Do you subscribe to any conspiracy theories?

[Drago-Kazov]

I'm not really big into conspiracy theories, but I thought I'd put out a general poll to see what the TrekBBS community thinks.

Please tell me if I've left any major ones out of the poll.

I don't really have any hardcore conspiracy theories. I pretty much take stuff at face value.

However, I do have a suspicion when it comes to secret organizations such as the freemasons, illuminati, or any other secret organization. The fact that it's secret means you never really know what is going on in there and what is being discussed or happening. So perhaps these organizations try to have some sort of power in or over the government and its people, so I i'm suspicious about them a bit just cause its secret. Humans love power, and history has shown how humans and groups of humans want to gain power over people.

Maybe our Italian friend could share some P2 stories.

 

[Starkers]

The trouble is blaming the CIA is that these are guys who couldn't take out Castro, despite coming up with a variety of ludicrous plans to kill him, yet we're supposed to believe they not only succesfully took out their own President, but also ensured it was covered up and reamined covered up when seemingly every other 'conspiracy' they had a hand in has come to light since.

 

[Drago-Kazov]

I never really studied the Kennedy Assasination but wouldn't be easier to take out someone on US soil on Texas where LBJ has a lot political connections then in Cuba?

 

[Lonemagpie]

One could speculate that he got lucky. However, based on the direction the car was traveling and how Kennedy was hit in two different directions

Except he wasn't. If he was hit from the grassy knoll there'd have been an entrance hole on his forehead, which there wasn't. The reason his head jerks back just as he's hit the second time, is because the driver is by now accelerating...

(and I don't buy Connally was hit by a ricochet),

Not a ricochet- a through and through from JFK - it went in JFK's back, out his throat, and on into Connally

there's just no plausible way Oswald could have done it alone.

Except that everything says he did.

I really wanna see the Mythbusters take on this one.

Actually, I'm really surprised they haven't already.... Maybe next year for the 50th anniversary...

 

[ichab]

It's something different to shoot at a range at a still target with no pressure on time.. something entirely different shooting at a small, moving target with a gun which was not in prime condition.

Oswald was a mediocre shot at best, at times barely qualifiying for his marksman badge so for him to get off 3 shots at a moving target with a bolt action rifle and no professional sniper training is questionable.

I don't rule out luck.. it is possible to get these shots off in the time but part of the fun of conspiracy theories is to debate about them and try to convince the other.

For me there are just too many coincidences and too much luck involved to believe that Oswald pulled it off on top of all the other irregularities and vanished evidence and breaches of protocol in the aftermath that further complicated the fact finding about the assassination.

Another thing to consider is all the witnesses who said they heard shots coming from the Grassy Knoll.

I'm not saying that the conspiracy theorists don't go a bit overboard. The JFK movie has some pretty wild stuff that has since been debunked: For instance in the movie it was suggested that the famous photo of Oswald holding the rifle was a fake. Years later Jesse Ventura talked to Marina Oswald and she admitted to taking that photo because Lee asked her to. Stone also mis-characterized the magic bullet theory with that whole "right then left, right then left."

 

[Lonemagpie]

Another thing to consider is all the witnesses who said they heard shots coming from the Grassy Knoll.

The interesting thing is that all the people who say that, only said that years later, after the grassy knoll thing became a popular idea - the memory cheats. I don't think I've seen any statements from the time that say they heard shots from the knoll - usually it's just they heard shots, period.

And, of course, people generally don't run *towards* the sound of gunfire...

I'm not saying that the conspiracy theorists don't go a bit overboard. The JFK movie has some pretty wild stuff that has since been debunked: For instance in the movie it was suggested that the famous photo of Oswald holding the rifle was a fake. Years later Jesse Ventura talked to Marina Oswald and she admitted to taking that photo because Lee asked her to. Stone also mis-characterized the magic bullet theory with that whole "right then left, right then left."

To be fair, that was Garrison's characterisation of it in his books, IIRC. But Garrison was a suggestible type who, again IIRC, ended up with such a convoluted theory that it requires something like 16 or so gunmen (It's been a long time since I read them) at Dealey Plaza, including Oswald, another book depository gunman, a fake oswald decoy, two grassy knoll gunmen, one or two on the flyover, and a foreign hit team in another building...

(Would it surprise you that Garrison was Section 8ed in the army back in the day? "severe and disabling psychoneurosis" which "interfered with his social and professional adjustment to a marked degree. He is considered totally incapacitated from the standpoint of military duty and moderately incapacitated in civilian adaptability.")

 

[ichab]

Another thing to consider is all the witnesses who said they heard shots coming from the Grassy Knoll.

The interesting thing is that all the people who say that, only said that years later, after the grassy knoll thing became a popular idea - the memory cheats

Wrong. They said it when the incident happened to both the FBI and the Secret Service.The trouble is, the Warren commission didn't bother to call them in.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Still doesn't make him right. The laws of physics haven't been broken, even by conspiriologists.

I should probably mention at the point that I started off as a conspiracy believer (basically because, being a Brit born after the fact, I first heard of it that way. Generally felt that the Mob did it.) and got really interested when Stone's movie came out. That prompted me to go and read as much stuff on the assassination as I could... and got thoroughly convinced otherwise by the actual evidence very quickly.