The Assassination of JFK

[Ben]

[Stavros]

Sorry Ben, the Milteer thesis, known of for more than 30 years has no foundation -Milteer was a known extremist who had 'predicted' the assassination of JFK -because he wanted JFK dead- before, in Miami. A notorious photo of him in Dallas on that fateful day is not only not him, the FBI confirmed he was in Quitman on the day of the shooting. Etc.

The full account is in the link --the conclusion reads:

Rather than having any "foreknowledge" of the assassination, Milteer gave a generic assassination scenario virtually identical to one that John Kennedy himself articulated. Mixed in were wacky elements that conspiracy books conceal from their readers. No Miami motorcade was cancelled because of his ranting, and he was not in Dallas on the day of the assassination. Given Milteer's extreme right-wing politics and his hobnobbing with potentially violent types, it's tempting to believe that he must have "gotten wind" of some real assassination plot. The problem is that there just isn't any evidence of it. The "Milteer story" has been known for over 30 years, and researchers have been unable to connect him or his associates to any of the "usual suspects" in the assassination — the CIA, anti-Castro Cubans, Texas millionaires, defense contractors. He was "connected" to the FBI alright. They were spying on him.
Although Milteer's rag-tag racist associates were capable of violence, they lacked the technical expertise to pull off an elaborate assassination plot. And they lacked the friends in high places that would have been necessary to pull off a "coverup" of a killing they did.
By 1967 the Secret Service decided that Milteer was not dangerous or a security risk. He was, quite simply, a crackpot who shot off his mouth and in doing so gained an entirely unmerited place in Kennedy assassination conspiracy books.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/milteer.htm

[Ben]

JFK Magic Bullet Theory Debunked:

[Ben]

[Ben]

Sorry Ben, the Milteer thesis, known of for more than 30 years has no foundation -Milteer was a known extremist who had 'predicted' the assassination of JFK -because he wanted JFK dead- before, in Miami. A notorious photo of him in Dallas on that fateful day is not only not him, the FBI confirmed he was in Quitman on the day of the shooting. Etc.

The full account is in the link --the conclusion reads:

Rather than having any "foreknowledge" of the assassination, Milteer gave a generic assassination scenario virtually identical to one that John Kennedy himself articulated. Mixed in were wacky elements that conspiracy books conceal from their readers. No Miami motorcade was cancelled because of his ranting, and he was not in Dallas on the day of the assassination. Given Milteer's extreme right-wing politics and his hobnobbing with potentially violent types, it's tempting to believe that he must have "gotten wind" of some real assassination plot. The problem is that there just isn't any evidence of it. The "Milteer story" has been known for over 30 years, and researchers have been unable to connect him or his associates to any of the "usual suspects" in the assassination — the CIA, anti-Castro Cubans, Texas millionaires, defense contractors. He was "connected" to the FBI alright. They were spying on him.
Although Milteer's rag-tag racist associates were capable of violence, they lacked the technical expertise to pull off an elaborate assassination plot. And they lacked the friends in high places that would have been necessary to pull off a "coverup" of a killing they did.
By 1967 the Secret Service decided that Milteer was not dangerous or a security risk. He was, quite simply, a crackpot who shot off his mouth and in doing so gained an entirely unmerited place in Kennedy assassination conspiracy books.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/milteer.htm

Oh, I haven't reached any conclusion.
Was it Oswald? Was it a vast conspiracy?
I mean, we still don't know conclusively. And this has been going on for 50 years.
Anyway, this will go on and on and on. Much like 9/11.
What about RFK? Conspiracy?
It seems conspiracy theories are, well, uniquely American. Much like celebrity culture.

[sukumvit boy]

The new PBS NOVA : "Cold Case JFK" is quite good.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365118537/
A fascinating review using modern ballistic and forensic techniques.

[danthepoetman]

I always had the greatest doubts concerning such conspiracies. But recently, came to my attention that a plot to kill JFK had been dismantled by the Secret Services in 1960. Of course, times were very different, and the security around political figures was far from what it became. Of course, this act was obviously seen as the action of a lone man, probably more or less senile, who was indeed confined to an asylum after being discovered. But I'm still a little bit surprised that after such a plot, no more measures were taken to protect the president's life. Why would you let the man you protect drive around in a convertible when you know some people hate him enough to attempt at his life? To me, this seems quite a bit suspicious.
Then again, when we look back to the era, people seem so ill equiped to face such a reality, they seem so incredibly unprepared and in fact, innocent in their very perspective, that it might just have happen the precise way history has it.
The fact is, JFK's assassination was probably the greatest injection of lucidity possible; innocence was lost at that precise moment for America.
Anyways, here is the story, for those interrested...


