Best-selling author James Swanson tells OregonLive.com that he is impatient with the proliferation of JFK conspiracy theories — and who can blame him? Swanson is correct that none have been proven.
But his impatience leads the author of “End of Days” into a logical mistake common in the debate about JFK’s assassination:
Lack of proof that any group of individuals is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean there is no evidence of conspiracy.
The preponderance of evidence does not eliminate the possibility that JFK’s enemies caused his death. To the contrary, the evidence shows that the official theory of a lone gunman is as implausible as many conspiracy theories. The evidence confirms what all opinion polls on the subject show: that we do not have a widely credible explanation of November 22, 1963.
And the extraordinary media attention to the 50th anniversary of the JFK’s death belies his claim that we have lost the human truth of the event.
Here’s what Swanson told the Oregonian:
“We have lost the emotion connection to Nov. 22. We have strayed too far from the human truths of that day: a wife lost her husband, two little children lost their father, and a nation lost its president. Dozens and dozens of pieces of evidence prove that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy and then murdered a Dallas police officer. To this day, none of the conspiracy theories have been proven true with hard, concrete evidence.”
Oswald woke-up, grabbed a rifle and lunch, rode with his co-worker to his job. Shot the president, went to the break room, drank a soda, went home, departed and on his way to the movies shot a policeman. Several days later, a low level mafioso kills Oswald. Oswald, defected to the USSR during the height of the Cold War and just as casually returned to the USA. If you follow the scholarship, such as Peter Dale Scott, the entirety is revealing of a culture that doesn’t fit any civic lesson. No one ever proved Oswald killed JFK. There are no records of Oswald’s interrogation. He was not allowed an attorney. And claimed to have not killed anyone. Proof, none existent that Oswald killed JFK or Tippit, knaves like Mr. Swanson, fabricate postulates to fit a conclusion that is anything but valid. Who shot JFK? It wasn’t Oswald. To point, read Michael Walsh’s account, where as an exercise he maps out with his compatriot, the assassination of Jane Fonda: it’s a template, by a Navy Seal and fits the JFK killing. As a member of the JFK administration said, he lost all faith in government after the JFK assassination. That the government knowingly allowed Kennedy to be murdered. He was a friend of my Father, served in the diplomatic corps, with JFK and LBJ.
“none of the conspiracy theories have been proven true” – This brings up the larger point of “Who decides?” How do we, the American people, know that anything is true? When it has a stamp of approval by a court, the FBI or the media? We all know how often they’ve been wrong and even deceptive. After all the revelations about innocent people who were railroaded by J. Edgar Hoover and Henry Wade, can we rely on them – or people like them – to tell us the truth about anything?
No, we’re on our own folks. We just have to stop listening to authorities, rely on our common sense and figure things out for ourselves. If an official story smells phony, it probably is.
Didn’t the FBI and the Secret Service investigations conclude that JFK and Governor Connally were struck by separate bullets? Is there really any controversy here?
The modus operandi of the WC lawyers was to elicit opinions from experts, then through leading questions get them to admit the possibility of an improbability, then to state the possibility of that improbability as expert opinion in the WC Report. I think that’s called intellectual dishonesty.
The real deception is that WC defenders pretend that there was a single, coherent narrative that originated from the government, when the fact is that nothing could be further from the truth. The WC staffers realized that the “official” story of the assassination didn’t hold water and tried to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
That so many people are still clinging to that ragged, faux ear is truly disappointing.
The fact that WC defenders assume the moral high ground (the word smarmy comes to mind) is, well, a certain je ne sais quoi.
“We have lost the emotion connection to Nov. 22. We have strayed too far from the human truths of that day: a wife lost her husband, two little children lost their father, and a nation lost its president. Dozens and dozens of pieces of evidence prove that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy and then murdered a Dallas police officer. To this day, none of the conspiracy theories have been proven true with hard, concrete evidence.”
I hope Mr. Swanson reads my book. The Assassination affected many innocent people, including witnesses like my grandfather, Orville Nix. In regards to evidence, well it’s hard when so many pieces of hard evidence are missing or have been destroyed including the camera original Nix Film.
