Mrs. Paine's Garage

[William Kelly]

THE ANNOTATED GARAGE - Bill Kelly's Review of Thomas Mallon's "Mrs. Paine's Garage."

There's Ghosts in the Attic, Skeletons in the Closet and Here's the Best of What's Left Out of Thomas Mallon's Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Assassination of President Kennedy.(Pantheon Books – Random House, 2001)

The answers to the most outstanding questions concerning the crime of the last century aren't in Thomas Mallon's book, Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Assassination of President Kennedy, though they say that at one time the primary evidence and the main suspect were once lodged in her house, where there's still ghosts in the attic and skeletons in the closet.

The first question that comes to mind is why Ruth and Michael Paine - the patrons and sponsors of the family of the man accused of killing President Kennedy, - how come they weren't primary witnesses before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) or the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB)?

Certainly their testimony under oath should be on the public record, and history shouldn't be left with their lame Warren Commission testimony and now this book by a would-be novelist on a foundation scholarship who got his facts right but the story wrong.

Mallon wanted to write this book as a fictional novel, and while some literature often comes closer to the truth than the most factually detailed history, this isn't one of them. It is to Mrs. Paine's credit that in order to obtain her cooperation she insisted he write non-fiction, but somebody should have explained to Mallon that in writing such a thing he should use footnotes, document his sources and include an index.

While Mallon is more comfortable writing fiction, this case is not myth or legend, nor even history yet, as in the lifetime of living contemporaries it remains an unsolved murder, and the contents of the Paine's garage are not historical artifacts but are legally considered to be evidence in a homicide.

What became of the evidence and the contents of the garage is interesting and that the major questions still go unasked, let alone unanswered, is typical of the perverted view exhibited by Mallon, who divides the world into two camps – the Conspiracy Theorists (CTs) and the Lone Nuts (LNs). Mallon is a LN, along with Ruth and Michael Paine, so he has sympathy with their plight, a situation mitigated by the general belief that there was a conspiracy and they were involved.

That the ratio of those who realize there was a conspiracy to those who believe in the Lone Nut thesis is 80% - 20% in favor of conspiracy doesn't make this truth a democratic decision. Mallon's book may be comforting to the LNs who want to believe Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy on a "spur of the moment decision," as Mrs. Paine puts it, but the evidence is supportive not only of the understanding of most rational people that there was a conspiracy, but that the assassination was a more specifically defined, well planned and successfully executed coup d'etat.

Alas, the world is not so simple as to be divided into just two camps, as there is also a third group that includes those who keep an open mind about such things as who is responsible for shooting the President of the United States in the head, and they try to approach the case as a homicide detective would. As with the assassination of civil rights activist Medger Evers, whose killer was convicted over thirty years after the crime, and the Birmingham bombings, the Mississippi Freedom Rider murders, the York, Pennsylvania race riot killings and other political crimes of the 1960s, the murder of President Kennedy will eventually receive belated but necessary justice.

When the authorities came to her house with a search warrant, Mrs. Paine did what every red blooded American housewife would have done, she went shopping while the cops rooted through her garage and bedroom.

If Mrs. Paine was subjected to the same justice that the Military Tribunal dished out to those who assisted John W. Booth in his flight from Ford's Theater after shooting President Lincoln, she would have been hanged whether she was part of the conspiracy or not. Indeed, as Philadelphia attorney Vincent Salandria has said, if there was true justice in this case, Ruth and Michael Paine would be indicted rather than treated as victims, and truth, if not justice, will be better served.

In the pursuit of justice, Mallon's book adds little other than what it doesn't tell us, which if examined closely, leads us closer to the truth for those that want to go there. Hopefully, justice will eventually follow. While most of the facts in "Mrs. Paine's Garage" are correct, the best parts are left out, and the Big Lie is the Big Picture that portrays the alleged assassin's family being taken care of by the generosity of Ruth Paine the Quaker, whose role as a Good Samaritan to the mad killer's family was a coincidental accident of history.

