I did locate the Author who discusses the Zapruder film in context, that I referenced in another comment.
He’s pretty damn objective & doesn’t go off on totally crazy stuff. He maintains the assassination was in-progress, seconds before the film started recording, and the resultant misunderstanding of that, led to numerous errors being made by trying to make reality fit what the film showed.

> His Global Point is: the film isn’t security-camera video & doesn’t represent the whole event.
Then, it goes on to become this iconic-film which “documented” the “death of Camelot,” and spawned an entire conspiracy-theory Industry. He would maintain that LHO performed the act, the 1st shot was deflected.

“From Rorschach Test to Time Clock: The Zapruder Film”
Max Holland
Sixth Floor Museum presentation
https://youtu.be/NHrxyGF6ZIw

about an hour.
-Of the thousand’s of totally whacky vids one could watch, this is not bad at all and considerably less whacky than most.
(I am biased of course, because I believe the guy. Others will differ.)

Cotour– the “Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza” people host a lot of researchers/authors, of all stripes. If you like this stuff–they are a good source to consider.
http://emuseum.jfk.org/
–and tangentially– The Spy Museum people, they have regular lectures on “spy-stuff,” highly interesting!

Look at it this way, I was comparing you to the brilliant Dr. Sheldon Cooper LOL

Wayne, I initially scoffed at the Accidental Discharge theory as well, but my reading of the original book by the Ballistician, and then the subsequent book which further explored the idea, both rang true to me based on my experience and training.

While I was assigned to our “CSI” unit for several years, I went to a ton of accidental shootings (and a lot more non-accidental…LOL), mostly hunting accidents, but also just people mishandling a weapon they were unfamilar with.

I have never been happy with the radically different ways that JFK was wounded and a low-velocity heavy bullet to the neck, and a high velocity lighter bullet to the head answer all of those questions.

Mitch said: “….on the surface I find it interesting because if a secret service agent accidentally shot JFK it would provide a motive for a broad cover-up. The parties involved would justify bending the truth to protect the agent and agency, after all Oswald did shoot the President with intent to kill why hang the agent and embarrass the agency?…”

Correct, and again the behaviour of these Agents after the fact all points to them wanting to avoid any real questions. If the book is correct, they screwed up big time and naturally wanted it to all go away. Blaming the “kill” shot on Oswald was the obvious way for that to happen.

And as the book points out, JFK would almost certainly have died just from the neck and throat wound, the head shot just made it happen a lot quicker. So Oswald was guilty of killing JFK in any case, but I believe that of all the “second gunman” theories, only this one has a chance of explaining all of the contradictory evidence.

A quick 3 min video with an animated view of the theory:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQLx02Sv9DI

Majestic-12 Leadership
“Dark Skies” (NBC)
https://youtu.be/z7HjOrGG4Ys
(4:52)

Cotour– seriously, there are something like 150+ separate & individual “theories” floating around on JFK.
The accidental discharge version is relatively newer and it does have the feature of being (initially) less-complex than some others.

I don’t entirely or flippantly disregard all these “theories,” but I have to draw the line somewhere for myself, and move on.

Yowza– 10 degree wind-chill & snowing heavily in my zone.

2. Kennedy was at odds with the CIA, fired Dulles, who apparently ignored him and showed up at work anyway. The Dulles brothers originated and ran a lot of the CIA’s world wide activities in influencing governments after WW11 when we basically owned most of the world. Some Irish / Catholic spoiled, “idealistic” rich boy is going to tell them what they would be doing? J. Edgar must have had one hell of a file on JFK and his father.

3. Kennedy screwed the Bay of Pigs invasion.

4. Kennedy was not on board with the Viet Nam war and the military industrial complex’s agenda.

5. Kennedy double crossed the Mob after they helped ensure his presidential win. And they lost a lot of money and assets when Castro took over, I think they might have wanted that back and Kennedy denied them what was theirs.

