Because JFK's head didn't just do that
November 10, 2023 5:28 PM Subscribe
The Secrets of the JFK Assassination (single link New York Magazine's Intelligencer). A dogged journalist finds evidence relating to Lee Harvey Oswald's involvement with intelligence agencies has been hidden, and public disclosure purposefully stymied. But some question if he goes too far theorizing beyond the new facts.
'Wilderness of Mirrors.'
oh, this takes me back. William King Harvey.
King got Philby fired and picked a fight with Guy Burgess.
from the article.
"The assassination has been known to drive people to unreason. “They tend to be smart people who are wide readers and trust their ability to figure things out,” Powers, the intelligence historian, told me. “It’s a subject that people get lost in. And sometimes they’re seen again, and sometimes not.”
Like a roach motel.
"And yet the archive pulls at you, irresistible, irrational, a form of gravity upon the mind."
it's kind of interesting because in the book Libra by Don delillo, CIA set up a really intricate assassination files room which is like the ultimate teaser like Wonka's factory of assassination theories.
posted by clavdivs at 6:29 PM on November 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
oh, this takes me back. William King Harvey.
King got Philby fired and picked a fight with Guy Burgess.
from the article.
"The assassination has been known to drive people to unreason. “They tend to be smart people who are wide readers and trust their ability to figure things out,” Powers, the intelligence historian, told me. “It’s a subject that people get lost in. And sometimes they’re seen again, and sometimes not.”
Like a roach motel.
"And yet the archive pulls at you, irresistible, irrational, a form of gravity upon the mind."
it's kind of interesting because in the book Libra by Don delillo, CIA set up a really intricate assassination files room which is like the ultimate teaser like Wonka's factory of assassination theories.
posted by clavdivs at 6:29 PM on November 10, 2023 [15 favorites]
One of the more damning revelations of the past few decades is that the Warren Commission very likely reached its lone-gunman verdict, or rather received it from on high, before it had begun its investigation. This conclusion emerged from later statements by the commissioners; from recordings of the phone calls of President Johnson, in which he made clear that it was of paramount importance to show that Oswald had no ties to either the Soviets or their Cuban allies, so as to avoid “a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour”You know, even if that's true, it's not a terribly bad idea.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:29 PM on November 10, 2023 [35 favorites]
'Wilderness of Mirrors.'
re: Angleton, this twitter thread is fascinating.
posted by juv3nal at 6:45 PM on November 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
re: Angleton, this twitter thread is fascinating.
posted by juv3nal at 6:45 PM on November 10, 2023 [9 favorites]
"At the urging of the CIA and other agencies, President Donald Trump twice extended the original 2017 deadline. In 2021, President Joe Biden pushed it to 2022 before extending it once again. At least 320,000 “assassination-related” documents have been released; by one estimate, some 4,000 remain withheld or redacted, the majority belonging to the CIA."
What in tarnation.
posted by mhoye at 6:47 PM on November 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
What in tarnation.
posted by mhoye at 6:47 PM on November 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
Look, if you'd told everyone walking out of the 1991 Stone film that "in 2017, President Donald Trump will push back the deadline for releasing documents about JFK's assassination. In 2021, President Joe Biden will do the same", a lot of heads would have exploded.
posted by mhoye at 7:02 PM on November 10, 2023 [35 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 7:02 PM on November 10, 2023 [35 favorites]
juv3nal's 'fascinating' twitter thread, except on nitter.net so people who don't have a twitter account can see more than the first tweet
posted by egypturnash at 7:03 PM on November 10, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by egypturnash at 7:03 PM on November 10, 2023 [23 favorites]
I'm in the midst of "JFK and the Unspeakable", by James W. Douglass - a book endorsed by RFK, Jr., Yoko Ono, and Oliver Stone. It lays out the whole case against the intelligence agencies in great detail, and with wonderful moral clarity and tells us what we can no and not know about the Oswald in Cuba episode. I urge anyone interested in this topic to read it.
posted by Modest House at 7:07 PM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Modest House at 7:07 PM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
tells us what we can no and not know about the Oswald in Cuba episode
Every typo is a confession.
posted by hippybear at 7:22 PM on November 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Every typo is a confession.
posted by hippybear at 7:22 PM on November 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Since his name came up, I wanted to recommend the Angleton biography: The Ghost by Jefferson Morley.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:25 PM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:25 PM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
But wait, to begin with, Morley was dead, dead as a doornail.
posted by hippybear at 7:31 PM on November 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 7:31 PM on November 10, 2023 [11 favorites]
Stross is somehow again ahead of the game: Angleton. Or maybe all this game of thrones stuff is well known to everybody and I somehow never heard of it.
posted by ashbury at 7:33 PM on November 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by ashbury at 7:33 PM on November 10, 2023 [8 favorites]
That Nitter thread on Angleton is mindblowing.
posted by blue shadows at 7:36 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by blue shadows at 7:36 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have at least one friend who's gone rather annoyingly deep into JFK conspiracy stuff. Not annoying because he's wrong necessarily, but annoying because there's no way (short of time travel) that we'll ever know for sure what happened in Dallas, Nov-22-63 ... beyond the result of one dead President. It's too far away now. There's too much smog in the intervening air. Or as I've come to think of it -- it's like a murky old photograph, the closer you zoom in, the blurrier it gets.
If it wasn't just Oswald acting alone, whatever happened, whoever was behind it -- I think it has to rate as a spectacularly successful intelligence operation.
posted by philip-random at 7:39 PM on November 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
If it wasn't just Oswald acting alone, whatever happened, whoever was behind it -- I think it has to rate as a spectacularly successful intelligence operation.
posted by philip-random at 7:39 PM on November 10, 2023 [7 favorites]
I mean, I'm left now to delve once again into the brilliant, decades-ahead-of-its-time 1990 musical by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman, Assassins. The conceit of the play is that everyone who has ever had the desire to assassinate a President all somehow exist in this same time-crossing reality, so failed and successful assassins across centuries intermingle, share their stories, and in the end there is a moment of apotheosis for the company of assassins.
You see, the entire time, there's been this promise of The American Dream. Anyone can make it in this country. But not everyone does make it, and many who don't make it end up bitter, and each generation that bitterness of not having the dream reach them no matter how much they reach toward it grows.
Toward the end of the second act all the assassins and would-be assassins meet and share their grievances, and ask why they can't share in the prize they were promised. After many protests, they are confronted by the voice of American Optimism that they shout down. Maybe the mailman won the lottery but where's their prize?
Eventually they all come together and sing about how there's Another National Anthem rising in the country.
Anyway, I'm just putting this here to say, we as a country are obsessed with the notion of assassination and what it can do to our very fragile house of democracy cards, and people were ruminating on these matters for a long time, and unfortunately the tiny seeds that were seen by John Weidman over 30 years ago seem to have truly come home to roost in our current situation. People have been marching to Another National Anthem for years and years even if they've never heard this particular bit of Broadway before.
posted by hippybear at 8:11 PM on November 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
You see, the entire time, there's been this promise of The American Dream. Anyone can make it in this country. But not everyone does make it, and many who don't make it end up bitter, and each generation that bitterness of not having the dream reach them no matter how much they reach toward it grows.
Toward the end of the second act all the assassins and would-be assassins meet and share their grievances, and ask why they can't share in the prize they were promised. After many protests, they are confronted by the voice of American Optimism that they shout down. Maybe the mailman won the lottery but where's their prize?
Eventually they all come together and sing about how there's Another National Anthem rising in the country.
Listen...The scene after this song dissolves into a room stacked with boxes, maybe filled with books, and a young man in a white t-shirt is there. The assassins all converge on him and sort of bully him into standing at the window and pulling the trigger a few times.
There's another national anthem playing
Not the one you cheer
At the ball park
Where's my prize?...
It's the other national anthem, saying
If you want to hear—
It says
"Bullshit!"...
It says
"Never!"—
It says
"Sorry!"—
Loud and clear—
It says: Listen
To the tune that keeps sounding
In the distance, on the outside
Coming through the ground
To the hearts that go on pounding
To the sound
Getting louder every year—
Listen to the sound...
