Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

vanityfair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 403 posts

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#121

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

morby wrote: post #5
morby wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would probably add some major points to this synopsis. The bullet was believed to have been on Connally’s stretcher. It is the “magic bullet”. The pristine bullet that was supposed to have hit JFK and Connally both. The assumption here is that it did not penetrate through JFK. That it came from the wound in his back. This would upend the investigative findings that the bullet in this back was responsible for the ne…

To add to that. The author details how this new detail subsequently alters the version of events. Namely it suggests that the bullet that hit JFK in the back and hit Connally were two different bullets and that they could not have been fired at that rate (the rate suggested by the video evidence) with the weapon used by Oswald

In other words, there can only have been more than one shooter. Not just Oswald.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#122

Post by pseingatl »

The article suggests that Landis' come to Jesus moment came after reading Josih Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas. Three years ago Thompson wrote another book, Last Seconds in Dallas in which he and an audio expert examined recently released magnetophone recordings. The inescapable conclusion is that there were two gunmen.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#123

Post by adolph »

empath-nirvana wrote: post #27

The problem with conversations about this topic and similar topics (9/11) is that almost no-one who cares about the topic deeply enough to have an argument about it online is interested because they're just super into ballistics and forensics and don't care about the political implications. It's all motivated reasoning because they don't like the _implications_ of the official story for whatever reason (or, alternati…

> Probably if you're about to comment on this post, you've got some motivated reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with finding out what really happened.

Is that a recursive statement or are you somehow the only one with clean hands?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#124

Post by DANmode »

lapcat wrote: post #40
empath-nirvana wrote: post #27

The problem with conversations about this topic and similar topics (9/11) is that almost no-one who cares about the topic deeply enough to have an argument about it online is interested because they're just super into ballistics and forensics and don't care about the political implications. It's all motivated reasoning because they don't like the _implications_ of the official story for whatever reason (or, alternati…

> Probably if you're about to comment on this post, you've got some motivated reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with finding out what really happened. I'm not sure that's true in this case. I remember 9/11, but I wasn't even born yet when the Kennedy assassination happened. I doubt that many people under age 70 remember that personally. It doesn't really have emotional salience for most people now. For me, i…

> Even if there was a conspiracy to kill JFK

He's dead, so...what?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#125

Post by oconnor663 »

ip26 wrote: post #112
EMM_386 wrote: post #107

What I find most intriguing about the JFK assassination is the fact that parts of it still can't be declassified. In 1992, Congress passed a law saying everything was to be declassified in 25 years. October 2017 came and went, and the FBI blocked around 7,500 documents from release. The DEA didn't want CI names related to organized crime in them. The State Department blocked some due to "national security and foreign…

What’s the anti-conspiratorial explanation for that? I can imagine a million different things they’d love to hide, but what would the legitimate, honest/harmless reason?

The anti-conspiratorial explanation would be that the government flagrantly broke tons of laws over the years, both in the US and abroad, and that they don't want to publish details about that (even though none of those details actually involve trying to kill Kennedy).

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#126

Post by pseingatl »

xyzelement wrote: post #118

Not directly related to this article, but I found the lone gunman theory much easier to accept after visiting the museum in the former book depository in Dallas. You can look down onto the plaza from the exact spot Oswald shot from, and you can easily imagine how the bullet fired from there would go through JFK and into the governor sitting in front of him. Not that this proves anything, it was just a "oh, I can tang…

I had the opposite feeling. Looking from the window, to your left, a winding road. To your right, the freeway entrance. With a bolt action rifle, Oswald had to shoot, eject the casing, reload, acquire the target of an accelerating vehicle, shoot, eject the casing, reload, acquire the target of an accelerating vehicle and fire again. One of the Marine Corps' top snipers said, "I can't do it." If he can't, how could Oswald?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#127

Post by dharmab »

pseingatl wrote: post #126
xyzelement wrote: post #118

Not directly related to this article, but I found the lone gunman theory much easier to accept after visiting the museum in the former book depository in Dallas. You can look down onto the plaza from the exact spot Oswald shot from, and you can easily imagine how the bullet fired from there would go through JFK and into the governor sitting in front of him. Not that this proves anything, it was just a "oh, I can tang…

I had the opposite feeling. Looking from the window, to your left, a winding road. To your right, the freeway entrance. With a bolt action rifle, Oswald had to shoot, eject the casing, reload, acquire the target of an accelerating vehicle, shoot, eject the casing, reload, acquire the target of an accelerating vehicle and fire again. One of the Marine Corps' top snipers said, "I can't do it." If he can't, how could Os…

The Carcano M91/38 is a magazine fed rifle, it isn't manually reloaded. You can work the bolt while remaining on target. That's not a particularly hard thing to do, either- I was able to learn that skill the first afternoon I shot a magzine fed bolt action.

