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A conspiracy theory even a Lone Nutter can love ...


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Blunt and Bagley were acquaintances for a number of years.  Malcolm built up a good rapport with the guy.

Bagley  dedicated the last decades of his life  trying to disprove the acceptance of Nosenko as being a genuine defector.

Malcolm and John Newman were also  interested in this idea.  In fact, today, John agrees with Bagley on that topic.

And that was the basis for the relationship.  What is  odd about that?  Its a heck of a lot less odd than following alien abductions etc.and comparing them with a homicide case.

Finally, Bagley answers a question from his new friend about a technical issue that he would understand.  And  Malcolm was sort of tight flipped about that.  It was John who thought it was important enough to make public.

What Malcolm himself thought important about it was the fact that it paralleled what Betsy Wolf had gone through as shown in the newly declassified documents from the HSCA.  Documents he decided to send me. 

IMO, the important thing about the Wolf documents is that I do not recall this particular issue, about the obstructions put on the Oswald file, as being in the HSCA report.  And second, I do not recall Wolf ever saying anything about her months long pursuit of this mystery, and all the paper she generated trying to solve it. Again, these are the dangers of secrecy and non disclosure agreements.  The Betsy Wolf endeavor seems to me to be quite important overall.  It is a troubling issue that what she did is only now just being made  public after about 55 years. 

If you ask me, its a disgrace.

 

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Malcolm Blunt is one of the principals of Dealey Plaza U.K., a thoroughly conspiracy-oriented organization/site; he was apparently closely aligned with John Armstrong until they had some falling out; and he is frequently credited on the Prayer Man site.  I hardly think that calling him a "conspiracy zealot" is an insult.  We can ratchet it back to "dedicated conspiracy-oriented researcher" if it makes everyone happier.

My point re Nosenko was:  If you're concerned that Nosenko may be a KGB plant, and that the KGB may have in fact debriefed Oswald and perhaps even recruited him in contravention of what Nosenko is saying, and OSWALD WAS YOUR OWN FALSE DEFECTOR AND IS STILL ON YOUR PAYROLL AS WILCOTT CLAIMED, why would you need to brutalize Nosenko for three years to learn the truth?  It seems to me that learning the truth, at least about Oswald, would have been a fairly simple matter if Oswald were still on your payroll and under your control.  They didn't mind brutalizing Nosenko but didn't want to offend Oswald, or what?

On the day after the assassination, Bagley is wondering if Oswald may have been acting on behalf of the KGB but shows no awareness that he has long been a salaried CIA employee.  Was Bagley that far out of the loop?

Bagley left the CIA in 1972 - but, given his position in 1963, was he not almost surely one of the people to whom the HSCA spoke in attempting to corroborate Wilcott's story?

Bagley published KGB: Masters of the Soviet Union in 1990, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries and Deadly Games in 2007, and Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a KGB Spy Chief in 2013.  (I have not read any of them.)  By the time the first was published, Wilcott's tale was common knowledge.  In any of these books or the promotional activities associated with them, did Bagley give the slightest hint that Oswald had been a false defector and salaried CIA employee?

Was Bagley ever quoted anywhere, by anyone else, as having revealed what he seems to have gone out of his way to reveal to Malcolm Blunt?  Is the suggestion that Bagley was learning the truth about Oswald for the first time when he sat down to review documents with Blunt (or whatever the circumstances were)?  Was Bagley that far out of the loop?

I'm just having a hard time understanding how any of this makes sense.  And, yes, I am somewhat suspicious that an 85-year-old ex-CIA executive would strike up a friendship with a "dedicated conspiracy-oriented researcher" and confirm for him alone Oswald's status as a false defector.  So, yes, I would like to see confirmation of the friendship and the revelation.