Take a look around...
We're the other national anthem, folks
The ones that can't get in
To the ball park
Spread the word...
There's another national anthem, folks
For those who never win
For the suckers!
For the pikers!
For the ones who might have been!
Anyway, I'm just putting this here to say, we as a country are obsessed with the notion of assassination and what it can do to our very fragile house of democracy cards, and people were ruminating on these matters for a long time, and unfortunately the tiny seeds that were seen by John Weidman over 30 years ago seem to have truly come home to roost in our current situation. People have been marching to Another National Anthem for years and years even if they've never heard this particular bit of Broadway before.
posted by hippybear at 8:11 PM on November 10, 2023 [13 favorites]
“Why You're Wrong About JFK's Assassination”—Step Back, 10 November 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 8:14 PM on November 10, 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 8:14 PM on November 10, 2023
I remain unconvinced that JFK's skull didn't simply decide at that moment that it was fundamentally unhappy remaining solid and intact.
posted by delfin at 8:48 PM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by delfin at 8:48 PM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
I seem to recall someone having the theory that Jackie was the intended target.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:17 PM on November 10, 2023
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:17 PM on November 10, 2023
a book endorsed by RFK, Jr., Yoko Ono, and Oliver Stone
Thanks for that list of endorsements - I feel like I now know everything I need to know about that book.
posted by Umami Dearest at 9:32 PM on November 10, 2023 [67 favorites]
Thanks for that list of endorsements - I feel like I now know everything I need to know about that book.
posted by Umami Dearest at 9:32 PM on November 10, 2023 [67 favorites]
I don't know who did what but all I need do is look at the Zapruder film to know that the official story is total bullshit.
The shot through his throat, from behind, it's got him reaching with both hands to ... Maybe he just decided to scratch his ears at that exact moment in time?
Then that shot from front right, which blew his head apart -- probably it wasn't a bullet, maybe a really fast, low-flying invisible bird flew through him.
Poor Jackie, watch her scramble onto the back of the limo, to get that big hunk of skull and brains and put it back where it belongs. Maybe she had some special super-glue tucked into her pretty pink hat.
Whoever did it, they were great shots. The throat shot was enough, but that head shot -- wow.
We will never know who. We can all speculate why but they've all got to be dead by now anyways.
That film does it for me. Plus look who was on the Warren Commission. Plus note that it's in Texas, and consider what a great thing it was for Lyndon Johnson.
I'd bet dollars against dimes that the same crew set up his brother, and MLK. We will never know, but that film tells us a lot.
I love that bit by Bill Hicks, where new president elects are taken into a high quality theater, high def film of the murder from every angle, asking "Do you have any questions?"
posted by dancestoblue at 9:41 PM on November 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
The shot through his throat, from behind, it's got him reaching with both hands to ... Maybe he just decided to scratch his ears at that exact moment in time?
Then that shot from front right, which blew his head apart -- probably it wasn't a bullet, maybe a really fast, low-flying invisible bird flew through him.
Poor Jackie, watch her scramble onto the back of the limo, to get that big hunk of skull and brains and put it back where it belongs. Maybe she had some special super-glue tucked into her pretty pink hat.
Whoever did it, they were great shots. The throat shot was enough, but that head shot -- wow.
We will never know who. We can all speculate why but they've all got to be dead by now anyways.
That film does it for me. Plus look who was on the Warren Commission. Plus note that it's in Texas, and consider what a great thing it was for Lyndon Johnson.
I'd bet dollars against dimes that the same crew set up his brother, and MLK. We will never know, but that film tells us a lot.
I love that bit by Bill Hicks, where new president elects are taken into a high quality theater, high def film of the murder from every angle, asking "Do you have any questions?"
posted by dancestoblue at 9:41 PM on November 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Whoever did it, they were great shots.
Video of the story on CBS by Dan Rather, reproducing the shooting with multiple recreational sharpshooters, some hitting once, some twice, one hitting three times.
Oswald's purported shooting was not remarkable at all.
posted by fatbird at 10:20 PM on November 10, 2023 [33 favorites]
Video of the story on CBS by Dan Rather, reproducing the shooting with multiple recreational sharpshooters, some hitting once, some twice, one hitting three times.
Oswald's purported shooting was not remarkable at all.
posted by fatbird at 10:20 PM on November 10, 2023 [33 favorites]
THEY do what THEY want...reconcile yourself to whatever politics or philosophy you think, but...THEY
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:54 PM on November 10, 2023
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 10:54 PM on November 10, 2023
"I'm just a Patsy". all the footage of Oswald in custody is interesting. One vital key is the murder of Tippit.
Tinker, Tailor, Poet, Spy: Tales of Literary Espionage.
"...After work at the London O.S.S., Angleton traveled in the Pearson circle: T. S. Eliot, the Sitwells, Benjamin Britten, Graham Greene, E. M. Forster, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Norman Douglas, Elizabeth Bowen, Compton Mackenzie. He was a frequent dinner guest of H. D. and her companion, Bryher (Winifred Ellerman)."
posted by clavdivs at 11:02 PM on November 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
Tinker, Tailor, Poet, Spy: Tales of Literary Espionage.
"...After work at the London O.S.S., Angleton traveled in the Pearson circle: T. S. Eliot, the Sitwells, Benjamin Britten, Graham Greene, E. M. Forster, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Norman Douglas, Elizabeth Bowen, Compton Mackenzie. He was a frequent dinner guest of H. D. and her companion, Bryher (Winifred Ellerman)."
posted by clavdivs at 11:02 PM on November 10, 2023 [6 favorites]
The Last Show
Lee Harvery Oswald, Jack Ruby, and The Policemen In Hats
November 24, 1963
posted by dancestoblue at 11:57 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Lee Harvery Oswald, Jack Ruby, and The Policemen In Hats
November 24, 1963
posted by dancestoblue at 11:57 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Not to be forgotten in the bibliography of JFK-assasination lit, The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. Along with Libra … look it’s all this narrative vs. that narrative anyway - sure, there’s the ‘real’ story out there somewhere and maybe even documented or here and there tangentially or directly - and jesus, it was almost 60 years ago now. All that’s left is the story of how ‘they’ did it.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:48 AM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by From Bklyn at 12:48 AM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
juv3nal's 'fascinating' twitter thread, except on nitter.net so people who don't have a twitter account can see more than the first tweet
That thread deserves its own post.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:33 AM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
That thread deserves its own post.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:33 AM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
an outpost of impertinence and boundary-testing in an otherwise buttoned-down newsroom
buttoned-up, surely?
Thanks for posting this and all the other links here; I used to think a lot about the Kennedy assassination, but then I read Don DeLillo's Libra and was like, ok, you win, it doesn't matter what you think about this the truth is malleable.
I've always thought the killing of JFK is going to be the centerpiece of a religion some thousand years hence, just like we have all sorts of ["official", "biblical"] documentation of the life & death of Jesus as well as two thousand years of addenda from historians, cranks and conspiracy theorists.
posted by chavenet at 3:23 AM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
buttoned-up, surely?
Thanks for posting this and all the other links here; I used to think a lot about the Kennedy assassination, but then I read Don DeLillo's Libra and was like, ok, you win, it doesn't matter what you think about this the truth is malleable.
I've always thought the killing of JFK is going to be the centerpiece of a religion some thousand years hence, just like we have all sorts of ["official", "biblical"] documentation of the life & death of Jesus as well as two thousand years of addenda from historians, cranks and conspiracy theorists.
posted by chavenet at 3:23 AM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
juv3nal's 'fascinating' twitter thread, except on nitter.net so people who don't have a twitter account can see more than the first tweet
I just finished reading Philby's book a few months ago, and can confirm it's really interesting—tough to put down at times.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:55 AM on November 11, 2023
I just finished reading Philby's book a few months ago, and can confirm it's really interesting—tough to put down at times.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:55 AM on November 11, 2023
buttoned-up, surely?Buttoned-down is a synonym, maybe stemming from the type of shirt collar.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 4:00 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
“That thread deserves its own post.”
