Cliff Varnell

4 hours ago, Paul Baker said:

😂

Nothing changes here, does it?

Nope, just another cocky non-response from the nutter gallery.

4 hours ago, Paul Baker said:

If you find the obvious is still just out of reach,

What kind of person is incapable of observing the movement of their own clothing?

A lone nutter.

7 minutes ago, Paul Baker said:

Here's a link to the debate on David Von Pein's JFK Archives website. This includes links to DVP's own opinions about the debate, which are well worth a read after you've listened.

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/10/radio-debates-featuring-john-mcadams.html

It's a little cringeworthy at times, but McAdams' responses are sensible and robust.

The Lone Nut is a cult.  It requires a true belief impervious to obvious fact.

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The First Day Evidence is a unified fact pattern.

It's all there in the First Day file, Clarice -- everything you need to catch them, those men you seek.

JFK suffered a shallow wound in his back and an entrance wound in his throat with no exit.

There were no rounds recovered from those wounds during the autopsy.

Those are the root facts of the JFKA. 

Y'all need to learn how to deal with it.

Just now, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Joseph Uscinski studies conspiracy theories. If ambition hits me at some point, I may do an article on his work as applied to the JFK case. I have two of his books and he mentions JFK quite often. While that would not convince you (or many others here) it would be an interesting exercise I believe.

I didn't bring up any "conspiracy theories."

I cited a Fact Pattern which you must pretend not to comprehend, apparently.

8 hours ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

There is a unified conspiracy theory? Could someone please point me to that?

No, there is a unified conspiracy fact pattern based on the First Day Evidence:  The physical evidence recovered with the body; the contemporaneous written reports of men in position of authority; the authenticated cervical x-ray; the overwhelming consensus ear/eye witness statements.

The bullet holes in the clothes are four inches below the bottom of the collars, which lines up with the Third Thoracic Vertebra.

Admiral Burkley's Death Certificate (signed off as "verified") put the back wound at T3.

The autopsy face sheet filled out by James Curtis Jenkins (signed off as "verified") put the back wound closer to T4 than T3.

Soon after the autopsy FBI SAs James Sibert and Francis O'Neill cabled FBI HQ to report a shallow wound in the back.

In his contemporaneous notes Mortician Thomas Robinson recorded a back wound 5 inches below the neck.

Dr. Ronald Jones and Dr. James Carrico at Parkland wrote contemporaneous notes recording an entrance wound in the throat.

The authenticated cervical x-ray shows a hairline fracture of right T1 transverse process and an air pocket overlaying the right T1/C7 transverse processes -- a trajectory which lines up with the damaged trachea.

The night of the autopsy Humes, Boswell, and Finck looked at the back wound, which had no exit and no bullet, and asked the FBI men if there existed rounds which would dissolve in the body.

There were 16 eye-witnesses to a back wound consistent with T3, and 14 eye-witnesses to the throat entrance wound.

There are 56 ear-witnesses to a "bang...bang bang" shot pattern.

And let's not forget FBI SA James Hosty's interview notes with Oswald which recorded Oswald sayng he'd gone outside to watch the "P. parade."

The First Day Evidence is a unified fact pattern.

On 4/16/2021 at 1:10 PM, W. Tracy Parnell said:

I hate to break it to you Calvin, but the CT community has already lost-they just don't know it. Go look on Wikipedia or read any of the mainstream books or websites or legitimate history textbooks. You will find the statement that LHO killed JFK alone.

Hate to break it to you Tracy but y'all gettin' yer ass kicked in pop culture.  The LN has never played well outside the newsrooms and universities.

Quote

The reason for this is not that there is a worldwide conspiracy to suppress the truth that includes the media and academia. It is because there exists no unified alternative explanation to the LN theory.

Of course there is! 

Those not blinded by confirmation bias recognize the fact the the bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to associate with his throat wound. 

JFK suffered a shallow wound in his back and an entrance wound in his throat which didn't exit.  No rounds were found during to the autopsy. 

The historical record indicates two possible explanations for wounds of entrance without exits or bullets:  either the rounds were removed prior to the autopsy, or JFK was hit with high tech rounds which dissolved in his body.

These are called leads.

Quote

 

You could put the top CT researchers in a room and they would agree on very little. The top researchers on both sides are dying at an alarming rate and when they are all gone so will the debate be.

Thank God!  All this phony debate obfuscates the fact that the bullet holes in the clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound.

