The Tin-Foil Fedora
Edward J. Epstein, author of James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? frequently sends me links to his newest articles. Epstein has been interested in the Kennedy Assassination for nearly 50 years. On a recent blog post he reviews the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald prior to that fatal day in Dallas.
But it’s not just ancient history that concerns him. Epstein was also one of the few who believed from the first that there was more to the Dominique Strauss Kahn case than a lecher in search of a quickie. Epstein wrote Three Days in May: Sex, Surveillance, and DSK and reprised his ideas in what Martin Peretz of the New Republic called a “truly dazzling take-up of the entire case. It was published in the December 22, 2011 issue of The New York Review of Books“. The Amazon blurb of Three Days in May sums up Epstein’s thesis.
Epstein shows that DSK, then managing director at the IMF and a leading contender to unseat Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France, was under close surveillance both before and after the incident. Just two days before, French authorities intercepted a sensitive phone conversation with DSK in Washington, DC. It looks as if he was carrying his own bug: a smart phone.
At the time I too believed that DSK was just another elitist predator who was literally caught with his pants down. Now like Peretz, I’ve realize that I was wrong. The collapse of the case strongly suggests that the DSK story is more complicated than it seems.
But to confess such a belief, is like expressing any lingering doubts about the Kennedy assassination, an invitation to ridicule. As Martin Peretz puts it succinctly, you can’t do it in polite company. “The New York district attorney’s first story still has party-line currency. Also try mentioning Edward Jay Epstein’s proven thesis, James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right?, available at Amazon and on Kindle, at a dinner party. The guests will think you a nut case.”
In most cases the guests will be right to reject someone who starts talking conspiracy. Conspiracy theories have a bad rep — even when, as is the case of with Edward J. Epstein’s books, there is nothing obviously wrong with the chain of reasoning or the facts on which they are based. The result of reading something like James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? is to start thinking the unthinkable. The experience produces a curiously bifurcated state of consciousness. At level you believe the case offered by Epstein; on another level one you can’t, otherwise, as Peretz noticed, the dinner party guests will think you are in line for a vacation at the funny farm.
Why are conspiracy theories regarded as a form of lunacy? The probable answer lies in what they are. “A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.” Thus to advance a conspiracy theory is to suggest that the world is not as it seems. It is to posit the existence of vast forces which which work together to create a synthetic normal. And that kind of thinking is very close to what bona fide insanity really is.
I remember walking through a cemetery with a childhood friend in order to visit his father’s grave. The friend had long had a problem with mental instability. While were yet a good 500 yards from the graveside, a group of gardeners came into the view in the distance.
“They are talking about us,” he said.
“Who’s talking about us?” I asked.
“Those groundskeepers over by that tree.”
“No they’re not. They don’t even know us. They couldn’t even recognize our faces at this distance,” I replied.
“Oh yes they are,” he added. “I can hear them.”
That was insanity. Insanity is a the condition where reality is ignored and the observed effects are attributed to fantasy. The friend who was hearing the voices was clearly losing it. But history also provides many instances of conspiracy theories becoming accepted fact. Historians call it this process “delegitimization”. In fact almost every revolution in the history of the world was the consequence of what was heretofore regarded as unthinkable suddenly becoming all too obvious.
It is sobering to recall that the Nazi Death camps were thought by many of its victims to be something that couldn’t possibly exist. It was just too fantastic to conceive. Many Jews continued to believe that what the authorities told them was the truth, often in despite of their own senses. Only when the Nazi government had been thoroughly delegitimized was it possible for these reflexively law abiding citizens to finally realize that what they regard as fiction was the actual truth.
In many cases, the deportation orders were given to the Judenrat suddenly, often around the Jewish holidays when awareness was reduced. Local police were charged with carrying out the Aktion (round-up of Jews) and the Jewish police was also tasked with participating in the round-up. The Jews were ordered to gather in a specific location, usually close to a train station, and to bring with them only a few possessions …
The powerful mechanism of murder employed throughout Europe relied upon various deceptions and lies … The Germans would begin the deportations with the weaker strata (the poor, refugees). The other sectors of society held on to the illusion that they would be left alone. After the initial deportation the ensuing stages would follow – until the complete liquidation …
The rumors about the death camps were usually greeted with disbelief, as ordinary logic and the human mind refused to grasp the very possibility of what was rumored. Thus, Nazi Germany managed to mislead the masses until, literally, the last moment.
Hitler in fact believed that the more monstrous the conspiracy, the less likely it was to be uncovered. In Mein Kampf he wrote: “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation … in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”
And so it proved — for a time at least. In more recent times the evolution and ascendance of the term “mainstream media” represents the transformation of what was once a conspiracy theory to a broadly acceptable proposition. When the media’s prestige was at its height, Walter Cronkite was considered to be the “most trusted man in America”. Whatever Walter Cronkite said was instantly believed by millions. That is no longer true today. There are now many individuals who now accept the proposition that the “mainstream media” lies to them quite frequently and that things are not quite as they are described.
Large news conglomerates, including newspapers and broadcast media, which underwent successive mergers in the U.S. and elsewhere at an increasing rate beginning in the 1990s, are often referenced by the term. This concentration of media ownership has raised concerns of a homogenization of viewpoints presented to news consumers. Consequently, the term mainstream media has been widely used in conversation and the blogosphere, often in oppositional, pejorative, or dismissive senses, in discussion of the mass media and media bias.
Elite media such as CBS and the New York Times set the tone for other smaller news organizations by creating conversations which cascade down to the smaller news organizations lacking the resources to do more individual research and coverage, that primary method being through the Associated Press where many news organizations get their news. This results in a recycling effect wherein organic thought is left to the mainstream that choose the conversation and smaller organizations recite absent of a variance in perspective.
The discovery of the actual mechanism for coordinating “talking points”, such as the Journolist forum, are really the equivalent of Edward J. Epstein’s recitations of Oswald’s movements or the peregrinations of Dominque Strauss Kahn’s Blackberry. They shed a fleeting light upon the shadowy backstage and by their transience suggest there is more to be seen.
The transformation of the the concept of the “mainstream media” as an organ of manipulation from a conspiracy theory to a grudgingly accepted serious proposition is reflected in the polls. The Gallup organization finds that close to 60% of respondents trusted the media “not very much or not at all”.
The history of conspiracies theories shows that while some remain fanciful forever, a significant number make the ultimate leap into accepted fact. John Adams was utterly astonished by the speed at which widespread loyalty to the British crown was transformed into opposition to it. “I am surprised at the suddenness as well as the greatness of this revolution.” And in another place he wrote, “what do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected from 1760–1775, in the course of fifteen years, before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington.” What he was describing a paradigm shift. And in that shift the conspiracy theory became the Declaration of Independence.
Conspiracy theories have always been with us. Some of them remain just that: fanciful explanations for which simpler causes are available. Others turn out to be a better version of the truth than the received wisdom. Which of the two they are is determined by experience. and is validated by history. For the American colonists the paradigm shift came in Philadelphia. For European Jewry, it came at a gate lettered, arbeit mach frei. Too late, but hey, that gate wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place.
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
I have a very difficult time understanding how anybody could be interested in the murder of President Kennedy for, “nearly 60 years.”
Since the time since the event won’t even be 49 years until November, this would seem to be rather difficult.
I was a few months short of turning eleven years old when it happened. The memories are still quite vivid.
There clearly was a conspiracy to kill John Kennedy, and then his brother.
And both conspiracies were successful.
The immediate perp-s were caught, but not the conspirators.
http://aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/contents_church_reports.htm
URL to the Church committee reports or at least some of them.
IIRC the committee found over 7,000 active and ongoing illegal conspiracies. To read them is like being trapped in the Spy novel section of the public library. That was just the US Intelligence services, which are babes in the woods compared to most.
Conspiracies are a fact of life. Yet for every valid conspiracy there are dozens of false ones. No way of telling how many actual conspiracies go unnoticed.
It is no accident that the older civilizations on this planet have the most conspiracy theories.
I think personal bias counts the most as far as accepting a conspiracy theory. Those that WANT to believe will. Those that don’t, won’t.
LOL. It’s 50 years. Thanks for correcting my arithmetic.
3. stoicheion.
Well said, sir. Conspiracies are so frustrating! In our rational minds we know there are probably no such things as “coincidences”, yet we instinctively understand groups of plotters are never clever enough to pull off intricate plots without incurring a fair share of hitches. What are we to do? What are we to do? And conspiracies are so much fun to consider. I mean Jack Ruby of all people? In a crowded Texas police station? C’mon!
It’s funny how the same people who insist the government is too corrupt, stupid, and incompetent to do anything right, from picking winners in the Green Energy sweepstakes to keeping classified Kill Lists from leaking to the New York Times, make an exception when it comes to their favorite conspiracy theory. To these folks, the complete lack of evidence is the surest sign that their pet conspiracy is working. They forget one very important thing. If these conspiracy theorists were right, they’d be dead for blowing the whistle.
In the larger scope of events, 49 years is indeed “nearly 60 years”. You’re vindicated Wretchard.
I just hope the new Epstein book will eventually appear in real book format.
