Writers (Like Derek Arnold) Continue to Conflate Princess Diana Conspiracy 'Theories' With JFK Assassination Conspiracy

There is no comparison at all between the death of JFK - an assassination via conspiracy - and the death of Princess Diana .

Derek Arnold displays a "bee in his bonnet" in his recent salon.com piece about the persistence of Princess Diana "conspiracy theories ".    I  am only superficially familiar with these, basically only having read that somehow the Queen and MI5 have been blamed for engineering a deliberate crash in Paris to kill Dodi and Diana.   To me, from what I have read, it appears in the realm of ideation - not even "theory".  Anyway, once Arnold drags in the Kennedy assassination he made himself a target for Kennedy researchers. Once more - like others (e.g. Tina Brown in 2013)  - he overgeneralizes, paints with too wide a brush..  .  He writes:

I've taught classes and researched the nature of conspiracy theories for over a decade, and I’m especially interested in the role of logic in these conspiracies — how it’s used to warp and concoct stories that explain extraordinary events. In the end, our reasons for entertaining conspiracy theories about luminaries, whether it’s the princess of Wales or John F. Kennedy, often have more to do with our lives than theirs.'

Uh no, maestro.  Don't drag JFK into your mix. The error committed here is one first highlighted by author Michael Parenti ('The Dirty Truth') in conflating the personal political value of the presumed target with the value of the assassination.  As entrancing and charming a personage as Diana was, she had no political value via any putative  assassination.  She commanded no armies or powerful allies. (For nor issued major policy decisions that would affect entrenched interests. Apart from initiating some land mine awareness programs and a few charities, Diana’s death had no where near the political impact that JFK’s  assassination had. (For example, JFK's plan to pull out of Vietnam by calendar year 1965, via his National Security Action Memorandum 263).  That Arnold is unable to make such a critical distinction reveals him as an amateur and conspiracy investigator lightweight.

But such casual conflation is a common error for conspiracy- investigating amateurs (under which umbrella I regard a 10-yr. researcher like Arnold) to a): to conflate all conspiracies or potential conspiracies using the same simplistic criteria, and b) to make generalizations which are unwarranted by such conflation. And here, again, my focus is on the Kennedy assassination conspiracy and perhaps Iran-Contra, no others.

It is useful at the outset to separate  "conspiracy theorists" from conspiracy analysts. The distinction is important, because as Dr. Pat Bannister has  shown, it marks the difference between a mature, rational, tempered approach to a case, and a scattershot, irrational, immature set of wild conjectures.  In this sense those who've dabbled in Diana conspiracies have generally been amongst the former. JFK researchers-  95 % of them from my experience (such as Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Anthony Marsh, James DiEugenio, Walt Brown, James Douglass, David Lifton) -  are assuredly conspiracy analysts. Hence, their products are conspiracy analyses not "theories".

One of the conspiracy amateurs' more insulting claims is that people "embrace conspiracies in order to rise beyond the randomness or meaninglessness of celebrity deaths."  Thus, Arnold's claim that "conspiracy theories" have "more to do with our lives than theirs".  Which is emphatic nonsense in the case of JFK's assassination, given once he was taken out LBJ could then rescind his NSAM 263 and re-issue his own (NSAM 273) which paved the way for the Vietnam War in which 58,000 Americans lost their lives.

In the case of the JFK assassination who can forget long time CBS anchor Walter Cronkite's words soon after?  To wit:

"What would be more comfortable? Accepting a lone assassin, or believing a second assassin suddenly materialized out of thin air, fired a shot and disappeared again without leaving a trace of his rifle, his bullet or any other sign of existence?"

But barely ten years after "Uncle Walter" uttered those words, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) did find for a "96 percent probability" of a second gunman (and hence conspiracy)  based on acoustic tests done by MIT researchers. While a special gov't appointed team attempted to refute it, they failed, and moreover none of them were bona fide  acoustic specialists like the MIT group.  Let us also note that the HSCA was the only genuine government investigation while the much ballyhooed Warren Commission was actually a creature of Lyndon Johnson - confected for his political cover. (Just prior to the assassination Johnson was facing investigation and possible prison time for his role in the Bobby Baker influence peddling scandal) NO  - not all conspiracies are created equal, and one wonders if Arnold even got as far as reading the HSCA findings.