6. A Mob member spur of the moment shoots Oswald.

Lots of very big and pissed off interests had vested interested in the project, not to mention that JBJ hated him and probably did not shed a tear for him.

But I never heard of the “accidental shooting” theory.
I’ll have to check the link later but on the surface I find it interesting because if a secret service agent accidentally shot JFK it would provide a motive for a broad cover-up. The parties involved would justify bending the truth to protect the agent and agency, after all Oswald did shoot the President with intent to kill why hang the agent and embarrass the agency?
Of course the theory must still fit known evidence.

It could be argued JFK’s assassination and the doubts surrounding it started an erosion in the public’s trust of authority. Wouldn’t it be ironic if a seemingly minor “bending of the facts” to avoid embarrassment resulted in decades of debate and mistrust.
Brings to mind Obama and Hillary lying about the Tripoli attack that killed Stevens being due to a spontaneous riot caused by a video.

Stay warm! (maybe a little mushy snow predicted for the NYC metro)

S.O.M. is just a more concise way in somewhat of a formulaic model that represents Machiavellian observations of the various justifications in the application of power where the ends can justify the means if the ends are determined to be essential. And the mistaken moral perspective that the every day individual tends to limit themselves by. Fairly simple.

Was the Donner party moral? When the food runs out and the snow is high, where does morality go? It becomes optional until those pressures of survival are “normalized”. “First we eat, then civilization.”

And these phenomenon that have been observed and recorded for hundreds, even thousands of years are IMO something rather than nothing. I am not stating what they are or are not, but they are, like it or not. Our ability to perceive and properly understand them may be limited related to them, but there they are.

I know that statement tends to drive a “scientist” or “engineer” totally insane. But there it is :)

I’ve seen that particular author you referenced, explain his accidental-discharge theory (and yes, he explains it all quite well I might add.) It certainly is, less-complicated, than the grassy-knoll guy, the umbrella man, the Mafia, “Cubans,” etc., but I’m not entirely satisfied with it myself. It raises more questions, in my mind, than it answers.

Saw an Author recently propose:
The Zapruder film– he was not sure how much film he had in his camera; he filmed a few seconds of the front of the motorcade then turned the camera off and waited briefly until he could see the car that carried JFK. When he turned the camera back on, (this theory proposes) Oswald had already fired the first shot, it was already in-flight and missed. The next 3 shots did all the damage, and those are on the Zapruder film.
[this is the theory that the first shot was deflected by the street-light pole and/or the tree branches. First shot would have been the easiest & closest.]
This author proposes that everyone, including the Warren Commission, “got stuck on the Zapruder film being a “complete film record of the entire assassination,”” when it isn’t actually “complete.” Zapruder thought he filmed “the entire incident,” but he did not. Then the Warren Commission proceeded from a mistaken premise and had to contort some “facts” to match up with what they thought they were seeing on film.

I’d put up a link to this guy, but there’s like “20 million entries” at Google and I can’t readily locate it right now.

Personally, I’m convinced it was LOH alone. (But, no matter….)

Yo– any snow in Massachusetts? Massive artic-cold front moving into the Midwest today, and getting colder. We’re predicted to get 7 inches by Friday evening.

All I could picture was “The Big Bang Theory” when an unsuspecting person asks Sheldon a seemingly innocent question and the room erupts in a chorus of “NOOOOOO’s!” LOL!

Cotour said:
“….What compelled me? Mathematics and physics and the words of men and attempting to reconcile the two….”

HA! You might as well be trying to reconcile Newtonian Physics with Quantum Mechanics……. or explain why Men and Women see the exact same thing and draw completely opposite conclusions… LOL!!

And while I am here and the Kennedy Assassination is on the table, the only “Conspiracy Theory” that I put any weight behind is that Oswald fired two shots, one that missed and ricocheted off the pavement, and a second that struck JFK in the neck.