As for DSK, is has been noted elsewher, that his departure made room for him to be replaced by that Lagarde woman, who had a long spell of emplyment in international finance in Chicago. Just like certain other people who soddenly came from Chicago to unexpected international prominence. Over at http://theulstermanreport.com/ There have been allegatione that Bernanke is now taking instructions from Lagarde.
“The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world!”
Those who try to debunk conspiracy theories frequently resort to the trope, “What are the odds that this, this, and this happened just in such a way to indicate a conpiracy”. At the same time, the “official” explanation of events depends on an even more outrageous bending of the laws of averages. Which we are expected to believe was “mere coincidence”.
The promoters of the “official” versions of events [large institutions, the government, and the "mainstream media"] also have a documentable history of lying to the public, and of being defiantly unrepentent for the lies when caught.
Therefore, when evaluating any cock and bull explanation of events coming from those promoters 1) they do not have, nor have they earned, any automatic trust over any other source of information, and 2) if it seems far-fetched, then the best filter is common sense and a highly attuned personal BS detector. Then examine the details as best you can, using outside sources you believe you can trust. Not every assassination is like Archduke Francis Ferdinand, dependent on the driver getting lost and jammed up in traffic right next to one of the conspirators who had failed earlier [the Gavril Princip Syndrome. The Archduke just had a real unlucky day.] Most are like the killing of Rasputin, and no amount of testimony can prove it was an accident. Follow the forensics. And if the forensics indicate that “so-and-so” did it, ignore the fact that you personally believe him to be a fine, upstanding person and a pillar of the community. He probably did it.
When JFK was killed, I was a 12 year old Jr. High student who had faked being sick because I just did not want to go to school that day. I saw it on TV as it was reported. Now I think it was the concept of Mannlicher Carcano being used that tripped my BS detector that something did not seem right. Yes, I was a strange child, but I knew that it was a POS.
When the summary volume of the Warren Commission Report was released the next year, I was the first one to check it out from our library, and I read all 800+ pages. As I said, I was a strange child.
The ballistics and weapons data alone convinced me I was being lied to. You need the single bullet theory to make the story work. I knew bullets do not make turns like that without hitting something with enough energy [KE=1/2 MV²] to damage the bullet, and that thing was pristine. That and the inability of the FBI at Quantico to get the weapon to fire fast enough to meet the timelines, even disregarding accuracy.
I knew I, and everybody else, was being lied to by the government. I knew someone had murdered my president, and apparently gotten away with it.
Conspiracies are real. Not all events are conspiracies, but some are. The incestuous combination of government and media is required to make one stick. See Journolist and the currently “kept” media.
Subotai Bahadur
8. Josh
Ha ha ha! Adam’s Rib! Good one!
T: “It’s funny how the same people who insist the government is too corrupt, stupid, and incompetent to do anything right, from picking winners in the Green Energy sweepstakes to keeping classified Kill Lists from leaking to the New York Times, make an exception when it comes to their favorite conspiracy theory.’
Gee, where does one start with such an ridiculous comment.
Many here suggest that the government is corrupt, stupid and incompetent. Let’s take each one separately.
• To be corrupt does not mean one is incapable of being involved in a conspiracy, in fact to be corrupt almost demands some sort of conspiracy. To deny there is not rampant corruption in our government, particularly in deep Blue Cities and States, these days is one hell of a claim.
• When people say the government is stupid, they usually refer to actions of the government or actions of a politician or empowered bureaucrat that under the viewpoint of the long discarded reasonable man theory are plainly stupid on their face. Now how those decisions come about usually are the result of a politician or bureaucrat pulled into a situation usually by the prevailing political or bureaucratic fashions that would demand extreme bravery by said individual to prevent the stupid act from occurring. The people involved are not necessarily stupid; the results of their actions are stupid, and therefore these same people are perfectly capable of acting within a conspiracy. Indeed, many of the political fashions of the left have forced those in government to act in accordance with what has become an ongoing conspiracy to abuse our rights if they want to keep their jobs.
• Incompetence – the same situation applies here as applies to government stupidity. The system encourages and rewards fashionable incompetence as long as it serves the purposes of the Left, or the connected.
Subotai Bahadur
I was 20. We were finishing a flight along the Chinese mainland about an hour out of Clark in the PI when we got the news. Everybody cheered. Nobody in the part of the navy I was in thought much of JFK.
What really sold me was the Zapruder tape. I have shot people in the head before and the bits don’t fly off toward the shooter. Granted, I was using a M-60 at much closer range but that shouldn’t matter;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=QTBInhsKW3E
The bullet penetrates above his right eye. A section of skull flies off and onto the trunk of the limo. The section was produced by a bullet going front to rear. Lee was behind them.
Oswald was the patsy. Someone to take the fall while the shooters left town. What ties it all together for me is the guy with the umbrella.
I would be interested in using a computer with a facial recognition program to look at the umbrella guy and compare him to file photos of the CIA of that period. It MIGHT be possible to check records to see who was in Dallas that day. Back in ’63, that sort of computing power was hard to come by. Standard for records retention is 7 years. That is a minimum. In practice, they keep them until they need room.
Yes, that bit about a piece of skull falling backward onto the trunk of the car always stuck out to me as being backwards, just by my young common sense. As I recall, Mrs Kennedy reflexively tried to reach back and grab it.
Conspiracies are rarely unmasked while the conspirators remain in power. This is because they are in a position to continue the cover-up. But in times of crisis, the slip begins to show. As Warren Buffet famously said, “it’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”
The 2008 financial meltdown and the current slow-motion collapse of the Euro are perfect examples of this. Scams which were viable during the fat years could not be concealed when the flow of money started to dry up. The tide went out and suddenly people were espied swimming in their birthday suits.
It’s a fascinating process to watch because of the speed with which it happens. One week Bernie Madoff was the Mister Pillar of Society. The next he was on a suicide watch. One month Mubarak is the Pharoah of Egypt. Not long afterward he is under arrest. Assad’s wife was in Vogue and not long after they were pariahs. In each of these cases the conspiracy theory suddenly became the conventional wisdom.
What Warren Buffet failed to observe is that people who were originally wearing clothes do not become naked when the tide goes out. This is equally true when you think of it. But the adage has surprising consequences. The mythmakers suffer disproportionately in a system collapse because the free energy they require to keep up the illusion dries up. The holograph of Jessica Biel fades and the hideous witch that is the concealed reality emerges in its place. On the other hand, if you looked like Jessia Biel to start with, unplugging the holograph machine does not change your appearance.
There is another aspect to this. As the absolute level of resources available to the mythmakers fade they must expend a relatively larger proportion of their declining store of energy to keeping up the system. The more the truth tends to burn through the greater the amount of lying that must be applied to cover it up.
I should add, for whatever it’s worth, that Epstein thinks that Castro had the means, motive and opportunity to do it. There maybe other opinions.
The “real conspiracies” (as opposed to the really fake ones) are most likely to be unmasked during a crisis. For that reason, if the JFK assassination was indeed a conspiracy, it almost certainly go officially undetected forever. America in 1963 had enough surplus energy to cover a conspiracy up, if conspiracy it were, until the passage of time made it impossible to recover the original data.
But the same is not true for America in 2012. If there are any big conspiracies out there, we will seem them unmasked in our lifetimes.
Is ‘conspiracy’ simply another aspect of information transfer?
Someone who gets his information from the New York Times will know that Fast & Furious is a conspiracy by Rascally Republicans to impune the first black President and his black head of the Justice Dept. Someone who gets his information from more reliable sources will know that Fast & Furious was a conspiracy by high-level Democrats to enact strict gun control over the bodies of dead Hispanics. Each of those two people will see his view as the truth, and the other’s view as a crackpot conspiracy theory. But reality is out there — if only information flowed freely.
Another example of the truth vs conspiracy dichotomy might be President Hoover’s book “Freedom Betrayed”, published posthumously last year, almost 50 years after Hoover’s death. In Hoover’s assessment, FDR was not the Great President so beloved of the faculty lounge crowd. Hoover’s view was that FDR blundered greatly by involving western democracies in a war with Hitler’s Germany; since it was inevitable that Germany & the Soviet Union would go to war with each other, a smarter President would have kept others out their way and let those two protagonists exhaust themselves. The involvement of other nations was a preventable tragedy, as was consigning Eastern Europe to communist rule; but FDR’s administration was riddled with a conspiracy of communist sympathisers.
Did Hoover see a conspiracy where none existed? Or are the standard issue leftist academic historians engaged today in a loose conspiracy to cover up the truth about FDR’s blunders? How do we sort out signal from noise?
14. wretchard
“The mythmakers suffer disproportionately in a system collapse because the free energy they require to keep up the illusion dries up…. As the absolute level of resources available to the mythmakers fade they must expend a relatively larger proportion of their declining store of energy to keeping up the system.”
Reminds me of Tolkien … In his duel with Fingolfin, Morgoth suffered wounds that never healed, a hewn foot as well as a face scared by the talons of Thorondor; and his hand was burnt forever black (and rendered eternally painful) by the Silmaril he grasped. Likewise Sauron suffered the permanent loss of his finger in his duel with Isildur; his throat was damaged beyond repair by Luthien and Huan; and when his corporeal body perished in the ruin of Numenor, he lost his beautiful (angelic) countenance and became a being “black and hideous.” Tolkien explained that both of these offspring of Eru’s thought–the one a high god and the other a divinity of lesser but still powerful rank–expended too much of their creative energy in their evil designs and in dominating other creatures; as a result, they literally could not keep up their appearances.