The man who did not kill JFK
By Bob Greene, CNN Contributor
October 24, 2010 9:32 a.m. EDT

Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose books include "Late Edition: A Love Story" and "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."
(CNN) -- In a few weeks a noteworthy anniversary will arrive: fifty years since the election of John F. Kennedy as president of the United States.
Much will be made of the fact that half a century has passed. Photographs of the young president and his family will be republished, retrospective essays will be written. Inevitably, as the Kennedy years are freshly examined, the name of the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald will be mentioned in the context of what might have been, if only Kennedy's path and Oswald's never had intersected.
But there is another name that you have likely never heard: a man who might have changed history as drastically and irrevocably as Oswald did. Kennedy was elected in November 1960; a month later, this man came very close to making sure that Kennedy never served a single day in office.
His name was Richard Pavlick.
From an Associated Press dispatch, December 16, 1960, dateline West Palm Beach, Florida:
"A craggy-faced retired postal clerk who said he didn't like the way John F. Kennedy won the election is in jail on charges he planned to kill the president-elect.
"Richard Pavlick, 73, was charged by the Secret Service with planning to make himself a human bomb and blow up Kennedy and himself."
Pavlick came much closer to killing Kennedy than most news reporters realized at the time. He was arrested in Palm Beach on December 15, 1960, in a car loaded with sticks of dynamite. Kennedy; his wife, Jacqueline; his daughter, Caroline; and his son, John Jr., were staying in the Kennedy family mansion in Palm Beach, preparing for the inauguration the next month.
Because Pavlick didn't get near Kennedy on the day he was arrested, the story was not huge national news. The announcement of his arrest coincided with a terrible airline disaster in which two commercial planes collided over New York City, killing 134 people, and that was the story that received the banner headlines and led the television and radio newscasts.
It wasn't until later that the complete story of a first Pavlick assassination attempt, a few days earlier, began to get out. It was that first one that might have changed American history.
Pavlick, who had lived in New Hampshire, spent much of his time writing enraged and belligerent letters to public figures and to newspapers. He resided in Belmont, New Hampshire; Belmont was at one time called Upper Gilmanton, and Gilmanton itself, four miles away, was reputed to be the model for the New England town in Grace Metalious' scandalous 1950s novel "Peyton Place." Thus, Time magazine, in its report of Pavlick's arrest in Florida, headlined the story: "The Man From Peyton Place."
It reported:
"One day last month Richard Pavlick decided to do something worthy of inclusion in 'Peyton Place': he made up his mind to kill a president-elect. He took ten sticks of dynamite, some blasting caps and wire, and began to shadow Jack Kennedy. He cased the cottage in Hyannisport, sized up the house in Georgetown, headed south for Palm Beach." The magazine quoted Pavlick: "The Kennedy money bought him the White House. I wanted to teach the United States the presidency is not for sale."
Here is what was not reported at the time, and was disclosed later by a top U.S. Secret Service official:
On December 11, 1960 -- four days before he was arrested -- Pavlick drove his car to the Kennedy home in Palm Beach. He held a switch wired to the dynamite, which, according to the Secret Service official, was "enough to blow up a small mountain." His plan was to wait for Kennedy's limousine to leave the house for Sunday Mass, then to ram it and blow up both the president and himself.
What stopped him?
Kennedy did not leave the house alone. Instead, he came out the door with Jacqueline, Caroline and John Jr.
Pavlick later told law enforcement officials that he did not want to hurt Mrs. Kennedy and the children. He only wanted to kill Kennedy himself.
So he waited a few days. A postmaster back in New Hampshire, troubled by some postcards that Pavlick had sent, alerted the Secret Service. That is how notification of the license plate of Pavlick's car made it down to Florida -- and that is why he was stopped and arrested on December 15. "I had the crazy idea I wanted to stop Kennedy from being president," he told reporters from his jail cell.
What if Pavlick had gone ahead with his plan on that first day -- what if the sight of Mrs. Kennedy and the two children had not dissuaded him?
As reporter Robin Erb, writing in The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade years later, put it:
"Had Pavlick been successful, [the assassination by Lee Harvey] Oswald and his murder by Jack Ruby would never have occurred. Had Mr. Kennedy been killed, Lyndon B. Johnson would have been sworn in as president in January, 1961. How would he have handled U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, or the civil-rights movement in the South?"
Next month a book about Kennedy's Secret Service detail in Dallas on November 22, 1963, co-written by a member of that detail, is scheduled to be published; advance publicity for the book has centered on the events surrounding that day in Dallas. It will be interesting to see if the Richard Pavlick story is mentioned, and, if so, if any new light is shed on the events in Florida in December of 1960.
As it was, Pavlick was ordered to be confined to a government mental-health facility. He would die in 1975.
And the Kennedy family remained in Florida during those final weeks of 1960. Allowed to live, they prepared for Christmas. United Press International reported that the tree in their home was donated by the West Palm Beach Optimist Club. The president-elect received, from his family, gifts of cigars and hand-knitted socks. All seemed safe and right in their world.

