(opinion) JFK Assassinated - Why?...

[dEMOK]

I know this subject is "old hat," but I was 12 when Kennedy was taken out. I saw the footage over & over on our b&w TV. I also saw Ruby killing Oswald over & over. This era in American politics has always fascinated me.

I've developed a "sketchy" understanding over the years; that's why I'm very interested in the understandings of many others.

Please (for the sake of curiosity) answer the "why" he was killed (not the how).

I'm all ears! (Call me Prince Charles.)

on edit -- sp

[uppityperson]

1. Because some one or ones wanted him dead.

Here is a question for you...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1018480&mesg_id=1025483

[rwenos]

2. Leading Candidates for Motive

1. JFK denies air cover to the Cuban nationalists in the Bay of Pigs invasion, thus enraging Cubans exiled in Miami, who take JFK out. Oswald is the patsy. (Joan Didion's book "Miami" sketches this out.)

2. JFK pays the price for Bobby antagonizing Hoffa and the mob. Mob takes JFK out as a revenge hit. (Many sources.) Oswald is the patsy.

3. JFK is killed by Johnson's people so Johnson can take over and escalate the Vietnam war, to enrich cronies in the defense industries. Oswald is the patsy. (Oliver Stone's movie "JFK.")

4. JFK is killed by CIA, enraged because JFK has promised to "break CIA into a thousand pieces." Oswald is the patsy. (Various paranoid leftie journalists.)

5. Oswald acts alone. (Warren Commission.)

[L. Coyote]

5. Racism. a la KKK, killing civil rights workers, MLK , and RFK

Ask, what do JFK, MLK, and RFK have in common? Civil Rights leaders.

[rwenos]

7. Executive Action

Made in about 1975, don't know the director, Burt Lancaster was one of the faceless RW hammer-men who paid for the hit. Motive posited was revenge from RW racists for Civil Rights reforms.

Left that out of my first list. Good catch.

[pnorman]

25. I recall seeing that film some time back.

It was at the Seaman's Club in Guam around 1974, and I recall that it left a strong impression on me. Later, I learned that it's distribution was near nil, so I "lucked out" that time!

I just checked Amazon and saw where it's now a DVD, but "not yet available". (I left my email address there to be notified when it does becomes available).

Thanks for the reminder. I had almost forgotten about it.

pnorman

[Joe Chi Minh]

122. They'd love to you believe that. In fact, 1- 4 in #2 were the reasons.

Only, in the broadest and most indirect sense of "civil rights", would those assassinations have been motivated by an antipathy to civil rights, i.e in accordance with the historic determination of the Rep-Dem Establishment to deny to the American people a closer approximation to a European-style democracy.

By attributing those assassinations to racist, "anti-civil right" motives, the authors of the notion, aware of the widespread racism in the country, overt and unacknowledged, would have sought to "divided and rule", and get the real, party-political killers off the hook.

[BlueIris]

19. Ah, someone else who has read "Miami." Have you read "The Last Thing He Wanted"?

That's one of the scariest books ever written. I still can't believe she managed to get that out. Nowadays, Ms. Didion wouldn't have been able to find a publisher for such material.

[elehhhhna]

70. I read it, and yes, it's scary. Haven't read Miami, though...

think I'll order it now.

edit: done! It's ordered.

[Bucky]

27. Pass the Occam and don't spare the Razors, but you forgot one theory

Another major C.T. for the Kennedy murder states that elements of the KGB and Kremlin hardliners got Oswald to kill Kennedy in order to undermine Krushchev's power base on the Kremlin--his working relationship with Kennedy was supposedly a major factor in his hanging onto power those last two years. But after the Cuban Missile fiasco, Kremlin hardliners wanted revenge for being humiliated and wanted Nikita out in the process, too. Brezhnev had a much more agressive foreign policy than the reform-minded Krushchev (besides the Czechoslovakian crackdown in 1968, Brezhnev stepped up support for North Vietnam and the Vietcong in order to tie the US down in Asia with an embarrassment of its own.
.

[rasputin1952]

40. You can add...

Thoughts from far RW'ers that he wasn't dealing w/the Soviets harshly enough. (RW hit)

He was debating pulling out of Vietnam. (RW hit)

Soviet sponsored. (KGB hit)

There were lot of people that just plain didn't think Kennedy was good for the nation. Some saw him as weak, others saw him as a real threat in the Cold War. I think these are far out theories, he showed up the Soviets and Kruschev during the Cuban Missile Crisis though, and hence the Soviet /KGB lin up. Personally I think that, while the Soviets and especially the KGB played some serious hardball, MAD and the thought or bringing about WWIII in a matter of minutes kept the Soviets from doing anything that drastic. But there were Rogue Elements that could have done this on their own. Neither side was short of maniacal zealots...just look at Curtis LeMay...he wanted to nuke the Soviets and Chinese, he had no moral reigns holding him back...:scared:

[Hangingon]

80. There is also the theory that John Connally was the target.

He was Secretary of the Navy and didn't change Oswald's discharge status after he returned from Russia. Lots of off the wall theories on this one.

[rasputin1952]

87. Yes...that one came out when some of the others didn't seem

to carry much water.

I can't think of why a discharge would be upgraded because someone came back from the Soviet Union after seeking asylum there...I know I would not have upgraded it if I were in a position to do so...:shrug:

There are so many absurdities in the whole situation that it is like trying to find the once piece of macaroni in a pool full of spaghetti. AFAIC, there are two certainties, I find in this whole thing...I didn't shoot Kennedy, and neither did Oswald...:D

[Hangingon]

89. I like your analogy but I think Oswald probably was the shooter.

We may never know. There have been so many hours spent on the conspiracy.

[rasputin1952]

100. If you get the chance...watch the video of the Press Conference

when Oswald first finds out he has been accused and charged w/shooting both Tippet and Kennedy. With Tippet, he is pretty cool, although it appears he has some knowledge of the event, most likely from the interrogation. When the reporter asks him if he shot Kennedy, Oswald is visibly shaken. Although it takes just a couple of seconds for him to recover, you can see that he just had an epiphany...right after that, he says he is a patsy as they lead him away. He also requests a lawyer, something apparently he never got.

Ruby shoots Oswald in the gut, his first shot is the only one that hits it's mark, although there are another shot(s) that can be heard. Pandemonium ensues and it is difficult to follow what happens, but considering the time elapsed, a gut shot, even at close range would be a serious problem, but unless it nicked or severed an artery, Oswald should have lived.

I realize some consider this 'flimsy' evidence...but body language speaks volumes...and that Press Conference tells a lot more than anything the Warren Commission came up with..:)

[Hangingon]

104. I have seen the press conference

I grew up in Dallas and lived there at the time of the assassination. I don't read the body language the same way. I think LHO did it - as improbable as it sounds. Oswald had the rifle and brought it to the School Book Depository. I understand others feel very differently - I think LBJ privately thought there was a conspiracy. Ruby ran a strip joint downtown and a lot of cops hung out there. He was pretty friendly with them. It was not difficult for him to get into the basement of the old City Hall - the police were trying to be open. A .38 that close in the right place can do the job.

Sadly, my grandchildren's children will be having this discussion some day.

[rasputin1952]

108. Maybe your G'Children will be spared all of the speculation...

2013 will open up the archives. If they haven't been tampered with, there should be some things in there that can shed light on this whole convoluted situation...:)

[dEMOK]

118. You have posted no facts?

What is your basis in "fact" for your assertions?

[L. Coyote]

51. Mental Illness, Delusional Thinking, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, aka

Paranoid Politics. There is a large element of political expression of marginal, somewhat-functional psychopathic behavior in politics in its most extreme forms. Take 9/11 for example and Nixon's Commie hunting. Nixon was over the edge mentally and still functional, somewhat. He was paranoid at a time when the Nation was paranoid, the perfect leader for the time?? (Remind you of someone today?)

He was not pardoned for his mental condition, just all his crimes, whatsoever and without having to reveal what they were, by a member of the Warren Commission.

[otherlander]

58. It seems like it could be a combination of those.

The CIA would want him to be gone if he wasn't going to escalate Vietnam, and the Cuban exiles were working with the CIA, and already hated him for refusing air cover. #4 I find very unlikely, though.

[Joe Chi Minh]

123. I think it was meant as a joke.

[otherlander]

136. Sometimes it's hard to tell around here.

Remember the people who said Bush caused the tsunami? :D Or Rove planted the Ramsey story...

[H2O Man]

139. Or that

Oswald was the lone gunman. I assume they are joking, but in a few cases, I'm not sure.

[Roland99]

59. Considering Johnson escalated the war mere days after taking over....

I'm all in for #3.

[AnnieBW]

112. I vote for #2

People forget how powerful the Mob was back then. I'm almost positive that they took him out, Oswald was the patsy, and Ruby (who had ties to the Mob) took him out to prevent him from spilling the beans.

[Richard Steele]

3. I honestly can't guess.

Too many possible suspects with too many motives.

[Cobalt-60]

4. My grandmother always said LBJ killed him to get his job

And the moment he got it he went whole hog into the Viet Nam Oil War.
Viet nam is not Iraq. But they had enough oil to steal.

[dailykoff]

18. and to funnel cash to his Texas backers, KBR / Halliburton.

Sickening, isn't it?

[L. Coyote]

6. K&R for quality, and good ears.

[dEMOK]

8. Thanks Man...

What's your opinion?

[Hippo_Tron]

9. Most presidents have had attempts on their lives, only some succeed

I know that security is much tighter around presidential candidates these days because of Bobby's assassination.

[dEMOK]

11. This Doesn't Answer my Question...

Why do you think JFK was taken out?

[itcfish]

141. I Believe He Was Killed

because he was a threat to the status quo. Civil Rights was very feared. but the biggest reason I feel was as alway $$$$. Wasnt he going to change something about the gold standard? He also wanted to get out of Viet Nam which was a cash cow to many and third reason which made it easy to kill him was that he was going to dismantle the CIA and that had the Dulles brother's panties in a twist.

[BlueIris]

36. I'm surprised we haven't heard more about what I'm sure were the

many attempts on Bill Clinton's life. Hopefully, they'll be a book on that someday.

[Bolo Boffin]

10. Oswald shot Kennedy because he could.

He was an angry, pathetic man. Read the new JFK book by Vincent Bugliosi.

[dEMOK]

13. At least you answered my question...

(love your sig pic)

I don't think it was that simple (although I don't have the answers to my own question).

on edit - another sp fu

[TexasProgresive]

37. How was Oswald able to shoot Kennedy with that pathetic

excuse for a rifle. The scope wasn't sighted in correctly and 2 collectors I know own the same type of rifle and say that it is worthless. My guess is that he was aiming at LBJ in the other car.:sarcasm:

[alcibiades_mystery]

55. Black Swan theory

And, indeed, the shots were not all that accurate.

