SIX MYTHS ABOUT THE JFK ASSASSINATION

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

[Jefferson Morley in Huffington Post]

Myth #1 JFK conspiratorial suspicions, like the idea of a gunshot from
the so-called grassy knoll, were ginned up after the fact by demagogues
like Oliver Stone.

In fact, a significant minority of eyewitnesses at the scene of the
crime thought at least one of the gunshots that hit Kennedy came from
the knoll, which was actually a grassy embankment bordering a parking
lot overlooking the route of JFK's motorcade through downtown Dallas. A
survey of eyewitness statements, compiled by conspiracy skeptic John
McAdams of Marquette University, found that 42 of 103 bystanders said
that the gunfire came from the knoll or from two different directions. .
.

Myth #2: JFK conspiracy theories are mostly held by anti-American
leftists and credulous liberals.

In September 1964, Warren Commission member Senator Richard Russell, a
paleoconservative from Georgia, rejected the so-called single bullet
theory and attempted to put a dissent into the commission's final report
(only to be slapped down by liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren.) By the
late 1960s, conservative figures ranging from former congresswoman Clare
Booth Luce to columnist William F. Buckley to Nixon White House chief of
staff H.R. Haldeman dissented publicly or privately from the Warren
report. . .

Myth #3: No reputable historian believes in a JFK conspiracy

I know of four tenured academic historians who have written directly on
the JFK assassination in the past five years. . .

Myth #4: Serious people of power in Washington overwhelmingly believe
there was no conspiracy.

Hardly. The slain president's own brother Bobby Kennedy was, in the
words of journalist David Talbot, "America's first conspiracy theorist."
He and First Lady Jackie Kennedy quickly concluded that JFK was the
victim of a major domestic plot. Lyndon Johnson suspected that the
assassination resulted from the struggle for power in Cuba. Richard
Nixon hounded the CIA for files on "the whole Bay of Pigs thing," which
his aides understood to mean Kennedy's assassination. . .

Myth #5. Scientists unequivocally support the lone gunman theory.

A study of the JFK ballistics evidence, published in the Journal of
Forensic Science in 2006, concluded that its findings "considerably
weaken support for the single-bullet theory." A pair of articles on the
medical evidence, published in Neurosurgery in 2004, offered a split
decision. . .

Myth #6: There is nothing significant to be found in the new JFK files
identified since Oliver Stone's JFK

The long suppressed CIA records made public since the 1990s certainly do
not confirm Stone's depiction of the assassination as a virtual coup
d'etat by the CIA and the Pentagon but they do raise new questions about
the Dallas tragedy. They demonstrate that a handful of top CIA officials
had much greater knowledge of Oswald's travels and political activities
in the weeks before Kennedy was killed than they ever let on. At least
one of these operatives-- an undercover officer named George
Joannides--remained quiet about what he knew of Oswald's Cuban contacts
to perhaps a criminal extent. . .

When you strip away all the tall tales of JFK's assassination, the
unsatisfying and infuriating truth is that we still don't have the full
story. And that's no myth.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jefferson-morley/what-jfk-conspiracy-bashe_b_73722.html


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||