Arnold blabs on:

"Indeed, many are drawn to what science writer Michael Shermer has termed “agenticity” — the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning and agency. It’s the idea that someone, somewhere — from God down to human conspirators — plays a role in what happens to us."

But I've already dealt with Shermer's straw man in past posts, so will do so again. For example, in my Nov. 22, 2014 post on the Skeptic Society's efforts to treat the JFK and other real conspiracies as looney ideations, I wrote:

"By the clever use of a pseudo-scientific,  dime store psychology template virtually any real conspiracy could be dismissed as nothing more then a combo of :  P (patternicity)+ A  (agenticity) + H (hindsight) + C (confirmation bias) nonsense!   

In the case of the Iran-Contra conspiracy,  the shipping manifests revealing the assorted Hawk and TOW missiles  destined for Iran would be likened to "seeing a pattern".  This would then be "infused with agenticity"(sic)  because the missiles ended up with the Iranians - so someone had to be a bad guy in doing it- since the Iranians were bad guys holding American hostages.  The next step would be to accuse  Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh of "looking for confirmatory evidence of what he already believed", i..e. the guilt of Oliver North, John Poindexter et al. because they "used their Government positions to create a hidden slush fund under the exclusive control of the conspirators”.  And finally, the coup de grace, Walsh would be accused of "hindsight bias" - advancing explanations after the fact for what he already knew happened. (Of course he knew, he uncovered the evidence in the course of his investigation!)

So, in other words, their bandying about of this pseudo-process is useless because it errs by proposing an excessively subjective and open-ended standard for parsing objective evidence. Hence, tying proof of conspiracy to sophisticated second guessing."

And then we see the usual citation of babble by some expert in the general area of "conspiracy theories":

"As political scientist Michael Barkun details in his book “A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America,” conspiracy theories usually hinge on three core beliefs:

• Nothing happens by accident. For this reason, the horrible machinations of “evil” conspirators become more believable than a fluke or an accident.
• Nothing is as it seems. Successful conspirators hide their identities and actions; we must, therefore, always be wary, even when there’s little reason for suspicion.
• Dots can always be connected. Though conspirators attempt to hide their actions, patterns exist everywhere

But let's parse these three beliefs in terms of the JFK assassination. Did it happen by "accident"? No,  JFK was quite deliberately shot and killed in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. The issue at hand is whether one lone nut did it, or whether it was a planned conspiracy.  The best evidence we have of a malignant,  pre-planned influence pertains to the altered autopsy photos showing JFK's head:

Parkland surgeon Charles Crenshaw also validated the rear of the head being blown out and readers interested can obtain his excellent book, 'JFK - Conspiracy of Silence' .  This link to a .pdf version of Dr. Crenshaw's book can be found below:
http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Conspiracy_Of_Silence.pdf

Most interesting (page 10) is when Dr. Crenshaw was shown one of the Warren autopsy photos (same one produced in the PBS Nova exercise) and asked by Gary Shaw of the Sixth Floor Museum whether it matches what he observed when attending to JFK.  Dr. Crenshaw was incredulous. He immediately spotted the fake and ascertained  that the head had been "manipulated".  It was immediately evident to him that a conspiracy was at work, else why alter the massive frontal head wound to a rear one?  I would leave that question for Derek Arnold to address if he can. And while he's at it, why did Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford find it necessary to alter the official (autopsy)  account of the back wound to a neck wound, e.g.

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Moving the wound to the back of the neck as opposed to being parallel to the third thoracic vertebra e.g. of the back., as JFK's physician identified it originally  could then permit people - many otherwise intelligent - to buy into the single bullet baloney  and dismiss the original improbable track, e.g.

All the preceding is relevant to the second point, i.e. of the capability of conspirators to hide their actions - and often identities. In the Kennedy assassination many of the participants used "cut outs" so that effectively concealed their identities.  The deliberate series of actions, meanwhile, including altering the JFK rear head wound and the bullet trajectory by Ford - was made possible because not all files, photos were released until much later The actual autopsy photo showing the rear of the head blown out didn't appear until the HSCA in 1978 or nearly 15 years after the assassination. Ford's notes and alteration of the upper back wound to the neck wound didn't emerge until 1993. This was after the JFK Records Act was passed.