[Zynx]

64. 1 out of 3 shots inside 100 yards for a scoped rifle is actually pretty bad.

Most marksmen shooting from a bench rest will put all three shots inside a four-inch area at that range. Experts will be ~ one inch. Trained snipers will be inside the same hole.

[Octafish]

66. For a moving target?

With a bolt-action World War I-era Mannlicher-Carcano?

[TexasProgresive]

67. And don't forget the scope was not properly sighted in.

It would be better to use the iron sights. I read somewhere that trained marksmen were not able to duplicate what Oswald allegedly did using that rifle as it was.

[Octafish]

76. There also was a tree in the way of the alleged 'sniper's nest.'

http://www.jfklancer.com/WindowView.html

More on the subject from Michael T. Griffith:

THE DENTED SHELL: HARD EVIDENCE OF CONSPIRACY IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION

[sanskritwarrior]

92. For a military trained marksman that is easy

Here is a perfect example. I am in the Army, I shoot an M-4 which is lighter than an M-16. Each weapon has to be zeroed before we go to the weapons range to qualify. My weapon was zeroed at the range I set my weapon down just as another soldier did the same. He grabbed my weapon, I grabbed his. We both shot and we both hit 39 out of 40, I would have hit them all but my first shot was off as I realized this was not my weapons, I adjusted fire on my second shot and then hit all 39 remaining targets.........Oswald was in the military he knew how to shoot........

[Zynx]

134. 10 MPH from an elevated position at that range is not really a moving target

Very few, if any adjustments are required relative to firing at a stationary target. Actual competitive "running target" shooting is done at the same level with a very fast crossing target that is quite a bit smaller than JFK's head.

Oswald's alleged marksmenship simply isn't all that great, nor is there any supernatural shooting ability required here. Actual expert marksmen can and do make him look pretty poor.

He wasn't a bad shot based on his USMC scores, but he isn't remotely in the league of actual police, army or competitive civilian sharpshooters.

[fooj]

102. Bugliosi?

Now, HE'S an angry, pathetic man. Ever seen him interviewed?

[KT2000]

12. We are the same age!

I have always believed he was killed because he was upsetting the powers that be.
Bobby was going after organized crime - which pays politicians well - and politicians are supported by the military/industrial juggernaut. Kennedy did not listen to the military during the Cuban Missle Crisis.
They saw where they were not safe and their empire could be brought down. I believe there were many who wanted him gone.

The "flowers that blossomed" after the Kennedys and Martin Luther King were killed were the war machine on this planet and the status quo that has accomplished the concentration of power into fewer and fewer powerful corporations.

That's how I see it - Thanks for asking.

[dEMOK]

21. KT2000...

Some of my sketchy understanding is reflected in your thoughts. Thank you.

I'm not satisfied. I want to hear from many sources -- Why was JFK killed???

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Crazy Lee Oswald, delusions of grandeur...

It's that sad and that simple.

[Awsi Dooger]

30. Bingo

I was glad to see there is another real world book on the subject, this time by Vincent Bugliosi.

[PurityOfEssence]

45. Please explain Jack Ruby

Jack Rubenstein was a low-level mafia functionary who didn't give a damn about anybody but himself. The idea that he was incensed by Oswald's actions and also acted alone just reeks.

The killing of Oswald was a classic mob hit: in close with a handgun.

Many people had motives to kill Kennedy; in a macabre way, the question should almost be "who DIDN'T kill Kennedy?"

Since Ruby was part of organized crime, it seems to follow that Kennedy's assassination was a mob hit, but that doesn't prove anything. Bugliosi's a sharp and decent guy, but the whole speculation about this killing has people's egos so knotted up in certainty that it's hard to keep things straight. Oswald may well have acted alone and it seems very plausible that he was the only shooter. Still, there are many tantalizing loose ends. Recently, E. Howard Hunt confessed on his deathbed that it was LBJ who masterminded it. One of the hobos from the rail yard certainly looks a great deal like Hunt.

For me, the big question is Ruby. I simply don't believe that he was acting alone out of some personal vengeance; he was a cagy and selfish guy. If he didn't do it of his own volition, then there's a conspiracy. It's as simple as that.

This is an endlessly interesting topic; it really shows people's character and prejudices.

Me? I think it was probably the mob, with some possible help from the CIA and maybe a little greasing of the works by Landslide Lyndon. (I'm reluctant with that last bit, though, because even though he was a son of a bitch, I have a lot of admiration for Johnson.)

The trail is largely cold now, but we may very well know the truth some day. Hunt's claim has a whiff of truth to it, too.

It's not that Oswald couldn't have done it all by himself, it's just that the Jack Ruby involvement doesn't seem to add up in that scenario.

So, not to be too combative, but how do you explain Ruby?

[alcibiades_mystery]

53. Here ya go:

"Jack Rubenstein was a low-level mafia functionary who didn't give a damn about anybody but himself. The idea that he was incensed by Oswald's actions and also acted alone just reeks."

You contradict your own premises. If he was such a selfish guy, why would he agree to sure life imprisonment for somebody else's interests? He wouldn't. The only thing that explains Ruby's actions is temporary insanity: precisely the very weird (non)reason he gave. You can't on the one hand say that Ruby is utterly selfish and on the other say that he committed an utterly selfless act for some other party. That makes zero sense.

In my view, Ruby is very easy to explain. He went nuts, and threw all reason to the wind. A selfish mafia functionary with close ties to the police would have found a less self-destructive way of pulling off the supposed silencing of Oswald. The mafia hypothesis is romanticist nonsense, usually argued by people who have never seen the mafia in action. I grew up in a mafia neighborhood. I know wise-guys, and kids of wise-guys. These people are not competent enough to pull off something like that, and - while they were more competent and influential in the late 1950's/early 1960's - they never were. More importantly, they lacked the DESIRE to bring that kind of heat down. The mafia never had the capability or desire to assassinate even a local mayor AND cover it up, much less the President of the United States. It's nonsense. So, the mafia theory then requires the collusion of government, which is supposedly powerful enough to hide everything, yet not powerful enough to find a better way to off Oswald than with an "obvious" partner. Ridiculous.

What we never want to believe, both with respect to JFK and to 9/11, is the power of the little guy, the sudden emergence of the seemingly powerless: their power to interrupt and change the social order. So we invent complex plots. It's theology in a modern guise. Kennedy conspiracy, 9/11 conspiracy, it's all the same thing: the reinvention of God in the guise of Shadowy Actors (tm).

[Octafish]

69. If Ruby was 'low-level mafia,' why did he know Oswald was 'Fair Play for Cuba Committee'?

During a press conference at Dallas Police Department, District Attorney Henry Wade said "Oswald is a member of the Free Cuba Committe." A man in the press pool immediately corrcted him and stated, "No, he is a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee." That man was Jack Ruby.



How would a "low level mafia functionary" know THAT extremely obscure fact about a guy he supposedly first heard about just that day?

http://www.jfklancer.com/jackruby.html

And why was Ruby even in that press conference? Was he already stalking Oswald?

EDIT: Fixed typo and added a sentence and a few words for clarity.

[alcibiades_mystery]

74. Because his buddies were cops?

Duh. That's how he got into the press conference in the first place. He heard it from his buddies that got the initial research, just before they let him in. Is this less plausible than that he knew all about a massive conspiracy to set up Oswald as a patsy? No. It's MORE plausible.

Why was he at the press conference? I dunno. Why did Hinckley obsess over Taxi Driver? Because he was crazy. What's to fucking know there? The real problem of the "press conference" Ruby presents is for the conspiracy theorists. If Jack Ruby is part of a larger plot to silence Oswald, why is he making a spectacle of himself at this press conference? Doesn't seem like a particularly smart move. One guy in college explained this by saying that he could then pose as a reporter the next day, but he was already allowed in, so it really serves no purpose. He goes to the press conference precisely BECAUSE he's an obsessed nut. No hit man would do such a thing. It's stupid. It's the conspiracy theorists that have to explain Ruby's presence at the press conference, not those who think Ruby is just a kook.

[H2O Man]

78. Respectfully disagree.

I am not sure that anyone taking either position -- lone gunman versus conspiracy -- has to explain why Mr. Ruby was at the press conference. However, it appears that the conspiracy folks can, while the lone gunman folks aren't able to.

Likewise, with the case of Mr. Hinchley, we have an individual with an actual mental illness that can (and was) diagnosed. With Mr. Ruby, it seems that there isn't any evidence of a diagnosis, other than a pretty clear Axis II anti-social personality disorder. It would be interesting to know if you have any particular mental illness that you are suggesting Mr. Ruby suffered from, which explains his shooting Mr. Oswald?

It is worth noting that significant records from US intelligence communities, which were not made available to the Warren Commission, have created a somewhat different picture of Mr. Ruby than what the Warren Commission painted.

One more point -- and again, I do intend this politely, because intelligent and sincere people can and do hold different opinions on this topic -- but in his autobiography, Tip O'Neill tells of how he believed in the lone gunman theory, until in 1968, when he had lunch with Dave Powers and Kenny O'Donnell. They were behind JFK in Dallas, and they were both sure that they saw and heard shots coming from the infamous grassy knoll. The FBI investigators pressured them to lie to the Warren Commission.

Is it possible to view an investigation as other than contaminated, when the investigators tasked with finding the truth instead pressure eye (and ear) witnesses to knowingly lie?

[alcibiades_mystery]

96. OJ killed Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown

The police did their damnedest to frame him for it. Doesn't change the fact.

The problem for the government was very clear: they had to avoid nuclear war in the face of this thing, and with pretty substantial uncertainty about what happened, at the same time that they had to take advantage of the event for geo-political strategic reasons. Operating with such abstract goals in conditions of uncertainty is very difficult, and explain most of the pressure/ discrepencies. I have no doubt that the government was desperate to paint Oswald as a lone nut, and at the same time emphasize his communist leanings. These actions are very easily explained by ideological goals. The irony, of course, is that Oswald REALLY was a lone nut, and that the EFFORT to paint him as such has done more to fuel the conspiracy theories than anything else. Ot's like the old Groucho Marx number: "He might talk like an idiot and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot..."

[H2O Man]

116. While the case

you mention is a poor example, it is true that investigators can manipulate evidence, and that can be independent of a suspect's actual guilt or innocence. Being from New York, I am reminded of a state police scandal from around the late '80s and early '90s. A BCI investigator, who applied for a job at the CIA, was caught for introducing false evidence into a number of felony cases, where he and a co-worker believed one or more suspects was guilty.

In one case, three guys who had their guilty verdicts for a hit where two people were brutally murdered, were convicted in re-trials. The "fake" evidence was unnecessary. In another case, a woman convicted of participating in a brutal murder of a family of four was found to have not been in the home, after a faked print was tossed.

However, planting or faking evidence of guilt, is distinct from suppressing evidence of innocence. The outcome of a trial infected with illegal manipulation of evidence may be the same, but there are obvious differences.

