The Convenient Deaths associated with the JFK Assassination Part 2

The Convenient Deaths associated with the JFK Assassination Part 2

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From: [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: JFK: List of Convenient Deaths
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Mar 91 04:26:30 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee)
Distribution: sci.skeptic
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Lines: 18

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] ( Steve Feinstein) writes:
>
> Here is the much requested list of people associated with the JFK
>assassination whose deaths are called convenient. Bear in mind that

Here's a project for you: Count how many people are associated with the JFK
assasination, either dead or alive.

Now figure how many of those people should have been expected, according to
statistics, to die in the 20 year period referred to.

Now compare to the size of your list.
--
"If God can do anything, can he float a loan even he can't repay?"
--Blair Houghton, cross-posting

Kenneth Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
INTERNET: [email protected])

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From: [email protected] ( Steve Feinstein)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: JFK: List of Convenient Deaths
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Mar 91 15:13:29 GMT
References: <[email protected]><[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Distribution: sci.skeptic
Organization: M.I.T. Lincoln Lab - Group 43
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In-Reply-To: [email protected]'s message of 26 Mar 91 04:26:30 GMT

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee) writes:
> Here's a project for you: Count how many people are associated with the JFK
> assasination, either dead or alive.
>
> Now figure how many of those people should have been expected, according to
> statistics, to die in the 20 year period referred to.
>
> Now compare to the size of your list.

This is exactly the vacuous CIA response. Having typed in over 400 lines, if
you're going to respond, the least you can do is read it and not just count the
names. I'm sure I don't have to explain the difference between natural
causes and death by murder or suspected murder near the time of testimony.
What you should do is count how many people were in Jack Ruby's apartment
the day he killed Oswald and how many of them died within 1 to 2 years of
that day. The answer is all three of them.

The FBI interviewed 25,000 people, attempting to find everyone remotely
involved in the case. Many people were connected who were not a threat
to the conspirators, either because they lacked damaging information or
they kept their mouths shut. The thing to look at is how many people died
who had damaging information, how many were willing to share the information
with the public, and how many of them would you expect to die during a given
period. And, how many of those deaths would you expect to be by "natural
causes", accidents and murders, neglecting for the moment that the first
two causes can be faked. The number of people who were dangerous to the
alleged conspirators was certainly less than 25,000. The HSCA did not even
attempt this analysis, saying it was too difficult to come up with meaningful
numbers. They just accepted the line that 100 deaths out of 25,000 is not
high for the given period. But how many people knew about the Ruby-Oswald
connection, and spoke about it? About the same number who died. How many
people had foreknowledge of the assassination, communicated it and were to
answer questions about it -- people like Milteer and Cheramie? How many of
those people died suspiciously? Too many for me to not be *skeptical* about
the official version of events.

All I can say is that for a group that calls itself skeptical, there are
alot of people who seem to believe the Warren Commission's conclusions.
That's no way to get a good reputation.
--

Steve Feinstein

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From: [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: JFK: List of Convenient Deaths
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 26 Mar 91 18:26:47 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee)
Distribution: sci.skeptic
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Lines: 56

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] ( Steve Feinstein) writes:
>> Here's a project for you: Count how many people are associated with the JFK
>> assasination, either dead or alive.
>> Now figure how many of those people should have been expected, according to
>> statistics, to die in the 20 year period referred to.
>> Now compare to the size of your list.
>This is exactly the vacuous CIA response. Having typed in over 400 lines, if
>you're going to respond, the least you can do is read it and not just count the
>names. I'm sure I don't have to explain the difference between natural
>causes and death by murder or suspected murder near the time of testimony.

You know what?

I never saw the CIA response.

Which means that, according to you, I have found the exact same flaw in your
data that the CIA did, despite having no contact with them and not reading
what they said. It would be very curious were the CIA to make something up,
and then when I look for flaws in your argument I see the exact same flaw that
the CIA supposedly made up, even though I looked at it totally independently
of the CIA. Perhaps the flaw is really there, and that's why both I and the
CIA can find it without consulting each other?

