I never thought we'd learn who Deep Throat was, but we did. Somebody will say something on their deathbed. Besides, no one's investigated my favorite theory -- that Jackie had him whacked for cheating on her.

The mob, maybe, but I find it pretty hard to believe that CIA agents would kill the president. Then again, just last week I'd have found it pretty hard to believe that an Army psychiatrist would commit mass murder, either. I don't really remember the JFK assassination; I was only four. I do remember in the following days that something monumental was going on on TV - monumental enough to preempt the soap operas that my mom usually watched that time of day. That somebody important had died in a far-away place was all that I really took from it.

dbreneman: Any CIA types involved would have been "contract employees"---that is, independent contractors typically hired for operational activity-- rather than career CIA officers. Many of such were involved in the Bay of Pigs operation and, for that matter, in other places during that Cold War period where the agency itself had to be once removed from dirty work.
(If such freelancers were involved in the JFK killing, it probably would have been without knowledge of agency management or career officers).

I should have mentioned a couple other theories---neither of which I find credible.

First, there was the notion that LBJ was involved in the killings, backed and paid for by right-wing Texans. Johnson, as vice president, had warned JFK not to go to Dallas on the day of his assassination. The political
atmosphere there was poisonous. UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been spat upon a month earlier by hyper-conservative protesters following a speech in Dallas. Moreover, LBJ was no right-winger and himself was
an object of hatred for his support of civil-rights and social-welfare
policies.

Second, there remains the longstanding notion that JFK was murdered by
right-wingers because he wanted to end the Cold War and withdraw from Vietnam. JFK, indeed, had undertaken arms-control and other initiatives toward relaxation of tensions with the USSR. But he nonetheless was a staunch anti-Communist and had run to the hawkish side of Richard Nixon in their 1960 contest for the Presidency. The Cuban Missile Crisis, forcing withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba, and the aborted Bay of Pigs
invasion had only recently taken place. I always thought JFK's detachment and sense of realism would have led him to abandon eventually our Vietnam
involvement. However, at the time of his death, we were in fact deepening it.

Oswald's murder by Ruby, a Chicago outfit guy, fit the classic pattern
of the "shoot-the-shooter" tactic employed to silence those who might talk.
Ruby died in jail and always characterized his murder of Oswald as undertaken for patriotic motives to avenge JFK's killing. A large number
of persons with possible involvement in, or knowledge of, a plot to kill JFK died in following months and years under sometimes murky circumstances.
But the number was so large that it would have taken a sophisticated,
hyper-organized operation to silence them all. I find it unlikely that
one or more of these persons would not have talked, in the ensuing period,
before their demise. Were their deaths a coincidence? Probably so.

The presence of some sort of reactionary right wing force in this Country cannot be denied, when looking at the sum of events. Locally most significant of those was Thomas Wales, a prep school classmate of Joseph (?) Kennedy. The context here for that killing is the clearest lens we have into these issues, and it sure as anything wasn't a ceasefire activist.

I attended Nixon Elementary, site of the birthplace, now presidential library. In 73/74 we had an ongoing demonstration (hippie camp) and tons of attention. Now, visiting that Orange County landmark I can almost reach out and touch the beast, very scary.

We will likely never find the killer of Kennedy - that does not mean the contextual operations which led to his death cannot be strongly opposed.

Another thing, no reason to suppose it wasn't some combination of all three of Van Dyk's theories - a Texas branch of the Chicago outfit/political machine with military/intelligence connections which stood to benefit from a Johnson presidency, perhaps?

Mr. Van Dyk, Your head is usually on good and tight. On this one though, you have a screw loose. Americans have grasped at these conspiracy straws for decades -- the Soviets, Castro, the CIA, The Mob -- none have panned out even in the slightest. All solid evidence, whether eyewitness, physical, or otherwise points to Oswald as the lone gunman. It's difficult to come to grips with the fact that some singular bozo could shoot and kill our beloved president, but that's what happened. He took advantage of his job in the book depository, brought his weapon, created a sniper's perch, and blasted away as the motorcade passed by. He was the only employee missing when they took a head count. Just down the street, for no particular reason, he shot and killed a Dallas patrol officer with the pistol he was carrying. Why? Because he had just shot the president and didn't want to get caught. The Soviets thought Oswald was either an American plant or an idiot. Either way they wanted nothing to do with him. It was only after Oswald attempted suicide that they allowed him to stay. Ruby was NOT part of the Chicago mob. He was a wannabe and a schmoe. The mob in Chicago wanted nothing to do with him. ...And on and on. It's smart folks such as yourself who continue to perpetuate this hollow hope that someone, anyone, acted in consort to kill the president. Get a grip. Lee H. Oswald, who had just attempted and failed to shoot an army general, for whatever reason, took a mail-order Italian POS rifle, his experience as a trained Marine, and as best he could, popped off a handful of rounds, three of which hit their targets. The end of a sorry story. Stop looking for a conspiracy where none exists.

Heywood: Yours is the conventional explanation. It could be right. However, Oswald's long history was one of a pawn---someone's pawn. And there are just too many unconnected dots...and too many intersecting coincidences to make the explanation fully convincing. Yes, Ruby was a fringe character but he did have a background of connection to the Chicago mob. Had he been told to shoot, he would have shot, without question.
Also hard to understand why Oswald, at least publicly identified as a fellow-traveling Leftist (defection to the USSR, Fair Play for Cuba Committee, etc.), would one day be talking about shooting a right-wing
general in Dallas and, the next, be shooting JFK. Did he squeeze off several rounds from the Book Depository? Did he shoot a Dallas policeman a bit later? Yep. That does not mean he did the whole thing alone and at his own initiative. I did not discuss the discrepancies between accounts of physicians who examined JFK's body in Dallas and those who later examined it in D.C.

