Caltrops - Tansin A. Darcos's Alter Ego





	[quote name="Commander Tansin A. Darcos"]CSPan's booktv had a showing on a new book coming out by Roger Stone, "The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ" in which he argues that Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson had Kennedy killed so he could become President. This guy should not be confused with Oliver Stone, who directed "JFK" but as far as I'm concerned this Mr. Stone's book is as much fiction as the movie. Stone points out that LBJ was a bully, when he was in the Senate he used his large size to get in people's personal space to make them uncomfortable, and when he became President he'd have aides come into the toilet and continue to hold meetings even while he was taking a dump. These, I knew. Stone also states that LBJ went from being a poor man to a multimillionaire as a result of being a senator and later president. I didn't know that but knowing the sort of environment back then I could believe it. Graft and payoffs were very common back then, and according to Stone, if you were anyone running any business and wanted any kind of legislation passed you had to pay off LBJ to get it. So these I could believe. He also says Kennedy planned to pick someone else to be president until LBJ and another member of congress strongarmed Kennedy into picking him for Vice President. LBJ was asked why he'd choose to go from being an important senate leader to Vice President, a position having almost no power. LBJ reportedly said that 25% of all presidents died in office so he'd take those odds. Stone says when Johnson was VP Kennedy basically marginalized him; he wasn't kept in the loop of what was happening, he was mostly used for low-level meetings such as minor ceremonial functions, and more-or-less ignored him. He also says while LBJ was vice president he was being investigated for bribes he took while in the Senate, and he was very likely to go to prison, (similar to what happened to Vice President Spiro Agnew many years later although Stone didn't bring it up.) So LBJ has two choices, have Kennedy killed or end up disgraced and in prison. Okay, so I can buy all this as plausible. It's not one of those theories that are so ridiculous as to be laughable. Plus there were some mobsters who'd paid bribes so they wouldn't get deported and helped to swing votes in some counties to the Kennedy camp, and JFK's brother Bobby basically double-crossed them and as Attorney General, went after them. So far, I can accept all these as a reasonable possible hypothesis. He also says that another guy's thumb print was in the area of the 6th Floor of the Texas School Book Depository, which was then owned by a private company, and that someone else was hurredly leaving the building, who didn't even look like Oswald, who supposedly was on the 2nd floor at the time, as he said he was, because the power was out in the building, the elevators were not operating. Okay, so nothing Mr. Stone has said is out of the realm of possibility. He says he's done the research and many interviews. Now, next thing he says is that there was another shooter on the grassy knoll in front of Deally Plaza and there may have been one on the Gas Company building... Now he lost me and he drops into the tinfoil hat crowd of crazy idea people. Every single time someone has claimed (1) That you couldn't fire a Manchester-Carccanno rifle - a cheap Italian imported $12 rifle you could order by mail order (back then) - three times in 6 1/2 seconds; (2) that there was more than one shooter; (3) that there was a shooter on the Grassy Knoll in front and to the left of Kennedy's convertible and Deally Plaza; (4) that the shooter was anywhere other than above and to the right of JFK; (5) that one bullet could not have killed kennedy, bounced through him and broke Texas' Governor Connolly's wrist, they've been shown to be wrong. Stone admits that Oswald was in the Marines, and was a "marksman" which he says is the lowest grade that you can have and stay in the Marines. That's like a C grade, there's "Sharpshooter" which is like B grade; and there is "Expert" which is the best class of rifleman you can have. And the guy who actually shot Kennedy was actually an Expert, not a mere Marksman. Independent TV shows have shown that even a mere Marksman can fire a Manchester-Carcanno three times in 6 1/2 seconds. They've also done tests with bones and ballistic gel that one bullet could have done what happened with Kennedy and Connolly; the results were not exactly the same but were only slightly off because the bullet nicked one of the bones the wrong way and made a slightly different movement, but it still did almost exactly the same trajectory, and was in roughly the same condition as the one indicated as the so-called "magic" bullet. No magic was involved, just plain physics. The Zapruder film is the key; you can't reconcile the images on the film with any event except a shooter from anywhere other than behind Kennedy to his right and above him. There were only three shots, this has even been proven from re-examination of the audio recording made by the Dallas Police when a motorcycle officer had his mike open at the exact moment of the shooting. So you can argue that it was a conspiracy, and you can even argue it was someone other than Oswald who shot Kennedy. You cannot argue a conspiracy to shoot him (there could have been only one shooter), you can't argue that the shots came from anywhere but the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, you cannot argue more than one person shot him, you can't argue the shots took longer than about 6 1/2 seconds; you can't argue it took more than 3 shots; and you can't argue any shots came from the Grassy Knoll behind Zapruder and in front of Kennedy. Which puts this guy's book into the Tinfoil Hat bin of discredited theories of people who make an argument for something that the facts prove otherwise. Damn shame, if he hadn't tried to argue the discredited "grassy knoll" claim and a multiple shooter theory he might have had one of the first reasonable arguments to claim there was a conspiracy. [/quote]