Here's the thing: if the JFK assassination happened today, with a skeptical public and a skeptical media, the investigation would have been totally by the book. In 1963 and '64, America was more naive and trusting, and the investigative agencies cut a lot of corners thinking (knowing) they could get away with it.
But that doesn't mean Oswald didn't do it. He did. There is a veritable mountain of evidence against him, and not even a shred of evidence against anybody else. Only innuendo and rank speculation.
Examples:
1.
The Autopsy. The movie Parkland dramatizes what happened and why. In 1963 there was no federal law against assassinating a POTUS. The crime was a Texas crime, murder, and the murder was committed in Dallas. The autopsy should have been conducted in Dallas. But the Secret Service wanted to get the body out of Dallas ASAP. They succeeded in violating Texas law in absconding with the body prior to a post mortem because a) the Secret Service had more muscle, and b) the local police department didn't have the balls to fully stand up to the Feds given that the POTUS had been killed in their city --- they were embarrassed.
But the reason the Secret Service wanted the body moved quickly had nothing to do with covering up evidence of a conspiracy. Here's how they were thinking at the time:
- We have to get the new POTUS (LBJ) out of Dallas. Who knows if this is a broader conspiracy, or a prelude to a nuclear attack. The top national priority at that moment was to get LBJ back to DC.
- LBJ would not leave Dallas without Jackie Kennedy. It would have been political suicide to be disrespectful to the widow ... and LBJ was more concerned about political appearances of deference to the Kennedy family than he was concerned about his own safety.
- Jackie wasn't going to leave Dallas without JFK's remains. Had the Dallas County examiner stuck to his guns, and had the DPD backed him up and ensured a local post mortem, Jackie would have been in Dallas all day and possibly even all night. That was just not palatable to LBJ or to the Secret Service.
- But still, in hindsight, it gave the conspiracy industry plenty of fuel because the chain of custody of evidence was broken.
- What should have happened: a Dallas judge should have released the body, but only under the condition that it be accompanied by the Dallas County Medical Examiner who would lead the autopsy when it was conducted in DC. That would have solved it.
Once they got to DC, the autopsy was originally supposed to be conducted at Walter Reed Army hospital. Why? Because the Army medical examiners are highly experienced in dealing with gunshot wound analysis. They would have done a highly professional job. Why wasn't the autopsy conducted at Walter Reed? Because somebody made the mistake of talking to Jackie about this on the plane, and when she heard about it, she insisted that JFK be taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital instead (JFK had served in the US Navy). The Navy doesn't have nearly the expertise in gunshot wounds as does the Army, but who was going to argue with Jackie under those circumstances? Nobody had the heart. And so there were a lot of mistakes made in the post-mortem. None that changed the fundamental answer to the crime ... but a lot that weakened the credibility of the autopsy, and fueled the conspiracy industry.
2.
FBI Involvement in the investigation. J Edgar Hoover desperately wanted to control the investigation. Why? Because he wanted to cover up some conspiracy to kill JFK? No, because he knew the FBI's Dallas office had previously had Oswald under surveillance and failed to connect the dots and consider him dangerous to the presidential visit. Hoover was more concerned about being embarrassed than anything else. The FBI tried (largely unsuccessfully) to wrest control of the investigation from the Dallas Police Department. In hindsight, it fueled the conspiracy industry, but it was not because the FBI was in cahoots with anybody to kill Kennedy.
3.
Did LBJ want a quick Warren Commission finding that Oswald acted alone? Yes. But it wasn't to cover up evidence of a conspiracy. He had been told by the Dallas County D.A. that the evidence against Oswald was overwhelming, and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. The fact that Oswald was a leftist who had previously defected to the USSR, that he had a Russian wife, and that he was pro-Castro caused LBJ to fear that the American political right wing would use any whiff of Soviet involvement as a pretext to demand war. LBJ didn't want war. But war rumors were rampant after the assassination. And LBJ didn't want to be railroaded into a war by a bloodthirsty populace feeding a reactionary Congress (and thank goodness for that). He knew the evidence against Oswald was incontrovertible, and so he pushed for a quick release of the Warren Commission to quell public suspicions of a non-existent conspiracy. Yes, there were reasons that LBJ wanted the "lone nut" characterization of Oswald advanced. It wasn't because Oswald was really a patsy. He wasn't.
Sure, when you dissect an event the way we have spent the past 50 years dissecting the Kennedy assassination, you are going to find inconsistencies in the official version of events. But none of these inconsistencies undermines the mountain of physical evidence that links Oswald to the killing. And there is zero evidence that anybody else was involved ... only rank speculation.
Do you really think the government is competent enough to kill a popularly elected POTUS, and cover it up for 50 years so thoroughly that nobody spills the beans on the conspiracy? Doesn't the rollout of Obamacare prove to you that the Federal government simply isn't nearly good enough to pull something like that off?
Oswald did it. And he did it alone.
And by the way, as good as the book "Case Closed" was, it pales in comparison to Bugliosi's book.