My point is that the relevant "hiding" was not a matter of personal "belief"  but rather of straight up evidence only being made available much later. In each case the motive for alteration leads directly to the logical conclusion of a cover up. That in turn leads to the question of WHO would want to do such a cover up.  

The last aspect: "dots can always be connected" is useless gibberish.  Again, it conflates meaningful "dots" with meaningless ones. Thus, if said "dots" have intrinsic meaning, one can say their analysis and the conclusion arising therefrom  is rational.  For example, the "dot" of Kennedy's head being altered at the time of autopsy and photographs taken, leading to the "dot" of the Warren Commission publishing the altered (intact) head but not the other (blown out rear).  Plus the "dot " of Gerald Ford's  revision of the wound placement which makes it (sort of) conform to the single bullet theory. Why? Well, because if the latter  is accepted it obviates the nees for a 2nd gunman (or a 3rd).

Then there's the inescapable "dot" of Jackie moving back across the limo trunk to try to retrieve a dislodged occipital bone from JFK's head  e.g.

This an example of  linear transfer of momentum  comporting with the "dot" of the massive rear head wound. Hence, we are not selecting dots out of thin air but based on actual physical evidence and laws.

Like other pretenders before him, Arnold then drags in "Occam's Razor" which is totally irrelevant. He writes:

"Yet many conspiracy theories routinely contradict Occam’s razor, a philosophical principle based on the idea that the more assumptions needed to explain something — whether it’s a scientific law or a conspiracy theory — the less reliable the explanation. 

In short, the simpler your explanation, the better. "

But as I've pointed out before, scientific hypotheses are distinct from conspiracies, and hence from conspiracy hypotheses.   The "Razor" -  as we call it -  basically stipulates that given two or more hypotheses to account for the same phenomenon, the one which makes the fewest assumptions is most likely the correct one.

However, the one proviso in invoking it, is that one is applying it to a hypothesis concerning a natural event, or natural phenomenon! The reason is simple: we expect all natural events or phenomena to conform to a limited number of defined natural laws, including: the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy law), Newton's laws of motion, and the conservation of mass -energy.
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The problem inherent in applying it to the Kennedy assassination is that this event is not an exclusive natural act or phenomenon. Indeed, the plausible presence of human emotions, motivations and agendas automatically places it in the realm of an unnatural event so that Occam's Razor cannot apply.

In effect, we are making a deliberate separation between the causes and effects which govern the natural world, say like solar eclipses, and asteroid flybys, and those which govern human affairs.

Unlike asteroid collisions or  total solar eclipses, humans are enmeshed in complexes of emotions and ideological agendas that can't be quantified like Newton's laws of motion, or simplistically reduced to one cause-one effect relationships. In addition, humans - unlike natural laws- are capable of deceit and misdirection. So, from many points of view, it would be foolhardy to reduce the realm of human behavior - including putative conspiracy - to the model applicable to simple natural laws. It would require something basically approaching a general denial that humans would or could ever act with duplicity

A final header in Arnold's  piece is:

Conspiracy trumps logic

Where he writes:

"Conspiracy theories make for interesting stories; they often involve breathtaking action, complicated plots and shadowy villains. They give us access to lives we normally never get to see."

But alas, this is useless in reference to actual documented conspiracies, such as Iran-Contra, BCCI and the JFK assassination. (By 'documented', I mean that an official government investigation has already found for it.)


Arnold's claim that "conspiracy theories" entail "complicated plots" and "shadowy villains" begs the following questions: 1) WHO is to make this determination? 2)  WHO is to reckon what is "complicated" in relation to what is a "large event" in the context of the conspiracy?  HOW does one distinguish a "shadowy villain" from a conspirator?

In respect of (1) we are entitled to inquire regarding the qualifications of the one making the assertions, say of "complicated plots".  Did these people, say like Arnold or others actually study the given background or did they merely lump it together with superficial examples of fringe conjectures, e.g. Apollo Moon hoax, Princess Diana, etc.?

