A defense that can be made for any Large-Secret-Enduring Conspiracy Theory. All of them will claim, when pressed, that they are really not that large. None of them provide an estimate of how many people were involved in the conspiracy. I don’t know of any JFK conspiracy book or movie that does so. Any more than I know of any such book on the Stolen 2020 Election, or the U. S. Government run 9/11 attack or the Apollo Moon Landing Hoax conspiracy theories.
The best JFK assassination books I've read are the ones that don't propose any theory at all (ie "Accessories After The Fact" by Sylvia Meagher). It's possible to be skeptical of the Warren Report and take apart the LN narrative without proposing an alternative theory of who really killed JFK.
It's not possible at this point to know "Who did it" but there seems to be enough holes in the official narrative that we can conclude that the case remains unsolved.
Earlier in the thread I proposed a theory of "what might've happened" but I'd be lying if I said, "I know what really happened". All I said was that I think a minimum of ten people would need to be involved and that not everyone would agree that ten people is a "large conspiracy".
I also noted that the conspiracy and cover-ups are two different categories involving two or more different groups of people with different, and sometimes conflicting motives.
For example, if the intention of blaming a "Communist" who had lived in the USSR for JFK's murder was to provoke a war between the US and Cuba/Soviets, that conflicted with Lyndon Johnson's desire to avoid a military confrontation with the Soviets. So I can see a scenario where Johnson's reaction might've conflicted with the motives of JFK's potential assassins.
If the Mob played a role in a plot against Kennedy, the CIA's motive for a cover-up would be to hide their relationships with Mobsters that were occurring in the early-60s while they were trying to kill Castro.
Those are just two examples to show how different institutions could have different reasons for silence or cover-ups.
I'm honest enough to admit that I don't know what really happened and am always willing to listen to new information.
I would just like there to be a book that really grabs people, a best seller, on the JFK assassination, that lists all the sub tasks the author thinks were done, and the number of people required to do so. You will never see such a book. Large conspiracies grab the imagination. That is why they have been so successful over the centuries. But the author isn’t going to provide the details that show how implausible it is. Hence, there will be references to the CIA being involved, the FBI being involved. No one could alert the authorities because the police and the press were all involved. And the conspiracy had a large goal, to start a war. Naturally, a book on all this is not going to come up with an estimate of the number of people involved in all this. It would involve too many people to be plausible.
Who has the power to investigate the CIA, or FBI, or Dallas PD? Usually law enforcement and intelligence institutions 'investigate themselves' and almost always, those institutions conclude that they 'did nothing wrong' when they investigate themselves.
Yes, there were attempts by Congress to investigate the CIA and FBI in the 1970s and we learned a great deal about some awful things that those agencies had done but Congress only grazed the surface because the CIA and FBI controlled the information that was shown to Congress.
Another obstacle is the fact that people within certain institutions are discouraged from becoming Whistleblowers. In recent years, several national security Whistleblowers have been prosecuted, not celebrated as heroes:
Chelsea Manning exposed US war crimes in Iraq.
Daniel Hale exposed war crimes in the Drone Assassination program.
Reality Winner exposed Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
All three were sent to prison for unauthorized disclosure of national security secrets.
Edward Snowden would've been prosecuted if he stayed in the US. Daniel Ellsberg was prosecuted but he won his case. However, he's the exception, not the rule for national security Whistleblowers.
Against those odds, why do you expect that people in the know inside those institutions would come forward to expose corruption or actual crimes?
Doing so risks one's career, freedom, and in some cases, their life. A few might take the risk but most won't.
The national Press is different from the government. If you report on certain subjects that the political or national security establishment doesn't want to discuss, you simply won't be published. There are a number of examples of reporters who were demoted or fired for covering topics that they were discouraged from reporting on.
Gary Webb had his life and career ruined after his reporting on the CIA's involvement with the cocaine trade.
No. How many years was this conspiracy kept hidden? 50 years? 40 years? No. It fails to meet the criteria because, while it may have been Large and Secret, the secret did not endure for long. This is a classic example of why Large-Secret-Enduring conspiracies do not exist. With too many people involved the secret is bound to be exposed, sooner rather than later.
Iran-Contra was exposed accidentally like Watergate. In both cases, we still don't know all the details of what happened as there was some stone-walling by intelligence agencies and enduring cover-ups in those examples still continue.
On a side note, 55 years later it has been all but concluded that the FBI and NYPD manipulated evidence and covered-up details about the 1965 Malcolm X assassination.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/nyregion/malcolm-x-killing-exonerated.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimesConspiracies happen. Cover-ups happen. The remaining question in the Malcolm X case is "Why did they do it?"
Why didn't they want the real killers caught?
