I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak

[David Von Pein]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Btw, I should also deal with DVP here and his 'well, it may not be six seconds' mantra.

The WC specified this because they said it may be the case in case the first shot missed. 

Or if the THIRD shot missed. You failed to acknowledge that the WC (again on that pesky Page #117 that CTers like James D. love to ignore so much) refused to be pinned down on WHICH of the 3 shots missed.

But, Jim, keep pretending the Warren Commission was a worthless and crappy "cover-up" investigation....even though it wasn't anything of the kind.

Edited October 10, 2018 by David Von Pein

[James DiEugenio]

Davey do you know how to count?

Going with your scenario of three shots:

No one will ever say that the shot in the back was the third shot. Not with that scenario.

Now when Tague heard the first shot, which he says he did, that is the shot he heard.

Which leaves Z 313 as the third shot.

As you can see above, 5.6 seconds is their time span with the Tague hit included. Something Hoover did not want to admit at all.  And the WC did not want to include either. Until they just could not cover it up anymore.

 

BTW, if that WC excerpt that Davey posts, is it not incredible that those cover up artists do not refer to the Z film at all?  In fact, if I recall correctly, they do not mention the film in the 888 page report.  Bugliosi trying to defend that in RP  is one of the unintentionally funny parts of his book. (Which is saying something, since a lot of it is risible.)  But when you time this out with the Z film, that is you figure in their idea of the oak tree obstruction, then you divide the elapsed frames until the head shot,  you come out with 5.6 seconds.

 I do not believe any of that BS myself, but I am just working in the confines of the Single Bullet Fantasy.  Which traps them every time.

 

 

Edited October 10, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[David Von Pein]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, [in] that WC excerpt that Davey posts, is it not incredible that those cover up artists do not refer to the Z film at all?  In fact, if I recall correctly, they do not mention the film in the 888 page report.

[...]

But when you time this out with the Z film, that is you figure in their idea of the oak tree obstruction, then you divide the elapsed frames until the head shot,  you come out with 5.6 seconds. 

Jimmy,

Yes, the Warren Commission mentions the oak tree obstruction. But even with the oak tree in Oswald's way for a brief period of time, the Commission still allowed for the possibility that Oswald squeezed off his first shot before the President's car disappeared behind the oak tree, thereby increasing the amount of time he would have had to get off his three shots (again see WCR, Page 117).

And you must be joking when you say "they do not mention the film in the 888 page report."

Good gosh, Jim, nothing could be further from the truth! The Zapruder Film is, in fact, referred to dozens of times within the 888-page Warren Report....many times on Page 98 alone (also pictured below). Plus, there are all those still photos from the Zapruder Film printed in the WCR too (beginning on Page 100).

So when you say, "if I recall correctly, they do not mention the film in the 888 page report", it makes me wonder what kind of oddball version of the Warren Commission Report you possess. (Maybe you've got an "altered" version of the Report that was planted in your house by an evil Government cover-up agent in order to make you look silly. Ya think?)

 

Edited October 10, 2018 by David Von Pein

[James DiEugenio]

Sorry about that one about the Z film, that is what I recalled Bugliosi saying.

You and the WC can do all you can to say, "but if", "well maybe", "it could be" etc etc.

But Tague said he heard the first shot.  We all know what JFK looks like coming out from behind the sign. He was obviously hit.  Tague heard that hit.  Then comes Z 313.

That is your evidence.  You and the WC can make up all kinds of conditionals and improbabilities, but that is what is on the film.  If you say the film is genuine, and you do, you are stuck with it.  Are you really going to say that JFK was hit at 167 and he did not register a reaction until he is behind the sign?

That is baloney. And you know it.

A major problem for the other side has always been that 6 second time frame.  The WC itself used it for both sets of tests they ran.  Which means they knew that was the time frame.  Realizing what a problem it would pose when other people read the report, they stuck that page in it that DVP uses.  Knowing that the Z film would wreck that qualification, but gambling that no one would go to DC to watch it.  Because when you watch it, and when you understand what Tague said, the time frame is six seconds.