How can you separate out "suspected murder" from natural causes? You can't
find statistics saying that in 25000 people so and so many die by murder, so
and so die by suspected murder, and so and so die by natural causes. If you
want to say that more people in this group were murdered than the statistics
predict, you don't get to count the "suspected" murders.

>... The number of people who were dangerous to the
>alleged conspirators was certainly less than 25,000. The HSCA did not even
>attempt this analysis, saying it was too difficult to come up with meaningful
>numbers. They just accepted the line that 100 deaths out of 25,000 is not
>high for the given period. But how many people knew about the Ruby-Oswald
>connection, and spoke about it? About the same number who died. How many
>people had foreknowledge of the assassination, communicated it and were to
>answer questions about it -- people like Milteer and Cheramie? How many of
>those people died suspiciously? Too many for me to not be *skeptical* about
>the official version of events.

Imagine that you are wrong. Oswald killed Kennedy. But also, I come along
and want to promote a conspiracy theory that is false. What can I do? Well,
I can look at those 25000 people and see that 100 of them died. Then, I can
decide, after the fact, that all 100 of those people must have been dangerous
to the conspirators. Then I can shout "look here, 100 of 100 potential
victims were killed! Must be a conspiracy!"

Do you really have any reason to consider those 100 people special _other_
than "I can pick people as 'special' based on their deaths. Then I can
conclude a conspiracy because the deaths were all of 'special' people"?
--
"If God can do anything, can he float a loan even he can't repay?"
--Blair Houghton, cross-posting

Kenneth Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
INTERNET: [email protected])

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From: [email protected] (Mark D. Fisher)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: JFK: List of Convenient Deaths
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Mar 91 15:52:53 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Distribution: sci.skeptic
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Lines: 22

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee) writes:
>Here's a project for you: Count how many people are associated with the JFK
>assasination, either dead or alive.
>
>Now figure how many of those people should have been expected, according to
>statistics, to die in the 20 year period referred to.
>
>Now compare to the size of your list.

That would not have any meaning unless the people he had listed included
everyone that was connected to the assasination, or a randomly pick sample of
that population. However these are people that were placed on the list because
they were dead. Suppose one million people were connected to the event in a
way at least as strong as the connections that the people on the list were and
that the list included every one of them that died. Then no matter how
unlikely it was for any individual person on that list to die when they did
statistics would indicate it to be safer to be connected to the incedent.

Therefore the list really doesn't prove anything one way or another.

As always,
Fish

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From: [email protected] ( Steve Feinstein)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: JFK: List of Convenient Deaths
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Mar 91 15:26:34 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
<[email protected]>
Sender: [email protected]
Distribution: sci.skeptic
Organization: M.I.T. Lincoln Lab - Group 43
Lines: 150
Posted: Wed Mar 27 09:26:34 1991
In-Reply-To: [email protected]'s message of 26 Mar 91 18:26:47 GMT

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee) writes:
>You know what?
>I never saw the CIA response.
>Which means that, according to you, I have found the exact same flaw in your
>data that the CIA did, despite having no contact with them and not reading
>what they said. It would be very curious were the CIA to make something up,
>and then when I look for flaws in your argument I see the exact same flaw that
>the CIA supposedly made up, even though I looked at it totally independently
>of the CIA. Perhaps the flaw is really there, and that's why both I and the
>CIA can find it without consulting each other?
>
>How can you separate out "suspected murder" from natural causes? You can't
>find statistics saying that in 25000 people so and so many die by murder, so
>and so die by suspected murder, and so and so die by natural causes. If you
>want to say that more people in this group were murdered than the statistics
>predict, you don't get to count the "suspected" murders.
>[...]
>Imagine that you are wrong. Oswald killed Kennedy. But also, I come along
>and want to promote a conspiracy theory that is false. What can I do? Well,
>I can look at those 25000 people and see that 100 of them died. Then, I can
>decide, after the fact, that all 100 of those people must have been dangerous
>to the conspirators. Then I can shout "look here, 100 of 100 potential
>victims were killed! Must be a conspiracy!"
>
>Do you really have any reason to consider those 100 people special _other_
>than "I can pick people as 'special' based on their deaths. Then I can
>conclude a conspiracy because the deaths were all of 'special' people"?
>
To repeat my earlier comments, the list does not prove that a
conspiracy exists/existed. What it proves is that there were
a number of deaths which are *suspicious* for some combination
of reasons, not all of which are elaborated on, obviously.

