On this day in 1963, Jack Ruby shot accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on live television, thus providing material for thousands of conspiracy theory books (including mine).
Ruby, the owner of a strip club in Dallas, said he was distraught by the tragedy of the John F. Kennedy assassination, and especially by its effect on Jacqueline Kennedy. He had visited the Dallas police station a couple of times during the 48 hours since Kennedy had been shot, milling around with reporters. On November 24, he wandered into the city jail basement just moments before the police moved Oswald to the county jail. As the prisoner moved past, Ruby lunged forward and shot him in the stomach:
Ruby’s murder of the man who had earlier shouted “I’m a patsy” caused millions to suspect a wider plot. Although the government’s official report on the assassination dampened speculation for a time, by the mid-1970s upwards of 90 percent of Americans believed in a conspiracy. The list of potential villains includes the Soviets, the CIA, the FBI, the secret service, the military-industrial complex, the mafia, Fidel Castro, anti-Castro Cubans, the Masons, the Jews, the Federal Reserve bank, aliens, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and Aristotle Onassis.
Ruby (born Jacob Rubenstein) had his own conspiracy theory: that anti-Semites would falsely accuse him of Kennedy’s murder and use his alleged guilt to justify a new holocaust. He told the Warren Commission that they had already begun their work and were torturing and killing Jews in Dallas. He died of cancer in 1967.
22 comments
November 24, 2008 at 4:43 pm
urbino
The list of potential villains includes the Soviets, the CIA, the FBI, the secret service, the military-industrial complex, the mafia, Fidel Castro, anti-Castro Cubans, the Masons, the Jews, the Federal Reserve bank, aliens, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and Aristotle Onassis.
LBJ seems worthy of mention.
November 24, 2008 at 5:12 pm
kathy
You’re right, urbino. Can’t believe I forgot the most obvious candidate.
November 24, 2008 at 5:23 pm
andrew
He had visited the Dallas police station a couple of times during the 48 hours since Kennedy had been shot, milling around with reporters.
Was he just hanging around, or was he trying to get information that would help him plan the shooting? (Not that he seems to have paid much attention to escape routes.)
November 24, 2008 at 5:43 pm
wilsonrofishing
I just wanted to write and say I enjoy your blog; I stumbled upon it by accident on the wordpress homepage and commenced to reading through it yesterday.
I don’t agree with everything you write, but I enjoy the presentation, the writing, and the scholarship. Please keep writing!
Bob W
November 24, 2008 at 7:32 pm
urbino
He really is the most likely suspect, kathy. I mean, anybody who would hold his dogs up by the ears…
November 24, 2008 at 8:08 pm
John Emerson
Kathy, do you believe that it was a conspiracy? There are so many loose ends in this case that it’s not possible for me to believe the official “lone madman” theory. Without guessing as to who it was, I assume that there were more people involved than Oswald. Somewhere in the Cuba-Mafia-CIA area, which doesn’t narrow it down much. (The conspiracy didn’t even have to be big-time people. I just don’t believe the official story, which is incredibly bizarre.)
As far as I can tell, after the Kennedy assassination the ridicule previously quite rightly heaped on the John Birch Society’s theory that Eisenhower was a Communist was adroitly shifted to anyone who doubted the Warren Commission story. The official story was so weird that multiple alternative theories popped up, some of them probably sponsored disinformation intended to discredit conspiracy theorists in general. Since then “conspiracy theorist” is used as a way of automatically rejecting anyone who says that important public figures are being deliberately dishonest.
To me the bottom line is: either the conspirators attained their goals, or they didn’t. In any case, it’s over and done with. Though if they did attain their goals, they shaped the world we live in.
November 25, 2008 at 7:23 am
Mark Boggs
I was commenting on this a few days ago over at positiveliberty.com. One of the posters lives in Dalls and has for 12 years but had never gone down to Dealey Plaza and looked at it.
For much of my youth, I was a die-hard conspiracy guy. I had all the books and knew all the players and all the strange twists and turns that the case took that were seemingly ignored by the Warren Commission.
Two things I could never get past:
1) Oswald shoots and kills Dallas PD officer JD Tippett. If you were innocent, why?
2) At a certain point, doesn’t the conspiracy become so large that the number of people involved become greater than the people who aren’t? And after all this time to have no credible person, on their death bed, offer up a confession?