And it gets even worse when you use the actual rifle--which as we know, is the wrong one.

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

20 hours ago, Bart Kamp said:

LNer scum

Yeah, this is over the top.

I don't think it's fair to label LNers as "scum."

"Chronic intellectual dishonesty" -- there, that's better...like when DVP suggests JFK wore his shirt differently than other men.

Did JFK wear his shoes and socks in a different position also, David?

 

 

Edited October 10, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[François Carlier]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Sorry about that one about the Z film, that is what I recalled Bugliosi saying.

You and the WC can do all you can to say, "but if", "well maybe", "it could be" etc etc.

But Tague said he heard the first shot.  We all know what JFK looks like coming out from behind the sign. He was obviously hit.  Tague heard that hit.  Then comes Z 313.

That is your evidence.  You and the WC can make up all kinds of conditionals and improbabilities, but that is what is on the film.  If you say the film is genuine, and you do, you are stuck with it.  Are you really going to say that JFK was hit at 167 and he did not register a reaction until he is behind the sign?

That is baloney. And you know it.

A major problem for the other side has always been that 6 second time frame.  The WC itself used it for both sets of tests they ran.  Which means they knew that was the time frame.  Realizing what a problem it would pose when other people read the report, they stuck that page in it that DVP uses.  Knowing that the Z film would wreck that qualification, but gambling that no one would go to DC to watch it.  Because when you watch it, and when you understand what Tague said, the time frame is six seconds.

And it gets even worse when you use the actual rifle--which as we know, is the wrong one.

 

 

First of all, Tague's location was farther away than most of the bystanders. Besides, he was not even really aware that he had been hit in the first moments after the shooting ("he initially ignored a slight sting that he was feeling, and only later Dallas police officer Buddy Walthers noticed blood on his cheek").
Therefore, relying, as you do, on the "Tague said he heard the first shot" notion is highly slippery terrain.
At any rate, you most certainly cannot use that to pretend to prove that Tague was hit by the second shot.
All evidence actually point to Tague being hit by a ricochet from the first shot.

1. first shot. Missed. Around Z160.
2. second shot hits JFK in the back, at Z224
3. third shot hits JFK in the head at Z313.

time span between Z160 and Z224 = 3.50 seconds.
time span between Z224 and Z313 = 4.85 seconds.
total time = 8.35 seconds.

Edited October 10, 2018 by François Carlier

[Guest]

On ‎10‎/‎8‎/‎2018 at 2:47 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

Factually incorrect.

The bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound.

Your LN true belief renders you incapable of observing the movement of your own shirt.

Cliff, I realize the holes-in-the-clothing issue is your idee fixe, and I wouldn’t try to change your mind.  If this single issue is viewed in a vacuum, I don’t believe your position is ridiculous or unreasonable.  When it’s viewed in the context of the assassination as a whole, however, I don’t find your position convincing and don’t believe your dogmatism is warranted.

The assassination was a unique real-world event that can never be precisely recreated.  We will never know precisely how JFK’s head and body were oriented at the moment of impact.  We will never know precisely how his shirt and coat were sitting.  We will never know precisely what effect his back brace might have had.  For that matter, we will never know the precise trajectory of the bullet or the precise location of the wounds.  As you may know, when you buy a car that turns out to be a lemon, all the individual parts may be within the allowable tolerances.  You get a lemon when too many parts are at the opposite extremes of the allowable tolerances.  Tiny elements of imprecision can add up to a serious problem. 

If there were gross and inexplicable discrepancies, which there aren’t, your position would be more solid.  But the seeming discrepancies are small enough that they can and have been explained.  You may not find these explanations satisfactory, but others with equal or greater expertise do – particularly when the issue is viewed in the context of the assassination as a whole.  I believe you are being dogmatic about an issue for which a dogmatic position simply can’t be justified.