The stability of Medieval society, both a small measure of physical safety and the fate of your immortal soul, depended on the authority of The Church. The authority of the Church depended on the logical proofs of doctrine advanced by the Scholastics, especially St Thomas Aquinas. The authority of Aquinas and the validity of his proofs depended on the authority of Aristotle and Ptolemy, who were not Christians. When Galileo promoted, his crime was less his private beliefs as his public and possibly worse private communications, the Heliocentric Theory he was naturally condemned for engaging in a conspiracy against the public good. It was only when the complexity of explanations relying on epicycles to explain ceelestial movements under Geocentric Theory became unsustainable that Ockham’s Razor shaved the debate and changed opinions.
Hollande said, he would have beaten DSK in the socialist primary selection, even if the NY accident didn’t interven.
Anyways, He wouldn’t have changed the face of Europe if he had managed to get to the presidential elections.
Probably that the people in IMF had more interest to see him out, Lagarde is a much more compliant (accomodating) interlocutor for the finance plebe
“The mythmakers suffer disproportionately in a system collapse because the free energy they require to keep up the illusion dries up
Or better yet, a small dog pulls aside the curtain.
stoicheion @ 12:
Sorry, I see just the opposite. Exit wound is the right temple.
There are lots of conspiracies in this modern world. Whether they are good or bad ones depends on ones viewpoint.
18. Marie Claude: Hollande said, he would have beaten DSK in the socialist primary selection, even if the NY accident didn’t interven. Anyways, He wouldn’t have changed the face of Europe if he had managed to get to the presidential elections.
Sure. Changed the face of Europe. His “victory” in the 19th Summit to Save the Euro consists of recapitalizing the banks from a big central fund, making it easier for Spain and Italy to borrow even MORE money at German-level rates, getting them that much deeper into their sovereign debt crisis. The markets seemed to like it, but they haven’t read the fine print yet: 1) It must be approved by all 17 of the nations using the euro currency by July 9. 2) Fully 30% of the money in the big central kitty comes from Spain and Italy, which are the very nations begging for a bailout.
How do we sort out signal from noise?
Even without the application of intentional distortion, noise is ever-present in history. The story Rashomon is the classic example, where the account of events vary depending on the point of view. Moreover, the record is always incomplete. There is information that is unavailable even to the best observer. Who are the conspirators? The critics of Fast and Furious or those who oppose it?
During the 70′s I surely spent time hatching my share of conspiracies and detecting them. It came with the turf, back in the anti-Marcos days. All the more reason then, to feel sure that conspiracies exist, if in my little league such things were found, then what more in the big time? If human beings are habitually engaged in plots, then to imagine the “wilderness of mirrors” free from them is to assert something that may not be likely.
But a paradigm shift is more than just a realization that conspiracies exist. It is a realization that the conspiracies we thought to exist were completely misunderstood; it creates a radically different way of interpreting events; that we got it wrong. For instance the Venona project “revealing the existence of Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project. Venona messages also indicated that Soviet spies worked in Washington in the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services, and even the White House.”
That kind of information changes the frame. It means things are inside out. Our allies are really our deadliest foes; and the enemy is right inside the gates.
For years it was thought that the Rosenbergs were framed. Now it accepted that they were probably guilty. Sylvia Plath, E.L. Doctorow and a host of others confidently used the Rosenbergs as metaphor for injustice. But the shoe as it turns out, was on the other foot.
Indeed one might argue that the Rosenbergs themselves were prisoners of a kind of paradigm trap. They may have actually have sincerely believed, astonishing and ridiculous as it seems now, that in giving the A-bomb secrets to the most evil man in 20th century history, Joseph Stalin, they were advancing the cause of “world peace”. Now, about the best one can say for them is they were chumps. And that is the best one can say.
The solution to some mysteries, and the JFK assassination is probably one such, must await the opportunity of our being able to inquire about the answer from St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, should we ever come to them. I am sure Ed Epstein will ask the question. And we might be surprised at the answer. Who was it who said that we will be astonished at who we find in heaven and who in hell; maybe it was Warren Buffet, who said substantially the same thing about naked people and tides.
Nutball conspiracy theorists are those who believe in a clockwork, deterministic Universe where the workings of that dark Universe are determined by shadowy all powerful people who conspire to screw everyone, specially the poor nutball conspiracy theorist himself. The poor little guy doesn’t have a chance up against the evil controllers of his clockwork Universe. You see, it isn’t his fault that he can’t get ahead – it’s those all powerful, secret, invisible world controllers who are keeping him down.
These tin foil hat wearers pop out of the woodwork at the most unlikely times and places – even on ski-lifts for goodness’ sake. They remind me that one should periodically look up to make sure that no products of the Alcoa Corporation are keeping the rain (or cosmic radiation) off one’s own cranium.
Yes there are schemes, plots and even conspiracies and yes there are myth makers whose spin and whose front stories damage truth and people before eventually breaking down and being unmasked. Given all that, it’s a slippery slope from the actual stochastic Universe down into the nutball, imaginary, shadowy, clockwork Universe. I have to say that, like the game of golf, I find it hard to take the imaginary, shadowy clockwork Universe seriously.
But the fun part is I could be wrong! Dun da dun dun daaa!
As a Dallasite, I too remain interested. Some guys are trying to preserve the Texas Theater and recently showed a premier of “The Making of Giant” which I attended. The whole Oak Cliff aspect was, and remains interesting to me.
I can’t wait for November as local radio typically introduces some new author or theorist to the story – always interesting.
My father fought his way through Italy, he and his contemporaries couldn’t stand JFK. One of his pals, also a WWII vet, who was present and knew which direction fire originated, always claimed a shot passed over his head from the overpass.
Officer Tippet’s presence in Oak Cliff has never been properly explained.
No one trusted LBJ, nor should they. Texans hated LBJ more than Kennedy yet he won a Senate seat. Of course I have my N. Texas bias.
Ruby?
Another friend’s dad was at Parkland and actually retrieved evidence from the gurney…still has it. Not sure how or why, but I’ve seen it first hand. My take is it was planted. He is very, very credible.
Much later I personally had an interesting conversation and challenged one of the members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The Warren Report never came up, we both knew it was b.s. and didn’t waste the time.
The site now is a tourist attraction; a museum, location hawkers, and an “X” marks the spot identification on Elm St.
Several years ago a friend was walking to lunch downtown and a car sidled up next to him. The window was lowered and one of many apparent tourists asked where Kennedy was shot. Without missing a beat he pointed to the back of his head and said, “I’m not certain, but think it was right about here”. They didn’t think that nearly as funny as I.
Most people in Texas detested the Kennedy family. Still do. What’s omitted is as many hated LBJ.
As an aside, I once met Maria Shriver at a party circa 1984 just outside of Dallas. Though this was pre-Arnold, she lived up to my expectation. She was not polite, particularly attractive or interesting. She was a rude bitch.
Random data points all, but a lone shooter? Acting alone? Yeah, that’s the ticket.
21 Teresita
“Sure. Changed the face of Europe. His “victory” in the 19th Summit to Save the Euro consists of recapitalizing the banks from a big central fund, making it easier for Spain and Italy to borrow even MORE money at German-level rates,”
first, it’s not his “victory”, but Monti’s and Rajoy’s ! second, it’s not recapitalisation of the spanish and the italian banks at german-level rate, otherwise, it will be at 0%/1%, it’s authorising ECB and EMS fund to do their work without that that adds more debt into the national debt of these countries (that have made their home work within reforms and austerity), like Portugal, Ireland, Greece were forced to accept before. You may know that ECB and MES fund isn’t Germany’s alone property, the 17 EZ states have their sharings, especially of the german bank losses in the occurence too.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-23/merkel-should-know-her-country-has-been-bailed-out-too.html
and that is forgetting that Germany largely beneffitted of the ECB largenesses during the 2002/2004 years
-http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-koo-the-entire-crisis-in-europe-started-with-a-big-ecb-bailout-of-germany-2012-6
“The markets seemed to like it, but they haven’t read the fine print yet”
oh, they must be so dumb for not reading what you read !
“It must be approved by all 17 of the nations using the euro currency by July 9. ”
actually it has formally been accepted by 25 EU countries (except UK and the czech Republic), though the attribution will be made under scrutinity, and the expertise of the banks, hence the deal of a banking union on the board.
“2) Fully 30% of the money in the big central kitty comes from Spain and Italy, which are the very nations begging for a bailout.”
yes, that’s the irony, though as these countries can’t refinance themselves anymore… if Germany doesn’t want to ruin the euro, she had to acccept, that at least 2 of the biggest states get some liquidities.
Merkel is playing her re-election in Germany, it’s not our problem, which is, are the Germans in Europe, or not, so far they played the in and out, depended on their interests. If they don’t want to stay, I bet that Monti and Rajoy, will show them the door, and what will come with it, german bankrupty !
Respect the fedora, and the captain’s hat please.
Convincing others of motive is difficult — after all who but “extremists” disliked JFK? The conspiracy surrounding his greatness is larger than that of his death; in fact his poor ethics could have principally sealed his fate. But since the assassination wasn’t for fame or money, then only a commie, Cuban, or Israel could have done it. Today we can add Muslim to the list, and none of these are impossible.
