Reply #97: Eating crow soon? Hmm. I hear the same stuff from religious types who assure me that

[stopbush]

"you'll find out soon enough that hell exists for non-believers."

A point of agreement: I believe that conspiracies do exist. I believe that conspiracies exist to carry out political assassinations. Two examples: Abraham Lincoln and Anwar Sadat. Both were assassinated as the end result of conspiracies aimed at killing them. That's what the EVIDENCE shows.

That is NOT what the evidence shows in the JFK killing. Quite the opposite.

As to your question, "What would you do, how would you react, what would you say, if facts and testimony came forth that proved without a shadow of a doubt that the CIA did in fact kill JFK?"

Answer: I would accept facts (evidence) that proved such a thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. Testimony? I'd be less impressed with testimony, just as any court in the land is less impressed with eyewitness testimony than they are with forensic evidence. Anyone who has seen the movie "Who Shot Liberty Valence?" knows the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Anyone who has tried to determine a football play before watching it in slo-mo knows that eyewitness testimony is not exactly to be trusted as the final word.

But here's my overall problem with your question: the idea that the CIA was involved in killing JFK has NO facts to support it at this time. I'm talking about FACTS, not about conjecture, not about tying together odds and ends of disparate narratives and weaving them into a grand conspiracy.

The fact is that your theory that the CIA was involved has miles to travel before it establishes even Fact One. The distance from establishing Fact One to establishing evidence that "proved without a shadow of a doubt that the CIA did in fact kill JFK" can be measured in light years.

And that must be set against the forensic evidence, testimony etc. that was gathered in the WCR, and that was reviewed in detail by three other exhaustive commissions that proved that Oswald did the killing and that the CIA was not involved. That's the kind of evidence that rational and logical people would NORMALLY consider to be beyond a shadow of a doubt.

All of these shadowy scenarios that so enamor you are pure conjecture. Why can't you see that? Most importantly, the fact remains that even if somebody has motive and opportunity to carry out a killing it doesn't mean they actually carried it out.

Here's a fact for you to consider: on the morning of Nov 22 1963, a man was overheard saying that "if a person really wanted to kill the president, all they would need to do is get themselves up in a high building with a high-powered rifle and there's nothing anyone could do to stop them."

You may be surprised to know that even though this little morsel was overheard by a government official, the person who said this was never brought in for questioning after the JFK killing. They were never detained before the killing. In fact, there is no record at all that this person was ever called to testify anywhere about the killing, nor were they ever interviewed by even the most-rabid CTist.

The reason? Those words were spoken by JFK himself on that fateful morning. They were spoken in his hotel room in Ft Worth and were overheard by both Jackie and Ken O'Donnell.

Yet, were I to follow the "logic" of what the typical JFK CTist considers to be evidence, those words as spoken by JFK - and WHEN they were spoken by JFK - SHOULD serve to make JFK himself a prime suspect in his own murder. After all, he described his own killing EXACTLY as it went down, even down to such details as the type of weapon used and the vantage point from which the shooter would shoot.

Think about that. Then think about the kind of "evidence" the theories that you seem to believe put forward as "proof" for their claims. They will have nothing on the words JFK himself spoke that morning.