Tag Archives: JFK

WHAT MAKES CONSPIRACY THEORISTS TICK?

A1A conspiracy theory is the belief that a plot by powerful people or organizations is working to accomplish a sinister goal—the truth of its existence secretly held from the public. Conspiracy theorists see authorities—governments, corporations, and wealthy people—as fundamentally deceptive and corrupt. Their distrust of official narratives runs so deep that they connect dots of random events into what they believe make meaningful patterns, despite overwhelming conflicting evidence, or absence of supporting evidence, to their conclusions.

Aside from a lack of common sense, what makes these guys tick?

A3First, let’s look at what Time magazine identified as the prominent conspiracy theories believed by the American public. These were identified in a recent poll. I’m not kidding you. Some people actually swallow these crazy concoctions.

From lowest to highest percentage they are:

10. The Reptile Elite — Among us are flesh-eating, blood-drinking, shape-shifting, extraterrestrial reptilian humanoids bent on enslaving the human race. The British Royals and the Bush family are part of the group, as was Margaret Thatcher.

9. The CIA and AIDS — Thinking is that the Central Intelligence Agency was out to destroy homosexuals and blacks so they invented the deadly HIV virus and injected it in place of hepatitis vaccinations.

A148. Holocaust Revisionism — Most deniers accept that the internment camps existed, but claim the numbers of people murdered are greatly exaggerated. General Eisenhower saw this coming when he forced hundreds of civilian witnesses to tour the camps and bear the truth to the world.

7. Jesus and Mary Magdalene — These folks claim Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a married couple, but Jesus occasionally shared her with his disciple, Peter. They attribute this to the Gnostic Gospels which were discovered in 1945 and claim it’s being covered up by the Vatican. Mainstream scholars dismiss as the Gnostic Gospels as even being authentic.

6. The Moon Landings Were Faked — According to this crowd, none of the Apollo missions happened. They were filmed on a Hollywood lot, or possibly at area 51. Watch this clip of Buzz Aldrin punching conspiracy theorist Bart Sibrel in the face. Click Here

A95. Secret Societies Rule the World — If you’re a member of the global elite, then you’d already know this. And you might belong to one or more of many groups; the Illuminati, Freemasons, Skull & Bones, Opus Dei, Bilderberg Group, or maybe even have a seat on the Council of Foreign Relationship. Sorry, your Costco card won’t cut it.

4. Paul McCartney is Dead — Supposedly the Beatles covered-up the real Sir Paul’s death in 1966 and an imposter has been in his place ever since. Maybe I’m Amazed, because I saw a recent clip of Paul McCartney in front of tens of thousands at Hyde Park takin’ a swing at Pretty Woman with Bruce Springsteen. If he’s an imposter, he’s some good at it.

3. Area 51 and Aliens — There’s a real Air Force base at Groom Lake, 150 miles north of Las Vegas, where all sorts of black op aircraft are tested. Like most military installations, public access is restricted, but you can get a good look at it on Google Earth. The resolution is excellent but I couldn’t find any saucer-shaped craft or ET-looking creatures. Oh, right… they keep them inside… or maybe back at Roswell.

A42. 9/11 Cover-Up — Apparently 42% of Americans believe the attacks on the New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania were orchestrated by some arm of the U.S. Government. Sad.

1. The JFK Assassination — The mother of conspiracy theories.  Times’ poll reports that only 32% believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. So two-thirds of Americans truly think their 35th President’s murder is unsolved? How can that be?

Well, it comes down to mindset.

I’m not saying that conspiracies don’t happen—even at a mass scale. The Holocaust was a massive conspiracy to exterminate the Jews. The Nazis totally believed the Jews were a threat to their existence. It was an article of faith within the Third Reich.

A159/11 was a monstrous conspiracy—by Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The Russian Revolution was a conspiracy. So was the American Revolution—fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. Nixon conspired to hide Watergate. Abraham Lincoln was murdered through a conspiracy. So was Julius Caesar. And don’t forget Stalin, the Mexican Drug Cartels, and Scientology.