The lie is laid out clearly in the dusk jacket notes: "Nearly forty years have passed since Mrs. Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker housewife in suburban Dallas, offered shelter and assistance to a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife Marina….Mrs. Paine's Garage is the tragic story of a well-intentioned women who found Oswald the job that put him six floors above Dealey Plaza – into which, on November 22, he fired a rifle he kept inside Mrs. Paine's house. But this is also a tale of survival and resiliency: the story of a devote, open-hearted women who weathered a whirlwind of investigation, suspicion, and betrayal, and who refused to allow her enmeshment in the calamity of that November to crush her own life. Thomas Mallon gives us a disturbing account of generosity and secrets, of suppressed memories and tragic might-have-beens, of coincidences more errie than conspiracy theory…"

The entire premise of this book rests on the assumption that Lee Harvey Oswald is the assassin of the President. But what if it can be convincingly demonstrated that Oswald didn't shoot anybody that day, and the alleged murder weapon was purposely left at the scene to implicate him in the crime? It doesn't make any sense for him, as many LNs contend, that he killed the President to make a name for himself in history, but then deny the deed. When the evidence is looked at more closely than Mallon sees it, it is more than likely that Oswald was framed for the crime and was exactly what he claimed to be – "a patsy."

But rather than take away the importance of Mrs. Paine's role in the affair, "The Patsy's Garage" makes its contents even more significant, as only your friends can set you up and frame you for a crime you didn't commit. Which brings us back to Michael and Ruth Paine, at whose home the accused assassin spent the night before the murder, and where the rifle said have been used in the crime was kept in the garage, even though no one has yet admitted to ever actually seeing it there.

Although George Lardner of the Washington Post said in his review of Mallon's book that the Paines weren't questioned by the HSCA and ARRB because everyone was "satisfied with their Warren Commission testimony," literally dozens of major issues remain unresolved, and the most frequent question the public asks Judge John Tunheim, the former chairman of the defunct Assassination Records Review Board is why the Paines weren't deposed and questioned under oath. Both Tunheim and Mallon try to answer this question, Tunheim's being that the ARRB, like the HSCA, just didn't have the time, while the real answer is that the government doesn't have the institutional willingness to ask the questions that it doesn't want answered.

That doesn't prevent us from asking them however, and the list of questionable issues regarding the Paines is long, but one day they may be answered.

For beginners, to believe the Lone Nut thesis, you must assume that Oswald killed the President by himself for his own perverted psychological reasons, that Oswald and his Russian wife met the Paines quite coincidently at a social party, that the Paines agreed to let Oswald's family move into the Paine home and obtain room and board and driving lessons in exchange for Russian language lessons, that Ruth and Michael Paine never knew anything about a rifle even though Ruth transported the gun in her car from Texas to New Orleans and back again and Michael packed and unpacked the car on both occasions, and that Oswald got the job at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) quite innocently through Mrs. Paine's morning neighborhood coffee klatch.

Of course the entire Lone Nut scenario falls apart if any one of these "coincidences" can be shown not to be so coincidental, and in fact all of them can be proven to be contrived. In order to address the most important issues I've set them up as Serials and placed them in the chronological order in which they occurred so we can better understand what is at stake, which is the bare bones, basic nature of democracy, truth and justice in America.

You would think that the first question would be how the Oswalds met the Paines [serial #1], which was at a February, 1962 party first suggested by George DeMohrnschildts to Volkmar Schmidt [Neither of whom appear in "Mrs. Paine's Garage"]. They thought that it would be interesting for Lee Harvey Oswald to meet Michael Paine, both of whom were interested in discussing "ideology."

DeMohrnschildt, Oswald's friend, and Schmidt, were both oil geologists with an interest in politics and psychology. Schmidt worked for Magnolia Oil Co., as did most of those who attended the party at Schmidt's house, which he shared with Everett Glover and two other men - son of a director of Radio Free Europe Norman Fredricksen and Richard Pierce, both of whom worked for Magnolia Oil and are also missing from Mallon's "Garage." [Nor would Mallon be expected to know the interesting tidbit that the widow of the founder of Magnolia Oil married Jim Braden's best friend and Braden would be taken into custody as a suspicious person at Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination].

The odd thing about the party is that the host, Schmidt, and one of the guests of honor, Michael Paine, were no-shows, but Ruth Paine met Marina Oswald and they enjoyed talking together in Russian, setting up their relationship.