It's actually the sort of thing I dislike — all the unattributed quotes and almost no citations. It could all be true! It doesn't contradict what I already knew about the early CIA. But various attributes of the thread made me moderately skeptical, in the non-pejorative, merely cautious sense.
Partly, that's just because of its proximity to the JFK assassination — I have absolutely no tolerance for JFK conspiracy stuff because I've always felt the reverence for JFK/RFK, the mythologizing, and conspiracy-theorizing were a kind of mental illness that afflicted my parents' generation. (I was born almost exactly a year after JFK was killed.) I have irrationally strong feelings about this, and not because my parents themselves cared very much, they didn't, but because it was an inescapable cultural obsession for so long.
And I absolutely fucking hate Stone's movie. In fact, he's kind of the poster child for all the wretched boomers who've been ravaged by this and related maladies.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:17 AM on November 11, 2023 [18 favorites]
It's actually the sort of thing I dislike — all the unattributed quotes and almost no citations. It could all be true! It doesn't contradict what I already knew about the early CIA. But various attributes of the thread made me moderately skeptical, in the non-pejorative, merely cautious sense.
Partly, that's just because of its proximity to the JFK assassination — I have absolutely no tolerance for JFK conspiracy stuff because I've always felt the reverence for JFK/RFK, the mythologizing, and conspiracy-theorizing were a kind of mental illness that afflicted my parents' generation. (I was born almost exactly a year after JFK was killed.) I have irrationally strong feelings about this, and not because my parents themselves cared very much, they didn't, but because it was an inescapable cultural obsession for so long.
And I absolutely fucking hate Stone's movie. In fact, he's kind of the poster child for all the wretched boomers who've been ravaged by this and related maladies.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 4:17 AM on November 11, 2023 [18 favorites]
Buttoned-down is a synonym
What a country!
posted by chavenet at 4:17 AM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
What a country!
posted by chavenet at 4:17 AM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
all the unattributed quotes and almost no citations.
Granted twitter is not the ideal format for it, but there are citations here.
posted by juv3nal at 5:10 AM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Granted twitter is not the ideal format for it, but there are citations here.
posted by juv3nal at 5:10 AM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
(notably, one of which is the book mentioned by computech_apolloniajames upthread.)
posted by juv3nal at 5:14 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by juv3nal at 5:14 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
...because I've always felt the reverence for JFK/RFK, the mythologizing, and conspiracy-theorizing were a kind of mental illness that afflicted my parents' generation.
You have to look at it in sort-of the same way gen-xers/millenials/gen-zers/etc. all pine for one of their own to be in the Oval Office. No more olds. Kennedy was your (and my) parents’ own. They saw themselves in him. Young. Vital. Eyes on a bright future. All snuffed-out in an instant. Fast-forward to today and put, say, President AOC in that car and see if today’s young don’t build their own similar mythologies around the assassination.
The bullets that killed Kennedy killed something in our parents’ generation, too. It crushed many of them. I vividly remember being sent home early from school the day JFK was shot, and finding my mom at home weeping uncontrollably.
I do think, though, that a lot of the conspiracy-mongering might have been avoided had Ruby not so openly and blatantly shot Oswald. That’s the real “WTF is going on?” moment in all of it, for me.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:16 AM on November 11, 2023 [20 favorites]
You have to look at it in sort-of the same way gen-xers/millenials/gen-zers/etc. all pine for one of their own to be in the Oval Office. No more olds. Kennedy was your (and my) parents’ own. They saw themselves in him. Young. Vital. Eyes on a bright future. All snuffed-out in an instant. Fast-forward to today and put, say, President AOC in that car and see if today’s young don’t build their own similar mythologies around the assassination.
The bullets that killed Kennedy killed something in our parents’ generation, too. It crushed many of them. I vividly remember being sent home early from school the day JFK was shot, and finding my mom at home weeping uncontrollably.
I do think, though, that a lot of the conspiracy-mongering might have been avoided had Ruby not so openly and blatantly shot Oswald. That’s the real “WTF is going on?” moment in all of it, for me.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:16 AM on November 11, 2023 [20 favorites]
Wretched boomer here: The list of entities who wanted JFK dead are numerous. The bullet through the throat might have been enough. The assassins wanted to make sure with the last shot and they did. In the light of history, JFK was charismatic but not very effectual. If there is nothing to hide why are so many documents still classified? There is much that we will never know other than he and his brother are gone.
posted by DJZouke at 5:22 AM on November 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 5:22 AM on November 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Would love to read this but got paywalled - is there a way around?
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:42 AM on November 11, 2023
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:42 AM on November 11, 2023
I just finished reading Philby's book...
spycatcher is from a philby contemporary at mi5. author peter wright speculates (and outright accuses someone) on "who was the other soviet mole in mi5?" he had to move to Australia in order to publish, evading the official secrets act.
posted by j_curiouser at 6:15 AM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
spycatcher is from a philby contemporary at mi5. author peter wright speculates (and outright accuses someone) on "who was the other soviet mole in mi5?" he had to move to Australia in order to publish, evading the official secrets act.
posted by j_curiouser at 6:15 AM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Here's an archive.org link that might work for you.
Here's the 1995 WaPo story by Jefferson Morley mentioned in the article (non-paywalled for me).
Here's the 1983 Harper's article by Christopher Lasch (.pdf, subscribers-only).
Here's Morley's 2001 article in the Miami New Times about George Joannides (non-paywalled for me).
Here's Morley's 2022 JFK Facts Substack essay (paid, free trial available).
While I think that the full story of JFK's killing is probably unknowable (and the NYMag headline writer is a little loose with the word 'proved' for my tastes), I remain hopeful that this story will not somehow lead to another new version of 'We Didn't Start the Fire.'
posted by box at 6:17 AM on November 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
Here's the 1995 WaPo story by Jefferson Morley mentioned in the article (non-paywalled for me).
Here's the 1983 Harper's article by Christopher Lasch (.pdf, subscribers-only).
Here's Morley's 2001 article in the Miami New Times about George Joannides (non-paywalled for me).
Here's Morley's 2022 JFK Facts Substack essay (paid, free trial available).
While I think that the full story of JFK's killing is probably unknowable (and the NYMag headline writer is a little loose with the word 'proved' for my tastes), I remain hopeful that this story will not somehow lead to another new version of 'We Didn't Start the Fire.'
posted by box at 6:17 AM on November 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
Oswald's purported shooting was not remarkable at all
If you're in Dallas, you can go to the Sixth Floor Museum in the book suppository and look down from the reconstructed sniper's nest to the markings on the pavement below. If you do, I think many of you will have the same atavistic "Shit, I coulda done that" thought that both I and biscotti did.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:22 AM on November 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
If you're in Dallas, you can go to the Sixth Floor Museum in the book suppository and look down from the reconstructed sniper's nest to the markings on the pavement below. If you do, I think many of you will have the same atavistic "Shit, I coulda done that" thought that both I and biscotti did.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:22 AM on November 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
Thanks for that list of endorsements - I feel like I now know everything I need to know about that book.
You beat me to the punch, but yeah. These are . . . not exactly adding to the credibility of the work.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:48 AM on November 11, 2023
You beat me to the punch, but yeah. These are . . . not exactly adding to the credibility of the work.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:48 AM on November 11, 2023
book suppositoryI think that might add an extra level of challenge to the shot.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 7:09 AM on November 11, 2023 [36 favorites]
Whoever did it, they were great shots.
Yeah, this is just wrong. From Oswald's position, it was about 70 yards with a scoped rifle. The car was moving in a mostly straight line away from Oswald, and slowly. People with deer hunting-type skills could hit this shot all day long; it is not super-sniper stuff. Gerald Posner's book Case Closed convinced me that Oswald was the lone shooter. I am open to conspiracy stuff about how and why Oswald came to his decision to fire those shots -- which perhaps makes these still-withheld files about the CIA/Oswald relationship important.
