A truly American theme.

On behalf of paranoid loners with an inflated belief in their own importance, the LNADS objects to this characterization.

were unique in that they were far away assassinations. Usually they are more up close. Far away assassins are more likely to be professionals, if you ask me. Also they were more successful than a lot of the assassinations you mention. George Wallace, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and others survived their attacks.

Neither Oswald nor James Earl Ray were professional assassins/snipers, nor were they the kind of person that anyone would want to trust with this kind of mission.. Oswald shot JFK with a $12 bolt-action rifle, not the kind of weapon any professional would use.

Looking briefly at examples of notable political assassinations by conspiracy, the pattern includes much more heavy weaponry, and generally more than one assassin, with more emphasis on trying to ensure that the job gets done rather than trying to get away cleanly. For example, the plan to kill Bush Sr involved bombs. Other examples:
• Archduke Franz Ferdinand: six assassins were involved, and a bomb was thrown at his car before eventually he was shot at point-blank range with a pistol.
• Anwar Sadat: a whole truck full of assassins attacked Sadat during a parade, using grenades and assault rifles. Sadat was shot 37 times.
• Charles De Gaulle (attempted): a member of a paramilitary organization opened fire on De Gaulle's car with a machine gun, firing a total of 187 rounds.
• Rafael Trujillo: car ambushed by multiple gunmen supposedly with weapons supplied by the CIA, and riddled with bullets.

This is not a complete list, by any means. But are there many notable examples of political assassinations carried out by snipers, or is that more of a movie thing?

shot. Each team was made up of approximately five men. Each of the three teams was assigned to a different location in Dallas that the President was supposed to be that day. So that if one team was not successful in shooting JFK at one spot the President was scheduled to be (for example the airport), another team would attempt at the next location - the Book Depository.

However, you've now got over a dozen conspirators on Kennedy's route, any one of whom could be caught and implicated in the plot.

There are now at least three weapons (one per site), which have to be disposed of without being seen or discovered.

Then there's the issue of what the conspirators would have done had they failed to kill Kennedy at the third site. After all, at least three shots were fired in Dealey Plaza and only one of them was necessarily fatal. I'm not sure that qualifies as the work of a professional team.

Finally, there is the question of whether or not any witnesses reported shots being fired at the other sites.

The crooked Dallas cops? The corrupt J. Edgar Hoover?

And it's no secret that he disliked the Kennedy brothers.

And the Dallas PD botched the entire Oswald custody thing, in case you didn't notice-- including holding Oswald spread-eagle as they were escorting him and letting a crook with known mob connections get right up to Oswald and shoot him. If they weren't crooked, they were certainly INCOMPETENT.

never caught a guilty person?

It's quite another thing when the suspect is involved in a highly-charged political assassination in a city where there is considerable loathing for the victim.

They let the President of the United States pass through three kill zones, according to this theory.

to keep this one on the front page. lol.

hasn't been shot at yet, considering the number of haters he has and how much influence RW radio/TV still has.

Security measures have improved since 1963 thank God. I wonder how many attempts have been prevented.

All the usual suspects and then some. Read up on stochastic terrorism sometime. All Any of the rest of us can do is hope the SS practices that eternal vigilance thing pretty thoroughly.

Guns make for a dangerous society it seems.

Booth had seven (at least) conspirators. Four of them were hung, the rest dead or imprisoned. No lone nut by any rational measure.

The 1950 Truman assassination attempt directly involved 3 people, one killed and two imprisoned (one for only 8 months, the other set free by Carter.) To say they weren't involved with the PR Nationalist party is just ridiculous and ignores all court testimony. They were not "lone nuts" by any measure.

There was another assassination attempt on Truman in 1947 by the Stern Gang. They sent letter bombs to the White House mail room but the Secret Service, warned by the British, intercepted them and disarmed them. No lone nuts.

I won't even comment on the JFK murder. You have an agenda so there is no point.

I didn't say Booth was a lone nut, I said the assassination was not linked to any powerful political or economic organizations, the kind that CTers insist are behind JFK. As to the number of people imprisoned, the circumstances of the trials were highly questionable. Military tribunal rather than ordinary court, conviction only required simple majority rather than unanimity (I assume you are in favor of changing the way the justice system like this in order to satisfy the public's desire to find people to hang for for a crime). Still, regardless of whether the number of people was three or eight, it was definitely a small group of nuts and not "the powers that be" that organized the assassination and hired some professional guns to carry it out.

