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Alternative Hypothesis AKA Conspiracy Theories

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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23,356

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Seriously though, the Russian theory makes logical sense.  Oswald acted alone but he was radicalized enough by Kremlin influencers to pull the trigger.  All you have to do is take a close examination of Oswald’s personal history to conclude he was under heavy Russian influence.

J Edgar Hoover said the American people needed to believe Oswald acted alone, which is true.  If the American public believed the Kremlin was behind the assassination it could have pushed us into a Nuclear War because the American people would have demanded Russian blood or retaliation.  The cover up and conspiracy theories were all misdirection to avoid a global catastrophe.

Oswald was chosen and assassinated afterwards to give the Kremlin their typical plausible deniability.

Of course the government will never go on the record or acknowledge any of this but they will release enough documents for people to draw their own conclusions.

JMO

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Tuco

Tuco 5,076

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2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Seriously though, the Russian theory makes logical sense.  Oswald acted alone but he was radicalized enough by Kremlin influencers to pull the trigger.  All you have to do is take a close examination of Oswald’s personal history to conclude he was under heavy Russian influence.

 

It seems like a risky and pointless plan. It's not like a procommunist stooge was waiting in the wings.  I don't see where the Russians would believe that removing Kennedy would improve their hand at all. 

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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23,356

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15 minutes ago, Tuco said:

It seems like a risky and pointless plan. It's not like a procommunist stooge was waiting in the wings.  I don't see where the Russians would believe that removing Kennedy would improve their hand at all. 

Seems like entangling the U.S. in the Vietnam War was a decent consolation prize for the Russians.

It’s hard to contemplate the state of the world at the time but Kennedy was a significant threat to Soviet expansion because he was so influential with his idealistic rhetoric. This was a war of ideas.

Also, I have no idea if Oswald was authorized from the Kremlin.  KGB agents often work autonomously against American interest without much oversight.  I’m not saying Oswald was KGB but he was almost certainly radicalized by them.  I’m not even sure the Russians expected Oswald to be successful.  It’s usually more about the message than the kill in assassination attempts. 

The conclusion I’ve made is the Russians had a significant hand in it and that’s what needed a coverup.

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F250

F250 28,680

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35 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Seems like entangling the U.S. in the Vietnam War was a decent consolation prize for the Russians.

It’s hard to contemplate the state of the world at the time but Kennedy was a significant threat to Soviet expansion because he was so influential with his idealistic rhetoric. This was a war of ideas.

 

Yes, Kennedy was opposed to Soviet and Communist expansion because he was a cold war warrior which was why he got us entangled in Vietnam.

 

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8,349

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I knew a crazy old outlaw biker / luthier in Nashville back in the early '90s and we were sipping cheap whiskey in his shop one afternoon...I asked him what he thought really happened to Kennedy. "Moses," as he was known, had grown up in Tampa in the early '60s, and he just kinda shrugged the whole thing off. "He needed killin'," he told me, reminding me about his, Moses's, dad had been some kind of labor boss in Tampa in 1963. He added that his whole school knew it was coming, because they all knew Tampa mob boss Santo Trafficante and how much Trafficante hated Kennedy. And dudes like Moses and his dad sided with Trafficante, who the Kennedys fucked over and betrayed during and after the fall of Cuba.

 

Moses died not long after our conversation, and then within weeks, Florida mob lawyer Frank Ragano started making the rounds with his story, which essentially agreed with Moses's matter of fact recalling and boils down to this: Trafficante and Carlos Marcello (New Orleans mob boss) killed Kennedy for many reasons, ranging from the Cuba snafu to them wanting to make Jimmy Hoffa feel beholden to them so they could ransack the Teamsters' pension fund.

 

Full story here:  

Spoiler

THE SINS OF THE GODFATHER? MOB LAWYER FRANK RAGANO SAYS HE KNOWS WHO KILLED JFK

 
 
 
 
By Jeffrey A. Frank June 21, 1994

This is the age of confession, an era of dragging oneself through the mud; abusers and abusees compete in the marketplace of self-abnegation. Which is why it seems inevitable that a place be set for Frank Ragano, a man whose chief claim to fame is a long career as "house counsel" to the mob.

But in this time of revealed secrets, Frank Ragano claims to possess one of the best. He says he knows who killed President Kennedy. He says he knows why. And he says he knows all this because one of the plotters told him.

Sure, sure, you've heard this one before. And Ragano's alleged source doesn't make his claim easier to believe. It is, after all, Santo Trafficante Jr., the powerful Florida Mafia boss, whose death seven years ago prevents him from denying his role.

Ragano is a short 71-year-old with wispy, reddish hair, and he is talking in a restaurant at the Mayflower because he has written a sort of Godfather Dearest, "Mob Lawyer," in which he recounts years of serving organized crime. His clientele included the very vanished Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa (killed by the mob in 1975), but numero uno was Trafficante, whose line of work included bolita, a numbers game, drug trafficking and a big interest in Havana's pre-Castro gambling casinos. The mob made Ragano very rich -- and very circumspect. Of Trafficante, he says, "I think if I'd been inquisitive, curious -- I think as soon as I was no longer any use to him -- he'd have me killed."

But that was then. Ragano says that when Trafficante vouchsafed the historic news about JFK's murder seven years ago, it came as a sort of deathbed admission. The mobster confessed, Ragano says, as they drove through the streets of Tampa on March 13, 1987 -- four days before Trafficante died. The exact date is important because there is an argument as to whether Trafficante actually made the trip from Miami.

If Trafficante did not, Ragano's story falls apart, which is why his every word is being challenged by the dead mobster's family, who insist that Trafficante was too ill to travel. To which Ragano says, "If they are sincere in their contentions that he was not here in Tampa on that Friday the 13th, I would suggest that they file a lawsuit so this issue can be settled by a court of law."

Not bloody likely.