More, neither of these apply in this instance, in regard to Oswald. What Powers and O'Donnell saw and heard does not change the facts about if Lee Harvey Oswald either did, or did not, shoot any gun from the building in question. That is distinct from what Powers and O'Sonnell experienced.

Rather, the FBI investigators made an effort to suppress evidence about shots coming from the grassy knoll. They pressured two of Jack Kennedy's close friends to lie. And Tip O'Neill is a good example of someone who used to believe that Oswald was the lone gunman, until he learned that the FBI pressured witnesses to knowingly lie about shots coming from that grassy knoll.

[pilar007]

146. The grassy knoll.

I agree with you completely. I clearly remember the grassy knoll being discussed within hours of the assassination. And yet, nothing. I don't remember the book/magazine, and I don't know if I should believe the image...but it is of the knoll as JFK passes.Behind the wall, in the foliage of the trees, there is a policeman aiming a rifle. Now if I remember correctly, the B&W photo is shown and you cannot see the image of the policeman. Then the same photo is shown with the outline of the policeman. He is wearing a police cap (not the baseball kind) with the badge in front. There is a PD patch on his arm. He is pointing a rifle. The photo was taken from a person across the street while JFK passed It gave me chills. But I don't know whether to believe it.

[Octafish]

82. How did THEY know?

Normally it takes time for all the facts to get in. Information moved even slower in 1963 -- before LexisNexis, the Internet and computers in the newsroom. And it's even longer before the cops in the know give it to the cops on the beat or their friends.

So, why the rush to get all the "facts" out there? The facts indicate there was a rush to paint a picture of Oswald as a Commie friend of Castro, don't you think?

[alcibiades_mystery]

84. "The facts indicate there was a rush to paint a picture of Oswald"

Of course. That's obvious. That it should imply anything but naked self-interest on the part of anti-communist government flacks is less obvious. How did they know? Probably because Oswald told them, or the FBI file on him had already come through, or whatever. I would expect that there was quite a bit of scuttlebutt about Oswald circulating among the Dallas police in those hours immediately following his apprehension. There are perfectly innocent explanations for Ruby's knowledge on this, and explanations that make a lot more sense than speculations about a larger plot.

[Octafish]

101. Here's a guy the CIA told the Warren Commission was OSWALD...

...of course, the guy just SAID he was Oswald
to the Soviet embassy employees and the CIA, listening in on the bugged phone line.
You see, he really was just PRETENDING to be Oswald.
And the reports of the time are that the man made a big stink at the Soviet embassy,
trying to make contact with a KGB officer known for his wet work.
This was a couple of months before the assassination.



Now why would the CIA lie about this?
Could it be part of a, um, plan
to make Oswald out to be some kind of violent Communist lone nut?

The Framing of Oswald

"The CIA advised that on October 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identified himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. Special Agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above, and have listened to a recording of his voice. These special agents are of the opinion that the above-referred-to individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald."

The paragraph shown above comes from an FBI memo sent to both the White House and the Secret Service on November 23, 1963, the day after President Kennedy's assassination. It was a follow-up to a phone call at 10:01 AM, in which Director Hoover informed Lyndon Johnson of the same fact. Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of Kennedy held in police custody in Dallas, had been impersonated in phone calls to the Soviet Embassy in Mexio City.

The fact that Oswald was impersonated less than two months prior to the Dallas shooting was obviously important news. What made the revelation even more stunning was that, in one such call, "Oswald" referred to a previous meeting with a Soviet official named Kostikov. Valeriy Kostikov was well-known to the CIA and FBI as a KGB agent operating out of the Embassy under official cover. But, far more ominously, the FBI's "Tumbleweed" informant had previously tipped off the U.S. that Kostikov was a member of the KGB's "Department 13," involved in sabotage and assassinations.

An otherwise inexplicable impersonation episode takes on an entirely new meaning in this light. The calls from the Oswald impersonator made it appear that Oswald was a hired killer, hired by the Soviet Union no less. This was a prescription for World War III.

Perhaps the perfect plan was foiled by the fact that Oswald was captured, allowing the FBI to interrogate him and compare his voice to the tapes of these tapped phone calls, which were apparently flown up from the CIA's Mexico City Station on the evening of November 22. In any case, what should have been a hot lead to sophisticated conspirators was instead quickly buried—by November 25, FBI memos made no more mention of tapes, only transcripts. The CIA has maintained to this day that the tapes were routinely recycled prior to the assassination, and no tapes were ever sent. But the evidence that the tapes did exist and were listened to is now overwhelming, and includes several FBI memos, a call from Hoover to LBJ which appears to have been suspiciously erased, and even the word of two Warren Commission staffers who say they listened to the tapes during their visit to Mexico City in April 1964!

Back in November 1963, with the knowledge that it wasn't Oswald in these calls to the Soviet Embassy tightly held, and with witnesses coming forward to claim seeing Oswald take money to kill Kennedy from Cuban operatives, a coverup went into high gear. Lyndon Johnson used the fear of nuclear war, bandying about the figure "40 million Americans" who would die in a nuclear exchange. Even though he knew of the impersonation, Johnson used this false scare to press men like Richard Russell and Earl Warren onto a President's Commission which another Commissioner, John J. McCloy, said was to "settle the dust."

CONTINUED...

http://www.history-matters.com/frameup.htm

Those interested in a scholarly analysis might enjoy John Newman's analysis:

http://www.jfklancer.com/backes/newman/newman_1.html

Personally, alcibiades_mystery, I'd prefer discussing the parties who've benefitted the most from President Kennedy's assassination.
To me, it's pretty clear that there was a conspiracy.

[Rex]

107. Looks a lot more like Jack Ruby than LHO.

[Octafish]

137. Oswald in Mexico City

The guy is built like a tank. The CIA eventually admitted the guy was about 6-feet tall with an "athletic build" compared to the skinny 5-9 Oswald.

Oswald in Mexico City

According to the Warren Commission, Lee Harvey Oswald traveled to Mexico City in the fall of 1963, in search of a visa for travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union. He failed in that effort and returned to Dallas, where 7 weeks later he shot President Kennedy.

Allegations of a Cuban or Soviet conspiracy, based on events and stories related to this visit, bloomed in the aftermath of the assassination. They were apparently instrumental in the creation of the Warren Commission, and over the years more and more has trickled out regarding a trip which ultimately remains enigmatic.

The record on Mexico City is wildly muddled and mysterious. Was Oswald impersonated there? Who is the "mystery man" caught by photo surveillance? Why are CIA records on the trip at sharp variance with participant's memories? Were the witnesses who reported events indicating a Communist conspiracy telling the truth, spinning false tales, or perhaps reporting on staged incidents? Did Oswald, or someone pretending to be him, threaten the life of JFK in the Cuban Embassy?

Despite the mysteries, one thing is certain. The events in Mexico City had a profound effect on the federal government's response to the assassination. President Johnson invoked fears of nuclear war in putting together the Warren Commission, finally enlisting a recalcitrant Earl Warren by telling him "what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City."

CONTINUED w Lots o' Links and Sources:

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Oswald_in_Mexico_City

[alcibiades_mystery]

113. Oy...

This is the original CIA memo on Oswald in Mexico:



Some plan. Let's get a guy who looks nothing like Oswald and then document that looking nothing like him in an official document! Thirty five years of age? Six feet tall? Athletic build? If anythi9ng, this proves the opposite. That the CIA noticed Oswald when he went to the Cuban consulate (which he did), and sent one of their people by for future shenanigans. Had they had a plan all along, it surely would have been pulled off with more sophistication, no? How hard would it be to find somebody who actually resembled Oswald to run this little scam? Or, at the very least, not to document the discrepancy. Indeed, in the October memo, they still get Oswald's name wrong. Why? Because the original file opened on Oswald when he defected to the USSR uses an incorrect name! Here:



One thing I'll never get is how, on the one hand, the diabolical conspirators are so crafty as to have everything planned to the last detail while, on the other, they are so incompetent as to succumb to bureaucratic sloppiness of the kind noticed by any right-out-of-correspondence-school paralegal. So, now we get to the cable of November 22, sent by the CIA to FBI, noting that Oswald had been in Mexico. Why? Because that's how government bureaucracies work, and the CIA certainly had an interest in getting in on the game after the fact, both for self-preservation reasons ("Look, we were on the ball on this guy!") and for wheeler-dealer purposes ("Let's turn this into something we can use!"). All of your fact sets can be easily explained by either of these two, or both in combination.

The great mistake is in thinking that if somebody DOESN'T argue for conspiracy, then that person necessarily argues for pure motives on the part of government. This is nonsense, a false binary that leads to most of the confusion in this case. The point is simple, as is the narrative: Oswald is running around making himself incidentally useful to a whole host of players. This is the friggin' height of the Cold War, for goodness sake. He keeps getting noticed, and no small number of players figure out that he can be used for any number of purposes. Then the nut up and manages to kill the President. He remains useful, and everybody jockeys for the best play, That doesn't mean that they had anything to do with the assassination. It means that they sought to turn this weird and random act to their own purposes. This is called politics. It's not that complicated.

So what happens. The conspiracy theorists, who are really preaching a theology (everything happens for a reason!) seize on every post hoc and propter hoc machination as prima facie evidence of conspiracy. Why? Because in their utter lack of imagination, they think that government couldn't possibly be trying to manipulate the situation if government were not guilty of causing it! Government people tgry to manipulate EVERY SITUATION. That is the way of our world. But there is a yawning chasm between manipulation of an event and cause of an event, just as there is a yawning chasm between qui bono and whodunnit. A car may crash outside my window, and I might bend the ensuing excitement into an argument for an afternoon fuck with my wife. Because I got laid doesn't mean I caused the fucking car crash, yeah?

[Octafish]

138. Another big coincidence - LBJ and Hoover's discussion of Mexico City erased...

FDR said: "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

I agree with him.

The Fourteen Minute Gap

Rex E. Bradford

April 10, 2000

During Watergate, one of the more important events was the discovery of an “eighteen minute gap” on one of the Nixon tapes. This erasure, reportedly performed by Presidential secretary Rose Mary Woods on Nixon’s orders, created quite a stir when revealed. It was never determined what in fact had been erased, which added to the mystery of the affair.

This article presents my discovery of a second such tape erasure, this one of a phone conversation conducted between President Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover less than 24 hours after the assassination of President Kennedy. The erasure in this case is about 14 minutes in length, somewhat shorter than the Nixon gap. The Johnson tape is different in one other significant respect—a transcript of the conversation survived the erasure. It is in my view the true “smoking gun” tape of modern American history.