EDIT: Here's a video of someone replicating the shots with that rifle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghmY6HmR4fs The comments also point out other factors that could have made the shot easier.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#128

Post by neaden »

pseingatl wrote: post #126
xyzelement wrote: post #118

Not directly related to this article, but I found the lone gunman theory much easier to accept after visiting the museum in the former book depository in Dallas. You can look down onto the plaza from the exact spot Oswald shot from, and you can easily imagine how the bullet fired from there would go through JFK and into the governor sitting in front of him. Not that this proves anything, it was just a "oh, I can tang…

I had the opposite feeling. Looking from the window, to your left, a winding road. To your right, the freeway entrance. With a bolt action rifle, Oswald had to shoot, eject the casing, reload, acquire the target of an accelerating vehicle, shoot, eject the casing, reload, acquire the target of an accelerating vehicle and fire again. One of the Marine Corps' top snipers said, "I can't do it." If he can't, how could Os…

Who was the marine Corp top sniper who said they couldn't do it?

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#129

Post by cjbgkagh »

agumonkey wrote: post #108
kelnos wrote: post #98

Even if Landis is being honest to the best of his ability, this account seems suspect for one simple reason: human memory is incredibly unreliable even in routine cases. Considering the stress and trauma around witnessing and being so close to an awful event like that, as well as the amount of time that has passed, I don't see how we can consider this story to be even remotely reliable. He may truly remember these ev…

I agree. Having gone through stuff I know how my mind can distort / hallucinate stuff in confusing / high stress situations. Even without questioning the person's honesty.. your brain is not a high quality source of information.

Totally, that's why I don't trust anything anyone says, ever. I can't trust that my fallible brain is hearing what people are saying correctly, so even if they're right my understanding of what they're saying may still be wrong.

Re: New JFK assassination revelation could upend the lone gunman theory

#130

Post by somenameforme »

ryandrake wrote: post #88
lapcat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably if you're about to comment on this post, you've got some motivated reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with finding out what really happened. I'm not sure that's true in this case. I remember 9/11, but I wasn't even born yet when the Kennedy assassination happened. I doubt that many people under age 70 remember that personally. It doesn't really have emotional salience for most people now. For me, i…

> I doubt that many people under age 70 remember that personally. I think OP's point is that personal remembrance, direct knowledge/witness, or subject matter expertise is not a requirement when it comes to defending one's strongly invested world view. Instead of looking at evidence, people start with a vague belief about the world and then draw the lines between everything that happens and that world view. For examp…

I think the issue is not one of expertise, but that many people are arguing without being aware of facts contrary to their own view. For instance a critical component to the conspiratorial view is Operation Northwoods [1]. And it tends to paint a far different than picture than you are claiming. Operation Northwoods was a planned CIA operation where they were going to carry out terrorist attacks against both civilian and military US targets (notably they even proposed the use of remote controlled civilian aircraft) and blame it on Cuba, so we could start a war with them. This plan successfully made its way all the way up the chain of the command and was one signature away from being executed. The problem is that JFK rejected it, vigorously.

The CIA and the military wanted global escalation and military conflict. Kennedy, by contrast, was working more towards reconciliation and global peace through good faith. Just prior to Operation Northwoods, he had recently removed the head of the CIA (following the Bay of Pigs catastrophe), and following the Joint Chief of Staffs presentation of Operation Northwoods to him, JFK also removed him from power as well. JFK would then go to on to pass a unilateral nuclear test ban as a show of good faith to the USSR, and was reportedly not only looking to withdraw from Vietnam, but also to completely dismantle the CIA. Less than 6 months later, he would be assassinated.

That's hardly a tale of some 'shadowy elite trying to control the world.' In fact the assassination becomes so utterly predictable in this context that one has to consider that if it was a simple lone-wolf then the CIA and military effectively won some sort of one in a quadrillion type lottery (at least from their rather sociopathic worldviews). For that assassin to then to be assassinated, after initially claiming he was a "patsy", and all the other weirdness around it all, I think Occam's Razor starts pointing in a pretty clear direction.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

Post reply on HN