But there are two instances on record suggesting that there was a connection between Ruth Hyde Paine and Oswald before they met at this party, the first being Ohio police reports of Oswald attempting to enroll at Ruth Paine's alma mater Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio [serial #2- Antioch], before he had a high school diploma and before he joined the Marines. Yellow Springs is where Ruth Paine's brother, a doctor, still lives, yet unquestioned about these things. The second instance is the Russian pen pal program that Ruth participated in [serial #3 – Pen Pal], a program that was monitored by the intelligence agencies and is said to have included others participants that knew of Oswald's defection to Russia after he was discharged from the Marines.

But it really isn't Mrs. Paine we should be interested in, it's her husband Michael, who owned the house and garage and is the principle character worth writing a book about.

Since Michael Paine didn't meet Oswald at the previously arranged party, Ruth set up a dinner engagement for them to get acquainted, and since Oswald didn't have a car, Michael drove from Irving to the Oswald's apartment in Oak Cliff, Dallas, to pick them up. Although he didn't mention it to the Warren Commission, a major bone of contention, Michael Paine did admit on a CBS TV special and to Mallon that he knew about the rifle from the first day he met Oswald because Oswald showed him the famous photo [serial #4 Back Yard Photo] – later found in the Paine garage, of Oswald with the rifle, pistol and two communist publications, one The Worker, the official publication of the Trotskite Socialist Workers Party.

Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Bolshevick revolution and the Communist Party in Russia, was exiled to Mexico City and executed there by Soviet trained assassin Ramon Mercader.

When Oswald and Michael Paine discussed this "Trotskite" publication, Paine quoted Oswald as saying, "You have to read between the lines to understand what they want you do." Well you have to read between the lines of Mallon's book too, if you want to learn the truth, as I will try to fill in the blanks he leaves out.

That Michael Paine and Lee Oswald would talk about communist ideology is a given, yet, it is inconceivable to me, that while talking about such "ideology," as George DeMohrenschildt and Volkmar Schmidt expected them to do, [serial #5 – Lyman Paine] Paine didn't bother to tell Oswald, the self-proclaimed "Trotskite," that his father – Lyman Paine was the founder of the Trotskite political party in the United States.

Both DeMohrenschiltd and Volkmar Schmidt, who met Oswald at another Magnolia Oil party, and Michael Paine, talked to Oswald [serial #6 – Walker Shooting] about shooting General Walker, Schmidt before and DeMohrenschildt and Paine shortly after someone – ostensibly Oswald, took a pot shot and barely missed killing Walker.

After that incident Oswald decided to relocate back to his hometown New Orleans. When Mrs. Paine drove the family to the Dallas bus station, Mrs. Paine suddenly suggested that Marina and the baby stay with her until Oswald got settled with an apartment and a job and then she would drive them there, which was quickly agreed upon. [serial #6 – Rifle Movement] Because Oswald didn't take the rifle on the bus with him, Mrs. Paine must have drove the rifle to New Orleans, and then back again the following October, when she drove Marina, the baby and the belongings, including the rifle to Texas, while Oswald went to Mexico City.

Michael Paine packed the car for the trip to New Orleans and unpacked it when they returned, yet testified he didn't know there was a rifle among the effects, saying that he suspected the gun wrapped in a blanket was "camping equipment," which was kept stored in the garage.

Mallon's book has one photo – on the dust cover jacket – of Mrs. Paine, Marina Oswald and her two children and Oswald's mother Margarete in the Paine kitchen, while a non-published photo of the Paine garage shows how cluttered it was. One of the Paine's three cars, a 1956 Chevy station wagon with a luggage rack on the roof, was kept parked in the driveway in front of the garage. [serial #7- Oswald's Driving]. Although it is often claimed Oswald didn't drive, Mrs. Paine's Warren Commission testimony is quite clear on this – she gave him lessons, he knew how to drive, he knew where she kept the keys to the car and he did drive, much to Mrs. Paine horror, sans insurance.