No, Oswald's activities in Russia are hardly irrelevant.  If your supposed false defector does things that could have easily caused him to be sent to Siberia or even shot, that is either one gutsy false defector (and why?) or perhaps your supposed false defector was just a goofball "being Oswald."  You also need some plausible mission for the false defector.  The bizarre notion that he was sent by CIA rogues to reveal the U-2 program and thereby sabotage the summit meeting between Khrushchev and Eisenhower makes no sense.  The Soviets already knew about the U-2.  The knew how high it flew and had missiles that could reach that altitude; they just didn't have enough of them in the right places.  The actual downing of the U-2 was somewhat of a comedy of errors, but it certainly didn't hinge on anything the lowly Oswald could have told them.  Again, read Titovets' book; if you are not intimately familiar with the USSR, life in Minsk and the radio factory as my wife is, it won't be as jaw-dropping to you as it was to her - but you will see that "being Oswald" is not a portrait of a CIA operative.  (The book is a portrait of the KGB trying its damnedest to figure out what Oswald was up to.)

No, the documents that Blunt was discussing with Bagley don't speak for themselves.  If they spoke for themselves, why did Blunt guess that they didn't show a false defector?  I'm not going to dive down that bottomless rabbit hole, but we would need a convincing provenance for each document and a solid consensus by people who really know what they are talking about that the documents can be interpreted in only one way.  At this point, the entire "Project Oswald" narrative is to me merely a typical example of the way a conspiracy narrative is constructed - dubious hearsay, discredited witnesses, questionable documents and dark sinister speculation, all without regard to whether it actually makes sense or meshes with the known real-word facts.

Lastly, the notes provided by Jim are just too garbled to be of significance to me ("Cuban stress analysis"?).  By the time he agreed to take a polygraph, Wilcott had already painted himself into a corner.  I've had a number of employees agree to take polygraphs in administrative investigations in identical circumstances - i.e., they had committed themselves to their stories past the point of no return and I guess we're just hoping they'd get lucky with the polygraph.  I can certainly see why, for perfectly legitimate reasons, the HSCA would have wanted Wilcott's testimony to be kept secret.  Even if he were a bald-faced l-I-a-r (as I believe he was) and even if the HSCA suspected this from day one (as I believe they did), he still could have woven into his tale highly sensitive names and other information that could have damaged the CIA.

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7 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

The HSCA was part of the cover-up.  

And yet that very same House Select Committee went ahead and concluded there was probably a conspiracy anyway, eh? And they concluded that Ruby probably had some help entering the DPD basement too.

Some "cover-up" that was.

It's just another example of how the conspiracy theorists of the world make very little (common) sense.

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8 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

And yet that very same House Select Committee went ahead and concluded there was probably a conspiracy anyway, eh? And they concluded that Ruby probably had some help entering the DPD basement too.

Some "cover-up" that was.

It's just another example of how the conspiracy theorists of the world make very little (common) sense.

Yes, Jim and his mentor Armstrong believe the HSCA, FBI, Warren Commission and just about everybody were part of a sinister "cover-up." The thing is Armstrong doesn't seem to mind at all using those same agencies as sources for his far-out theories which he does repeatedly in his "book." How does he know when to believe them and when they are "covering up"?

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4 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

I can certainly see why, for perfectly legitimate reasons, the HSCA would have wanted Wilcott's testimony to be kept secret.  Even if he were a bald-faced l-I-a-r (as I believe he was) and even if the HSCA suspected this from day one (as I believe they did), he still could have woven into his tale highly sensitive names and other information that could have damaged the CIA.

That's right, all you guys can do is call Wilcott a l-i-a-r, which is completely illogical since he was obviously eager to take a lie detector test.  It has been patently obvious for more than half a century that "Lee Harvey Oswald" was a spy!

Wilcott_Lie_Detector.jpg

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Why do the Lone Nutters on this board have such kooky views?  The vast majority of Americans believe now, and always have believed, that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK.  From the NBC News article "The One Thing All Americans Agree On: JFK Conspiracy."  

redo_data_download_3_2017_10_27__0aaea4e

It is exceptionally weird how hard the Warren Commission loyalists work here.  Do you now how out of step you are with the rest of America?

