"The purpose of this book has been twofold. One, to educate everyday Americans that Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone. .... And two, to expose, as never before, the conspiracy theorists and the abject worthlessness of all their allegations. I believe this book has achieved both of these goals."
-- Vincent Bugliosi [hereinafter VB]; Page 1461 of "Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy" (W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.)(Copyright 2007 by Vincent Bugliosi)
"The conspiracy community regularly seizes on one slip of the tongue, misunderstanding, or slight discrepancy to defeat twenty pieces of solid evidence; accepts one witness of theirs, even if he or she is a provable nut, as being far more credible than ten normal witnesses on the other side; treats rumors, even questions, as the equivalent of proof; leaps from the most minuscule of discoveries to the grandest of conclusions; and insists that the failure to explain everything perfectly negates all that is explained."
"If these conspiracy theorists were to accept the truth, not only would they be invalidating a major part of their past, but many would be forfeiting their future. That's why talking to them about logic and common sense is like talking to a man without ears. The bottom line is that they WANT there to be a conspiracy and are constitutionally allergic to anything that points away from it."
"One would think that at least five people (Jackie Kennedy, Governor Connally and his wife, Nellie, William Greer...and Roy Kellerman)...might forever be immune from being accused, by the terminally wacky buffs, of being involved in the conspiracy to murder Kennedy, if for no other reason than that they themselves were in the line of fire. But not so fast say the conspiracy buffs, unwilling to concede by exemption any Homo sapiens who were alive and breathing on November 22, 1963.
"Conspiracy theorist James H. Fetzer has removed Greer, who was directly within the line of fire for both shots that hit Kennedy, from the line-of-fire defense, claiming that Greer, as a part of the conspiracy, deliberately stopped the limousine after the first shot to make Kennedy an easier target for the remaining shots. So apparently Greer, per Fetzer, decided to place his own life on the line to see that Kennedy was killed.
"And two young buffs from Canada also removed Greer as well as his partner, Kellerman, from the line-of-fire defense by actually contending that Greer himself turned around and shot Kennedy, Kellerman holding the steering wheel while his partner did the deed.
"In fact, a Tulsa citizen, serving as his own lawyer, went so far as to file a lawsuit on September 30, 1996, asking the court to find Greer and Kellerman guilty of murdering Kennedy.
"That leaves three other passengers in the presidential limousine. Surely at least they have to be immune from the pointed finger, right? Well, not all of them. A few weeks after the assassination, Governor Connally's wife, Nellie, wrote an account of the assassination on a yellow pad. Thirty years later, Newsweek published excerpts from the account. One excerpt refers to Nellie's visit to her husband's bedside in the recovery room at Parkland Hospital. "He asked me about the President," she wrote, and when she told him the president was dead, his reply was, "I knew."
"Conspiracy theorist and author Walt Brown writes, "Those two words ['I knew'] will probably--and perhaps should--generate two conspiracy books." In other words, there's at least a chance that Connally was so intent on joining in the conspiracy to murder Kennedy that, like Greer, he was even willing to risk his own life.
"In fact, conspiracy theorist Harrison E. Livingstone, in his book 'The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy', informs his readers that "those in the know in Texas believe that Connally was part of the planning for the assassination."
"I don't know about Nellie, but it's probably just a matter of time before some nutty buff removes Jackie's Oleg Cassini pillbox hat and tries to put the conspiracy hat on her. I mean, she wasn't quite as much in the line of fire as Connally and Greer were. And God knows, with JFK's flagrant womanizing, she certainly had a motive.
"Indeed, how long do we have to wait for some deranged conspiracy theorist to write an article or book stating that President Kennedy was in very ill health, that he had been told he didn' t have too long to live; and that he, yes HE, was a party to the conspiracy to have himself murdered? The motive? Polls showed his popularity was in decline and he viewed his murder as a good career move. And we know that Kennedy's popularity did, in fact, rise dramatically as a result of his death on November 22, 1963.
"But all of the above assumes that John F. Kennedy was actually killed on November 22, 1963. And we don't know this. Indeed, conspiracy theorist George Thomson, a swimming-pool engineer, is convinced that twenty-two shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, and five people were killed, but not JFK. Officer Tippit was impersonating JFK in the presidential limousine and it was he who was killed. Kennedy escaped and was seen a year later in New York reveling at a private birthday party for author Truman Capote. Who am I to say that George Thomson is wrong?"
