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

don't get me wrong, i can totally understand the lasting skepticism about the assassination for ppl who lived through it, espec given the total mindfuck oh-god-is-this-actually-happening weirdness of ruby shooting oswald only two days later. but it's telling that so much conspiracy theory seems to rely way heavily on a sentimentalized version of JFK as the dude who was gonna save us all (rather than as the practical politico and seasoned cold war guy he was).

jack ruby left his dog in the car when he parked outside dallas police HQ, which indicates that he hadn't pre-meditated shooting oswald. (don't worry, someone rescued the dog.)

I love the bit in Slacker with the Conspiracy A-Go-Go guy who won't stop talking about Ruby's dog.

it was like Murder on the Orient Express; everybody did it.

Appreciate JFK's work on the missile crisis, but y'know, chickens coming home to roost.

an old professor of mine posted this a few months ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/opinion/the-umbrella-man.html

The JFK assassination doesn't bother me at all from a conspiracy standpoint, but the Oswald assassination does a little bit.

I read the Kerry Thornley biography awhile ago and aside from all the goofy fun-time beatnik Discordianism it's good into what it was like being on the receiving end of Garrison's witch hunt of an investigation.

I also think some sketchy/illegal shit might have gone down in the days afterward, when the CIA realizes that wackadoodle dude they were keeping tabs on just killed the President. xp

I remember when JFK had just come out, Mad Magazine did a piece about "less popular theories on the JFK assasination", or something like that. My favourites were "Zapruder had a gun in his camera", and "Aristoteles Onassis killed JFK so he could marry Jackie". I wonder if there are some conspiracy nuts out there who actually believe in one of those?

Okay, holy shit, apparently there actually are some theories that say Onassis had Kennedy killed, though not because he wanted to marry Jackie. And he had Robert Kennedy assassinated too.

The Rolling Stones contributed a rather specious conspiracy theory.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/LHO.html

"Zapruder had a gun in his camera"

― Tuomas, Tuesday, May 8, 2012 5:21 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah

that's my favorite one

It was the guy from scanners in the trunk of the limo

i figure it was the mob using oswald
― disappointing goth fest line-up (orion), Wednesday, September 13, 2006 7:08 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i still stand by this (to the extent that i give the JFK assassination any thought at all). JFK was whacked.

so then the mob whacked oswald to keep him quiet - they must have had a lot of faith in jack ruby. also amazed w/ all the fbi sweeps of mob dudes in the late 70s and early 80s everyone kept their mouth shut about it.

i would like there to be a conspiracy as much as anyone. iirc that was the big elephant-in-the-room subplot of norman mailer's "harlot's ghost". they called the jfk file at the CIA "the crown jewels" in it. and i really liked the story james ellroy put together in the american tabloid trilogy.

but as chuck d said - in a very different original sense - 'Man to man/ I don't know if they can/ From what I know/ The parts don't fit'

it is hard for me to believe that our gov't couldn't something so trivial as watergate secret but they've kept the lid on jfk all this time

Fun and games, man. Fun and games.

yeah personally i find ufo / bermuda triangle / number stations stuff much more fun, jfk assassination is just depressing

it is hard for me to believe that our gov't couldn't something so trivial as watergate secret but they've kept the lid on jfk all this time

Even though I find aspects of the conspiracy argument compelling--and aspects of the lone-gunman argument baffling--to me this has always been the strongest argument for Oswald acting alone: most individuals have a hard time keeping a secret, and the idea that 10 or 50 or 100 could keep one for an open-ended period of time seems virtually unthinkable.

esp a secret THIS BIG that involves the cia, fbi and mafia working in collusion, three groups of people we know are actually quite bad at keeping secrets ... will be very interested to see what gets redacted in 2017 though when the rest of the files come out

funny how Ollie Stone had a character raise that same counterargumenet only to get shouted again.

i've never read a dedicated book so i basically know nothing but i always assumed that the assassination was a zeitgeist thing: a spirit of hate for kennedy floating thickly around, and this weird insecure perennial patsy who wanted to be Part Of History hanging out in a series of rooms drinking while people he wanted to impress grumbled SOMEONE SHOULD SHOOT THE SONUVABITCH. when there's evidence that lbj or dick helms or whoever are Covering Stuff Up i suspect it's not secrets about dealey plaza they're concealing but secrets about the state of the union 1963. (i like the delivery in stone's nixon of "i don't think you understand how much people hate kennedy down here!") but most of that stuff isn't even secret at this point. idk. for me all the lessons that ought to be learned from the assassination have to do with the way the spirit of a time can become so pressurized and toxic that it suddenly spurts out some violence (which then begets violence, which then etc, and suddenly you have The Sixties). the national need to believe in a conspiracy seems like a fear of history: surely someone else must have done this to us. so basically i'm in mick jagger's camp.

fear of history, fear of random universe, think you nailed it there

^^^this, plus also treasure maps and secret doors for the next generation

http://www.everywoodyallenmovie.com/images/crimes-and-misdemeanors-7.jpg

"Who did this terrible thing to our city? My GOD it was me!"

http://www.everywoodyallenmovie.com/images/crimes-and-misdemeanors-7.jpg

ok just imagine Alan Alda playing X, sitting on that bench with Kevin Costner.

haha i thought that was mike love for a second b/c i'm listening to the beach boys thread in another tab and i was like, yeah, i could get behind the idea that mike love masterminded the kennedy assassination

http://pdxretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Mike-love-yng1.jpg

"A devastating national trauma will cause people to drown their sorrows in refreshing songs about surf, sun and fun... We'll make millions, if everyone can just keep quiet."

http://cdn2.dailycaller.com/2011/05/jfk.jpg

"I loved like the warmth of the sun / Within me at night / It won't ever die."

i heard crosby stills and nash did it

before they could end the vietnam war ... they had to start it

"everywoodyallenmovie.com" an important resource of which i was previously unaware

i heard crosby stills and nash did it

Grassy knoll and Oswald's schemin'
THREE SHOT IN MO-TOR-CADE

this summer I hear the gunning
Jack dead in DEALEY-O

I like this new (?) pop-music-centric conspiracy theory. Too bad Paul McCartney hadn't died yet - one of his doubles would fit the pattern perfectly.

funny how Ollie Stone had a character raise that same counterargumenet only to get shouted again.

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

stone in the director's cut later discredited this character when he tried to set up garrison in a gay bathroom sting!

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.

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

some good stuff here i didn't know. pretty scary imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kyjK214s-4

― piscesx, Wednesday, April 18, 2012 7:44 AM

hmmmmm - http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/nagell1.htm

parallax view is dope tho

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