“The Gallup organization finds that close to 60% of respondents trusted the media ‘not very much or not at all’.”
Everyone concedes media distortion whether it’s leftwing or right, but the average citizen harbors no suspicion of sheer fabrications. Even when we spot a plain lie, it gets chalked up to political bias or careless reporting. To their credit, the British tabloids have attempted to educate people by intentionally self-discrediting (for example with stories about transgendered 3-year-olds). Readers apparently still buy the headlines, however, if not the details found in The Daily Mail. It seems impossible to awaken them.
“It is sobering to recall that the Nazi Death camps were thought by many of its victims to be something that couldn’t possibly exist. It was just too fantastic to conceive. Many Jews continued to believe that what the authorities told them was the truth, often in despite of their own senses.”
“Alarmists” had this choice: scare everyone around them and be beaten by guards, or keep their fear to themselves. Jerry Lewis’ unreleased the Day the Clown Cried portrayed this dilemma through the plight of a clown who desperately tried saving kids while shielding them from reality, right to the last moment.
17. Blast From the Past “The stability of Medieval society, both a small measure of physical safety and the fate of your immortal soul, depended on the authority of The Church.”
And today we view Medieval times almost comically. The disease, torture, and witch hunts were like Monty Python skits or a Renaissance festival. Someday people could look back at the 20th century and think “Oh sure, terrorism and genocide… everyone was doing it.”
“Indeed one might argue that the Rosenbergs themselves were prisoners of a kind of paradigm trap.”
I think they were trying to dissuade spies is all. Not sure if there ever was such a couple as the Rosenbergs.
Look. The facts are prosaic. The problem is a reasonable one: official state secrecy rules. If you attempt to follow official history, you may at some point discover that actual records of events are locked in classified files. How one write legitimate history under such circumstances? One can’t. So “conspiracy theories” can be legitimate exercises in trying to piece together from the outside what is most plausible, or likely – without any expectation of being correct. I for one think, for example, that the biggest gaping hole in public knowledge about how to interpret events comes from the aforementioned fact and the fact that very few people seem to have an intuitive understanding of the Soviet Union and it’s methods – which should be of little surprise because what entity, after all, has more things classified about it in the past 60 years? I also think Angleron was right – and his theory and it’s unpopularity bear a striking resemblance to the analysis of the current head of the CIA’s China desk, who wrote in 2000 I think that any notion that there is actual dissenting among the Chinese elite – a hawk and a dove wing – is mistaken: there is no daylight among the beliefs of the members of the Chinese ruling structures, and this includes the military. And this belief is based on the simple inference that, despite the Bo Xilai commotion, the fact is that the Chinese Politburo controls the media and the internet protocols, and therefore only allows to be seen what it wants to be seen, and it makes sense that the party machinery would only really tend to graduate its own. That’s how Angleton’s theory works, and that is how Epstein’s and Ion Pacepa’s theory works – it is a matter of plausibility based on concrete knowledge supplemented by reasonable inference in the absence of that knowledge. That’s all you can do. After all, in reality there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, and there never won’t be – even if you’re the chief of CIA counterintelligence from its inception.
Conspiracy theories often flourish in situations involving sexual scandal because extramarital misconduct as well as political skulduggery requires secrecy. The murder-suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary and his teenage mistress in January 1889 was thought by some to be a double hit carried out by the Austrian secret police (in one version) or foreign agents (in a second version) because Rudolf was too liberal politically to suit his father, Emperor Franz Josef. Another case was the sudden death of Warren Harding during his tour of the West Coast in 1923. Although most accounts maintain that he died of either a stroke or complications of pneumonia, rumors circulated that he had been poisoned by his wife Florence because she was tired of his recurrent extramarital affairs. Wretchard has already mentioned DSK. Last, there are the conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Marilyn Monroe– that it was not suicide but murder carried out by an agent of Teh Kennedys– which brings us back full circle to JFK.
LOL. It’s 50 years. Thanks for correcting my arithmetic.
Unless of course the real JFK was killed ten years earlier so an imposter could be inserted for some plot or other. And the imposter was done away with in Dallas to prevent him from spilling the beans. And since Wretchard made the slip of writing “60 years” then clearly he was in on the plot somehow… We’re on to you, Mr. Fernandez…
John Adams was utterly astonished by the speed at which widespread loyalty to the British crown was transformed into opposition to it.
It is another form of preference cascade. The fear of the dinner party keeps many people from buying into the conspiracy, but as more and more buy in, the cost for each additional subscriber grows less, because there are fewer at the dinner party who will mock you for believing it. In fact, sooner or later, not believing the conspiracy theory will embarrass you in the better circles.
Also, when things go badly south, there’s less time for dinner parties and petit social dramas. The bigger dramas take over.
#25
…It’s not our problem….
Absolutely sure about that?
To be sure, hope certainly springs eternal. And everyone loves a scapegoat! (Though it is a most curious irony that the Germans are the scapegoat du jour…. even if one may well assume that when everyone gets tired of picking on the Germans, the Jews will—fulfilling their age-old responsibilities and service to humankind—get to pick up the slack).
File under: Cliche of the day
I’m reminded of Miller!!!
Miller: A lotta people don’t realize what’s really goin on. They view life as a bunch a unconnected incidents and things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice a coincidence that lays on top a everything. I’ll give yan example, show ya what I mean. Suppose you’re thinkin about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly sombody’ll say like, “Plate,” or “Shrimp,” or “Plate o’ shrimp.” Outta the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin for one, either. It’s all part of the cosmic unconsciousness.
Otto: You do a lotta acid, Miller? Back in the hippie days?
Miller: Give ya another instance. You know the way everybody’s into weirdness right now? Books in all the supermarkets about Bermuda Triangles, UFOs, how the Mayans invented television, that kinda thing?
Otto: I don’t read them books.
Miller: Well the way I see it its exactly the same. There ain’t no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine. People get so hung up on specifics, they miss out on seeing the whole thing. Take South America for example. South America, thousands of people go missing every year. Nobody knows where they go. They just like disappear. But if you think about it for a minute, you realize something. There hadda be a time when there was no people, right?
Otto: Yeah, I guess.
Miller: Well where did all these people come from? Hmm? I’ll tell you where. The future. Where’d all these people disappear to? Hmm?
Otto: The past?
Miller: That’s right! And how’d they get there?
Otto: How the fk do I know?
Miller: Flying saucers. Which are really… yeah, you got it. Time machines. I think a lot about this kind of stuff.
http: // http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJ5cCP0ZPE
From “Repo Man” (1984)
All of you should read Victor Lasky’s It Didn’t Start with Watergate, a meticulously sourced and footnoted work on the felonious, outrageous conduct of the Democrat presidents from FDR to Carter (published in 1977). Even the stories you know are Much Worse than you know: read about the massive election fraud in 1960 (it wasn’t just in Chicago); the collusion of the TV talking heads with the D party behind the scenes, all the way back; how Nixon was taped and wiretapped and bugged to within an inch of his life; and more.
Very sobering stuff. You expect a certain amount of this Borgia-esque activity when the prize — the levers of the world’s preeminent power — is so great, but man, this is outRAGEous.
I’ve been thinking of the Battle of Helm’s Deep lately (Lord of the Rings):
“It was now past midnight. The sky was utterly dark, and the stillness of the heavy air foreboded storm.
“Suddenly the clouds were seared by a blinding flash. Branched lightning smote down upon the eastward hills. For a startling moment the watchers on the walls saw all the space between them and the Dike lit with white light: it was boiling and crawling with black shapes, some squat and broad, some tall and grim, with high helms and sable shields. Hundreds and hundreds more were pouring over the Dike and through the breach.
“The dark tide flowed up to the walls from cliff to cliff. Thunder rolled in the valley. Rain came lashing down.
“Arrows thick as the rain came whistling over the battlements, and fell clinking and glancing on the stones. Some found a mark. The assault on Helm’s Deep had begun, but no sound or challenge was heard within; no answering arrows came. . . . The men of the Mark amazed looked out as it seemed to them, upon a great field of dark corn, tossed by a tempest of war, and every ear glinted with barbed light.
. . . Then at last an answer came: a storm of arrows met the enemy, and a hail of stones. They wavered, broke, and fled back; and then charged again, broke and charged again; and each time, like the incoming sea, they halted at a higher point. . . .”
Tolkien fought for the Crown in World War I, in Europe’s trench warfare.
So is the Mob really running everything? The ACA is just another slush fund after all.
PA Cat at 28, I have a friend who’s wife’s mother, my friend’s mother-in-law, believes she is the granddaughter (I guess she’d be that far removed generation-wise) of Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress. The family story is that Rudy escaped to the US (or was it Canada?) with his teen squeeze.
I’ve met the mother maybe twice, and she looked like a Slavic type, strongly (and not the handsome Slavic type, either). Nothing like any sort of Euro royalty. Just on her looks alone, I’d dismiss the story.
But I know the wife’s sister pretty well, an excellent artist, actually–who believes it like gospel.
To skip to another European country:
The English Liberal government at the time of the Irish Potato Blight certainly conspired to starve the Irish to death. There’s no question as to that. About a million died outright. It conveniently helped them solve a lot of problems, esp one named Daniel O’Connell.
