Conspiracy Is Not A Theory - Conspiracy Is A Crime

 My first impression of Taki’s Magazine is of a conservative news blog trying to be hip.  Cool graphics, a host of big names featuring eye catching titles such as:  How Bimbos Saved the American Republic, A Pox On Your Blankets and not to be undone, The Men Who Taste Jews in Their Sandwiches.  Too cool for school, huh? 

I got wind of this site since a link from one of my articles landed in the comments section to an article by Steve Sailer entitled, "That’s What They Want You to Think".  The title gives it away, doesn't it?  Sailer apparently wants to be considered a serious journalist so this article is a bushwhack of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. The Lone Gunman comes up for air once again.  To be fair, Sailer will admit to conspiracy in the deaths of Caesar, Lincoln and Archduke Ferdinand.  But in the long run it doesn't matter as conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination becomes the stumbling block for further intellectual inquiry.  For Sailor, he goes one step further and declares conspiracy in Kennedy’s death to be outlandish and that’s a step too far.

The mind of Sailor works in mysterious ways.  He says that the epitome of conspiracy kookiness is Oliver Stone's JFK film:

"The flagrant stupidity of most conspiracy theories popular during my lifetime, as epitomized by Stone’s 1991 masterpiece/fiasco JFK (in which the entire military-industrial complex plots to murder John F. Kennedy by hiring some flaming French Quarter homosexuals), serves to inoculate the powerful against the suspicion that they have influence (or responsibility) regarding events."

Excuse me, but real conspiracy craziness is saying that cruise missiles cloaked in airliner holograms crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11.  There is nothing crazy about believing in a conspiracy in JFK's death.  Certainly not for a man that had this number of enemies.  And Sailor's assessment of Stone's version of events in the JFK assassination and movie is completely ignorant.  If Stone followed the party line, or made prosecutor Jim Garrison appear to be a wrong-head fool, then the praise would abound.  But by thinking this way, the author displays a detrimental lack of fundamentals in the Kennedy assassination.  He looks at no serious flaws in the government's official story.  Instead, it's the critics that get the thrashing behind the woodshed. 

I don't get people like this.  It's as if their critical thinking skills have been suspended when it comes to this subject.  To be sure, the JFK assassination can be a Black Hole for speculation.  I know it’s a great thing to be considered fair minded and rational.  But many seem blinded by this impulse, trading in the truth for a spotless reputation.  Anomalies be damned.  A nineteen year old Marine can teach himself Russian, complete with a Baltic accent.  No problem.  And where is this kid going to hear Russian spoken with a Baltic accent to begin with?  No problem. We are told Oswald bought a money order to pay for his rifle on the morning March 12, 1963.  Yet, his work records indicate he never took any time off that morning.  No problem.  The money order didn’t have his fingerprints on it.  No problem.  The money order is missing all bank and USPS routing stamps.  No problem.  The money order is discovered in the National Archives and nobody can explain why.  No problem.  There are hundreds of other things I could bring up like this but you can read about those issues elsewhere on this blog. 

But Sailor just can't let a sleeping dog lie.  He goes on: "After all these years, it appears that the best explanation we can come up with is that Oswald and Ruby each acted alone. But just because that’s the best explanation doesn’t mean it’s a very good explanation. It’s merely somewhat less absurd than all the other specific hypotheses."

I see.  So having more than one gunman in Dealey Plaza is absurd.  The idea that all hypotheses are absurd is ludicrous and displays a lack of understanding regarding the basics of the case.  If one only pays attention to the numerous witnesses that heard shots coming from someplace other than the school book building (the Newmans, Zapruder, the Willis family, Nix, Powers, etc.) we get an inkling of a different story playing out.  Obviously, another shooter is a conspiracy.  Some people want to be the smartest guy in the room.  Unfortunately for Steve Sailor, in regarding the Kennedy assassination, that room is nothing more than a walk-in closet.

Conservatives and liberals make lock horns on many issues but they are in lock-step when it comes to the Warren Commission's conclusion of Lee Oswald as Lone Gunman.  The same conservatives that tell their readers in print and their listeners on the radio that one cannot trust what is coming out of Washington are the same people that have no problem believing the Warren Report.  There were no liars, criminals and plotters back in 1964?  I don't know of a single conservative in the media (radio, print or web) that believes in conspiracy in the death of John F. Kennedy.  And mainstream liberals are no better.  Chris Mathews on MS-NBC gives voice to the same view. 