First, some background. At last November’s JFK Lancer conference in Dallas, former military intelligence officer and history professor John Newman gave an electrifying presentation. In this talk, he discussed in detail the existence, post-assassination, of the famous “Oswald” Mexico City tapes. One of the most astonishing documents to surface in this regard was a transcript of a phone call between FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the new President Lyndon Johnson. This call occurred at 10:01 AM on the morning of November 23, 1963, less than 24 hours after the assassination, while Oswald was still alive in a jail cell in Dallas. The most explosive portion of this transcript is reproduced below:

LBJ: Have you established any more about the visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico in September?

Hoover: No, that’s one angle that’s very confusing, for this reason—we have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet embassy, using Oswald’s name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there.<1>

Tapes of Oswald calling the Soviets not matching his voice? But hasn’t the CIA declared since the beginning that these tapes were routinely recycled prior to the assassination, leaving only transcripts as evidence on November 22, 1963? When the above LBJ-Hoover conversation was first revealed a few years ago, many assumed that Hoover was being typically loose with his facts. But last November, Newman presented a good deal of evidence which corroborates Hoover’s astounding statement that the taped calls did indeed survive the assassination and were listened to by FBI agents. Some of this comes from the Lopez Report, the long-suppressed House Select Committee on Assassinations staff report on Oswald’s trip to Mexico City. More still comes from newly released FBI materials, some only available for the first time last year. The Lopez Report excerpted a memorandum from FBI’s Belmont to Tolson on 11/23/63, which states:

…..Inasmuch as the Dallas Agents who listened to the tape of the conversation allegedly of Oswald from the Cuban Embassy to the Russian Embassy in Mexico and examined the photographs of the visitor to the Embassy in Mexico and were of the opinion that neither the tape nor the photograph pertained to Oswald,…..<2>

Also in the Lopez Report is the following excerpt of a memo from Hoover to Secret Service Chief Rowley on 11/23:

…..The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on October 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual indentified himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. Special Agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened to his voice. These Special Agents are of the opinion that the above-referred-to-individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald…..<3>

The “extremely sensitive source” above is a wiretap, and this quite detailed inter-agency memo should by itself be sufficient to corroborate the LBJ-Hoover call. But there is more. There are CIA documents from the day of the assassination referring to the review of “intercepts” and “actual tapes.”<4> There is also an 11/25 FBI cable which refer to tapes “previously reviewed Dallas.”<5> Newman presented yet additional documents, including an FBI memo from January 1964. At the bottom of this memo from Brennan to Sullivan discussing CIA-FBI liaison procedures, Hoover scrawled his own comments: “OK, but I hope you are not being taken in. I can’t forget the CIA withholding the French espionage activities in USA nor the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, only to mention two of their instances of double-dealing.”<6> There may be more to come. An 11/23 FBI memo, from agent Eldon Rudd to Dallas Special Agent-In-Charge Gordon Shanklin, has an interesting redaction: “With regard to the tapes ********************* referred to herein, CIA has advised that these tapes have been erased and are not available for review.”<7>

CONTINUED...

http://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/FourteenMinuteGap/FourteenMinuteGap.htm

BTW: Thank you for the documents.

[PurityOfEssence]

71. Interesting, but consider a few things here...

As usual, you make very good points and may very well be right. I appreciate the tone, too; we're behaving ourselves better than we have at points in the past.

The idea that we invent elaborate constructs to shield ourselves from the scary reality of mortality and vulnerability is dead on, and the religion point is undeniable. It's terrifying to most people to think that we're not immortal and that there isn't any big daddy with a guiding hand, and this same kind of need for order and cosmic justice creeps into politics, romance, career paths and just about everything. The denial of the existence of conspiracies falls into the same category, too: it's a form of whistling-in-the-woods wishful thinking that horrible cabals with immense power and tentacles everywhere just don't exist. Truly, denial is one of the greatest human traits, and to a certain degree it's necessary; if we focused on all the deadly microbes, sinister predators, cults, entrenched interests, sheer randomness of life and the reality of our physical frailty, many people would be frozen in clenched fear and unable to leave their tiny little rooms and ever go outside.

I like to look at many situations as "conspiracy lite". Things don't have to be meticulously planned out and executed flawlessly, sometimes opportunities arise and it's easy for certain power blocs to benefit from them. 9-11 is a good example: it's very plausible that certain neo-cons simply ignored intelligence hoping that they'd get hit and have the "New Pearl Harbor" that they so wanted to justify their world domination. (I actually think it's something like that: they thought they'd let the furrin inferiors take a shot and then they'd have the justification they needed. Under this theory, they never expected the attacks to be so incredibly successful, freaked out, ran from airbase to airbase, and then realized that this was better than their wildest dreams.) Of course, that's an argument for another time, but it's much more plausible than them rigging planes with radio control devices or recruiting the hijackers or anything like that. To have concocted such a scheme would have stressed the system; someone with a conscience on the inside would have cracked. To simply let down one's guard to get a justification sounds very plausible.

Having said all that, though, conspiracies DO happen. The poo-pooing that's usually done is that people are incapable of keeping secrets. Franklin's line that three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead is all very funny, but it simply isn't true.

Life IS extremely sloppy and unpredictable and engineering complex schemes is nigh impossible. Nonetheless, look at what Enron was able to pull off in California: there were scads of cads involved in that little episode and it only barely got found out. The Georgia senatorial election of '02 is fishy as hell, and so is Wellstone's death. Conspiracies DO happen.

We don't like to hear what evils have been done in our name, but we've killed heads of state in Ecuador, Guatemala, Vietnam and others, we've overthrown governments in Iran, Chile, Panama and others, and we've done this under the radar and off the books. When assessing culpability, one needs to look at motive, ability and evidence. Although evidence is spotty in the Kennedy assassination, there are so many groups with motives and seething rancor that it makes one's head spin. As for ability, the point you make cuts the other way too: it's not that hard to get one person with a rifle in a good position. Any number of organizations were capable of doing it and it could have been done completely by the shooter him/herself.

The events of November 22, 1963 are like a cipher for humanity; asking one for an opinion is a window to the person's psyche. One's fears, bigotries, need to be certain, contrariness or need to belong bubble to the surface very quickly. It's not going to go away, because so much is still unanswered. To me, this is fun, not only because it's very important to get to the bottom of it, but because the journey is so stimulating.

Part of the problem is that so many people had motives and the ability to do something about it. Heaps upon heaps of suspects make one's head swim to such a degree that many people simply think that if there are this many different forces at play, ONE of them must have done it. It's a cumulative effect, and the coincidences are staggering. It's a joke, but it's a fun one: "who DIDN'T kill Kennedy"? Nixon referred to the assassination as "that Bay of Pigs thing". He was in Dallas that day. George H.W. Bush the CIA functionary was there too. The list of others who had a beef with Kennedy goes on and on: Texas oilmen who thirsted for revenge for the end of the depreciation allowance, the Soviets for numerous reasons, the Cubans for us trying to destroy them, the mob for letting Cuba take their casinos, the mob for Kennedy welching on his Daddy's deal to lay off Johnny Romeo in return for winning in West Virginia, the mob for Bobby's trouble making, the CIA for being clamped-down upon, the CIA and various reactionaries for cooling off the anti-Vietnam hysteria, racists far and wide for the civil rights initiatives, big money pissed off over reforms with our currency, and the list goes on. In the face of all this, it's easy to see how many people presume conspiracy; it becomes a question of "which one?".

Another problem was the bungling of the autopsy and investigation. By being so incredibly secretive, it just set many people's teeth on edge.

Let's get back to Ruby, though. The idea of temporary insanity just sounds a little bit too pat to me; it's sort of a trump card for human behavior. (Oh, he just flipped out, that's it.) Maybe it's true, and it's not all that far-fetched, but it seems facile and dismissive. There are many explanations for his actions, but none seems to really satisfy me as conclusively as this one does you. (Then again, I like keeping things open and have a perverse pride in not making decisions about things; to me, with so much of the world being in the grey area, it's a good idea to keep things open until they've been conclusively shut.) Also, the idea of "temporary insanity" reeks of cheap TV plotting, much akin to "amnesia". Worse than that, it's another form of denial: many people simply suck, but we deny that and protect our fragile worldview by labeling them "insane". The truth is that the human character in its natural state contains many uglinesses that are not aberrations. For all of our altruism and nurturing sweetness, we're a pretty nasty bunch. To tag someone as "crazy" is to define them as "unusual", so we can go about our normal workaday lives without looking over our shoulders all the time.

Here are some other possibilities. Perhaps he knew he was dying and was an extreme narcissist--which fits with the mobster type; yes, I grew up with them too--and wanted to be a big hero and go down in history avenging the president. (That actually smacks of some truth.) Perhaps he was forced to do it, being told he'd be killed if he didn't. Perhaps I'm wrong and he actually did care about someone else (a lover, a kindly waitress, a maiden aunt) and was told that this person would be killed if he didn't push the button. (That's mob thinking, isn't it?)

Perhaps he was just a sadistic asshole, relished killing people and thought he could get away with it because he was killing a "bad" man.

Perhaps Oswald acted completely alone, but because of his spooky dealings in the Soviet Union, with the Fair Play for Cuba group and who knows what else, he simply couldn't come to trial and was thus rubbed out by the CIA pulling mob strings.

Whatever the case, there were so many coincidences and truly unique forces at play that this seizes the imagination of so very many. Oswald lived in the Soviet Union at a time when they were the greatest of Satans. What motive he had is murky at best; Kennedy could hardly have been looked upon as a hater of Cuba at the time, especially after not supporting the Bay of Pigs very well.

As a contrarian--as are you--I tend to be awfully skeptical of simple answers; it seems that most of life exists in the grey area with many influences at play that bring about marginal victories or defeats. Personally, I'm a great believer in "conspiracy lite", where many forces are at play and quick tactical moves are made to capitalize on opportunities that arise.

Far too many things are unanswered about this assassination. I'd like to hear some corroboration of E. Howard Hunt's deathbed revelations. Many people do come clean when facing death; Lee Atwater is a classic example.

Don't be upset at the fixation people have for this; it's human nature. Yes, denial is a major preoccupation, but it cuts both ways, doesn't it?

[alcibiades_mystery]

115. That's a loooooong post there...

we're behaving ourselves better than we have at points in the past

Speak for yourself.

Truly, denial is one of the greatest human traits

So, apparently, is some manner of dialectic, wherein every affirmation is REALLY a denial of the "opposite" proposition. In any case, I don't deny that conspiracies exist. Some do, to be sure.

Nonetheless, look at what Enron was able to pull off in California: there were scads of cads involved in that little episode and it only barely got found out.

Actually, it unraveled in near full disclosure in under three years, and people like Tyler Slocum of Public Citizen were screaming bloody murder during most of that time. Your other examples remain speculative.

Let's get back to Ruby, though. The idea of temporary insanity just sounds a little bit too pat to me

Me too. I'm not using it in any technical sense, but in a sense of all that weirdness that pushes forward human motivations in extraordinary circumstances. Each of the things you mention make sense to me, except for the mob ties and other conspiracy stuff. Yes, did it because he was obsessed with a waitress, or wanted to be in the history books, or whatever. Why do people collect Princess Diana commemorative plates? How the fuck should I know? They just seem plum crazy to me. But it's that sort of thing.

