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UR_CONSPIRACY

                                              July 11, 2004

To take the "ur conspiracy"
as an example -- the
conspiracy that put the          Well... at least it put them
conpiracy theorists on the       in their current place on the
map:                             intellectual landscape.

  The assassination of JFK.                     Maybe that's
                                                "off of the map".
A lot of energy has been put into
raking over the Warren Commission                  But polls show less than a
report, studying the frames of                     third of the people buy the
the Zapruder film, looking over                    lone assassin theory.
the background of Oswald...

I'm not up on the details
of these disputes and I        The theorists have a number of
have no conclusion that I      interesting points, but they
want to present on whether     don't always impress with
Kennedy was killed by a lone   their intellectual rigor.
assassin, on who might have
been behind a conspiracy to    E.g. what possible reason
kill Kennedy, and so on.       could Oswald have for
                               waiting until the last        The opposing view
                               minute to get off a shot?     is that there were
                                                             multiple gunmen,
                                     Well: maybe he was      and that a single
But the notion that the CIA--        indecisive and          shot from the
or some faction inside the CIA--     wasted time stalling,   book repo doesn't
might have had a president           then decided to go      cover the amount
killed remains interesting, not      for it at the last      of damage that
because it's proven, or even         moment. Why not?        was done...
provable, but simply because it                              If Oswald (or
can be made to sound plausible.                              someone) fired
                                                             from there, the
The fact that such things         To make it sound           reason they waited
seem *possible* is already        plausible to most          was for the car to
a strong inditement against       people, my                 get in range
the CIA and friends:              experience is              of the other guns.
                                  that all you need
   Perhaps a free                 to do is lay out             Plausible, but
   country shouldn't              a motive:                    Oswald's pause
   have a secret                                               doesn't prove it.
   police, eh?                    Kennedy was angry with
                                  the CIA because he felt
                                  manipulated into the "Bay
                                  of Pigs" fiasco.  A memo
                                  exists where Kennedy said
                                  he wanted to "scatter the
                                  CIA to the winds".
             Convicting                                    MOTIVATIONAL_BIND
             just based               From a report in
             on motive alone          "The New York Times",
             would seem to            April 25, 1966:
             reflect a funny          "C.I.A.: Maker of
             attitude...              Policy or Tool?"

   Is it okay with you for the            [ref]
   CIA to be capable of doing
   anything given a motive?

You'll just cross your fingers
and hope they'll never want to
do anything bad?




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