The third shot, the Head Shot, came from the car behind his…… which was full of hungover SS Agents and contained a single M-16 rifle with the safety off. When the first shot rang out, one of the Agents grabbed the rifle (which, being a new issue weapon, he was unfamiliar with) , stood up in the still moving car and started to look around for a shooter. There is a picture that shows this agent waving the rifle around at that moment and it was pointed in the general direction of the Presidents car….

The theory, presented by a very skilled ballistician in the 80’s, is that the Agent had an accidental discharge of a high velocity round that violently shattered the President skull and then disintegrated into small bits, unlike the round that passed thru JFK’s neck which remained incredibly intact.

It is a compelling theory and explains so much, even the sound of the shot bouncing off the Grassy Knoll heard by so many.

There have been two books written about this and both are fascinating, Here is the more recent one:

https://www.amazon.com/Mortal-Error-ballistics-astonishing-discovery/dp/0312080743/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1481206599&sr=8-13&keywords=jfk+assassination+books+secret+service

As a career cop, I agree with Mitch that stated above that the most simple explanation is almost always the correct one, and that human error is both common and often denied.

Enjoy Feynman greatly, glad you liked that talk. (only our technology changes, bureaucracies’ are amazingly consistent across centuries.)

Tangentially– Dr. Roger Penrose has a new book out and is currently on a “book-tour.”

Roger Penrose:
“Fashion, Faith and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe”
https://youtu.be/rnDXYrIBnP4

descriptor blurb:
“Penrose argues that fashion, faith, and fantasy, while sometimes productive and even essential in physics, may be leading today’s researchers astray in three of the field’s most important areas–string theory, quantum mechanics, and cosmology. Arguing that string theory has veered away from physical reality by positing six extra hidden dimensions, Penrose cautions that the fashionable nature of a theory can cloud our judgment of its plausibility. In the case of quantum mechanics, its stunning success in explaining the atomic universe has led to an uncritical faith that it must also apply to reasonably massive objects, and Penrose responds by suggesting possible changes in quantum theory. Turning to cosmology, he argues that most of the current fantastical ideas about the origins of the universe cannot be true, but that an even wilder reality may lie behind them. Finally, Penrose describes how fashion, faith, and fantasy have ironically also shaped his own work, from twistor theory, a possible alternative to string theory that is beginning to acquire a fashionable status, to “conformal cyclic cosmology,” an idea so fantastic that it could be called “conformal crazy cosmology.””

On the right I meet too many people who are susceptible to other conspiracy thinking.
To those people I point out that if there is a vast Dem/Repub Clinton/Bush conspiracy how did Trump win the election? (Gosh if Bush and cronies can paint the World Trade Center with “nano-thermite” or use a disintegrating ray (Dr Wood) and fly holographic missile armed jetliners, surely they can keep Trump from winning).

It’s tough to sort out what is going on.
Consume a variety of news sources and digest with a heavy dose of common sense along with a swig of historical perspective.

Wayne, I listened to Feynman’s Los Alamos recollections (fun stuff – note all the petty silliness even during this most secret, intense project).
Right now I’m checking out the Mattis interview Wodun linked.
He says GHW Bush was right to limit the 1991 Gulf War… this Mattis fellow IS a clear headed thinker.

I as well, believe people have seen “objects in flight which are not identified.” (by definition…)
— I just strongly doubt they are extra-terrestrial in origin. Not “impossible,” but extremely improbable.
In my youth, I dug a little bit deeper into all this “alternative stuff,” and while the body of literature is indeed wide, it’s not very deep. There’s no “there” there. Most of these things, collapse pretty quickly under scrutiny.

That being said– as long as the “alternative-science” movement/people/stuff, doesn’t impact my liberty, or cost me money —people can think whatever they want.

Richard Feynman
“This is the way nature works”
QED Lecture at University of Auckland
https://youtu.be/t-jpH1ue6Zs
(6:36)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMIyDf3gBoY

Seems to me many that follow such thinking were brought up believing father always knows best, the clergyman is totally moral and uncorrupt and the President is the smartest man in the world.
Then when growing up they discover that’s not always true, are genuinely shocked and think they’ve stumbled on some hidden secret and everything they thought was true is now suspect.

