The JFK Assassination: Four Unanswered Questions

The Creeping Fascism of American Politics

FOCUS: States Unite Against Citizens United

Dimon's Deja Vu Debacle

This Is What Tyranny Looks Like

Cut It Out: An Open Letter to Black Bloc Anarchists

The piece begins: "Forty-seven years ago today President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. It was an event of only a few seconds, but it was a hinge of history, something of such political and cultural importance that at dusk on November 22, 1963, America was a different country than it had been at sunrise."

President John F. Kennedy and his wife in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. (photo: World History Archive/Newscom)

Comments

We are concerned about a recent drift towards vitriol in the RSN Reader comments section. There is a fine line between moderation and censorship. No one likes a harsh or confrontational forum atmosphere. At the same time everyone wants to be able to express themselves freely. We'll start by encouraging good judgment. If that doesn't work we'll have to ramp up the moderation.

General guidelines: Avoid personal attacks on other forum members; Avoid remarks that are ethnically derogatory; Do not advocate violence, or any illegal activity.

Remember that making the world better begins with responsible action.

- The RSN Team

+9 # James H. Fetzer 2010-11-28 10:14

The answers to these four questions, two of which concern the "magic bullet", can be found in "Reasoning about Assassinations", for example, which I presented at Cambridge and published in an international peer-reviewed journal. The third about a second shooter on the grassy knoll is addressed in "Dealey Plaza Revisited: What Happened to JFK?" The fourth concerns the backyard photographs and is resolved in "The Dartmouth JFK-Photo Fiasco", which I co-authored with Jim Marrs. For a summary, see "JFK: What We Know Now". All of these studies are google accessible.

+11 # george beres 2010-11-28 12:59

Prof. Fetzer's research into the Wellstone assassination should fit in with the murders of the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. All were instigated by those who demand we remain on a war stance: corporate heads and the CIA. So much we do not know. Why does not someone request an interview with Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Bobby Kennedy? Deluded Americans are afraid to face up to reality. - George Beres

+4 # Russell Voice 2010-11-28 15:08

The Mythbusters "meat bullet" came as close to my idea that the magic bullet was made of BONE!!! Most likely not even Dr Michael Baden (HBO's Autopsy) today possesses the technology to reassemble every bone fragment & in forensics 50 years ago that would have quite easily been missed

+20 # A. T. Lang 2010-11-28 10:41

IF the government REALLY wants this "settled" once and for all, RELEASE ALL the "evidence" they have. My cousin was one of the finest balistic expeerts in the country at that time. He was called in to work with the investigation. All I know is he came home and would not talk about it and told me never to ask him about it again. The only thing he would tell me is to never believe anything that came out of the Warren Commission. He never said another word about it after that. You can find references to my cousin, Jack Huber, in some of the books written about the Kennedy assination.

+6 # exomike 2010-11-28 12:23

This is a fluff article not worth publishing. Its mostly pronouncements and "he said she said." balance to the point of disinformation.

+10 # Peter Edler 2010-11-28 12:31

Let JFK rest in peace! To assume that a confused drifter like Oswald might have shot the President with a Mannlicher-Carcano borders on the ridiculous. Oswald was the typical patsy - he didn't even know why he'd been told to go up there, until he saw that rifle, and then it hit him, 'I'm being set up', and he bolted. The rest is history. NO SHOTS AT ALL WERE FIRED FROM THE BOOK DEPOSITORY. Oswald vowed to tell his story and Ruby silenced him. Could anything be clearer? Who masterminded this? I'd say J. Edgar Hoover would be a good guess.

+1 # Cole Banks 2010-11-30 15:28

Interesting that three people who J Edgar Hoover detested - JFK, his brother RFK and Martin Luther King/MLK - all died while the S.S. and the FBI were watching them. Repeatedly incompetant? Conspirators? Motivated by an anti-liberal, anti-black bias that saw the Kennedy brothers and MLK as a threat to the established white coservative Republican way of life?

+1 # John Corbett 2010-12-02 03:33

Neither the SS nor the FBI was protecting RFK and MLK when they were assassinated. SS protection for Presidential candidates was not done until after the RFK assassination. Non-candidates such as MLK have never been afforded such protection.

+10 # MARY SANDERSON 2010-11-28 14:08

Trivia, it is not. You correctly stated that our world was changed. Many Americans are healthy and brave enough to want to understand the dark side of our story.

Besides Fetzer's there are other worthy books based on information released in recent years. "JFK, Why He Died and Why It Matters" comes to mind.

+1 # michael lawlor 2010-11-28 14:20

Weak "story". Check the education forum site if you really want to learn something.

+2 # r-man 2010-11-28 17:33

Grier didn't ask the questions most important to me. Off the top of my head I'd ask: 1, Why did Ruby have access? 2, Why was Oswald able to go unwatched, or even get a job in Texas after defecting to become a communist? 3, Is it realistic to believe that the Carcano could make the shots - how faulty was the scope? Why was the magic bullet found at the hospital relatively undamaged.