If some conspiracies are true, then how do you determine which ones are false? The more these characteristics apply, the more likely the theory is wrong:

  • “Proof” of the conspiracy emerges through dot-connecting without any hard, physical evidence.
  • Execution requires large and complex elements.
  • The agents require nearly super-human powers.
  • Everyone maintains secrecy.
  • There is a grandiose ambition for control.
  • The plot ratchets from small to large events.
  • Everything has a sinister overtone.
  • Facts and speculation are mingled without assigning degrees of probability.
  • The theorist is extremely suspicious of authority—government and private.
  • The theorist refuses to consider alternative explanations, seeking only confirmation of the theory.

I understand the mindset of real conspirators. It’s all about self-preservation. But what about the tin-foil crowd?

A12In American Conspiracy Theories, political scientists Joseph Uscinski and Joseph Parent conducted an “extensive empirical study” on the subject and found: Conspiracy Theorists are often caricatured as a small demographic composed primarily of middle-aged white male internet enthusiasts who live in their mother’s basements—but that’s wrong. Conspiracy theories permeate all parts of society and cut across age, gender, race, income, political affiliation, educational level, and occupational status.

What gives? How does a cross-section of otherwise normal people get so distorted in their thoughts and believe in really weird things?

A13Quassim Cassam is a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. He’s embarking on a study on why people believe in outlandish theories. Part of this work is to answer why people get pushed to extremes like joining ISIS.

Professor Cassam says: It seems to be because of the kind of thinker they are, or to put it bluntly, because there’s something wrong with how they think. It’s the peculiarities of their intellectual constitution—in a word, their intellectual character. It’s what social psychologists call a conspiracy mentality.

Cassam goes on: The gullible rarely believe they’re gullible and the closed-minded don’t believe they’re closed-minded. Closed-mindedness is the toughest intellectual vice to tackle because it’s in its very nature to be concealed from those who have it. There’s no reasoning with those kinds of people.

A5I found an article in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology where Dr. Jan-Willem van Prooijen of the University of Amsterdam summed it: Conspiracy theorists tend to have one thing in common—they feel a lack of control over their lives.

Part of my John F Kennedy Assassination book research was checking the online chat boards on the JFK forums. Lemme tell you—there are some whacko, nut-jobs out there.

I believe there are four reasons why people believe JFK’s murder was a conspiracy. These reasons probably apply to most conspiracy theories and theorists.

  1. A17They don’t have the correct information to understand the case facts.
  2. They haven’t got the personal knowledge, or experience, to properly interpret the evidence.
  3. They simply want to believe in a conspiracy.
  4. They don’t have the mental capacity for objectively processing thoughts.

There’s no reasoning with those kinds of people.

THE MISSING BULLET IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION

JFKThere are only three significant questions left unanswered in the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy which occurred in Dallas, Texas, on November 22nd, 1963.

First is Lee Harvey Oswald’s motive.

Why’d he do it? We’ll never know for sure because Oswald never confessed and he died two days later, taking that secret to his grave.

Second – where was Oswald going after the assassination?

LHO photoHe left the scene, went home, grabbed his revolver, and was walking south on a Dallas street when intercepted by Officer JD Tippit. Oswald shot Tippit and continued fleeing before getting cornered in a theatre where he attempted to shoot the arresting officers. Clearly he was planning to live another day.

The third question – what happened to the missing bullet?

This can now be reasonably explained, although it’s taken a half century to figure it out.

LHO Rifle -Lt DayEvidence clearly shows that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from his 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle which was recovered from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Conspiracy theorists – give it a rest. Oswald was the trigger man and he acted alone. Not one single piece of evidence exists to refute this because non-events leave no evidence. It never happened any other way than Oswald acting alone.

The problem with the three shot evidence is that only two bullets were recovered. One has never been accounted for.

So what happened to it?

Let’s look at the firearms evidence in the JFK homicide case.

