Assassination Psychoanalysis

Assassination Psychology – Psychoanalysis 

By William Kelly

Richard Sprague, the former prosecutor and first chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, tasked with investigating the assassination of President Kennedy, and said to be the son of two psychologists, when asked about Oswald’s mental state said, “I am not about to find out if Oswald was nurtured at his mother’s breasts, my approach to evidence is more direct.”

Sprague was then directly relieved of his job. 

But those who believe Oswald killed Kennedy for his own psychological reasons fail to connect to the real motives behind the assassination.

There was a lot of psycho-analysis going on over the course of the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, most of coming from those who believe JFK was killed by a deranged lone nut who often reflect on the mindset of conspiracy theorists and why they believe what they do.

Rather than review the evidence that convinces nearly 80% of the people that Oswald didn’t act alone in killing JFK, they prefer to psychoanalyze the logic and reasoning of most people everywhere, in every time and generation, to believe conspiratorial forces killed JFK.

Instead of considering the facts that support the belief of most people hold that Oswald wasn’t on the Sixth Floor at the time of the assassination, wasn’t the sniper in the window who didn’t shoot the fatal shot that came from the front of the president, those radical extremists who stick to the implausible belief that Oswald killed JFK alone want to psychoanalyze the rest of us who don’t see things quite as clearly as they do.

One of the first books to attack the critics of the official version of events – “The Scavanagers and Critics of the Warren Report” – was co-authored by Lawrence Schiller, who also co-authored Norman Mailer’s book about Oswald, and who has refused to share the KGB files that were provided to them.

More recently Marquette University professor John McAdams wrote a book about how conspiracy theorists think and imply their thought processes are illogical.

Those who promote the idea that a deranged Oswald killed Kennedy alone like to psychoanalyze the logic of so-called conspiracy theorists, like Professor Michael J. Wood, lecturer at eh University of Winchester in Hampshire, England, who claims that conspiracy theorists operate under a different set of assumptions than other, more rational people. When it comes to the assassination of President Kennedy Wood parrots Priscilla Johnson McMillen, who has often said the same thing as he says, “It was a pretty shocking event on a national scale, and to think it could be the product of just one person is very unsettling.”

But Professor Wood has it backwards – if Oswald was a deranged madman who killed JFK alone, that could be understood, - what is unsettling is the idea that Oswald didn’t kill JFK alone and instead it was a successful conspiracy and coup d’état and our democracy has been robbed of us, and that’s why they’re keeping all of the secret records hidden under the guise of “national security.” Now that’s unsettling. It’s not unsettling that it was a deranged, lone nut, it’s unsettling that it was a conspiracy.

They say how difficult it is for conspiracy theorists to accept the fact that one lowly little man had the ability to commit such a tremendous act and change the course of history, and how reassuring it is to think that there was something more sinister behind it.

But it is not the mind-set of the conspiracy theorists that should be studied, it is the mind of the assassin – the man who pulled the trigger – or to flip the coin – the mind set of lone nutters who want us to believe that the assassin was a lone nut rather than an agent of those who wanted Kennedy eliminated.

If we must examine what motivates people to believe silly theories, let’s look more closely at the mind-set of the minority - 20% who hold the radical extremist view that one deranged loner killed the Kennedy, a smaller, more easily isolated and studied minority group.

At the 2013 Wecht conference in Pittsburgh Lisa Pease mentioned a formal study of those who espouse such extremist beliefs as Holocaust Deniers, 9/11 Truthers, Obama Birthers and she added Lone Nutters in the JFK case, pointing out that while they all represent a small, similar less than 20% of the population minority viewpoint, only the Lone Nutters occupy important and significant positions in government, academia and the media.

This despite the facts of the case and that Lone Nutters are totally illogical, as they claim that the alleged assassin sought fame and a place in history, yet this belies the fact that he denied the deed and claimed he was set up as a patsy.

Also illogical is the attempt to portray Oswald as a lonesome loser who couldn’t hold a job and failed at everything he tried to do, yet claim he had the wherewithal to successfully kill Kennedy all by himself. If he did kill Kennedy wouldn’t that make him the world’s best and greatest assassin in history?

And wouldn’t his mind and motives be studied by psychologists as a standard case study today?

If Oswald killed Kennedy all by himself, wouldn’t it be of interest to determine exactly how he did it? Where’d he get the bullets? How’d he get the gun in the building? How’d he get down the stairs without any of the four people on the steps seeing him?

In late August 1964, as the Warren Commission was wrapping up its report, Lee Harvey Oswald’s older brother Robert received a telephone call from Warren Commission attorney Wesley Liebler, who was holed up in a remote cabin while writing the part of the Warren Report about Oswald’s motives. Libeler told Robert Oswald he had a few minor questions, some lose ends that had to be tied, like “Why’d he do it?”

Why would Oswald kill the President if he sincerely liked him? Why did Oswald deny the deed if he did it to achieve fame and place in history?  Why’d he do it? What was his motive?

Robert Oswald was flabbergasted. Here the US government undertook this giant investigation and concluded Oswald did it alone for his own psychological motives, and they would have us believe they are reasons that we will never know because they were his own personal demons – like Ted Bundy, or John Hinckley. Just plain crazy.

But what if Oswald wasn’t the Sixth Floor Sniper assassin, and was set up to be the Patsy as he claimed – is the mind and psychology of the Patsy worth studying or knowing?

It’s like what Vincent Bugliosi said to John Judge – “I heard you don’t believe Oswald acted alone,” to which Judge replied, “Oh, I think Oswald acted alone all right, I just don’t believe he killed anyone.”

Whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, one of the multiple shooters or a just a mere Patsy, his motivations are worth reviewing, especially if what happened at Dealey Plaza was not the random act of a madman but a well planned and successfully executed covert intelligence operation.

Those who claim a deranged Oswald acted alone can say “case closed” and go home, leaving the psychoanalysis to the psychologist, but if Oswald didn’t act alone, then there is a big hole in our “national security” shield, a hole that has allowed the intelligence network responsible for killing Kennedy to go on and continue unheeded, and permitted to function within the government from then until now.

There are two types of investigations – criminal and intelligence – with a the purpose of a criminal investigation being the accumulation of evidence that can be presented in a court of law to convict those responsible and an intelligence investigation to determine exactly what happened, how and why it occurred, more so it won’t happen again than to prosecute those responsible.

When the Secret Service commissioned some psychologists to study the history of political assassinations in the United States and profile those who have attacked the president, both recent and historically, they failed to include one profile that I think is particularly important when it comes to political assassinations – that of the covert operational profile. And since they didn’t mention it – and being from New Jersey where we have a reputation for developing criminal profiles – I have outlined what I call the COP – the Covert Operative Personality.

And regardless as to whether you believe Lee Harvey Oswald was the Sixth Floor Sniper and lone assassin or if he was set up as the Patsy, Oswald pretty much sets the proto-type of the COP profile as a former USMC, trained in radar, electronics and counter-interrogation techniques, fluent in two or more languages, quiet, well read and with a passive-aggressive personality type……

Of those who fit the COP profile – Oswald is joined by Frank Forini Sturgis of Watergate fame, Gerry Patrick Hemming, Tosh Plumlee, Michael Townly, Ali Mohammid, and others I will nominated ASAP.