I’ve mentioned before the case from about 30 years ago where a woman was driving across one of the bridges out of New York City.  A .22 caliber bullet entered through her half-open window and struck her precisely behind the ear, killing her instantly but producing almost no blood.  The wound wasn’t even seen by the first responders.  The incident had all the earmarks of a very professional mob hit, and the authorities spent months trying to figure out why this ordinary woman might have been the target of a mob hit.  The case was finally solved by chance:  A couple of kids had been shooting a .22 rifle into the river a half-mile away.  One bullet ricocheted off the water as though it were solid glass and found its unlikely way through the girders of the bridge, through the woman’s window and into her head at the precise spot where a professional hit would have been placed..

In the real world, weird stuff happens and people make honest mistakes.  Conspiracy Logic hinges on weird stuff never happening and people never making honest mistakes.  Everything that doesn’t perfectly mesh with a connect-the-dots Lone Nut explanation becomes evidence of a conspiracy.

I sound like a broken record, but I’ve said many times that every conspiracy theory hinges on the conspirators being diabolical geniuses at steps 1, 3, 5 and 9 and bumbling fools at steps 2, 4, 6, 8.  If we have to make them into geniuses at step 3 for the theory to work, that’s what we do.  If they must be fools at step 4 for it to work, then by God they were.  The net result is unconvincing.

In all of the hypothesized covering up – alterations of the Zapruder film, alterations of the body, phony autopsy photos, fabricated money orders, murders of those who knew too much, and on and on – how does it happen that the conspirators left the coat and shirt with obvious clues for people like you to find and planted a bullet so pristine that even the most diehard Lone Nutter is astonished by it?  Wouldn’t these have been two of the easiest things to deal with?  Why do we really need the magic bullet at all?

To those who don’t share the conspiracy mindset, it's the very fact that the magic bullet and the holes in the clothing require some explaining that is the hallmark of authenticity of the way things happen in the real world.  In the main, conspiracy theorists just don't live in the real world when it comes to their pet theories.  The theory has become essentially a fundamentalist religion.

[Mathias Baumann]

16 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

In all of the hypothesized covering up – alterations of the Zapruder film, alterations of the body, phony autopsy photos, fabricated money orders, murders of those who knew too much, and on and on – how does it happen that the conspirators left the coat and shirt with obvious clues for people like you to find and planted a bullet so pristine that even the most diehard Lone Nutter is astonished by it?  Wouldn’t these have been two of the easiest things to deal with?  Why do we really need the magic bullet at all?

Lance,

with all due respect I think that's a strawman argument. Most serious researchers (e.g. John Newman) have come to the conclusion that the cover-up was disconnected from the actual murder conspiracy. And there you have the reason why the conspirators decided to involve Oswald - because of his Communist background and specifically his meeting with Kostikov.

The actual conspiracy needn't have been big - Santo Trafficante orders John Roselli and David Morales to kill the President. Morales hires Oswald and a couple Cuban shooters, Roselli hires Ruby to silence Oswald. The conspirators knew there would be no honest Investigation, because that would've meant that Oswald's meeting with Kostikov would become public. And then there would've been a MAJOR international crisis.

[Guest]

16 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Getting back to the subject of this thread which is Litwin's book, here is what Paul Hoch said on that subject (and I agree with him):

My model is that there were many coverups, probably many independent ones … One possibility-ironically- is that Oswald did it alone but so many people had things to cover up [unrelated to any assassination plot] that the reaction of the government made it look like the assassination resulted from a conspiracy.

There seem to be at least six distinct discussions going on in this thread.  Virtually every thread on these forums serves to make my Whac-A-Mole point.  It's impossible to keep a conspiracy theorist from playing the "Oh, yeah, well what about THIS?" game.  The same issues, over and over … and over and over … and over and over.  Is there an audience of lurkers out there who are actually on the fence and whose minds might be changed by these "discussions"?  The fact that pissing contests are of only limited fascination for me is why I went on hiatus.