Re: Truman, I didn't claim that the people weren't members of any political groups, I claimed that there were no powerful political groups involved with the assassination. I'm sure you can understand the difference. Oswald was involved with Fair Play for Cuba, but that doesn't mean that Fair Play for Cuba had anything to do with the assassination.

Your term, you own it.

...that they were mostly lone nuts and sometimes small groups of nuts working together. Of the six presidents that have been shot, there are five lone nuts, and one trio of nuts. No big conspiracies by the likes of the CIA/MIC/BFEE/KGB/corporate overlords or anything remotely like that.

Do you really think that if Oswald had a couple of drinking buddies that he discussed shooting JFK with, that would satisfy the CTers?

a 'lone nut' either.

But even if all of them were, as you claimed, lone nuts, which they were not as you now admit, how does that have anything to do with the JDK assassination? I'm not seeing the connection at all.

But nowhere is there a big conspiracy involving big powerful forces like the JFK CTers insist.

Technically, if Oswald had a drinking buddy who helped him plan the JFK assassination, that would be a conspiracy.

But that's not what JFK conspiracies are about. JFK conspiracies are about the need to believe that JFK was killed by a powerful and sinister group whose interests were threatened by his policies, as opposed an essentially random event caused by one (or two) delusional nuts.

No wonder you think you are right so often.

between a large conspiracy like what JFK CTers believe in and a nominal "conspiracy" involving two or three nuts instead of just one. And I think that any reasonable person would agree that this is the more significant distinction.

Not.

Dr. Samuel Mudd (set Booth's broken leg), Marry Surrat (hung, owned the boarding house where the plot was hatched), John Surrat (acquitted) JW Booth (crazed alcoholic actor and ring leader), Lewis Powell (lunatic and drunkard) David Herrold (low IQ and n'er do wel man child).

Three people trying to kill HST in a revealed conspiracy is not the MIC, CIA, or the secret government or a foreign government trying to kill JFK.

Are you sure you do not want to discuss the JFK murder?

Look at the headline of the OP. In neither the Booth case or Truman case(s) were the people involved lone or nuts.

Love to discuss the JFK murder and I do with those who are honest and without agendas.

Another conspiracy theory perhaps? Am I a payed government propagandist?

A delusional Booth found a couple of drunks...woo big conspiracy. Truman had some pissed off Puerto Ricans after him, so what?

The point of the OP is crazy people do crazy shit for all kinds of crazy reasons and a conspiracy of enormous magnitude is not a necessary condition for crazy shit to happen.

The actual evidence in the JFK murder, which you seem to refuse to discuss, overwhelmingly says LHO acted alone.

The rest of your post is typical CT ad hominem. When cornered and out of evidence, attack the opponent and question their motive.

An easy name calling slur. People ranging from U.S. Grant to Edgar Allen Poe were alcoholics. What the F does that prove?

Maybe if a person didn't have an agenda they would post honest headlines. Instead of contradicting them in the actual post. The PR were not nuts. Booth and his gang weren't either. The Stern Gang who attempted to kill Truman were not nuts. They all had ideology behind them. Oswald was certainly not a nut. The Marines certainly didn't think so. They shipped him to a top secret base to do intelligence. If he had any part in the JFK killing he was operating off of ideology. He wasn't a nut at all.

Also, the headline was not dishonest. Nowhere did I claim that all assassinations and attempts were by lone nuts. Just that lone nuts are the rule, not the exception, and even when there are conspiracies, they tend to be small conspiracies consisting of a small group of nuts, rather than the kind of outlandish schemes that JFK CTers conjure up. The idea being that, although it is tempting to suspect broad conspiracies and to try and draw connections where none exist, the actual history of assassinations and attempts on US presidents tells a different story.

Being a nut and having a political ideology are not mutually exclusive. Oswald was a marxist and a vocal supporter of Castro. Surely that played a part in his decision to shoot JFK.