First of all, you have to weigh the ear-witness reports. The vast majority of witnesses stated that three gunshots were heard. Some claimed that one, two, and as many as nine shots were heard, but you’re going to get that variation with the hundreds of people that were present in Dealey Plaza when Kennedy was shot.

JFK Snipers nest 6You’ve got to give credibility to the witnesses who were closest to the muzzle. There were three Texas School Book Depository workers directly below the sixth floor, southeast window (sniper’s nest) where Oswald fired from. They were unshakable and unanimous that three shots rang out.

Their testimony is corroborated (backed-up) by the fact that three expended shell casings were found in the snipers nest. These three casings were forensically matched as being fired from Oswald’s Carcano ‘to the exclusion of all other firearms’ as the categorical term goes.

JFK Cartridges 510What’s clearly telling is the location in which these casings were found and photographed. In all my reading and research, I can’t find any official comment on the meaning of the casing pattern, although it’s obvious when you simply think about it. Two casings are grouped together, and the third is by itself about five feet from where Oswald pulled his trigger.

JFK 3 Cartridges Clear photoTo further understand the significance, you have to know that Oswald piled a small fortress of book boxes around the sniper’s nest to conceal himself, creating a cardboard wall. When he ejected the casings from his bolt action rifle, they flew through the air at a 90 degree angle from the barrel and struck the wall of boxes to Oswald’s right, then ricocheted to rest on the floor.

Hmmm… two were together and one was off by itself. It’s obvious that Oswald’s barrel position changed between the lone cartridge and the group of two.

So how does this explain the missing bullet?

Let’s look at the two shots that were accounted for.

CE399The first bullet that hit Kennedy, known in assassination terminology as The Single Bullet Theory, got him through the back of the shoulder/ base of the neck, exited his throat, then entered Texas Governor John Connally’s back. In a rapidly diminishing velocity, it traversed Connally’s chest, blew out below his right nipple, continued on to smash his wrist, and lodge in Connally’s thigh. It remained intact, as full metal jacket bullets are designed to do when they penetrate soft mediums like cloth and flesh, and was recovered on Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital. This bullet is also known as The Magic Bullet.

JFK CE567The second bullet that hit Kennedy blasted his head apart. It fragmented into multiple pieces, as full metal jackets are designed to do when they hit a hard medium like bone at a high velocity. Less than fifty percent of this round was recovered. By the way, both of these bullets were ballistically linked to being fired from Oswald’s Carcano ‘to the exclusion of all other firearms’.

These two shots were recorded on the famous Zapruder film which shows them occurring 4.88 seconds apart with both trajectories in the same line to the sniper’s nest window.

Ergo. The two tightly grouped casings came from these two shots because the angle of ejection, ricochet, and rest pattern are similar.

So why was the third casing so far apart?

Simple. It was fired from a different angle.

Let’s think this thing out, then look at some more physical and witness evidence.

JFK Houston StIf you were Oswald, intent on shooting the President, would you expose yourself to the eyes-front approach of the motorcade as it approached you from the south on Houston St.?  (Remember, Oswald was unstable, but he was calculating.)  An approaching target, when you’re in a vertical vantage point, is a tough target to hit (Remember, I was a sniper so I know what I’m talking about). It’s common sense that he’d wait until JFK’s limo rounded the corner onto Elm St. and was nearly stopped right in front of him. That’s the most logical time to squeeze-off a shot.

But the two shots that killed JFK happened when the limo was far west of the sniper’s nest and vanishing from Oswald’s sight picture.

So why didn’t he fire when he had the closest opportunity?

Well, he probably did.

The angle of ejection for the lone casing is entirely consistent with Oswald firing it at the first logical opportunity which was when the limo was closest to him and the security eyes were facing away.

So how did he miss?