However, a big Posner point is that Oswald tried to kill retired general Edwin Walker in April 1963. I don't think this is much disputed - Oswald wrote a note about it to his wife and talked to friends about it. So, if Oswald is this CIA conspirator assigned to kill the president, why is he taking a shot at a somewhat random right-wing former general seven months earlier? It would be similar to trying to assassinate someone like Mike Flynn today. It's hard to explain except by concluding that Oswald was just bananas and wanted to make a big gesture by shooting someone prominent. I know you can always say "that's what they want you to think," but, from an Occam's Razor perspective, it's hard to square the Walker episode with a conspiracy.
posted by Mid at 7:38 AM on November 11, 2023 [22 favorites]
Yeah, this is just wrong. From Oswald's position, it was about 70 yards with a scoped rifle. The car was moving in a mostly straight line away from Oswald, and slowly. People with deer hunting-type skills could hit this shot all day long; it is not super-sniper stuff. Gerald Posner's book Case Closed convinced me that Oswald was the lone shooter. I am open to conspiracy stuff about how and why Oswald came to his decision to fire those shots -- which perhaps makes these still-withheld files about the CIA/Oswald relationship important.
However, a big Posner point is that Oswald tried to kill retired general Edwin Walker in April 1963. I don't think this is much disputed - Oswald wrote a note about it to his wife and talked to friends about it. So, if Oswald is this CIA conspirator assigned to kill the president, why is he taking a shot at a somewhat random right-wing former general seven months earlier? It would be similar to trying to assassinate someone like Mike Flynn today. It's hard to explain except by concluding that Oswald was just bananas and wanted to make a big gesture by shooting someone prominent. I know you can always say "that's what they want you to think," but, from an Occam's Razor perspective, it's hard to square the Walker episode with a conspiracy.
posted by Mid at 7:38 AM on November 11, 2023 [22 favorites]
When I was younger I spent several years deep into this rabbit hole, and now I'm older and more jaded, I'm in the "We'll never know" corner. While that Nitter thread does give us the sources, it reminds me of too many usenet posts that relied on volume to look impressive.
The bigger problem is that once you set off into the world of confidential information - whether later published, leaked, stolen, is that you never really know if you can rely on what you're seeing. Any of it could be faked, or selectively edited, or superseded by a later version. You're then essentially having to choose what you believe, which means this all becomes about competing faiths rather than anything more solid. And this is more than just the stoned undergraduate "how do we really know anything, man?" This is field where people actively lie, deceive, produce fakes and forgeries.
Occam's razor takes me to the idea that America is, for reasons, awash with guns; that Oswald did at least master basic rifle skills in the Marines; that the spot on the 6th floor of the depository does offer a reasonable shot. Beyond that... it does matter, but it isn't worth driving yourself mad over. Second shooter? Maybe. Oswald acting alone? Probably.
One thing that changed my mind was Pynchon's V. One lesson you can take from that is that people are quite capable of doing terrible things that lead to countless deaths just because we are selfish humans. It's comforting to think there's a shadowy power steering all this. There might be, but there doesn't have to be: human nature is enough.
Cavities in the teeth occur for good reason, Eigenvalue reflected. But even if there are several per tooth, there's no conscious organization there against the life of the pulp, no conspiracy. Yet we have men like Stencil, who must go about grouping the world's random caries into cabals.
posted by YoungStencil at 7:47 AM on November 11, 2023 [15 favorites]
The bigger problem is that once you set off into the world of confidential information - whether later published, leaked, stolen, is that you never really know if you can rely on what you're seeing. Any of it could be faked, or selectively edited, or superseded by a later version. You're then essentially having to choose what you believe, which means this all becomes about competing faiths rather than anything more solid. And this is more than just the stoned undergraduate "how do we really know anything, man?" This is field where people actively lie, deceive, produce fakes and forgeries.
Occam's razor takes me to the idea that America is, for reasons, awash with guns; that Oswald did at least master basic rifle skills in the Marines; that the spot on the 6th floor of the depository does offer a reasonable shot. Beyond that... it does matter, but it isn't worth driving yourself mad over. Second shooter? Maybe. Oswald acting alone? Probably.
One thing that changed my mind was Pynchon's V. One lesson you can take from that is that people are quite capable of doing terrible things that lead to countless deaths just because we are selfish humans. It's comforting to think there's a shadowy power steering all this. There might be, but there doesn't have to be: human nature is enough.
Cavities in the teeth occur for good reason, Eigenvalue reflected. But even if there are several per tooth, there's no conscious organization there against the life of the pulp, no conspiracy. Yet we have men like Stencil, who must go about grouping the world's random caries into cabals.
posted by YoungStencil at 7:47 AM on November 11, 2023 [15 favorites]
. If you do, I think many of you will have the same atavistic "Shit, I coulda done that" thought that both I and biscotti did.
Yes, the shot is up a hill and the angle makes it look farther than it is, until you see it in person.
There's actually a video game that simulates the event - you can see he had better opportunities and probably hesitated before shooting. The youtube upload guy in the simulation shot him on the first attempt. Warning - the graphics are graphic and the situation is awful.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Yes, the shot is up a hill and the angle makes it look farther than it is, until you see it in person.
There's actually a video game that simulates the event - you can see he had better opportunities and probably hesitated before shooting. The youtube upload guy in the simulation shot him on the first attempt. Warning - the graphics are graphic and the situation is awful.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
You have to look at it in sort-of the same way gen-xers/millenials/gen-zers/etc. all pine for one of their own to be in the Oval Office. No more olds. Kennedy was your (and my) parents’ own.
Genuine question: is this true? Kennedy was born in 1917, he decidedly wasn't a boomer. I'm an older millenial with boomer parents and while my mom has distinct memories of the Kennedy assassination, despite being British, I don't think my dad has ever mentioned Kennedy and my dad grew up Catholic enough that a Catholic president would have been a big deal (though Chicago's ethnic divisions maybe meant my dad didn't see Kennedy as reflecting him).
Or are you thinking it's more like me and Obama, where the first ballot I cast was to elect Obama to the Senate and his election as president was deeply surreal (well, Jesse Jackson crying in Grant Park is the enduring memory of 2008 for me). Even then, only the oldest boomers could have voted for Kennedy.
posted by hoyland at 8:44 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Genuine question: is this true? Kennedy was born in 1917, he decidedly wasn't a boomer. I'm an older millenial with boomer parents and while my mom has distinct memories of the Kennedy assassination, despite being British, I don't think my dad has ever mentioned Kennedy and my dad grew up Catholic enough that a Catholic president would have been a big deal (though Chicago's ethnic divisions maybe meant my dad didn't see Kennedy as reflecting him).
Or are you thinking it's more like me and Obama, where the first ballot I cast was to elect Obama to the Senate and his election as president was deeply surreal (well, Jesse Jackson crying in Grant Park is the enduring memory of 2008 for me). Even then, only the oldest boomers could have voted for Kennedy.
posted by hoyland at 8:44 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
yes, more like Obama, I'd say. JFK definitely spoke to a younger, more progressive America. He didn't wear a hat -- that kind of thing. Or put it this way, my grandfather (old school Catholic, conservative) HATED JFK even if he was Catholic, whereas my mom (born in 1931) embraced him fully. One of my earliest memories is being four years old, playing with a red truck on the kitchen floor when the news came on the radio that JFK had been shot. My mom dropped a pan, sat down and broke into tears like she herself had taken a bullet.
posted by philip-random at 9:05 AM on November 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 9:05 AM on November 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
Kennedy's inaugural address has that line about how the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans (which he goes on to identify as 'born in this century,' so...)
posted by box at 9:07 AM on November 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by box at 9:07 AM on November 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
Oswald's purported shooting was not remarkable at allI actually did exactly this, down to having that exact thought.
If you're in Dallas, you can go to the Sixth Floor Museum in the book suppository and look down from the reconstructed sniper's nest to the markings on the pavement below. If you do, I think many of you will have the same atavistic "Shit, I coulda done that" thought that both I and biscotti did.