It is not necessary to prove anything more than that *one*
person was killed because of such reasons. Such proof
would imply that someone other than Oswald needed
to hide information to such a degree that they would
commit murder. Now, for argument's sake, suppose we
had such proof, yet in 28 years since the assassination,
this was the only person connected with the case to
die. Does that prove there was no conspiracy? Of course
not, because we know a priori that an assassination-
related murder occurred (note that this is not a
"suspicious" death, but a death definitely linked to
the case).

What is actually contained in this list? There is no
proof that a single person actually was killed for what
they knew about the assassination. However, there are
*individual* cases which should not be buried in
aggregate statistical arguments -- use aggregate statistics
when you have no more information than numbers of people,
or when you goal is to obfuscate the truth, which, hopefully,
in this case is not true. This is the point of providing the
list. The flaw in the presentation is that it's hard to flush
out so many details. But let's look at a couple.

Joseph Milteer: This is a man who was *tape recorded* by
a police informant on 11/6/63 describing the assassination
plot against Kennedy in Miami in detail (that he would be
hit from an office building with a high-powered rifle and
that someone would be picked up afterwards to "throw the
public off"). When the Miami motorcade was canceled, he
later called the same informant from Dallas on 11/22/63
saying that Kennedy would be hit. The tape was turned
over to Miami police who forwarded it to the FBI. The
Secret Service in Dallas apparently never got wind of
this information. On 11/27/63, Milteer denied making the
remarks attributed to him when questioned by the FBI. He was
called in for more questioning, but died before he could
make it in. The cause of death was "burns received from
a heater explosion in his vacation cabin". Milteer was
known to be a right-wing extremist with connections to
anti-Castro Cubans.

You cannot tell me that this is not suspicious. Of course,
it's not *proof*, but if we were to find several "equally
suspicious" cases, we would certainly want to look into
them further. Let's take another case.

Dorothy Kilgallen: One of the only reporters to interview
Jack Ruby during his trial, claimed to be carrying a message
to Ruby from a mutual friend. Ruby and Kilgallen met
privately for eight minutes behind the judge's bench without
the four sheriff's deputies who always accompanied him.
This nationally syndicated columnist did not write about
this meeting. Her biographer suggested that "either a) she
was saving the material for her book "Murder One", b) he
furnished her with a lead which she was pursuing, c) that
he exacted a promise of confidentiality from her, or
d) that she was acting merely as a courier. Each
possibility puts her in the thick of things."
Another possible source of information for Kilgallen was her
drinking friend, Joan Crawford, who was a principal owner of
Pepsi-Cola, for whom Richard Nixon was an attorney. Both
Nixon and Crawford were in Dallas during the assassination
and there is information which opens the possibility that
Nixon and Crawford were privy to some information. Among
Nixon's lifelong connections to the mob is Jack Ruby himself
who used to work for Nixon. Or did you believe that Nixon
"was no crook"?
Back to Kilgallen, she told attorney Mark Lane, "They've
killed the President, the government is not prepared to tell
us the truth..." and that she planned to "break the case".
She told others, "this *has* to be a conspiracy! The Warren
Commission is laughable...I'm going to break the real story
and have the biggest scoop of the century". Her last
column appeared on 9/3/65 in which she wrote, "this story
isn't going to die as long as there's a real reporter
alive -- and there are alot of them." Kilgallen was found
dead in her home on 11/8/65, originally called a heart
attack, then changed to a drug and alcohol overdose,
circumstances undetermined. Her biographer wrote

After three years of investigating Dorothy's
death, it is clear to me that she did not die
accidentally and that a network of varied activies,
impelled by disparate purposes, conspired effectively
to obfuscate the truth.

Dorothy's close friend, Mrs. Earl Smith, was thought to
have kept Kilgallen's notes. Smith died two days after
Kilgallen, cause of death unknown. No notes were ever
found.