Anyway, I agree completely with what Paul Hoch is suggesting.  With LHO's background, some at the highest levels of government may actually have feared an outcry for immediate reprisals against the USSR or Cuba.  Others had plenty of reason to be embarrassed at their failure to understand the danger LHO posed and to keep tabs on him as they should have.  Others had plenty of reason to be embarrassed at their failure to protect the President or properly manage the Dallas visit.  Others may have feared being implicated in a conspiracy, even if one didn't exist, precisely because they were among the many powerful people and organizations that despised JFK and stood to benefit from his death.  We can characterize this as a "cover-up conspiracy" or simply "wild, chaotic, cover-your-ass scrambling."  I don't think it extended to altering the body, the Zapruder film or the autopsy photos, but I can well believe that it accounts for many of the inconsistencies in the testimony and documents.

For those who aren't familiar with Whac-A-Mole, DVP allowed me to film him practicing to keep his skills sharp for his interactions with conspiracy theorists:

 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Mathias Baumann said:

Lance,

with all due respect I think that's a strawman argument. Most serious researchers (e.g. John Newman) have come to the conclusion that the cover-up was disconnected from the actual murder conspiracy. And there you have the reason why the conspirators decided to involve Oswald - because of his Communist background and specifically his meeting with Kostikov.

The actual conspiracy needn't have been big - Santo Trafficante orders John Roselli and David Morales to kill the President. Morales hires Oswald and a couple Cuban shooters, Roselli hires Ruby to silence Oswald. The conspirators knew there would be no honest Investigation, because that would've meant that Oswald's meeting with Kostikov would become public. And then there would've been a MAJOR international crisis.

I don't know that "most serious researchers" have concluded that, but I do agree that it makes more sense than a single assassination-and-coverup conspiracy.  I believe credit has to go to Larry Hancock for this notion, and I said here that I found it compelling when I read his Someone Would Have Talked.

Morales hires Oswald?  Really, ya think?  I'm reminded of what Trafficante (I think) said when they asked him what he'd say if he learned Ruby had been on the payroll of the Mafia:  "I'd say they need a new Personnel Director."

Unlike the typical conspiracy theorist, I'm not inalterably, foaming-at-the-mouth wedded to the Lone Nut explanation or inalterably, foaming-at-the-mouth opposed to the notion of an extremely limited assassination conspiracy.  I simply see no real evidence of a conspiracy and don't believe that participation in one fits with who LHO was.  If there was an extremely limited conspiracy - which at this point I don't believe there was - I believe LHO would have been a central figure, not a patsy.  (This endless "patsy" crap drives me insane.  He clearly said he was a patsy of the DPD, arrested only because he'd defected to the USSR.  He didn't suggest in any way, shape or form that he was used as a patsy in the assassination itself.)  I don't find it inconceivable that he might have told someone at the Soviet or Cuba embassy or within the pro-Castro movement what he planned to do, but I find it unlikely because I believe the assassination was far more spur-of-the-moment than that.

As I suggested in my last post to Tracy, what I find entirely believable is (1) a Lone Nut assassination for the reasons I have suggested, followed by (2) wild, cover-your-ass scrambling on a variety of fronts that might well give the appearance of a "cover-up conspiracy."

[Mathias Baumann]

4 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

Morales hires Oswald?  Really, ya think?  I'm reminded of what Trafficante (I think) said when they asked him what he'd say if he learned Ruby had been on the payroll of the Mafia:  "I'd say they need a new Personnel Director."

Ruby was as perfect a choice as Oswald, because he knew half the Dallas Police force. They allowed him to walk in and out the building carrying a concealed gun just as he pleased, think about it.

