From: kilcup@pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu (Greg Kilcup)
Subject: Re: conspiracy
Organization: Ohio State University; Physics Department
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 05:11:57 GMT


I don't like to take up net bandwith to make points which have
surely be made many times in previous posts, but as one academic
to another, I felt I really had to counter some of the statements
that 6489mcadamsj@vms.csd.mu.edu (John McAdams) has made.

First to establish our points of reference ...
> Well the last book I've read is Jim Moore's CONSPIRACY OF ONE.  And I've read
> occasional articles by David Belin and I saw the Dan Rather special on CBS in
> the 70s and the Nova piece just a couple of years ago.
I read Moore and Belin, and though they sound reasonable if read
in isolation, I now consider them more slanted than most of the
conspiracy books.  The Rather special was of course a disgrace.
Nova was interesting, but I was disappointed in the way that
Walter Cronkite summed up the show by saying that no one has proven
that the lone gunman theory is impossible.  Just on the basis of
what what shown on Nova, I thought one could fairly conclude it
was next to impossible.

> How about Rober Sam Anson's claim that Zapruder heard a bullet "whiz by his
> head."  Turns out that Zapruder never said such a thing.
Fine.  I am willing to stipulate that many false statements have been
made concerning the events of the Nov. 22.

> How about the claim that the gun discovered on the sixth floor of the School
> Book Depository was "really a Mauser?"  Actually, the officers who discovered
> it said it was a Mauser because, they said, "it looked like a Mauser."  And
> indeed a MC does look like a Mauser.
Actually Officer Weitzman reported quite explicitly that he recovered
a "7.65 Mauser bolt action" (WC vol.24 p.228).  In addition to being
a police officer, Weitzman was a sporting goods store owner, and was
someone likely to be familiar with a variety of weapons. Deputy Roger Craig
also testified that he saw the word "Mauser" stamped on the rifle.

> How about the claim that Oswald is actually standing on the front steps of the
> School Book Depository, and is visible in a photo taken at the time of the
> assassination?
How about it?  I know the "orthodox" explanation is that that is Billy
Lovelady, but I also know that Lovelady claimed to be *sitting*
elsewhere when Kennedy drove by, and to be wearing a plaid shirt.


> How about Mark Lane, who interviewed a man in a railroad signal tower above
> Dealey Plaza, and he claimed to have seen a "puff of smoke" from the area of
> the grassy knoll at the moment of the assassination?  Apparently, Lane believes
> that modern assassins use muskets.
Or recently oiled guns.  In any event there is a film from an NBC
photographer which indeed shows a puff of smoke on the grassy knoll.


> How about Anson's claim that some mysterious figure was responsible for
> "fingering" Oswald in the theater?  How come he never mentions Johnny Calvin
> Brewer?
Sorry I don't know who Anson is, but he doesn't sound very reliable.

> How about the claim that Oswald's rifle wasn't capable of hitting the
> president? 
What about it?  That seems quite plausible to me, given the
misaligned sight and inability of *good* riflemen to pull of
the same stunt, even for CBS and Dan Rather.

> ... If it wasn't, why would a conspiracy plant such a weapon? 
> Presumably the conspiracy had the resources to plant any weapon they wanted?
It is not mine to speculate on the minds of those involved.
However, if you insist on a plausible scenario, how about this:
the conspirators wanted the gun to be traceable to Oswald, and
Oswald had already conveniently purchased a M-C rifle.
I must add that I am a but suspicious of your style of argument here.
It sounds as if you want to say that any conspiracy must have been
basically perfect.  I would say it was far from perfect, and the
business with the rifles was one small screwup.  Not that it mattered,
since even today many people seem to be willing to believe that the
M-C was the murder weapon.

> How about the claim that the head shot came from in front?  Not only does the
> Zapruder film show Kennedy being hit from behind, all the medical evidence is
> that he was.  I know people like you believe it was all faked, but I don't
> believe that.
??!?!  I thought one thing everyone agreed on was that the Zapruder
film sure *looks* like Kennedy was hit from the front.  Then you have
say things like "muscle spasm" if you believe that there were only
shots from behind.  Personally I find it most plausible that *two*
shots arrived at JFK's head almost simultaneously.  Many earwitnesses
report hear two reports right on top of each other at the end.

To cut to the chase, I used to believe the WC until I ran into
two irremovable obstacles:  (1) the testimony of policeman
Joe Smith that he encountered a man with Secret Service ID
on the grassy knoll, and (2) the *highly* improbably magic bullet.
(I mean improbably here in the same sense as in "It is improbable
that a meteor will stike the White House this century, but I
can't prove it is impossible.")

Concerning the coverup, I certainly would not expect the WC to be
knowing and willing partners in a grand conspiracy.  But it should
be recognized that committees and agencies have their own dynamics
which can cause them to deliberately look away from their supposed
object.  So I can believe that Earl Warren was an honorable man
who for his own misguided reasons did not want certain truths to
emerge.  Similarly, I do not believe that the LA police and DA
office were partners in a grand conspiracy in the assissination
of RFK, but I do believe that some people there (possibly including
a young Darryl Gates) knowingly and deliberately destroyed evidence
and blocked a real investigation.  Perhaps they did this to avoid
the institutional embarrassment of admitting they let the real
killer escape.  Or to take a more benign example from recent years,
you may recall the Rogers commission's investigation of the
Challenger explosion, during which Richard Feynman focused public
attention on the O-ring problem.  I hadn't realized until reading
James Gleick's *Genius: the Life and Science of Richard Feynman*
that Feynman had to struggle against Rogers to bring these facts
to light.  Again I assume that Rogers is a basically honest and
honorable man, but in this case he used his position as chairman
to steer the questioning away from direction which could embarass
NASA.  Feynman was a singular character, and insisted on attaching
his own scathing evaluation of NASA to the otherwise bland official
report.  It is unfortunate for us that there were no Feynmans on the
Warren Commission.

 --- Greg Kilcup

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