'Carlos Messed Up'

The theory that the mob killed JFK has had many devotees. The House Assassination Committee came to that tentative conclusion in 1979, 15 years after the Warren Commission said that one lone nut killed the president. The House committee singled out Trafficante and New Orleans Mafia chieftain Carlos Marcello, who died in 1992.

Ragano, to be sure, has no proof. But his testimony is rich in detail, right down to the words allegedly spoken, in Sicilian, by the dying Trafficante as they drove around Tampa: "Carlos e futtutu. Non duvevamu ammazzar a Giovanni. Duvevamu ammazzari a Bobby." ("Carlos {Marcello} messed up. We shouldn't have killed Giovanni {John}. We should have killed Bobby.")

How does a person react to discovering who was behind the crime of the century?

"I didn't know how to deal with it," Ragano says earnestly; his Florida drawl sounds incongruous in a world of Sicilian confidences. "As a lawyer. As a human being. As an old friend. I just didn't know how to deal with it." He turns to Nancy Ragano, who has been girlfriend and wife for 30 years. "I didn't tell her for a while," he says, "and she kept asking me, 'What's wrong, what's bothering you?' "

"Frank was very disturbed for about two weeks there," says Nancy Ragano, who sounds like the Florida coed she was when she met the mob lawyer. "I thought maybe it was Santo's death."

"When you find that a man you know is responsible for the president's death, my God ... ." says Frank Ragano.

"... -- the godfather to my son," says Nancy Ragano, "and those are not nice things to hear."

As the Raganos talk on, it is suddenly a most peculiar Washington moment. This conversation has been taking place in a quiet corner of a restaurant in the hotel where, years before, Ragano had lunch with Hoffa -- and where J. Edgar Hoover regularly lunched with his deputy, Clyde Tolson, and where, Ragano says, he once saw Hoffa and Hoover greet each other. On this bright spring day, two tables away, sits former CIA chief Richard Helms, who served as deputy director of plans after the Bay of Pigs fiasco -- a time when the CIA tried to hire Trafficante and the mob to kill Fidel Castro. Ragano does not recognize Helms, who occasionally looks his way.

Ragano is trying to figure out why Trafficante told him:

"If somebody was to tell me why did Santo tell you about it, I don't know anybody else he could have told. I was close to him for 27 years. He was a sick man. And I think maybe he owed me something." Ragano pauses. "It could very well be that he didn't think I'd say anything about it."

A Meeting in Tampa?

Then there is the view that Ragano is making all this up, which is what Trafficante's widow and daughters say, while lamenting that their children and grandchildren must bear the stigma.

Mary Jo Trafficante Paniella says by telephone that her father was at Miami's Mercy Hospital on March 12 and March 14, and family lawyer Henry Gonzalez, by fax, produces hospital records to show that Trafficante received dialysis treatments on those days. "One thing we do remember is the week my father died," says the 54-year-old Paniella, who teaches elementary school. "When {Ragano} named a date and said he was with my father, we said, 'How can he say this?' "

It's easy, Ragano says, because Santo Trafficante was not in the hospital on March 13, 1987. Ragano carries with him a March 19, 1987, Tampa Tribune story in which Ragano says he talked with Trafficante on March 13 about his medical options.

At the suggestion that Ragano might have made his historic confession by phone, Ragano says Trafficante was so fearful of being bugged that he'd carry a pocketful of quarters for pay phones. "To suggest for a moment he would be talking to me about the murder of a president over a telephone, that's beyond comprehension."

If he has witnesses that the two met in Tampa, who are they? asks Paniella.

Ragano says he has three -- but won't produce them. "One guy is afraid of retaliation. The other guys are two doctors, who say they'll testify if they're summoned to court."

Then Ragano says, "I did not see the two daughters in {Trafficante's Tampa} house that Friday. The one person I saw was his widow, and she's not making any claims or denials at all."

Ragano is wrong about that. "That's a big, big lie," says the 74-year-old Josie Trafficante by telephone. "My husband was too sick to fly anywhere. If he had to travel, I had to take him in a car, because he had that colostomy bag."

"In view of the terrible things that I've said about her late husband in our book, and knowing her as I do," Ragano responds later, "I'm not at all surprised that she would parrot the claims of her two daughters."

Of herself and her 50-year-old sister, Sarah Ann Trafficante Valdez, Mary Jo Paniella says, "Our children have this burden to bear. They'll have this all their lives because he decided to write a novel."

"This book was not written to make me look good," says Ragano. "It makes me look terrible."

That is one Ragano statement that no one will dispute.

'Rank Self-Deception'

Ragano's coauthor is Selwyn Raab, a New York Times reporter who has covered the Mafia for two decades. Raab's brief narrative is set apart from Ragano's, and occasionally he takes his writing partner to task. "Frank's refusal to consider the evidence of Trafficante's ties to the Mafia was rank self-deception for a lawyer trained to be logical," he writes at one point.

Not only does Raab scold Ragano, but Ragano scolds himself. His memoir is filled with quotidian humiliation, such as the night that Trafficante ordered Ragano to solicit the favors of a cigarette girl at a Miami bar.

The worst happened on the night of Nov. 22, 1963, when the future Nancy Ragano, then 19, walked into a Tampa hotel bar to find Trafficante exulting, "The son of a bitch is dead." Ragano's glass, she says, was raised in a toast.

"I have to tell you," she says, almost angrily, "I'm not so sure I've ever forgiven Frank for that night."

Wait a minute, says Mary Jo Paniella. An FBI surveillance report proves that her father was in Miami that night. Ragano says that Trafficante routinely misled the FBI.

"I think that was the night I made my pact with the devil," says Ragano, "sitting there like an idiot, toasting the death of the president."

More humiliations were to come: conviction for tax fraud in the early 1980s, his law practice suspended and finally, last year, a prison sentence, of which he served 10 months. At age 70, Ragano was broke and without a livelihood. Through the worst of it, in the mid-'80s, his old friends shunned him -- even Trafficante, although the mobster eventually reconciled with his former "house counsel."