Hence, all spout the partly line, "Kennedy was killed by a Communist."  But that is wrong.  Oswald never said he was a Communist but instead, a Marxist.  While the two political philosophies share a lot in common there is enough of a difference for Oswald to clearly state which side he (allegedly) was on.  (And there is much evidence to show what Oswald was on either side, but simply fronting for other parties.)  These critics of the critics don't even know the correct terminology right from the launch of their attacks, nor the implication of these two political doctrines. 

Conspiracy is not a theory–conspiracy is a crime.  A felony.  So prevalent it had to be documented as a crime in our criminal justice system.  Conspiracy is an integral element of human life and history.  Any book of history, the history of anything on a macro or micro scale, features conspiratorial components.  Plotting is what bad people do since they can’t do everything in the sunshine.

The phrase "Conspiracy Theorist" is a deriding term, a put-down, a form of punishment for not believing what your betters tell you and meant to ridicule any critic who is doubting an officially sanctioned narrative of an event.  While at the same time, bypassing the flaws in an account of how things happened, which are usually propagated by a governing authority.

You didn’t see anything here.  Now move along.

Addendum #1
Actually, there were some conservatives that believed in conspiracy in the JFK assassination but they are no longer on the air.  One was Rollye James, formerly on XM Radio.  Very much a libertarian she stayed on the constitutional side of most issues and is a lover of all things conspiratorial.  I miss her show greatly as she was nobody’s shill.  And the late Dale Sommers, AKA The Truckin’ Bozo, on the XM Radio’s Road Dog channel.  Sommers was fond of pointing out how Oswald left his rifle on the sixth floor and that a real Marine never leaves his rifle behind.  Sommers also served in military intelligence but I don’t know if that influenced his thinking on this issue.  I don’t know of any others that are on air nor do I know of any liberal radio hosts that support conspiracy in the assassination of JFK either.

Addendum #2
In regards to the “flaming French Quarter homosexuals” that Jim Garrison was investigating, we now know two salient facts.  Both were liars.  David Ferrie lied to the FBI about knowing Lee Oswald and Clay Shaw lied under oath at his trial about his involvement with the CIA.  Shaw also lied again in an interview published at the time.  They both lied about knowing Oswald.  Their involvement with behind the scenes Cold War intrigue is now well documented by witness testimony and latter-day document releases. 

John Wilkes Booth vs Lee Harvey Oswald

(Update from previous article.)

Over the years you all have most likely read the list of amazing coincidences between Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy’s lives and deaths. Lincoln’s secretary was a Kennedy and Kennedy’s secretary was a Lincoln, and so on. However, after reading Michael Kauffman’s American Brutus I am convinced that there are more coincidences between their alleged killers, John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald than the Presidents themselves. American Brutus is an excellent book on the Lincoln assassination, focusing on the life of John Wilkes Booth and the resulting plot. I recommend it for students of the Kennedy assassination as well as it accurately plots how conspiracies operate and how to keep coconspirators quiet. While reading it I began to notice a trail of coincidences between the lives of Booth and Oswald that parallel one another to an amazing degree.

Coincidences like this are interesting to ponder but ultimately lead to nowhere. Maybe just mathematical flukes, or maybe the nature of reality is different than what we know. One can have the sense that these trivial deeds are signposts—markers—to history. The assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy were pivotal in American History. But why are the events and deeds of Booth and Oswald so similar? Could assassins have a similar psychological makeup, allowing them to have similar life experiences? Quite possibly so. Maybe it all looks significant and really is not, just a way our brains organize data and patterns we discover in the world. It remains an interesting mystery, never the less.

Arrest records. Prior to their famous deeds, both Booth and Oswald were arrested and jailed for pity crimes. In early 1863 a provost marshal in St. Louis arrested Booth for making anti-government remarks, briefly detained, paid a fine and let go. In the summer of 1963, Oswald was arrested for a scuffle on the streets of New Orleans, briefly detained, posted bail, and let go.

Undelivered speeches. In Booth’s day the main debate was over slavery. Booth wrote a speech on the issue, a rough draft with spelling errors, which he never delivered. Oswald’s issue for his time was communism vs capitalism. He also wrote a speech about this subject. It was a rough draft, with spelling errors, which he also never gave.

Both men accidentally shot themselves. As Booth was examining his stage manager’s pistol, he noticed some rust on the barrel. When he went remove it with a pocketknife, the gun accidentally discharged wounding Booth in the thigh, narrowly missing an artery. He took weeks to recover. While in the Marines, Oswald accidentally shot himself in the upper left arm with an unauthorized .22 pistol. This resulted in the first of his two court-martials he would receive. (The second being an altercation he had with the sergeant that turned him in for the accidental shooting.)

Both men had tattoos.  Booth had his initials JWB tattooed but it was unclear by the witnesses where.  Either a wrist or hand but neither left or right was indicated.  Two witnesses say Oswald had a tattoo on his left forearm.  