Don't be upset

I'm not.

Yes, denial is a major preoccupation, but it cuts both ways, doesn't it?

Eh...

[villager]

94. Bingo

n/t

[dailykoff]

15. "LBJ, the candidate from Halliburton."

Some things never change. Hard to believe I know, so I'll post a link as soon as I can find one.

[dailykoff]

20. Here we go:

The Candidate From Brown and Root
By Robert Bryce
The Austin Chronicle

AUGUST 28, 2000: Herman Brown's huge bet on the Mansfield Dam just keeps paying off. It made Brown a rich man. It secured the future of his company. And it led to other big projects that provided the funds to elect Lyndon Johnson to the U.S. Senate in 1948 and the White House years later. Today, 63 years after Johnson helped secure federal funding for the dam, it appears that the modern descendent of George Brown's Brown & Root may once again be propelling a Texas politico toward the White House. Call it fate, dumb luck, or clever politics. Whatever it is, Brown & Root, arguably the most famous construction company in Texas, is once again near the center of a presidential race. And the company's political connections are once again paying big dividends.

Brown & Root is a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services conglomerate that until July 25 employed Dick Cheney as chairman of its executive board and CEO. Like LBJ before him, Cheney has used his association with Halliburton and Brown & Root to enrich himself and gain political power. Last week, Halliburton announced that it was giving Cheney a retirement package worth more than $33.7 million. That comes on top of more than $10 million Cheney has earned in salary, bonuses, and stock options at Halliburton since 1995. In return for his pay, Cheney has helped the company attract government contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Johnson had it a little easier, as his symbiotic relationship with Brown & Root occurred before campaign finance laws required candidates to reveal the sources of their funding. Indeed, by Johnson's own admission, according to his biographer Ronnie Dugger, much of the money he got from Brown & Root came in cash. In return, Johnson steered lucrative federal contracts to the company. Those contracts helped Brown & Root become a global construction powerhouse that today employs 20,000 people and operates in more than 100 countries.

"It was a totally corrupt relationship and it benefited both of them enormously," says Dugger, the author of The Politician: The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson. "Brown & Root got rich, and Johnson got power and riches." Without Brown & Root's money, Johnson wouldn't have won (or rather, been able to steal) the 1948 race for U.S. Senate. "That was the turning point. He wouldn't have been in the running without Brown & Root's money and airplanes. And the 1948 election allowed Lyndon to become president," said Dugger, who is currently running for the Green Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate in New York.

(snip)

Going Global

Johnson then steered all kinds of federal projects to Brown & Root -- including airports, pipelines, and military bases. During the Vietnam War, the company built roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases from the Demilitarized Zone to the Mekong Delta. But the company's relationship with the government would continue long after LBJ was laid to rest along the banks of the Pedernales.

more at link: http://weeklywire.com/ww/current/austin_pols_feature2.html

[dEMOK]

26. WOW !!!...

dailykoff -- Thank you so much for your honest answers!

I didn't expect this level of response to my simple question!

Johnson did take his mistakes to the grave...

[dEMOK]

28. Brilliant Post,,,

nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

126. Now will you mutts who question the sense in abolishing Presidential pardons

- at least as they relate to business and/or politics - come to your senses? I doubt it.

[BlueIris]

16. A) Actually wanted the President to be the goddamned President.

As opposed to being the doormat yes-man for the intelligence community and the Pentagon. B) Wasn't interested in continuing the Vietnam War. C) Considered too liberal, too Irish, too Catholic, etc. to be a "good 'leader.'" D) Was moving toward supporting the Civil Rights movement. E) Although some will probably say this should be A)--wanted a more progressive economic structure for the country. The most vituperative JFK haters I know are elitists before they are anything else, and view him as an interloper in "their" class whose main objective was to undermine "the way things should be."

[H2O Man]

39. Good.

Very good.

[Wilms]

17. He may have upset a few people with this one.

Executive Order 11110

This executive order allowed the US Secretary of the Treasury<1>, as per delegated authority given to the President by the Thomas Amendment to the Agricultural Adjustment Act, to issue silver certificates against silver bullion. The major change affected by this order was that the printing of paper money could again be carried out without any reliance on the Federal Reserve System, which by this time had become the sole entity responsible for currency distribution and valuation in the United States. Very little of this silver-backed money was ever issued, with the project largely being abandoned after Kennedy's assassination only a few months later. No President since JFK has ever availed himself of what this order allowed and President Reagan took actions to remove the power.

This order was issued as part of a series of actions that were intended to lessen the strain of the US Treasury’s need of silver and gradually move the US off of the silver standard. The order was needed due to the passage of Public Law 88-36 which repealed the Silver Purchase Act and other related monetary measures. One result was that after the repeals, only the president could issue new silver certificates. The Federal Reserve could replace them, but only in larger denominations. The thrust of the order returned the authority back to the US Treasury to issue new silver certificates and specify denominations. This allowed for the Federal Reserve to distribute and exchange currency at lower denominations that met the growing economic need. The order was taken off the books in 1987 with E.O. 12,608, 9/9/87. The authoritative basis for the order had been nullified in 1982 with the passage of PL 97-258

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11110

[BlueIris]

24. Huh.

That's a new one on me.

[azurnoir]

22. The CIA was a magor suspect

according to this Salon article both Jackie Hennedy and Bobby Kennedy suspected the CIA. The murder I am truly curious about is Lee Harvey Oswald's, done on live national TV so there could be no question.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/05/02/brothers/index.html


:evilgrin:

[Bucky]

23. He double crossed the mob. Nobody double crosses the mob.

Actually, I really don't know the certain answer. Neither does anyone else in this thread. But the crime families that JFK had played footsie with before his election, and whom he used to try and take out Castro for a while before abandoning further attempts, were not nice people and certainly had connections to both Ruby and Oswald. I find them the most plausible suspects, Occam-wise.

[Cetacea]

29. "Occam-wise", the mob needed inside help.

I think they may have been involved to some degree, but they could not have pulled off the autopsy and other shady aspects of the case.

[villager]

31. The wildest theory I ever heard was that JFK had to be taken out because he'd "turned on"

in the White House.

Being thus "psychedilicized," and (presumably) making Larger Connections to things, he was, of course, a threat to the entire American power structure.

Whatever the reason - more probably a collusion between Mob revenge and Intelligence agency coup tendencies -- I don't believe Oswald "acted alone" at all.

[BlueIris]

35. WHAT?

That beats even the wildest theory I've encountered, which is that JFK/RFK got killed (literally) by their Dad, because they wanted to restructure the economy in a way he didn't approve of. Yes, killed by their own father, as part of the fall out from Joe Kennedy's long-term "war" with Aristotle Onassis (allegedly the reason Jackie went off with A.O. after her husband and his brother's assassinations).

But your theory...because he'd...oh, fer Chrissakes.

[villager]

95. Consider though -- if he had, that probably would be the "system's" response...

n/t

[qdemn7]

32. Revenge...is the common reason.

Revenge by the mob, specifically Carlo Marcello, Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli and Jimmy Hoffa. the mob helped JFK win the election by stealing Cook County, Illinois. After the election JFK and RFK went after the mob. They viewed this as betrayal and took their revenge.

Revenge by the anti-Castro Cubans for JFK's failure to help them at the Bay of Pigs. They also, viewed this as a betrayal and took their revenge.

Revenge by rogue elements of the CIA. For JFK's actions in the wake of the Bay of Pigs. These elements were the crucial government link in the assassination.

[dEMOK]

33. Who Wanted Revenge???

???

[dEMOK]

34. Please speak...

....

[H2O Man]

38. The scene

in the park (w/ManX) in JFK.

[Hangingon]

81. I am always amazed that people take Oliver Stone as a

serious historian.

[H2O Man]

83. Good for you.

Of course, if you know who Man X is, then you wouldn't need to talk about Mr. Stone.

[Hangingon]

86. Yep. I've been around conspiracy wackos for a long time.

[H2O Man]

93. I don't doubt it.

Wouldn't surprise me a bit.

[timtom]

41. Without having the responses to this post yet

I believe it was basically JFK's being a serious threat to the Federal Reserve and the Military-Industrial Complex.

[qdemn7]

43. I guess

I don't under stand the economic issue of the Federal Reserve. Can you enlighten me? I read the earlier post and the link about the silver but I don't understand.

[timtom]

48. Executive Order 11110

For openers.

"On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business."

http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/thefederalreserve.htm

On the other hand:

"Myth #9: President Kennedy was assassinated because he tried to usurp the Federal Reserve's power. Executive Order 11,110 proves it. (Last updated 9/4/2000)


Presidential Executive Order 11,110 is quite infamous among conspiracy buffs. Jim Marrs, author of Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, writes that the order instructs the Treasury secretary to issue about $4.2 billion in silver certificates as a form of currency in place of Federal Reserve Notes.1 Written by John F. Kennedy, Marrs also speculates this order was part of a larger plan by Kennedy to reduce the influence of the Federal Reserve by giving the Treasury more power to issue currency. The order wassigned June 4, 1963. A few months later, of course, Kennedy was killed, and conspiracy theorists hypothesize a link between the murder and E.O. 11,110. They argue that the Federal Reserve was somehow involved in the assassination to protect its power over monetary policy."

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/weberman/jfk.htm

As with every other piece of reality, an underlying ambiguity clouds a clear and definitive answer.


<edited to add second link>

[qdemn7]

73. Thanks for the links n/t

[itcfish]

143. I am With You

on this one!

[cureautismnow]

42. Oswald Speaks

At http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/LHO.html , there is a great deal of speech supposedly spoken by LHO after his arrest in the Texas Theatre. Time and time again, he claims that he did not do what they said he did. For example,

1. "I don't know why you are treating me like this. The only thing I have done is carry a pistol into a movie. . . . I don't see why you handcuffed me. . . . Why should I hide my face? I haven't done anything to be ashamed of. . . . I want a lawyer. . . . I am not resisting arrest. . . . I didn't kill anybody. . . . I haven't shot anybody. . . . I protest this police brutality. . . . I fought back there, but I know I wasn't supposed to be carrying a gun. . . . What is this all about?"

2. "I didn't shoot Pres. John F. Kennedy or Officer J. D. Tippit."

3. "I didn't shoot anyone," Oswald yelled in the halls to reporters. . . . "I want to get in touch with a lawyer, Mr. Abt, in New York City. . . . I never killed anybody."

4. "I have been dressed differently than the other three. . . . Don't you know the difference? I still have on the same clothes I was arrested in. The other two were prisoners, already in jail." Seth Kantor, reporter, heard Oswald yell, "I am only a patsy."