The original film that your grandfather shot that day was lost? I am guessing that he gave his one copy to the authorities, right? Today a multiple copy could be made so much quicker, and people would have so many devices to take film clips that it would be much harder to control all of the evidence like what happened fifty years ago. Sorry to hear that the original Nix film is gone. What a loss to history!
So many Researchers are unaware the original Orville Nix film, an incredibly important record, is missing. Thanks to the FBI.
Thanks, Gail, for your important comment.
I haven’t read this guys book, so don’t want to be critical of it without reading it, but want to talk about his last comments.
Using the angle of I don’t want to talk about conspiracy, let’s talk about the human interest angle and suffering and sadness – is the same angle that Parkland took and it just doesn’t work with this subject.
The problem is that it is a way to ignore the bigger picture reality by escaping into banality and superficiality.
The Parkland guy for example said as a journalist he covered wars – not by talking about what was going on in the war or any big meaning, but the emotional stuff of being brave and he wanted to apply that angle to the JFK assassination.
People like that sort of stuff in an action movie or to feel good about the soldiers, but with something like the JFK assassination it just doesn’t work well at all with audiences. So Parkland bombed. It’s also a total act of cowardice. – Let’s not talk about the meaning and just talk of “human interest” suffering. Pathetic.
Authors & news media that continue to serve up “Oswald did it’ scenarios without laying out on the same table the tremendous amount of independent investigation & analysis performed by a dedicated few since the release of millions of declassified records (thanks to Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ movie) are the real distraction. The informed public now recognizes the propaganda format & rejects it; driving them to alternative sources to get to the truth. Mr. Swanson & others who think like him should pay attention to Jeff Morley, Doug Horne, Jim DiEugenio, Joan Mellen and scores of other dedicated historians & ask them questions if he doesn’t understand the implications of their tireless, unselfish efforts. Each one of them adds multiple brush strokes to the unfinished picture whereas Mr. Swanson & those like him add absolutely nothing. As is usually the case in life, the burden to educate the young people not fully informed will fall to their elders who lived through this nightmare in real time.
After 50 years and dozens of books and virtually every possible conspiracy theory put forward including the S.S. shooting JFK the absence of evidence indeed is evidence of absence.
There was no conspiracy. Oswald bought a rifle using an alias that he used to forge an ID that was on his person when he was arrested. That rifle was found on the sixth floor of the TSBD. All shots that hit JFK have been proven to come from behind in the direction of the TSBD. After 50 years there is no evidence that Oswald had any relationship to the CIA. Oswald certainly was in the TSBD but nobody saw him during the assassination; the last place that he was seen was on the 6th floor. He took off immediately after the shooting,bought a bus ticket that when it brought him back to the Plaza got off, again spent more of his precious money to take a cab where? Right, his rooming house where he didn’t bring his curtain rods but did pick up a .38 cal. revolver with which he used to gun down Tippit in front of multiple eyewitnesses, including several who picked him out of a police lineup that day. He used the same gun to attempt to kill a second policeman.
After 50 years the only proven variation from the Warren Commision findings has been the recognition that Oswald’s first shot missed, while the Commision originally thought that the second shot missed.
That is it. You can believe the facts, or you can make up alternative facts that require suspension of common sense. Every conclusion of the Warren Commision has been replicated experimentally multiple times by multiple experts. No alternative theory has. Even if everything Jefferson Morley believes is in the desired CIA files is true it still cannot refute the physical evidence that Oswald attempted 3 murders on Nov. 22, 1963 and was successful in 2. The Tippit evidence was overwhelming and no serious researcher can ignore that evidence, which almost certainly would have brought Oswald to the executioner.
Have you read “Hear No Evil” yet? Please do. Then come back and tell me where this book gets the facts wrong, as you say. It’s a slog of a read, but surely you are open minded and will give this carefully written, carefully sourced book a chance, right?
Seriously: Read it. I want to hear from you where the author makes mistakes. Or hear that he explained something scientifically that you hadn’t thought of before. I challenge you to read this book and report on it. Are you up to the challenge, Photon?
There’s always one more conspiracy book to read. One more that supposedly cracks open the case and then fades from view when yet another is released. Few if any of them are ever examined in the microscopic level of detail that researchers demand from the official record.