Every legitimate cold case homicide investigation starts with a thorough examination of the physical evidence recovered with the body.

The JFKA has rarely received a legitimate investigation.

13 hours ago, Lawrence Schnapf said:

4. Accusing a high level officer of plotting to kill a president is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. Even a false flag plot is very dangerous and requires more than a mere supposition. I really cannot buy that Phillips was involved in any sort of plot. He was too good a PR guy to know the risks-having already learned some serious lessons with Cuba.  

Isn't that what a false-flag operation needs -- a good PR man?  The plotters had four psyop specialists at hand -- David Phillips, Edward Lansdale, George Joannides, and C.D. Jackson.

That Veciana's composite sketch of Maurice Bishop was identified as Phillips by Phillips' niece has always struck me as extraordinary evidence.

40 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Cliff--

I am not here to defend Trump, or Nixon. 

My point is, we have an intel community that does not answer to the elected President. 

It is not OK, just because Nixon and Trump were unpopular in certain circles, and perhaps even deserved their unpopularity. In the case of Nixon, a case can be made he was a war criminal---what he did to SE Asia is heart-breaking. And he knew it was a lost cause.  

I disagree with your take on the Deep State backing Trump. 

I think the US globalist community was aghast at Trump, for good and bad reasons. 

But hey---different opinions is what makes an intellectual stew. I welcome yours.

Benjamin, did you watch any cable news over the past two weeks of the 2016 campaign?

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Come on Cliff. You’re blinded by your adherence to the shot in the back that you dismiss the rest.

Dismiss the rest of what?

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Do you think there were three shots?

A simultaneous volley of multiple shots sounds like a single report.

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Do you think the head shot came from the rear?

What part of Bennett's statement precludes his observation of a high right rear exit wound?

39 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Cliff - do you believe SA Bennett’s report? To me it smacks of circling the wagons.

Destroying the single bullet theory is circling the wagons?  He wrote contemporaneous notes at 5:30 eastern time 11/22, before there were any wagons to circle.

He wrote that he was looking to the right on Elm St.  Willis 5 shows him facing to the right.  He heard a firecracker sound and turned to look at JFK.  Altgens 6 shows him with blurred facial features, consistent with head movement.  He wrote that he saw JFK hit about four inches down the shoulder, on the right side.  The bullet holes in the back of JFK's clothes are four inches below the bottom of the collars, to the right.  He described a "bang...bang bang" shooting sequence consistent with 55 other ear-witnesses.

SS SA Glen Bennett's statement is the most robustly corroborated individual account in the entire case.

1 hour ago, Denny Zartman said:

The firecracker sounding noise was not necessarily the first shot that hit Kennedy.

Here is the WC testimony of close proximity witness Linda Willis.

<quote on>

Mr. Liebler: Did you hear any shots, or what you later learned to be shots, as the motorcade came past you there?

Miss Willis: Yes; I heard one. Then there was a little bit of time, and then there were two real fast bullets together. When the first one hit, well, the President turned from waving to the people, and he grabbed his throat, and he kind of slumped forward, and then I couldn't tell where the second shot went.

<quote off>

From the WC testimony of Nellie C.:

<quote>

Mrs. Connally:...I heard a noise, and not being an expert rifleman, I was not aware that it was a rifle. It was just a frightening noise, and it came from the right. I turned over my right shoulder and looked back, and saw the President as he had both hands at his neck.

Mr. Specter: And you are indicating with your own hands, two hands crossing over gripping your own neck?

Mrs. Connally: Yes; and it seemed to me there was--he made no utterance, no cry.  I saw no blood, no anything. It was just sort of nothing, the expression on his face, and he just sort of slumped down.</q>

From Secret Service SA Clint Hill's WC testimony:

<quote on>

Mr. SPECTER. Now, as the motorcade proceeded at that point, tell us what happened.