I also downloaded and played a game that put you in Oswald's position and let you try to kill JFK. Super tasteless, but also a very good demonstration that anyone with a reasonable grasp of shooting with a rifle could have done it as well.
posted by fatbird at 9:58 AM on November 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I had a pretty good bout of JFK Fever in the late 80s/early 90s, so I can’t catch it again.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:02 AM on November 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:02 AM on November 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
I actually did exactly this, down to having that exact thought.
predatorhandclasp.gif
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:07 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
predatorhandclasp.gif
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:07 AM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
The bigger problem is that once you set off into the world of confidential information - whether later published, leaked, stolen, is that you never really know if you can rely on what you're seeing. Any of it could be faked, or selectively edited, or superseded by a later version. You're then essentially having to choose what you believe, which means this all becomes about competing faiths rather than anything more solid. And this is more than just the stoned undergraduate "how do we really know anything, man?" This is field where people actively lie, deceive, produce fakes and forgeries.
This reminded me of "Dance of the Gull Catchers," Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's epilogue to their book From Hell about the Jack the Ripper murders; the epilogue concerns itself with the history and evolution of JtR theories, and how they were in many ways the JFK conspiracies of their day (particularly the ones that involve the British royal family's alleged role in them, as From Hell does). After jokingly suggesting that JtR may have been an alien ("Soon, somebody will notice the disturbing similarities between the Ripper crimes and recent cattle mutilations, from which they will draw the only sensible conclusion"), Moore compares the growing body of potential evidence and resulting theories to a Koch snowflake, a fractal figure that encloses a finite area within an infinite boundary. The more detail that's added, the less clear it becomes. The same with JFK; eventually, who wasn't on the grassy knoll? (I was in utero at the time, but my mother is unfortunately deceased so I can't be 100% sure about myself.)
So people pick and choose what to include and exclude according to their own biases. Someone (can't remember who) said that Jim Garrison's theory struck them as someone overreacting to finding out that there was a more-or-less openly gay man as an established member of New Orleans high society (Clay Shaw, whose trial forms the center of Oliver Stone's JFK); Stone's movie, IIRC, excludes the witness who "said under cross-examination that he fingerprinted his daughter each time she came home from school to make sure that a spy hadn’t taken her identity." But, if you're a serious assassination buff, you can just Gish-gallop to something else and go, "Explain that." If you're not facing a debunker who's equally invested, eventually you'll hit something. Garrison wrote three books about the assassination after he lost Shaw's trial.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:28 AM on November 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
This reminded me of "Dance of the Gull Catchers," Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's epilogue to their book From Hell about the Jack the Ripper murders; the epilogue concerns itself with the history and evolution of JtR theories, and how they were in many ways the JFK conspiracies of their day (particularly the ones that involve the British royal family's alleged role in them, as From Hell does). After jokingly suggesting that JtR may have been an alien ("Soon, somebody will notice the disturbing similarities between the Ripper crimes and recent cattle mutilations, from which they will draw the only sensible conclusion"), Moore compares the growing body of potential evidence and resulting theories to a Koch snowflake, a fractal figure that encloses a finite area within an infinite boundary. The more detail that's added, the less clear it becomes. The same with JFK; eventually, who wasn't on the grassy knoll? (I was in utero at the time, but my mother is unfortunately deceased so I can't be 100% sure about myself.)
So people pick and choose what to include and exclude according to their own biases. Someone (can't remember who) said that Jim Garrison's theory struck them as someone overreacting to finding out that there was a more-or-less openly gay man as an established member of New Orleans high society (Clay Shaw, whose trial forms the center of Oliver Stone's JFK); Stone's movie, IIRC, excludes the witness who "said under cross-examination that he fingerprinted his daughter each time she came home from school to make sure that a spy hadn’t taken her identity." But, if you're a serious assassination buff, you can just Gish-gallop to something else and go, "Explain that." If you're not facing a debunker who's equally invested, eventually you'll hit something. Garrison wrote three books about the assassination after he lost Shaw's trial.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:28 AM on November 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
my mom is one of the oldest boomers and she was 17 when JFK was killed. she does remember it well but I've never felt like it had some deep indelible mark on my parents (dad was 20 at the time, he is not a boomer)
posted by supermedusa at 10:33 AM on November 11, 2023
posted by supermedusa at 10:33 AM on November 11, 2023
I don't believe Jack Ruby acted alone.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:38 AM on November 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:38 AM on November 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
One man knew the truth about the JFK assassination, and that man was the Realist's Paul Krassner.
posted by delfin at 10:43 AM on November 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by delfin at 10:43 AM on November 11, 2023 [5 favorites]
The NYMag article is just re-telling Jefferson Morley's existing work, right? My main takeaways are:
What I don't understand is the leap from "the CIA was interested in this guy and lied about it" to "this guy was a CIA operative" to "the assassination was a CIA conspiracy." They were aware of/in contact with Oswald, and maybe interested in using him, as part of their illegal domestic operations just a few months before the assassination. Of course a spy agency is gonna cover that up. It doesn't mean they killed JFK.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:51 AM on November 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
- Oswald had contact with the DRE, an anti-Castro group, in New Orleans in mid-1963.
- The DRE was a CIA operation, so the CIA was certainly aware of that contact.
- Fairly high-level CIA folks covered up that knowledge, not just to the Warren Commission, but to their own agents in Mexico City when Oswald visited the Cuban embassy there, which suggests some folks in the CIA had an operational interest in Oswald in mid-1963.
- The CIA liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, George Joannides, was the very same agent who had been in charge of DRE operations in 1963, and he deliberately hid all this stuff from the committee.
What I don't understand is the leap from "the CIA was interested in this guy and lied about it" to "this guy was a CIA operative" to "the assassination was a CIA conspiracy." They were aware of/in contact with Oswald, and maybe interested in using him, as part of their illegal domestic operations just a few months before the assassination. Of course a spy agency is gonna cover that up. It doesn't mean they killed JFK.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:51 AM on November 11, 2023 [10 favorites]
I’m pretty sure it was Christopher Marlowe that did it.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 11:25 AM on November 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 11:25 AM on November 11, 2023 [12 favorites]
James Ellroy's take was good reading.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:35 AM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:35 AM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
James Ellroy's take was good reading.
brutal but good.
SPOILER ALERT: his basic line was that there was a conspiracy which involved organized crime and various other concerns but its prime driver was acting mostly from a complex mix of humiliation and broken heart. He was a mob guy (albeit politically connected) but he genuinely LOVED Kennedy in a man-crush sort of way and, to some degree, would have died for him had Kennedy not at some point brushed him off as "not of my station". At least, that's how I remember it -- I read the book a long time ago.
posted by philip-random at 12:04 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
brutal but good.
SPOILER ALERT: his basic line was that there was a conspiracy which involved organized crime and various other concerns but its prime driver was acting mostly from a complex mix of humiliation and broken heart. He was a mob guy (albeit politically connected) but he genuinely LOVED Kennedy in a man-crush sort of way and, to some degree, would have died for him had Kennedy not at some point brushed him off as "not of my station". At least, that's how I remember it -- I read the book a long time ago.
posted by philip-random at 12:04 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hal Holbrook acted alone.
posted by pracowity at 12:05 PM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 12:05 PM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Jack Kirby Draws Jack Ruby for Esquire magazine, 1967.
posted by Catblack at 12:34 PM on November 11, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Catblack at 12:34 PM on November 11, 2023 [9 favorites]
George de Mohrenschildt is my favorite JFK assassination bit player. What did that dude know?
posted by St. Oops at 12:35 PM on November 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by St. Oops at 12:35 PM on November 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was around 10 when JFK was assassinated and it left a huge impression on me. We were let go early from school and I came home to find my mother (a staunch republican) crying. Later, there was someone who came to speak at where I was in college who went through the Zapruder film in slow motion and made it pretty clear to me that the Warren commission explanation was bullshit. This was among the first episodes that made me distrust the US government and in particular the CIA.
posted by bluesky43 at 2:08 PM on November 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by bluesky43 at 2:08 PM on November 11, 2023 [6 favorites]
RFK, Jr., Yoko Ono, and Oliver Stone
Well, since you sweetened the pot
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:34 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well, since you sweetened the pot
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:34 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
In _Illuminatus!_, a semi-comedy of conspiracy theories from the 70s, there was a man who had file cabinets of clippings about the JFK assassination. He kept hoping he'd find the one fact that would make it all make sense. He didn't realize that half of his "information" was people lying to cover their asses.
