We disagree. For the majority of historians it has been proven, and was in 1964. The conspiracy side however has not changed nor will it. Their mantra is and remains “we cannot prove conspiracy because the conspirators won’t let us.” I personally have stated numerous times on this site and other sites over the years, Oswald and only Oswald shot and killed JFK to the exclusion of anybody else. However, we don’t know and likely never will whether some individual or organization was pulling his strings. Is it possible? Of course it’s possible. Can it be proven? No, it cannot be.
Time is the enemy of conspiracies because over time the conspiracy is exposed, deliberately or by accident. People talk, documents are found, evidence discovered.
But time is also the enemy of conspiracy theories too. Because over time, despite efforts to find the conspiracy, none is found. People who should have talked never do. Documents that should indicate something don't. Evidence that should be discovered isn't. Time reveals the emptiness behind a conspiracy theory just as much as it reveals any actual conspiracy.
We've had more than half a century of investigations - directly and indirectly into this event. It's the most studied crime in American if not world history. Multiple government investigations, news media, investigative reporters, historians, "citizen" journalists. On and on and on. And nothing of any substance has been found.
It's not there. Oswald shot JFK. Maybe he had some help. Maybe (again) he was used, or manipulated. Maybe. But after all of these years that will never be proven. Whoever may have worked with him or used him - and it had to be a small "c" type conspiracy - is long dead.
If someone wants to or needs to use this tragedy to go after the secret "they" - the CIA, the government, the secret fascist cabal running the country - that that person believes needs to be exposed then please stop. Stop using this to go after your own monsters that you've created. They didn't kill JFK. One sad misfit did.
Paul, I have been surprised since I got a more complete impression of your thinking and approach, beginning when I was comments editor @JFKfacts, 2015 - 2016, than I had prior to that, from what I read in your Ed Forum posts, that you seem in such close agreement now, with Steve.
I do not understand why anyone would be this self-limiting and not recognize it as a severe handicap, if fact finding is the goal. If you start with a strong LN or CT bias, you'll build in a tendency to avoid finding what you don't want to know because you are actually about validating your biases.
Years of LNs observing the erroneous assumptions driven anger of CTs must account for a portion of LN cynicism and frustration. I disagree that they are all worked up about nothing, but there is the problem of them knowing what they know that is not as sinister or corrupt as they believe it all is.
Example: Three things triggered this reaction, which I found very telling. It exposes an ideology resembling a religion.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/22439-yes-postal-money-orders-do-require-bank-endorsements/?do=findComment&comment=319024
Posted November 19, 2015 (edited)
I will repeat this for your benefit, I think everyone else got it:
Now, my general point is this: how can an attorney isolate one part of this transaction and say its valid, based on that one point. When, in fact, everything about it is dubious. By doing so, is he not then guilty of doing the thing he says is true about the people he criticizes?
To make a point of comparison: its like saying Humes' beveling idea overrides all the problems with the autopsy.
Yeah, sure it does.
Edited November 19, 2015 by James DiEugenio
I think LNs have a similar block, if a thing as condensed as the WC Report can also be the foundation of a "circle the wagons" ideology.
The WC Report, just as its opposite CT pushback, is a sum of its parts. DiEugenio believes his ideology is all or nothing.
I read a question I thought was interesting and original. I try not to limit myself, mainly by staying indifferent about Oswald's guilt or innocence or if he was an LN or not, to the extent I can discipline myself to.
A poster using the name Brian Castle was briefly active on several forum in 2015 - 2016. He asked a question about the meaning of the key punch holes in the postal money order deposited by Klein's Sporting Goods.
Author Jean Davison attempted to use the key punch holes to support a conclusion the holes proved the money order was bank processed routinely and validated the authenticity of the payment to Klein's for the Assassination rifle mail order.
I was surprised such a simple method of validation could have been overlooked and instead, many embraced John Armstrong's objections, serial number sequence discrepancy, lack of bank endorsement stamping on the reverse side, and the money order not found in Kansas City, but instead located in Washington, DC serving as the main points of a sub-belief system of DiEugenio outlined ideology.
