Continuation JFK Conspiracy Theories VIII

[Allen773]

Originally Posted by smartcooky

In actual fact, the exact opposite is true. With a group involved in a conspiracy, there are many personalities in play. The more people who are involved in a conspiracy, the more chance there is that one of them won't be able to keep him mouth shut. The more the members of the group have to communicate with each other, the more chances there are to intercept those communications and to gather intel.

But the lone fanatic is a different proposition - he's the one factor that is the most difficult to prepare for. He does all the planning himself, he tells no-one what he is doing, and communicates with no-one else... James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, John Hinkley Jr, Mark David Chapman, Robert John Bardo.

Exactly.

The only one of those you named who I have any doubt as to whether he acted alone was James Earl Ray—there is some suspicion about his brothers possibly helping him, and in killing MLK he may have been trying to collect a bounty that some white supremacist businessmen in certain cities were raising (Kansas City or St. Louis IIRC, and probably some Southern cities). I’m sure these were some of the same men involved with the Klan and White Citizens’ Councils, which themselves had allies and members in local law enforcement in many places, especially the South—and Memphis is obviously in the South.

But white supremacists/segregationists being prominent in American politics and broader society isn’t exactly a conspiracy theory. And in any case the aforementioned businessmen, local cops and sheriffs’ departments, and so forth wouldn’t have been necessarily involved in Ray’s plot themselves—just providing monetary incentives or turning a blind eye to any racist who was willing to murder the nation’s most prominent black civil rights leader. And there were (and are) a lot of racists in America, unfortunately, and some of them are armed.

Moreover, I bet King would have encountered many more real or potential threats to his life than JFK or RFK, and was certainly less protected than the President. The FBI didn’t exactly like him (understatement). But your broader point about the lone assassin with nothing to lose being much more dangerous and harder to detect than a conspiracy is taken. I fully agree.

[pgwenthold]

Originally Posted by mikegriffith1

I've read many JFK assassination conspiracy books, and the overwhelming majority do not express "a world view that believes there is a conspiracy behind everything."

And it's worth mentioning again that a select committee of the U.S. Congress, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that two gunmen fired at JFK,

As has been noted, their basis for concluding there were two gunmen has crumbled. The dictabelt stuff does not support a second shooter, not at all.

Quote:

that someone inside the Dallas Police Department HQ building helped Jack Ruby get into the basement to shoot Oswald, that Oswald had a relationship with several radically anti-communist CIA assets, that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City, and that one of the gunmen who fired at JFK was on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza.

I am not sufficiently familiar with the HSCA report, can you point me to where they drew that conclusion and upon what basis they did?

I have never heard anyone attribute these conclusions to them previously.