Conspiracy Theories, the man on the grassy knoll

So who shot JFK anyway? If you read magazines or any one of the hundreds of books on the subject it was either the CIA the KGB the Mafia the military industrial complex or the Cubans. Everyone is a suspect except, of course the angry lone nut, AKA Lee Harvey Oswald. I may be a minority of one but I believe that Oswald and only Oswald shot JFK. There was no sniper on the grassy knoll, no hit team in the Dal-Tex building no signal from the "umbrella man". Just a confused, maladjusted young man with a cheap gun and a and a half baked plan.
I must admit that I too was once a conspiracy theorist. I read my first article in a tabloid magazine back in the early seventies and I was hooked. I then read Josiah Thompson's Book "Six Seconds in Dallas" where he goes through the Zapruder film frame by frame and makes incorrect assumptions about the assassination based on the film. I went on to read Mark Lane's early work "A Rush To Judgement" in which he skewers the Warren commission and all its' conclusions. I read voraciously and bought every video I could find about the assassination. I sent away for a copy of the Warren Commission report and combed it for details. The more I looked the less likely the conspiracy theories I cherished seemed. I had thought that I would find the smoking gun and put to rest forever the one true theory of the Kennedy killinmg. Instead I came to the following conclusions; Lee Harvey Oswald and only Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. The Warren Commission, in spite of its' undoubtedly political purpose, essentially got it right. Finally there was no conspiracy to cover up the events of November 22, 1963 because their was no need to. No major agencies were involved in planning the assassination so they didn't need to cover it up. That is not to say that agencies were not guilty of letting down the President and his family and that certain agencies bungled the investigation and handling of evidence, but more about that later.


I will not be able to deal with all these questions in a single, readable Blog, so I will break it out into a number of chapters. This will be a process and I invite your comments and thoughts. I am not one hundred percent sure where it will lead us but let's look at one thing at a time.





Chapter One- Lee Harvey Oswald... One insect, so much grain

We humans are creatures of logic. Big outcome, big input. JFK was; handsome,intelligent, charismatic, popular, young, outwardly vigorous (he was actually suffering from Chromes disease and the medication for it gave his skin a copper color making him appear tanned and healthy), and one of the most powerful men on earth. Lee Harvey Oswald was, undersized, pasty, unpopular, withdrawn and about the last person you would expect to do anything momentous. How could so much; shock, grieving and loss be caused by anyone so insignificant.?

In their song "Empty Garden, Hey,Hey Johnnie" about the assassination of John Lennon, Elton John and Bernie Taupin described Lennon's assassin as an insect. "Funny how one insect can damage so much grain." This was intentional, by leaving him unnamed, only as an insect, they do not make a celebrity of a murderer. I shall not even mention his name here for the same reason. Oswald must be mentioned although he deserves the same fate. Like Kennedy's death Lennon's death shocked us by its' senselessness, its brutality and vast loss of potential. So Much Grain! The heady days of Camelot were over with the crack of a rifle. Gone was the handsome prince. Gone was the promise that he represented. On one side of the equation is this huge number representing the hopes and dreams of a generation on the other side of the equal sign is a slight, balding young man with a cheap surplus gun. How can such a great event be caused by so humble a source? Logic dictates that there has to be more to it. Hence the conspiracy theory. Make Oswald seem bigger by adding, say the CIA and the whole equation becomes less lopsided. Too bad life doesn't always follow formulas. Lennon's death was an even greater tragedy because of how unfair the event was, so was Kennedy's. A nation lost a leader, a wife lost her husband and children lost their father and no one would ever face justice because Oswald died before he could be punished.

So Oswald was an unlikely assassin. So what? History is not cast like a Hollywood blockbuster. The starring role seldom falls to the perfect player. Oswald wanted to write his name large in history and he was failing at it miserably. Everything he had done to draw attention to himself and put himself on the front page had fizzled. He had defected to the USSR where he thought He would be a celebrity defector and would be much sought after by the Soviets and there espionage and intelligence community. Instead they sent him to a low paying factory job where he languished. The Soviets thought him to unstable to be of any use and quickly realized that in spite of his claims he really had no secrets to offer from his time in the m the Marine Corps where he had also achieved little and was only barely able to meet muster. Oswald had fancied himself a communist but his idea of communism differed drastically from the reality he met in the Soviet Union where he encountered the same class barriers that he had endured in the States. He was intellectually lazy and seldom thought through his actions. His marriage to Marina had not worked out either, they quarrelled constantly, usually about money which Lee was never very good at earning . When he failed to achieve fame by defecting he undefected and returned to the U.S. and got no press there either. The state department held its' nose and took him back.

Oswald then set about making connections in the U.S. joining the "Fair Play For Cuba" committee and appearing briefly on TV in this connection. He knew, though, that his next escapade would bring him instant fame. He set about hatching the plot to kill the most powerful man in the free world, the President of the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy!

next episode-The Plot.