It has now been definitively established, at least among serious people, that there was no conspiracy behind the murder of President Kennedy. To the disappointment and continuing disbelief of thousands of amateur sleuths, it turns out that the man responsible really was Lee Harvey Oswald, acting on his own initiative.
But there is a credible theory of how JFK was killed that attributes the fatal wounding not to one of the bullets from LHO's rifle, but to 'friendly fire' from a member of JFK's own security detail. I was reminded of this when reading an entertaining email exchange between Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons, editor of the sports magazine Grantland (the discussion is mostly about sports but free-wheels across other topics). Here's Gladwell, referring to a book called Popular Crime, by Bill James:
James loves the Kennedy book Mortal Error by Bonar Menninger, which is based on the work of a Baltimore ballistics expert named Howard Donahue. Donahue's focus is on the mysterious third bullet that hit Kennedy — and that ended up killing him. It didn't behave like the first two bullets. It disintegrated inside Kennedy's skull, for instance, which a bullet fired from Oswald's rifle should not have done. And from where Oswald was situated it is hard to see how the bullet could really have traveled in the trajectory that it did. The questions surrounding the third bullet are a big part of the reason so many people believe in a conspiracy. So what was Donahue's explanation? There was a second gunman. But it wasn't an assassin. It was a Secret Service man named George Hickey who heard the first two shots, panicked, and let off a shot that hit the president in the head. It was all a tragic accident. Hickey's AR-15 rifle matches the ballistics and trajectory of the fatal bullet perfectly. And numerous eyewitnesses reported seeing him grab his weapon and wave it about. I could go on. James describes in brilliant detail just how convincing this particular explanation is.
But, as Gladwell goes on to say, this will never be a popular explanation. When it comes to narrative magnetism, cock-ups are no match for conspiracies.
Gladwell/Simmons here.
There are still so many strange coincidences and unlikely side events regarding the JFK assassination that even serious people should pause before accepting the official explanation (as, say, that given by the Warren Commission). How many Americans defected, as Oswald did, to the USSR in the 1950s? Perhaps a few hundred people at most. How many of those defectors had worked at a U2 air base in Japan and made friends with people in the Japanese Communist Party, as Oswald did? How many of those defectors to the USSR were allowed, as Oswald was, to move outside Moscow and to marry a Russian spouse? Perhaps fewer than 50. How many of these spouses came from families in Soviet military intelligence? How many of those married defectors were then allowed by the Americans, as Oswald was, to return to the USA? Perhaps fewer than 20. How many of those would have had a CIA file? Certainly all of them. Why could the CIA not ever find Oswald's file after the assassination? Maybe a cockup, but nonetheless very odd.
Was Oswald a plant by a US intelligent agency when he defected to the USSR? Was he a plant by a Soviet agency when he returned to the USA?
I suggest you listen the radio interview Oswald made when living in New Orleans, and defending (or pretending to defend) Castro's Cuba. (You can find it on the web.) He is clearly very intelligent and articulate. It is hard to believe he would have been a simple-minded assassin, or been easily led. But he might readily have acted well a part in some larger drama, either one created specially for him by others, or one he imagined for himself.
There is a lot of crucial information we still don't know about this case, so much so that serious people who think the results are all in are simply not paying attention.
Posted by: peter | June 15, 2012 at 10:38 PM
Oh come on Peter, as if we have to rely on what you refer to as the "official" explanation, complete with conspiratorial scare marks, to conclude that LHO was the sole culprit. Every serious contemporary historian has concluded that the Warren Report, for all its flaws, answered the biggest question correctly. Yes there's miles of stuff "on the web" and Oliver Stone made a fun movie but there is no longer anything to see here. Move along.
Posted by: Ian | June 15, 2012 at 11:24 PM