aTmAg said:
Agristotle said:
Fascinating thread, thanks to all. Soup, your command of this subject is amazing.
My lone contribution, many years ago I had a buddy in the intelligence community (interesting bona fides) say that so many people wanted JFK dead that some THINK they did, but didn't. PERSONALLY, he thought LBJ was in it up to his eyeballs.
After reading "The Devil's Chessboard" it's entirely conceivable to me that Dulles and his ilk could and would do it.
There is no way they could have kept it secret so long.
This is where I am as well.
Conspiracies exist. The CIA had a conspiracy to kill Castro. Well, conspiracies to kill several foreign leaders that went as well as the one to kill Castro. Conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln. The Mafia is basically one big organized conspiracy.
The deeper and more intricate the conspiracy, the more likely for it to be exposed. More people know, more moving parts and more chances for it to fail.
Let's think of a great criminal conspiracy - The Luftansas Heist. We all on here probably know it well from Goodfellas. They stole today's equivalent of about $25mm. They needed guys on the inside that were vulnerable, they needed guys to participate in the action, they needed people on the back end. Within six months, a dozen people involved were dead. At least five people involved ratted it out. Others like Henry Hill got busted doing other stuff and talked about it. But the wives and girlfriends of the dead guys knew and others knew that weren't involved (like Henry Hill.)
And that's the thing. Think how many people would need to be involved for an organization like the CIA or Mafia to pull off a hit. Maybe a dozen on the low end. And for it to be a CIA operation, wouldn't McCone need to have been involved or give the OK? Dulles was fired by Kennedy two years before the assassination. There would need to be a ton of people involved to work everything out and cover it up afterwards.
We're going to assume none of them ever made a deathbed confession like Mark Felt did, so he could cash in on being Deepthroat for his family? Everyone is going to take it to the grave? It's not like these guys are carrying FBI/CIA misdeeds to the grave. We find out all kinds of stuff.
I think an official CIA or Mafia operation like that would have eventually leaked. We would have some solid record of it. But we have thousands of mafia guys that have gone to jail and tons that have talked, plus lots of unwitting wiretaps and there is no talk about it. Death bed confessions? Books to cash in on it? Lots of guys have written books post-retirement. Not even a wiff of any conspiracy.
You just ultimately need more for a conspiracy than "Something looks off here." Cause yeah, something does look off. But there is no evidence that there is something off.