Why I'm a conspiracy theorist...

[JakeEpping]

Reading 11/22/63 was an amazing experience, and I call it a GREAT BOOK, one of the best books
I've read.

I am completely stunned, however, at Stephen King's afterword, and his belief of 99% certainty
that Oswald acted alone.

As previously stated, I've lived in Dallas for over 30 years... like many people in this city, I have vague
connections to some of the fringe details of the the JFK assassination...

Such as:

• my father has worked with the doctors at Parkland who tried to save Kennedy...
• a close friend of mine was friends with Jack Ruby, and Jack Rubinstein (his full name) was a member of my synagogue.
• My high school English teacher actually spent a 2 weeks of class going over the Warren Commission Report with us instead of teaching us Mark Twain, as was the curriculum.
• Another friend of mine actually interviewed personally many of the eye witnesses who were at Dealy Plaza
• I have visited the Book Depository multiple times with guests and relatives who want to see the site

When you grow up in Dallas, this terrible event is part of the culture here, whether you like it or not.

Forget Oliver Stone's film, for a second, which was highly sensationalized... But how Stephen King
can say that "any reasonable person" would dismiss a conspiracy theory is beyond absurd.

I won't go into massive debate, but let me point our 5 things briefly:

1. The ballistics of what happened were physically impossible for one shooter, experts have already said.
2. Oswald's connections to the mafia and CIA are well known. How can we call him some ordinary citizen "fame junkie"?
3. Why is a huge percentage of the Warren Commission Report censored with black strips covering mutliple paragraphs and sentences?
4. Jack Ruby's connections to organized crime are also well known.
5. Why did many of the key witnesses to the assassination die very mysterious deaths after the assassination?

These 5 facts might not prove conspiracy, but they at least cancel out the idea that this is 99% a closed case.

[Sepia and Dust]

These 5 facts might not prove conspiracy, but they at least cancel out the idea that this is 99% a closed case.

The onus, I'm afraid, is on you to prove conspiracy. Why doesn't prove anything, and it isn't evidence of anything.

The known facts of the case point to a single shooter.

[Walter Oobleck]

I read a dog-eared, hardcover-missing copy of the Warren Commission Report in the 70s. Don't recall any passages blacked out. You sure you didn't read a copy that Boris and Natasha Badinoff had gotten their cold Russian hands on...blacked out stuff, themselves? Ole Boris and Natasha...and their dog, too, Smedley. Or was that Snidely Whiplash? It was a time for conspiracies, the Cold War, the Bomb...UFOs in the sky w/diamonds...but yeah, that magic bullet is a hoot. Not saying it's not entirely impossible, although it very likely is that...impossible. Only way we'll know for sure is when the last ding-dong of doom has sounded and God sets up the projector and we begin to watch the story of our lives, no details omitted.

[JakeEpping]

The onus, I'm afraid, is on you to prove conspiracy. Why doesn't prove anything, and it isn't evidence of anything.

The known facts of the case point to a single shooter.

There is more then enough evidence to point to a possible conspiracy, but not enough to prove it completely.

I am simply disputing King's assertion that any sane, reasonable person would be 99% sure it was a lone gunman.

[JakeEpping]

I read a dog-eared, hardcover-missing copy of the Warren Commission Report in the 70s. Don't recall any passages blacked out. You sure you didn't read a copy that Boris and Natasha Badinoff had gotten their cold Russian hands on...blacked out stuff, themselves? Ole Boris and Natasha...and their dog, too, Smedley. Or was that Snidely Whiplash? It was a time for conspiracies, the Cold War, the Bomb...UFOs in the sky w/diamonds...but yeah, that magic bullet is a hoot. Not saying it's not entirely impossible, although it very likely is that...impossible. Only way we'll know for sure is when the last ding-dong of doom has sounded and God sets up the projector and we begin to watch the story of our lives, no details omitted.

Like I say, when you grow up in Dallas, this stuff is all around you.

My school library had an authentic copy of the Warren Commission Report, and it was almost half full of edited and censored passages covered with black oblong strips.

I'm completely serious.

[GNTLGNT]

There is more then enough evidence to point to a possible conspiracy, but not enough to prove it completely.

I am simply disputing King's assertion that any sane, reasonable person would be 99% sure it was a lone gunman.

....he wrote that while sitting on a grassy knoll....

[tenngolfer]

The stangest conspiracy theory I saw was a documentary on Netflix, I think it was called Dark Legacy. It basically had the traditional conspiracy theory folks in it, CIA & others, but with a twist. The (George) Bush family being behind it, something to do with linking them to pre WWII Germany and the banking industry. Never heard that one before.

[Shasta]

Like I say, when you grow up in Dallas, this stuff is all around you.

My school library had an authentic copy of the Warren Commission Report, and it was almost half full of edited and censored passages covered with black oblong strips.

I'm completely serious.

You do realize that classified reports are declassified over time, right? They can't fully declassify something until everyone involved would no longer be in danger if the report is released. An original one WOULD have parts the general public couldn't see.

But it looks like almost everything is open now:

It is a common misconception that the records relating to the assassination of President Kennedy are in some way sealed. In fact, the records are largely open and available to the research community here at the National Archives at College Park in the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Record Collection.

Congress created the Kennedy Collection when it passed the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. This statute directed all Federal agencies to transmit to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) all records relating to the assassination in their custody. The Kennedy Act also created a temporary agency, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), to ensure that the agencies complied with the Act.



It does look like a little bit is still closed:

According to the Act, no record could be withheld in part or in full, without the agreement of the ARRB. The guidelines for withholding records are outlined in the provisions in Section 6 of the Act. The full report of the ARRB is available online. A copy of the Act is in Appendix C of the ARRB Report mentioned above. In all cases where the ARRB agreed to withhold a record or information in a record, they stipulated a specific release date for the document. In addition, according to Section 5(g)(2)(D) of the Act, all records in the Kennedy Collection will be opened by 2017 unless certified as justifiably closed by the President of the United States.


http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/faqs.html#sealed

And here you go:

A digitized version of the Warren Commission Report and all 26 supporting volumes is available at the web site of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) at the following link: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib.htm. The AARC is a private organization and is not affiliated with NARA in any way. NARA cannot vouch for the accuracy of this digitized version of the Report and supporting volumes. However, we are providing the link as a courtesy for our researchers.

I'm not going to check the whole thing because I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I did do some spot checking and didn't see anything blocked out.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib.htm

[JakeEpping]

....he wrote that while sitting on a grassy knoll....

I've been to the grassy knoll many times, and the probability that a shooter was behind that fence
I put at around 95%.

[JakeEpping]

You do realize that classified reports are declassified over time, right? They can't fully declassify something until everyone involved would no longer be in danger if the report is released. An original one WOULD have parts the general public couldn't see.

But it looks like almost everything is open now:

I'm not going to check the whole thing because I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I did do some spot checking and didn't see anything blocked out.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib.htm

At the time during which I was growing up, the Warren Report was censored. Maybe parts of it have been declassified by now,
but I doubt the versions that are now available are not seriously altered and blocked, as they were originally. Unfortunately,
I'm too busy reading other books to investigate this.

I think that if Oswald was the obvious lone gunman, there would not be countless examples of conspiracy evidence. You don't
see this evidence in other simple cases of assassination in history.

The mere existence of such overwhelming counter-data at least contradicts this idea of 99% certainty.