5. "I did not kill President Kennedy or Officer Tippit. If you want me to cop out to hitting or pleading guilty to hitting a cop in the mouth when I was arrested, yeah, I plead guilty to that. But I do deny shooting both the President and Tippit."

On several other occasions, he denies killing JFK or Tippit. IMHO, that doesn't sound like a man with illusions of grandeur. It's a crying shame that Ruby deprived us of the trial of the century.

Personally, I believe rogue elements in the CIA took Jack out. He threatened to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and cast it to the winds." They got him before he got them.

[zippy890]

85. Oswald : " I am just a patsy"

"I'm just a patsy.”--spoken at a press conference at Dallas Police headquarters the night of his arrest, November 22, 1963, as a suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy. "Don't believe the so-called evidence."--spoken to his brother Robert from jail the morning of November 23, 1963, about the case being built against him.

--

[Octafish]

44. The JFK Assassination - A False Mystery Concealing State Crimes

The Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex and the Big Money Establishment could not Control JFK. President Kennedy was a man of peace and worked to actually bring that about -- from the Bay of Pigs through the Cuban Missile Crisis to his policy in Vietnam. At home, he worked to make this a better nation for ALL Americans -- rich, poor, black, white. That not only rocked the boat, it threatened to rearrange the seating arrangements and who had to paddle.

Here's an excerpt from an excellent overview by Vincent J. Salandria:

Note: The following is the complete text of Vincent Salandria's speech to the Coalition on Political Assassinations, delivered in Dallas, Texas on November 20, 1998. It is reprinted here by permission.

* * *

The JFK Assassination:
A False Mystery Concealing State Crimes

by Vincent J. Salandria

EXCERPT...

Armed with an exploratory model of explanation that the Kennedy assassination was a Cold War killing, I began to sift through the myriad facts regarding the assassination which our government and the U.S. media offered us. What I did was to examine the data in a different fashion from the approach adopted by our news media. I chose to assess how an innocent civilian- controlled U.S. government would have reacted to those data. I also envisioned how a guilty U.S national security state which may have gained control of and may have become semi-autonomous to the civilian U.S. governmental structure would have reacted to the data of the assassination. The use of this simple method of analysis applied to the assassination data and the reactions to those data by our national security state and its civilian allies thoroughly convinced me that my model of explanation was correct. No other interpretation adequately explained how our government, our media and our establishment reacted to the facts relevant to President Kennedy's killing.

I submit that the manner in which the data were handled by our government demonstrate that: (1) the national security state at the very highest level of its power killed President John F. Kennedy for his efforts at seeking to develop a modus vivendi with the Soviets and with socialist Cuba, (2) subservient U.S. government, civilian establishment and mainstream media persons criminally and systematically aided the warfare state in covering up the assassination, and (3) in light of this criminal cover-up by the American power elite that there is no logical way we can conclude that the assassination was not the product of our warfare system. There was also no way rationally to conclude that the assassination was a result of the labor of the Soviets, Castro, the Mafia, J. Edgar Hoover, President Johnson, or that any lower level U.S. governmental operatives had been solely responsible for the execution of President Kennedy.

As I examined the evidence I was confronted with an unvarying pattern. Whenever evidence of a conspiracy emerged --- and mountains of facts were supplied by the government for us to scrutinize --- the government refused to act on that evidence. On the other hand, whenever any data emerged, no matter how thoroughly incredible, which could possibly be interpreted as supporting a lone assassin theory --- the government invariably and with the greatest solemnity declared that such data proved the correctness of the lone assassin myth. That is not the earmark of an innocent, blundering government.

I posited that an innocent civilian government would have in an unbiased fashion accepted, made public, and protected all of the assassination data. An innocent government would have fairly evaluated the data irrespective of whether or not they supported a particular conclusion. An innocent civilian government would never have accepted an improbable explanation of data while other probable explanations were extant.

I concluded that only a criminally guilty government which was beholden to the killers would reject a probable explanation of the evidence coming into its possession and instead would seize upon an improbable explanation for the evidence. Most importantly, I concluded that only a guilty government seeking to serve the interests of the assassins would consistently resort to accepting one improbable conclusion after another while rejecting a long series of probable conclusions. In short, while purporting to tell the truth, our government turned probability theory on its head. In an unvarying pattern it consistently accepted any data that even remotely supported a single-assassin concept and rejected data which incontrovertibly supported a conspiracy.

Now let us briefly review some of the evidence. The Secret Service stated that at the time of the assassination there were no Secret Service assigned to or in Dealey Plaza other than those attached to and who remained in the motorcade. There are no existing records which support any other federal agents having been present in Dealey Plaza. Yet, we know from the evidence that at the time of and immediately after the assassination, there were persons in Dealey Plaza who were impersonating Secret Service agents. This was clear evidence of both the existence of a conspiracy and the commission of the crime of impersonating federal officers. But our government showed no interest in pursuing this compelling evidence of the existence of a conspiracy nor in prosecuting the criminals who were impersonating federal officers. In refusing to pursue the evidence of conspiracy and in failing to pursue the criminals who were impersonating federal officers, the Warren Commissioners, their staff, the Attorney General's Office, and the FBI became accessories after the fact and abetted the killers.

The U.S. government was immediately confronted with the observations of many eyewitnesses, including skilled observers such as police officers and the Secret Service Agents in the motorcade. They had heard shots coming from --- saw smoke emanating from --- saw a man fleeing from --- and smelled gunpowder in the grassy knoll area of Dealey Plaza. Let us assume arguendo that all of the eyewitnesses who had concluded that shots were fired from the grassy knoll were dead wrong. But an innocent government could not and would not at that time have concluded that these good citizens were wrong and would not have immediately rushed to declare a far-fetched single assassin theory as fact.

The Parkland Hospital doctors, after having inspected the body of our murdered President, promptly offered their professional opinions that the President had been hit in the throat by a penetrating bullet. They concluded that this neck hit was a wound of entry and therefore necessarily resulted from a shot delivered from the front of the President. Let us posit that all of those doctors may have been mistaken in their conclusion. But given their professional medical opinions, no guiltless government would have chosen so quickly to close its options and to have declared at that point that the assassination was the work of a single person. For if any one of those doctors was correct, then a conspiracy to kill the President was proven. The government officials who immediately chose to designate each Parkland Hospital doctor as wrong were criminal accessories after the fact.

CONTINUED...

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/27th_Issue/vs_text.html

Yours is the most important question I've seen asked on DU, dEMOK. Wish more people understood what it really means -- especially DUers.

[Robbins]

46. Motive

I believe Kennedy was seen as a threat to rich and powerful men so they used their cronies In the CIA(my suspecion Is Richard Helms organized the hit with the help of those like George Bush who
were members of the super secret Skull and Bones and those who wanted to kill Kennedy for letting
Castro stay In Power In Cuba) to do It.The Mafia Bosses who were Involved In the plots against Castro may have been Involved as well but they were not calling the shots.

[Octafish]

49. We Know the Truth

Well stated, Robbins. The evidence makes clear the assassination was an act by those threatened by JFK's policies.

From Gaeton Fonzi, a researcher who served the House Select Committee on Assassinations:

Note: The following is a speech delivered by Gaeton Fonzi at the Third Annual "November in Dallas" conference in 1998. The speech was made as Mr. Fonzi accepted JFK Lancer's Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It appears here with permission of its author.

* * *

We Know the Truth

by Gaeton Fonzi

EXCERPT...

"It is difficult to believe the Warren Commission Report is the truth."

I look back on that now and I think: What a cowardly way to put it. Why didn't I myself tell the absolute truth? And the absolute truth is that the Warren Report is a deliberate lie. The truth is that the Warren Commission's own evidence proves there was a conspiracy to murder President Kennedy.

The truth is that in covering up the criminal conspiracy to kill Kennedy, the Warren Commission itself became part of that conspiracy. And why didn't I tell the absolute truth ahout Arlen Specter and say that, in helping devise the single-bullet theory, he himself was a conspirator?

We were young once and not so brave. We wanted to cling to the myth of a mystery. We wanted to hang onto the questions of motivation and parade the usual suspects and the illusion of a dilemma before the American people. Could the Mob have killed President Kennedy? Could the KGB have killed President Kennedy? Could Castro have killed President Kennedy? Could anti-Castro Cubans have killed President Kennedy? Could the CIA have killed President Kennedy?

I suggest to you that if it ever becomes known what specific individuals comprised the apparatus that killed Kennedy, those individuals will have some association with any or all of the above. And still the emergence of such individuals, dead or alive, will add but inconsequential detail to the truth about the assassination. Because we have known --- and have long known --- who killed President Kennedy.

Could any but a totally controlling force --- a power elite within the United States Government itself --- call it what you will, the military-intelligence complex, the national security state, the corporate-warfare establishment --- could any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been able to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then bring such a broad spectrum of internal forces to first cover up the crime and then control the institutions within our society to keep the assassination of President Kennedy a false mystery for 35 years?

Where is the mystery?

CONTINUED...

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/29th_Issue/fonzi.html

The nation has been feeding the War Machine at the expense of all the things JFK stood for non-stop -- with a few notable exceptions -- since November 22, 1963.

[Peggy Day]

97. This country has never been the same. nt

[Octafish]

111. Echoes in Iraq: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, 1964 (Editor & Publisher)

Lyndon smelled another Korea.

Echoes in Iraq: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, 1964

By Greg Mitchell

Published: June 01, 2007 10:40 AM ET udpated Friday

NEW YORK Links between the Vietnam and Iraq conflicts, once mocked, have slowly gained traction as the current war entered its third, and then fourth, and now fifth year.

Among the unearthed telephone calls between President Lyndon Johnson and various aide and advisers was one dating from the early months of the U.S. "surge" in Vietnam.

It took place on May 27, 1964, and featured President Johnson talking with his special assistant for national security affairs, McGeorge Bundy. At one point Johnson admits: "It's damn easy to get into a war, but if it's going to be awful hard to ever extricate yourself if you get in."

Later in the conversation, LBJ orders a meeting with influential columnist Walter Lippmann, who has an intriguing idea for saving face in the conflict. Johnson states: "I'd like to hear Walter and McNamara debate."

Excerpts from the transcript follow. (Hat tip: TalkingPointsMemo.com.)
*

Johnson: I will tell you the more, I just stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, and the more that I think of it I don't know what in the hell, it looks like to me that we're getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once we're committed. I believe the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think we can get out. And it's just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw.

Bundy: It is an awful mess.

Johnson: And we just got to think about it. I'm looking at this Sergeant of mine this morning and he's got 6 little old kids over there, and he's getting out my things, and bringing me in my night reading, and all that kind of stuff, and I just thought about ordering all those kids in there. And what in the hell am I ordering them out there for? What in the hell is Vietnam worth to me? What is Laos worth to me? What is it worth to this country? We've got a treaty but hell, everybody else has got a treaty out there, and they're not doing a thing about it.

Bundy: Yeah, yeah.