+1 # John Corbett 2010-12-02 03:30

The ballistics evidence proves the Carcano did make the shots. It is the only rifle in the world that could have fired the only two recovered bullets from the shooting. There was nothing "magic" about the bullet found and the hospital and it was not undamaged. It was flattened on one side and had been bent. It had been slowed considerable before it hit bone and had begun to tumble as evidenced by the fact the damage was at the base of the bullet rather than the nose. Experiments have been made shooting animal carcasses which have produced bullets with very similar damage.

+3 # Patricia Robinett 2010-11-28 17:39

I was quite captured by the James Files video on YouTube... perhaps others might be too. Fascinating.

+4 # Dion Giles 2010-11-28 18:14

Whenever there is a conspiracy to bring about an incident with dire consequences there will be a coverup, there will be a cover story, there will be benefactors, there will be evidence (including evidence that facts are being deliberately concealed), there will be those who reject the cover story and there will be those (including the conspirators) who recoil in horror at the cover story being rejected and turn against those who dare to reject the cover story and demand answers. This is the case from the JFK murder to the "Tonkin Gulf Incident" to the WTC Twin Towers murders to the WMD lie campaign to the very contrived "terrorist attempts" of recent days. Peter Grier's article is just another standard call to accept the cover story and not worth amplifying on RSN.

Always ask ***who benefits*** from the dire consequences?

+4 # Demorinschield 2010-11-28 18:29

The definitive book now is JFK and the Unspeakable by Douglass, from Orbis books. It confirms the conspiracy theory with all the latest findings.

0 # John Corbett 2010-12-02 11:32

Yes, when it comes to conspiracy books, we seem to have a flavor of the month. Meanwhile the Warren Commision Report has stood the test of time with no revisions necessary. If anyone ever came up with a conspiracy theory as logical and compelling as the WCR, the conspiracy theorists would have something to rally around. As it is, they must constantly come up with new angles as the old ones bite the dust.

+3 # Foxtrottango 2010-11-28 18:35

Let's see now. Aren't we forgetting something? Kennedy was involve in the assassination of the South Vietnam President and in the bay of pigs invasion to try to assassinate Fidel Castro. In the end he was assassinated himself.

He shouldn't have fired that Admiral or lashed out at the CIA right after the bay of pigs fiasco. The truth, we will never know exactly what happened except that a poor border-on-the-insane young fool was set up by whom? No ones knows and the one that most likely did (Ruby) died shortly thereafter.

The FBI and CIA aren't saying anything.

+1 # JFK 2010-11-28 21:01

Maybe someone should show this shill of a writer who says nothing but believe the limo with six bullet holes...and while we are at it let's ask who paid off this stupid writer with an agenda.

0 # RealM5 2010-11-29 08:11

The most important question that comes to me at this point is, "Why was this inaccurate, misleading article publishe?"

+3 # Cliff 2010-11-29 08:14

A complete confession from one of the assassins was obtained by an ex-FBI agent, recorded and included in a very compelling documentary released in 2006.... "I Shot JFK" http://www.archive.org/details/secret_society

Of course... it never saw any press....

-1 # RealM5 2010-11-29 09:35

Of course it was ignored. He is just a "lone nut."

+2 # Dickinseattle 2010-11-29 18:49

Be sure and review "Bloody Treason" for a good overview and note the CIA section, particularly Project Mongoose under W. Harvey, a Kennedy enemy, overseen by CIA General Ed Lansdale, who was photoed walking past the 3 "tramps" in Dealey Plaza. Review also the chapter on the S.S. involvement in Fetzer's "Murder in Dealey Plaza".

0 # John Corbett 2010-12-02 03:20

These are not unanwered questions. They have been asked and answered numerous times. The assassination of JFK hasn't been a mystery since day one. A little loser by the name of Lee Harvery Oswald read that JFK would be riding past his workplace. On the night before the assassination he made an unscheduled visit to the house his estranged wife was living in and retrieved his cheap imported war surplus rifle. He smuggled it into work the next day and when JFK rode by in an open topped car, he stuck the rifle out the window and shot him dead. Not really complicated. Oswald was a little nobody who wanted to become a somebody and fate dealt him a once in a lifetime opportunity to do just that. He succeeded but in the ultimate irony, didn't live long enough to relish in his infamy.

+2 # Mark Pommier 2010-12-02 14:06

The author states, "If the single “magic” bullet did not do the damage, a second shooter must have done it, some experts on the assassination say."

To qualify, the Single Bullet Theory is the ONLY solution that allows for one shooter. If the SBT is disproven, especially through known woundings, then MULTIPLE shooters were present, and a conspiracy indeed existed.

The 1st question the author poses is if JFK & Connally were hit by the same bullet --- they were not, by virtue of Connally's unerring insistence that the shot that hit the president (in the back) did not hit him (Connally).

+2 # Jacqueline Johnson 2010-12-03 18:30

I would refer you all to David Talbot's book BROTHERS.
It is by far the most interesting, well-researched book on
the assassination and RFK's quest to find the answer.
Talbot is a respected journalist--also founder (?) of
Salon.com

Refresh comments list
RSS feed for comments to this post.

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

rsn

Name:	*
Username:	*
E-mail:	*
Password:	*
Confirm password:	*
Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required.