I’ve bookmarked “Hear No Evil” for a rainy day, will have a look into that at a later date.
The best new work I’ve read on the assassination recently are Bill Simpich’s essays over at the Mary Ferrell site and Peter Savodnik’s “The Interloper”. Have you read either of these?
I plan to read the Simpich material when I get some spare time. I have not heard of “The Interloper” but will look for it. Thanks.
You have stated the official party line succinctly. But, among other things, the “Oswald bought a rifle” issue is fraught with difficulty. How the money order was purchased, how it was mailed and the fact this it did not have the usual notations on the reverse side (that would indicate it’s expected travel through the system) are just a few of the facts that invite reasonable people to ask reasonable questions. No one at the post office can attest to his receiving the rifle. Even the post office documents that list who was eligible to receive his mail (part three of the form) was not available for scrutiny and disappeared under unusual circumstances (it was suppose to kept on file for 2 years). As to how many shots, and which shot did what, some of the members of the commission doubted the official version. If a member of the commission might have doubts, who can blame the rest of us?
“it did not have the usual notations on the reverse side (that would indicate it’s expected travel through the system)”
Because the system is always perfect, everything is always, without fail, done in a systematic way, and there is no human error, nor anomalies. This is symptomatic of the way researchers seize upon the tiniest anomalies.
If you want me to believe there’s something to this story, here’s the proof I’d like to see:
1. A representative sample of rifle purchases from this period made in the same manner. Let’s say at a minimum several hundred purchases, preferably far more, to ensure a reasonable sample size and comprehensive dataset to work from.
2. Demonstrate clear patterns in the purchases for an absolute majority of cases. Otherwise, we have nothing to compare your claims against.
3. Demonstrate how Oswald’s purchase is obviously different from the patterns established above and any other edge cases that might arise in the sample data.
4. Prove there was something unusual about this purchase by providing alternative explanations for things such as missing notations and then conclusively show the alternative explanations do not apply and explain why your explanations are correct.
5. Assuming you have managed to demonstrate 1, 2, 3 and 4: offer some very clear, detailed and conclusive proof of how this fits into a larger conspiracy scenario. It’s no good saying “Oh, this is a discrepancy”, I want to know how it fits into the larger picture.
If you’re going to demand impossibly high burdens of proof from the official record, then your claims have to meet the same standards.
I want to acknowledge that your points are both clear and cogent. I appreciate the response.
My central point: if Oswald had lived and had gone to trial the allegations that: he bought a rifle, purchased it with a specific money order which found it’s was into the bank account of the seller, that it had a specific serial number to the exclusion of all other rifles from the manufacturer, etc, would have been offered as proof of his complicity. It is the prosecution who must assume the burden of proof. The discrepancies must be explained by those offering that proof. In the absence of an adversarial procedure the Warren Commission offered the information as fact with little to no comment or challenge to the irregularities. The presence or absence of conspiracy is not germane to the discussion of whether or not the evidence trail on Oswald is truly complete.
No problem, likewise I was interested to read your reply.
“The discrepancies must be explained by those offering that proof.”
In my view the same requirement applies to researchers and conspiracy theorists. If you’re going to argue for a conspiracy that implicates officials at the highest level of government (to use one example), I think you need some very solid evidence and explanation to make that case. Otherwise you’re applying one standard to the official records and a completely different one to conspiracy theories.
Researchers have been dissecting the official record in truly microscopic detail for 50 years. Few historical events, if any, are scrutinised in this way. I’d argue that if you took this approach to essentially any historical event anomalies or discrepancies will inevitably arise. Researchers often make the assumption that 50 years ago when the world worked quite a lot differently that all these discrepancies would have been blindingly obvious to investigators and the failure to explain them at the time is the result of incompetence or deliberate obfuscation. I’m not sure if that’s realistic or was always the case. When researchers come across something like the point you raised about the notations on the money order, there is an automatic assumption of conspiracy to the exclusion of all other explanations. What else might explain those discrepancies? In the case of the money order, this is a serious claim and I would argue that it requires serious proof and serious explanation.
Photon, every bit of that statement has been dismantled, discredited and debunked over the last 50 years by serious scholars.