Scars on necks. Booth had a tumor removed off his neck shortly before the assassination. Oswald had a mastoid operation as a child which left a three inch scar on the left side of his neck (which was not seen in his arrest photos nor listed in the autopsy report).

Both men used aliases. Booth used John Boyd while on the run after the assassination; Oswald used Alek Hidell and had a Hidell ID in his wallet at the time of his arrest.

Both men spent their last days living alone. And estranged from the women in their lives. Booth in a hotel away from his girlfriend; Oswald in a rooming house separated from his wife and children. Also, Booth's girlfriend Lucy Hale was born in 1841.  Likewise, Oswald's wife Marina was born in 1941. 

Booth and Oswald were both killed by a single gun shot. Booth by a rifle shot to the neck. Oswald by a pistol shot to the abdomen.

A "junior" in the family. Booth had a brother named Junius after their father. Oswald had a brother named Robert after their father. Both of them were older brothers.

Autopsy Photographs. Booth and Oswald’s bodies were autopsied; both were photographed. Booth’s autopsy photos have never been released.

Family member named June. Booth had brother named Junius but he was called in the family by his nickname, June. Oswald’s first daughter is named June.

Miscellaneous: Both men were southerners. Both have six letters in their middle names. Both have a total of 15 letters in their three names. Their middle names are derived from relatives. Both were mortally wounded before their trials. Both men were involved in assassinations of Presidents on a Friday. Both were survived by their mothers. Both were in their 20‘s. Both had their fathers die when they were young. Both were widely traveled.

Sources:
Kauffman, Michael, American Brutus; Bugliosi, Vincent, Reclaiming History; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; Baker, Judyth, Me and Lee, The Warren Report

Adventures of a JFK Blogger

I assumed after I listed my email address after I started this research blog into the Kennedy assassination I would all kinds of interesting characters contacting me. And they did. A mixed collection of pranksters, guys with far-out theories, authors, random individual stories, and thankfully, legitimate researchers that have been around for years doing yeoman work. I knew getting into this everybody has a theory and some were going to be kooky. It is the loony ones that bring all of this ridicule and mockery from the Establishment that insists that conspiracies to kill presidents haven’t happened since Abe Lincoln went to Ford’s Theater in 1865.

I was contacted last week by one of the far-outs. This guy proposed the idea that the grassy knoll shooter was a diversion; the real kill shot came from Jackie. Brother, spare me! He provided links and all, but I never darkened the site of those pages. I wonder if some guys enjoy pulling pranks with this nonsense. Or maybe somebody else thinking I’ll bite and write on article on this subject. Needless to say, I never responded back. How can I? The only fringe topic I like to explore is the doppelganger theory. And the only reason I’m on to that is because of the evidence that there might actually have been a double of Oswald in play. It does help to iron out the conflicts in Lee Oswald’s timeline as they are legion. There is a load of high strangeness in the Kennedy assassination and sorting it all out is a quite a chore. Rabbit trails abound; it’s avoiding the rat holes you encounter along the way.

One of the lesser far-outs wrote to me about an article in Rolling Stone from years ago about Oswald showing up somewhere, and talking to some guy about LDS and how this would be big in the years to come. Of course LSD was largely unknown at the time except to the Timothy Leary bunch and the weirdoes at the CIA conducting the MK-ULTRA experiments on unsuspecting (and sometimes suspecting) souls. Of course, LSD would make its impact a few years later via the hippie/youth movement culture, but I fail to see why this matters or where it fits. It’s another distraction. I quickly move on.

I was pleased to get an email from Tommy G. Thompson. A Texas based artist now, he was attending Stripling Junior High Fort Worth in 1963 and recalls the hullaballoo that erupted when the FBI showed up. Lee’s mother Marguerite was living in a duplex right across the street from the school at the time. He says he knew assistant principle Frank Kudlaty, who he described as a “straight shooter.” Kudlaty gave his account in John Armstrong’s Harvey and Lee, of handing over Lee Oswald’s school records to the FBI the day after the assassination. Of course that raises a major problem as Oswald’s surviving school records have him attending Beauregard Junior High in New Orleans at the same time. But his brother, mother and some fellow students remember him attending Stripling in the fall of 1954. A strange incident in the annals of the investigation to be sure. Anyway, it was good to be contacted by someone so close the event at the time.