Jumping back to the present:
Are we going to add Chief Justice John Roberts to our lists of conspirators? I’ve been ready Andy McCarthy on the decision, and also yet another Epstein, this one Richard, at
http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/121426
As well as Mark Levin:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-levin/obamacare-the-commerce-clause-and-supreme-court-decision/10150883505015946
And by this time, I’m prepared to believe just about any cloak and dagger ideas on it all.
More firmly than ever do I believe the Genesis account that civilization is the product of Cain and his clann.
An Préachán
Abraham Lincoln was also a conspiracy nut. Read the “House Divided” speech- especially the last paragraph- in which he accuses various now-obscure political figures of conspiring to spread slavery over the entire United States.
I think Lincoln was correct, and I think the people of the North knew it- which is why they elected him President.
I figure that was a sign that the political culture of the United States as it existed circa 1860 was collapsing. Well, duh- in light of what happened after.
I also figure the collapse in trust of the “mainstream media” is a sign of the collapse of the present political culture of the United States. Well- we don’t know what will happen next. But when most people are willing to entertain crazy-sounding notions such as that the mainstream media is just lying to everyone then the political culture that is associated with that media has deep and thorough problems.
Well, duh.
The conspiracy I believe about Kennedy is the widespread and deliberate efforts of the communist infiltrated media to suppress Oswald’s communist links. This assassination happened in the aftermath of the downfall of McCarthy. The media, and fellow travelers on the Left successfully created a Big Lie – one that declared it was paranoid, anti-American, and amoral to seek out and destroy Communisim and Communists.
This Big Lie has an almost exact counterpart in the suppression of inconvenient facts surrounding Obama and his long list of radical friends, many of whom are enemies of America. Political Correctness(tm) and Multiculturalism(tm) and the eternal and unforgivable crime of White Racism(tm) are the lies that wafted Obama into the White House. These Big Lies are also used to shove tens of millions of unassimilated specifically non-white illegal aliens down our throats, while worshiping at the godhead of “Diversity(tm)”. How many in the media, white brown black etc positively chortle at the prospect of whites becoming the minority in America by 2030? I couldn’t care less if those citizens were legally assimilated into the American fabric with an appreciation of liberty and a respect for our Laws and Constitution. But I doubt that twenty or thirty million illegal aliens who flouted our most basic laws of sovereignty will give a damn about following our other laws. Further, they are nurtured on the Grievance Gravy Train(tm) – they will remain pissed whatever this nation gives them – citizenship, path to citizenship, food stamps, section 8. I believe the influx of illegal Mexicans is a toxin introduced deliberately by the political elites, academia, and the media to punish whites and to unglue America. They are the Big Liars to the concept of We the People.
E Unum Pluribus stands the entire notion of America on its head, and undermines rule of law and of equality under the law by inventing privileged classes and races and monstrous mechanisms such as affirmative action, and racial grievance to implement the scheme.
What is most amazing is that Obama’s radicalism is right there in the open. It keeps seeping out like fluid from a decaying corpse. I think he was probably born in Hawaii, yet his own literary agent stated he was Kenyan born until 2007 when his run for the White House became serious. But if one repeats what Obama himself maintained until quite recently, one is labelled insane by the vast majority in the media and in political circles. Obama’s anti-white contempt is on full display in Dreams From My Father, in comments such as “clinging to their guns and bibles and anyone who is different from them”, “Nation of Cowards”, and in his twenty year relationship with the racist anti-American pro-Farakhan Black Liberation traitor Jeremiah Wright – yet anyone who asserts Obama is a radical Black Liberationist freak is labelled a racist bigot. So too his communist roots (mommy, “Uncle Frank”, Gramps, and all his Marxist buds in college) is swept under the carpet of the Multicultural Perpetual White Racism Diversity Political Correct carpet, a carpet that is bulging from all the filth it conceals underneath.
And the latest conspiracy theory is one foisted onto America by the black political Left via the white liberals in the Dem Party. No better example of that exists than the tri-caucuses (Asian, black and Latino) walking out of the Issa contempt vote accompanied by Nancy Pelosi on the idea that white racists simply don’t like Eric Holder.
The Trayvon Martin case was another manifestation of the urban myth that whites are out to get blacks. Despite all information to the contrary, thanks to the ceaseless advocacy of the theory of the New Jim Crow as applied to crime statistics, the entire political Left saw the anecdotal and fact-challenged Martin case as a rousing civil rights issue – even the NBA released a statement though they knew nothing about the facts – the outcome was already prepared for and known.
There is no other way to explain 4 Joseph Goebbels analogues being cozened on a major American cable channel, MSNBC, by way of Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry, Micheal Eric Dyson and Touré. Their tall tales routinely rise to the level of conspiracy theories as witness Perry’s recent speech that blamed the reaction to 9/11 on America’s racism. There is no sign that these kooks will be marginalized any time soon.
If the New Jim Crow with its decontextualized narratives of stop and frisk and driving while black smeared all over the spectrum of unrelated black crime is not a conspiracy theory, I don’t know what is.
Here’s a data point on the JFK killing, you won’t find elsewhere:
1. Julia Postal was the woman who called the poice on Oswald, from the movie theater. Her testimony to the Warren Commision is accessible online. She is seen briefly (as portrayed by an actress, not the real person) in Olliver Stone’s movie JFK.
2. Julia’s husband’s brother (her brother in-law) was Frederick Postal (my paternal grandfather)
3. Frederick Postal was a busniess associate of John McCone, both before and after WWII. They were close enough that John McCone gave Mr Postal Christmas presents — this I have first hand knowledge of from my childhood.
4. John McCone was the Director of the CIA at the time of the JFK killing.
That’s all I know of the situation, and maybe it all is just coincidence, but it just seems all so peculiar that Oswald would go to a theater where someone with that close of a connection to the head of the CIA would be working.
In the closing scenes of American Psycho, Patrick Bateman confesses his crimes and sets off alarms all over the city. But his lawyer, the decorator, almost all of society either refuses to believe this about him, or they are themselves conspiring to protect him. These characters need jobs after all – and Wall Street pays each of them.
Conspiracies do not require secrecy and organization, only a tacit understanding that what you believe to be good for the masses is true enough to will it so. The MSM has made an industry out of telling you what is gonna kill you… news at 11:00. Teachers unwittingly parrot the party line and inculcate students with a low level, persistent form of brain washing. Politicians try to get in front of these messages and hew legacies by being the first adopters to fashion law to placate the fears raised by the popular Zeitgeist. It is hardly a conspiracy. It is group think and it is insidious to the core. In this case, Hollywood may be creating our reality. You can be sure they think so. Just ask George Clooney.
Coupla comments:
WRT MLK, for example. It is not meet that giants be brought low by pissants. Conspiracies are more satisfactory.
WRT Lincoln: See DeVoto, Year of Decision. The slave society was planning on expanding. Central America and the southwest.
WRT Trayon Martin. The Bad White Man narrative is desperately needed. It is so rare, and keeps falling apart, they have to fake it. See Brawley, Duke lax. Now we have another faked-up case. I believe part of it is that a certain cohort of the population–the Self-appointed Powerfully Excellently Wonderful, aka SPEW–need this sort of thing in order to publicly display their sense of moral outrage. Since it’s easy not to be a racist, anybody can do it. Which kind of takes the cachet away. So the SPEW need as many incidents of Bad White Man as they can get and they’re desperately short. So they do the best they can with what little they have.
Black girls, age seven, named Heaven, gunned down in Philly, are useless to the SPEW. She’s a nothing burger, a waste of time. She was not killed by a white man so screw her. God, those SPEW are despicable
It is worth remembering with respect to “conspiracies”, that there was an organization bent on fomenting lies and conspiracies worldwide for well over 70 years.
It was the NKVD, and then it was the KGB.
The US government invented HIV/AIDS? KGB propaganda.
Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg were innocent? KGB propaganda.
Wow, sure glad that they put an end to that! I’m sure that Vladimir Putin , somewhere, has renounced everything he was raised with as a KGB man.
I saw a poorly produced jail house confession where an inmate thoroughly and dispassionately described his involvement with a mafia hit team to take out Kennedy. I was convinced that this was the truth. Later I saw an exhaustive reenactment of the shooting by a team of Australian forensic scientists. On film they showed the particular rifle in case (can’t remember its name though, oddly, I have one) shoot a watermelon off of a ladder. The water melon ejected material towards the firearm and actually fell towards it. They reenacted the shooting with ballistic gelatin mannequins with simulated bones and exactly reproduced the single bullet trajectory along with the pristine bullet. I was convinced that this was the truth. Now I am convinced if you take a particle of sand and mix it in an ocean of sand you will never be sure if you recovered the original or not.
David – “there was an organization bent on fomenting lies and conspiracies worldwide”
I forgot who it was but some East European KGB colonel writing for National Review proclaimed; ” I wrote John Kerrys speech!” He goes on to say that the agitprop that Kerry was spewing was precisely the pap that they were crafting in the Kremlin.
The Left couldn’t impose Kerry the communist on us so they put their candidate in a new wrapper, Berry the unassailable. The Dems learned a valuable lesson. If Barry Sotero did no exist they would have to invent him. As such, they are inventing more ruling class victims.