Urbino,
Have you ever seen the pic of the guy winking at LBJ right before LBJ was sworn in on Air Force One before they fly back to DC? Always thought that was a creepy picture with a bigger story behind it. But then again, I was a conspiracy nut.
Had the great opportunity to interview David Belin, one of the Commission investigators whose job it was to determine whether Oswals acted alone. He was a lawyer in Des Moines, IA for a time. He insisted Oswald acted alone and I, being a conspiracy guy, ignored nearly every bit of the interview in the paper I was writing, leaning instead on the conspiracy authors like Lifton, Hurt, Garrison, etc. Sent Belin a copy after it was completed and he sent me a nice note back telling me in more than a few words that I was an idiot. Nice man, though.
November 25, 2008 at 7:26 am
Mark Boggs
And I think Ruby was more than chummy with the officers in the Dallas PD, which is why he had such great access. He can be seen standing amongst reporters in one of the pictures where the first press conference was given after Oswald was arrested. Not sure if it was some sort of payola thing because of his night club or whether there was just a general chumminess in corruption.
November 25, 2008 at 7:27 am
PorJ
Kathy,
I was researching something unrelated to this when I came across many letters to the networks, newspapers, etc., arguing the belief that the transfer of Oswald was re-arranged to allow for press coverage, which played a role in Ruby’s ability to access Oswald. I didn’t follow up, but since you’re in charge in conspiracies around here – is there any truth to this? I know only NBC was live (this was the first live killing on TV in U.S. history), CBS didn’t cover with TV (they were there on radio), but was this a “perp walk” in which details were widely circulated and routines altered to accomodate the media? Any truth to the rumors that the press may have been complicit?
November 25, 2008 at 8:02 am
Mark Boggs
PorJ,
I’m not Kathy, nor do I pretend to have her level of expertise, but as I recall from my voracious reading 20 years ago, the perp walk was not something that was well publicized. After just rereading a section of “Resonable Doubt” an NBC producer has Ruby pestering him for the time of Oswald’s transfer and hanging around inside one of their media vans watching the proceedings.
Ruby always claimed he simply walked down the ramp from the street to the basement.
Another interesting side note, the night of the press conference after Oswald’s arrest the Dallas Sheriff (I think) had stated that Oswald was part of the Free Cuba Committee. Ruby, who was standing amongst the press that night as though he were one of them, corrected the sheriff by telling him that Oswald was, in fact, a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee a group with the exact opposite aims of the Free Cuba Committee (according to Henry Hurt, the author).
How in the world would he know this about Oswald if he didn’t have more intimate knowledge of Oswald than just as the accused assassin of the president?
November 25, 2008 at 8:13 am
John Emerson
You don’t need an enormous group for there to be a conspiracy. You just need more people than just Oswald. You don’t need Oswald to be innocent, either. You just need him not to be a lone wacko.
Outside the US, if a major political figure is murdered, political conspiracy is the first thing anyone thinks of. There’s no reason that the US should be different.
That does NOT mean that all or most political murders are the result of conspiracies. It just means that the conspiracy hypothesis must always be considered.
We now have the opposite situation, that in the US conspiracy theories are automatically ruled out and ridiculed. In world political history conspiracies of various kinds are thick on the ground, and there’s no reason for American exceptionalism in this regard.
A “conspiracy theory” is a theory that there has been or is a conspiracy. Some conspiracy theories are true, some are false but reasonable, and some are insane.
November 25, 2008 at 8:27 am
Mark Boggs
John,
Granted. My view was always structured in the black/white sense of the problem. Oswald did it alone / Oswlad did not do it and was not involved. It is certainly possible and probable that Oswald was involved but not alone.
My only point about the “group” of the conspiracy is that, if you continue pulling most of those threads, you end up with a fair amount of people needing to have some knowledge of the event for it to have happened. It seems that with an expanded number of conspirators, the likelihood of the proverbial beans being spilled expands as well.
November 25, 2008 at 9:57 am
John Emerson
If you compile all of the Kennedy conspiracy theories and put them side by side, the effect is ridiculous. But some of them are quite reasonable standing alone.
I ended up believing that the truth about the conspiracy was suppressed because the truth would have been embarrassing to important people, not because they were involved in the conspiracy but for other reasons. (For example, lack of vigilance, or peripheral involvement with the conspirators. And possibly because no one wanted to go to war against a foreign nation.)