JFK Traffic LightSimple again. As Oswald was following Kennedy in his cross-hairs, a traffic light came into play. Oswald squeezed off the first round, but it hit the metal housing on the light and fragmented.

jfk traffic light5This accounts for other evidence like where James Tague, a bystander five hundred and twenty feet to the west, was hit in the cheek by a piece of concrete curb that was sent flying by a lead fragment and where Virgie Rachley stated to have seen sparks fly from the pavement behind the limo when the first of three shots were fired. The simplest explanation is that these fragments were from the first, and missing, bullet.

JFK Signal lightEvidence of the strike exists in blowup photos from a Secret Service re-enactment in 1964 where you can see a defect in the traffic light housing. Unfortunately the light was replaced years ago and was never examined.

So, like Occam’s Razor states, the simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation.

To me, it’s obvious that the missing JFK bullet has a simple explanation.

5 HISTORY CHANGES IF JFK WASN’T ASSASSINATED

JFKJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States of America, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, fifty-one years ago today.

JFK’s murder on November 22, 1963, might be the most significant, singular event that shaped modern history. Ever wonder how our world would be today if Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t pull his trigger and President Kennedy survived?

It’ll never be known, but here’s 5 things where history would probably read different.

1. 1964 Presidential Election

JFK LimoKennedy’s main reason for his trip to Texas in November, 1963, was to restore unity in the local Democrats. JFK critically needed their support to capture the Texas Electoral College votes. That was the tipping point which narrowly gave him the 1960 election victory over Richard Nixon. The margin was .17 percent.

The November, 1964, presidential election was going to be a race between Democratic incumbent Jack Kennedy and Republican Party’s Senator Barry Goldwater. JFK committed to winning a second term and the polls prior to his death looked promising.

His popularity rating was at 58 percent right before the assassination and he’d just completed 1,000 days in office. That number was higher than similar ratings for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama – five presidents who won re-election bids.

JFK3JFK was going to keep Vice President Lyndon Johnson on the ticket as his running-mate. Although Kennedy personally disliked Johnson and cut him out of most decisions, he needed Johnson’s support to carry Texas – Johnson being a powerhouse within Texan Democrats.

If JFK had won the 1964 election, Johnson was still likely to become President. I say ‘still likely’ because Kennedy was a sick man. His deteriorating spine caused him immense pain and his advancing Addison ’s disease, the failure of adrenal glands, required him to be severely medicated. It’s unlikely that his health would have stood another five years, thereby defaulting the presidency to Lyndon Johnson sometime in his second term.

There’s no doubt that the shock of JFK’s assassination gave otherwise unearned support to Johnson who pledged to carry out Kennedy’s policies which included civil rights, the space program, nuclear de-escalation in the Cold War, and slowing the spread of communism.

2. Civil Rights

On recordings made in the White House just before his death, President Kennedy told advisers that he expected a tough re-election campaign because of his support of civil rights.

JFK4JFK introduced the Civil Rights Act in June, 1963. It faced fierce opposition in Congress, mostly from southern Democrats. Kennedy rejected an attempt to substitute a bill that would allow segregation at public facilities to continue, but it was stalled in Congress when Kennedy died.

After JFK’s death, President Johnson told the nation that passing the Civil Rights Act would be the best way to honor Kennedy’s legacy. By July, 1964, Johnson and his allies got the act approved. If Kennedy had lived, the debate over the Civil Rights Act would never have occurred during an election year.

Kennedy would have waited until after the 1964 election with the hope of having more leverage in Congress to pass the act. The combination of Kennedy and Johnson’s commitment to civil rights would still have been a huge, uphill battle and, without JFK’s assassination, probably wouldn’t have succeeded. 

JFK5History records that once Johnson became president he was able to get the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964 and Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 using his mandate from a sympathetic landslide election, Kennedy’s legacy, and his considerable powers of persuasion in Congress.

Without question, JFK’s assassination accelerated the implementation of American civil rights which reverberated around the world.

3. Space Program

JFK6On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy stood before Congress to deliver a special message on “urgent national needs.” He asked for an additional $7 billion to $9 billion over the next five years for the space program, stating to Congress “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” 

Skeptics doubted the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) ability to meet the president’s ambitious timetable. Within a year, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom travelled into space. 