Putin on the Ditz!
Or How Putie hit Hillary’s reset button
Ok, enough of my bad headline writing.
There is a massive rabbit hole that is the Kennedy conspiracy. But if one looks at who gained power and money it surely looks to be the hawks/MIC and a few religious ideologues. The water is so muddy by intention that truth will never be truly known. I am secure in the knowledge that it takes massive amounts of money and power to keep all those lies up and running that eventually as it did with the USSR the lies come crashing down around the ears of those last elites for whom the past is but a childhood memory.
What does the Bible say, “As ye sow, so shall ye reap”.
The part that really gets to me though is where President Adams prior to his election to the office states in a letter that we will survive and prosper only by an increase in our virtue as a nation. Boy have we failed in that task…
@26 Baobo;
““Indeed one might argue that the Rosenbergs themselves were prisoners of a kind of paradigm trap.”
I think they were trying to dissuade spies is all. Not sure if there ever was such a couple as the Rosenbergs.”
Might try and post that up over at Mr. Radosh’s blog on PJM. See how he responds to it…
and what the hell it this US presidential campaigning in Europe all about? I thought that was illegal. If it isn’t it should be.
30. Barry Meislin
your chosen empathy is telling, but you aren’t living in Europe of course, and you don’t read the press. The poor Germans aren’t scapegoated (they who the first launched the scapegoating of the Mediterranean club, with molto xenophobic labels, and do you know? they actually put the cause of the financial crisis on the Anglo-Americans and the Jews’s back). We just defend ourselves, naturally that the basic Germans don’t enter into our incriminations, it’s their actual elite !
“But to confess such a belief, is like expressing any lingering doubts about the Kennedy assassination, an invitation to ridicule.”
I enjoy this blog a lot. But the statement above is just silly. If you want to be ridiculed, try suggesting that Oswald not only shot Kennedy, but that he may well have acted alone.
Drudge conspiracies all in a line:
Author denied French literary award’s cash prize because he visited Israel…
Iran: There will be war — and we’ll win…
IRS steps up scrutiny of tax-exempt political groups…
Clooney to Raise Obama Money in France, Switzerland…
Does the IRS have an enemies list too?
Fail Burton @ 38: “There is no other way to explain 4 Joseph Goebbels analogues being cozened on a major American cable channel, MSNBC, … There is no sign that these kooks will be marginalized any time soon.”
Hey, Sharpton et al have already been marginalized. They have been banished to MSNBC, which no-one watches!
A few points:
1)Who DIDN’T want to kill Kennedy? That list would take up quite a bit of space, and that wouldn’t include all the boyfriends of his once-a day sex addiction.
2)You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you. Sometimes, not frequently, they are.
3) Conspiracy theories are comforting to some because they really don’t want to have to analyse anything themselves. If they took the trouble to follow, step by step, the logic involved, they would see the flaws. There’s always at least one link that smells of shellgame. But, people being lazy and stupid, they don’t bother. They hear one interesting tidbit, never consider the source, and viola… conspiracy! It’s also why demagogues like Ostupid can gain traction. PEOPLE ARE LAZY AND STUPID! Not everyone, but it certainly is the default setting.
And then there are different kinds of conspiracies.
Everyone has his favorite theory about who conspired to kill Kennedy. But what about the alternative theory — there was no conspiracy to kill Kennedy (Oswald acted alone), but there was a very effective conspiracy after the fact, to cover up what happened? The loose ends from that well-intended after-the-fact conspiracy created a rich ground in which theories about evil before-the-fact conspiracies have thrived.
Bonar Menninger’s interesting 1992 book “Mortal Error” presents a lot of forensic evidence that Kennedy was hit by two different types of bullet. The first World War II-style bullet from Oswald’s gun passed through Kennedy’s neck, hit Connally, and retained its integrity (the “magic bullet”). The second 1960s-style bullet hit the back of Kennedy’s head and disintegrated. Different bullets = different guns.
Menninger presents contemporary photographs showing that the second bullet likely was an accidental shot fired by a panicked Secret Service agent in the car behind the President’s when he grabbed the AR-15 rifle which was craddled on the floor of the car & pointing forward, towards Kennedy.
The speculation is that LBJ and other senior officials decided that it would not be a good idea to tell the American public that JFK had accidentally been killed by his own protective Secret Service detail. Hence the following cover-up.
‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!’
The cranium, of course, is a dense shell of bone enclosing softer highly lipid matter filled with blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Not equivalent to a melon, but some of the physics of bullet penetration are similar. Take a look at one of the many youtube videos of bullet versus melon. Contents are ejected in a nearly isotropic pattern (all directions).
The impedance to shock wave changes abruptly at the bone-tissue interface. Structures like this can create a reflected wave traveling in opposite direction to bullet path. Reflected wave hits cranium near region of bullet entry, which is already structurally defeated, and the result is tissue and bone being ejected retrograde to bullet travel.
Additionally, a competent crew in the land of OZ or NZ recently conducted some very impressive tests of the single bullet theory using real bone and ballistic gelatin. Apparently, the findings supported the possibility of the single bullet result.
14. wretchard
Conspiracies are rarely unmasked while the conspirators remain in power. This is because they are in a position to continue the cover-up. But in times of crisis, the slip begins to show. As Warren Buffet famously said, “it’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”
Or in the Chicago Way, just who wore the cement shoes.
Oops! Is that a conspiracy theory too?
We unconsciously know we are ruled by Crime.gov; something, some many, many things don’t fit.
The hidden economics of DemSoc are what don’t fit.
GSE’s, such as drugwar, military supply, LBO aquisition, tax-exempt money laundery, organizing, accreditation and licensing, false preachers, campaign and image management have become global enterprises.
Capitalism was murdered by Empire progressives a century ago.
Why should pod people target only one side?
I count prohibition- a ‘war’ on human nature- as one of DemSoc’s greatest innovations. It has covertly funded the change from capitalism to influence networks to the applause of a happily captive society. Both sides believe ‘we’ are gonna get ‘them’. Only we and they go to jail, below a certain line.
The great conspiracy is the collusion of image management professionals, hired by both sides, to distract us with ‘keeping the dream alive’.
No economist or pundit I know of refers to the effect of the hidden economics.
Cartel governments, fueled by criminalized liberties, are the new norm.
Should Romney be elected- somewhat doubtful- then I await with cynical delight the screams of conservatives that “Nothing has changed!”
I enjoy Epstein and read all of his website, which is very quirky. There are parts of it you can only access by answering pulzzler and logic questions. He has lots of good analysis and data about 9-11 and, especially, the anthraz attackes as well as all his stuff on JFK and Soviet moles.
Abraham Lincoln was also a conspiracy nut. Read the “House Divided” speech- especially the last paragraph- in which he accuses various now-obscure political figures of conspiring to spread slavery over the entire United States.
That is one theory that may now cross over into the mainstream. People who have never heard of Lincoln, or have never read anything about the Civil War are now learning that vampires from Europe were in charge of the system of slavery; that Abe was in fact a hunter of the undead. The original of the Gettysburg address contained these words:
I think a good book to write would be “The Real 9/11 Conspiracies.”
In addition to that of the terrorist Arab Muslim hijackers we could describe:
1. Making asbestos look so hazardous that it was not used to insulate all of the steel in WTC, making the building very vulnerable to fire.
2. Training airline pilots to turn over control of their aircraft to hijackers, including Federal agents telling the pilots that they would be jailed if they did not do so.
3. No longer having armed fighter aircraft sitting alert, not even next to Wash, DC.
4. A mandatory 30% across the board cut to all Federal civilian personnel under Al Gore’s Reinventing Government Act.
5. Generally making the U.S. look as weak and indecisive as possible in the 1990’s, from “Blackhawk Down” on.
Of course, these were not “conspiracies” per se, but in fact the result of bad policies, bad ideas, and stupid people. Together they amounted to a gigantic conspiracy, even if they were not one.
Sherlock Holmes might put it: “One is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is Federal Government Policy.”
CJM #39:
So you are saying that Oswald went Postal?
“[...] then I await with cynical delight the screams of conservatives that “Nothing has changed!”
Conservatives already know that, but Republicans might be suprised.
In a thread years in the past, I mentioned, *the highest form of dissent is the ability of a citizen to claim a conspiracy*. And of course to make that claim without the threat of physical violence, or the legal system regarding dissenters as targets, to squelch their voices, and frighten them into the *consensus*.
Journalist and lawyers frequently seem to be of the bootlicking consensus class. Especially at the *mainstream media* level. Only exception I recognize. Judge Andrew Napalitano. Which is a ridiculous that one lawyer journalist, at the mainstream level, stands forth as the only dissenting voice.
The internet has definitely filled in the gap even if that gap is the size of the planet, yet regrettably nowadays websites devoted to conspiracy seem devoted to eating their young and demanding political correctness and certain pedigrees of political stripe before you can enter into their bastions of their particular consensus.