"Here's a guy, I thought we were closer than brothers," Ragano says, "and when I was in trouble, Santo turned his back on me. How coldblooded can you get?"

A Favor for Marteduzzo

Some students of the Kennedy murder, such as the indefatigable Harold Weisberg, are skeptical of Ragano's claim. Among those who believe it are G. Robert Blakey, Justice Department veteran and chief counsel to the House Assassination Committee, who says, "I have carefully studied his story and I think he is telling it as he remembers it." But that is no surprise. Blakey 15 years ago said it was a "historical truth" that the mob -- Trafficante and Marcello, in particular -- killed Kennedy to get the administration off its back.

Washington lawyer Ron Goldfarb, who is completing a book on Robert Kennedy and organized crime, also takes Ragano seriously. "He's broke, he's looking to cash in on a book," says Goldfarb. "On the other hand, does what he says line up with other things you know are so? The answer to that is yes."

Ragano says he hasn't a clue about what happened in Dealey Plaza on the day Kennedy was shot.

"I think Santo was the brains, and I think Carlos carried it out. ... Whenever we would talk about Carlos, Santo would always remind me that he had powerful friends in Texas, and he did have a man in Dallas, a Mafia figure who represented his interests there."

Ragano remembers a conversation that took place in a car with Marcello and Trafficante. The radio was on, he says, and they heard the news about New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's loopy investigation of the assassination.

"Santo said, 'Carlos, mark my words, before this thing's over they're going to blame you and I for killing the president.' And I looked back there, and both of them looked like the cats that ate canaries. And I wondered at the time -- I wondered why they'd make a statement like that."

Ragano says Marcello and Trafficante both knew Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana, who once had the same girlfriend as John F. Kennedy.

"Giancana felt, rightly or wrongly, that he was instrumental in bringing about the {1960} election," Ragano says. "Because there was only 118,000 votes, the smallest margin ever, and they felt they had a friend over there and they felt betrayed.

"And they were close, Santo and Giancana. ... I would say all those guys had to know. I know they all felt they were double-crossed. But I don't think they could pull off something like this without some of those guys getting together and deciding on it."

Ragano says the plot might have begun in July 1963, when Hoffa, who hated the Kennedy brothers, told him: "Something has to be done. The time has come for your friend and Carlos to get rid of him, to kill that son of a bitch John Kennedy."

Ragano -- only half-seriously, he says -- carried the message -- for the man they nicknamed Marteduzzo, which means little hammer. "Marteduzzo," he told them, "wants you to do a little favor for him." But, he writes, the reaction was odd: "Santo and Carlos exchanged glances. ... Their facial expressions were icy. Their reticence was a signal that this was an uncomfortable subject."

"I don't think he could order those two guys to do anything," Ragano says, "but if they could lead Jimmy to think they did it because he ordered it, it would make the {Teamsters} pension fund more accessible. These are devious people, these are cunning people, they don't think the way we do, everything has double meanings.

"The whole motive revolves around one thing -- forget everything else. The Teamsters pension fund. It all goes back to that -- a billion dollars.

"So by killing Kennedy, Jimmy would be beholden to Carlos and Santo and they would have {guaranteed} access to that pension fund. They had the motive and obviously had the capability. When {the CIA} wanted to get rid of Castro, who did they turn to? Santo -- not one of their own agents.

"I don't pretend to know how it happened," Ragano says, "but after I talked to Santo, four days before he died, all these pieces fell together. I could see the jigsaw puzzle."

 

Edited by MaybeACoordinator
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SimonBolivar

SimonBolivar 10,911

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, TornACL said:

I like using the term Alternative Hypothesis to make loons sound more measured and intelligent. It almost sounds like they're following the scientific method!

In college there was speaker that came into our sociology class one day touting a class he was teaching the next semester about cults, conspiracy theories, and the like. He said that a highly specific and sesquipedalian jargon was involved in almost every instance of groups of conspiracy theorists. It made everything sound much better than "we're going to go drink beer in the woods and say we saw sasquatch".

Edited by SimonBolivar
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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23,356

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

You see Russians everywhere....over 80 posts a day, since this new board has been up and I bet 90% of the posts are about Russians.

Oswald was an odd duck who was presented w/ a golden opportunity to make his bloody mark on history and did it....all by his lonesome. 

 

The U.S. government's release of a trove of previously classified documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy has brought renewed attention to contacts between his shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Soviet intelligence officers in Mexico two months before the killing.

One of those officers, Valery Kostikov, was identified by the CIA a day after Kennedy's assassination as a KGB officer in an operation allegedly being run by the Soviet spy agency's 13th Department "responsible for sabotage and assassination."

Oswald's contacts with Kostikov were previously known and have long stoked speculation that the KGB may have had a hand in the assassination. But their interactions at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City nonetheless grabbed headlines in both Russian and Western media following the October 26 release of nearly 3,000 records on Kennedy's killing.

But the links between Kostikov, who was serving as vice consul at the embassy as Oswald tried in vain to get a Soviet visa there in September 1963, and the KGB's "assassination" department appear to be far from definitively established, according to previously classified documents now available to the public.

As the U.S. website MuckRock noted this week, in a now declassified memo to the CIA's director in September 1964, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover said his agency's files "do not contain any information to fully support" the CIA's assessment that Kostikov worked for the KGB's 13th Department.

Hoover's memo also cited a letter the FBI received from the CIA's counterintelligence chief five months before Kennedy's killing stating that the CIA "could locate no information in your files to indicate Kostikov was a representative" of the KGB's assassinations department.

Hoover suggested that the CIA amend its record to excise "the affirmative expression of belief in Kostikov's employment" in that department. He advised changing the reference to Kostikov to say that he "may be associated" with that department but that "no specific information is at hand to definitely support that possibility."

The CIA said in early 1964 that Oswald's contact with Kostikov and other KGB officers stationed under diplomatic cover in Mexico City "was nothing more than a grim coincidence."