"Unbelievably, [Oliver] Stone told Time magazine, "I think this movie ["JFK"], hopefully, if it's accepted by the public, will at least move people away from the Warren Commission." He wanted his movie, he wrote with towering arrogance in the January 1992 edition of Premier, to "replace the Warren Commission Report."
"Can you imagine that? A Hollywood producer wants his movie to replace the official and most comprehensive investigation of a crime in history. It's a measure of Stone's sense of self that such a thought, even if a vagrant one, would even enter his head.
"Arrogance thought it already had a bad name. That was before it met Oliver Stone."
"Perhaps the most powerful single piece of evidence that there was no conspiracy in the murder of President Kennedy is simply the fact that after all these years there is NO CREDIBLE EVIDENCE, direct or circumstantial, that any of the persons or groups suspected by conspiracy theorists (e.g., organized crime, CIA, KGB, FBI, military- industrial complex, Castro, LBJ, etc.) or anyone else conspired with Oswald to kill Kennedy.
"And when there is NO EVIDENCE of something, although not conclusive, this itself is very, very persuasive evidence that the alleged "something" does not exist. Particularly here where the search for the "something" (conspiracy) has been the greatest and most comprehensive search for anything in American, perhaps world history.
"I mean, way back in 1965, BEFORE over forty additional years of microscopic investigation of the case by governmental groups and thousands of researchers, Dwight Macdonald wrote, "I can't believe that among the many hundreds of detectives, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service agents, and [counsel] for the Warren Commission...not one would be bright or lucky enough to discover or stumble across some clue [of a conspiracy] if there were any there."
"But not one clue of a conspiracy has ever surfaced. And this is so despite the fact that the two people the conspirators would have had to rely on the most not to leave a clue, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, were notoriously unreliable.
"A conspiracy is nothing more than a criminal partnership. And although conspiracies obviously aren't proved by the transcript of a stenographer who typed up a conversation between the partners agreeing to commit the crime, there has to be some substantive evidence of the conspiracy or partnership's existence.
"And in the conspiracy prosecutions I have conducted, I have always been able to present direct evidence of the co-conspirators acting in concert before, during, or after the crime, and/or circumstantial evidence from which a reasonable inference of concert or meeting of the minds could be made.
"In the Oswald case, if, for instance, Oswald had disappeared for a few days before the assassination without adequate explanation, or within these few days he was seen in the company of a stranger, or there was evidence he had come into some serious money, or he had made any statement to anyone, such as Marina, suggesting, even vaguely, a conspiratorial relationship, or someone had called him at the Paine residence and he left the room and took the call in another room, or he was seen getting in a car after the shooting in Dealey Plaza*, or any of a hundred other possible events or circumstances had occurred, that would be one thing. But here, there is NOTHING, NOTHING. Just completely foundationless speculation and conjecture."
-- VB; Page 1439 [Emphasis is all Bugliosi's]
* = DVP Interjection --- There are witnesses who DID say they saw Lee Oswald getting into a Rambler station wagon in Dealey Plaza about ten minutes after the assassination. But those witnesses were positively mistaken. How can we know they were mistaken? Because Oswald, at that exact time, was getting on a bus several blocks east of the Book Depository Building. And we don't even need the testimony of witness Mary Bledsoe to confirm this fact either. The paper bus transfer, dated Nov. 22, 1963, that was found in Oswald's shirt pocket after his arrest is verifiable proof that Oswald could not possibly be the man who was seen by some witnesses getting into a station wagon on Elm Street at approximately 12:40 PM CST on 11/22/63.
"To say that those alleging a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination have not met their burden of proof would be the understatement of the millennium. Here, the absence of any credible evidence of a conspiracy is bad enough for the conspiracy theorists, but, as demonstrated on these pages [of "Reclaiming History"], there is much, much evidence pointing irresistibly in the direction of NO conspiracy."
"If [Lee Harvey Oswald] had succeeded in getting to Cuba, who believes he would have ended up killing Kennedy? No one I've ever heard of. And how believable is it that a plot to kill the president of the United States, the most powerful man on earth, would be born after October 1, seven weeks before Kennedy's death? To believe something like that is to be addicted to silliness.