At the time I clearly remember that everyone feared the answer to the question “who did it?”, and that the Warren Commission seemed to see its task as claming people down.
November 25, 2008 at 10:19 am
Mark Boggs
Which is funny, John, becuase they traded calming people dcown in the short term for the far more dangerous long-term impression that they may have been complicit in the cover-up themselves.
And I can’t help but revert back to one of my original questions: Why, in the 45 years since then, have we yet to see one credible individual come forward on their death bed and offer up some sort of confession as to the assassination or the whitewash of the Warren Commission?
November 25, 2008 at 10:29 am
John Emerson
Why have we never heard a word from Marina Oswald, or the people in the Russian exile in Dallas who knew Oswald? There was a lot of intimidation going on. This was the biggest story in decades, with a lot of major players.
November 25, 2008 at 11:32 am
Mark Boggs
Some of the books I’ve read give detailed lists of all the people who would have had varying degrees of contact and knowledge with the key players involved and their untimely and bizarre deaths following the assassinations.
November 25, 2008 at 11:33 am
kathy
It is possible to argue that Oswald was guilty, but part of a conspiracy; it is also possible to argue that Ruby was exactly as he appeared – alone and crazy (a holocaust in the basement of the county records building?) – and yet still Oswald was part of a conspiracy. There is an endless list of possible scenarios, and nobody ever lost money by proposing new ones. I personally think the lone gunman theory is the most compelling one, but there are still unanswered questions (for example, about that Mexico City trip of Oswald’s).
Here’s what I think is historically important: there were real conspiracies surrounding the Kennedy assassination (the CIA’s assassination plots against Castro) that the US government chose not to disclose at the time, or for years afterward. The government got this skeleton out of the closet one bone at a time, and as a result, people don’t trust any of the government conclusions. Also, it can become something of a parlor game for some people: what’s more fun than trying to solve an unsolved mystery?
November 25, 2008 at 12:03 pm
John Emerson
Oswald’s entire life and all of his associations with Russia and Russians still seem unexplained to me, and (as I said) the silence about him from his wife and the people who knew her makes me wonder.
Both Oswald and Ruby dying in jail are also eyebrow-raising. Ruby made a lot of strange statement while he was in jail, some of them crazy.
The only Kennedy Assassination book I’ve read is the fairly recent “Assassination Science”. I’m not competent to judge it but it alleges a vigorous coverup immediately after the assassination, and a lot of it is at a fairly expert, credentialed level (which is why I can’t judge it). To my memory it doesn’t speculate at all about who the assassins were.
Contributors
The magic bullet theory has always seemed strange, and the recent research reaffirming it with new science wasn’t very convincing to me.
If we ever find out what happened, it will be after all the players are dead, but I’ll be gone too by then probably. What’s done is done.
November 25, 2008 at 2:38 pm
nick
“Jack Ruben-stein”, eh? lots of emphasis on those final three syllables….
November 26, 2008 at 12:06 am
Stinky
The government got this skeleton out of the closet one bone at a time, and as a result, people don’t trust any of the government conclusions.
I love your sentence.
Its not just the government conclusions that are in doubt, however.
November 26, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Michael
Kathy-
I think you hit it right on the head: Who doesn’t love a mystery? That there are obviously lots of important issues here only serves to make an already compelling story even more compelling.
Also, Kathy: I’m looking forward to your book!
Speaking of books: Has anyone read Mob Lawyer, by Frank Ragano? Mr. Ragano was a friend of my brother’s, and not incidentally, Santo Trafficante’s lawyer. In this second capacity, he was witness to some amazing things involving Trafficante, Marcello, Hoffa, etc. In other words, a Who’s Who of those in and around most conspiracy theories. And he was pretty clear about what happened in his book.
Which brings me to my second point: Some say there have been no death-bed confessions, but it seems to me there have been more than enough. But, unless the confessions were made with a tape recorder present, they’re disbelieved.
I’m not saying I believe each and every one, either. (That was the obligatory “I’m not a conspiracy nut” disclaimer.)
November 27, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Rick B
John, your statement “Outside the US, if a major political figure is murdered, political conspiracy is the first thing anyone thinks of. There’s no reason that the US should be different.” fits with what I still believe to be the case.
