Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "The Kennedy Assassination: Inside the Book Depository" video.
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You can pin that on four people, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Allen Dulles, and J. Edgar Hoover, and to a lesser extent, Earl Warren. Johnson was convinced the Cubans had been directly involved. He got Warren to sit at the head of the commission because he said if the country wasn't convinced Oswald acted alone WWIII would break out. Robert Kennedy put Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission to make sure they didn't stick their noses into areas he didn't want them venturing into, areas that included assassination attempts on foreign leaders, specifically Castro, and other hijinks he was involved in at the behest of his brother. It's why he was in such a an all-consuming depression after the assassination, one he never recovered from. He was convinced one of their several covert plots had backfired. Later he said: "We were more energetic than wise about a lot of things, especially Cuba, and we paid a very high price for it." He also said: "I found out something I never knew, the world I lived in wasn't the real world." Allen Dulles knew all the secrets going back to the Eisenhower administration and made sure locations like Mexico City and New Orleans were simply given a cursory look. Those were secret hot-spots in the Kennedy's secret war and Dulles's job was to make sure they stayed that way. Warren didn't object when obvious leads were simply left unexplored. Hoover just wanted to protect the FBI. I think there was a lot more interaction between Oswald and the Bureau, especially after Marina got cozy with the White Russians in Dallas but Hoover and his bunch were much better at making sure trails went ice-cold than the CIA was.
Anyway, that's kind of a long response but there was no shadow group, no rogue CIA bunch who had the Commander and Chief whacked like Oliver Stone makes out in his propaganda film. He just hatted Johnson going back to the days of Vietnam and doesn't have much time for the rest of the country for that matter. Guys like him and Mark Lane were out making money and grinding axes. As Lee's brother Robert said: "You can't just simply ignore all the evidence against Lee and nobody has shown me any real evidence he didn't do it." He pins it on their crazy mother who is the root of all the conspiracy talk in the first place. I recommend Die By The Sword by Gus Russo. He comes down on the conspiracy side and while I disagree with his conclusions, he gives the best analysis of what the Kennedy's were up to from 1961-1963 and how their own reckless behavior cost them dearly.
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@TheAdvertisement Thank you for taking the time to read them. Sometimes I provide more detail than people want to be concerned with but it's a topic I spent a lot of time reading on and researching over the years. I first became interested when A&E ran The Men Who Killed Kennedy series. That peaked my curiosity and I initially went in on the conspiracy side. I read books like Six Seconds in Dallas, Best Evidence, The Killing of the President and On the Trail of the Assassins. Then I had a discussion with a very smart history professor who's opinion I respected and she told me to read Case Closed by Gerald Posner.
That got me started down a different path and after that I read that book, The Warren Report and a lot of the source material that was released as a result of the JFK Records Act. The Mary Ferrell website was free at that time and it was a great resource for those declassified documents. Unfortunately a lot of that stuff is behind a pay wall now or has been taken down for one reason or another but it's still a good website. I also listened to the live radio broadcasts from that day. David von Pein has a very good JFK channel on YT if you want to hear the event as it happened. Most people ignore that but events in real-time, while they contain some inaccuracies, hold up well. Memories fade and some people change their story for various reasons so it's good to hear what actually happened.
I also went to Dealey Plaza a couple times and when you actually stand behind the picket fence you realize that theory is highly flawed, and that's being generous. My boss actually lived next door to Robert Oswald for many years but he said the topic of the assassination never came up. He said Bob, as he called him, was a good man. Robert pins all the trouble on the grand-dame of all conspiracies, their mother. She was NVTS nuts and as Robert said, if she was even a half-assed decent mother the world would have never heard of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Like I say, I went in looking for a conspiracy, I came out with a three-time-loser and a $19.00 mail-order rifle, a guy who idolized Castro and was trying to win favor with him in an attempt to get to his socialist heaven on Earth. He acted alone. Was he egged on? Most likely. There are the three unaccounted for days he spent in Mexico City. Someone from the Cuban embassy may have riled him up. But Oswald was no more the kind of guy you would get involved with in an active conspiracy to assassinate a head of state than Jack Ruby was. Governments and the mob don't use unstable people for jobs like that a host of very good reasons.
I know this is a long rant as well but there are polls that claim more than 85% of the country doesn't accept the Warren Report and most people believe Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a vast conspiracy. That needs to be challenged because the truth is under assault all over the place and the truth matters above all else. As John Adams said: "Facts are stubborn things." If Occam's Razor ever applied to any individual or any event, it applies here.
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@DanC-go9lc I'm familiar with Posner's book on the MLK assassination but I've never read it. Admittedly, I haven't done much research into that case but again, James Earl Ray isn't exactly the type one would hire for a hit. From what I have read, there was a lot of talk about a $50,000 bounty on King's head and it seems most likely that Ray heard about it and thought he could collect. As I understand it, when it turned out to be a lot of talk Ray headed for the hills. He used to run drugs between Canada and the U.S. and he was had a history of crossing the border between Detroit and Windsor Ontario. He spent so much time running contraband in that area that he became a fan of my team, the Detroit Tigers. You'd probably know more than I do but it appears he was trying to get to South Africa where he thought he would be safe but he ran out of cash in London and some half-assed robbery attempt got him pinched.
I do remember seeing him answer the King family directly when they asked if he was involved in the shooting and Ray, who wasn't known for stammering, stuttered when he told them he didn't. Could be nothing, but I grew up in the city around some of the best liars you'll ever meet and the ones who aren't very good give themselves away through body language or a stammer, a lot like what Ray did. And he loses eye contact for a brief second, another tell. That's just my observation though.
And yes, I agree that there was a lot of shady stuff going on in Mexico city that will never come to light. Johnson was trying to prevent a war, RFK was trying to prevent a scandal, and the CIA had no desire to give up assets or methods over a guy who was dead. The reasons are straight forward, the path each took created the conspiracy cottage industry, which was just fine for all parties involved. As long as people chase the shiny object they don't look for the darker one. I should read Posner's MLK book.
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