Last edited Mon Dec 2, 2013, 03:57 AM - Edit history (1)

As far as what it means; first it means you provided me me with fine examples of people who are sobriety challenged that were also successful and famous. It does not mean people who are sobriety challenged make good decisions, case in point: JW Booth. It also means you are willing to freak out over the smallest detail while overlooking a mountain of evidence that says your conspiracy theory is just that and nothing more.

The PR guys that went after HST planned to die in the act. If they were not nuts, then neither were those assholes who flew planes into the WTC.

Totally guided by their ideology. Are U.S. military personnel who go on very risky missions that they may die "nuts"? It sounds like anybody doing anything you don't agree with is "nuts". An easy way of dismissing things.

Yeah, I think known suicide missions are nuts. That's fine if you don't. As far as you're concerned the 9/11 hijackers were brave men equivalent to our own US military. I get that.

And it won't make any difference to the "True Believers" in a Conspiracy.

I'm willing to bet that if a color sound film of Oswald firing 3 shots from TSBD came to light, they wouldn't believe it. They would still be claiming LHO was the patsy he claimed to be and he was part of a larger conspiracy.

But, let's say they get ALL the records open, a new independent investigation, and all witnesses testify. And they find out that the CIA, FBI, USSS, and Dallas PD basically botched protecting the President. No conspiracy, simple human failures across the board, and everyone engaging in massive CYA to avoid looking like a bunch of incompetents. Would that satisfy them? Could them accept massive human error as the cause of JFK's murder? I doubt it. Because people still believe that FDR MIHOP / LIHOP Pearl Harbor, and of course there is 9/11, which is, in the doubters mind a MIHOP / LIHOP to equal Pearl Harbor.

Several of those he called 'lone nuts'' were not 'lone nuts'.

And that his real target was the mayor of Chicago, who was the one person actually killed in the attack. See, for example, http://voices.yahoo.com/president-elect-franklin-delano-roosevelts-assassination-10401833.html

Of course, Zangara was executed barely more than a month after the shooting -- they didn't mess around in those days -- which didn't give much opportunity for any alternative story to come out.

Booth had differences with his conspirators so he is a "lone nut" too ? Btw, you know that 8 other people were hanged for Lincoln's murder for their part in the conspir......the whatever-it-was-since-we-can't-say-conspiracy thingy.

The member of Manson's gang are "lone nuts" also.... they all just happened to be a Sharon Tate's house on the same night.

So nothing is ever a conspiracy? Not Bush v Gore, not the "Saddam has WMD,' not the Kochs talking to Scott Walker, not HR 368, not "We Are the World," not the 4 teams of hijackers who did 9/11, not....anything.

At a minimum, it included himself, David Herold (who helped him flee Washington), Lewis Powell (who was supposed to kill Secretary of State Seward the same night, but failed - though not for lack of trying) and George Atzerodt (who was supposed to kill VP Johnson but chickened out). There is some evidence that Mary Surratt, John Surratt, Samuel Mudd (despite his relatives' protestations) and some other Confederate sympathizers were also involved.

But I agree on most of the others: Czolgosz was one of many self-proclaimed anarchists assassinating monarchs and other rulers at the time, so while I think he had a particular political agenda I also think he acted alone.

But, in effect, Lincoln's assassination is much more similar to the JFK lone gunman theory than any of the conspiracy theories. Yes, there were multiple actors in Lincoln's assassination, and yes, they did have clear political motives, but they were still an isolated group of nuts. There was no involvement from government or any other powerful economic or political interests.

After Lincoln, the Presidency was effectively crippled for more than a generation. Congress dominated policy-making. But that could be just as easily attributed to Andrew Johnson's impeachment and the inability of either party (at the presidential level, at least) to build a majority coalition as it could to the aftereffects of Lincoln's murder.

There's also the issue of Reconstruction. With Lincoln in office, the policy might have been more uniform, consistent, and effective. That assumes, though, that Lincoln would have been able to maintain the same level of persuasive power in a post-war United States as he had during the war.

I'm not sure it's the best approach to consider these events in hindsight and attribute a kind of superhuman prescience to those who initiate them. We can't predict what will happen in 2014, let alone 2016 or 2018, and it would be difficult for any of us to act in a way which would ensure that our preferred vision for the future of the country would happen exactly as we desire it.

Thanks.