Who Was Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov?

There is scant Russian-language information about Kostikov online, but now-declassified CIA documents include a brief biography.

They say he was born in Moscow in 1933 and studied either at a foreign-languages or a foreign-affairs institute in the Soviet capital. A fluent Spanish speaker, he served as an interpreter at international exhibitions in Spain and traveled to Mexico and Cuba in the years before he was assigned to the embassy in Mexico City, according to the CIA.

Kostikov's appearance matched the description an "FBI-controlled double agent" gave of a Soviet intelligence officer he met in Mexico, the CIA memo says. That agent's Soviet handler in the United States was Oleg Brykin of the KGB's 13th Department, according to the CIA background memo.

The declassified document -- dated November 23, 1963 -- states that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald was at the Soviet Embassy on September 28, 1963.

Oswald, who had returned to the United States with his Soviet wife after living 2 1/2 years in Minsk beginning in 1959, was by all accounts desperately seeking a Soviet visa to return.

The CIA document states that Oswald called the Soviet Embassy on October 1, 1963, "identifying himself by name and speaking broken Russian, stating" that he'd spoken to Kostikov "and asking the guard who answered the phone whether there was 'anything new concerning the telegram to Washington.'"

Kostikov himself was quoted about his interactions with Oswald in a book by a fellow KGB officer, Oleg Nechiporenko, about the Kennedy assassination.

In an updated Russian-language version of that book, Nechiporenko quoted Kostikov as saying that he and his colleagues were preparing for a volleyball game when Oswald showed up at the embassy on September 28, 1963.

He said he arrived at the compound to find Oswald sitting there with his colleague, Pavel Yatskov, to whom Kostikov explained that the American had been there the previous day.

Kostikov said Oswald "was very riled up and broke into hysterics at the mention of the FBI, crying and saying as he wept: ‘I'm afraid they'll kill me. Let me in.'"

He said Oswald pulled out a handgun, saying that he carried it for protection, and put it on the table in front of them, Nechiporenko quoted Kostikov as saying. Yatskov took the bullets out of the gun and put it in a drawer, he said.

They gave Oswald a glass of water, Kostikov said, after which he looked at his watch. "It was already 11 a.m., and we were late for the volleyball game," he was quoted as saying.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rferl.org/amp/28819941.html

 

just too many coincidences.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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Pods

Pods 7,526

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Posted
23 minutes ago, RDCanecutter said:

That's what they want you to believe. Day of Thor, Day of Jupiter, both linked by throwing lightning/thunder. What are they hiding from us?

Jupiter is chief of the Gods, also known as Zeus who lives atop Mount Olympus where only birds fly. Odin is the Norse chief of the Gods and he has a raven. 

Admiral McRaven oversaw the operation that killed bin Laden and then was the Chancellor for the UT system. 

My God, how deep does this go?

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 104,561

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The U.S. government's release of a trove of previously classified documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy has brought renewed attention to contacts between his shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Soviet intelligence officers in Mexico two months before the killing.

One of those officers, Valery Kostikov, was identified by the CIA a day after Kennedy's assassination as a KGB officer in an operation allegedly being run by the Soviet spy agency's 13th Department "responsible for sabotage and assassination."

Oswald's contacts with Kostikov were previously known and have long stoked speculation that the KGB may have had a hand in the assassination. But their interactions at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City nonetheless grabbed headlines in both Russian and Western media following the October 26 release of nearly 3,000 records on Kennedy's killing.

But the links between Kostikov, who was serving as vice consul at the embassy as Oswald tried in vain to get a Soviet visa there in September 1963, and the KGB's "assassination" department appear to be far from definitively established, according to previously classified documents now available to the public.

As the U.S. website MuckRock noted this week, in a now declassified memo to the CIA's director in September 1964, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover said his agency's files "do not contain any information to fully support" the CIA's assessment that Kostikov worked for the KGB's 13th Department.

Hoover's memo also cited a letter the FBI received from the CIA's counterintelligence chief five months before Kennedy's killing stating that the CIA "could locate no information in your files to indicate Kostikov was a representative" of the KGB's assassinations department.

Hoover suggested that the CIA amend its record to excise "the affirmative expression of belief in Kostikov's employment" in that department. He advised changing the reference to Kostikov to say that he "may be associated" with that department but that "no specific information is at hand to definitely support that possibility."

The CIA said in early 1964 that Oswald's contact with Kostikov and other KGB officers stationed under diplomatic cover in Mexico City "was nothing more than a grim coincidence."

Who Was Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov?

There is scant Russian-language information about Kostikov online, but now-declassified CIA documents include a brief biography.

They say he was born in Moscow in 1933 and studied either at a foreign-languages or a foreign-affairs institute in the Soviet capital. A fluent Spanish speaker, he served as an interpreter at international exhibitions in Spain and traveled to Mexico and Cuba in the years before he was assigned to the embassy in Mexico City, according to the CIA.

Kostikov's appearance matched the description an "FBI-controlled double agent" gave of a Soviet intelligence officer he met in Mexico, the CIA memo says. That agent's Soviet handler in the United States was Oleg Brykin of the KGB's 13th Department, according to the CIA background memo.

The declassified document -- dated November 23, 1963 -- states that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald was at the Soviet Embassy on September 28, 1963.

Oswald, who had returned to the United States with his Soviet wife after living 2 1/2 years in Minsk beginning in 1959, was by all accounts desperately seeking a Soviet visa to return.

The CIA document states that Oswald called the Soviet Embassy on October 1, 1963, "identifying himself by name and speaking broken Russian, stating" that he'd spoken to Kostikov "and asking the guard who answered the phone whether there was 'anything new concerning the telegram to Washington.'"

Kostikov himself was quoted about his interactions with Oswald in a book by a fellow KGB officer, Oleg Nechiporenko, about the Kennedy assassination.