In fact, a genuine conspiracy only demands enough complexity or elements to make it work – if even partially. And if it works, as the JFK conspiracy clearly did, who’s to say the elements were excessive or "complicated"? Also, let's bear in mind as long time JFK researcher Peter Dale Scott has pointed out, in the Kennedy case we are actually looking at THREE separate conspiracies but which are often conflated by the media or careless critics. These were: 1) The pre-assassination framing of Lee Harvey Oswald, 2) the actual killing of JFK on Nov. 22, 1963 and 3) the extended cover-up of the facts starting with the Warren Report itself and extending to "Operation Mockingbird" assets preventing subsequent revelations, insights in the media. Oh, and let's not forget the latter day disinformationists like Gerald Posner and Vince Bugliosi - serving the mandate of CIA doc. 1035-960.

Who is also to say that over 100 components –say  to make the BCCI banking conspiracy work, was too much or “too complex”? This is a totally subjective take that need not be vindicated objectively.  In the case of the BCCI banking conspiracy, since it entailed moving money to thousands of "dummy accounts" all over the world, the complexity was implicit. In fact, reams of evidence were culled from that criminal bank's operations in 73 countries and exposed. But whether anyone could comprehend all aspects of its workings - which were deliberately rendered complex- is another matter

What about separating an actual conspirator from a "shadowy villain"/  Arnold provides no insights or clues.  Iran -Contra investigator and special counsel Lawrence Walsh named a number of conspirators, e.g. Albert Hakim, Oliver North, John Poindexter, who not only made "slush fund" withdrawals -  used to fund the purchase of Israeli Hawk and TOW missiles to ship to Iran - but also doctored manifests. Were these shadowy villains or just real good guys who somehow were misunderstood?

What about CIA master spook, David Atlee Phillips, e.g.

Was he just a misunderstood spook, or as Peter Dale Scott has written (Oswald, Mexico and Deep Politics’, 2013, p. 25) : the primary person responsible for manipulating the Mexico City CIA cables to frame Lee Harvey Oswald in advance of the assassination?

These assorted cables sent from the CIA station in Mexico City might have seemed like 'small potatoes'. But only in retrospect, as Scott observes, did it become apparent those cables were part of what was used to frame Oswald leading  to phase one of the conspiracy leading to the installation of a national security  and endless war state.

In a very real sense articles like Arnold's do no service to either genuine assassination conspiracies like John F. Kennedy's, or to tragic deaths like those of Princess Diana - which feature some residue of unanswered questions. In future, a more forthright approach by authors who tackle conspiracies and "conspiracy theories" is needed, with greater effort to separate wheat from chaff.  In particular, to make more subtle distinctions between conspiracy theories directed at celebrities and political conspiracies such as Watergate, Iran-Contra and the JFK assassination. 

There is especially the need to be wary of the use of language by many of these authors, such as the  substitution of "scandal" for  "conspiracy". Thus, we are now supposed to accept "the Watergate scandal" as opposed to Watergate conspiracy, and the "Iran-Contra scandal" as opposed to Iran-Contra conspiracy. The effort here clearly to expunge the concept of political conspiracy from public consciousness.

By his cavalier conflation of the JFK conspiracy with a conjectured one for Princess Diana, (with nowhere near the equivalent degree of evidence), Derek Arnold drives one more nail into public consciousness of actual conspiracy. 

What Is Tim Brennan's Main Problem? (Ans. He's Uneducated On the Kennedy Assassination)

Tim Brennan, for those who may have forgotten, is an irritating,  self-appointed critic of JFK assassination conspiracy "buffs" - who fancies himself qualified to remark on others' works - though he's never written even a pamphlet or comic of his own. In an earlier blog post, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/05/educating-australian-bloke-on-basic.html

I attempted to educate him regarding his ignorant claim that the WC rifle tests were a success and showed Oswald was the shooter from the Texas School Book Depository. This was after he delivered his inane post in Google groups, including a reference to the WC exhibit and claiming to indicate where the shots hit.  He then let loose with a digital yelp:

 "X marks the spot where SENIOR OIC member Mark Lane lied! Stop the LIES! Oswald INSIDE!! Disband the OIC!!! "

