On the Loss of Occam’s Razor in the JFK Case

By Nicholas R. Nalli, Ph.D.

Those of us who have not been living under a rock the past couple of months are probably aware that the Kennedy Assassination has recently regained the attention of mainstream news coverage in the aftermath of the release of the remaining classified JFK files by the Trump Administration.  With the release of the remaining files, which #47 ordered within the first week of his second term, there has been renewed interest in the case, albeit with new perspectives.  The full declassification of the remaining documents and redactions by President Trump no doubt was partially at the beckoning of JFK’s nephew (and now U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but also as a lingering unfulfilled promise from his first term.  Oliver Stone and his consultant, Jim DiEugenio, have both been making the rounds, as well as others, many, if not most, insinuating that it was a deep-state operation.

Among these is Jefferson Morley, an independent journalist and noted JFK author, who has emerged as one of the more prominent and articulate advocates keeping various aspects of the case relevant, appearing before the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets this spring (along with Stone and DiEugenio) and making other appearances in the mainstream media.  Mr. Morley has long advocated for the declassification of the JFK documents and is among those I would consider to be rational “Warren Commission Critics” or “buffs” (as they prefer to be called, but some of whom being full-blown conspiracy theorists), including Josiah “Tink” Thompson, the late Dr. Donald Thomas, Dr. Cyril Wecht, and Edward J. Epstein, along with a handful of others.

Government Transparency and Conspiracy Theories

Like many JFK buffs, Morley takes umbrage with the label “conspiracy theorist,” and it’s not difficult to understand why: Within the broader universe of conspiracy theories, many zany fringe ideas reside, including those who deny the moon landing and climate change, who believe that extraterrestrial aliens landed at Roswell, chemtrails are being dispersed by the government into the atmosphere, and that the hated U.S. President George W. Bush (remember him?) was behind the 9/11 World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.  I again empathize with the more rational JFK buffs, Morley and Thompson among them, and will attest that they are not zanies.  But I might remind them that Moon Landing Deniers and 9/11 Truthers also do not consider themselves conspiracy theorists.

Unfortunately, anyone claiming or implying that President Kennedy was assassinated by a host of unknown men-in-black (who not only planned and executed the operation with exacting precision, but also covered it up for 61+ years, successfully pinning it on an insignificant, innocent-but-appearing-guilty fall guy), still falls squarely within that category.  According to Merriam-Webster online:

conspiracy theory

: a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators.

(e.g., the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's assassination)

It should be noted that the term “conspiracy theory” does not include actual, real conspiracies, examples of which include the Lincoln Assassination and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, both of which were committed by conspiracies with a small “c”.

To be clear, Morley’s Statement for the Record dated 1 April 2025 for the House Task Force does not descend to the level of “conspiracy theories” given that he doesn’t there venture into the realm described above.   Here Morley simply makes a legitimate criticism of the withholding of information in the assassination of President Kennedy by past U.S. intelligence officers (most of whom are now deceased), specifically information pertaining to Lee Oswald, the man found by both the Warren Commission and House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to have been the lone gunman in the assassination of Kennedy.

Past Withholding of Information

Within the recent declassified documents, Morley has unearthed occasions where he believes that Richard Helms, James Angleton, and George Joannides (all long deceased CIA Officers) were hiding information they had on Oswald.  But Oswald had brushed against American intelligence in his activities (discussed a bit more below) and thus there were issues with protecting classified information, including sources and methods.  There was no “Oswald operation” but excess secrecy, which coupled with “cover your ass” (CYA) actions, made it look suspicious.

As an example, it is now well known (at least to JFK buffs) that, on the order of his superior, FBI Agent James Hosty (who was assigned to Oswald), destroyed circumstantial evidence that potentially exhibited what is now known as “leakage behavior.”[1]   The evidence in question was a “pointed” note left for Hosty by Oswald at his Dallas FBI field office just 10 days before the assassination. 

Testimony and speculation about what the note said has varied.  The existence of the note was kept hidden from the Warren Commission, and when it became known years later, Hosty shrugged it off.

However, his receptionist, Mrs. Fenner, with whom Oswald left the note, testified that it contained an overt threat that he (Oswald) would blow up the FBI building if Hosty did not back off from harassing him and his wife.[2]  (!)

Hosty devoted considerable space in his book questioning Fenner’s credibility,[3] but to his credit he otherwise admitted that the note was “angry” in tone and that it demanded that he stop harassing him.[4]   Hosty also noted that during the interrogation in Dallas, Oswald told him “I’m sorry for blowing up at you.  And I’m sorry for writing that letter to you.”[5]  But if the note was innocuous, then why would Oswald apologize for it during an interrogation, and why would he connect it with his “blowing up” at Hosty?