In an updated Russian-language version of that book, Nechiporenko quoted Kostikov as saying that he and his colleagues were preparing for a volleyball game when Oswald showed up at the embassy on September 28, 1963.

He said he arrived at the compound to find Oswald sitting there with his colleague, Pavel Yatskov, to whom Kostikov explained that the American had been there the previous day.

Kostikov said Oswald "was very riled up and broke into hysterics at the mention of the FBI, crying and saying as he wept: ‘I'm afraid they'll kill me. Let me in.'"

He said Oswald pulled out a handgun, saying that he carried it for protection, and put it on the table in front of them, Nechiporenko quoted Kostikov as saying. Yatskov took the bullets out of the gun and put it in a drawer, he said.

They gave Oswald a glass of water, Kostikov said, after which he looked at his watch. "It was already 11 a.m., and we were late for the volleyball game," he was quoted as saying.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rferl.org/amp/28819941.html

 

There are just too many coincidences.

You and smokey1861 need to get a room and hatefuck each other to oblivion.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 104,561

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Posted
Just now, Pods said:

Jupiter is chief of the Gods, also known as Zeus who lives atop Mount Olympus where only birds fly. Odin is the Norse chief of the Gods and he has a raven. 

Admiral McRaven oversaw the operation that killed bin Laden and then was the Chancellor for the UT system. 

My God, how deep does this go?

Turtles, man...all the way down...

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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23,356

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Posted (edited)

I should have expected any logical theory presented would be ridiculed.

It doesn’t really matter at this point because no minister of truth is going give a explanation with certitude of the Kennedy assassination.

The waters have been muddied too much over the years to have a legit discussion about this.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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Pods

Pods 7,526

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Posted
1 hour ago, TornACL said:

I like using the term Alternative Hypothesis to make loons sound more measured and intelligent. It almost sounds like they're following the scientific method!

That's part of the benefit of attacking science. The words will still have lingering value that indicates something has been shown to be true. 

If no one knows what the words hypothesis or theory actually mean, these gobshites can then can appropriate those terms and use them to promote their pseudoscientific circle jerks. 

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RDCanecutter

RDCanecutter 26,249

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Pods said:

Jupiter is chief of the Gods, also known as Zeus who lives atop Mount Olympus where only birds fly. Odin is the Norse chief of the Gods and he has a raven. 

Admiral McRaven oversaw the operation that killed bin Laden and then was the Chancellor for the UT system. 

My God, how deep does this go?

You're getting the job description mixed up with the deity/planet. Caesar said the Gauls considered Mercury the king of the gods. Mercury the deity/planet matches up with Odin. Thor the planet matches Jupiter. Hell, it's right there in your days of the week:

Monday Moon-day---------------- Lunes Lunar day

Tuesday Tyrs day-------------------Martes Mars day

Wednesday Woden's day------ Miercoles Mercury day

Thursday Thors day--------------Jueves Jove's day Jupiter

Friday Freya's day-----------------Viernes Venus' day when you get venereal diseases.

Why bring up Gauls instead of Germans? It's don't matter, Caesar said the only difference was that they were both itchy and scratchy, and the Germans a little more so.

 

IT'S ALL RIGHT THERE ON YOUR DENARIUS.

 

 

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MaybeACoordinator

MaybeACoordinator 8,349

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Posted

Carlos Marcello = Latin, Marcellus  "hammer," or even "Hammer of Mars."

 People with this name fight being restricted by rules and conventions. 

Carlos Marcello hated the rules and conventions of the Kennedys.  

Santo Trafficante = Italian for "Holy Trafficker." Speaks for itself.

Lee Harvey Oswald: Anglo Saxon. Refers to the Northumbrian King Oswald. After his death in 642 at the hands of the Welsh at the Battle of Maserfield, which is an anagram of "federalism,"  (and you know what that means), Reginald of Durham recounts a miracle, saying that King Oswald's right arm was taken by a bird to an ash tree, which gave the tree ageless vigor; when the bird dropped the arm onto the ground, a spring emerged from the ground. Both the tree and the spring were, according to Reginald, subsequently associated with healing miracles. 

That bird? That bird was a raven, as in, Admiral McRaven, who oversaw the operation that killed bin Laden and then was the Chancellor for the UT system.  

And...in 1307,  Pope Clement V issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. 

ON NOVEMBER 22, TO BE EXACT. 

 

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Blotto

Blotto 23,429

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50 minutes ago, F250 said:

I don't buy into any of these conspiracy theories but I admit the Mob theory is the most interesting. Interesting in the way fan fiction can be interesting.

 

 

8 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The mob theory is a fun one. 

It's been years since I read it, but I really dug the book American Tabloid (James Ellroy). It meanders through the FBI, CIA, mafia, Cuba and Kennedy's assassination. Good mix of historical context and drinking/fucking/killing. 

There were rumors Bruce Willis had the movie rights, but nothing ever came of it.

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F250

F250 28,680

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3 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

There's also a sort of Murder on the Orient Express angle to it. Maybe err'body killed Kennedy: Hoover's FBI, CIA, the mob, and even some Russkies. 

That was 14 year old F250's understanding of the conspiracy. I didn't realize there were competing theories. I just thought it was the Russians, Mob, Cubans, LBJ, CIA and Free Masons working together.

 

 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89,409

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15 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

just too many coincidences.

And many of those coincidences, the relevant ones, were created by Oswald himself.  His dissatisfaction with his life in America, his blaming it on the American government, etc. led to his journeys to Russia (and eventually Mexico City).

Oswald wasn't some dude that was doing okay in the US, that all of the sudden was being blackmailed or bribed by the Russians.  He actively sought out contact with the Russians, thereby creating the very Russian connections that so many people point to.   And those Russian connections viewed him as either a useful idiot (and I don't mean a would-be assassin of JFK), or they viewed him as a plant by some three-letter American agency.  They clearly didn't afford him the kind of respect that he thought he deserved, or that you would think an assassin of an American President would command if he were controlled/aided by them.