Being a lawyer don't you think it is highly suspicious that Oswald could be killed that way? In a supposedly highly secured area? Surrounded by dozens of police officers? After they had received threats against his life? No, certainly Ruby pulled some strings with his pals in the police. That's the only reasonable explanation in my opinion.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Mathias Baumann said:

Ruby was as perfect a choice as Oswald, because he knew half the Dallas Police force. They allowed him to walk in and out the building carrying a concealed gun just as he pleased, think about it.

Being a lawyer don't you think it is highly suspicious that Oswald could be killed that way? In a supposedly highly secured area? Surrounded by dozens of police officers? After they had received threats against his life? No, certainly Ruby pulled some strings with his pals in the police. That's the only reasonable explanation in my opinion.

I'm not going to get sucked into Whac-A-Mole, but Ruby was the perfect Oswald assassin because he was incredibly emotional and volatile, often prone to violence, out of his mind with lack of sleep and fear that the Jews would be blamed for the assassination, a classic example of the little man stereotype who expected to be a hero to the nation after he shot LHO, and able to move freely throughout the DPD as he had always done.  How absurd was it that he served as the unofficial host of the reporters at the DPD briefing and actually attempted to walk into the room where LHO was being interrogated (about the only time he was ever told "You can't go in there, Jack")?  Do those incidents sound to you like Ruby was somebody's hit man or involved in a conspiracy with the DPD?  Do they really?  Sure, you can concoct a hypothesis whereby Ruby was on an assignment and acting in concert with the mob and members of the DPD, but a much more believable hypothesis is what I've described.  Weird stuff happens.

[Mathias Baumann]

55 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

I'm not going to get sucked into Whac-A-Mole, but Ruby was the perfect Oswald assassin because he was incredibly emotional and volatile, often prone to violence, out of his mind with lack of sleep and fear that the Jews would be blamed for the assassination, a classic example of the little man stereotype who expected to be a hero to the nation after he shot LHO, and able to move freely throughout the DPD as he had always done.  How absurd was it that he served as the unofficial host of the reporters at the DPD briefing and actually attempted to walk into the room where LHO was being interrogated (about the only time he was ever told "You can't go in there, Jack")?  Do those incidents sound to you like Ruby was somebody's hit man or involved in a conspiracy with the DPD?  Do they really?  Sure, you can concoct a hypothesis whereby Ruby was on an assignment and acting in concert with the mob and members of the DPD, but a much more believable hypothesis is what I've described.  Weird stuff happens.

Just consider this: Ali Agca was a megalomaniac who believed he was Jesus Christ himself. Yet someone hired him to shoot the pope. As you say, weird stuff happens.

But come to think of it, if you expect to get your hitman captured by the police, choosing a complete lunatic might not be such a bad idea after all. Think of all the crazy stories Agca told his interrogators. This caused great confusion, and we still don't know which of the many stories he told is true.

[Cory Santos]

14 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Or if the THIRD shot missed. You failed to acknowledge that the WC (again on that pesky Page #117 that CTers like James D. love to ignore so much) refused to be pinned down on WHICH of the 3 shots missed.

But, Jim, keep pretending the Warren Commission was a worthless and crappy "cover-up" investigation....even though it wasn't anything of the kind.

Its been years since I read the report.  Thank you David for pointing this out.

In Court, "probably" wide range of possibilities, etc. means this is not scientific.  While it is admissible as a government document, in a criminal case, if I had an expert using this type of speculation, it would not come in.  So, the W.C. is supporting a supposed historical fact with speculation and possibilities.  Can we agree to start looking at what actually happened?  Clearly, the W.C. did not have all the information a true investigating body needs and as such, its findings must be considered with all the evidence since which has been presented.

[James DiEugenio]

Tell that to Francois.

 

That guy is so out of it he is up to over eight seconds.  And why stop there.

Its very simple, the Z film is their evidence, Kennedy is hit in the back, Tague heard that shot.  Then at 313 JFK is hit in the skull.

Do the arithmetic and its 5.6 seconds.