The first conspiracy theorist

[Paul Brancato]

I disagree with this for the reason that the conspiracy to kill JFK was very sophisticated and must have included a plan for setting up a patsy. It's one thing to say compartmentalization existed, and another to say that there was no guiding hand overlooking both before and after planning. 

[Cliff Varnell]

16 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

I disagree with this for the reason that the conspiracy to kill JFK was very sophisticated and must have included a plan for setting up a patsy. It's one thing to say compartmentalization existed, and another to say that there was no guiding hand overlooking both before and after planning. 

At the very top, absolutely.

I think there were a lot of potential patsies.

My point is that the field team who killed Kennedy wasn't the same operation as the framing and murder of the patsy.

No one who handled Oswald was any where near the operation to kill JFK.

Why would they?

[Paul Trejo]

6 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Bobby Kennedy was talking about the conspiracy with friends before LHO was apprehended. See Brothers chapter one.

I'll give Assistant DA William Alexander the second spot, since he wrote up the conspiracy indictment that night.

She was a back-up patsy.

Not a theory to him, was it?

 I doubt it [; that Buddy Walthers was part of the JFK Kill Team].

Intelligence operations are compartmentalized, as a matter of tradecraft, strictly need-to-know.

What did the Kill JFK Team need to know about Oswald?  Nothing.

What did the team tasked with framing Oswald as a commie and whacking him ASAP need to know about the JFK Kill Team other than the time and place?  Nothing.

This is one of my main beefs with the JFK Assassination Critical Community -- the unproven assumption that the folks who set-up and killed LHO were the same guys who killed Kennedy.

There's a raft of folks out there who call themselves "Kennedy assassination researchers" who know quad-x all about the murder of JFK, but they can quote chapter and verse on he murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

I seriously doubt the guys who whacked Kennedy were ever near Oswald.

Cliff,

Thanks for extending this perspective of Lee Harvey Oswald.

While I agree that RFK pondered a possible conspiracy before LHO was arrested (in Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, 2007, by David Talbot). -- that was speculative, and did not propose a conclusion.

Assistant DA William Alexander does not deserve the second spot -- at best the fourth or fifth, since his conclusion was at night, and comes hours after J. Edgar Hoover's CT, the "Lone Nut" CT, which, according to Dr. David Wrone, was first announced at 3PM CST on the day of the JFK murder.  There were multiple claims about the JFK Kill Team before the day was over.  

The first publicly announced CT was that LHO was a Communist, and that the Communists killed LHO.  The JFK Killers really thought they could sell this lie.   Many believed it.   Many still believe it to this very day.

Ruth Paine was not only a back-up Patsy -- she was predetermined as a Link to LHO -- weeks in advance.  James Hosty was instrumental in this link.   He worked with Forrest Sorrels, certainly, to prevent the Secret Service PRS from investigating the "WANTED FOR TREASON JFK" posters that had been circulating weeks before the JFK motorcade.   This is interesting evidence of the plot and the plotters.

I fully agree with you that the CT of Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) was no theory to LHO -- but actually an established fact -- and indeed LHO knew who many of the JFK Killers were -- though not all of them.  LHO knew that Guy Banister and many of the mercenaries at 544 Camp Street were part of the plot.  LHO probably did not know who the Dallas players were.

You doubt, Cliff, whether Buddy Walthers was part of the JFK Kill Team.   I am convinced that he was.   Your doubts are based the nature of "Intelligence Operations" and this suggests a possible CIA-did-it CT.  I realize that paramilitary plans are also secret, and also have a chain of command.  Yet when they reach downward to the local Police and Deputies, they are not so disciplined.  

In my CT, it was precisely Captain Fritz & Co. that leaked the most clues. 

In the case of LHO, for example, the JFK Kill Team already knew that was sheep-dipped at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans by Guy Banister and Company.  That is, they already knew that the Patsy was a Communist traitor who needed to be killed anyway.  

James Hosty revealed in his book, Assignment Oswald (1996) that he himself knew about the alleged Oswald-Kostikov connection in Mexico City a full month before the JFK assassination.   IMHO, this is proof that Hosty was part of the JFK Kill Team, because Oswald never met Kostikov in Mexico City (according to Bill Simpich, 2014).  James Hosty shared everything he knew with Captain Fritz & Co.  That is the undoing of the Dallas plot, IMHO.

However, Cliff, I agree with you wholeheartedly that the Sheep-dip Team in New Orleans surely had to know the schedule and the purpose of the Sheep-dip.  Guy Banister knew.   Perhaps David Ferrie, Jack S. Martin and Fred Crisman only figured it out after the fact.

So -- I agree with you that many in the New Orleans Team were ignorant of the purpose of their actions.  Many (including David Atlee Phillips) believed that LHO was being prepared for a mission inside Cuba to whack Fidel Castro.

Yet as Jeff Caufield (2015) showed brilliantly, there was a direct connection between Guy Banister in New Orleans and General Walker in Dallas.  So, there was a string of connection in which the full plan was known months ahead of time.  That's what I'd like to convince you.

I think we might also agree, Cliff, that Jack Ruby had no knowledge at all about the JFK assassination -- either the plotters or the plot -- but he was drafted to be the killer of the "cop-killer" LHO by the Dallas Police -- especially (but not exclusively) by the Dallas Police who were rogue members of the JFK kill team (including Roscoe White, according to his son, Ricky White, and his wife, Geneva White, who once worked for Jack Ruby).   Jack might have figured it out, later -- and so had to die as well.

Until we can name the Ground Crew with certainty, Cliff, your statement stands -- that we don't know if the JFK shooters ever  knew Oswald.  But if we can include in that Ground Crew any of the members of Interpen, or 544 Camp Street -- or perhaps Roscoe White (who served in the Marines near LHO in Japan, and who appears in at least one photo with LHO, and who lived in Dallas when LHO did, and who Jack White says is the body double of LHO in the Backyard Photographs) -- then we can't decide if LHO ever knew them or not. 

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

Edited March 11, 2017 by Paul Trejo