I think it was RA Wilson (one of the authors) who said that JKF's assassination was proof of discordianism that the most famous man in the world was killed on television, and no one could figure out what really happened.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:40 PM on November 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
I think it was RA Wilson (one of the authors) who said that JKF's assassination was proof of discordianism that the most famous man in the world was killed on television, and no one could figure out what really happened.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:40 PM on November 11, 2023 [8 favorites]
Ellroy has Carlos Marcello and the CIA conspiring to do it, mainly because JFK “betrayed” Cuba, where the mob had huge interests in the casinos and the CIA wanted to crush communists. Also, JFK had sicced RFK on the mob, when the mob had helped JFK get elected through voter fraud in West Virginia and elsewhere (according to Ellroy). Phillip, you’re thinking of Ward Littell and Kemper Boyd, who are basically FBI guys who are swept up in the plot, but not decision makers.
posted by Mid at 3:55 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Mid at 3:55 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
On the side question about boomers and JFK, JFK was more the president of the "Greatest Generation" (born 1901 - 1924), of which he was a member, and of the "Silent Generation" (born 1925-1946). In my opinion, for boomers, the heartbreaking lost president who might have been was more Bobby Kennedy/RFK Sr. (born 1925) ... who doubtless is rolling over in his grave at what his son is up to now btw. As a later boomer, one of my earlier childhood memories is watching the JFK funeral on TV, but I was too young to really feel it the way my Greatest Generation parents did.
posted by gudrun at 3:59 PM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by gudrun at 3:59 PM on November 11, 2023 [4 favorites]
My favorite JFK assassination book is Best Evidence by David Lifton. He has everyone in on the plot: the Dallas police, the FBI, the Secret Service, the CIA, and Robert and Jackie Kennedy. He also has a crack team of forensic surgeons on board Air Force One altering Kennedy's body while en route from Parkland Memorial to Bethesda Naval Hospital where the autopsy was performed.
Here's what's great about this book. After chapters describing in detail how everyone played their role in creating the "lone wolf" scenario, Lifton finally addresses the question that's been on the reader's mind from the start: why go to all this trouble? I mean, if you've got the FBI, the CIA and the Secret Service in your pocket, you pretty much run the Executive already, so why not just shove Kennedy down the stairs. That, announces Lifton in the final chapter, is the subject of my next book.
And that's what's so great. Best Evidence is a pure conspiracy, freed from the constraints of motivation and logic. Like art, it's conspiracy for its own sake.
posted by SPrintF at 4:01 PM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
Here's what's great about this book. After chapters describing in detail how everyone played their role in creating the "lone wolf" scenario, Lifton finally addresses the question that's been on the reader's mind from the start: why go to all this trouble? I mean, if you've got the FBI, the CIA and the Secret Service in your pocket, you pretty much run the Executive already, so why not just shove Kennedy down the stairs. That, announces Lifton in the final chapter, is the subject of my next book.
And that's what's so great. Best Evidence is a pure conspiracy, freed from the constraints of motivation and logic. Like art, it's conspiracy for its own sake.
posted by SPrintF at 4:01 PM on November 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
OMG, what if we all killed Kennedy?
posted by chromecow at 5:03 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by chromecow at 5:03 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
OMG, what if we all killed Kennedy?
"I shouted out
'Who killed the Kennedys?'
When after all
It was you and me."
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:26 PM on November 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
"I shouted out
'Who killed the Kennedys?'
When after all
It was you and me."
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:26 PM on November 11, 2023 [13 favorites]
Remember remember the guns of November
A 4 part examination of the event. Radio broadcasts and written transcripts. by Dave Emory .
posted by hortense at 5:42 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
A 4 part examination of the event. Radio broadcasts and written transcripts. by Dave Emory .
posted by hortense at 5:42 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
Wait wait wait.
What if the South Park character's name has been Kennedy this entire time, and he was just mumbling so we didn't understand? And so we've really just been seeing Kennedy killed over and over and over for decades?
posted by hippybear at 6:00 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
What if the South Park character's name has been Kennedy this entire time, and he was just mumbling so we didn't understand? And so we've really just been seeing Kennedy killed over and over and over for decades?
posted by hippybear at 6:00 PM on November 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
back and to the left
posted by clavdivs at 9:12 PM on November 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 9:12 PM on November 11, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ward Littell
a more literal name for a tragic little man could not be invented for pulp fiction
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:16 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
a more literal name for a tragic little man could not be invented for pulp fiction
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:16 AM on November 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Then there was Dorothy Kilgallen. Thankfully, The Beatles released "She Loves You" on September 16, 1963. After a somber 1963 Thanksgiving, The Beatles were a balm for the ears and heart.
posted by DJZouke at 5:51 AM on November 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by DJZouke at 5:51 AM on November 12, 2023 [3 favorites]
However, a big Posner point is that Oswald tried to kill retired general Edwin Walker in April 1963. I don't think this is much disputed - Oswald wrote a note about it to his wife and talked to friends about it. So, if Oswald is this CIA conspirator assigned to kill the president, why is he taking a shot at a somewhat random right-wing former general seven months earlier? It would be similar to trying to assassinate someone like Mike Flynn today. It's hard to explain except by concluding that Oswald was just bananas and wanted to make a big gesture by shooting someone prominent. I know you can always say "that's what they want you to think," but, from an Occam's Razor perspective, it's hard to square the Walker episode with a conspiracy.
Sean Munger on YouTube has a couple long form videos (Part 1, Part 2) that go into the Walker stuff and really dig into demystifying some of the pop culture and conspiracy theory tellings of the assassination and the things those tellings leave out that don't square with the conclusions they're trying to draw. Very interesting stuff! Really paints a picture of Oswald as a guy with some serious Main Character Syndrome that, to me, is motive enough, especially since he tried this before with Walker.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:53 AM on November 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Sean Munger on YouTube has a couple long form videos (Part 1, Part 2) that go into the Walker stuff and really dig into demystifying some of the pop culture and conspiracy theory tellings of the assassination and the things those tellings leave out that don't square with the conclusions they're trying to draw. Very interesting stuff! Really paints a picture of Oswald as a guy with some serious Main Character Syndrome that, to me, is motive enough, especially since he tried this before with Walker.
posted by jason_steakums at 6:53 AM on November 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
I seem to recall someone having the theory that Jackie was the intended target.
That was an episode of Quantum Leap.
posted by Billiken at 12:24 PM on November 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
That was an episode of Quantum Leap.
posted by Billiken at 12:24 PM on November 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Some people seem to believe that the motion of Kennedy’s head cannot be explained by the Oswald acted alone explanation. Where can I read discussions of this issue?
posted by Jackson at 4:26 PM on November 12, 2023
posted by Jackson at 4:26 PM on November 12, 2023
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/cold-case-jfk/
This episode does a lot to articulate the modern Oswald-alone case, going into the motion of Kennedy's head, the magic bullet path, etc. Short version: bullets hitting contained volumes of soft matter in a harder shell are propelled backwards by the force of the soft matter explosively exiting the opposite side the shot entered. They demonstrate on a pumpkin.
I've never seen an articulated case for "snapped backwards therefore hit from the the front." It just seems to appeal to our incorrect intuitions about the effect of bullet strikes.
posted by fatbird at 6:35 PM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
This episode does a lot to articulate the modern Oswald-alone case, going into the motion of Kennedy's head, the magic bullet path, etc. Short version: bullets hitting contained volumes of soft matter in a harder shell are propelled backwards by the force of the soft matter explosively exiting the opposite side the shot entered. They demonstrate on a pumpkin.
