13-02-2014, 04:43 AM
(This post was last modified: 13-02-2014, 09:14 AM by Marc Ellis.)
Vasilios Vazakas Wrote:Seamus i agree with what you are saying, but we'll never find concrete evidence beyond reasonable doubt to prove who the true sponsors were. They are clever enough not to leave any traces. We have only indications not direct proofs so we have to think who benefited the most and why. Cui Bono?
Beyond a reasonable doubt? No.
More likely than not? Yes.
I'm a beginner in the JFK assassination research field. And I'll be a reader - not an author.
But FWIW, after reading "Destiny Betrayed", "Not In Your Lifetime" and "Reclaiming Parkland"*
this amateur's tentative conclusions are:
A. IMO, "Reclaiming Parkland" is by far the most important and best book of the three. I'll start
reviewing it and giving it 4.5 to 5.0 on a score of 5 at some sites like goodreads.com . I think history
will find it definitive and one of the most important books on the subject ever written. I look forward
to reading a rebuttal by Bugs, McCadams, et al. I doubt we'll be seeing one though.
----
Other tentative conclusions:
1. Anti-Castro Cubans trained by DOD & CIA - did the shooting & much of the organizing. The US trained some of them to be snipers. This was a classic small-team sniper operation. I don't think the training was intended to kill JFK though. It was for waging war on Cuban soil. I know there are some problems here though. And that's what I intend to read next, books that explore the months before Dealey Plaza.
2. A lot of anti-Castro Cubans lost brothers, fathers, sons, uncles, grandfathers, at the Bay of Pigs.
Imagine the rage they felt. They blamed JFK for their lost family members. They wanted blood revenge.
They got it.
3. The mob financed much of the plan. Marcello, Giancana, Jimmy Hoffa. Marcello said he would find
a lunatic. One day that lunatic showed up at 544 Camp Street/531 Lafayette.
A small group of anti-Castro Cubans - maybe with a small number rogue elements of the CIA organized it. Those two groups - the Mob & the Anti-Castro Cubans enraged about the Bay of Pigs had more motive than anyone else IMO. I do concede some disaffected CIA bosses had motive too.
4. Guy Bannister & David Ferrie delivered the lunatic to Carlos Marcello.
5. The FBI & CIA knew a lot about Oswald and might have even used him. After all, Banister
was a loyal J. Edna Hoover acolyte and it would be grossly negligent of the CIA not to have a thick
file on the defector who was given a US State Department loan to return to the US. Wasn't the CIA nominally
a part of the State Department back in those days?
6. Oswald was not a shooter.
7. The cover up engineered by the CIA was to hide how familiar they were with Oswald and with the actual shooters they trained. I don't think DOD/CIA/FBI planned to assassinate JFK. I'm not yet persuaded on that. Call me a Pollyanna. I could be wrong.
8. I don't know if Oswald shot Tippit or not. I'm not convinced either way. But even if he did - it doesn't prove he killed JFK or even make the the LN theory more probable. (I thought Summers' book was pretty good on that point. Summers did NOT persuade me Oswald shot Tippit. He did persuade me that even if he did shoot him - that does not tend to prove he shot JFK. In fact, it might make the idea of a conspiracy more plausible.)
9. "Destiny Betrayed" led me to a different conclusion about RFK than the author. IMO, Sheridan was RFK's man. He would not have tried to destroy Jim Garrison's investigation if he thought it was against RFK's interests. I recommend "Destiny Betrayed" for the detail Jim DiEugenio provides on the sabotage of Jim Garrison's investigation.
10. Why#9? I think RFK felt partly responsible for his brother's death. Specifically, I'm referring to his persecution of Mob leaders. That makes sense to me. Sheridan free-lancing on his own in complete disregard of RFK's wishes makes no sense to me.
11. Ruby was a Mob guy. He did the Mob's work. Oswald wasn't supposed to make it to jail - let alone trial.
12. I think Clinton, Louisiana probably happened. But it was unrelated to Dallas. It's the sort of thing Guy Banister enjoyed doing - infiltrating Civil Rights organizations in his home state. It would have served his interest to have a Marxist Leninist discovered in CORE. Planning presidential assassinations in another state was not the sort of thing Banister did.
13. Of the weakness in the Coincidence Theory adherents (LN's) arguments, the most glaring to me involves 544 Camp Street. No LN'er has come up with even a serious theory as to why Oswald would stamp that address on his FPFC leaflets. And everybody, the WC, HSCA, research community agrees that Oswald did in fact stamp that address on at least 10 or 11 leaflets.
14. I'm not as interested in the autopsy controversies. But David Thorne's section on 50 Reasons for 50 Years really shook me up. But I'm still more interested in the pre-Dealey Plaza events.
---
Those are the conclusions I formed in 2013 after reading those three books. As I read more, a few may change.
But I've already read enough to know #6 won't change. Not sure what to read next - maybe Fletcher Prouty can
change my mind about DOD/CIA/FBI culpability. Or maybe I'll pick up "Into the Nightmare". Reading McBride's Q&A
on another forum piqued my interest. And it's not unrelated to the level of Federal involvement.