But, his focus was so intent on sliming Mark Lane he evidently omitted the 15- odd other authors, including Edward Jay Epstein ('The Assassination Chronicles', 1966) who also exposed the rifle tests as a sham (pp. 148-150). Epstein, like me, noted the Army specialists were allowed to fire at  stationary targets (unlike Oswald), and also  that the rifle sights were altered for increased accuracy that Oswald never had. In terms of the altered sights, etc. no- the test did not succeed.  Hell, if Tim had the slightest ambition he also could have availed himself of the key volume:  Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, 1964: Vol. II,  to learn the details of the test trials, how set up and why Epstein, me and others concluded they failed to prove Oswald  fired the weapon. He could have even exerted himself to obtain other trials that confirmed the WC test failure, e.g.

Oswald 'had no time to fire all Kennedy bullets' - Telegraph

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/.../Oswald-had-no-time-to-fire-all-Kennedy-bullets.ht...

In reference to Brennan's 'X marks the spot' baloney I pointedly noted:

"What we behold is a boxlike mold in separate scenes,  with presumed projections of "hits" but no indications of exactly where the hits struck in terms of cranial morphology.  (Rendering the 'X' more like a cartoon joke that seeks to confer credibility where none exists.) It's all of the same deceptive piece as the fake FPCC handbills Newman exposed, the fake autopsy photo (though not a formal exhibit - the WC's top guiding honcho (LBJ)  did authorize its creation at Bethesda), the fake Oswald rifle exhibit, and the CE399 fake.  Close inspection of the images in the exhibit frames shows nothing of any value or anything specific in terms of  relating shot precision to the exact anatomical positions in the absurdly configured  "head". We have a word for such bollocks - it's called a "Macguffin".

Brennan was also smarting after I pulled a "rope a dope" on him to entice him to actually show up and post on my blog. I used the ruse of claiming the autopsy photos were actual exhibits, which they were not, as I noted in the comments section.  I knew I'd elicit a reaction that he'd yelp "You're no expert!" and even had to try to educate him (and others) again, observing:

"In fact, no such exhibits existed because Gerald Ford determined it would be too horrific for any of the Commission members to see them - or to make them public as exhibits. They found their way to RFK who retained them at the Dept. of Justice then they were transferred to the National Archives. They finally did emerge with the HSCA investigation in 1978.

More on the backstory can be found in this youtube interview:

http://www.actionnewsjax.com/videos/news/why-the-warren-commission-never-saw-jfk-autopsy/vCNPy9/

I then - having lured him to the blog - asked him point blank:

"So no, there were no "numbers" for these photos because they didn't exist at the time as exhibits. The question that remains for you is why the false image was used and circulated by WC groupies and not the image showing the rear of JFK's head blown out? "

But rather than be man enough to come back and address the question put to him, he evidently went whimpering like a sniveling wimp to 'Narkive'.  There, he blabbed "Hi all!" then whined that I was a "self proclaimed expert" on the assassination. But one does not invest 35 years in research on the event, then write a comprehensive, 624 page book (which it is evident Tim has never read) to become a "self-proclaimed" expert. No, the book  - the published work - discloses the expertise, including my analysis of the acoustics and the fractional calculus-based  tests I used to show the Oswald rifle photos were fakes, e.g.


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/analysis-of-pixel-diffusion-in-oswald.html

Did Brennan respond to the manifested expertise? No, he chose to render his grievance-filled comments on Narkive, disguised as an attempted lampoon of my wife's quite reasonable (and justifiable) book review. . In other words he confirms he's a weak-minded, clueless dolt, compounded when he claims (despite never having read my book) that I registered the autopsy photos as actual WC exhibits - which  I never did. What I wrote is the same as what I wrote in the earlier link,

"The reference to "used in Warren Commission" then, doesn't  mean as any official exhibit - but as a dummy mold or 'model'  from which the 2D fictional head shot drawing was rendered.  The critical aspect being the phony basis for a rear shot as opposed to a frontal shot.(The fake construction was done before the WC sketch was made part of the WC exhibits)"  ....This false image did conform with the drawing fiction of how the WC believed the head shot ought to have occurred, e.g. http://jfkassassination.net/russ/infojfk/jfk1/1p255f68.jpg


So clearly, Tim can't even read a blog post properly, far less a full 600+ page work on the assassination.