Fortunately for your side, you have the power of the media and the government with you. Fortunately for our side, few Americans trust them anymore.
This is just a list of Lone Nut Buff talking points, probably copied from something John McAdams has posted at one time or another.
Ahh Photon… you do so enjoy your falsehoods. BTW, that type of misrepresented evidence did bring Oswald to the executioner, Jack Ruby.
Photon,
I note you are given to assertions. Fine. We all are.
Question: If you believe Oswald killed Kennedy, acting alone, how do you account for so many facts that undermine the notion Oswald did it?
For example, the alleged murder rifle cannot be tied to Oswald. You know that.
How can you possibly say it was not tied to Oswald when he bought it, he showed it to his wife, she took pictures of him holding it, he was arrested carrying the same pistol that he purchased at the same time, people witnessed him firing it, fibers from the blanket he wrapped it up in were found in association with it, his palm print was found on it, the same alias that he used to purchase it was found on a forged ID ion his person when he was arrested,etc.,etc.
Why make up falsehoods?
In Wade’s reign of terror, there was little that wouldn’t have brought a suspect to the executioner.
The assassination of Oswald in a basementful of Dallas police personnel stripped the Dallas police (at the time) of any credibility and is probably the main reason this discussion continues.
Even if Oswald had shot Tippit, or had shot at Walker, it is a spasm of illogic to conclude that he shot JFK. But that kind of homespun erudition was exactly what the WC was counting on.
To paraphrase Jesse Curry, no one can put Oswald in that window with that rifle.
Keep trying, though, by all means.
Even if you think Oswald carried out the shooting on his own, this does not automatically prove that there was no conspiracy. The probable key to the assassination is determining exactly who Oswald was. The official version (Warren Commission) is that Oswald was a violent, insignificant loner, who believed in using violence to bring about political change. There is clearly significant problems with this.
He was in the Marines, and worked as a radar operator in the CIA’s U2 base in Japan. Oswald later defects and appears to indicate that he will give the Soviet Union secrets about the American military. However, he remains an American citizen throughout his time in the Soviet Union. When Oswald returns to the USA, instead of being condemned as a traitor, he is given a loan by the State Department…
Moreover, if Oswald was this insignificant loner that the Warren Commission believed him to be, why would someone attempt to impersonate him at embassies in a place, such as Mexico City, at the height of the Cold War?
Excellent points and this distinction is lost on most people who equate Oswald’s involvement as meaning he acted alone. This may in fact be the brilliance of the conspiracy: to have gotten Oswald in position to act.
If there was a conspiracy, surely the brilliance lies in the fact that the plot, presumably one of daunting complexity, has survived five decades of scrutiny from government investigations and hundreds of researchers, yet it has never been proven to have happened or protagonists identified with any high degree of certainty? That alone elevates it to a level of genius seldom, if ever, seen in history. And conversely, also makes it extremely unplausible.
Apologies about the similar posts, computer was playing up yesterday.
I am not sure it would be impossible to cover up a conspiracy involving a number of powerful individuals. The American government decided very soon after the assassination that Oswald carried it out on his own. This was despite the fact that they knew Oswald had been impersonated in Mexico City. Were they afraid of what would be revealed if they dug to deeply into the most secretive and darkest areas of the American establishment?
Without question I agree that the intelligence services attempted to conceal things from the official investigations. The question though, is what and why? The CIA for example were up to all sorts of things during this period, why is it not plausible to suggest that they were extremely reluctant to reveal their full knowledge of Oswald because it might then lead to questions being asked about some of their other projects? Not to mention revealing further details about aspects of the case such as their involvement with the DRE? There’s a range of possibilities here.
On the question of coverups involving powerful individuals, could there be any conceivably larger coverup than killing the president? What are some other examples from history of coverups with a similar level of significance involving similar hypothetical players that have managed to last more than 50 years without being revealed?
“Tweet, tweet” goes the mockingbird. He writes, “To this day, none of the conspiracy theories have been proven true with hard, concrete evidence.” But if the murder was essentially a de facto act of state and the state controls the “hard, concrete evidence,” his statement is rendered meaningless.