Mr. HILL. Well, as we came out of the curve, and began to straighten up, I was viewing the area which looked to be a park. There were people scattered throughout the entire park. And I heard a noise from my right rear, which to me seemed to be a firecracker. I immediately looked to my right and, in so doing, my eyes had to cross the Presidential limousine and I saw President Kennedy grab at himself and lurch forward and to the left. </q>

From Secret Service SA Glen Bennett's statement 11/23/63:

<quote on, emphasis added>

About thirty minutes after leaving Love Field about 12:25 P.M., the Motorcade entered an intersection and then proceeded down a grade. At this point the well-wishers numbered but a few; the motorcade continued down this grade enroute to the Trade Mart. At this point I heard what sounded like a fire-cracker. I immediately looked from the right/crowd/physical area/and looked towards the President who was seated in the right rear seat of his limousine open convertible. At the moment I looked at the back of the President I heard another fire-cracker noise and saw the shot hit the President about four inches down from the right shoulder. A second shot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the President's head. I immediately hollered "he's hit" and reached for the AR-15 located on the floor of the rear seat. Special Agent Hickey had already picked-up the AR-15. We peered towards the rear and particularly the right side of the area. I had drawn my revolver when I saw S/A Hickey had the AR15. I was unable to see anything or one that could have fired the shots. The President's car immediately kicked into high gear and the follow-up car followed.</q>

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Obviously, I cannot refute your scenario.

It's an exercise in parsimony, no matter what your theory of the case is.

Let the evidence fill in the blanks:  I have to expand my list of probable perps.  I think Paul Helliwell was the paymaster of the JFKA; assistant Dallas County district attorney Bill Alexander filled out the LHOA team.

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I have only offered what I think is a credible scenario. 

I still tend to lean to "fewer is better" in terms of pre-event JFKA believability. 

Absolutely.  That's why I don't think Dulles, Angleton, or Harvey were involved in the JFKA.  They didn't have their hands in the drug trade like other Agency guys did.

And I don't think there was an oligarchic star chamber that decided to whack JFK.  I think one guy pushed the button.

11 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Thanks, Cliff. 

I cannot prove anything. My gut tells me the plot to kill JFK had to be small, very small in terms of knowing participants. 

That said, I do not regard my scenario as the be-all, end-all. It is a description of how a plot could be very small, and dovetails with certain undisputed facts about the case. 

 

The five guys who organized the JFKA (so I speculate):

Averell Harriman

George H.W. Bush

Carl Jenkins

Henry Hecksher

Charles Siragusa (perhaps unwitting)

The names of the shooters, spotters, communication specialists, observers, misdirection artists -- lost to history.

The five guys who organized the LHOA (sis)

Harriman

Bush

David Phillips

Edward Lansdale

Jack Ruby

The names of potential back-up patsies are found in the roster of usual suspects, most especially Allen Dulles.

On 4/3/2021 at 11:30 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

Towards A Simple, Plausible Yet Explanatory Conspiracy Theory

 

That there was a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy is a near certainty, as the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979.

 

The HSCA conclusion was a scam as much as the Warren Commission conclusion.  That JFK was murdered in a multi-shooter ambush was officially established on June 28, 1966 when Gaeton Fonzi confronted Arlen Specter with the clothing evidence -- the author of the Single Bullet Theory had a nervous breakdown.

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Featured_Fonzi-Specter_Interviews.html

It doesn't get any better than that.  The HSCA logged in the clothing evidence, but to promote it would have cast aspersions on the military run autopsy. 

So the HSCA finessed the issue by offering up the acoustics evidence, to feed the burgeoning complexity-fetish now rampant in the JFKA Critical Community.

There is no "near certainty."  The bullet holes in the clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound.  Period. 

On 4/3/2021 at 11:30 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

In the decades since the HSCA stumbled to its conclusion, the evidence supporting the conspiracy view of JFK’s death has only become stronger, including the certain debunking of CE 399, the infamous “magic bullet.”

Demonstrably incorrect.  The case for conspiracy has been driven down rabbit holes of highly technical, ancillary issues.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/11/poll-jfk-conspiracy/2152665/

<quote on>

A clear majority of Americans still suspect there was a conspiracy behind President John F. Kennedy's assassination, but the percentage who believe accused shooter Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone is at its highest level since the mid-1960s, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

According to the AP-GfK survey, conducted in mid-April, 59% of Americans think multiple people were involved in a conspiracy to kill the president, while 24% think Oswald acted alone, and 16% are unsure. A 2003 Gallup poll found that 75% of Americans felt there was a conspiracy.

As the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death approaches, the number of Americans who believe Oswald acted alone is at its highest since the period three years after the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination, when 36% said one man was responsible. </q>

The conspiracy side dropped 16% points in a decade.  Why?