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28 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Why do the Lone Nutters on this board have such kooky views?  The vast majority of Americans believe now, and always have believed, that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK.  From the NBC News article "The One Thing All Americans Agree On: JFK Conspiracy."  

redo_data_download_3_2017_10_27__0aaea4e

It is exceptionally weird how hard the Warren Commission loyalists work here.  Do you now how out of step you are with the rest of America?

ABSOLUTELY I know this, Jim!  The truth isn't determined by polls.  I'm not surprised at all by the poll numbers.  It's completely irrelevant to me if 99.9% of Americans eventually buy into a conspiracy.

Over the past 55 years, conspiracy books have outnumbered Lone Assassin books by a ratio of - what? - 100-to-1, maybe more?  Ditto for YouTube videos, TV programming and all the rest.  Oliver Stone reached a larger audience than Posner or Bugliosi ever dreamed of.  The conspiracy drum has been beaten nonstop for 55 years.  "JFK conspiracy" has become a meme.

The Lone Assassin explanation is no fun.  It's dull as hell.  There's no mystery, nothing to speculate about for 55 years.  Conspiracy theorizing, in contrast, is a jigsaw puzzle that can become as big and complex as you'd like it to be.  Conspiracy theorizing is a hobby, a lifestyle, a religion!

Moreover, conspiracies are superficially more plausible.  So many people and organizations either despised JFK or stood to benefit from his death that constructing a plausible conspiracy theory is child's play.  That's why there have been dozens of such theories.  Even to a Lone Nutter, Oswald's motives remain a considerable mystery.

Put it all together and I'm surprised the poll numbers are that LOW.

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53 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

ABSOLUTELY I know this, Jim!  The truth isn't determined by polls.  I'm not surprised at all by the poll numbers.  It's completely irrelevant to me if 99.9% of Americans eventually buy into a conspiracy.

Over the past 55 years, conspiracy books have outnumbered Lone Assassin books by a ratio of - what? - 100-to-1, maybe more?  Ditto for YouTube videos, TV programming and all the rest.  Oliver Stone reached a larger audience than Posner or Bugliosi ever dreamed of.  The conspiracy drum has been beaten nonstop for 55 years.  "JFK conspiracy" has become a meme.

The Lone Assassin explanation is no fun.  It's dull as hell.  There's no mystery, nothing to speculate about for 55 years.  Conspiracy theorizing, in contrast, is a jigsaw puzzle that can become as big and complex as you'd like it to be.  Conspiracy theorizing is a hobby, a lifestyle, a religion!

Moreover, conspiracies are superficially more plausible.  So many people and organizations either despised JFK or stood to benefit from his death that constructing a plausible conspiracy theory is child's play.  That's why there have been dozens of such theories.  Even to a Lone Nutter, Oswald's motives remain a considerable mystery.

Put it all together and I'm surprised the poll numbers are that LOW.

I have found that lone nutters are the most prone to anti-intellectualism. Their psychology is about as easy to predict and see through as creationists.

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11 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

I have found that lone nutters are the most prone to anti-intellectualism. Their psychology is about as easy to predict and see through as creationists.

You may have "found" this, but there is no science to back it up.  There is science to back up the existence of a prone-to-see-conspiracies psychological profile.  In literally every area of weirdness - Flat Earth, Big Foot, alien abductions, the Illuminati, and on and on - it is those at the most extreme of the fringe who scream "HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THIS?  IT'S SO OBVIOUS!  HOW CAN YOU EVEN QUESTION IT?  ARE YOU STUPID, SOME KIND OF DISINFORMATION AGENT, OR WHAT???"