Johnson: Of course, if you start running from the Communists, they may just chase you right into your own kitchen.

Bundy: Yeah, that's the trouble. And that is what the rest of that half of the world is going to think if this thing comes apart on us. That's the dilemma, that's exactly the dilemma.

CONTINUED...

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003590634

Smells to me like the same class of people want the US in Iraq.

[Gold Metal Flake]

47. Easy, people.

Coming down on the wrong side of someone's pet JFK theory will get you branded as a co-conspirator in the crime.

[WiseButAngrySara]

50. I found who I always look for on these threads: Octafish and H2OMan! ...n/t

[Octafish]

61. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy as Coup D'Etat

In addition to spot.acorn, JFK Lancer, History Matters and the Mary Ferrell Foundation are real treasures.

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy
as Coup D'Etat

by Christopher Sharrett

EXCERPT...

It strikes me that the function of many current renderings of the Kennedy years is to remove from our view the ideological conflicts and contradictions of the Kennedy period. We are shown everyone from the Joint Chiefs to Allen Dulles to William Harvey to David Ferrie in lockstep behind the Kennedy brothers. This thinking has been touted by a few sectors of the left, who suggest that since the Kennedy brothers were members of the ruling class, no one in their number would want to kill them. This thinking does a huge public disservice, since it prevents a nuanced understanding of an important phase of the Cold War, and of the internal strife within the state that overtook people such as John Kennedy. My own research into the Kennedy assassination has never been motivated by a desire to lionize John Kennedy. Kennedy was clearly a player in the Cold War, but a large part of the historical record shows that his was one of the very few centrist, essentially cooptative positions toward the socialist bloc at a time when virtually all sectors of state power were calling for massive incursions into the colonial domain picked up by the U.S. from its enemies and allies after World War II. A surprising amount of the historical record, much of which tends to ignore the assassination, shows that at the time of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, "Kennedy demonstrated that he would stand up to the belligerent advice from his closest aides."9 While Kennedy suggested a policy of restraint, Gen. Thomas Powers, commander of the Strategic Air Command, had other ideas: "Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win."10 During the Missile Crisis, Powers raised the readiness of SAC to DEFCON-2, one step away from war, without JFK's authorization.11 After one meeting with the Joint Chiefs during the Berlin crisis, Kennedy left the room fuming, stating "These people are crazy."12

Throughout Kennedy's term in office his relationship with the military was extraordinarily strained, and "the generals and admirals did not think much of Kennedy's ideas, either."13 About Gen. Curtis LeMay, Chief of the Air Force, Kennedy remarked after one of his many walkouts on LeMay: "I don't want that man near me again."14 After feeling misled at the time of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy stated "...Those sons of bitches with all the fruit salad just sat there nodding, saying it would work."15

And while Russo and other current narratives have it that Allen Dulles and the CIA entranced Kennedy, the full record shows something much more complex. While Kennedy was indeed enamored of James Bond novels and the world of espionage and counterinsurgency, after the Bay of Pigs betrayal Kennedy said: "I've got to do something about those CIA bastards."16 An important book on the internecine battles that confronted Kennedy contains the following illuminating passage:

Pacing his office later, alone with his friend Red Fay, the President said: "I sat there all day and all these fellas all saying 'This is gonna work, and this won't go,' saying 'Sure, this whole thing will work out.' Now, in retrospect, I know damn well that they didn't have any intention of giving me the straight word on this thing. They just thought that if we got involved in this thing, that I would have to say 'Go ahead, you can throw all your forces in the thing, and just move into Cuba' ... Well, from now on it's John Kennedy that makes the decisions as to whether or not we are going to do these things."17

New scholarship is also useful in countering the revisionism that has Kennedy the architect of the Vietnam invasion. In a book on Vietnam, Francis X. Winters notes that while Kennedy approved of the coup against Diem, he was taken aback by his assassination. Kennedy's ultimate intent was to install a new, reformist government that would gain legitimacy with the public, co-opt the socialist agenda, and allow the government of Vietnam to do its own policing. In contrast, the Johnson Administration regarded the reformist strategy as "do-gooder" and opted instead for direct military intervention.18 Recently released tape recordings (presented on CBS News) show Kennedy disturbed by the murder of Diem, perhaps less for moral reasons than out of concern that the strategy behind the coup was already producing results opposite of what was intended.

On the matter of the assassination cover-up being put in place not out of official guilt but out of a desire to prevent a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, I would have thought by now that this risible notion was long since put to rest. One recent book shows that not only were the Soviets appalled by the events of Dallas (this was known to U.S. state authority rather quickly), they were informed by an emissary of the Kennedy family that the Kennedys felt JFK to have been the victim of a rightist coup.19

Gaeton Fonzi's account of the Phillips affair and the HSCA non-investigation of the CIA contains much instructive material. As he recounts in his book The Last Investigation, the Congress knew that Phillips perjured himself on a number of important points in his testimony before the HSCA, yet chose not to recommend prosecution of Phillips. A recent book on the HSCA by one of its staff lawyers does not deal with this moment, although it offers yet another muddled, small-scale conspiracy narrative not associated with the political economy of the postwar American power structure. At the time the Congress became interested in reopening the assassination inquiry, Clare Boothe Luce, widow of Time-Life magnate Henry Luce and former lover of Allen Dulles, gave out a good deal of malarkey (about Cubans no less) to investigators designed to send them on a wild goose chase.

CONTINUED...

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/28th_Issue/coup.html

Thanks for caring, WiseButAngrySara!

I agree: H20 Man is good.

Me? I'm more of a plagiarist...



... with a wild imagination.

[H2O Man]

63. I tend to think

we are both role-players on the DU team.

Interesting article. My father used to say that viewing Dallas as a Coup D'etat was good, but that when one really studied JFK closely, it was his election in 1960 that was the real coup. His removal was the system reasserting itself, and getting back on the self-destructive track that JFK had offered a sane alternative to.

[Octafish]

65. Explains our current circumstances with Congress's unwillingness to stop the Iraq War...

...Back in 1960, the idea that the War Party would be interrupted was unacceptable to a certain class of American.

It also explains the non-reaction since of Corporate McPravda for the Truth -- and an unfortunately large number of, um, citizens.

Thank you for sharing your Father's perspective, Mr. H20 Man. His theory regarding the election of JFK holds much merit. By your words and works, you reflect your Dad's extraordinary wisdom.

[glitch]

105. Your father was a wise man.

Here's another question: why was he killed so dramatically, in such a shock and awe, public spectacle, manner?

[H2O Man]

119. Though he was not

alive to read it, my father would have loved Thomas Maier's 2003 "The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings." The book puts JFK into the cultural context that my father recognized as so important in everything he was trying to do as president. My oldest brother was one of the people who rather early on challenged the nonsense put forward by the Warren Commission; by the mid-1990s, he was one of the growing number of people who various researchers called for assistance, including some who were preparing to debate the topic publicly.

My father used to say that the important thing for people to focus on was Jack Kennedy's life. He thought it was vital to move beyond myths such as JFK owing his election to Chicago, etc. The guy was using the office to attempt to make radical changes in our society. And he was preparing for a second term, which would have created an opportunity to institute a number of important changes. Many of them are listed among the responses on this thread.

I recall that when I first started posting on DU, and was taking part in a discussion about the Plame scandal, I wrote that it is always important to not just ask "How?," but to also ask "Why?" When one looks at what JFK had done since 1961, and what he was preparing to do in his second term, the question of "why?" is answered.

Regarding the point of the manner, I think back to the book by Man X, who noted that both LBJ and Richard Nixon continued to hear the echo from the plaza during their terms in office. Both understood the "why?," if not the "how?"

[glitch]

121. And I would imagine every President since has heard that echo.

Especially when considering change for the people. Along with all the rest of us, we all heard it. But I think you are right, the message was meant most for those who attempt to wield power to create change.

You are blessed to have had such excellent role models, and it shows in your writing.

[Retired AF Dem]

52. My two thoughts are

1. Dad uses mob buddies to help get JFK elected. JFK and RFK turn against mob. JFK and later RFK taken out.

2. JFK sends advisor's to Nam. JFK decides to take them out. Military/industrial complex stands to lose billions of dollars. JFK dies, Johnson escalates the war.

[devilgrrl]

54. He was going to let the Arabs control their own oil...

we can't have that, can we?

[RestoreGore]

56. He was going to blow the lid off the military industrial complex

And tell us the truth.

[Xenotime]

124. Do you have proof?

[JNelson6563]

57. He was an obstacle to the New World Order

as were a few others who have also gotten whacked.

Julie

[file83]

98. Ding-Ding....we have a winner.

He wasn't going to play by their rules, so they removed him as a player.

[Xenotime]

125. Where is the evidence?

[kskiska]

60. PBS Interview with Oswald's brother

(snip)

The big question is why. What's the best answer you come to for yourself regarding his motive?

To try to understand why Lee did what he did on Nov. 22 is a cumulative effect of all his past plans and efforts and failures. Historically in his life, it was always done by himself. He planned by himself, he executed by himself, he failed by himself. This was a part of his character, that inner self, that we used to say, "Me, myself and I will do something."

(snip)

At the police station after the assassination
What did he say, and what were you trying to get out of him?

Initially, when we started talking, I was concerned about his bruises on his face ... that he had received at his capture at the Texas theater. ... He says he got that at the theater, and they hadn't been mistreating him since then. We talked about family matters. ...

Finally, I guess, I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to ask him very serious questions. I asked him, I said, "Lee, what in the Sam Hill is going on?" He said, "I don't know what they're talking about." I said, "Lee, they've got you charged with the death of the president, shooting a police officer. They've got your rifle. They've got your pistol. And you don't know what the Sam Hill is going on?"

I became kind of intense at that point, looking into his eyes. He never did answer. But he finally said, "Brother, you won't find anything there."

Read the entire interview…
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/interviews/oswald.html

[leftofthedial]

62. in essence, it was a coup by proxy by the rabid military-war profiteer

contingent (agents of the oligarchy)

they wanted unending war, even though it would always be based on lies

Kennedy wanted to lead the country to a sustainable peace (he wasn't a pacifist, but he saw war as a means to resolve disputes, with peace as an eventual result)

he was ready to de-escalate Viet Nam and pursue detente with the USSR

In an interesting "echo," the same contingent used Watergate to remove Nixon when he established relations with China

[mitchum]

68. A conspiracy of the Miami Crybabies, Mafia and the goddamn CIA

[seemslikeadream]

72. Watch this

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=4330031689287456187

[helderheid]

77. I'm 30 minutes in

:wow:

[seemslikeadream]

79. The best part is the last half!!

[helderheid]

90. that is proving true!!