I normally do not subscribe to conspiracy theories. For one thing, just about any enterprise has enough screwups and mistakes to
make an air-tight conspiracy improbable. But I have not been alone in suspecting one in this instance. I mentioned that LBJ, for one, did not believe Oswald acted alone. His gut instinct told him that was the case and so has mine. If you are right, we can stop our speculations now.

John Laine's "A Kiss for the President" is a bada-bing, electrifying novel set in the 1950s during the rule of Castro. In 1958 the mafia had millions invested in Havana casinos and the bosses were very happy with the way things were run. Fidel Castro put a big dent in the mob's profits when he closed all the casinos and organized crime's assets were seized. Sal Morano was one of those mob bosses affected and he wasn't happy. Morano learns through one of his contacts, a New York congressman, that the CIA plans to invade Cuba and restore American property, but they're in need of funding in order to put their covert operation into action. Who better to finance than those who can leave no paper trail and who have everything to gain? Morano puts together a team of the mafia's most elite and "connected" members to finance the invasion and the election of JFK. Everything seems to be going according to plan when Kennedy becomes President. But there's a glitch in the plan when JFK fails to oust Castro. The boys aren't happy- Sal, along with other high powers, are taking JFK's failed promise very personally. Everyone knows you don't renege on a promise to the mafia- especially to Sal Morano. Sal has connections all right; some of which are very close to the President. Laine takes the reader on a whirlwind of a ride with an absorbing plotline that moves seamlessly to the upper echelons of dirty politics to the mafia's hard-core tactics.
Buy this exciting new novel today at: http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/AKissforthePresident.html

Okay Mr. Van Dyk, Let's tackle a few of your remaining issues. Ruby for one. Let's pretend you are Jack Ruby the hot-headed strip club owner who had a reputation as a loser among the hoods he tried to hang with in Chicago. Now as Ruby you are given the biggest assignment of your life -- Kill Oswald to shut him up to protect the boys in the Mob who put out the hit on JFK. This Mr. Ruby, is your time to prove what a big man you are and to get some respect, right? You have been given this job in advance and told exactly what to do. Imagine how this would play in Ruby's mind. He would obsess on this assignment like no other. It will be his big chance. Well, Ruby's "hit" played nothing like that in the minutes prior to his shooting of Oswald. A time stamp on the Western Union ticket showed that just about 45 minutes before his hit job, he wired money to a stripper who had asked him for it. Also, at the same time, he left his beloved dog in the car as he went inside the Dallas police garage. No, Mr. Van Dyk, these were not the actions of a man about to undertake the biggest mob job of his life. If he had this assignment from Chicago, he would have told the stripper to forget it, as he was too busy. Then he would never have brought his precious dog to the job. No, indeed. This was not the behavior of a man about to make history and his bones for the mafia. Ruby's shooting of Oswald reeked of impulsiveness. He had his gun, he saw his moment, and he made his play. This was not acting on orders from his Chicago masters, it was an improvised action based on his anger. More...

Mr. Van Dyk, You ask, why would an avowed leftist, Oswald, attempt to shoot a right-wing general followed by an assassination of liberal JFK? Because of JFK's left-leaning politics, it just doesn't make sense, right? First of all, you can't assign rationality to the likes of Oswald. This is a perennial loser who wants desperately to be somebody. With his job at the book depository in place, the shooting of JFK was just happenstance. With the parade moving right under his window, he saw it as an opportunity to vent his frustration by shooting the president, as he tried earlier with the army general. C'mon, it didn't matter that JFK's politics were liberal. It mattered only that he was driving by. Don't put rational left/right political thought on Oswald. He was way beyond rational. Oswald was an impulsive loser trying to be somebody, plain and simple. Don't construct a Rubik's Cube from of a game of tic-tac-toe.

Lastly, Mr. Van Dyk, no, you are not alone in thinking the assassination of JFK was conspiratorial in nature. The American public, including LBJ, couldn't fathom this horrendous crime being committed by a lone kook. Something this huge in scope and historical significance had to have been planned and executed by outside forces. It just HAD to. The "lone gunman" is the most difficult of notions to believe. Well folks, get over it. After all these years not one shred of real evidence has surfaced to connect the assassination of JFK with anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald. There has been plenty of conjecture by smart people such as yourself, but not one witness or solid forensic clue. If there had been, there would have been an army of criminologists, lawyers and politicians who would have jumped all over it. So sorry to let everyone down. Oswald, with his superior Marine training, committed the crime of the century, without any help.

Has Lou Dobbs found he has an ounce of sense left and taken indefinite leave from others like him, loudmouth inciteful hate-directing gas bags who hate Fairness Doctrine? Just try not to make things worse, Lou, OK? Don't invest in crap.

Mr. Van Dyk, many of us are "living survivors" of Kennedy's assassination. That simply means we were alive then.

What really throws me in all that you say is this: "After a few moments, not knowing what else to do, we resumed our session as if nothing had happened. I cut my lecture short and went to a discussion period."

You have got to be kidding. You went to a DISCUSSION PERIOD when you thought the President and Vice President were dead??!!?

Sarah: I indicated I was a living survivor of 1960s national politics, not JFK's assassination. An obviously failed attempt at irony.

It is interesting what people will do, and how they will act, under tension or strain. The people at the Defense Intelligence lecture all were career officers and trained to carry on in all circumstances. I suspect we all were in shock---and simply continued, until we got official word of what had happened. Then we all departed in silence..a silence, as I mentioned, which generally prevailed throughout the city on that day.