What’s interesting about Mrs. Fenner’s account is that the specific threat is in character with the historical Lee Oswald without her being privy to that information.

Just six weeks earlier Oswald brandished his revolver before the Soviet consulate in Mexico City while apparently nearly suffering a nervous breakdown, telling them in tears that the “notorious FBI” was following him and going to kill him, which is why he had to carry a gun.[6]

While in New Orleans earlier that year, Oswald also instructed teenagers about guerrilla sabotage tactics, specifically how to derail a train and set off a bomb on the Huey Long Bridge.[7]  (!!)

Some “lone-gunman proponents” out there might still dispute that the “Hosty note” made any incriminating violent threat, but whatever the note said, it was considered damaging enough that Hosty’s FBI superior went ballistic[8] and ordered that the note, material evidence in a capital murder case involving the President of the United States, be destroyed.[9]  And regardless of what type of threat the note contained, it takes chutzpah to leave an angry written directive for an FBI Agent at his office… and this is something that may very well have been a red flag (leakage behavior) before the assassination.

Of course, it should come as no surprise to us that U.S. intelligence agencies (viz., FBI and CIA) would’ve taken an interest in Lee Oswald.  He tried to defect to the Soviet Union and revoke his USA citizenship; he indicated that he would share classified military information of “special interest” to  the Soviets in Moscow[10]; regularly corresponded with Communist groups after returning to the USA; made news in NOLA after creating a scene at the Trade Mart distributing pro-Castro Communist propaganda; appeared on a NOLA radio debate and on television affirming that he was a Marxist; took a bus to Mexico City where he spent six days visiting the Soviet and Cuban consulates, during which time  he happened to make contact with Valerie Vladimirovich Kostikov (outwardly a consular officer, but clandestinely a KGB Agent from Dept 13 which handled sabotage and assassinations), consorted with radical leftists, obstinately demanded entry to Castro’s Cuba, brandished a firearm in front of the Soviets, and had an “altercation” with the Cuban consulate (to put it mildly… more on that in another thread) mere weeks before the assassination, among many other things.

It would appear that the 24-year-old former Marine lived quite an activist life; indeed, it’s no small wonder conspiracy theorists over the years have conjectured that he was some sort of Intelligence Agent.  But many of the details of these past actions by the assassin were either withheld by intelligence agencies or dismissed by the Warren Commission as being irrelevant in the case, amounting to nothing more than the bizarre behavior of a “lone nut.”  Much more has since come to light that throw doubt on this “lone nut” characterization of Oswald, and on this point again, I think Morley and I would agree …

Science and Occam’s Razor

However, in his recent article, titled “Who Lost Occam’s Razor?” (published in the JFK Facts blog), Morley claims that the “Inside-the-Beltway journos” (i.e., mainstream news media) “wax dismissive” and have been indifferent toward the “new evidence about JFK’s murder,” noting that there has been a lot of new material released that nobody would’ve been able to thoroughly review yet.[11]

More specifically, Morley takes issue with a comment made by New York Times Film Critic A. O. Scott’s regarding Occam’s Razor and the JFK assassination boondoggle:

Occam’s razor, the venerable philosophical principle that the truest explanation is likely to be the simplest, has been thrown away.  We’re living in the age of Occam’s chain saw, when the preferred answer is the one that makes the loudest noise and generates the most debris.

“Occam’s Razor” has been variously described as the “principle of simplicity”,[12] but that’s an oversimplification (no pun intended).  More exactly, it refers to a fundamental premise within rational inquiry (especially science), namely that given two competing hypotheses that explain a phenomenon equally well, the simpler hypothesis is more likely the true one (and thus the better one).  Morley provides a similar definition in his article, so we are certainly on the same page here.

Every great physical theory has essentially been about reducing an infinite multitude of observed phenomena to a simple universal formula (e.g., Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation in classical mechanics), set of coupled equations (e.g., Maxwell’s Equations in classical electrodynamics), or governing principles (e.g., the principle of least action for all of physics), and there is always an aura of elegant simplicity in the result.

Scott is simply positing that, in our current age, Occam’s Razor is being “thrown out” in favor of sensationalism, mysticism, and conspiracy theorizing, and this generally applies to contemporary topics, the JFK assassination simply being one of the vanguards of this present state of affairs.  It is this latter point where Morley disagrees, and where he goes on to suggest that it’s the other way around, hence the question posed in the title of his article.

As a case in point, Morley refers to my 2018 Heliyon article on the physics of JFK’s head wound providing two excerpts and then wryly asking if the reader has questions… or a headache. 

