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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3243 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 9, 2024

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A few years ago I read an article on Quillette called "My Misspent Years of Conspiracism", in which the author describes how he was taken in by Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK which alleges a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy, and how he subsequently came around to the idea that the Warren Commission's conclusions were accurate: JFK was killed by two rounds fired from the Texas school book depository by Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted alone. He explained the turning point in disabusing him of his misconceptions about the assassination was the TV documentary The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy. Not being especially well-versed in the various conspiracies surrounding the JFK assassination, I was persuaded by this article, and by its assertion that pretty much everything in the film JFK (which I haven't seen) is nonsense.

Today I've been reading some of the Wikipedia articles about the assassination, including the master article and the article about the assorted conspiracy theories (there's also one about the Dictabelt recording and the single-bullet theory, which I haven't gotten to yet). I'm currently watching the Beyond Conspiracy documentary mentioned in the article and it's fascinating (available here, but you need a Vimeo account). I was intrigued by this paragraph from the master article:

All remaining assassination-related records were scheduled to be released by October 2017, with the exception of documents certified for continued postponement by succeeding presidents due to "identifiable harm... to the military, defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations... of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure." President Donald Trump said in October 2017 that he would not block the release of documents, but in April 2018—the deadline he set to release all JFK records—Trump blocked the release of some records until October 2021. President Joe Biden, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, delayed the release further, before releasing 13,173 unredacted documents in 2022. A second group of files were unsealed in June 2023, at which point 99 percent of documents had been made public.

Two questions:

  1. Did the documents released since 2017 contain any bombshells? Have any conspiracies (or any components of conspiracies) been vindicated by the release of these documents?
  2. Even if the film JFK is a load of tripe, is it entertaining enough to be worth a watch? Or can you only get any enjoyment out of it if you're a true believer? Speaking as someone with decidedly mixed feelings on Stone as both a director and a screenwriter: Platoon was okay, Wall Street is trash, Alexander dragged on for bloody years, Natural Born Killers was eh (although I was probably about twelve years old when I saw it and perhaps too young to really get it), Midnight Express was somewhat entertaining but also the most unabashedly racist Hollywood film I've ever seen - come to think of it, the only film in which Stone had any involvement which I can say I love without qualification is Scarface.
  1. There’s some interesting new stuff in there, like new information on Oswald’s activities and movements in the months leading up to the assassination. There are no bombshells. Even if Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy, I highly doubt any of that would end up written down.
  2. It’s pretty good and worth a watch. Even if you just take it as fiction, it’s a fairly well constructed thriller. As someone interested in the JFK assassination I find it a little annoying since I’m constantly trying to parse actual historical stuff (of which to be fair there is a lot) from things Oliver Stone added. Additionally a lot of it is based on Jim Garrison’s theories, and Jim Garrison was in some ways kind of a loon.

I personally think the circumstances around Kennedy’s assassination stink like hell. I would go off at length here, but I would rather eventually put it all together in an effort post.

I wonder why they would bother with not releasing these latest documents if they all amount to a nothingburger.

I also wonder if the last 1% of documents is something that the CIA/DoD did which wouldn't reflect well on the US. Like some sort of reprisal or dirty tricks against the soviets.

Ostensibly it’s to protect “sources and methods.” For example, that would include tradecraft techniques for contacting moles, or bugging and trailing sources. Technology changes, but a lot of those methods might be just as useful today as they were in 1963. Or documents might mention agents embedded in hostile foreign countries like Cuba who are still alive and might be subject to arrest and execution if their names are revealed. Conspiratorially, even if there’s nothing damning in the files, there could be evidence that might be linked to shady business, or small details that contradict the Warren Report, or possibly obvious holes in the investigative methodology that points to an after the fact cover-up.

I'd love to see that effort post. Love the username by the way.

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