Even if you think Oswald carried out the shooting on his own, this does not automatically prove that there was no conspiracy. The probable key to the assassination is determining exactly who Oswald was. The official version (Warren Commission etc) is that Oswald was a violent, insignificant loner, who believed in using violence to bring about political change. There is clearly significant problems with this.
He was in the Marines, and worked in the CIA’s U2 base in Japan. Oswald later defects and appears to indicate that he will give the Soviet Union secrets about the American military. However, he remains an American citizen throughout his time in the Soviet Union. When Oswald returns to the USA, instead of being condemned as a traitor, he is given a loan by the State Department…
In addition, it is known that Oswald handed out FPCC leaflets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. Why would a person, who apparently is a staunch advocate of using violence to affect political change and purports to be a Marxist, be handing out political leaflets? Surely a dedicated believer in political violence would look with disdain at using ordinary democratic methods?
Moreover, if Oswald was this insignificant loner that the Warren Commission believed him to be, why would someone attempt to impersonate him at embassies in a place, such as Mexico City, at the height of the Cold War?
I agree that the question of Oswald is central, however I don’t think the violence originated in his politics. A more credible, in my view, interpretation is that it comes from the personal side of his life. Oswald was not exactly a rocket scientist and I really question whether he understood concepts such as Marxism on anything much more than a flag-waving kind of level. Or, alternatively, whether it was something he gravitated towards as a young man to fill some kind of void in his life, to help define his identity.
When considering the short and very unhappy life of Oswald, it really doesn’t get off to a good start and continues downhill from there. No father, constantly uprooted childhood, complicated family life, somewhat unusual character for a mother. Joins the Marines, drops out. Tries to start a new life in Soviet Russia with this hopelessly idealized and unrealistic vision of the country. That doesn’t work either. Marriage falling apart prior to the assassination. If there was anger and frustration I’d suggest it’s far more likely to come from his personal life.
I think describing him as a dedicated believer in political violence is inaccurate. His letters home from the USSR for example don’t talk about violence, they’re full of waffle about the workers utopia.
There’s no evidence the Soviets had any interest whatsoever in Oswald’s “secrets”. In fact they tried to get him out of the country as soon as possible.
The Mexico City incident however is where things get complicated. If you haven’t already, you might want to have a read through Bill Simpich’s essays on the Mary Ferrell site in relation to this topic. There’s a case to be made that Oswald’s unusual history and defection/return made him a very curious and interesting figure to the intelligence services. What did they think he was? What was his story used for internally? Interesting stuff.
I think it’s fairly well established that the intelligence services deliberately withheld from the WC, and also the HSCA, the degree of knowledge they had about Oswald. Hence the WC contains the weird and nonsensical figure of a defector, and later returning defector, that no-one seemed interested in.
“… Oswald was not exactly a rocket scientist and I really question whether he understood concepts such as Marxism on anything much more than a flag-waving kind of level.”
When he was in youth detention in the Bronx as a teenager Oswald scored 118 on an IQ test. JFK’s IQ was effectively the same at 119. Of course JFK was no “rocket scientist” either. 🙂
And this IQ test proves what exactly? Have you ever seen Oswald’s handwriting and spelling? Both were atrocious. His school record was not impressive by any stretch. If books about Marxism were full of puzzles to match shapes together you might be onto something, but they’re not.
I’m not suggesting Oswald was a complete and utter moron, but I doubt whether he really had a deep understanding of Marxism on an intellectual level. The appeal seems likely to have been on a more visceral level, something to belong to, a way of differentiating himself and defining his identity. This is a guy who defected to the USSR and for whom it took a considerable amount of time to figure out that the worker’s utopia was a myth. I don’t think he was a complete fool, but I’m not sure he was the sharpest knife in the drawer either.
“…none of the conspiracy theories have been proven true with hard, concrete evidence.”
Correct. There has been no trial of any accused assassin. But Swanson like almost all, if not all, Believers (my term) misses the mark, as you point out, Jeff.
The issue is not whether some writer such as Waldron or Hartman or even Posner has some argument to flourish. This issue is whether the known facts lend credence to the proposition that Oswald, acting alone, fired three shots, two of which hit and one of which killed President Kennedy.
