofrio will be in the footage

i used to have arguments with a mate of mine about whether 9/11 was a conspiracy or not. i didnt think it was and he did as he'd recently seen "zeitgeist" and was now all about 9/11 being a conspiracy. then he would ask, "did you think the kennedy assassination was a conspiracy?". id say "yeah i think its likely" and then i was hit with "ahhh well if the US government would do that why wouldnt something like 9/11 be a conspiracy??" GROAN

well there actually are precedents for political leaders being killed by conspiracies, there's not really any precedent for a conspiracy as airtight and leak-proof as a government-planned 9/11 would have had to be. oh and plus there is actually no evidence at all that 9/11 was a conspiracy.

rip capnlorax