It was a magazine I read at my orthodontist's office back in the day -- I don't remember the name, but it was one of the more major and reputable newsmagazines. It might've been US News and World Report. I tried to track it down online just now, but I couldn't remember enough.
Theicle referred specifically to Stone's theory of the motive of the alleged conspirators, based on a think tank report about the consequences of Kennedy's peacemaking efforts. That report was admitted to be a hoax six months after it was published, but Stone's whole explanation of the reason for the assassination is built around the assumption that it's true.
If you're refering to the memorandum of October 1963 that Kennedy signed and said that several thousand soldiers were gonna come back at the end of 1963 and all American involvement was gonna end by 1965, yeah, that is not a lie. That is very much a fact. As explained in Untold History of the Us, Kennedy told his close aid, Kenny O'Donnel that his peacemaking policies were gonna make him rapidly unpopular throughout the country, because he was intent in harbouring an end to the Cold War. He knew he couldn't pull out completely from Vietnam because he feared retaliation from within his government and even his brother, Robert Kennedy, attested to this. If there was a chance to win the fight, he was gonna take it, but neither MacNamara nor Max Taylor found anything at all to support that thesis.
I am aware some historians have doubted this, but in all honesty is it unbelievable to think Kennedy, whose rationality helped avert the most devastating moment in world history (which came as a result of hardliners from both the Soviet Union and the US) would've done something akin to this? I mean, Ellsberg himself, who was quite critical of Kennedy for being duplicitous about the situation in Vietnam, was and is sure he would've come out of it. Robert MacNamara, too.
But that's exactly why I do believe Cronkite -- because when he started his investigation, he believed that the Warren Commission was wrong and was trying to disprove their conclusion. But he ended up confirming it instead. That's very telling.
Yes, it proves he succumbed to the lie out forth by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Literally nothing else if value.
proving what you wanted to prove, that could easily be your bias blinding you. But if you end up trying to prove one thing and conclude that the evidence proves the exact opposite, then that makes it very likely that your conclusion is free of bias. Cronkite believed there was a conspiracy and then proved himself wrong. He changed his theory to fit the facts, which makes him infinitely more trustworthy than those who twist the facts to fit their theories.
That's a the only worded insult befit of a published author (which you definitely are) but for the sake of academia, what are the facts?
Zapruders film alone showcases the impossibility of a single shot causing all the wounds in Kennedy's body, Connelly and the car itself, along with James Tague, who was conspicuously absent from the 50th anniversary coverages of the assassination, btw. The witnesses in the area prove there was activity nearby and indeed, the possibility of the shot coming from there stems from them alone. You have several people in that very area protecting the Grassy Knoll from the courageous citizens who actually rushed there to SEE what they thought came from there, while pretending to be Secret Service agents when, in 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations declared that there was not a single one there, at least officially. You have the ludicrous single bullet theory which, outside of Stones dissection of it, is still a ludicrous explanation for what happened. But that isn't what's crazy, what's crazy is you have a bullet shatter bones of two, maybe three people and shatter glass, and still come out as intact in a stretcher in Parkland Hospital.
Beyond the above, you have the Doctors and staff who operated on Kennedy in Parkland Hospital, who saw in his body the result of a shootout consistent with the Zapruder film. All of the Doctors involved have, every time they were asked, confirmed he had a gaping hole in the back of his head, which was inconsistent with the grizzly, outrageous and frankly sacriligeous post-mortem mutilation his body received in Bathesda.
Finally, you have Oswald. A murderer who was never proven to be Kennedy's killer until after he died, and whose lack of testimony could have been held in contempt and liable for lawsuit given it was never transcribed and transcripted, therefore invalid.
there's only one right answer but countless wrong answers. So if a lot of different people independently look into the same thing and their results converge on the same answer, then that's very probably the right one. But if they diverge into many different paths, then they're probably looking in the wrong place for the right answer, or else they'd all end up agreeing on it.
Except that's is nonsense. That is the taking the assumption, that the Warren Commission had every intent in making an honest, consistent and thorough investigation that explained how the events of that day came to be and what exactly happened. And everyone who disagrees with the Warren Commission, including the said House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 70's, agree that the said report is incomplete and warranted further information.
the Kennedy conspiracy theorists have a dozen different theories and can't converge on a single explanation
Again, they all do. That Oswald was part of a conspiracy that, ultimately, framed him. Hows that for consistent? At this point, you're trying to prove that there is not a consensus, when there is one, just not on who lead the operation (some say the Mafia, for example), but most rational thinking individuals will tell you that the official story doesn't hold water.
while I'm aware of at least
three investigations that separately, independently concluded that Oswald most likely acted alone -- the Warren Commission, the Cronkite/CBS News investigation, and
an investigation conducted by PBS's NOVA in 1988 (narrated by Cronkite but conducted by a different group). Specifically, the
NOVA investigation used computer simulation to prove that a single bullet could have struck both Kennedy and Connelly, and a separate
NOVA investigation 25 years later (
that I just learned about) used more advanced computer and forensic methods to confirm that finding.
Meanwhile, hundreds of marines, marksmen and what have you have routinely attempted the shoot and have failed, one after the other. And it follows common sense. I served in intelligence in my country and have discussed this issue with various other officers, and it is a common joke in the army, at least here in Europe - the marksman who couldn't shoot.
And you concomitantly left out the aforementioned House Select Committee on Assassinations which, in the late '70's concluded that JFK was likely the victim of a conspiracy which included Oswald. And as far as I'm concerned, while not the closest-to-the-truth conclusion, it's easily more credible that the WC spearheaded by Allan Dulles, one of the most despised architects of the US' intelligence apparatus and a facilitator for some of the worst coups catapulted around the world. And that despite the fact it was consistently met with opposition and continual hurdles, namely by the CIA as all of their requests for further information on all sorts of issues, including the extraordinary activities of Oswald while in the USSR (which everyone seemingly ignores - a penniless intelligence officer who defects to the US' mortal enemy, the USSR, finds work in
their intelligence community, marries a Russian and then is allowed to come back to the US... without so much as a conviction for treason! In the early '60's!!)
At the end of the day, it's easier to think that one guy did it. One lone nut. One crazy dude who killed the President. It's easier because as a people, you can ignore the larger question that posits responsibility about the conduct of government and what it is and should be doing. Kennedy was killed because he was opposed to the self destructive path it was leading itself with Vietnam, and history proved him (and his brother) rigjt through Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, which showed the consistent pattern of hardlining post-WWII generals that were intent in military expansion without regard to their own. The fact that it's a dilemma that is posited even today is not incidental - as a people, Americans haven't risen to the challenge of holding the government accountable for these continual invasions of other nations under false pretences. But hey, maybe Ellen is right and we need to be kind to everyone, even to the war criminals. And maybe we should be naive, govenment-friendly citizens who are rightly shocked when the leader of the free world is shot by a communist sympathiser. Afterall you can't blame no one. Everyone weeps and moves on with their lives. Except, even the craziest killer has a reason. I mean, at least Bush explained his invasion on Iraq was to "liberate" the Iraqis from Saddam's oppressive regime. Oswald, however, claimed from minute one he was a patsy.
Btw, can anyone share how Oswald's description surface only shortly after the shooting?