As far as truths there is no absolute. Absolute is the province of faith.
Notice courts use standards of fact such as “beyond a reasonable doubt” or ‘preponderance of evidence”.
When the evidence for something is very strong and generally accepted (e.g. the earth is round) we consider it “true”.
History, politics, human intentions are a lot fuzzier.
And “But I saw it on the internet” is fuzziest of all.
Discovering we don’t know something that we once thought we understood is not proof of a conspiracy.
Discovering someone lied to you does not mean they are part of a vast plot to deceive and control the world (the cause of the lie is usually far more mundane).
I do believe in UFOs – I believe people have seen objects that appeared to be flying that have not been identified. As far as what they are I remain open minded because I don’t see enough evidence to draw a conclusion.

BTW was that Bigfoot guy on a date with Amy Schumer? He did say “like f*cking a German woman”!

https://youtu.be/e-g3OlX7AuQ

The Norwegians are serious about it, what ever it is.

“Coast-to-Coast AM’s Art Bell was cast as a member of the Majestic-12 Board of Directors in the “We Shall Overcome” episode of the primetime NBC/Sony TV series “Dark Skies.” Bell played William S. Paley, the famous CBS network president. This clip also features the excellent Don Moss playing Hubert Humphrey.”

They are either actors playing out a script for the many reasons that exist to spread disinformation, or they are psychologically unbalanced and believe their own stories that they tell to others, or…………….what else?

Its easy to just brush them off but there they are just the same.

Apparently we learned different lessons. You learned conspiracy and I learned engineering. Must be our personality differences.

However, you seem to have taken a reduced emphasis on the danger of radiation (did McMillan know the extent of the actual danger?) with an additional concern for national security and assumed an identical action by a different team of people on a different continent and about a different subject with different levels of national security concerns. Aren’t you comparing apples to Cadillacs? Aren’t you assuming that all people act exactly the same, even under different conditions? Should that really change our answers to your two questions?

Should we also not be answering whether or not FDR let the Pearl Harbor attack happen so that he had an excuse to enter the war? I had a grade school teacher who insisted this was true.

You wrote: “So understanding this we ask : What is the truth?”

A more important question is whether we would recognize the truth, especially those who assume everything is a conspiracy. Thus, a conspiracy theorist (is that the right phrase?) also would assume that the truth were only another conspiracy.

If no one has knowledge of UFOs shutting down our nuclear missiles, is that proof that it happened? After all, if no one is talking, that is proof of the extent of the conspiracy.

wayne,
The story that I heard was that three science fiction authors were discussing what would happen if a new religion were formed. Heinlein wrote a story about it, “Stranger In A Strange Land.” Hubbard did it, Scientology.

Also, if you get cold in space, just turn around and face the sun. That is the warm side.

And thank you for the advice on checking my basement. I would hate to turn out like Sutherland. Or Pelosi or Reid.

Don’t know who these people are, but yes, not a governmental sanctioned hearing.
Just watched the first few minutes. I’ll try to give it a fair, complete view, tonight.

I’d pivot back to Mitch’s initial point(s) & throw in some quantum-mechanic’s (very loosely):
Everything can happen, but most things don’t happen. The least complicated answer is often more true than not.

tangent, and I’ll disengage…
Majestic-12 Leadership
https://youtu.be/z7HjOrGG4Y
(4 minutes)

Something related, getting a bit off subject, what think you?

https://youtu.be/FbBc_LmXkbQ

Is this testimony real (I think it is not in front of Congress but a private organization)?

These seem to be credible, serious as a heart attack military officers. Is it a psyops operation that is testing security? Are all of these people hypnotized or under drug control?

I have a friend who worked in servicing these kind of missiles and I asked him if he knew of these events, he said he did, they were real (what ever they were, I am not saying what they were).

Does anyone else here know of or know anyone who worked these systems and have any knowledge of these events?