One of the more interesting and annoying encounters I’ve had was with journalist Russ Baker. He’s the author of Family of Secrets, regarding the history of the Bush family. In my piece, What Did Poppy Know And When Did He Know It?, I listed his book as a source. Shortly thereafter, I got a full-page email in which he was alternately nice and alternately anal. I received a lecture on the proper form of using references, such as how the author’s name should be listed (last name, first name, book title). Hey, it’s a blog, not a doctrinal thesis! I did take his advice on that issue and have since wrote them in proper form. He then lectured me on the context of which they were used in the relation to each other. Whoa. I had the feeling Mr. Ego Man wasn’t in the mood to share the stage with anybody else mentioned in the piece. He then went on to imply I was plagiarizing his work, which is funny as what I was writing about is publicly known, or would be known to a researchers of the JFK assassination. Then he finished off asking me to post a link on my blog to his book link on Amazon. What cheek! What am I, a free PR outlet for his book? Like he would give me a link on his site or do anything for me. Or course I passed.

I never replied and back and never heard from him again. I’m just a little blogger out here, no threat to anyone. I do respect Mr. Baker for wanting to protect his work but this approach is like trying to swat a fly with a Louisville slugger. It is akin to producing your own translation of the Bible and then putting your copyright on it (which by the way, had been done). The whole affair left me with ambivalent feelings for this man. A while back I heard his interview on the C2C AM show and Russ Baker is apparently well versed in the art of the self-promoter. At one point he made reference to “...the secrets I uncovered in my book.” Having read his book I wondered, what secrets? Virtually everything he wrote about is public knowledge or has been documented by other authors. As a JFK researcher it is familiar to me, though possibly not to the public at large on this subject. However, it is good to have all of this information on the Bush family in a single volume to study.

Though I have a hard time believing any of it, if you want to read some really wild dirt on the Bush clan then check out Sherman Skolnick. The late mud-raker’s web site is www.skolnicksreport.com. Though rarely sourced, and deeply influenced by dark conspiracies, Skolnick’s digging rages on, making Russ Baker seem like he didn’t go far enough, only looking through a dusty window into the basement Bush family intrigues; though Baker’s work is believable and competently sourced. Perhaps a deeper look into Skolnick’s work would yield some grains of truth we don’t want to face. Such as, just how deep and dark are our politics?

One valuable lesson I learned in writing articles here is to avoid other people’s pissing matches. I didn’t one time and got burned. There are two sides to every story so find out what the other says before you dig in. Or better yet, just let it be.


assassination

Book Review: American Brutus by Michael Kauffman

One of the criticisms of conspiracy theory is that people are not capable of keeping secrets. The conspiracy of John Wilkes Booth to first kidnap and then later assassinate the president of the United States offers evidence to the contrary. Of the half dozen or so characters that pass through the narrative, nobody gives the plot away. Booth cleverly made sure that all that came in contact with him were linked to him, either through letters, public meetings in restaurants or bars, horses rented from the same stable, or signed hotel ledgers.

Michael Kauffman’s American Brutus is a tour de force in what a real conspiracy is like and how it unfolds. John Booth, the charismatic and successful stage actor runs the show. A pro-slavery southerner, he increasingly views Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant. His first plot is not to kill Lincoln but capture him and hold him for ransom for the freeing of Confederate prisoners of war. These plans fall short with the defeat of the south and his fellow conspirators disapproval of his method of capturing Lincoln, which included lowering him from the balcony to the floor on a rope, while the entire audience watched!

Towards the end, Booth becomes unhinged, gives up his acting career, goes into debt financing his plot, appears moody and depressed, and apparently at the last moment, decides to murder Lincoln.

Author Kauffman reveals many firsts in the assassination of Lincoln, such as:

• Booth apparently didn’t break his ankle during his dramatic leap to the stage after shooting Lincoln. He landed on his right foot but it was his left ankle that was broken. No witness recalls Booth limping off the stage. Kauffman gives evidence that an accident on the get-away horse during the flight may have caused it.
• During the flight, a former Confederate soldier who learned Booth’s identity asked him for an autograph. Booth did one better and wrote a poem (never before published) where he hinted that he had turned down a bribe to kill Lincoln. If so, this clue may indicate the conspiracy had more twists and turns than originally known.

One of the more amazing tales of the book is how the authorities managed to find everybody, from Booth to the host of conspirators, without using modern investigative techniques, forensic science, and slow communication and travel of the time. Despite numerous bungles (such as finding Booth’s escape map and ignoring it), the case was solved in about the same amount of time as modern investigations take.

I highly recommend this book for students of assassinations and conspiracy. It’s a well-written and thoroughly documented account of the Lincoln assassination. It’s a real conspiracy that can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. No files or evidence is still classified after all of this time. Despite all that is known, there are still mysteries that can never be solved in this case—only closer approximations of the events that transpired.