Dr. Cyril Wecht Disappointed by Oswald Hung Jury Verdict but Says Mock Trials on JFK Assassination Should Continue

https://throughtheoswaldwindow.com/articles/dr-cyril-wecht/

For two days the 2017 mock trial jury was inveigled with the acoustics evidence, the Neutron Activation Analysis, the provenance of CE 399, and in depth study of the head wound/s.

The jury came back six for LHO as a lone nut, five for his innocence and one abstained.

Arlen Specter had a nervous breakdown with the clothing evidence shoved in his face but still the JFKA Master Class won't have anything to do with the T3 back wound.

In my book that's not progress.

11 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

As I said, I was trying to put together a JFKA with the minimum number of participants, so loose lips would not sink ships, before or after. Consider it thought-inducing design constraint.

A long overdue exercise, Benjamin, great thread.

I like to approach the fact of conspiracy with a similar "constraint."

7 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Robert Blakely also thought LOH was supposed to be hit, ASAP post JFKA, but something went awry. So you have good company, and evidently "hitting the hitter" is a known tactic in Mobland.

I think differently. 

In my scenario, LOH was supposed to escape, then perhaps show up in Cuba, or just change ID's and live life as a blond on a 100-acre ranch in Panama, or what have you. 

The fact that LOH was in police custody and alive forced the CIA to pull out all the stops to alter the situation, and ultimately rely on Jack Ruby. 

It sure seems likely that LOH concluded rather quickly after the JFKA that he was in danger.

I don't see Oswald as a "hitter."  He was a patsy sheep-dipped as a Commie agent whose early death would have sparked an invasion of Cuba.

You're right, I have a lot of company in this view.

Benjamin, I like your work on Nixon v. Helms 1971, although I'd add that Nixon tried 3 times to get the files on the Bay of Pigs, the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and the overthrow of Diem in So. Vietnam -- soon after he came into the White House in '69, Oct. '71 and May '72.  Helms stiffed him him each and everytime.

I think Nixon would have learned more about the Kennedy Assassination from the Diem files, but who knows?

I'm less enthusiastic about your take on Trump.

Benjamin Cole's text in italic, my response in bold.

Come October, President Joe Biden will make a decision on whether to release the remaining 15,834 still-repressed files that were supposed to have been released under the JFK Records Act of 1992.

The JFK Act required that all the JFK files be made public in their entirety within 25 years, which of course, was 2017.

But back in October 2017, President Donald Trump caved to the warnings of then-CIA director Mike Pompeo, FBI director Christopher Wray, and the National Security State, and left the remaining 15,834 files either redacted or totally under wraps.

However, the mercurial Trump then also ordered the withheld files to be reviewed again within four years, perhaps seeking leverage over his adversaries in the intelligence communities.

Fast forward to present, Trump has been booted from office and the betting is that Biden will also cave before the National Security State, despite the JFK assassination having happened 58 years ago.

Yeah, my money's on non-disclosure.  I'd also bet there's nothing in those files that would tell us anything about the murder of JFK.  The cover-up, yes, but nothing about the murder itself ever made paper.

History is full of confounding realities. For all of his weaknesses, Trump was probably the better hope for full disclosure of the JFK records than Biden.

For Trump was often, perhaps usually, at odds with the National Security State, variously called the “invisible government” or the “shadow government,” and, of late, “The Deep State.”

The Deep State installed Trump into the White House.  In late October '16 the FBI had hundreds of thousands of H. Clinton e-mails on the laptop of a sex pervert married to a top Clinton aide.  They knew these e-mails were duplicates of what they already had. 

They also had the Steele Dossier, as did the rest of the US intel community.

On Oct. 28 FBI head James Comey announced a re-opened investigation into Clinton's e-mails which set off a media firestorm that lasted until the election.  Cable news was Bash Hillary TV 24 hours a day for 11 straight days.  If the Deep State wanted to take down Trump why wasn't the Steele Dossier dropped?

In one of his seemingly ubiquitous running battles, Trump in 2019 detailed then-US Attorney General Robert Barr to investigate the nation’s investigative agencies, to ascertain whether elements of the Deep State illegally colluded to first try to prevent his ascendance to the White House, and then to undermine his presidency.

"Prevent his ascendance"?  They greased his ascendance!

"Undermine his presidency"?  RussiaGate was entirely driven by Trump himself.  The Mueller investigation came about because Trump fired James Comey.  Mueller treated Trump with great delicacy.  He didn't go after the kids, didn't go after the finances, allowed Trump's lawyers to give non-answers to written questions, allowed Bill Barr to publicly misrepresent the Mueller Report for 2 months before giving a low-energy testimony to Congress.