Again, you will never convince me that this is not
suspicious. I could go on.

As long as there are strong suggestions of multiple
assassination-related deaths, listing those deaths
supports, but in no way proves, that a conspiracy
took place. That is the purpose of the list that
I posted.

The fact that you and the CIA came up with the same
lame reasoning to write off all of these cases, only
proves that people independently will play on the
same misconceptions in the same way, either honestly
or dishonestly, to further their respective causes.

Steve Feinstein

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From: [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: JFK: List of Convenient Deaths
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 27 Mar 91 19:47:46 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee)
Distribution: sci.skeptic
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Lines: 28

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] ( Steve Feinstein) writes:
>As long as there are strong suggestions of multiple
>assassination-related deaths, listing those deaths
>supports, but in no way proves, that a conspiracy
>took place. That is the purpose of the list that
>I posted.

If you have one death without proof of assassination, and then you find another
death without proof of assassination, what you now have is two deaths without
proof of assassination.

Pointing to "suspiciousness" as evidence has the same problem as pointing to
deaths as evidence: in 25000 people, just like you could expect a certain
number of deaths, you could expect a number of deaths that occur under unusual
circumstances. You can then select those people for special consideration and
say "look how suspicious these are" when in a group of that size you should
really expect events that appear suspicious but have nothing behind them.

(The fallacy often appears in reference to more explicitly-stated statistics.
If the odds are 100 to 1 against something being caused by chance, it could
still very well be chance if you had to look through a hundred things to find
it.)
--
"If God can do anything, can he float a loan even he can't repay?"
--Blair Houghton, cross-posting

Kenneth Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
INTERNET: [email protected])

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From: [email protected] (Daniel Read)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: JFK: List of Convenient Deaths
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 28 Mar 91 00:04:46 GMT
References: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
Distribution: sci.skeptic
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
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In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee) writes:
>
>If you have one death without proof of assassination, and then you find another
>death without proof of assassination, what you now have is two deaths without
>proof of assassination.
>
>Pointing to "suspiciousness" as evidence has the same problem as pointing to
>deaths as evidence: in 25000 people, just like you could expect a certain
>number of deaths, you could expect a number of deaths that occur under unusual
>circumstances. You can then select those people for special consideration and
>say "look how suspicious these are" when in a group of that size you should
>really expect events that appear suspicious but have nothing behind them.
>
>(The fallacy often appears in reference to more explicitly-stated statistics.
>If the odds are 100 to 1 against something being caused by chance, it could
>still very well be chance if you had to look through a hundred things to find
>it.)
>--

This is not a fallacy. You are arguing that the original poster has
insufficient data to prove their claim. Granted, this is true.
You, however, have no data and an alternative hypothesis. I think
you should get the data to refute your opponent and stop doing
thought experiments.

daniel

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From: [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: JFK: List of Convenient Deaths
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: 28 Mar 91 03:05:29 GMT
References: <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected] (Kenneth Arromdee)
Distribution: sci.skeptic
Organization: Johns Hopkins University CS Dept.
Lines: 22

In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Daniel Read) writes:
>>(The fallacy often appears in reference to more explicitly-stated statistics.
>>If the odds are 100 to 1 against something being caused by chance, it could
>>still very well be chance if you had to look through a hundred things to find
>>it.)
>This is not a fallacy. You are arguing that the original poster has
>insufficient data to prove their claim. Granted, this is true.
>You, however, have no data and an alternative hypothesis. I think
>you should get the data to refute your opponent and stop doing
>thought experiments.

I gave my hypothesis. It's the null hypothesis.

If the other poster wishes to make a claim, he should prove it. If he cannot
prove it (and you admit he can't), I have no obligation to _dis_prove it in
order to object to it.
--
"If God can do anything, can he float a loan even he can't repay?"
--Blair Houghton, cross-posting

Kenneth Arromdee (UUCP: ....!jhunix!arromdee; BITNET: arromdee@jhuvm;
INTERNET: [email protected])

...PART 1
...PART 2
...PART 3