I don't think the polls reflect intellectualism or anti-intellectualism.  They reflect that a large percentage of Americans are (1) ill-informed about the basic facts of the Kennedy assassination, and (2) heavily influenced in their views about most subjects by what they learn from the media and other less-than-reliable sources.  30 years ago, I was no less intelligent and intellectual than I am now, but my only sources of information about the assassination had been the flurry of truly wild conspiracy books that had then been published.  Ergo, even I was prone to scream "HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THIS?  IT'S SO OBVIOUS!  HOW CAN YOU EVEN QUESTION IT?  ARE YOU STUPID, SOME KIND OF DISINFORMATION AGENT, OR WHAT???"  Now I know better, simple as that.

When it comes to creationists, a subject about which I am willing to bet my experience and depth of knowledge dwarf yours by a factor of 5000, all Christians (and Muslims and Jews and others) are creationists in the sense of believing that we live in a God-created universe.  Those who have believed this include the greatest minds in philosophy, science and other disciplines for the past 2000 years.  Many of the greatest scientific minds of today remain believers, despite the virtual terrorism of the paradigm of naturalistic materialism within academia for the past 50 years.  Scientism and the naturalistic paradigm have achieved the status of a fundamentalist religion, and it is now the religious believers who find themselves in the curious position of heretics.  But the wall is crumbling.

I assume you are talking about creationists in the sense of Young Earth creationists.  Indeed, I can level essentially the same arguments at a YEC that I can level at someone who is wedded to one of the wild-and-crazy JFK conspiracies.  The YEC believe that the Bible teaches a 6,000-year-old earth (I don't see this), that the Bible is the literal and unerring Word of God, and that, therefore, NO EVIDENCE OR ARGUMENTS OF ANY KIND CAN BE ALLOWED TO CHALLENGE THIS PARADIGM.  This isn't really irrational, and the YEC are not really anti-intellectual; a highly qualified YEC scientist (and there are many) would destroy someone like you in a debate (and even have my head spinning).  The flaws in their paradigm, I believe, are the notions that the Bible teaches a 6,000-year-old earth at all and that God would saddle us with a universe in which 99% of the evidence is to the contrary.

Every paradigm has its axioms.  In the conspiracy paradigm, Lee Harvey Oswald simply cannot have been a lone assassin; this possibility is off the table.  This is why I refer to conspiracy zealots as fundamentalists.  I believe that this axiom is flawed and actually has less epistemological justification than the YEC's axiom that the Bible teaches a 6,000-year-old earth.  My paradigm has no such axiom.  Neither "Oswald was a lone assassin" nor "there cannot have been a conspiracy" is one of my axioms.  If the director of the CIA ever holds a press conference, fesses up to a conspiracy, and releases all the supporting documentation, my beliefs will shift accordingly.  I will not do what conspiracy theorists do:  Attempt to preserve my paradigm by screeching "HE'S AN OBVIOUS DISINFORMATION AGENT!  THEY CAN ONLY BE DOING THIS TO COVER UP SOMETHING EVEN BIGGER AND MORE SINISTER!  THOSE DOCUMENTS ARE ALL FAKE!!!"

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1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

We can ratchet it back to "dedicated conspiracy-oriented researcher" if it makes everyone happier.

Great. Thank you.  I think that the more we stay away from loaded terms, the more useful the debate.

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

My point re Nosenko was:  If you're concerned that Nosenko may be a KGB plant, and that the KGB may have in fact debriefed Oswald and perhaps even recruited him in contravention of what Nosenko is saying, and OSWALD WAS YOUR OWN FALSE DEFECTOR AND IS STILL ON YOUR PAYROLL AS WILCOTT CLAIMED, why would you need to brutalize Nosenko for three years to learn the truth?  It seems to me that learning the truth, at least about Oswald, would have been a fairly simple matter if Oswald were still on your payroll and under your control.  They didn't mind brutalizing Nosenko but didn't want to offend Oswald, or what?