Stymied by his own futility re: JFK assassination issues, Timmy in his pathetic plea for  Narkive attention resorts to desperation.  He  dredges up a single book review my wife did on a 6 -year old limited edition book, Dialectical Atheism.  He perhaps invoked this to try for some kind of humorous irony or whatever - but falls flat on his  forlorn, Aussie dupe face.

The book itself was only intended for a very limited market of mainly younger atheists or those who'd recently come on board to atheism, who wanted to be able to argue for it in assorted forums, or in letters to editors. Given the expected relevant readership was only 100-150 there would not logically have been an adequate pool with the competency to do a proper review of the book. In addition, the book spanned a history of encounters with theists - including clergy, my own brother Mike ("Pastor Mike") and online religionists spanning 4 decades, for which encounters only my wife was consistently a part of - hence possessed the knowledge of what transpired.  In other words, no other reviewer would have been able to do justice to the content.  And isn't that one wants in a reviewer, as opposed to an ignorant, semi-educated twit or poppet out to do a hit job?

Thus, why not have the most intelligent, competent person one knows  to do a review of a difficult, limited circulation book?  Brennan chafes about the 5 star rating, but I can show him as many 5 star ratings for books on Amazon that are pure crap - including McAdams' recent effort about "logic" and the Kennedy assassination.  Besides, IF Brennan despised the "nepotistic" 5 star review that much he could have written a neutralizing review of his own for "1 star" (if he believed it deserved such).  But that would have necessitated getting off his Aussie ass and writing something more than a crybaby whimper on Narkive -  though I doubt he'd be able to read my book any more than any other on the Kennedy assassination, say Dr. Charles Crenshaw's 'Conspiracy of Silence',e.g.

http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Conspiracy_Of_Silence.pdf

Timmy, alas, has exhausted his bag of tricks and has nowhere else to go but down. He's confirmed he's another sniping, semi-educated puppet who has no business offering comments on works he hasn't read and likely wouldn't understand if he did.  In that vein, perhaps it is best he stick with the  Warren Commission Fables.

Nitwit Psychologist Compares Flight MH370 Conspiracies to JFK Conspiracy

Well, it appears I've been wrong. Abby Huntsman isn't the only moron loose in the media blabber-sphere.  Apparently, you can get them a dime a dozen, a talking head who pontificates but who knows absolutely nothing, nada when it comes to the crunch. In this case, regarding a major American conspiracy which has consumed this nation (and undermined any trust in the gov't)  the past 50+ years.. Such was the situation earlier this afternoon, in one of those dead news periods, where MSNBC's 'The Cycle' featured a psychologist nitwit who actually compared the people who buy into the Flight MH370 conspiracy codswallop - which I exposed two posts ago - to those of us who have investigated the JFK assassination  conspiracy.  Of course, this is like comparing apples and oranges, chalk and cheese. There is no similarity whatsoever.

The fact this fool (Nicholas DiFonzo ) could even make a remote comparison between the bollocks spouted on MH370 and the Kennedy assassination, discloses he knows next to nothing on the latter and is merely filling dead air with more dead air.

While he starts out tamely enough, generically noting "people don't like things that are unexplained" and  "a natural coping mechanism we have is to try and figure things out"  - which is logical- he then draws incorrect conclusions vis-a-vis the Kennedy assassination.  His egregious take was triggered when  Cycle co-host Krystal Ball intimated that "no matter what we learn in this case there will still be people who believe in their own version of what took place". Then the dummy responded:

"Well, that's right. Just remember the JFK conspiracy theories. There are still many people, possibly even the majority of Americans, who disbelieve the Warren Report. Who disbelieve the formal, informational authorities, or the formal - even media authorities-  and possess a great deal of distrust in whatever information is given to them. And that's not necessarily because there's a mental illness out there, it's just especially with the outpouring and growth of the internet. It's allowed people to form in these echo chambers or these factions where they talk with other people who are very similar to them. And then you rely less on the official information source"

So, let's see: he's generous enough to allow we may not be "mentally ill" but on the other hand, we're subject to "echo chamber" dynamics! It's not that I've spent over 37 years investigating the events of that fateful day, meticulously aggregating documents  (released after the JFK Records Act) and parsing them, but that I'm ensconced in an "echo chamber",  seeing or hearing only one side. NOT!