"The absurdity of the notion that Oswald conspired with others to kill Kennedy can be spotlighted by the fact that on the very day, September 26, 1963, that it was announced in both Dallas newspapers that Kennedy was going to come to Texas on November 21 and 22 and that Dallas would likely be one of the cities he would visit, Oswald was on a bus traveling to Mexico City determined to get to Cuba."
"Indeed, since Kennedy's motorcade route past the Book Depository Building wasn't selected until November 14, and announced in a paper for the first time on the morning of November 19 in the Dallas Morning News, we not only thereby know that Oswald getting a job at the Book Depository Building on October 15 was unrelated to President Kennedy's trip to Dallas and the assassination, but it would seem that any conspiracy involving Oswald as the hit man would have had to be hatched no earlier than November 19, just three days before Kennedy's death (that is, unless the argument is made—which I have yet to hear even the daffy conspiracy buffs make—that WHEREVER Kennedy went when he came to Dallas, it was Oswald's job to track him down and kill him).
"Surely no person with an ounce of sense could possibly believe that the CIA, mob, and so on, recruited Oswald to kill Kennedy just three days before the assassination."
"[Mark] Lane...elevated to an art form the technique of quoting part of a witness's testimony to convey a meaning completely opposite to what the whole would convey. A perfect example occurs when he quotes part of Jack Ruby's testimony before the Warren Commission, in which Ruby literally begged Chief Justice Earl Warren to bring him to Washington to give further testimony.
"[Quoting from Lane's 1966 book, "Rush To Judgment":] "Ruby made it plain that if the Commission took him from the Dallas County Jail and permitted him to testify in Washington, he could tell more there; it was impossible for him to tell the whole truth so long as he was in jail in Dallas," writes Lane. Lane gives the following excerpt from Ruby's testimony before the Warren Commission...Ruby: "But you [Warren] are the only one that can save me. I think you can." Warren: "Yes?" Ruby: "But by delaying, you lose the chance. And all I want to do is tell the truth, and that is all."
"The unmistakable implication that Lane seeks to convey is that if Ruby were questioned in Washington, he would divulge the existence of a conspiracy. YET THE VERY NEXT WORDS that Ruby uttered after "that is all" were "There was no conspiracy." These four words, which completely rebutted the entire thrust of Lane's contention, were carefully omitted from 'Rush to Judgment'."
"When Oswald got in the cab shortly after getting off the bus for the trip to Oak Cliff, and the cab drove off, the cabdriver [William Whaley], seeing all the police cars crisscrossing everywhere with their sirens screaming, said to Oswald, "I wonder what the hell is the uproar?" The cabdriver said Oswald "never said anything."
"Granted, there are people who are very stingy with their words, and this nonresponse by Oswald, by itself, is not conclusive of his guilt. But ask yourself this: If a thousand people were put in Oswald's place in the cab, particularly if they, like Oswald, were at the scene of the assassination in Dealey Plaza and knew what had happened, how many do you suppose wouldn't have said one single word in response to the cabby's question?"
"There is a simple fact of life that Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists either don't realize or fail to take into consideration, something I learned from my experience as a prosecutor; namely, that in the real world--you know, the world in which when I talk you can hear me, there will be a dawn tomorrow, et cetera--you CANNOT be innocent and yet still have a prodigious amount of highly incriminating evidence against you. That's just not what happens in life. ....
"But with Lee Harvey Oswald, everything, everything points towards his guilt. In fact, the evidence against Oswald is so great that you could throw 80 percent of it out the window and there would still be more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt."
"Conspiracy theorist Walt Brown [said that] Oswald's Mannlicher-
Carcano was a "piece of junk" that "certainly lacked accuracy."
"Even if Oswald's Carcano was the worst piece of junk in the
world, this is an irrelevant argument since...firearms experts for the
Warren Commission (FBI) and HSCA proved that it was, in fact, the
weapon that fired three bullets in Dealey Plaza, two of which struck
the president.
"But in point of fact, the Carcano was not a piece of junk that
lacked accuracy. Ronald Simmons, the chief of the Infantry Weapons
Evaluation Branch of the Department of the Army, had his people test-
fire Oswald's Carcano rifle...forty-seven times, and testified the
rifle was "quite accurate"--in fact, just as accurate as the American
military rifle being used at the time, the M-14.
"Indeed, the exact type of rifle Oswald used to kill Kennedy was
still being used at the time [in 1964] by the Italian NATO rifle team
in competition."