The Mueller Report was a limited modified hang-out that had no repercussions.  The surveillance of Carter Page went no where, ditto the Steele Dossier.  Neither were reported on cable news prior to the '16 election.  The Deep State installed Trump and then covered his ass after he screwed up.

At present, the criminal investigation into what is called “Russiagate” is led John Durham, now special counsel to the Justice Department and the former US Attorney for the District of Connecticut (2018–2021).

Durham, originally tasked by Barr in May 2019 to investigate whether the invisible government had it in for Trump, has left the US Attorney’s Office with the advent of the Biden Administration, but has stayed on and is leading the criminal Russiagate investigation, as special counsel.e.  There;'s nothing to it.

The Dunham Probe was a Trump PR move.  There's nothing to it.

https://lawandcrime.com/awkward/durham-investigation-insiders-say-no-evidence-to-support-obamagate-has-been-found-in-18-months/

Like so many modern-day Washington look-sees, the Durham inquiry promises to be interminable yet inconclusive and spun thereafter by party-based PR machines and media mouthpieces.

Even a synopsis of the National Security State vs. Trump could consume a book. The famed Mueller investigation ended in a muddle, followed by a December 2019 report by the Department of Justice Inspector General that concluded that the FBI copiously lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, aka the FISA court, to gain permission to spy the former Trump campaign staffer Carter Page during the 2016 election.

So what?  Nothing came of it.  Zero.

To critics, Trump’s directives to Barr and Durham were the actions of a paranoid, or rank political theater. That could be. To put it mildly, Trump was and is a man of manifest flaws.

But then, what other aspiring presidential candidate had contemporaneously written about him in the op-ed section of The New York Times, by a one-time director of the CIA: “Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.”[2]

That line was penned by Michel J. Morell, professional lifer in the CIA, a onetime deputy director, and occasional acting director until his retirement in late 2013. 

The Morell missive was run in The New York Times even before Trump became President.

You don't have to be a Deep Stater to notice that Donald Trump has the emotional make-up of a hyper-spoiled 8 year old.

1 hour ago, Dennis Berube said:

Indeed. The Democratic party has a problem with people needing a photo ID in order to vote (to the point of asking corporations to get involved politically on their side, hmmm, government and corporate power blending...),

Voter ID laws disenfranchise millions of people, mostly Democrats.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/how-voter-id-laws-discriminate-study/517218/

You have a problem with people having easy access to the ballot, Dennis?

1 hour ago, Dennis Berube said:

but they wish you to have a digital passport which requires you to take part in an experiment (officially, with a never before used technology) for something that you likely (if you are healthy at least) have a 99.9%+ survival rate for AFTER you unluckily catch it, in order to go to a restaurant or travel.

Factually incorrect.  The Biden Administration does not support vaccination passports.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/white-house-moves-up-vaccine-eligibility-timeline-says-no-federal-vaccine-passports/

1 hour ago, Dennis Berube said:

 

If you cannot smell the strong fascism there, or somehow think they would only be temporary, good luck to us all.

I've been smelling strong fascism here for quite a while.

1 hour ago, Dennis Berube said:

As for the pro-Gates faction here, although I know you levy this charge at me and anyone holding my views on Gates, you should be a little more careful about how you go about "fact-checking". The world's largest foundation in history (which has more money than the GDP of half of the of countries of the world) can afford a lot of PR work that reaches many sources. By design, much like any propaganda, that work is not very effective if the targets are aware of it. One of the sadly effective spins is that criticism of Gates comes from "right wingers" and Trump people, that is classic transparent divisive propaganda, much like the anti-white messaging as of late. Gates' personal conviction that the world is overpopulated and needs to be reduced is right from his own mouth.

There were two obstacles to this Plandemic Eugenicist Scenario:  a swift and effective executive response to the outbreak of the virus, and the swift development of a safe and effective vaccine.  So the Eugenicist Deep Staters installed a total boob in the White House, someone to encourage the virus to wash over the entire population.

To combat the development of an effective vaccine the Eugenicists need a rigorous anti-vaxx movement to inhibit herd immunity. 

4 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I think you are correct that the LOH slaying was a unplanned and separate operation from the JFKA. 

Separate but not unplanned.  I'm convinced the plan was to whack Oswald about 45 minutes after JFK.

That would have been the only way to pin the deed on Castro.

