"Killing Kennedy"

[Gold]

The FBI and CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission, and the FBI did their best to blame the Secret Service. J. Edgar Hoover, the biggest bureaucrat in United States history, tried to take protection of the President away from the Secret Service. Mark Lane did a great job taking apart the Warren Commission report.

 

[Dick Whitman]

FYI, PBS has a special tonight on how the initial investigation was botched. Just set the DVR.

 

[Gold]

FYI, PBS has a special tonight on how the initial investigation was botched. Just set the DVR.

Thanks for the heads-up. For those of you in Southern California, it is Channel 50 at 9 pm

 

[Shoeless Joe]

I do not believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. He may very well have been the only person firing a gun in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, but his actions were not those of a single individual just deciding to kill the President of the United States and getting lucky. I don't know what exactly what happened. I really don't. As I have said on previous Kennedy threads, the only intentional government involvement was sweeping as much as it could under the rug in an effort to wrap things up neatly. Oooops. That didn't work.

 

[NoOneLikesUs]

Just throwing this in here:

"Ruby and Oswald" 1977 TV dramatization of the events surrounding the assassination. Pretty much terrible acting throughout and the editing is rough, but it uses a lot of the actual locations and sticks closely to what the Warren Commission reported.

 

[Dick Whitman]

The PBS show was interesting. In particular, they recreated the single-bullet theory using some ballistics experiments. It definitely checks out. The bullet tumbles sideways after passing through flesh, which is consistent with Connally's wounds and the condition of the recovered bullet.

They were just starting to address "back and to the left" when I had to get in the shower, but I think I know where that was going. It was his body seizing from brain damage, not moving from the impact.

 

[GoochMan]

Please. The Warren Commission as a reference? That's certainly a nice impartial view of things.

Take a look throughout the internets--there's plenty of references that counter that statement--that you can find residue on a cheek from a rifle shot.

Find me one.

I'm way late to this, so apologies. They did nitrate tests on the Oswald cheek casts in 1964. That test was supposed to be far more reliable than paraffin tests. His casts were negative.
And from what I remember, the control group all tested positive on the nitrate tests after firing a similar rifle -- in fact, the residue was found on both cheeks, not just the one flush with the rifle.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Please. The Warren Commission as a reference? That's certainly a nice impartial view of things.

Take a look throughout the internets--there's plenty of references that counter that statement--that you can find residue on a cheek from a rifle shot.

Find me one.

I'm way late to this, so apologies. They did nitrate tests on the Oswald cheek casts in 1964. That test was supposed to be far more reliable than paraffin tests. His casts were negative.
And from what I remember, the control group all tested positive on the nitrate tests after firing a similar rifle -- in fact, the residue was found on both cheeks, not just the one flush with the rifle.

Is that in a book? Where did you see that?

 

[Webster]

Ruby killing Oswald was always more interesting to me.

 

[YankeeFan]

What are "cheek casts"?

 

[old_tony]

And to the comments suggesting Oswald was a sniper or marksmen--his military scores were average at best.

I don't think this is true. People testified that he was above average. And, as I understand it, the shot on Kennedy was relatively easy even for amateurs.

I'm guessing "average" for a Marine is still in the upper 3% of all Americans.

 

[old_tony]

To the Oswald alone crowd, do you think he was truly just a the lone nut citizen assassin, or do you acknowledge he may have had intelligence community ties in his past?

At the height of the Cold War, just a few years beyond the McCarthy communist witch hunts, there's nothing skeptical about a US citizen renouncing his citizenship to move to the USSR, and then just as easily reverse course to come back to the good ol' USA?

I think it's entirely possible that he was at one time an asset for the CIA or Marines and proved to be too stupid and was pushed out. From there, it's not hard to believe he acted alone in trying to "show" his former bosses.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I know that the Oswald stuff gets all the attention, but I'm more fascinated by the assassination as a news story/historical event. Only 9/11, I feel like, compares in my lifetime. I would guess Pearl Harbor was comparable, too.

You just very rarely have these bolts from the blue that alter history in a flash like this. There was a show on PBS the other night, narrated by George Clooney, in which they discussed and dramatized how the news spread and broke. It was really interesting to see what the first reports were on the wire and how they were scrambling behind the scenes to get on the air with it.

As I understand it, reporters didn't see the assassination, because they were in press buses well behind in the motorcade. Everything was second-hand or further. Then, for the first hour, all the usual channels of official information were in disarray. So I guess a lot of the first-day reporting was from events at the hospital, because that's where reporters finally re-entered the scene and where the White House press people started to get things under control again, as far as getting information out.

 

[cranberry]

Merriman smith's account:

http://www.downhold.org/lowry/kennedy.html

 

[da man]

I know that the Oswald stuff gets all the attention, but I'm more fascinated by the assassination as a news story/historical event. Only 9/11, I feel like, compares in my lifetime. I would guess Pearl Harbor was comparable, too.

You just very rarely have these bolts from the blue that alter history in a flash like this. There was a show on PBS the other night, narrated by George Clooney, in which they discussed and dramatized how the news spread and broke. It was really interesting to see what the first reports were on the wire and how they were scrambling behind the scenes to get on the air with it.

As I understand it, reporters didn't see the assassination, because they were in press buses well behind in the motorcade. Everything was second-hand or further. Then, for the first hour, all the usual channels of official information were in disarray. So I guess a lot of the first-day reporting was from events at the hospital, because that's where reporters finally re-entered the scene and where the White House press people started to get things under control again, as far as getting information out.

PBS's Dallas affiliate, KERA, produced an excellent show a few years ago about the reporters covering the event. It's called JFK: Breaking the News.

Bob Schieffer, who at the time was working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was prominently featured in it. He said he was the night cops reporter and came into the office when he heard about the shooting to answer phones -- everyone else had been sent to Dallas to cover the story. So he picks up the phone and a lady asks is anyone there can give her a ride to Dallas. He tells her, "Lady, we're not a taxi service," and she says, "I think the person they've arrested is my son." So he drops everything and winds up giving Lee Harvey Oswald's mother a ride to the Dallas police station.

Here's an interview with Schieffer about it: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/kennedy/schieffer.html

 

[GoochMan]

Please. The Warren Commission as a reference? That's certainly a nice impartial view of things.

Take a look throughout the internets--there's plenty of references that counter that statement--that you can find residue on a cheek from a rifle shot.

Find me one.

I'm way late to this, so apologies. They did nitrate tests on the Oswald cheek casts in 1964. That test was supposed to be far more reliable than paraffin tests. His casts were negative.
And from what I remember, the control group all tested positive on the nitrate tests after firing a similar rifle -- in fact, the residue was found on both cheeks, not just the one flush with the rifle.

Is that in a book? Where did you see that?

A book called 'Breach of Trust'. It used some of the files released in the 90's to add to the background I think. Really took the warren commission Apart.