Scrutable

Bunch of new documents cleared for release https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... s-released

You can see why the US authorities tolerated the spread of conspiracy and misinformation - the truth is even more damning. At the height of the Cold War a radicalised nobody assassinated the president with little external assistance - stochastic terrorism at its most devastatingly effective.

I don't think suppressing those conspiracy theories was really an option. Even trying to do it just looks like a cover up and makes it worse. All I think the conspiracy theories actually show us is that people want to believe that somebody is in control.

WIth J Edgar Hoover in charge of the investigation, many people would have been predisposed to disbelieve whatever he came up with.

Not all the documents have been released.

The links between the CIA and the Mafia and the Kennedy assassination are too obvious to be ignored, but the powers that be think iof they throw some other stuff out there we will be distracted..

JFK was a committed cold warrior who tripled defence spending. Any theory that has him being offed for being a pinko is utter garbage.

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 11:53 am JFK was a committed cold warrior who tripled defence spending. Any theory that has him being offed for being a pinko is utter garbage.

Meanwhile Oswald:

Becomes a socialist, but doesn't give much impression of being very intellectual about it
Defects to Soviet Union
Notices it isn't very nice living as a factory worker in Minsk in comparison to living in USA
Asks to be allowed to come back
Marries a Russian emigré living in the US
Meets anti-communist contacts of wife, but pisses them all off
Can't hold jobs down due to being unreliable and an a..eh.le

Whatever point he thought he was making when he shot JFK, which we can never know, it is unlikely it made much logical sense.

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 11:53 am JFK was a committed cold warrior who tripled defence spending. Any theory that has him being offed for being a pinko is utter garbage.

Yes, but on the other hand there are people today who seem to genuinely believe that e.g. Joe Biden is a Marxist, and the John Birch Society was similarly deranged and quite influential back in the day.

IvanV wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:24 pm

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 11:53 am JFK was a committed cold warrior who tripled defence spending. Any theory that has him being offed for being a pinko is utter garbage.

Meanwhile Oswald:

Becomes a socialist, but doesn't give much impression of being very intellectual about it
Defects to Soviet Union
Notices it isn't very nice living as a factory worker in Minsk in comparison to living in USA
Asks to be allowed to come back
Marries a Russian emigré living in the US
Meets anti-communist contacts of wife, but pisses them all off
Can't hold jobs down due to being unreliable and an a..eh.le

Whatever point he thought he was making when he shot JFK, which we can never know, it is unlikely it made much logical sense.

I mean, the US certainly put a lot of effort into trying to kill people like Stalin and Castro, so I'm sure the USSR would've been just as keen to kill the president of the US.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:21 pm

IvanV wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:24 pm

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 11:53 am JFK was a committed cold warrior who tripled defence spending. Any theory that has him being offed for being a pinko is utter garbage.

Meanwhile Oswald:

Becomes a socialist, but doesn't give much impression of being very intellectual about it
Defects to Soviet Union
Notices it isn't very nice living as a factory worker in Minsk in comparison to living in USA
Asks to be allowed to come back
Marries a Russian emigré living in the US
Meets anti-communist contacts of wife, but pisses them all off
Can't hold jobs down due to being unreliable and an a..eh.le

Whatever point he thought he was making when he shot JFK, which we can never know, it is unlikely it made much logical sense.

I mean, the US certainly put a lot of effort into trying to kill people like Stalin and Castro, so I'm sure the USSR would've been just as keen to kill the president of the US.

Did the US put in a lot of (or any?) effort to kill Stalin? Castro was different, in that it was not unlikely that the Communist government in Cuba could have fallen had he been killed. There was little reason for the USSR to see any geopolitical advantage to killing Kennedy.

Oswald fluked the shot.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:21 pm

IvanV wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 12:24 pm Meanwhile Oswald:

Becomes a socialist, but doesn't give much impression of being very intellectual about it
Defects to Soviet Union
Notices it isn't very nice living as a factory worker in Minsk in comparison to living in USA
Asks to be allowed to come back
Marries a Russian emigré living in the US
Meets anti-communist contacts of wife, but pisses them all off
Can't hold jobs down due to being unreliable and an a..eh.le

Whatever point he thought he was making when he shot JFK, which we can never know, it is unlikely it made much logical sense.

I mean, the US certainly put a lot of effort into trying to kill people like Stalin and Castro, so I'm sure the USSR would've been just as keen to kill the president of the US.

When some deluded person carries out some atrocity, it's usually more about their delusion than the target of the atrocity. Cf death of John Lennon, etc.

It's a hypothesis that Oswald came back to the US as an undercover Soviet agent. I don't think it stands up to much scrutiny. He was far too unreliable and inconsistent, and drew attention to himself. It wasn't a pose, he was like that before he went to the Soviet Union. It's more plausible he was allowed out because the Soviet Union was just pleased to be rid of a defector who had become inconvenient.

Stalin and Castro were unique items that removing would be seen as valuable to the US cause in the Cold War. I don't really see that as applying to JFK in the other direction. He was not some unique threat to them. The Soviet Union do not in general seem to have engaged in an assassination campaign on US soil.

There was an assassination attempt on Major General Edwin Walker earlier in 1963, which the Warren Commission attributes to Oswald. Walker was a loudmouth anti-communist and a John Birch Society member, who repeatedly got into trouble for excessive promotion of his unpleasant views. If that is all correct, then Oswald's doesn't seem to have become a right-winger on his return from the Soviet Union, even if he didn't like living in the Soviet Union. Would the Soviets have recruited him and had him doing that, risking getting caught, if their main aim was for him to shoot Kennedy? Who was Edwin Walker to them?