[Stavros]

Dan I think you will agree that at any one time someone in the USA is planning to assassinate the President, even if it doesn't get beyond the bedroom door or the garage. I don't understand the point about 'innocence', after all, other Presidents were also assassinated, no? The 1960s wasn't exactly a decade of 'innocence' either...!

[danthepoetman]

That's what we think TODAY! But were people thinking like that in 1960? I'm not so sure, Stavros. You're right: there were assassination acts and plots before, but in the end, not that many before Kennedy. Consult the Wiki list I leave at the end of bottom of the post and you might get surprised, Stavros. And all these attempts (before Kennedy) seem to have taken place for particular, circumstancial reasons - that's what it seems to me; you tell me if you disagree.
As to the "innocence" concept, I do find that the political perspective radically changed in America somewhere between JFK's assassination and the Watergate. How could it not? American to this day are probably the Nation who believe the most in its institutions.
But it's easy to see just how it has desintegrated since. Growing political movements on the left or right (Tea partyism, Occupyism, Libertarianism, "Militias" of all kind, etc.) are thriving. A multitude of catastrophic political scenarii are given credibility by unbelievable numbers of people, nowadays, something that would have been absurd and totally unthinkable in the 50's. Can you imagine the survivalist paranoia in the 50's, under Eisenhower?
I grew up during the Cold War, something young people today have no idea about; we were certain to be doomed, but never were we so cynical about the political institutions. How many people today believe in conspiracies of all kinds? It's up to the point where America is becoming ungovernable. Anything done politically today is suspected of being motivated by dark, secret, even evil intentions. It's reached ridiculous lenghts.
All of this in my opinion, largely originate from that relatively short, 10 years period, between the assassination of JFK in 63 and the Watergate in 72-74. In fact, I think the very origin of the conspiracy theory comes from the pure sentiment of shock caused by the assassination: "how could such a great president and a great human being be killed by a mediocre individual with a bad italian rifle?" "How would it be possible that such a little man put an end to such a great era in our history?" Nixon's team anctics (which by the way were regarded through out the world as something not that serious and rather common) was only, to use the image, the cherry on top of a sunday.

Anyways, here is that list, Stavros. I was surprised, I'm sure you will be as well if you don't already know all of this (which knowing you wouldn't surprise me):
List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=danthepoetman;1422450]
You're right: there were assassination acts and plots before, but in the end, not that many before Kennedy.
-Of the 20th century Presidents before Kennedy, the only ones who seem to have escaped assassination attempts were Taft, Wilson, Harding and Coolidge and they were mostly one-term Presidents. My remark wasn't a scientific one anyway.

As to the "innocence" concept, I do find that the political perspective radically changed in America somewhere between JFK's assassination and the Watergate. How could it not? American to this day are probably the Nation who believe the most in its institutions.
But it's easy to see just how it has desintegrated since. Growing political movements on the left or right (Tea partyism, Occupyism, Libertarianism, "Militias" of all kind, etc.) are thriving. A multitude of catastrophic political scenarii are given credibility by unbelievable numbers of people, nowadays, something that would have been absurd and totally unthinkable in the 50's. Can you imagine the survivalist paranoia in the 50's, under Eisenhower?

I grew up during the Cold War, something young people today have no idea about; we were certain to be doomed, but never were we so cynical about the political institutions. How many people today believe in conspiracies of all kinds? It's up to the point where America is becoming ungovernable. Anything done politically today is suspected of being motivated by dark, secret, even evil intentions. It's reached ridiculous lenghts.
All of this in my opinion, largely originate from that relatively short, 10 years period, between the assassination of JFK in 63 and the Watergate in 72-74. In fact, I think the very origin of the conspiracy theory comes from the pure sentiment of shock caused by the assassination: "how could such a great president and a great human being be killed by a mediocre individual with a bad italian rifle?" "How would it be possible that such a little man put an end to such a great era in our history?" Nixon's team anctics (which by the way were regarded through out the world as something not that serious and rather common) was only, to use the image, the cherry on top of a sunday.

-Richard Hofstadter wrote a famous article, and then a book which looked at paranoia in American politics, and it is far from new -
-from 1855:
. . . It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious venom of Catholicism.

-from 1895:
Every device of treachery, every resource of statecraft, and every artifice known to the secret cabals of the international gold ring are being used to deal a blow to the prosperity of the people and the financial and commercial independence of the country.

-the original paper is here:
http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/t...ican-politics/

Tony Tanner, in City of Words (1971) discusses paranoia and conspiracy in the context of post-war American literature but as part of a more general American view of politics. Outstanding book.

Nothing new under the Sun, or the Sundae for that matter...