I am trying to see your point here, but I don't.  Nosenko defected to the US in 1964.  The whole Nosenko affair was much bigger than just Oswald and involved the very biggest issues and questions within the US counterintelligence community about Soviet penetrations, whether Golitsyn and Fedora were legitimate, etc.; as I said a terribly complex mess.  Sure, the Oswald stuff was part of it, but by then Oswald is dead (so bringing in Oswald instead of brutalizing Nosenko is not a choice, eh?)  As to debriefing Oswald upon return to the US, I am already on record as being incredulous that the CIA claims not to have done so. 

2 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

On the day after the assassination, Bagley is wondering if Oswald may have been acting on behalf of the KGB but shows no awareness that he has long been a salaried CIA employee.  Was Bagley that far out of the loop?

I don't know the answer to that question.  But from about 1:00 PM November 22, 1963 Oswald was "radioactive" to everyone; which person in the CIA or any organization would admit to having a covert relationship with Oswald?  Even if Bagley (or others) knew of CIA association with Oswald, would you expect then to come forward and admit it?

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

what he [Bagley] seems to have gone out of his way to reveal to Malcolm Blunt?

Out of his way?  As indicated, Blunt took an opportunity to ask Bagley what he thought.  Bagley answered.  How is that going out of his way? 

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

No, Oswald's activities in Russia are hardly irrelevant. 

You are really hung up on this.  The proof of his false defection is in the documentary record, not in the circumstantial evidence of his behavior.  I would agree Oswald's activities are relevant in figuring out what his purpose was as a false defector.  But in the face of the documentary evidence, they are irrelevant to proving whether he was a false defector or not.  You are an attorney, so you understand this.

Your issue here is that you can't seem to figure out what Oswald's purpose entering the USSR might have been.  You seem to be under the impression that the only purpose of a false defector would be to gather intelligence.  There may be other purposes, and several respected researchers (respected at least by many if not by you) have hypotheses as to Oswald's purpose (sabotaging the summit is not one of them).  I refer you again to Newman if you are interested.  (Remember what was told to Dan Hardway of the HSCA: "a useful idiot".)

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

I'm not going to dive down that bottomless rabbit hole, but we would need a convincing provenance for each document and a solid consensus by people who really know what they are talking about that the documents can be interpreted in only one way. 

 

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

At this point, the entire "Project Oswald" narrative is to me merely a typical example of the way a conspiracy narrative is constructed - dubious hearsay, discredited witnesses, questionable documents and dark sinister speculation, all without regard to whether it actually makes sense or meshes with the known real-word facts.

Questionable documents? I ask this with all seriousness: Do you seriously doubt the provenance of the released Oswald CIA documents and routing information used by Newman?  The 1963 documents and routing were verified by Jane Roman herself who handled the originals contemporaneously!!  Is this not convincing provenance? Is Jane Roman a discredited witness? Richard Helms himself did not question the veracity of the "amazing" date of the opening of Oswald's 201 file.  Is this not convincing provenance? Is Richard Helms a discredited witness?  Why didn't Jane Roman or Richard Helms dispute the veracity of the documents?  Newman's first work Oswald and the CIA has been out for years.  I have not seen one instance where the genuineness of documents themselves have been questioned. You seem to be a thoughtful, intelligent person, but your characterization of these documents as "questionable" is just weak. If you don't accept Newman's credentials to have an informed opinion on this (again, executive assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency) or Jane Roman's, then who would you accept?  

(As to dubious hearsay, without comment on whether I believe Bagley made the statement to Blunt, I've already stipulated that Bagley's words are unnecessary to make the case.  And whether or not Wilcott is telling the truth has nothing to do with any of my facts or arguments.  And please tell me, what is the "dark, sinister speculation" that I have engaged in?)

If the facts are not on your side, argue the law.  If the law is not on your side, argue that facts.  If neither is on your side pound the table?  You have now resorted to pounding the table.

