Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald (10 page)

Hits a lot closer to home, doesn't it? This unstated syllogism is what lies behind articles like we saw in the
Dallas Observer
, and this chapter title in
Reclaiming History
(RH 872):

Or this marvelous writing by Bugliosi (RH 872):

“A chorus of cuckoo birds will voice their bizarre observations.” Pure poetry from our legal Longfellow (love that meter!). But underlying this poetics is logic, Bugliosi-style, and that's where the beauty ends.

Again, returning to the syllogism, to disprove this “logic,” all we have to do is take a look at
all
the beliefs that Jim Marrs has. If this logic were true,
every single thing
that Jim Marrs believed would have to be
false
. Yet we know this could not possibly be the case, as shown in the following counter-syllogism:

People who believe in aliens are crazy.

Jim Marrs believes in aliens and that 2 + 2 = 4.

People who believe that 2 + 2 = 4 are crazy.

Now
that
is crazy!

With two of the most poorly-conceived syllogisms disposed of, let’s also eliminate the disreputable tests some people may have silently used in their minds to convict Oswald, most of these related to the Asch effect:

• The Bestseller Test
  (if a bestseller says it, it must be true);
  
• The Friend Test
  (if all my friends say it, it must be true);
  
• The Television Test
  (if the television reports it, it must be true);
  
• The Personal Feeling Test
  (if I hate Communists, Oswald did it);
  
• The Textbook Test
  (if my textbook tells me so, it must be so);
  
• The Timing Test
  (if I have been exposed to ten hours of information that Oswald did it, and one hour of information that he did not do it, then he did it);
  
• The Stack Of Books Test
  (if John reads a stack of books 1 foot high on the subject, and Ted reads a stack of books 2 feet high on the subject, and they are opposed, Ted is right, and John is wrong, particularly if Ted thinks Oswald did it);
  
• The Majority Rules Test
  (if the majority thinks that Oswald was involved, he is guilty);
  
• The Lots Of Letters Test
  (people with lots of letters after their name should always be trusted over people with no letters after their name. NOTE: having a Nobel Prize = 20 letters after your name, and testifying for the Warren Commission gives you double points);
  
• The Famous Person Test
  (if a famous person says something, and a person we don’t know says something else, believe the famous person);
  
• The Hall Of Mirrors Test
  (the more media outlets that report something, the more likely it is to be true).
  

I think we can take it on faith that truth is not determined by the number of bestsellers which report something as true, or the number of friends we have, or whether or not a television show reports
x
, or any of the above, and if faith doesn’t do the job, numerous counter-examples in the real world would. Now, if anyone can come up with any compelling reasons why I am wrong, please let me know.

So much for the easy ones. But while easy to show invalid, they are not the most common reasons why Oswald gets virtually burned at the stake in our 21st century version of the Salem witch trials (at least in the 17th century version, the "witches", unlike Oswald,
had
a trial). The most common reason is a meme that lies silently in people’s minds, unarticulated. If you want to know why PBS, CBS, ABC, Tom Hanks, and a whole host of others are wrong, you have to understand this meme, and that is this:

They are applying the wrong standard of proof
.

Because they are applying the wrong standard of proof, they can convict in their minds someone who is actually
unconvictable
.

It took me a long time to figure out how so many people could be off the mark, until I finally realized that many of these people have their belief because they are not applying the correct standard — that of
reasonable doubt
— but a different and illegitimate standard, the standard of
unreasonable chance
.

Yes, the
unreasonable chance
standard is alive and well in America, and for my money (up to $12,000 or possibly higher, remember?), if you want an explanation of how so many people can be so wrong, this is it.

To prove that this standard does its dirty work silently in people’s minds, an elegant proof is provided by none other than Stephen King, in the afterword to his book. Extra points if you spot the doublethink before I highlight it for you (
11/22/63
, p. 845):

(While you are scoping out the doublethink, I have to point out something about the “fame-junkie” crack: if Oswald was such a fame-junkie, why did he
deny
killing Kennedy? Isn’t that something a fame-junkie would be
proud of
?) Okay, I’ll forget about the crack, and move to the issue at hand, focusing on two opposing key statements in the King paragraph:

1. “I’d put the probability at ninety-eight percent, maybe even ninety-nine.”
   
2. “Were the odds of it happening just the way it did long? Yes. So are the odds on winning the lottery, but someone wins one every day.”
   

Now there’s a contradiction for you. A
glaring
one. We can see why when we realize that
winning a lottery is not an easy thing to do
; for example, in the
Mega Millions
lottery in America, 5 numbers are drawn from a group of 56, 1 number is drawn from a group of 46, and you must match all 6 balls to win the jackpot. Good luck: the chance of winning is a whopping
1 in 175,711,536
!
4

To simplify matters, let’s say the lottery King is talking about is a much easier lottery to win, where the chances of winning are a much less intimidating one in a million. Now, let’s restate what King said using common terminology in both statements, and the contradiction will really pop out at you:

1. “I’d put the probability at
   980,000 chances in a 1,000,000
   , maybe even 990,000 chances in a 1,000,000.”
   
2. “Were the odds of it happening just the way it did
   1 chance in a 1,000,000
   ? Yes. So are the odds on winning the lottery, but someone wins one every day.”
   

Now, how ridiculous is that?
The confidence level that one should have for an event to occur should be
directly related
to its probability!!
So, for example, if you flip a coin one time, you should be
50%
confident that heads will come up, not
100%
. If you flip a coin three times, you should be
12.5%
confident that heads will come up three times in a row, not
50%
.

Yet what King is saying is that even though the
odds
of Oswald being guilty were around
1 in 1,000,000
, he puts the
probability
of Oswald being guilty at
980,000 chances in 1,000,000
!!!

Folks, that just does not compute! 980,00 ≠ 1!!

Oswald gets inappropriately burned at the virtual stake because King rides down a slippery slope from the
reasonable doubt
height and some way, somehow, ends up mired in the
unreasonable chance
quicksand: in other words, if there is
any
chance that you are guilty, then you
are
guilty, even if the chance is one in 1000 or one in 1,000,000 or one in 1,000,000,000! Therefore, you are damned if you did, and damned if you didn’t.

Object to King’s reasoning? Well, shame on you, because someone
does
win the lottery . . . don’t they? Well, eventually. But that’s not really the point, is it? If you put people in jail based on the results of a
coin flip
, that approach would be light-years more fair than this standard!

Can you imagine how full our prisons would be if we convicted people using the
unreasonable chance
standard of 1 in a 1,000,000??? If you can’t, consider the insight which emerges when we come at the ratio from another angle:

If the chance you are
innocent
is 999,999 out of 1,000,000, get ready to do some hard time in the slammer!

That’s right, under the Stephen King lottery-odds-are-the-benchmark version of the
unreasonable chance
standard, we’d
all
be calling Sing Sing home! And if that were true, would King be singing a different tune?

I don’t know, probably not: if that person knocking at your door with a warrant for your arrest turns out to be Stephen King, I’d suggest you git while the gittin’ is good.

Uh oh, too late . . . heeeeeeeeeeere’s Stephen!