Although many facts are in dispute or apparently covered up, facts that are known about the alleged murder weapon, the killing of officer Tippit, the number and direction(s) of shots fired at JFK, etc., make it impossible for an informed, unbiased individual to reach any conclusion but that our government deliberately chose not to investigate this crime and reveal the results of its investigation honestly.
“…impossible for an informed, unbiased individual to reach any conclusion but that our government deliberately chose not to investigate this crime and reveal the results of its investigation honestly.”
It’s been investigated a number of times already. The question is not whether the assassination has been investigated, but to what degree the investigations that have taken place were hampered by the obstruction of the intelligence services and what their motives were for doing so. At this point in time and with our current knowledge the debate enters the realm of speculation. Unless of course you believe that those who were involved in the WC, HSCA, etc., people such as Earl Warren, deliberately set out deceive the country. A claim I find extremely difficult to believe.
As far as your larger point is concerned, I beg to differ.
Earl Warren didn’t deliberately set out to deceive the country. I think it would be more accurate to say that he was dragged into serving on a panel that he really didn’t want to serve on by Lyndon Johnson, who very, VERY badly wanted to be president, and did not want any controversy over how he got into office to muck up his 1964 campaign. The Warren Commission should have been called the Dulles Commission, because it was Allen Dulles who did most of the legwork, whereas Warren was more of a figurehead.
I do think that Allen Dulles acted to deliberately deceive the country. He was assisted by Arlen Specter, who deliberately twisted the facts around, forcing a square peg (single bullet theory) into a round hole.
I urge anybody who wants to debate the details of the assassination to read Donald Thomas’ excellent book, “Hear No Evil.” Come back to me with FACTS that contradict the laws of physics and other information carefully noted and sourced in his book. It’s available from http://www.maryferrell.org.
I do not recognize a butterfly scientist as an expert in acoustics or ballistics and neither should you.
He has no valid explanation for “hold everything secure”.
Oh, I see. Put faith before logic, right? Don’t read anything that might upset the government party line, comrade. You’d make a great Stalinist, Paul.
Hmm…I don’t know, Paul. Should I trust your judgement, as you do what??—you won’t tell us. Or the Philadelphia lawyer, Arlen Specter, who is suddenly a ballistics expert?
Oh–wait. Some other experts have weighed in, and said that “Hear No Evil” is a good read, after all.
Praise for HEAR NO EVIL (from maryferrell.org):
Hear No Evil is truly a monumental work. Don Thomas has made a huge contribution to the vast JFK Assassination literature. His objective, detailed analysis of every relevant forensic scientific aspect of this politically-motivated murder should convince any unbiased reader of the harsh fact that President Kennedy’s assassination was the result of a multi-faceted, well-orchestrated conspiracy.
– Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., past president of American Academy of Forensic Scientists, past president of American College of Legal Medicine.
In my opinion, Don Thomas has produced the best book on the Kennedy assassination published within the last thirty years. Unfailingly fair-minded, Thomas lays out with devastating clarity the way science has bent itself to support an unsupportable official truth. More than this, his discussion of the evidence is a model of sober clarity. In a field crowded with sensation mongers and conspiracy wackos, Thomas’ voice is that of the sober scholar-scientist. His book sets the table for all future discussions of what happened in Dealey Plaza.
– Josiah Thompson, author, Six Seconds in Dallas
I think I’ll follow their advice and not yours, okay?
Again,the whole premise falls apart with the phrase ” hold everything secure”
Photon, Are you asking me to believe the statement of a washed up rock drummer? Where’s did he study acoustics? In Cleveland, at the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame? This acoustics buff has spent too much time spinning Beatles records backwards to take seriously.
Except that after all of the “experts” who analyzed the tape came to conclusions, it became apparent that they had not even listened to the tape that even crudely copied for mass distribution still had the phrase audible.
And it was audible- go back to the NOVA special and listen for yourself.
And obviously the Ramsey group heard it and they WERE acoustic experts.
Per the traditional aphorism, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. If Swanson is impatient, he should join Jeff Morley and add his voice to urge or embarrass the government to release the balance of the CIA records related to JFK.