Try to shoot Walker. Then shoot JFK instead. There doesn't seem to be much political nuance to his actions.

That's why I mentioned stochastic terrorism - Oswald may not have been a direct Soviet asset enacting a masterplan. Nevertheless in a war (even a cold one) people who sympathise with one side may think they're helping by killing the leader of the other side.

I don't think it takes any huge stretches of imagination, or a grand conspiracy, to wonder why a communist sympathiser during the cold war would want to kill the US president in general, never mind one who'd been involved in stuff like Bay of Pigs, shortly after the missile crisis, etc.

I'd suggest the most sensible comparison for Oswald's choice of target would be the kinds of targets chosen by other lone non-state actors / terrorists, in which context the US president seems to make a bit more "geopolitical sense" than a bus full of random shoppers or whatever.

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:42 pm Oswald fluked the shot.

He was a trained marine who achieved a sharpshooter designation and he shot JFK twice.

El Pollo Diablo wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 4:11 pm

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:42 pm Oswald fluked the shot.

He was a trained marine who achieved a sharpshooter designation and he shot JFK twice.

Whenever someone mentions Lee Harvey Oswald I always think of this bit from Full Metal Jacket - clicky

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:42 pm Oswald fluked the shot.

I've never been to Dallas and never even held a rifle but I have seen people who do shoot and have been there remark that their doubts fell away when they saw what an easy shot it was.

Martin Y wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 4:32 pm

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:42 pm Oswald fluked the shot.

I've never been to Dallas and never even held a rifle but I have seen people who do shoot and have been there remark that their doubts fell away when they saw what an easy shot it was.

I have driven past there. The distance to the street is not large.

dyqik wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 5:35 pm

Martin Y wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 4:32 pm

noggins wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 2:42 pm Oswald fluked the shot.

I've never been to Dallas and never even held a rifle but I have seen people who do shoot and have been there remark that their doubts fell away when they saw what an easy shot it was.

I have driven past there. The distance to the street is not large.

If the Full Metal Jacket clip is correct and Oswald was only 250 feet away, that's 75 metres. The shortest target range for proper rifles is usually 100 m, and in a competition my dad used to shoot at 100 m, 200 m, 400 m & 600 m. Oswald's feat was getting his 3 shots off in the time, but it's not that difficult if you know your rifle.

I stand corrected. My point was supposed to be: even if the conspiracy tw.ts are right about it being a rubbish gun with a crappy sight. Ill take Oswald being lucky over some b.llsh.t conspiracy.

Martin_B wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 2:14 am

dyqik wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 5:35 pm

Martin Y wrote: Fri Dec 17, 2021 4:32 pm

I've never been to Dallas and never even held a rifle but I have seen people who do shoot and have been there remark that their doubts fell away when they saw what an easy shot it was.

I have driven past there. The distance to the street is not large.

If the Full Metal Jacket clip is correct and Oswald was only 250 feet away, that's 75 metres. The shortest target range for proper rifles is usually 100 m, and in a competition my dad used to shoot at 100 m, 200 m, 400 m & 600 m. Oswald's feat was getting his 3 shots off in the time, but it's not that difficult if you know your rifle.

That doesn't feel completely wrong for the distance.

Looking at Google maps, Dealey Plaza is about 200m across.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Wed Dec 15, 2021 10:48 pm You can see why the US authorities tolerated the spread of conspiracy and misinformation - the truth is even more damning. At the height of the Cold War a radicalised nobody assassinated the president with little external assistance - stochastic terrorism at its most devastatingly effective.

That's what they want you to believe. Don't you find it very convenient that these documents were released the day after the number of Covid cases in the US was 113,749, which in hexadecimal is 1bc55, a sequence that can be found in plain sight in the MD5 hash of the sentence "Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot JFK!" ?? Wake up, sheeple!

noggins wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 3:43 pm ... even if the conspiracy tw.ts are right about it being a rubbish gun

That Ian chap on Forgotten Weapons dot com said the Carcano didn't deserve its crappy reputation in America. He says that was due to people using very slightly wrongly sized ammunition as the exact diameter of bullets it was designed for were hard to find in America. Owners mostly didn't know the right size was non-standard and just thought their gun's accuracy was rubbish.

Oswald appears to have been educationally sub-normal if you see what I mean. I'm not normally conspiracy minded at all but I cannot imagine, not matter how much fluke and 1 in a million... he could not have made that shot.

nezumi wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 9:04 pm Oswald appears to have been educationally sub-normal if you see what I mean. I'm not normally conspiracy minded at all but I cannot imagine, not matter how much fluke and 1 in a million... he could not have made that shot.

From the biography found here:

Lee entered the third grade at the Arlington Heights Elementary School. He remained at Arlington Heights for the entire school year, completing the third grade with a satisfactory record, which included A's in social studies, citizenship, elementary science, art, and music, and a D in spelling. In September 1949, he transferred to the Ridglea West Elementary School, where he remained for the next 3 years. Lee's record at Ridglea is not remarkable in any respect. In the fourth and fifth grades, he received mostly B's; in the sixth grade, B's and C's predominate. He received D's in
both the fifth and sixth grades in spelling and arithmetic; in the fourth and sixth grades, C's are recorded for Spanish,which may account for his rudimentary familiarity with that language later on. In the fourth grade his IQ was recorded at 103; on achievement tests in each of the 3 years, he twice did best in reading and twice did worst in spelling.

He appears to have been an average student.

How intelligent do you need to be to shoot somebody 75m away?

I'd have thought the sharpshooting training he received would have been sufficient education.

Average student, average marksman.
He had some help along the way, but it wasn't the Soviets or the Cubans.