Jerry Mathers discusses the urban myth of his “death in Vietnam”
https://youtu.be/TkqG31mFn9U
(3:43)

Garry–
I’ll give bigfoot-guy the benefit of the doubt and say;
ingenious click-bait for his Dog business website. I wonder what his conversion-rate is?

—I do find all the alternative-stuff to be “interesting,” & I’m a fan of well-done S-F as well. I generally classify the “alternative-stuff” into the realm of Philosophy until such time as it morphs more into Science.
I don’t discount all of this stuff off-handedly, “I Want To Believe,” but…. “not my bag.”
(It’s all less-true than it is actually-true.)

A moderately well done series that didn’t last, but combines history/speculation/aliens all together, and “Project Majestic.” Nice blend of real-film and period-acting, it hits “everything” that went on in the 1960’s.

Preview for “Dark Skies” – 1996 TV Series
https://youtu.be/EKdZfXtAiKk

I threw in the Prompt Critical movie ‘cuz I thought you might enjoy it. .)
Just now realized you might enjoy it on more than 1 level–
If you were to watch as well, the “official” movie-version of the incident, put out by the Feds, it doesn’t match the “whole story,” as is presented in the Movie-version.

Fed version:
1961 Nuclear Reactor Meltdown :
The SL-1 Accident –
https://youtu.be/FAKcWM-yBkI

>”massaging reality,” yes “they” did do that on occasion.
It’s “controlled” reality, I do not deny that.

My general position is; there’s a whole lot of stuff “they” don’t tell us, and for dubious reason’s. Whether that morphs into actual “conspiracies,” is open to legit-debate.
My position is not that conspiracies don’t ever exist, but rather– there are far-less conspiracies afoot than is commonly thought by folks who are into that sorta thing. Have to put myself more in Mitch’s camp on all this type of stuff.

https://youtu.be/SjQdSJgRBLY

Frightening, 45 MPH! Evidence is hard to argue with.

British helped us develop the whole concept but then had to re-create everything from memory without blueprints. This was uncharted territory for them. Things went south, they made further decisions. Mistakes were made, etc. etc., etc.
–Not a nuclear-engineer. In retrospect, it does read like a series of blunders and maybe no single decision was make-or-break, but collectively, choices intersected at a fire.
–I believe I did see somewhere, the whole Windscale thing was highly classified & the “actual” records sealed for 40 years.

Just as a general aside:
Most “government records,” of a non-military/intelligence nature, are “confidential” for a set length of time. (think Census Records & your Mail Carrier’s Employee records, for example.)
There is a constant amount of “information” the Government collects/holds, that becomes available, on a yearly basis. Somebody however, has to actually go through archives and research this stuff.
Most records relating to WW-2 for example, didn’t become fully available, until the 80’s/90’s.

totally tangential– at the RAND website; they have a lot of their “historic” Reports available.
Stuff that was classified/restricted in the 1950’s but declassified in the ’90’s.
…of course, the “really-good-stuff,” remains classified/restricted.

more tangential–
Aliens did not crash at Roswell.
Oswald killed Kennedy.
Amelia Earhart crashed in the Pacific. She did agree to report on Japanese ship movements.
Judge Crater was not kidnapped by aliens.
Elvis is dead.
“Men in Black, ” is not a documentary.
Cross Circles are fake.
Aliens do not land in Nebraska.
Eric Von Dannekin (chariots of the god’s fame) was a huckster.
There is no “Bermuda Triangle.” (and no Atlantis, except the resort.)
Bigfoot does not exist.
D.B. Cooper did not survive the parachute-ride.
We did land on the Moon. (O.J. Simpson did land on Mars’ but that’s a movie…he’s in prison now.)
Robert Blake– I think he did it.
L.R. Hubbard (scientology) — Personality Dsorders’s

If you were to read it again and plug into it the subject matter we are discussing, The Warren Commission, The 9-11 report / NIST report, the Windscale report and what we already know about their contents as facts you might see some value and interconnected relevance in its structure.