21 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

"Explain the JFKA with no more than five willing conspirators."

Can we de-couple the Kennedy Assassination from the Oswald Assassination?

I don't think the guys who planned and executed the nuts and bolts of the JFKA knew anything about the LHOA. 

What did Ozzie's handlers need to know about the JFKA other than time and place?  The Kill JFK Team didn't need to know who'd take the fall.  If Oswald got into a car accident on the way to work 11/22 Kennedy was still going to get whacked.

I don't think there was anyone outside of W. Averell Harriman and George H. W. Bush who knew everything about both plots.

Larry posits a plot that came together 90 days out.  On August 24, W. Averell Harriman bum rushed the dispatch of Cable 243, green-lighting a coup against Diem.  Was Harriman, an oligarch with deep ties to global banking and Western intelligence, the top operator in a supra-institutional cabal dedicated to re-ordering the world's narcotics market in 1963?

I posit such.  The Skull & Bones boys and their Sicilian-American mafia allies wanted to take global heroin production away from the Corsican Mafia.

After all, it was Harriman who bucked the entire US foreign policy/military establishment in '62 by selling JFK on a partition of Laos, giving the CIA unfettered access to the Golden Triangle opium market and allowing the North Vietnamese nearly-unfettered access to the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  To maintain access to the opium fields a militarized So. Vietnam was an absolute must. 

Nationalist Diem wanted to kick the Americans out, so he had to go.

When Kennedy made noises about pulling out of So Vietnam his fate was sealed.  

In the 50's Havana was the global hub of narcotics trafficking, so Castro had to go in the grand plan, but no dice.  I think Castro cut a deal with the Skull & Bones boys after the JFKA.  The heroin the Red Chinese supplied him as aid thereafter moved thru Bush's Zapata Off-Shore.  Or so I speculate...

90 days out Harriman tells Bush to contact Carl Jenkins and David Atlee Phillips.  In the 50's Jenkins taught the Thai Border Police how to interdict opium convoys and taught the Kuomintang how to keep their opium caravans from interdiction.  The best guy to plan an ambush of a slow moving motorcade.  Phillips was tasked with arranging a variety of potential patsies given any number of contingencies. Highly compartmentalized.

A lot of the Cubans we hear about may have been back-up patsies.

17 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

It is also possible that Hancock is right, that CIA higher-ups did in fact explicitly work with Cuban exiles and others to have JFK assassinated, and planned for a long time to so, and also planned to make Oswald the patsy. From my perspective, that scenario involves too many people. 

The point of my exercise was to develop and simple explanation to how the JFKA happened, with a very small number of pre-event conspirators.

Benjamin, the quest for simplicity is always to be applauded.  I'm soooo glad you brought this subject up.

My thang is having the simplest, strongest case for conspiracy as the subtext of my study.  The bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound.  This establishes the following root facts: JFK had a shallow wound in his back, no exit, no round found during the autopsy; the wound in his throat had no exit and no round found.

The night of the autopsy the doctors speculated JFK was hit with high tech weaponry, like the blood soluble darts developed for the CIA program MKNAOMI.

As a student in the Vincent Salandria School of Research into the Obvious --I can make a case for CIA conspiracy in under a hundred words.

This is why Diem was overthrown.

"Today's World Report: Truce Moves Reported In Viet Nam," New York World-Telegram & Sun, (Friday), 25 October 1963, p.6:

"LONDON - The government of South Vietnam and Communist North Viet Nam are apparently making exploratory contacts that could lead to a truce, diplomatic sources said. There was no official confirmation…Diplomatic sources said the current moves were believed to be aiming at some sort of truce arrangement with possible wider ramifications." <quote off>

30 years ago I had a girlfriend Kim who is the daughter of an officer in Nhu's police corps.  She's Buddhist.  13 at the time of Diem's overthrow, Kim said there was no strife between Catholics and Buddhists until it was ginned up by the Central Intelligence Agency.

By the time JFK green-lit the coup the Catholic/Buddhist strife was calming down.

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 278:

<quote on, emphasis added>

On Thursday, October 31, General Don went to Gia Long Palace and talked with both Diem and Nhu.  He inquired about the petition he and General Dinh had given Diem in September, asking for cabinet posts and policy changes.  He was told that since everything had resumed to normal there was no need for changes…

General Don was busy on Thursday with last-minute preparations for the coming action.  That was the day [activist professor] Buu-Hoi went with two Buddhist monks to see Ngo Dinh Nhu.  They asked him to intervene with Diem to set free “all Buddhist dignitaries, laymen and students still under detention,” and Nhu “promised to obtain from the president a favorable answer to this request.”