I found, ironically, that Jean Davison's observation about the key punch holes was correct if the Klein's money order had been the older version that was replaced in Dallas just weeks before Oswald was alleged to have purchased the money order at the Dallas Post Office. The Post Office Dept. had paid the Federal Reserve $650,000 annually to provide keypunch operators to manually process cashed money orders with punches representing the dollars and cents displayed on the face of each money order. A primary reason for the revised money order cashed by Klein's was to eliminate that cost and the manual fraud check operations of the
Kansas City Postal Money Order Center, which could then be eliminated after most outstanding old method money orders were cashed, after the gradual, 1963 roll ouy of the new style, in one postal region after another!
I did some digging, had some luck, and presented proof countering John Armstrong's long embraced objections. Lance Payette became interested and solved the mystery of the meaning of the blue inked string of
numbers displayed on the postal money order's face. Just as Jim DiEugenio left himself with no method to consider these new facts and adjust his views, Jim Hargrove's reaction, speaking for John Armstrong, was even more telling. He rewrote Armstrong's web presentation challenging the money order, even incorporating the article image below, taking all credit for presenting a more accurate account to readers.:
My critique of Armstrong's long held claims on his web page, considering the new discoveries.:
Rebutting John Armstrong's conclusions:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161020060305/http://jfk.education/node/13Klein's postal money order - claims raising suspicion it was fakedhttps://web.archive.org/web/20161020060221/http://jfk.education/node/11
Sorry Brian, Jean, and DVP, Banks Did Not Key-Punch 1963 P.O. Money Orders
Submitted by Admin on Tue, 11/10/2015 - 06:47
Updated November 19, 2015:
https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/afips/1966/5068/00/50680479.pdf
(Lance Payette brought this to my attention, today. "File Locator Numbers - See Explanation, below:)
https://web.archive.org/web/20161020060221/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat=19620623&id=2PQiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Nc0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=5330,4714873&hl=en
More.....
https://web.archive.org/web/20161020055109/http://jfk.education/node/12Klein's Postal Money Order - 1963 Banking System InnovationI was fortunate to make and present this other discovery, shortly after,:
The two people, brothers named by author Joan Mellen as proof of CIA interference in Jim Garrison's investigation, also described in DiEugenio's book, were actually first cousin's of Garrison's wife, and Clay Shaw was informed of this within a week of his arrest.:
https://jfkfacts.org/comment-of-the-week-15/and
https://jfkfacts.org/provocative-prolific-joan-mellen/
Tom S. April 12, 2016 at 1:25 pm
Although I am credited as a contributor to Ms. Mellen’s book, “Our Man in Haiti,” my entire body of research results influence me to share an opinion that the description of Joan Mellen in this article is overdone….
She first met Jim Garrison just months after the Clay Shaw trial in 1969 and described interviewing more than 1200 people before publishing her book on Jim Garrison, “Farewell to Justice.”
More than 30 years after she first met Jim Garrison and in addition to much other research and interviewing 1200 people, this was the crux and the emphasis of Joan Mellen’s presentation on the best supported CIA influences/interference on Garrison’s investigation and his prosecution of Clay Shaw.
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Unredacted_-_Episode_1_-_Transcript.html
Unredacted Episode 1: Transcript of Interview with Joan Mellen
Joan Mellen is the author of A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History. This interview was conducted on 22 Feb 2006. Tyler Weaver provided the introduction, and the interview was conducted by Rex Bradford.
…….
REX: I – I think –
JOAN: – when Baldwin was present, he was a CIA asset, his brother worked for the International Trade Mart and Clay Shaw, David Baldwin, and these, these are CIA people….
I think, so far, four years later, that the Garrison investigation may have been an elaborate ruse intended to make the clamoring from 1966 on, for a congressional committee inquiry, seem unreasonable and after Clay Shaw's almost instant acquittal, ridiculous. The role of Nicholas B. Lemann as the most prominent critic of "JFK, the Movie" in 1991, and the suit against Lemann and Conde Nast in 1992 by Perry Russo encourage this supsicion, even more. There was no investigation until six years after Clay Shaw walked out of the courtroom a free man, and nine yeras after the June 1967, CBS INquiry.