JFK Files

[Dr Koop]

Oswald was never tried. The evidence against him was never tested in front of a jury - aside from public opinion. What prompted the director of the FBI is send out a memo shortly after the assassination that said the American public "must be convinced" of Oswald's guilt? Why does the US government insist, after 54 years, on insulting people's intelligence with its single shooter theory? 

 

All this and more ...

[John MacLean]

35 minutes ago, Dr Koop said:

Oswald was never tried. The evidence against him was never tested in front of a jury - aside from public opinion. What prompted the director of the FBI is send out a memo shortly after the assassination that said the American public "must be convinced" of Oswald's guilt? Why does the US government insist, after 54 years, on insulting people's intelligence with its single shooter theory? 

 

All this and more ...

Oswald was most likely not a 'lone nut'. I think there was more than one person with a gun looking to shoot JFK that day. If Oswald conspired with other nutters, even if they just aided him in some way, that by very definition means there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK. It doesn't mean that it was a conspiracy involving the CIA, FBI, Mob, Cubans or other sundry people who had reason to want him dead. He wasn't short of enemies.

Why was it important for the American public to be "convinced" of Oswald's guilt? To protect the institutions of the State. The FBI/Secret Service/etc may not have been directly involved in a plot to assassinate JFK but they were certainly culpable, through there own incompetence in not monitoring Oswald and allowing JFK to be in an open top car, allowing the motorcade to take the route it did taking a sharp corner and slowing down, in allowing it to happen. 

If you can sell the idea that 'some lone nut did it, it couldn't be prevented' then you avoid scrutiny and the apportioning of blame in high places. What happened after the shooting is the real conspiracy. 

[Savage Henry]

Oswald was never tried. The evidence against him was never tested in front of a jury - aside from public opinion. What prompted the director of the FBI is send out a memo shortly after the assassination that said the American public "must be convinced" of Oswald's guilt? Why does the US government insist, after 54 years, on insulting people's intelligence with its single shooter theory? 
 
All this and more ...

If it had gone to trial, he’d probably have been cleared on a mistrial. Doesn’t mean he didn’t kill JFK.

Bureaucratic incompetence leads to conspiracy theories. Unless it’s nowadays, in which anything passes as a conspiracy.

[Dr Koop]

He didn't and I very much doubt if he did that there'd be any kind of mistrial give the crime.

Mishandling of evidence and witnesses is also like to lead to theories - as does the insistence that there wasn't one from the off.

[welshbairn]

3 hours ago, John MacLean said:

Oswald was most likely not a 'lone nut'. I think there was more than one person with a gun looking to shoot JFK that day. If Oswald conspired with other nutters, even if they just aided him in some way, that by very definition means there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK. It doesn't mean that it was a conspiracy involving the CIA, FBI, Mob, Cubans or other sundry people who had reason to want him dead. He wasn't short of enemies.

Why was it important for the American public to be "convinced" of Oswald's guilt? To protect the institutions of the State. The FBI/Secret Service/etc may not have been directly involved in a plot to assassinate JFK but they were certainly culpable, through there own incompetence in not monitoring Oswald and allowing JFK to be in an open top car, allowing the motorcade to take the route it did taking a sharp corner and slowing down, in allowing it to happen. 

If you can sell the idea that 'some lone nut did it, it couldn't be prevented' then you avoid scrutiny and the apportioning of blame in high places. What happened after the shooting is the real conspiracy. 

At the time there was loads of lines of information to point to the Soviets. There was a real risk of pressures to nuclear war. A fast conclusion to a lone wolf suited everyone on Earth. 

[LongTimeLurker]

2 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

At the time there was loads of lines of information to point to the Soviets. There was a real risk of pressures to nuclear war. A fast conclusion to a lone wolf suited everyone on Earth. 

The time spent in Minsk and the Fair Play for Cuba stuff would have made Oswald an ideal patsy for a group of right wing nutters and mafia types that wanted to engineer an invasion of Cuba.  Agree that fear of a slide into a nuclear war was a big part of what would have made the lone nut angle attractive in the aftermath before public pressure to retaliate against the Communists gained any momentum, along with the embarassment angle that security could have been so lax that an organized conspiracy could ever take out a US president.  Never been convinced that there was a sudden U-turn after LBJ took over that can sensibly described as some sort of coup. JFK had been hugely into backing South Vietnam partly because it had a Roman Catholic dominated government and military. LBJ kept Robert McNamara on as his secretary of defence right through to 1968, so there was plenty of continuity from the JFK era on military matters. LBJ also pushed through the whole civil rights agenda as part of his Great Society much to the chagrin of the far right headcases that filled the state apparatus in the United States at that point and had pushed the whole McCathyism approach of the 1950s and saw Martin Luther King as a dangerous commie inspired troublemaker as some of the documents that have been released are making clear.

[Dr Koop]

At the time there was loads of lines of information to point to the Soviets. There was a real risk of pressures to nuclear war. A fast conclusion to a lone wolf suited everyone on Earth. 

By happy coincidence, this is the line the US government and intelligence services were selling the members of the Warren Commission with their 'Oswald in Mexico City' fiction.

This included a claim Oswald had visited the Russian embassy there to meet the head of the USSR's assassinations bureau for the western hemisphere in the late summer of 1963 before heading to the Cuban embassy to plan his 'escape' to Cuba and life in paradise.

Evidence: wire taps of calls to the embassies that have since been trashed as fakes by officials of the US intelligence services and a photo of a fat guy who looks more like Jack Ruby than Oswald, purportedly in Mexico City, against a redacted white background.

That's what scared the shit out of Warren - that is a conspiracy theory promoted by the CIA to a panel investigating Jack Kennedy's murder. At the same time, the American people were being sold something else, a lone nut.

That became public in the late 1960s, well after Oswald was traduced in the public mind as the lone gunman.

One event, two theories, forwarded by one government agency.

[Enigma]

He was going to tell us about the aliens.

[LongTimeLurker]

10 hours ago, Enigma said:

He was going to tell us about the aliens.

...which in reality is widely believed to have been a mythology that was actively spread and encouraged by people linked to the US state apparatus as a way to facilitate secret military tests like the stealth bomber and confuse the Soviet block.  Better to have people say nothing about strange things they see in the sky for fear of ridicule as a UFO believer and to undermine the credibility of any who do speak out than have details of what was going on with a new weapon system appear in the press. Much the same thing happened with the JFK assassination with lunatic theories like the driver being the culprit being spread and promoted to undermine the credibility of anyone not going along with the official line.

[Dr Koop]

The big secret at that time was the U2's altitude capabilities, which were something like three times the ceiling of the official world record. Oswald was at Atsugi in Japan, where the U2s were based; a radar operator.

One of my favourite sidetracks is how the Russians managed to shoot down Gary Powers' U2 flight, how he survived it for great big show trial sorta thing and how that really pissed off the Russians.

Around about that time, Oswald caught the clap in a hostess bar in the line of duty. A self inflicted wound in anyone's army. It's on his record. Not an inkling of a disciplinary hearing or black mark.