Interestingly enough, I again completely emphasize with Mr. Morley here.  There have been many an occasion when I suffered similar “fatigue” when trying to digest a technical article, solve a research problem, or complete an assignment.  There were many times when I felt (and probably was) in over my head.

And in my younger, more idealistic days I always vowed to myself that I would write technical material in a more accessible manner than these earlier gauche authors that I had to suffer through.  Although I have tried to live up to this endeavor, I have probably ended up falling short on more than one occasion and unwittingly joined the ranks of my predecessors.

It should be understood that although the Heliyon paper was open-access (providing free access to everyone and not simply those with the privilege of having library subscriptions to technical journals), it was nevertheless a peer-reviewed technical article published within the scientific literature, so it was still oriented toward a scientific/academic audience.  An increasing number of scientific journals have been moving toward open-access, and as such they now include a “Plain Language Summary” along with the Abstract at the beginning of published articles… and that’s a good thing IMO.

That said, however, the conclusion of the paper that JFK was shot in the head from behind does indeed adhere to Occam’s Razor, specifically in the interpretation of Zapruder Frames Z312–Z313, where the forward head-snap of JFK’s head is clearly evident concurrent with the head wound.[13] 

The simplest (and best) explanation for this observation was an impulse caused by a high-speed bullet fired from the rear.

The mathematical description in the Heliyon paper was meant to provide a quantitative analysis so that a more definitive forensic statement could be made.  As the venerable Lord Kelvin put it:[14]

In physical science, a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it.  I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

— Thomson, W. (1891). Popular Lectures and Addresses, Vol. I, p. 80.

In the application of Occam’s Razor to physics, Albert Einstein is reputed to have included an addendum to the Razor: “As simple as possible… but not more so.”

What Einstein meant is that although the simplest theory is often the most probable (or preferred), that theory must nevertheless explain all the data excluding noise, and sometimes the physical world behaves in counterintuitive, complex ways.[15]

A Cautionary Tale

So, let’s get back to the question about “who lost Occam’s Razor” in the JFK case.

Tink Thompson had some salient observations indirectly addressing this issue in a short (six and a half minute) 2011 JFK assassination documentary (by Errol Morris, published online by The New York Times), where he brilliantly uses the example of the “Umbrella Man” to make the point.  If anyone hasn’t seen it, I strongly recommend doing so: “Who Was the Umbrella Man?” | JFK Assassination Documentary | The New York Times.

In a nutshell, Thompson relays to us the story about solving the mystery of the Umbrella Man in the mid-1970s.  Following the publication of the Warren Report, the identity (and “purpose”) of the darkly dressed man standing in Dealey Plaza with a black umbrella opened near the Stemmons Freeway sign (exactly where the President and Governor are first shot), remained a mystery.  Because of his location, and because it was otherwise a sunny day with nary a cloud in the sky, conspiracy theorists (Tink’s words for them) jumped to the conclusion that the Umbrella Man played a role in the Conspiracy against the President (and consequently, the Warren Commission was complicit in covering up his existence).  Oliver Stone in his 1991 blockbuster JFK insinuated that the Umbrella Man was there to give a signal to the “triangulated” snipers, and that the U.S. Secret Service would never have allowed him to open his umbrella on the street (this recasting of the Secret Service as some sort of gestapo has lingered on with latter-day conspiracy authors).

But Tink followed up on the lead, and the Umbrella Man would eventually appear before the HSCA to explain what he was really about, namely a silent protest against JFK’s father for his appeasement policies in World War II, symbolized by UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella.  Tink found this eventual revelation amusing, but he more importantly draws the following “moral of the story” at the end of the video:

What it means is, if you have any fact which you think is really sinister...  Forget it man.  Because you can never, on your own, think up all the non-sinister, perfectly valid explanations for that fact.  A cautionary tale!

Nailed it, Detective Thompson!

This gets at why we should always seek to apply Occam’s Razor, namely that a “sinister fact” involving a Conspiracy and underlying plot is implicitly going to be complicated by definition, involving numerous moving parts.

The endeavor of science may be thought of as the process of selecting the best explanation from an infinity of inferior counter-explanations.  A scientific theory is the best-known explanation for a set of phenomena, although occasionally a “better” not-yet-known explanation may later be found.

As a closing note, Tink also says the following at the beginning of his short JFK assassination documentary on the Umbrella Man:

In historical research there may be a dimension similar to the quantum dimension in physical reality. If you put any event under a microscope, you will find a whole dimension of completely weird, incredible things going on. It’s as if there’s the macro-level of historical research, where things sort of obey natural laws and usual things happen and unusual things don’t happen… and then there’s this other level where everything is really weird.