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2 minutes ago, Al Fordiani said:

Sure, the Oswald stuff was part of it, but by then Oswald is dead

Yes, that's true.  My bad.  I'm still puzzled, however, as to why the CIA would have been so befuddled as to whether Nosenko was telling the truth about Oswald when they'd had Oswald back home and under their thumbs for 18 months (supposedly) and under their thumbs the entire time he was in Russia (supposedly).  Did the CIA think Oswald was capable of duping them for that length of time?  While brutalizing Nosenko, had they been satisfied by Oswald simply saying "Nah, the KGB didn't debrief me.  Nah, I'm not working for the KGB.  Don't worry about it."  Bagley's flurry of concern at the time of the assassination that Oswald might have KGB connections, and his years of concern about whether Nosenko was telling the truth about the KGB's interest in Oswald, just make no sense to me if Oswald had been a CIA operative and under the CIA's control the entire time.  (Yes, I realize there were many aspects to the Nosenko affair other than just Oswald, but my concern here is what he was saying about Oswald.)

14 minutes ago, Al Fordiani said:

Even if Bagley (or others) knew of CIA association with Oswald, would you expect then to come forward and admit it?

No, but I also wouldn't expect them to write memos such as the one Bagley wrote to Sullivan.

15 minutes ago, Al Fordiani said:

As indicated, Blunt took an opportunity to ask Bagley what he thought.  Bagley answered.

No, in Blunt's story Bagley asked HIM what he thought the documents showed.  Bagley then corrected him.

17 minutes ago, Al Fordiani said:

You are really hung up on this. 

No, I'm not merely hung up on this - I regard it as virtually dispositive.  It's not a matter of being able to figure out Oswald's mission.  It's that he did things that would have been insane for any visitor to the Soviet Union.  Unless the mission was to plant a false defector in the Siberian labor camps for 25 years, the stuff he did makes no sense.  The KGB, in their wisdom, realized "No false defector, no spy, would ever act like this.  He's just being Oswald."

22 minutes ago, Al Fordiani said:

Questionable documents? I ask this with all seriousness: Do you seriously doubt the provenance of the released Oswald CIA documents and routing information used by Newman?  The 1963 documents and routing were verified by Jane Roman herself who handled the originals contemporaneously!!  Is this not convincing provenance? Is Jane Roman a discredited witness? Richard Helms himself did not question the veracity of the "amazing" date of the opening of Oswald's 201 file.  Is this not convincing provenance? Is Richard Helms a discredited witness? 

Perhaps "questionable" is not the right term.  Perhaps "far less than the clear and unequivocal documentation we would need to establish what is being asserted, given the mountain of evidence and reasonable inferences to the contrary."  Do I question that the documents clearly and unequivocally show what you think they show?  Indeed I do.  Do I question the implications Jefferson Morley and John Newman drew from their interview of Roman 31 years after the assassination?  Indeed I do.  Here's the full story, right from the pen of Jefferson Morley:  https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/WhatJaneRomanSaid/WhatJaneRomanSaid_1.htm

I'm certainly not afraid of this "evidence."  Jefferson Morley and John Newman have carved out this as their niche in the conspiracy community.  (I have been unable to find any article or editorial on this subject in the mainstream press that wasn't written by one of them!)  Yes, this is a body of evidence, but one that is subject to interpretation.  If we reach the point where serious academics with no obvious dog in the fight say "This evidence can only be interpreted as Oswald being a false defector and/or CIA-guided participant in the assassination," then I will take it more seriously.  My current guess is that the CIA's "keen interest" in Oswald was approximately the same as the KGB's "keen interest" in Oswald.  At this point, I would bet that whatever relationship (if any) that Oswald had with the CIA will prove to be inconsequential and will not lead to Dealey Plaza.  But I certainly could be wrong.

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3 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

You may have "found" this, but there is no science to back it up.  There is science to back up the existence of a prone-to-see-conspiracies psychological profile.  In literally every area of weirdness - Flat Earth, Big Foot, alien abductions, the Illuminati, and on and on - it is those at the most extreme of the fringe who scream "HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THIS?  IT'S SO OBVIOUS!  HOW CAN YOU EVEN QUESTION IT?  ARE YOU STUPID, SOME KIND OF DISINFORMATION AGENT, OR WHAT???"