The fact this twit is so abysmally informed actually makes one question the current level of psychology and whether all such practitioners might be as daft and ignorant as he displayed.  The fact he is unaware of the CIA's "Operation Mockingbird" (google it!) which corrupted the media for decades and likely still is, shows he's not qualified to comment on the JFK assassination. See also:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-jfk_22.html

 The fact he's unaware the media is the least trustworthy source  - along with the Warren Commission itself,  shows he's the last person that ought to have been given air time to provide any serious insights into genuine conspiracy theories or why a discrete subset are in fact VALID.

His appeal to the "formal, informational authorities"  is also choice, given these "authorities" have been uniformly disinformational. Start with the illustrious Warren Commission, a creature of LBJ and directed by him to whitewash his own complicity in the assassination.  As Steve Kornacki noted in his Nov. 24 (MSNBC) show, LBJ was on the verge of being subjected to a massive LIFE magazine expose (and Senate investigation) for the Bobby Baker scandal - including influence peddling to net millions of dollars- with the money trail to be published. Hence HE stood to gain the most, at just the right instant of time, with JFK killed.  Instantly he became the great "successor" as opposed to damaged criminal, and dropped from JFK's '64 ticket.

Johnson’s first kneejerk reaction was to form a “Texas Commission” to look into the assassination, with staff entirely composed of Texans..  Subsequently he realized, after many complaints,  he needed a gov't pseudo- commission  as the best way to cover his tracks ("the way to commit the perfect crime is to be in charge of the investigation that follows"). However, to sell this mad cow,  he needed a prominent name to confer gravitas. It had to be then Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren! But how to get Warren on board when he initially demurred? Easy! Blackmail him!

Johnson's taped words - after speaking to Warren and finally getting his "cooperation" - were duly recorded for posterity and history (cf. Michael R. Beschloss, Taking Charge:The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-64, 1997, p. 72, as cited by Russ Baker, in 'Family of Secrets', p. 46):

"Warren told me he wouldn't do it under any circumstances...He came down here and told me 'No'...twice. And I just pulled out what[FBI Director} Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City....And he started crying and said: 'I won't turn you down...I'll just do whatever you say.'

What we have here is insight into the man's character and that he wasn't anything near the upstanding "liberal" Prez so many of his followers (like Bill Moyers) have made him out to be. It shows he'd resort to blackmail to coerce the Chief Justice to confer gravitas on his commission - and in so doing it shows he'd stoop to anything to have that commission be a political whitewash. And this is the dick head that the idiot psychologist wants to invest with "ultimate authority" so we thereby eschew any and all independent investigation?

Then there were the innumerable other frauds and perversions, including the material witnesses never asked questions, the formal document mandating Oswald to be found guilty and the cooperation of Hoover in confiscating, withholding evidence, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-jfk_14.html

Then there was the fact that NONE of the wounds fit, so the autopsy report had to be 'adjusted' by Gerald Ford and the photos had to be altered to show a rear head shot and a "magic bullet' theory was thereby confected.:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-jfk_15.html

Then we have the fact Oswald's rifle didn't work, so couldn't be used in its original condition for test trials.:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-fhe-jfk.html

We then - some 14 years later, were treated to the the undermined HSCA investigation:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-jfk_19.html

Let's get one thing clear once and for all: If you are some authority in a specialty, say psychology, don't even presume to remotely lecture or pontificate on the JFK assassination - especially in terms of some "conspiracy psychology" if you haven't investigated it yourself.

Everyone is of course entitled to his or her own opinion, but not their own facts. Had the psychologist who appeared on The Cycle made clear he was only giving his opinion we might forgive him and the place from which most opinions emerge. He didn't, so must be held to account. Comparing the MH370 "conspiracies" to the JFK conspiracy is the hallmark of an idiot, or at least a moron!