In February, 1962, John Glenn orbited earth. His success inspired a great army of people who worked to reach the moon. By May, 1963, Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra, and Gordon Cooper made multiple orbits. Each mission lasted longer than the one before and gathered more data. 

As space exploration continued through the 1960s, JFK’s shoot for the moon vision was fulfilled.

JFK7Gemini was the second NASA spaceflight program. Its goals were to perfect the entry and re-entry maneuvers of a spacecraft and conduct further tests on how individuals are affected by long periods of space travel. The Apollo Program followed Project Gemini. It was to land humans on the moon and assure safe return to Earth. 

On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin realized President Kennedy’s dream. 

At 8:18 p.m. ET, Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon. Six hours later, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step onto the lunar surface. Both men were returned safely to the earth.

President Kennedy’s vision got the job done on time. His death speeded up our human destiny which is to explore and populate beyond Earth. 

4. The Cold War

In October, 1962, the world squeaked-by annihilation when the Soviet Union put nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis hit the height of the Cold War and tensions between the Russia and the USA were ready to snap.

Kennedy’s cool, but tough, handling through diplomatic back-door discussions with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev resulted in a Cold War turning point. The Russians backed down and removed the missiles in exchange for the Americans taking their ICBMs out of Turkey.

Khrushchev developed a respect for Kennedy as a man he could trust and deal with.

JFK9After JFK’s sudden death and Johnson’s immediate succession, the Soviets returned to an aggressive, hard line against America and continued their mistrust of American administrations under Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter. It took a quarter century for frosty relations to thaw till Ronald Reagan asked for the Berlin Wall to come down.

The Cold War would’ve been warmer and shorter had Jack Kennedy not been cut down in Dallas.

5. Vietnam

Audio tapes from November 19, 1963, show Jack Kennedy’s take on Vietnam as he quizzed two aides who’d returned from South-East Asia.

JFK13“On the one hand, you get the military saying the war is going better, and on the other hand, you get the political opinion with its deterioration. I’d like to have an explanation what the reason is for the difference,” Kennedy asked.

“He had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should support the war in Vietnam, but not get our soldiers involved in combat,” Robert Kennedy said about his brother. The reason was the Domino theory. “It’ll be the loss of all of Southeast Asia if you lost Vietnam. I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall and this is the quandary he wrestled with.”

JFK10But, three weeks before President Kennedy’s death, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem was killed in a military coup indirectly supported by the United States. Kennedy then made it his priority to stabilize the region by assisting with military material and advisers, but he was loath to putting American army boots on the ground.

The Vietnam situation rapidly deteriorated in the year after JFK’s death. In August, 1964, Congress (with President Johnson’s forceful manipulation) approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It gave Johnson the ability to commit massive amounts of U.S. troops without a war declaration.

JFK12In 2009, Koji Masutani made a film about President Kennedy and Vietnam in Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived. It was based on research of data and transcripts from the Kennedy administration. Masutani and the researchers concluded that Kennedy would have sought a more diplomatic solution than Johnson.

Their theory was that Kennedy’s pattern of behaviour was established in his handling of crises like the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile situations. It saw the president going against the advice of his military advisers to find a diplomatic solution. Kennedy’s pre-presidential book Profiles In Courage also gave insight into his preference to diplomacy vs. aggression.

De-classified planning documents from November 20, 1963, (2 days before JFK was shot) verify that Kennedy wanted all military personnel out of Vietnam by the end of 1965, unless there were “justified” exceptions. The fallout from the Diem coup was unknown at the time of the Kennedy assassination, so how the he’d have handled Vietnam during an election year will never be known.

JFK14But what’s known  to history – inversely to John F. Kennedy’s plan to exit Vietnam as quick as possible without losing a soldier – perversely the administrations of Presidents Johnson and Nixon supported a decade-long war in Vietnam and lost.

58,220 U.S. military personnel died. So did well over a million Vietnamese.

History changed when JFK was assassinated.