[seemslikeadream]

131. one, single name that can be directly linked to the Third Reich, the US military industrial complex,

http://onlinejournal.org/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

Nor, finally, is it in any way a "theory" that the one, single name that can be directly linked to the Third Reich, the US military industrial complex, Skull and Bones, Eastern Establishment good ol' boys, the Illuminati, Big Texas Oil, the Bay of Pigs, the Miami Cubans, the Mafia, the FBI, the JFK assassination, the New World Order, Watergate, the Republican National Committee, Eastern European fascists, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, CIA headquarters, the October Surprise, the Iran/Contra scandal, Inslaw, the Christic Institute, Manuel Noriega, drug-running "freedom fighters" and death squads, Iraqgate, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, the blood of innocents, the savings and loan crash, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the "Octopus," the "Enterprise," the Afghan mujaheddin, the War on Drugs, Mena (Arkansas), Whitewater, Sun Myung Moon, the Carlyle Group, Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States, is: George Herbert Walker Bush.

[Octafish]

140. Bush

Heck of a message, there, seemslikeadream.

Paranoid shift

By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Download a .pdf file for printing.
Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Click here to download a free copy.

January 10, 2004—Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They really only wanted "absolute power."

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon, because something similar happened to me.

Although I don't remember ever meeting James Jesus Angleton, I worked at the CIA myself as a low-level clerk as a teenager in the '60s. This was at the same time I was beginning to question the government's actions in Vietnam. In fact, my personal "paranoid shift" probably began with the disillusionment I felt when I realized that the story of American foreign policy was, at the very least, more complicated and darker than I had hitherto been led to believe.

But for most of the next 30 years, even though I was a radical, I nevertheless held faith in the basic integrity of a system where power ultimately resided in the people, and whereby if enough people got together and voted, real and fundamental change could happen.

What constitutes my personal paranoid shift is that I no longer believe this to be necessarily true.

CONTINUED...

http://onlinejournal.org/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

Green Hills III by Renata Palubinskas

[itcfish]

145. I Can't Open The

link. What is it about so I can do a search?

[seemslikeadream]

147. Here is the title

JFKII - The Bush Connection - Complete Documentary

[mnhtnbb]

75. He was leaning towards pulling troops OUT of Vietnam.

[Octafish]

110. JFK signed orders getting US out of Vietnam... NSAM 263.

National security Action Memorandum 263

LBJ countermanded those orders, committing the US to helping Vietnam with NSAM 273.

National Security Action Memorandum 273

Of course, this information was left out of "The Pentagon Papers." Perhaps Daniel Ellsberg, and hence The New York Times, never saw them.

[DemSoccerMom]

88. As someone born in the 70s,

I've often found myself pondering this question, as well. I have long loved history, and the JFK assassination fascinates me.

I don't have any new ideas as to "why" that haven't already been more eloquently discussed, but I have heard a few theories that I will admit ignorance to (his father?!?). It's all really quite interesting.

As to the how (and I know this wasn't what you were asking, but kindly allow me to speculate, if you would): I find the "single bullet theory" both ludicrous and insulting. I honestly don't understand how a bullet could change trajectory without hitting bone, or some other hard, non-porous surface. I don't pretend to know much about rifles, but what I do know says this simply isn't feasible.

I'm not completely sure what I think happened, and I don't presume to know WHY it happened, but I do find these posts enlightening.

[helderheid]

103. I too was born in the 70s and fascinated by his assassination - the single bullet theory is ridiculo

and it seems obvious to me from the footage that he was struck from the front, not the rear. There are too many unanswered questions about this for me to buy any official story. Like where the hell was the secret service??

[sanskritwarrior]

91. Because

Lee Harvey Oswald was crazy.........

[northzax]

144. as were John Hinkley, John Wilkes Booth and Charlie Giteau

but conspiracy theories are so much better.

I personally think that he had stiffed his pusher for his pain medication, and it was a drug hit. makes as much sense as anything else.

[Speck Tater]

99. JFK's dad's Mafia ties. JFK was supposed to delivery

on his dad's promises to the Mafia, and when he didn't the Mafia put out a contract on him. I figure it's as good as anyone else's half-baked theory.

[Redneck Socialist]

106. He had Marilyn Monroe knocked off...

so Joe DiMaggio killed him.

That's my favorite theory anyway. ;)

[Prophet 451]

109. Too many reasons

Take your pick of:
1. The Kennedy family's alleged mafia ties (Mafia hit)
2. Considering pulling out of Vietnam (military-industrial, RW hit)
3. Revenge for Bay of Pigs fiasco (Castro hit or RW Cubans)
4. revenge for Bobby Kennedy's vendetta against the mafia (mafia hit)
5. Sympathy vote would ensure Bobby Kennedy the presidency (Bobby Kennedy hit, that one's so unlikely as to be impossible though)
6. Considering restoring relations with Cuba (RW/CIA hit)
7. Delving too deep into what the CIA/Feds were up to (such as MKUltra, CIA/Fed hit)
8. Power (anyone who benefitted from the assassination, such as LBJ)
9. Madness, political grudge (Oswald)
EDIT: 10. Kennedy's embaressing personal behaviour (shagging anything that moved, smoking dope (allegedly), etc)

Cui bono is no use here, there's too many people with too much to gain and too many reasons.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

114. Money.

...and who wasn't going to make it.

[Cetacea]

117. I guess Booby and Jackie were "Conspiracy Nuts" too. eom

[dailykoff]

132. You got that right. "Let them see what they've done"

is how Jackie put it that evening, and according to David Talbot's Brothers, Bobby said "I thought they would get me, instead of the president" (page 13). Talbot says they were both convinced from day one that it was a domestic conspiracy.

[Lost4words]

120. One word POWER!

[cgrindley]

127. Please delete this stupid thread

Kennedy was shot by a mentally ill loner named Oswald. Period. If you believe anything other than that, you are an idiot.

[Octafish]

128. That's what J Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles would want.

They said Oswald was alone.
Despite the evidence.
Despite the facts.
Despite the Truth.

PS: I'd rather be an idiot than allow traitors get away with the assassination of a President who worked to keep the peace.

[itcfish]

148. Ya Think

Hoover was in on it too?

[Octafish]

149. I Know

...Hoover played a big part in things. He was tied to everyone from Nixon to Prescott Bush to the Murchisons to Howard Hughes to Robert Maheu to Johnny Roselli and Frank Costello. Along with almost unlimited secret police powers, Hoover also utilized a nationwide net of informers, rats and stool pigeons to give him the naked skinny on almost all the politicians, intellectuals and sports notables of his day.

There's a great book on Hoover and the JFK assassination. Based on the memos and documents then public, "Act of Treason" chronicles how Hoover heard JFK was going to be hit, yet did NOTHING to stop it:

ACT OF TREASON, The Role of J Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy

Author: Mark North
Publisher: Carroll & Graf publishers, New York - first paperback edition ISBN:0881848778 1992

This is the most compelling explanation of both the murder of JFK and the official cover-up that followed. Mark North proves that in September 1962 J Edgar Hoover heard of the plot against the life of John Kennedy. Hoover did not warn the Secret Service. He withheld the information in part because he felt Kennedy was an immoral liberal, but, more importantly, because the President had made it known that he intended to retire the Director and replace him with his own man.

SOURCE: http://www.tomfolio.com/bookdetailsmem.asp?book=33576&mem=292

I read the book, way back when it first came out. I remember being most impressed that the public record was so clear about Hoover betraying Kennedy. However, J Edgar's is but one role -- a major player, but still only that of a co-star.

[H2O Man]

129. silly n/t

[devilgrrl]

142. I heard Oswald hung his laundry in his yard to dry - what more proof do you need?

:sarcasm:

[Octafish]

130. Here's a guy to ask: Poppy Bush was in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Why?

At least that's what he told the FBI.

In the hour of the death of President John F. Kennedy, ostensible Texas oilman George Herbert Walker Bush named a suspect to the FBI in a "confidential" phone call. He then added he was heading for Dallas. Skeptics need not take my word for it, that's what Poppy told the FBI:



Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Gee. Why was Poppy Bush in Dallas when JFK was assassinated?

Could it be, he was on official business? I suspect he was on Secret Government business. After all, his eldest son bragged during his Texas Air National Guard and Harvard grad school days that his daddy was CIA.

Here's an FBI document from the same week of the assassination in which FBI Director J Edgar Hoover briefed one "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency." Some strange coincidence there, wot?



Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

I do remember that GHWB was head of the CIA when the Church Committee was looking into the CIA assassination programs. He made things all friendly-like and turned what had been a serious hunt for truth under previous DCI Colby into another dog-and-pony show that was big on show and light on facts.

Recent evidence shows Bush was CIA earlier than he admitted:

Bush Senior Early CIA Ties Revealed

By Russ Baker and Jonathan Z. Larsen
The Real News Project January 8, 2007

NEW YORK--Newly released internal CIA documents assert that former president George Herbert Walker Bush's oil company emerged from a 1950's collaboration with a covert CIA officer.

Bush has long denied allegations that he had connections to the intelligence community prior to 1976, when he became Central Intelligence Agency director under President Gerald Ford. At the time, he described his appointment as a 'real shocker.'

But the freshly uncovered memos contend that Bush maintained a close personal and business relationship for decades with a CIA staff employee who, according to those CIA documents, was instrumental in the establishment of Bush's oil venture, Zapata, in the early 1950s, and who would later accompany Bush to Vietnam as a “cleared and witting commercial asset” of the agency.

According to a CIA internal memo dated November 29, 1975, Bush's original oil company, Zapata Petroleum, began in 1953 through joint efforts with Thomas J. Devine, a CIA staffer who had resigned his agency position that same year to go into private business. The '75 memo describes Devine as an “oil wild-catting associate of Mr. Bush.” The memo is attached to an earlier memo written in 1968, which lays out how Devine resumed work for the secret agency under commercial cover beginning in 1963.

“Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil,” the memo reads. In fact, early Zapata corporate filings do not seem to reflect Devine's role in the company, suggesting that it may have been covert. Yet other documents do show Thomas Devine on the board of an affiliated Bush company, Zapata Offshore, in January, 1965, more than a year after he had resumed work for the spy agency.

CONTINUED...

http://realnews.org/rn/content/zapata.html

Regarding Dallas: Now I don't know if Poppy was a trigger man, was only there to watch what happened or what just happened to be there. I do know Poppy Bush has never explained these memos. He's never even admitted where he was the day JFK was killed.

Seeing how he would go on to become President, as would his dim son, I believe it's vitally important that we learn the Truth.

Why? The United States and the world haven't been the same since November 22, 1963. And not a single major player in the nation's mass media have stepped up and demanded a real investigation. So, it's up to us, We the People.

[Forkboy]

133. So the Dead Kennedys would have a cool band name.

[BornagainDUer]

135. Allen Dulles and the Mafia killed him for the same

reason that Dulles, Morgan banking empire and the Dupont's attempted a coup against FDR: both FDR and JFK threatened their power. Only with Kennedy it was more personal for A. Dulles: Kennedy fired his fascist ass and threatened to break the CIA into a thousand pieces.