I've never seen an articulated case for "snapped backwards therefore hit from the the front." It just seems to appeal to our incorrect intuitions about the effect of bullet strikes.
posted by fatbird at 6:35 PM on November 12, 2023 [4 favorites]
Posner has some discussion of the head movement and says: (1) JFK's head moves forward first, but it is quick and you can't see it unless you slow the Zapruder film; (2) JFK was wearing a back brace, which may have prevented him from moving forward more (the expected motion); 3) there can be a neuromuscular spasm when someone suffers a large brain injury; and (4) the "jet effect,' which is what fatbird describes.
posted by Mid at 7:01 PM on November 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Mid at 7:01 PM on November 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's a mistake to see JFK as a hero primarily of the Boomer generation. After all, many of us were children (I was in sixth grade) at the time of his assassination. I too had the experience of dashing home when we were let out of school early to tell my mother and finding her weeping in the living room. She was born in 1929. She wrote a poem about him afteward. The Catholoic neightbor woman, in her 50s, was weeping, too, crying for the first Catholic president.
JFK was of a new generation who reflected many of the young soldiers from World War II and their spouses. (Eisenhower thought him too young and lightweight to be president.) But JFK, right or wrong, said positive things and made people like my parents and us kids think all things were possible--we were going to the moon! Polio was being vanquished! America was on the ascendancy. All was right with the world, it seemed. Vietnam merited barely a thought. More assassinations and societal convulsions were just a few years away.
People need heroes, preferably someone they identify with, by age or cause. The death of Princess Diana and the response of younger people around the world reminded me a bit of how people acted after JFK's murder. Her legend grew, as did his.
posted by etaoin at 7:01 PM on November 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
JFK was of a new generation who reflected many of the young soldiers from World War II and their spouses. (Eisenhower thought him too young and lightweight to be president.) But JFK, right or wrong, said positive things and made people like my parents and us kids think all things were possible--we were going to the moon! Polio was being vanquished! America was on the ascendancy. All was right with the world, it seemed. Vietnam merited barely a thought. More assassinations and societal convulsions were just a few years away.
People need heroes, preferably someone they identify with, by age or cause. The death of Princess Diana and the response of younger people around the world reminded me a bit of how people acted after JFK's murder. Her legend grew, as did his.
posted by etaoin at 7:01 PM on November 12, 2023 [6 favorites]
Even then, only the oldest boomers could have voted for Kennedy.
'Boomers' born in 1939, I suppose.
More like parents of Boomers, born in the 20's and 30's, looking for someone born in their century.
I also was in 6th grade in '63. My teacher burst into tears and left the room. In some ways that was more traumatic to me than the president being killed. I was a paperboy at the time and the Evening News[paper, that had been printed much earlier in the day] had a headline suggesting that Kennedy was going to drop Johnson off the ticket in '64. Well, not now...
I am still believing in the lone gunman idea, but I can certainly see why the CIA wanted to hide the fact that he had worked for them. I don't think it was a CIA plot.
Decades ago, I heard some wag on TV saying it was ridiculous to assume the CIA did it, because the assassination was successful.
posted by MtDewd at 8:36 AM on November 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
'Boomers' born in 1939, I suppose.
More like parents of Boomers, born in the 20's and 30's, looking for someone born in their century.
I also was in 6th grade in '63. My teacher burst into tears and left the room. In some ways that was more traumatic to me than the president being killed. I was a paperboy at the time and the Evening News[paper, that had been printed much earlier in the day] had a headline suggesting that Kennedy was going to drop Johnson off the ticket in '64. Well, not now...
I am still believing in the lone gunman idea, but I can certainly see why the CIA wanted to hide the fact that he had worked for them. I don't think it was a CIA plot.
Decades ago, I heard some wag on TV saying it was ridiculous to assume the CIA did it, because the assassination was successful.
posted by MtDewd at 8:36 AM on November 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
I was born in 1964, which some people include within the boomer generation, but I have never felt "boomer" and have always felt very strongly gen-x. My parents were young parents, born in 1943 and 1946, and they always seemed very boomer to me, even if they were born right at the cusp. Thus, I attributed the JFK obsession to boomers.
My parents themselves weren't particularly fond of Kennedy, both having grown up in Republican families. Not that they disliked him. But when I was growing up, the flame of the JFK obsession was carried by the boomers in particular, Oliver Stone being a prime example. I grew up with people talking about how everything in the 60s would have been better if he'd not been shot. So it really seems a boomer obsession to me.
My mom had just started her senior year in high school when he was shot — she'd be pregnant with me by the following April. My dad was a bit older. Interestingly, neither seem to have stories about learning of the assassination, not that I recall, and I remember everyone's personal stories. I wonder why that is.
Clinton was my generation's "young president", which somehow seems bleakly appropriate.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:30 AM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
My parents themselves weren't particularly fond of Kennedy, both having grown up in Republican families. Not that they disliked him. But when I was growing up, the flame of the JFK obsession was carried by the boomers in particular, Oliver Stone being a prime example. I grew up with people talking about how everything in the 60s would have been better if he'd not been shot. So it really seems a boomer obsession to me.
My mom had just started her senior year in high school when he was shot — she'd be pregnant with me by the following April. My dad was a bit older. Interestingly, neither seem to have stories about learning of the assassination, not that I recall, and I remember everyone's personal stories. I wonder why that is.
Clinton was my generation's "young president", which somehow seems bleakly appropriate.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 2:30 AM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
“Earl Warren, born in the 19th century, died trusting in the good faith of men such as Helms, Angleton, and Dulles and of institutions such as theirs.
“To say now that these people, as well as the Commission, suppressed, neglected to unearth, or overlooked evidence of a conspiracy would be an indictment of the entire government of the United States,” he wrote in his memoirs. “It would mean the whole structure was absolutely corrupt from top to bottom.”
Warren evidently found the idea of a plot of any sort too monstrous to contemplate. Dulles, of all people, had once tried to make him understand that the world wasn’t quite as honest as he thought. The proof was there, if only one could see it.” (—Last paragraph of the linked New York Magazine’s Intelligencer piece.)
Oh Earl Warren, you sweet summer child.
Time for someone to make a hot new film about Angleton and Joannides.
What’s wildest to me is that Trump and Biden both fully agreed to continue to keep the information sealed. I find that kinda unfathomable for whatever reason.
posted by edithkeeler at 7:29 AM on November 16, 2023
“To say now that these people, as well as the Commission, suppressed, neglected to unearth, or overlooked evidence of a conspiracy would be an indictment of the entire government of the United States,” he wrote in his memoirs. “It would mean the whole structure was absolutely corrupt from top to bottom.”
Warren evidently found the idea of a plot of any sort too monstrous to contemplate. Dulles, of all people, had once tried to make him understand that the world wasn’t quite as honest as he thought. The proof was there, if only one could see it.” (—Last paragraph of the linked New York Magazine’s Intelligencer piece.)
Oh Earl Warren, you sweet summer child.
Time for someone to make a hot new film about Angleton and Joannides.
What’s wildest to me is that Trump and Biden both fully agreed to continue to keep the information sealed. I find that kinda unfathomable for whatever reason.
posted by edithkeeler at 7:29 AM on November 16, 2023
Footnote: I don't believe in this generational labelling stuff. I for one as a later boomer do not have much in common with the early cohort boomers. My life experience was very different from early boomers like Bill and Hilary Clinton. Bill was technically born in the last year of the "Silent Generation" anyway, and Hilary in the first year of the boomer generation. I was born some ten years after Hilary. Coming of age in the 1970s was a totally different experience for me than her coming of age in the 60s. The Clintons also were too conservative for me, since I'm much more progressive than they ever were. I voted for Bill Clinton, but he was not "my" president. Oliver Stone is also technically not a boomer, having been born in 1946, the last year of the "Silent Generation" cohort.
I believe in Democracy with a capital D, and in presidents to lead one, but not in any particular President. I also personally never idolized any president on general principles. Heck, Lincoln was amazing but also flawed. His thinking evolved over time at least. I guess I admire presidents like him the most because they are capable of growing in the role and changing their views. Also ... the Gettysburg address.
JFK, for various reasons, including the Bay of Pigs debacle, is certainly not someone I idolize. I'm certainly fonder of him than Eisenhower as a president of course. Since my father worked for the government, I also knew the more complicated backstory on the Cuban Missile Crisis well before the general public, due to my father being somewhat involved in the potential planning for getting the American missiles out of Turkey.