I don't think the polls reflect intellectualism or anti-intellectualism.  They reflect that a large percentage of Americans are (1) ill-informed about the basic facts of the Kennedy assassination, and (2) heavily influenced in their views about most subjects by what they learn from the media and other less-than-reliable sources.  30 years ago, I was no less intelligent and intellectual than I am now, but my only sources of information about the assassination had been the flurry of truly wild conspiracy books that had then been published.  Ergo, even I was prone to scream "HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THIS?  IT'S SO OBVIOUS!  HOW CAN YOU EVEN QUESTION IT?  ARE YOU STUPID, SOME KIND OF DISINFORMATION AGENT, OR WHAT???"  Now I know better, simple as that.

When it comes to creationists, a subject about which I am willing to bet my experience and depth of knowledge dwarf yours by a factor of 5000, all Christians (and Muslims and Jews and others) are creationists in the sense of believing that we live in a God-created universe.  Those who have believed this include the greatest minds in philosophy, science and other disciplines for the past 2000 years.  Many of the greatest scientific minds of today remain believers, despite the virtual terrorism of the paradigm of naturalistic materialism within academia for the past 50 years.  Scientism and the naturalistic paradigm have achieved the status of a fundamentalist religion, and it is now the religious believers who find themselves in the curious position of heretics.  But the wall is crumbling.

I assume you are talking about creationists in the sense of Young Earth creationists.  Indeed, I can level essentially the same arguments at a YEC that I can level at someone who is wedded to one of the wild-and-crazy JFK conspiracies.  The YEC believe that the Bible teaches a 6,000-year-old earth (I don't see this), that the Bible is the literal and unerring Word of God, and that, therefore, NO EVIDENCE OR ARGUMENTS OF ANY KIND CAN BE ALLOWED TO CHALLENGE THIS PARADIGM.  This isn't really irrational, and the YEC are not really anti-intellectual; a highly qualified YEC scientist (and there are many) would destroy someone like you in a debate (and even have my head spinning).  The flaws in their paradigm, I believe, are the notions that the Bible teaches a 6,000-year-old earth at all and that God would saddle us with a universe in which 99% of the evidence is to the contrary.

Every paradigm has its axioms.  In the conspiracy paradigm, Lee Harvey Oswald simply cannot have been a lone assassin; this possibility is off the table.  This is why I refer to conspiracy zealots as fundamentalists.  I believe that this axiom is flawed and actually has less epistemological justification than the YEC's axiom that the Bible teaches a 6,000-year-old earth.  My paradigm has no such axiom.  Neither "Oswald was a lone assassin" nor "there cannot have been a conspiracy" is one of my axioms.  If the director of the CIA ever holds a press conference, fesses up to a conspiracy, and releases all the supporting documentation, my beliefs will shift accordingly.  I will not do what conspiracy theorists do:  Attempt to preserve my paradigm by screeching "HE'S AN OBVIOUS DISINFORMATION AGENT!  THEY CAN ONLY BE DOING THIS TO COVER UP SOMETHING EVEN BIGGER AND MORE SINISTER!  THOSE DOCUMENTS ARE ALL FAKE!!!"

Are you serious? You think there's no easily measurable cognitive deficiencies from people who just listen to everything they're told?

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3 hours ago, Micah Mileto said:

Are you serious? You think there's no easily measurable cognitive deficiencies from people who just listen to everything they're told?

Well, yes, I am serious about what I said in my post, but I'm not understanding your second question.  Do I think there is "no easily measurable cognitive deficiencies" on the part of "people who just listen to everything they're told"?  What does that mean?  If it's a serious question, let me know and I'll respond.