Imagine in the next four months multiple conspiracies of varying degrees of grist and grind came forth about President Obama. (OMG is that even possible!!!). Would all the lawyers and journalists and lawyer/journalists that make up columnists on PJMedia stand firm if one went off the farm and started advocating rip-roaring controversial conspiracies. (See Alex Jones) or would some start abandoning ship and just not feel comfortable on board such a masthead. Honestly, in my view, where there is no rip-roaring dissent macro or micro theirs no dissent at all. A news disseminating website with no robust advocation of conspiracy induces in its readers tendency too conflate our democracy and our role as citizens,and oh so subtly into one that resembles slaves who possess a slavish devotion to consensus. God I hate the New York Times.
Conspiracy theories are a form of gnostic knowledge. In an otherwise chaotic-seeming world they offer a charming interpretation of events whereby things happen for understandable reasons instead of randomly. This is not to say they are untrue.
Blastfromthepast, Aquinas’s arguments about earthly matters do not typically appeal to an outside authority, Christian or otherwise, but to reason and a particular conception of the person and the world that is itself grounded in Aristotelian theory. For this, and also for a debunking of the popular notion that the Church saw heliocentric theories as a threat, please see David Hart’s excellent “Atheist Delusions: Christianity and its Fashionable Enemies.”
Stoicheion, I am surprised and saddened to read that American airmen on active duty would cheer the news of the President’s murder.
The entire world has been subjected to a ubiquitous conspiracy, advanced piecemeal by confederates infiltrating every corridor of power, every agent of public discourse, including the hallowed halls of academia.
To further their sordid goals, first must fall the truth, next the reigns of power. Capitalism must be convicted and sentenced to loss of esteem in the minds of all.
The persistent message that, was not government interference in the free market that produced ‘le crise’, but t’was an inevitable result of the evils of capitalism.
It’s worked smashingly. Just look at recent polls purporting that a majority blames bush for the meltdown. Yes, he enacted the unfunded prescription medicine plan, and launched the costly conflicts in AfPak.
Amazingly, the actions of Andrew Cuomo, housing Secretary for Clinton, the repeal of Glass-Steagall in the waning days of Clinton, coupled with the nefarious activities, possibly fraudulent, of hedge fund managers to encourage construction of intended to fail CDO’s, and the obstruction of reforms, under Bush 43, by Barney Frank and Francine Waters purchase no mention in these fallacious offerings.
Indeed, one man is credited with the entire collapse, and this without endorsing a single piece of legislation that was later repealed by Obama.
But this great lie ferments today in the minds of the public. It forms the cornerstone for the continued deception of the public for the purpose of continuing the assault on liberty now in motion.
Basically, it all boils down to paranoia. The more paranoid you are, the more conspiracy theories you accept. There is a fine line there. On the other side lies madness.
Constant paranoia produces PTSD. Humans in a high threat environment become paranoid. Or dead. When they really ARE out to get you, paranoia is a survival skill.
When my middle son got back from his last tour in Afghanistan, He moved into my hunting lodge in Alabama. 1 man almost 70 acres of woods and river seemed like a good place to decompress. I talked him into enrolling at University Alabama Huntsville so the time wouldn’t get heavy on his mind. It’s about a hour and a half drive. On the way there and back we both were picking out ambush sites. It was a bonding experience.
I think that those who scoff at all conspiracies have never been in a high threat environment.
Remember all conspiracies have at least one thing in common. The conspirators KNOW they will get away with it. Most conspiracies fall because of bad luck.
Dame Fortune is attracted to planning and effort. She turns her face on sloth and sloppy thinking.
Let’s look at Watergate. They got caught because a guard (does anybody remember him?) found a door ajar and checked it. When he found the latch taped over he called it in.
That wasn’t bad luck, that was poor planning and sloth. If a man dressed as a bum( street person in today’s jargon)had been left to guard the door with an open bottle of 4 Roses, the Watergate conspiracy would never had happened.
The JFK assassination will fall to technology. If the Warren report was revisited with modern technology and different members, we would get a different result. Exhume the body and look at it with techniology that didn’t exist in 1963. Forensic Science has come a long way since 1963.
I look at the Zapruder tape and see an entrance wound because a skin flap holds on the chunk of shattered skull. In super slo mo I see the hair on the back of JFK’s head moving AFTER the chunk of skull in front comes loose. R Daneel sees something different. Will some future technology allow us to see for sure? I think so.
Hey, how bout another conspiracy!
It turns out that the Bank Of England, Barclays and the Bank Of Scotland, and probably the FED and the American Giant Squid conspired to fix the LIBOR rate upon which many variable rate mortgages are based.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/bank-england-about-be-dragged-lie-borgate-and-which-us-bank-next
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=207900
You are so right T. all these conspiracies are just the wild imaginings of us loser right wing- wingnuts.
45. JFSanders – I almost mentioned it once, but the story is beyond my interest and understanding to question. It wouldn’t be a bad myth anyway (concealing nuclear secrets sounds good), though in the long run I’m afraid knowledge always wins out — there is no chance of hording technology or progressing indefinitely. God can only separate tribes and put us on different planets occasionally.
Fascinating topic as always, thanks W.
Epignosis 53: Thanks for the facts on what happens when bullet meets bone and brain. Seems to me that any theory, whether it results in a “conspiracy” model or not, has to survive encounter with the facts. In the perfect world where we don’t live, we would have look-up tables showing that for shots like Oswald’s the p(bone blowing retrograde) is such and such, and we could be that much more or less confident of a single shooter.
Epignosis 62: I guess the simple explanation for blaming Bush is, it’s a simple explanation. Think about it: reality is both infinitely complex and granular, and very very simple. There are driving forces, and then there multitudinous variegated manifestations of those forces at work. To refer to your 53, brain and bone go all sorts of directions after a single bullet strike. All theorists seeks to economize. Conspiracy theorists perhaps more than most. They can use a hidden layer to explain emergent behaviors, and who are we to second-guess them? But whether or not the Bush-blamers are conspiracy-theorists, they are indubitably lazy. In my modest view, it is OK and indeed desirable to be economical –Ockham was right– but it is bad, very bad, to be lazy.
The trouble is, they often look the same.
“It wouldn’t be a bad myth anyway (concealing nuclear secrets sounds good), though in the long run I’m afraid knowledge always wins out — there is no chance of hording technology or progressing indefinitely.”
IIRC, it took a large chunk of our GDP at the time to produce the first nuclear weapons. Theft allows someone else to get the same benefit with a much, much lower cost.
#46 Annoy Mouse
and what the hell it this US presidential campaigning in Europe all about? I thought that was illegal. If it isn’t it should be.
What is this “Law” of which you speak?
There are words on paper marked ‘US Code”, but they do not apply to anyone in the Political Class, and most definitely do not apply to anyone who has control of the coercive organs of the State.
Something to consider in these times:
— Boris Bazhanov’s Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary, published in 1992
Subotai Bahadur
67; Yes, but the real cost in being second to the party is the fact that you may show up to a gun fight with a knife…
Granted to my mind not protecting your assets is very stupid. We have as a open border society have always had the problem of just whom is coming across the border and for what real reason. It is practically us against the world due to the fact that we do not proffer our tech to our allies except on a need to know basis. We extend no trust, thus we get none in return. Americans by and large are fairly distrustful on a individual basis due to the fact that we live in a competitive environment where knowledge can be a serious advantage or the lack thereof a very serious disadvantage. We and they are always working a multi-level game and by the act of complication we arrive at the point that it is easier for them to use espionage to gain what we would probably give them albeit after we have gained a measure of superiority.
There is a very real reason that the greatest minds on earth gravitate to the U.S.A.. Not because of our humanities depts to be very sure. Opportunity is what drives those people to our shores. Something not available to them in their home countries.
“In more recent times the evolution and ascendance of the term “mainstream media” represents the transformation of what was once a conspiracy theory to a broadly acceptable proposition.”
I have said before, we should start referring to the so-called MSM as the “Leni Riefenstahl Media Complex.”
I do not know (and do not particularly care) if what I say next might be a conspiracy, but here it is:
I see a similarity between the Obamacare and… sharia.
1. Both impose tax (penalty, fee, whatever) on a subgroup of people in order to compel them to behave a certain way. In one case it is to buy insurance, in another to nudge them to become muslims.
2. Both put society’s (perceived or real) needs ahead of individual.
So what is it? Greed combined with stupidity, or intentional creeping of sharia? Or both?
#57 Wretchard,
I hope there aren’t too many people dense enough to actually believe that Abraham Lincoln was a slayer of the undead.
But I suspect there will plenty of moviegoers who will assume Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address are completely fictional, and would be incredulous if told that there actually was a President Lincoln who delivered a real-life Gettysburg Address.
Yes, we’re doomed.
I suggest anyone who doubts that Oswald killed Kennedy read a book by Gerald Posner titled “Case Closed”. As someone who has read many JFK conspiracy books I believe Posner made a convincing case that the conspiracies are wrong, and Oswald was in fact the lone gunman.
So in my view the real Kennedy conspiracy isn’t actually who killed him. It’s the head-scratching mystery conjured up by the so-called “mainstream media” to keep the issue alive and uncertain so no one will have to talk about the doubleplusungood fact that Kennedy was a killed a murderous communist traitor.
Again, read the book.
Bftp@17:
That’s entirely wrong, that bit about Galileo vs the Church. Would that I had electricity but I have a smartphone with a fading cell, or else I could explain why. That time will come again I’m sure.
Been away at camp last week for the Roberts treason, couldn’t comment, now into urban camping in wake of a “land hurricane”. It is frustrating to say the least.
