National Archives releases thousands of JFK assassination records

One thing that sticks out to me as someone who's just looking into this stuff is the evidence of at least two other assassination plots in Chicago and Miami in November 1963. There may have been one in Tampa as well. I'm not yet clear on who knew what or when, but if these things are true, there certainly seemed to be a lot of credible threats in a short time period involving different people. And despite those threats, they decided in Dallas that it was safe to drive Kennedy slowly around tall buildings in a convertible? From what I can tell, it sounds like the House Select Committee found that the secret service just dropped the ball.

Predictions of Joseph Milteer

Thirteen days before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, a man named Joseph Milteer was tape recorded telling Miami police informant William Somersett that the murder of Kennedy was "in the working," that the best means of killing Kennedy was "from an office building with a high-powered rifle," and that "they will pick up somebody within hours afterwards, if anything like that would happen just to throw the public off."


Foreknowledge of the assassination, or just a lucky guess coupled with an uncanny understanding of how such things work?


Miami Police notified the Secret Service, and there are indications that an unannounced motorcade in Miami scheduled for later that month was cancelled. After the Kennedy assassination, informant Somersett spoke to Milteer on the phone. Police and FBI interviews with Somersett revealed that Milteer was jubilant, and said that "everything ran true to form. I guess you thought I was kidding when I said he would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle."

 

Owald was a Marine technician at Atsugi Air Force Base where the U2 was based. After he "defected" to the Soviet Union, the U2 was shot down by the Russians. Some believe that Oswald was working for U.S. intelligence and provided the Russians with info to help shoot down the plane in order to destroy detente. The Paris Summit Conference, to include U.S. and Russian leaders, was cancelled as a result of the shoot down. Gary Powers, the U2 pilot who was shot down and captured by the Russians, believed that Oswald was involved.

They hung out at a bar, but it wasn't Jack Ruby's. It was the Cellar Coffee House in Fort Worth, where some of them drank until 5 o'clock in the morning.

Johnson didn't leave the hospital until well after he was told that JFK was dead. He was not sworn in until both he and the body (officially dead or not) were aboard Air Force One. (That is, the Dallas casket was aboard. It may have already been empty, as it was when it got to Bethesda. The body arrived at Bethesda earlier in a metal shipping casket.)

 

They even moved the motorcycle cops back from beside the limo, thus exposing it on both sides. In addition they removed a press truck that ordinarily was in front of the limo in motorcades, thus exposing it from the front. In addition to that the White House physician, who ordinarily rode in the limo's front seat in a motorcade, was moved far back in the motorcade. The last thing you would want is a doctor right there with a president who has been shot.

 

Here is a shocker. Politicians are “me” people. They and their handlers want the focus on them. They don’t want a truck in front, or motorcycles to the sides as it takes away the focus from them. The same can be said of protectees who go into a crowd to shake hands and kiss babies.

I remember going to the location decades back. I went in believing the hype of the “impossible shot”. Man the distance was close, as in layup with a rifle close. Definitely changed my opinion on the conspiracy hype.

 

@cocodrilo you know so much detail about Kennedy’s assassination I’m beginning to wonder.

 

I've read that it was about 90 yards with the target moving at a little over 11 miles per hour. I don't know how difficult that shot is or isn't. But I don't think a conspiracy of some sort necessarily means that Oswald was not involved; it just means he wasn't acting alone. Maybe he was, I dunno. But the HSCA later concluded that the assassination was probably the result of a conspiracy. That's pretty interesting even if its analysis of the acoustic evidence has been criticized. If it was simply a loner with a gun, there certainly seems to have been a lot of secrecy, arm-twisting, and missing and contradictory evidence. To what end? To cover up incompetence perhaps?

 

well incompetence is usually the culprit. Just making the point that focusing on easily explained minutiae doesn’t foster a realistic look. Back in the day the shot difficulty was often hyped. Then you go there.
Could the CIA of those pesky Italians have been involved, sure it is possible. Just take everything with a grain of salt. Just like a Mullen 9th ranked class

 

The movie JFK broke a lot of people's brains, its more of a boomer fever dream than anything. IRL Garrison was basically laughed out of court and destroyed his career. It seems crazy that such a thing even went to trial, it was so half-baked. It seems like a lot of people think the Garrison account is basically "true" though - including Oliver Stone it seems. That being said, I definitely think Oswald was known to the CIA and was probably some kind of asset, whether he was just a nut that ended up killing the president and could potentially make them look silly or guilty, or they actually encouraged it ... I lean toward the former. The CIA intentionally killing the president seems so unnecessary lol.

 

If there was a conspiracy, I would have to believe it was in the form of a couple of rogue CIA agents that talked Oswald into killing Kennedy. That would explain why Oswald likely expected someone to pick him up and whisk him out of town, as evidenced by his escape by walking down the street, and his statement that he was "a patsy". OTOH, Oswald was so hopelessly stupid that a couple of nobodies in a bar might have convinced him that they were CIA agents, and he would have fallen for that.

 

Here is a website that goes through all the detailed physics calculations of the fatal bullet. It clearly debunks the theory that the shot was fired from the front. It also explains the science behind why the blowout of the skull happened--it was not an "exit wound", but an explosion from cavitation behind the bullet passing through the skull and brain. They calculate almost everything imaginable, including the slowing of the bullet on the way to the target, and how that would have been affected by temperature and humidity, etc. They even track brain/skull particles from one frame in the Zapruder film to the next to verify their calculations.

The idea that Kennedy was shot from the front was proposed in 1975 by Geraldo Rivera when he first showed the Zapruder film to the horrified public. As you can imagine, it is based on testimony from people who know essentially nothing on the subject compared to the people who did these calculations. Kennedy's head did move forward very briefly (mostly in between Zapruder film frames) before moving back and to the left.

Gunshot-wound dynamics model for John F. Kennedy assassination - PMC (nih.gov)

 

Being influential and being right are two different things. By your definition, Donald Trump was the most influential president since Lincoln, as he is the only one to influence followers to attempt a coup. Doesn't mean that the election was stolen from him.

As far as the butchering of Kennedy's head, I have to believe that the Parkland doctors knew they had to try something to save Kennedy, as doing nothing might get them blamed for not saving him. Of course, the medical journals are probably blank when it comes to reconstruction a head blown apart by a high-velocity round, and they didn't have a lot of time to figure out what to do. So they tried something, and it didn't work. Whether it looked like surgery or something else, is not surprising. Did you expect the Parkland doctors to put a large band-aid on Kennedy's head and call it a day? And once they realized that they may have done more harm than good with their attempt, they probably would not want to include the details of it in their surgical notes. Again, not surprising.

 

Though the Parkland doctors saw that JFK could not be saved, they did things like a tracheotomy. They did not perform surgery on his head. Of course, like you say, they could have been a pack of liars and really did a job on it.

Arguing with lone-nutters is like arguing with young-Earth creationists. I've done both until I was sick of it, it's pointless. And I'm through with this thread.