Kathy, your statement “Here’s what I think is historically important: there were real conspiracies surrounding the Kennedy assassination (the CIA’s assassination plots against Castro) that the US government chose not to disclose at the time, or for years afterward. The government got this skeleton out of the closet one bone at a time, and as a result, people don’t trust any of the government conclusions.” adds a great deal to the story.
Having lived through that period myself, I can tell you that the series of assassinations of left-wing American political leaders starting with Kennedy and the clear criminality of Nixon and his henchmen – particularly Agnew – left me disposed to disbelieve any government publicized narrative that exonerated anyone with government connections.
I don’t expect any verifiable truth ever be told. My reading of assassinations has led me to believe that one of the first things any organizer of such a conspiracy would do is to tightly compartmentalize the operation and afterward permanently silence anyone who had knowledge or evidence that could shed light on the killing. Another thing such a conspirator would do is ensure that an unstable person like Oswald was carefully handled in ways he himself was unaware of, and keep him from knowing anything significant.
Then there is the fact that there are a lot of individuals who might be completely innocent but who would find their reputations and careers damaged by any hint that they MIGHT be connected. Or they may have other unrelated conspiracies of which they ARE guilty which would be exposed if they ever came under investigation. Such individuals have a strong motive conceal evidence in the assassination to protect themselves from investigation.
All in all, I find no significant reason to discount a conspiracy.
At the same time, it is also possible that an unstable individual like Oswald just happened to be working at a location on the publicized motorcade route, just happened to have purchased a cheap rifle by mail order, and just happened to remember enough of his Marine shooting training to succeed in killing Kennedy. I well remember the military weapons available by mail order catalog at that time. I looked at 81 mm mortars and very much wanted a .455 Webley revolver myself. It was available but I never had the money. Kennedy’s assassination could just have been a random event working out of the existing zeitgeist.
Enough time has passed so that I do not every expect to see a report of something that excludes all other possibilities and provides the definitive answer to whether there was an intentional conspiracy (or set of conspiracies) to kill Kennedy which was operational and worked. Certainly not a report that provides names.
But Kathy is right to point out the resulting distrust of government that grew out of that entire period. The distrust had previously existed, but was considered fringe stuff like the John Birchers or the way minorities (especially African-Americans) viewed government. With the Kennedy assassination it became mainstream, and has, I think, been a motivating force in the growth of movement conservatism among other things.
Oddly enough, that very distrust of government may be one reason why no definitive final answer is possible. No one trusts government to provide the answer and there is no other trusted source with sufficient resources to actually wade through all the false trails to get to a final result, even if the evidence of it does exist. So why bother even looking?
I’d love to read Kathy’s book, but I currently have a stack of over 30 urgent-to-read books that I have already bought and not had time for including “Angler” (half finished) and Bacevich’s “The Limits of Power” (next on the stack.) “Angler” is about the central current American conspiracy. The conspiracy is the effective limited coup by Cheney over segments of our federal government and federal policy for the last eight years, and is worth current reading for its currency where re-investigating the Kennedy assassination seems to have a lot less current value as a demand on my time.
The idea that one outgrowth of the increase in centrality of the U.S. federal government since WW I has been the growth of conspiracy theories is an interesting topic, though. I assume that the growth and power of conspiracy theories is an interaction of the growth of the central government simultaneous with the growth of the mass media.
Since one effect of democracy and the belief in democracy is to provide individuals with a level of trust of the central government, is the growth of conspiracy theories an indicator that the belief in government provided by democracy is failing as the central government becomes both more distant because of the growth of population, yet simultaneously becomes more intrusive as governing techniques become more effective?
If so, then that suggests that the most populous nations are all going to have a similar and increasing distrust of the central government as the popular media get more effective. The counter to that would among other things logically be efforts to promote patriotism, which has its own negative side effects like anti-immigration movements.
A strongly federal system would, of course, also be a counter that problem, but the central federal government will still have to apply controls to things across the states like interstate commerce and interstate crime. Are anti-discrimination efforts appropriately federal ones? The history of slavery, segregation and things like the Japanese internment strongly suggest that they are. But the correction efforts by the central government will carry a backlash, of which the conspiracy theories might be an indicator.
Just some thoughts that occur when considering the subject of Kathy’s book.
Damn! Kathy, your book is $30 and I am retired on a fixed income.