This initial commentary by Tink gets at the heart of conspiracy theorizing, namely that if you take any “event” from history (or even events from an ordinary day in the life…) and you put it under a microscope, you will eventually find oddities, peculiarities, coincidences, etc.  But in such cases, one does not irrationally consider such things as “significant,” “directed,” or part of a “simulation.”

Any given set of data contains both “signal” (the actual pattern) and “noise” (random, meaningless fluctuations not relevant to the pattern).  It appears that we humans, in our survival instinct, sometimes err on the side of finding signal (or patterns) within what is otherwise noise.[16]

Relying on Occam’s Razor, a scientist seeks to find models or theories that capture the signal but not meaningless noise.  Models that capture both the signal and the noise are typically far more complicated (i.e., requiring more parameters) and are considered to be “overfitted.”

Within the JFK Assassination, the Umbrella Man was “noise,” not signal.  It is the attempt to overfit a “model” (explanation) to such noise that invariably leads to conspiracy theories.  It is ironic and a pity that Thompson did not take his own “cautionary tale” to heart when he published his latest book, Last Second in Dallas in 2021, where he contorts evidence to fit a preconceived notion of multiple shooters, as I discussed at length previously. [17]

Mr. Morley may be dissatisfied with the Warren Commission’s conclusion, but he appears (I hope) to be less committed to the fantastical notion of multiple mysterious snipers firing every which way in Dealey Plaza, which Tink Thompson and others have obstinately committed to, Occam’s Razor be damned.

Although I believe that the U.S. federal government was mostly forthcoming at the time of the Warren Commission Report (and even more so by the time of the HSCA), Morley’s advocacy for complete transparency at this late stage, some 61+ years after the fact, is something we can all agree on.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Fred Litwin and Paul Hoch for their encouragement and support in this article.  All opinions expressed herein are those of the Author.

[1] Schuurman, B., Bakker, E., Gill, P. and Bouhana, N. (2018), Lone Actor Terrorist Attack Planning and Preparation: A Data-Driven Analysis†, ‡. J Forensic Sci, 63: 1191-1200. https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.13676

[2] Summers, A. (2013): Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the JFK Assassination, Open Road Integrated Media, New York, NY, ISBN: 978-1-4804-3548-3, pp. 348-349.

[3] Hosty, J. P. Jr. (1996): Assignment: Oswald, Arcade Publishing, New York, NY, First Edition, ISBN: 1-55970-311-3, pp. 194-198.

[4] Ibid, p. 27.

[5] Ibid, p. 22.

[6] Russo, G. and S. Molton (2008): Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder, Bloomsbury, New York, NY, First U.S. Edition, ISBN: 1-59691-532-3, p. 309.

[7] Mailer, N. (1995): Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery, Random House, New York, NY, First Trade Edition}, ISBN: 0-979-42535-7, pp. 570-571.

[8] Hosty (1996), pp. 29-30, op. cit.

[9] Summers (2013), op. cit.

[10] Epstein, E. J. (1978): Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, Ballantine Books, New York, NY, First Edition, ISBN: 0-345-27883-6, p. 98.

[11] Morley, J. (2025): Who lost Occam’s Razor?,  JFK Facts, 24 May 2025, https://jfkfacts.substack.com/p/who-lost-occams-razor.

[12] McFadden, J. (2023). Razor sharp: The role of Occam's razor in science. Ann NY Acad Sci, 1530, 8–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.15086

[13] Nalli, N. R. (2021): The Ghost of the Grassy Knoll Gunman and the Futile Search for Signal in Noise, Secrets of a Homicide: John F. Kennedy Assassination News, Commentary & Opinion, June 2021, http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-ghost-of-grassy-knoll-gunman.html, cf. Animated GIFs 1–3.

[14] Extracted from https://www.someweekendreading.blog/Lord-Kelvin-on-quantitative-knowledge/.

[15] Cf. Wolpert, L. (1994): The Unnatural Nature of Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, second printing, ISBN: 0-674-92981-0.

[16] E.g., van Prooijen JW, van Vugt M. (2018): Conspiracy Theories: Evolved Functions and Psychological Mechanisms. Perspect. Psychol. Sci.13(6):770-788, doi: 10.1177/1745691618774270.

[17] Nalli (2021), op cit.

About Nicholas Nalli

Dr. Nick Nalli is a scientist who has previously published a number of articles on the science of the JFK Assassination, including Gunshot-wound Dynamics Model for John F. Kennedy Assassination, Sniper Target Tracking Analysis of John F. Kennedy Assassination, and The Ghost of the Grassy Knoll Gunman and the Futile Search for Signal in Noise.  He continues to take interest in the case, especially the scientific and geopolitical aspects.