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How to Interpret the JFK Files
The evidence that Oswald acted alone remains almost entirely unchallenged. But the behavior of others on the periphery and the manner in which our government acted to control information gave rise to countless conspiracy theories. All of the redactions, bogus secrecy, etc., are reducible to three categories of official reaction to the facts and records: (“They” refers to whatever government entity was involved.)
- They did not make good use of what they knew.
- They missed stuff they should have known.
- They were doing other things that they should not have been doing.
Hence redactions and overclassifications. The same great minds that designed the Bay of Pigs invasion were apparently reaching out to mobsters who wanted to recover their Cuban holdings, plotting the assassination of Castro, making extensive and possibly unlawful use of diplomatic cover, and not efficiently sharing nor acting upon intel involving Oswald.
John Donovan, my high school teacher and later my mentor during my stint as a teacher, had been a Marine lieutenant and Oswald’s commanding officer in Okinawa. He recalled bull sessions in the radar facility in which Oswald exhibited the traits of a self-educated man—bright, opinionated but not fully aware of the incompleteness of his take on many things. (He had no doubt that Oswald or virtually any other Marine of that era could have accurately made those shots from the Book Depository window.)
John was interviewed by Edward Jay Epstein, who then hired him to help find and interview about a dozen individuals. A rather high percentage of those who agreed to meet had fatal heart attacks, along with one fatal hunting accident, prior to the appointed time. Two others ducked further contact. Coincidence was not impossible. Nor did he conclude that this proved an assassination conspiracy. His take was that if any of these unlikely events were orchestrated, it probably meant that the investigation was wandering into a murky world in which there is a great deal to hide apart from any relevance to the JFK killing. (See, 1,2, and 3 above).
It was thought that Napoleon had stirred up more trouble than necessary with the execution of the Duke of Enghien. This inspired the famous quote: It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder that reflects the eternal attitude of apparatchiks and Deep State denizens in all times and places. Morality, national interest, truth and legality matter far less than avoiding adverse perceptions, political accountability and outright embarrassment no matter how many complications and misperceptions ensue.
Published in General
I’ve been privileged to have been found trustworthy enough to be allowed access to classified information. I’m persuaded that 50% of classified information received that status because someone found it to be embarrassing and that person had access to the appropriate rubber stamp.
Never attribute to conspiracy anything which can be explained by incompetence.
Good post.
That aphorism is itself a CIA psyop!
Robert Heinlein was CIA?
Okay. Maybe.
Grrr….
It might be behind a paywall, but the title of this Wall Street Journal piece tells you what you need to know:
How the CIA’s ‘Benign Coverup’ After the JFK Assassination Gave Rise to the ‘Deep State’:
President Kennedy’s killing planted the seeds for the belief that shadowy bureaucrats could be conspiring against the public
Consider this possibility, which if true explains all of the government’s actions following the assassination: LHO fired twice and hit JFK in the back with his second shot, then a SS man mishandled his weapon and shot JFK in the head.
Then Oswald said “I’m a patsy” before being shot by a throwaway wanna-be mob guy. There’s your government conspiracy.
Or [butt]-covering.
I recall reading a theory once that Jackie actually fired the fatal shot. It wasn’t a joke.
Looking at something like the JFK assassination after the fact, it’s always possible to find little discrepancies here and there which you can then use to build huge conjectures upon. And in so doing completely miss the larger pattern.
If Oswald wasn’t the shooter, then why was he there? Why did multiple witnesses ID him for shooting that cop a few minutes later? Why did he try to shoot the cop who tried to arrest him in the theater right after that?
If other conspirators killed Kennedy, why would they go to the trouble of getting Oswald to be in the area just so they could have someone to blame it on? If you think about it, that would have been way too much effort, uncertainty and risk for what you got in return, which was basically nothing. Why do you care if there’s a patsy if you can get away with it anyway? Looking back on it after the fact, it’s easy to imagine that course of action. But when you think about it from the point of view of actually doing it, it makes no sense.
Jesse Waters had some idiot on the other night, some self proclaimed JFK assassination expert. He was going on about the supposed “blow out” wound on the back of Kennedy’s head. He said Oswald couldn’t have done it because that meant the bullet came from the front and Oswald wasn’t in the front. What? How did he know where Oswald was? Sounds like he was assuming Oswald was in the school book building! Why would he think that???
If you want to know whether Kennedy had a blow out wound on the rear of his head, just watch the Zapruder film. He didn’t. It doesn’t matter what one out of ten witnesses who saw the body thought they remembered.
JFK assassination theories were always the playground of leftists. It’s beyond pathetic how conservatives have now taken it up, not because there’s some new evidence, but merely because the CIA and related agencies, who are implicated in these theories, seem to have fallen out of favor with conservatives.
I think you didn’t consider what I suggested. LHO did shoot JFK and Officer Tibbets. Everyone can agree that it’s possible to weave speculation and vague circumstance into a narrative that LHO was part of a conspiracy, but there’s no more than that – no real reason to think he was anything but a lone actor.
In the theory I present, government involvement in the assassination began only after LHO shot JFK in the back, when a Secret Service agent accidentally shot JFK in the head.
I read that book too. It makes more sense than the other theories.
Turns out there are two of them – “Mortal Error” and “Smoking Gun.” I haven’t read the latter.
I like Jim Bishop’s report of Clint Hill’s phone conversation with Robert Kennedy in “The Day Kennedy Was Shot” :