JFK was killed 50 years ago this month. Will we ever know the truth ?

If the government has been able to hide evidence for fifty whole years, they are doing a better job than they ever have at hiding absolutely anything.

Conspiracy theories give adherents a false sense of security that somehow things can be explained. It negates the terror of chaos.

As your question details suggest, it might be that what the report the Warren Commission is the Truth. I agree with @Hawaii_Jake. If it was a massive government cover-up, then it was a remarkably well done one for a government that seems incapable of stopping leaks in present time, much less over a period of 5 decades. The idea that it would be impossible for a single, crazed man acting alone to kill someone as important as the President of the United States is about the most idiotic proof of a conspiracy I have ever heard.

I agree with HJ. If you’ve ever visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas, as I have many times, you’ll be amazed by how much smaller it is than photos and videos make it seem. I find it easy to believe Oswald was able to make his shots, and as HJ says and I’ve been saying for decades, there’s no way the government kept a conspiracy secret all this time. Conspiracy theorists will never be satisfied, though, and I gave up arguing with them a long time ago.

I’m not big on (or even interested in) conspiracy theories either, but the ‘Reelz’ thing was the first I’ve ever seen which suggests that, rather than some complex, pre-planned murder taking place, that the fatal shot may have been fired by bone-headed mistake.

And if the Warren Commission addressed the fact that Oswald’s rounds were 6.5 mm in diameter while the head-shot entry wound was measured at only 6 mm ( as would be caused by an AR-15 ), I’d be interested in knowing how they explained that away….

A single, crazed man acting alone is historically the only persona who ever has shot a President.

Good point, SK, and this documentary suggests that the crazed Oswald did his best, but only succeeded in hitting the president’s neck (which probably wouldn’t have been fatal by itself….)

Right. An accidental shot toward a moving convertible just happened to take a man’s skull off while another man was aiming at the same moving man’s head and missed.

That’s a hell of a coincidence.

” Over the years, pretty clear evidence has shown that Oswald, though involved, did not act alone ”

Really? I need more evidence than provided by Reelz, whatever that thing is.

” accidentally been fired by a Secret Service agent in the trailing car who was quickly handling a loaded AR-15 rifle after the first two shots were fired. ”

Really? An AR-15?!?

That’s just a new twist on all the other inconsistencies the conspiracy theorists have proposed, all of which are entirely inconsistent with one another because none of them pay attention to the actual known facts. Scroll down here to get to the image of the damage to the anterior/posterior damage x-ray and read the expert analysis the x-ray analysts provide. The inability of laymen to interpret x-ray data has been a major part of all the differing, and entirely contradictory conspiracy theories.

Further, the Ramsey Clark Panel measured the posterior entry wound at 8 mm on the outside of the skull and 20 mm on the interior surface of the skull bone

No coincidence at all, SK. They are saying that Oswald got off two shots, one which hit the street and one the president’s neck. The Secret Service agent, quickly responding to that from the car following the president, grabbed a loaded AR-15 rifle, and in hurridly turning to look for the shooter, accidentally fired it.

An AR-15 is the ‘civilian version’ of the Army’s M-16, in that it will fire only in semi-automatic mode, and has no ‘automatic’ feature as the M-16 does. But ammunition from both weapons will typically make a pretty small entry hole, then massively explode after hitting the target (as we’ve seen numerous times in the Zapruder film ).

As we all know, Oswald’s ‘neck shot’ also wounded Gov Connolly, yet was recovered in almost pristine condition….

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I don’t buy it.

Maybe I don’t either. I’m just pointing out an interesting theory which is far different than most of the other wild speculation during the past 50 years….

@OneBadApple Just as the entry wound and exit wound do not align with a shot fired from the level of the grassy knoll, the angle is inconsistent with a shot from someone on the bumper of the trailing car. The shot came from higher up than that.

When people go out not to just find the truth, but to make a film giving their own preconceived version of the truth, they reject any contradictory evidence, show cherry picked and even entirely fabricated evidence, cook up their own graphics, etc. It can all be very convincing. But ask yourself why all the various conspiracy theory films out there wildly contradict not only the findings of the Warren Commission, the FBI, the Dallas Police and the Ramsey Clark Panel; they contradict one another as well.

ET, while I like to think that I’m far from naive in most matters ( and am in general agreement with most of what you’ve said ), it never hurts to examine and discuss the potential merits of different viewpoints, especially newer ones.

My only effort this evening was to throw out there for discussion something which is a little different than all of the CIA / Mafia conspiracy stuff which has been going around since we were both young boys.

Anyway, I will never be convinced that we were told everything which we deserve to know, and neither will the majority of the American public…

@OneBadApple Well, it did touch off some discussion. I’m guessing that what Warren Commission, the FBI, the Dallas Police and the Ramsey Clark Panel came up with, which was largely consistent, is the actual truth. In the spirit of discussion, though, if it is not then I would say we will now never know. The evidence is long gone and most of those involved have died. If there ever was an alternate truth, they probably took it to the grave with them.

I doubt it.

The panacea for most conspiracy theories about transpired events are incompetence theories (and vice versa), whether it’s the one you describe or that Oswald slipped through the cracks in security.

As is evident from this discussion and most others, you see what you see. Sometimes a mind is changed, but not often. It’s interesting to note in this discussion that both “sides” contend that evidence is selected to fit the theory—doesn’t seem promising for consensus either way.

What I might add to the mix is the suggestion that the reason that there are wildly contradictory conspiracy theories is simply because some are wrong and some are disinformation. If there’s a “conspiracy truth” on the loose, then surely it is obscured with a shit ton of disinformation.

Secondly, if the official reports also selected evidence (as asserted by the OP), then it’s not a stretch to speculate that the reason the official reports line up is because there was an effort to “get the stories straight.” Even if there wasn’t a whiff of conspiracy, this is reasonable to expect. I mean, really. This is pretty basic.

Regarding the Reelz show, I would say it’s just a scraping of the barrel to sell one more novel story (and a bad one at that), since everything else has already been done. If there’s anything redeeming about it for those who would doubt the official story, it’s that it is another treatment that acknowledges more than one shooter.

I blame Jack Ruby, if that fucking amateur had kept his head then the truth would’ve come from the horse’s mouth (Oswald) fucking years ago.
LHO acted like a rabbit in the headlights when caught, the pussy would have sung like a nightingale eventually, if only to massage his ego.

Ruby’s actions are a huge reason why so many conspiracy theories have gotten traction over the years. Pretty hard to accept that some pudgy nightclub owner would become so ‘distraught’ over this event that he would shoot Oswald in the chest in front of the whole world, knowing this would make his life basically over, then he conveniently dies of cancer in prison not long after.

Dead men tell no tales, I guess….

After 50 years, why does it matter? It’s fun (in a perverse sort of way) to try and dream up these conspiracy theories, but Kennedy is still dead. And anything that he might have affected has long since been changed by politics and history,

Besides, there are far more recent potential conspiracies to ponder: 9/11 and the WTC, Space Shuttle disasters, Oprah’s network…

You are right, after all these years this national tragedy and the debate over it have become close to irrelevant. And conspiracy theories can be interesting enough to almost be called ‘fun’.

‘Seinfeld’ did a hilarious job of recreating it in their ‘Shea Stadium spitting’ episode.

There’s this today. The news photo headlining the article clearly shows how close the security car was to the President’s car, and how close the crowd on the sidewalk was to both. The idea that a Secret Service agent riding on the following car accidentally shot the president and nobody in that gathered crowd saw or hears it is absurd. End of story.