Now the Mob stuff, that is a much more interesting angle.  They actively wanted he and Bobby dead, because he was a threat to them.  Hell, JFK was useful to the hardline Soviets, who needed a bogeyman like JFK to get their pet projects approved (more weapons, more troops, etc.), and JFK's death could have brought about consequences the Soviets did not want.

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89,409

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16 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The waters have been muddied too much over the years to have a legit discussion about this.

I was very much info the JFK stuff in the 90s (aided by the explosion of interest and published material in the wake of Stone's movie a few years earlier).  I had a lot of free-time, had a few friends who were into it (who pulled me into it), went to a few gatherings/symposiums, etc. (helped by so much of those things happening in Texas/Dallas), and accumulated quite the collection of books and photocopied documents and papers of (basically a foot-locker's worth of stuff).    My internet access was very limited at the time (although I read the hell out of the JFK/conspiracy usenet groups).

As I said, I kept coming back to a few things, namely that Oswald's dissatisfaction with his life led him to seek out/create the Soviet connections, it put him within the orbit of the Mob types, but it also meant that Oswald could have easily done it all on his own.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if the Soviets or Mob were truly going to kill JFK, they would have picked somebody who hadn't created all kinds of paper trails pointing to Moscow or that put him in proximity to the Mob.

As far as muddied waters, I had this conversation with a friend from my conspiracy days a few weeks ago - in my experience with the JFK stuff, and by proxy, plenty of other conspiracies (a helluva lot of overlap), you can't trust many conspiracy theories for a couple of reasons.

The biggest problem is the people pushing conspiracy theories.  They tend to fall into these groups:

  1. People who are pushing them for money/profit.  Book authors, website owners, etc.
  2. People who were "insiders" and have an axe to grind (perhaps fired employees, or turned down for a promotion, etc.) or who want to use their former positions to give them some kind of importance.
  3. People who are doing because it amuses them or they enjoy manipulating/muddying things (i.e. doing it for the lulz).
  4. People who feel personally attached to the subject matter and don't want to believe a simple explanation - a lot of JFK conspiracy types, particularly those who were young adults when JFK was killed, fell into this category. They didn't want to believe that Camelot collapsed all because of a lone nut who was unhappy with this life.
  5. People with mental health issues (paranoid, etc.).
  6. People who genuinely find it interesting.
  7. The true believers who don’t fall into 1-6. Few and far between at times, but they can keep a movement going. 

Groups 1-3 are more than enough to muddy the waters individually, they can keep a conspiracy theory going long beyond its expiration date, and they actively take advantage of groups 4-5.  When you combine Groups 1-3, it's bad.  Really Bad.  

Groups 1 and 2 are the worst - people who are looking to make a profit will churn out all kinds of shit to keep sales going, and Group #2 in particular is a problem, because if they were "insiders", they can toss out enough lingo and usually have some kind of tangible connection that can be used to manipulate others.  

The UFO movement really suffered from Group #2, because far too many "I was an E-2 who was a cook at a base that occasionally had a pilot who passed through on his way to Nellis/Area 51" types were floating around, and they fed into/overlapped Group #1.    Then again, perhaps it was best that Groups 1-2 muddied the UFO waters, since that kept a lot of our top secret aircraft secret for a lot longer.

This applies all the way up to the 2018 conspiracy theories such as the Trump/Deep State stuff.  Actually, it's worse these days, because it's even easier to muddy the water and create connections where there were none, and it's easier to tap into Groups 4-5.  There's a big difference between coming face-to-face with somebody at a conspiracy conference and somebody sitting in their parent's basement cranking out conspiracy connections after conspiracy connections.

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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23,356

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I never got too deep into the JFK conspiracy theories but from a macro level, the Russian angle is impossible to ignore.

 It’s not like Oswald defected to the Soviet Union... oh wait, he did.

It’s not like Oswald had any experience in assassination attempts...oh wait, he did.

It’s not like Oswald had connections to people in the KGB...oh wait, he did.

The big questions for me are:  did the U.S. government try to cover something up and if so, what would possibly justify a cover up of this magnitude?  It must have been something pretty substantial that went beyond the mob or Cubans.

I don’t know if Oswald was under any orders but if you study the history of Soviet active measures, Oswald is the poster child for how that form of warfare is supposed to work.

“You take an already unstable extremist individual and you push that individual to the more extreme direction they were already going.  Sit back and watch the fireworks.”

I know there is never going to be a widely accepted version of exactly how things went down but my recent investigations into Russia’s tactics and methods made me look at the JFK assassination from an entirely different perspective.  

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Jiggy-Z

Jiggy-Z 3,432

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19 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

I knew a crazy old outlaw biker / luthier in Nashville back in the early '90s and we were sipping cheap whiskey in his shop one afternoon...I asked him what he thought really happened to Kennedy. "Moses," as he was known, had grown up in Tampa in the early '60s, and he just kinda shrugged the whole thing off. "He needed killin'," he told me, reminding me about his, Moses's, dad had been some kind of labor boss in Tampa in 1963. He added that his whole school knew it was coming, because they all knew Tampa mob boss Santo Trafficante and how much Trafficante hated Kennedy. And dudes like Moses and his dad sided with Trafficante, who the Kennedys fucked over and betrayed during and after the fall of Cuba.

 

Moses died not long after our conversation, and then within weeks, Florida mob lawyer Frank Ragano started making the rounds with his story, which essentially agreed with Moses's matter of fact recalling and boils down to this: Trafficante and Carlos Marcello (New Orleans mob boss) killed Kennedy for many reasons, ranging from the Cuba snafu to them wanting to make Jimmy Hoffa feel beholden to them so they could ransack the Teamsters' pension fund.

 

Full story here:  

  Reveal hidden contents

THE SINS OF THE GODFATHER? MOB LAWYER FRANK RAGANO SAYS HE KNOWS WHO KILLED JFK

 
 
 
 
By Jeffrey A. Frank June 21, 1994

This is the age of confession, an era of dragging oneself through the mud; abusers and abusees compete in the marketplace of self-abnegation. Which is why it seems inevitable that a place be set for Frank Ragano, a man whose chief claim to fame is a long career as "house counsel" to the mob.