What a rational person believes about anything can only be the product of his experiences, observations, studies, reflection and perhaps intuition.  He accumulates as much evidence as he can, decides which evidence is the best evidence, draws what seem to him to be the most reasonable inferences, and arrives at a position, while remaining open to the possibility that better evidence may come to light.  The quality of his thinking will depend to at least some extent on the quality of the mind with which he has been blessed.  The depth of his conviction will depend to a large extent on how diligently he applies himself to this task.

This approach has led me to a belief in the God of Christianity, certain views about anomalous phenomena, consciousness, the nature of reality and lots of other things - including, yes, the Lone Nut position in regard to the JFK assassination.  I'm not an intractable zealot about anything.  But those who are intractable zealots in all of those areas find me intolerable.  I find it truly amusing that I am equally detested by the intractable zealots on atheist forums as by those on Christian ones!

 

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On 12/19/2018 at 9:33 AM, Lance Payette said:

My current guess is that the CIA's "keen interest" in Oswald was approximately the same as the KGB's "keen interest" in Oswald. 

One last post from me on this thread.  I am now in danger of just basically repeating myself, so I will check out of this thread.

I agree that the "watch the crazy guy" hypothesis fits very well for the KGB reaction to Oswald.

But it does not fit the known facts of the 1959 or 1963 CIA interest. It just doesn't.

As per Jane Roman: 

"...this SAS group [Special Affairs Staff] would have held all the information on Oswald under their tight control." 

"Yeah, I mean I’m signing off on something that I know isn’t true.”

"To me its indicative of a keen interest in Oswald held very closely [by the SAS] on the need to know basis.”

"There has to be a point for withholding information from Mexico City." (bold added)

If the CIA interest in Oswald is merely routine "watch the crazy guy" then why would anything be compartmentalized in the SAS (an operational group) and information disseminated only on a need to know basis?  If the CIA interest in Oswald was merely "watch the crazy guy" then why would the covert operations people (Karamessines) LIE to his own people in the Mexico City Station?  It is not even close to adding up!  It cannot simply be routine.  There has to be a point!

And the 1959 defection, we've been over.  No 201 file was opened for over a year, which everyone, including Richard Helms, admits there is no explanation for if Oswald was a true defector.  While agreed that analyzing the routing of the Oswald information in 1959 takes interpretation, and agreed that I am no expert, it seems relatively elementary to me that if information on a supposed defector to the USSR is being withheld from the Soviet Russia Division, something is up.  And I do count Newman as an intelligence expert.

On 12/19/2018 at 9:33 AM, Lance Payette said:

If we reach the point where serious academics with no obvious dog in the fight

Newman and Morley did not start out as JFK conspiracy theorists.  Newman's research led him to that conclusion.  Morley as well is someone who can hardly be called a zealot....so who qualifies as someone with "no dog in the fight?"  I am confident that such a "consensus" will be reached.  But it will still be ignored by many.....

To the larger point of your thread about CT mentality:  I have been reading posts on this forum for over 10 years.  Yes, I have read all the claims of "disinfo agent" and seen the members that would entertain any theory as valid so long as it furthered their agenda or had a conspiracy bent.  I agree that it does get ridiculous at times.  

But let's not kid ourselves: many lone nut believers are as bad or worse than any of the CT'ers, zealots in the extreme. There have been and are LN posters on this forum that are just rude and divisive and add zero useful information.  In the bigger picture, the number of times that I personally have been ridiculed over the last 40+ years...well, maybe it shouldn't, but it really gets old and it takes a toll, and at times people here react with exasperated emotion.  Some of the LN posters on this forum enjoy bringing this exasperated emotion out of people; it's their only purpose (besides derailing legitimate threads), and it's just childish and pathetic.  Pathetic.  So, Mr. Payette, would a LN'er like you ever call out a LN'er's trollish behavior like a fair-minded person would?  Or do you just want to point out your perceived inadequacies of the CT crowd?

I would love to see the tenor of the debates here be more professional.  I try to model that behavior myself.  But it is an internet forum, so it is what it is.

 

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