The news was announced in an official press release.  It would be a banner headline on the front page of the Times of Vietnam the next day.

This was awkward news for the generals.  The Buddhist issue, which had been slipping away ever since the arrival of the mission from the United Nations {Oct. 24], seemed to be disappearing before their eyes, and a convenient excuse for their coup with it.

<quote off>

James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pgs 201-2

<quote on>

In Saigon on Friday morning, November 1, Ambassador Lodge and Admiral Harry Felt, Commander in Chief of the Pacific, met with President Diem, as rebel troops were gathering outside the city…

“Tell President Kennedy that I take all his suggestions very seriously and wish to carry them out but it is a question of timing.”

This was the response from Diem that Kennedy had been waiting for, and Lodge recognized it.  In his comment on Diem’s statement, Lodge cabled: “If U.S. wants to make a package deal, I would think we were in a position to do it.  The conditions of my return [to Washington] could be propitious for it.  In effect he said: Tell us what you want and we’ll do it.”

A milestone had been reached.  Diem had finally responded to Kennedy in a hopeful way through a reluctant ambassador, and Lodge had conveyed the message to Washington with a supportive comment.

However, Lodge buried Diem’s message to Kennedy near the end of his report.  Moreover, he did not send the report on his breakthrough conversation with Diem until 3:00 PM, an hour and a half after the coup had started.  He also chose to send this critical cable by the slowest possible process rather than “Critical Flash,” which would have given it immediate attention in Washington.  As a result of Lodge’s slow writing and transmission of Diem’s urgent message to Kennedy, it did not arrive at the State Department until hours after the rebel generals had laid siege to the presidential palace.  It was too late.

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2 hours ago, David Andrews said:

The more I look at the old films, and the interview comments of people like Lodge and Hilsman, the more it seems that Diem and Nhu (and Madane Nhu) were an embarrassment to the US establishment.  Diem picked up Catholic anti-communism at Notre Dame but not the graces of a pluralistic society.  Lodge was too embarrassed, or too disgusted, to send a US plane to take Diem and Nhu out of the country, which would seem to be his job as ambassador.  That's the extremity of the new "It's their war" principal.

I'd like to know more about what we were doing to create a free market economy in South Vietnam.  If we had worked harder at that and invested more quickly, could multinational corporatism have contained Diem and recreated South Vietnamese society?  Jobs at PepsiCo could have been the social support system lacking under Diem.  But we preferred to make it our war.

I suspect that Kennedy sidestepped his way into approving a coup supported by the military, State and CIA.  I don't think Lodge and Hilsman were running any cables behind his back on the fatal weekend.  JFK ought to have assured Diem and Nhu's safe escape, for the honor of the failed experiment, as we'd been grooming Diem since university.  But I feel that Diem and Nhu were responsible for an unstable SVN and increased support for communism in the south and north.  They made a free society ungovernable.

Factually incorrect.

May 8, 1963. Hue, South Vietnam.  Buddhist protesters crowded around a radio station when two explosions killed eight people.  The Catholic Diem regime blamed the Viet Cong; the Buddhists blamed Diem.

JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass, pg 130-1

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Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hospital director at Hue, said after examining the victim's bodies that he had never seen suchinjuries. The bodies had been decapitated. He found no metal in the  corpses, only holes. There were no wounds below the chest. In his official finding, Dr. Quyen ruled that "the death of the people was caused by an explosion which took place in mid-air," blowing off their heads and mutilating their bodies...

...In May 1963, Diem's younger brother, Ngo Dinh Can, who ruled Hue, thought from the very beginning that the Viet Cong had nothing to do with the explosions at the radio station.   According to an investigation carried out by the Catholic newspaper, Hoa Binh, Ngo Dinh Can and his advisers were "convinced the explosions had to be the work of an American agent who wanted to make trouble for Diem." In 1970 Hoa Binh located such a man, a Captain Scott, who in later years became a U.S. military adviser in the Mekong Delta. Scott had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admitted he was the American agent responsible for the bombing at the radio station the next day. He said he used "an explosive that was still secret and known only to certain people at the Central Intelligence Agency, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a timing device."
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JFK suffered back/throat wounds without exits that left no metal in his body.