74 @ cowboy: +1 on the urban camping thing. We got our power back on at 1 this afternoon in the DC area after being dark for 38 hours and it was not fun. Besides not being able to do much of anything, the streets were clogged with yuppies driving around looking for coffee and gasoline. The local bakery was thronged because it has a generator. One more day and I would have had to toss the contents of my refrigerator and freezer. A small glimpse of what life might be like if this happened: (http://www.amazon.com/One-Second-After-William-Forstchen/dp/0765317583)
Got mixed responses on this idea on another blog: The Sovs, while they had Oswald, saw the value of having a potential lone wolf in the US to do something, anything, to throw grit in the US machinery. It cost them nothing to casually bring up ideas for sabotage, for causing law enforcement to spend a zillion bucks looking for somebody who did something awful. For assassinating somebody, anybody. Giving a mail delivery truck a flat tire isn’t going to ruin the US, but it doesn’t help. Try a bit higher.
Then they sent him back, a cheap way to put a crossthreaded washer into the US’ day to day operation. No biggy. But it didn’t cost them anything since their costs to keep him for whatever reason were already sunk.
And he exceeded their expectations.
Consider the coincidences involved in JFK’s riding open top and Oswald having access to the building and being in Dallas–he did not move their anticipating a presidential visit. He could only have started planning when the visit was announced. Now, he got lucky, really lucky. But what if he’d shot and missed?
JFK is still alive and we have an enormous public distraction which, while not an existential threat to the country, uses up even temporarily, some design margin, some attention to other business.
In sum, he was sent back to be a burr under our saddle, among a large number of others influenced one way or another. But he got lucky. Had he decided to move to Omaha–when was the last time a president had an open-top motorcade in Omaha?–he’d have ended up starting a brush fire some hot August night or trying to shoot the mayor.
And,since he was acting as a lone wolf, the Sovs have deniability and can pay for the thing out of the coffee fund.
Blast From The Past:
Got my electricty back (Yippee!). To quickly summarize my complaint with your analysis: it depends on the importance of a heliocentric view vs. a geocentric view. The reality is that these distinctions really meant nothing to _THEOLOGY_, but everything to _SCIENCE_. This should be readily observable by quick inspection of the nature of the dispute. Heliocentric? Geocentric? What do they mean? It’s a _SCIENTIFIC_ problem.
The charge is that the Church was all wrapped around a geocentric world view and going around suppressing all dissent against that proposition based on biblical grounds, and this is a very big deal. That whole proposition is entirely untrue at every level. In truth the Church was not theologically invested in a geocentric world view at all. Rather, the Church maintained the _SCIENTIFIC_ position of the day which was an astronomy informed by Aristotle. Aristotle held the earth in contempt and viewed the heavenly bodies as, well, heavenly. Galileo’s discovery of sunspots did the real violence. He found imperfections in the sun. The sun was supposed to be more perfect than the earth. The earth was supposed to be _LOWLY_. Theologically, the earth was a place of sin, astronomically, the heavens were the abode of the perfect. Astronomy _AND_ Theology looked to the skies for perfection in Galileo’s day. Geocentricism is defined as holding the earth in some special, honored place. That _NEVER_ was the case. The earth was _ALWAYS_ thought to be lowly and secondary to the perfection of the heavens.
There’s a lot more to be said about the Galileo trial. The more you dig into it, the more outraged you will become. Everything that’s you’ve been told is very likely wrong. If the topic is conspiracy theories, a good starting point is right here. The Galileo story is a foundational myth of modern thought in many ways, and the commonly understood story is exactly that: a myth. How did this myth, so contrary to what happened, and so easily verifiable, get such great legs?
…and you don’t read the press….
Naw, it’s way too depressing. So I just skim….
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/euro-compromises-likely-to-unravel-2012-07-02
File under: Do you believe in the power of prayer? Do you believe in Merkel’s? Because if not, you had better start…. (And that goes for all of us….)
“For European Jewry, it came at a gate lettered, arbeit mach frei.”
Well, for many it came later than that. Outside the doors to the gas chambers labeled delousing showers were pegs for the soon to be dead to hang up their clothes and after tying the laces together their shoes. Each peg had a number. As they were herded into the gas chamber, they were directed to remember the number of their peg so that they could retrieve their clothes after showering.
The people who designed the holocaust machinery were trying to allow the people they killed to avoid facing reality up to the last moment. It made them easier to control but it also helped the killers with their consciences. Animals are not made to suffer needlessly in slaughterhouses and Jews should not me made to suffer more than necessary while being exterminated was their thinking. It is interesting the mental gymnastics that participants in both sides of this process engaged in.
78. Barry Meislin
in the comments section:
“Fortunately he’s wrong 100% of the time. Perfect record so far”.
funnily, economy opinionists across the pond would like that the latin revolt would fail and that the Germans remain the gauleiters, I don’t see the same appreciation on Brit papers.
Merkel is only worried by her career and by the german elders’ pensions, she doesn’t care of the fate of 200 million southeners, that lose their jobs and home, of the entrepreneurs in the south that can’t have access to liquidities, and to credit for developping their business, unlike they are ready to pay loanshark (usurer) loans (of course none can sustain such a situation), while german entrepreneurs have the banks favor, hence can siphon the velleities of creating businesses in the south.
She doesn’t work for the future of Europe, but for the german hegemony on Europe, but it’s a short term vision, the Spanish aren’t people that you can smash and humiliate like children in a school playground would do, they will retaliate. Mario Monti, though put in charge by Merkel and the EU elite threatened to resign, hence to put Italy into a turmoil, with civil unrests, so the dear german euro would evidently go kaput.
The Germans, if they don’t want to play the european partnership, should leave the euro. They who don’t remember that we supported them when they were “the sick man of the EU”, we paid higher credits interests for being in the ERM/EMU, annd higher EU budget contribution, so that Eastern Germany got investment funds like Spain, and not like the eastern republics could dream of.
The Germans forget that the Allies were forgiving them after WW2, and cleared all their debts, when Germany could have been removed from a map.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2012/06/economic-history
Like a french paysan (in my region, Brittany) during a church office, responded to the priest that was preaching prayers during the war, “it’s not prayers that we need, it’s guns”, I wouldn’t advocate guns today, but new state men like Churchill, de Gaulle, Franco… (yes, he who refused Hitler to cross Spain), that would put the Germans back into their place, and would fight for our sovereignty.
Cowboy 77,
Surprised that someone as careful as you took issue with me on this. My argument is not that Heliocentrism was a heresy or a threat to any core Christian doctrine. The tragedy is that the Church allowed their authority to be compromised defending, or at least being seen as defending, a pagan position. Investing so much of the intellectual capital of Western Civilization in the uncritical acceptance of the conclusions of the Greeks, as opposed to giving proper respect to their methods tempered by new information and techniques as they became available, was a mistake.
Geocentric theory was “Settled Science” and when Galileo wrote another narrative he threatened to gore many an ox. The New Erbocian Times and Holy Office for Temporal Harmony were outraged. Later when more observations from Tycho Brahe and the work of Kepler became generally available opinion swung to his defense.
While the trial of Galileo was a public relations disaster for the Church in their defense they had not condemned Copernican theory. It was only declared it one possible theory and not settled science. In other words they attempted to create a more open field of intellectual exploration. Not unreasonably they considered that a big deal and hoped that Galileo, who was an important person with important supporters, would endorse the opportunity to explore Copernican theory without directly challenging other possible explanations. Galileo attacked the offered compromise, and was seen as attacking the person of the Pope and the mechanism of inquiry that had sustained civilization. His writings and arguments to create a support base for declaring his position the new settled science was what was seen as conspiratorial.
There are topics where I personally agree with the consensus opinion, such as with current Evolution Theory. There are other subjects where I am deeply skeptical of the official position, as with Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory and the proposed political consequences of that theory. In all cases I believe that we are best served by teaching a respect for accuracy of research and the tolerance for minority or unpopular opinions. Reliance on authority, whether that of Aristotle or Galileo or a Pope or Al Gore in scientific matters is usually a bad idea.
We do not have to go back to first principles and redefine the Universe every day but we do have to allow even the greatest authority to be tested. We need to teach how the Scientific Method is supposed to work.
About 20 years ago I was coordinating a product launch for one of our clients at a well-known Los Angeles hotel. Since this particular product required security I was introduced to the hotel’s Security Director to review the details and later to a security consultant who would be involved. At the cocktail party following the introduction, the consultant shared some of his background including the investigation of Marlyn Monroe’s death when he was a detective on the Los Angeles police force. He went on to say her demise was made to look like suicide but wasn’t. Apparently, she was getting too vocal about her relationship with JFK and mental about marrying him. Unfortunately, Jackie happened to be an inconvenient obstacle, not to forget public opinion. Particularily after the “Happy Birthday Mr. President” song and a few other incidents that were hushed up, the Camelot Group decided Marlyns’ going public was a real possibility, especially with reelection coming up. So, to prevent any unpleasantness, she was, according to this gentleman, taken care of for everybody’s peace-of-mind.
I asked why this story had never gotten any currency in the press and the consultant said, ” Look, they just took care of one of the most famous people on the planet with no fuss. Who would believe anything else?” I saw his point.