What I really do regret as a boomer who very much opposed the Vietnam war is that I believe on balance JFK might have come to be more conservative about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam than LBJ. So, in that sense, I'm sad for the "what might have been" with JFK, as opposed to what happened with LBJ and Nixon and Vietnam. My mother's first cousin was a doctor who served in Vietnam, so I had some sense as a kid what the war meant in actual human casualties, even aside from it being on the nightly news every day.
As I said previously though, the assassination that hit me right in the gut was RFK. Actually, it is really hard to describe how horrific it was that first Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968 and then RFK was killed June 6, 1968. Within 2 months so much promise was wiped off the map. Then Nixon was elected President later that year. I was still in middle school but I can't even begin to express how much despair I felt in 1968. (How people felt about Trump being elected or god forbid, being elected again, probably is the closest analogy.)
posted by gudrun at 8:51 AM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
I believe in Democracy with a capital D, and in presidents to lead one, but not in any particular President. I also personally never idolized any president on general principles. Heck, Lincoln was amazing but also flawed. His thinking evolved over time at least. I guess I admire presidents like him the most because they are capable of growing in the role and changing their views. Also ... the Gettysburg address.
JFK, for various reasons, including the Bay of Pigs debacle, is certainly not someone I idolize. I'm certainly fonder of him than Eisenhower as a president of course. Since my father worked for the government, I also knew the more complicated backstory on the Cuban Missile Crisis well before the general public, due to my father being somewhat involved in the potential planning for getting the American missiles out of Turkey.
What I really do regret as a boomer who very much opposed the Vietnam war is that I believe on balance JFK might have come to be more conservative about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam than LBJ. So, in that sense, I'm sad for the "what might have been" with JFK, as opposed to what happened with LBJ and Nixon and Vietnam. My mother's first cousin was a doctor who served in Vietnam, so I had some sense as a kid what the war meant in actual human casualties, even aside from it being on the nightly news every day.
As I said previously though, the assassination that hit me right in the gut was RFK. Actually, it is really hard to describe how horrific it was that first Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968 and then RFK was killed June 6, 1968. Within 2 months so much promise was wiped off the map. Then Nixon was elected President later that year. I was still in middle school but I can't even begin to express how much despair I felt in 1968. (How people felt about Trump being elected or god forbid, being elected again, probably is the closest analogy.)
posted by gudrun at 8:51 AM on November 16, 2023 [4 favorites]
What’s wildest to me is that Trump and Biden both fully agreed to continue to keep the information sealed. I find that kinda unfathomable for whatever reason.
When a voice over a hidden Oval Office speaker declares, "We did it once; we can do it again," you listen to it.
posted by delfin at 3:07 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
When a voice over a hidden Oval Office speaker declares, "We did it once; we can do it again," you listen to it.
posted by delfin at 3:07 PM on November 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Time for someone to make a hot new film about Angleton and Joannides
oh.yeah.
Shadows in the Square Dance
INT. SOVIET EMBASSY - NIGHT
We enter a grand ballroom at the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. The room is adorned with Soviet flags and adorned with twinkling lights. Couples twirl on the dance floor to the lively tunes of a square dance caller.
JAMES JESUS ANGLETON, a suave and enigmatic CIA counterintelligence chief, sips on a drink, scanning the room with his piercing eyes. He's wearing a sharp suit and looks as if he's analyzing every movement around him.
GEORGE JOANNIDES, a shrewd and calculating CIA operative, approaches Angleton, his eyes also darting around the room. He's more relaxed but equally vigilant.
JOANNIDES: (smirking) Quite the unusual setting for a rendezvous, wouldn't you say, James?
ANGLETON: (chuckles softly) Nothing is ever what it seems, George. Not even a square dance at the Soviet Embassy.
They exchange a knowing glance, understanding the gravity of their covert conversation amidst the seemingly innocent revelry.
JOANNIDES: You've been deep in the rabbit hole lately. Any promising leads?
ANGLETON: The threads are becoming intertwined, George. Something's brewing in the shadows, and I intend to unravel it.
Suddenly, the music stops, and the room falls silent. The SQUARE DANCE CALLER, a stern-looking Soviet official, steps forward with a mischievous glint in his eye.
SQUARE DANCE CALLER: Comrades and guests! Let us celebrate unity and harmony through dance! Dosido! Allemande left!
The dance floor erupts into coordinated chaos as everyone, including Angleton and Joannides, joins in the intricate dance moves. Amidst the spins and do-si-dos, Angleton and Joannides subtly exchange coded messages.
JOANNIDES: (furtively) We need to reconvene. There's a new development in Miami.
ANGLETON: (nodding imperceptibly) Understood. Meet me at the usual spot.
Suddenly, Angleton maneuvers Joannides into a complicated dance move, slipping a small microfilm roll into Joannides' pocket.
ANGLETON: (whispers) For your eyes only.
As the dance continues, they maintain their facade, subtly weaving intelligence amidst the dance steps.
SQUARE DANCE CALLER: Promenade! And that's a wrap, comrades!
The music reaches its crescendo, and the dance concludes as the guests applaud. Angleton and Joannides exchange a knowing nod before disappearing into the crowd, their covert exchange successfully concealed amidst the revelry.
FADE OUT.
The scene ends, leaving the audience intrigued by the clandestine interplay between two masters of espionage in an unexpected setting.
posted by clavdivs at 3:19 PM on November 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
oh.yeah.
Shadows in the Square Dance
INT. SOVIET EMBASSY - NIGHT
We enter a grand ballroom at the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. The room is adorned with Soviet flags and adorned with twinkling lights. Couples twirl on the dance floor to the lively tunes of a square dance caller.
JAMES JESUS ANGLETON, a suave and enigmatic CIA counterintelligence chief, sips on a drink, scanning the room with his piercing eyes. He's wearing a sharp suit and looks as if he's analyzing every movement around him.
GEORGE JOANNIDES, a shrewd and calculating CIA operative, approaches Angleton, his eyes also darting around the room. He's more relaxed but equally vigilant.
JOANNIDES: (smirking) Quite the unusual setting for a rendezvous, wouldn't you say, James?
ANGLETON: (chuckles softly) Nothing is ever what it seems, George. Not even a square dance at the Soviet Embassy.
They exchange a knowing glance, understanding the gravity of their covert conversation amidst the seemingly innocent revelry.
JOANNIDES: You've been deep in the rabbit hole lately. Any promising leads?
ANGLETON: The threads are becoming intertwined, George. Something's brewing in the shadows, and I intend to unravel it.
Suddenly, the music stops, and the room falls silent. The SQUARE DANCE CALLER, a stern-looking Soviet official, steps forward with a mischievous glint in his eye.
SQUARE DANCE CALLER: Comrades and guests! Let us celebrate unity and harmony through dance! Dosido! Allemande left!
The dance floor erupts into coordinated chaos as everyone, including Angleton and Joannides, joins in the intricate dance moves. Amidst the spins and do-si-dos, Angleton and Joannides subtly exchange coded messages.
JOANNIDES: (furtively) We need to reconvene. There's a new development in Miami.
ANGLETON: (nodding imperceptibly) Understood. Meet me at the usual spot.
Suddenly, Angleton maneuvers Joannides into a complicated dance move, slipping a small microfilm roll into Joannides' pocket.
ANGLETON: (whispers) For your eyes only.
As the dance continues, they maintain their facade, subtly weaving intelligence amidst the dance steps.
SQUARE DANCE CALLER: Promenade! And that's a wrap, comrades!
The music reaches its crescendo, and the dance concludes as the guests applaud. Angleton and Joannides exchange a knowing nod before disappearing into the crowd, their covert exchange successfully concealed amidst the revelry.
FADE OUT.
The scene ends, leaving the audience intrigued by the clandestine interplay between two masters of espionage in an unexpected setting.
posted by clavdivs at 3:19 PM on November 18, 2023 [2 favorites]
Paul Krassner's The Parts They Left Out Of The Kennedy Book remains timeless.
posted by delfin at 6:24 AM on November 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by delfin at 6:24 AM on November 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Would JFK Have Lost Had He Lived? (Jeff Greenfield, Politico)
posted by box at 7:34 AM on November 24, 2023
posted by box at 7:34 AM on November 24, 2023
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