But in this time of revealed secrets, Frank Ragano claims to possess one of the best. He says he knows who killed President Kennedy. He says he knows why. And he says he knows all this because one of the plotters told him.

Sure, sure, you've heard this one before. And Ragano's alleged source doesn't make his claim easier to believe. It is, after all, Santo Trafficante Jr., the powerful Florida Mafia boss, whose death seven years ago prevents him from denying his role.

Ragano is a short 71-year-old with wispy, reddish hair, and he is talking in a restaurant at the Mayflower because he has written a sort of Godfather Dearest, "Mob Lawyer," in which he recounts years of serving organized crime. His clientele included the very vanished Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa (killed by the mob in 1975), but numero uno was Trafficante, whose line of work included bolita, a numbers game, drug trafficking and a big interest in Havana's pre-Castro gambling casinos. The mob made Ragano very rich -- and very circumspect. Of Trafficante, he says, "I think if I'd been inquisitive, curious -- I think as soon as I was no longer any use to him -- he'd have me killed."

But that was then. Ragano says that when Trafficante vouchsafed the historic news about JFK's murder seven years ago, it came as a sort of deathbed admission. The mobster confessed, Ragano says, as they drove through the streets of Tampa on March 13, 1987 -- four days before Trafficante died. The exact date is important because there is an argument as to whether Trafficante actually made the trip from Miami.

If Trafficante did not, Ragano's story falls apart, which is why his every word is being challenged by the dead mobster's family, who insist that Trafficante was too ill to travel. To which Ragano says, "If they are sincere in their contentions that he was not here in Tampa on that Friday the 13th, I would suggest that they file a lawsuit so this issue can be settled by a court of law."

Not bloody likely.

'Carlos Messed Up'

The theory that the mob killed JFK has had many devotees. The House Assassination Committee came to that tentative conclusion in 1979, 15 years after the Warren Commission said that one lone nut killed the president. The House committee singled out Trafficante and New Orleans Mafia chieftain Carlos Marcello, who died in 1992.

Ragano, to be sure, has no proof. But his testimony is rich in detail, right down to the words allegedly spoken, in Sicilian, by the dying Trafficante as they drove around Tampa: "Carlos e futtutu. Non duvevamu ammazzar a Giovanni. Duvevamu ammazzari a Bobby." ("Carlos {Marcello} messed up. We shouldn't have killed Giovanni {John}. We should have killed Bobby.")

How does a person react to discovering who was behind the crime of the century?

"I didn't know how to deal with it," Ragano says earnestly; his Florida drawl sounds incongruous in a world of Sicilian confidences. "As a lawyer. As a human being. As an old friend. I just didn't know how to deal with it." He turns to Nancy Ragano, who has been girlfriend and wife for 30 years. "I didn't tell her for a while," he says, "and she kept asking me, 'What's wrong, what's bothering you?' "

"Frank was very disturbed for about two weeks there," says Nancy Ragano, who sounds like the Florida coed she was when she met the mob lawyer. "I thought maybe it was Santo's death."

"When you find that a man you know is responsible for the president's death, my God ... ." says Frank Ragano.

"... -- the godfather to my son," says Nancy Ragano, "and those are not nice things to hear."

As the Raganos talk on, it is suddenly a most peculiar Washington moment. This conversation has been taking place in a quiet corner of a restaurant in the hotel where, years before, Ragano had lunch with Hoffa -- and where J. Edgar Hoover regularly lunched with his deputy, Clyde Tolson, and where, Ragano says, he once saw Hoffa and Hoover greet each other. On this bright spring day, two tables away, sits former CIA chief Richard Helms, who served as deputy director of plans after the Bay of Pigs fiasco -- a time when the CIA tried to hire Trafficante and the mob to kill Fidel Castro. Ragano does not recognize Helms, who occasionally looks his way.

Ragano is trying to figure out why Trafficante told him:

"If somebody was to tell me why did Santo tell you about it, I don't know anybody else he could have told. I was close to him for 27 years. He was a sick man. And I think maybe he owed me something." Ragano pauses. "It could very well be that he didn't think I'd say anything about it."

A Meeting in Tampa?

Then there is the view that Ragano is making all this up, which is what Trafficante's widow and daughters say, while lamenting that their children and grandchildren must bear the stigma.

Mary Jo Trafficante Paniella says by telephone that her father was at Miami's Mercy Hospital on March 12 and March 14, and family lawyer Henry Gonzalez, by fax, produces hospital records to show that Trafficante received dialysis treatments on those days. "One thing we do remember is the week my father died," says the 54-year-old Paniella, who teaches elementary school. "When {Ragano} named a date and said he was with my father, we said, 'How can he say this?' "

It's easy, Ragano says, because Santo Trafficante was not in the hospital on March 13, 1987. Ragano carries with him a March 19, 1987, Tampa Tribune story in which Ragano says he talked with Trafficante on March 13 about his medical options.

At the suggestion that Ragano might have made his historic confession by phone, Ragano says Trafficante was so fearful of being bugged that he'd carry a pocketful of quarters for pay phones. "To suggest for a moment he would be talking to me about the murder of a president over a telephone, that's beyond comprehension."

If he has witnesses that the two met in Tampa, who are they? asks Paniella.

Ragano says he has three -- but won't produce them. "One guy is afraid of retaliation. The other guys are two doctors, who say they'll testify if they're summoned to court."

Then Ragano says, "I did not see the two daughters in {Trafficante's Tampa} house that Friday. The one person I saw was his widow, and she's not making any claims or denials at all."

Ragano is wrong about that. "That's a big, big lie," says the 74-year-old Josie Trafficante by telephone. "My husband was too sick to fly anywhere. If he had to travel, I had to take him in a car, because he had that colostomy bag."

"In view of the terrible things that I've said about her late husband in our book, and knowing her as I do," Ragano responds later, "I'm not at all surprised that she would parrot the claims of her two daughters."

Of herself and her 50-year-old sister, Sarah Ann Trafficante Valdez, Mary Jo Paniella says, "Our children have this burden to bear. They'll have this all their lives because he decided to write a novel."

"This book was not written to make me look good," says Ragano. "It makes me look terrible."

That is one Ragano statement that no one will dispute.

'Rank Self-Deception'

Ragano's coauthor is Selwyn Raab, a New York Times reporter who has covered the Mafia for two decades. Raab's brief narrative is set apart from Ragano's, and occasionally he takes his writing partner to task. "Frank's refusal to consider the evidence of Trafficante's ties to the Mafia was rank self-deception for a lawyer trained to be logical," he writes at one point.

Not only does Raab scold Ragano, but Ragano scolds himself. His memoir is filled with quotidian humiliation, such as the night that Trafficante ordered Ragano to solicit the favors of a cigarette girl at a Miami bar.

The worst happened on the night of Nov. 22, 1963, when the future Nancy Ragano, then 19, walked into a Tampa hotel bar to find Trafficante exulting, "The son of a bitch is dead." Ragano's glass, she says, was raised in a toast.

"I have to tell you," she says, almost angrily, "I'm not so sure I've ever forgiven Frank for that night."

Wait a minute, says Mary Jo Paniella. An FBI surveillance report proves that her father was in Miami that night. Ragano says that Trafficante routinely misled the FBI.

"I think that was the night I made my pact with the devil," says Ragano, "sitting there like an idiot, toasting the death of the president."

More humiliations were to come: conviction for tax fraud in the early 1980s, his law practice suspended and finally, last year, a prison sentence, of which he served 10 months. At age 70, Ragano was broke and without a livelihood. Through the worst of it, in the mid-'80s, his old friends shunned him -- even Trafficante, although the mobster eventually reconciled with his former "house counsel."

"Here's a guy, I thought we were closer than brothers," Ragano says, "and when I was in trouble, Santo turned his back on me. How coldblooded can you get?"

A Favor for Marteduzzo

Some students of the Kennedy murder, such as the indefatigable Harold Weisberg, are skeptical of Ragano's claim. Among those who believe it are G. Robert Blakey, Justice Department veteran and chief counsel to the House Assassination Committee, who says, "I have carefully studied his story and I think he is telling it as he remembers it." But that is no surprise. Blakey 15 years ago said it was a "historical truth" that the mob -- Trafficante and Marcello, in particular -- killed Kennedy to get the administration off its back.

Washington lawyer Ron Goldfarb, who is completing a book on Robert Kennedy and organized crime, also takes Ragano seriously. "He's broke, he's looking to cash in on a book," says Goldfarb. "On the other hand, does what he says line up with other things you know are so? The answer to that is yes."

Ragano says he hasn't a clue about what happened in Dealey Plaza on the day Kennedy was shot.

"I think Santo was the brains, and I think Carlos carried it out. ... Whenever we would talk about Carlos, Santo would always remind me that he had powerful friends in Texas, and he did have a man in Dallas, a Mafia figure who represented his interests there."

Ragano remembers a conversation that took place in a car with Marcello and Trafficante. The radio was on, he says, and they heard the news about New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's loopy investigation of the assassination.

"Santo said, 'Carlos, mark my words, before this thing's over they're going to blame you and I for killing the president.' And I looked back there, and both of them looked like the cats that ate canaries. And I wondered at the time -- I wondered why they'd make a statement like that."

Ragano says Marcello and Trafficante both knew Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana, who once had the same girlfriend as John F. Kennedy.

"Giancana felt, rightly or wrongly, that he was instrumental in bringing about the {1960} election," Ragano says. "Because there was only 118,000 votes, the smallest margin ever, and they felt they had a friend over there and they felt betrayed.

"And they were close, Santo and Giancana. ... I would say all those guys had to know. I know they all felt they were double-crossed. But I don't think they could pull off something like this without some of those guys getting together and deciding on it."

Ragano says the plot might have begun in July 1963, when Hoffa, who hated the Kennedy brothers, told him: "Something has to be done. The time has come for your friend and Carlos to get rid of him, to kill that son of a bitch John Kennedy."

Ragano -- only half-seriously, he says -- carried the message -- for the man they nicknamed Marteduzzo, which means little hammer. "Marteduzzo," he told them, "wants you to do a little favor for him." But, he writes, the reaction was odd: "Santo and Carlos exchanged glances. ... Their facial expressions were icy. Their reticence was a signal that this was an uncomfortable subject."

"I don't think he could order those two guys to do anything," Ragano says, "but if they could lead Jimmy to think they did it because he ordered it, it would make the {Teamsters} pension fund more accessible. These are devious people, these are cunning people, they don't think the way we do, everything has double meanings.

"The whole motive revolves around one thing -- forget everything else. The Teamsters pension fund. It all goes back to that -- a billion dollars.

"So by killing Kennedy, Jimmy would be beholden to Carlos and Santo and they would have {guaranteed} access to that pension fund. They had the motive and obviously had the capability. When {the CIA} wanted to get rid of Castro, who did they turn to? Santo -- not one of their own agents.

"I don't pretend to know how it happened," Ragano says, "but after I talked to Santo, four days before he died, all these pieces fell together. I could see the jigsaw puzzle."

 

I remember reading the biography of Frank Sheeran ( I Heard You Paint Houses).  Frank was a body guard and mob hitman who also confessed to the killing of Hoffa.

He was not a made man and traveled more in the Detroit an Buffalo mob circles but he did relay a story about how he had to drop some rifles off at a mob concrete plant in Cleveland.  The recipients were David Ferry (Marcelo's pilot) and either Marcelo's or Trafficante's body guard. This was mere days before the assassination.

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