Among the other evidence found in the garage was [serial #8 Blanket] the blanket that that rifle was supposedly kept wrapped in, another photo of Oswald with the guns and magazines, and [serial #9 – Minox Cameras] a Minox camera, which Michael Paine later claimed as his own. In the house were other items of evidence, including a [serial #10] typewriter that Oswald used to write a letter to the Soviet Embassy, a book that contained [serial #11 – Letter] a letter Oswald wrote to Marina with instructions on what to do if he was caught after the Walker shooting incident, and one of three of [serial #12 – Wallets] Oswald's wallets.

Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is.

In a review of the evidence against Oswald, it's apparent that it comes down to the rifle.

Although no one has said that they actually saw the rifle in the garage, the blanket the gun was supposedly wrapped in was mentioned by Michael Paine, Ruth Paine and Marina, but for some reason that should catch the attention of homicide investigators, the well oiled and greased gun that was wrapped in the blanket not only didn't have any clear fingerprints, but it didn't have any microscopic fibers from the blanket, a practical impossibility.

If you read the Warren Report on the fiber evidence, they found ONE single fiber on the stock of the rifle that DID NOT match the blanket, even in color, but the FBI forensic lab specialist testified COULD HAVE come from the shirt Oswald had on at the time of his arrest. It's just a shame he changed his shirt after the shooting so that wasn't the shirt that he had on when JFK was shot. To me, that's a plant, as the FBI didn't know

Oswald changed his shirt at the time.

While the photo of Oswald, the rifle, blanket, photos and Oswald letters to Marina and the Soviet Embassy are discussed in Mallon's book, the Minox cameras, multiple wallets and other questionable points are ignored completely.

Nor does Mallon bring out the full character in the slew of interesting characters that populate this story, beginning with Ruth and Michael Paine, Michael Paine's father Lyman Paine and mother – Ruth Forbes Paine Young, her friend and traveling companion Mary Bancroft, Michael's main mentor, step-father and Bell Helicopter inventor Arthur Young, Marina's biographer Priscilla Johnson McMillan, and their joint association with the World Federalists, whose founder Cord Meyer, Jr., was head of the CIA's domestic contacts division and later International Organizations Division chief under Alan Dulles.

The bottom line is that if JFK was killed by a lone, deranged nut case, then the President's death would be an accidental, unconnected anomaly and unrelated to the policies, politics and character of the man or the office of the Presidency. We have such killers in our history – such as Howard Unruh, who snapped and killed 13 neighbors in a killing spree, but Oswald isn't one of those type of killers, as Ruth and Michael Paine and practically everyone who knew him has acknowledged.

If the accused assassin is Lee Harvey Oswald – the former Civil Air Patrol cadet, USMC radar operator, trained in electronics, interrogation techniques and the Russian language, owned a Minox camera, the guy who defected to Soviet Russia, lived there for two years and returned with a Russian wife, went to Mexico City and knew exposed covert operators like David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, George DeMohrenschildt, Volkmar Schmidt, Ruth and Michael Paine and took a pot shot at General Walker, all before he was 24 years old, then the assassination MO – modus operandi was that of a clear and clean cut covert operation conducted by an state controlled intelligence network. If Oswald had anything at all to do with the assassination, he fits the Operational Profile and could not and did not commit the assassination on his own, as all intelligence analysists knew from the moment they knew his background.

As Ruth Paine herself briefly suspected, as she testified to the Warren Commission that Oswald didn't "live" on Neeley Street, but that, like an agent, he was "operating from a base at 214 Neeley Street," and posed the question herself: "I may say, also, I wondered, as I had already indicated to the Commission, I had wondered, from time to time, whether this (Lee Harvey Oswald) was a man who was working as a spy or in any way (was) a threat to the nation, and this thought,…I am interested to know if this is a real thing or something unreal. And I waited to see if I would learn anymore about it. But this thought crossed my mind."

I too am interested to know if this is a real thing or something unreal, and would like to learn more about it, as this same thought has crossed my mind, and I look forward to having Michael and Ruth Paine help answer the important outstanding questions when properly questioned under oath. But since the answers aren't in Mallon's book, we'll have to look for the truth somewhere else.

Bill Kelly

bkjfk3@yahoo.com

Edited May 2, 2007 by William Kelly

[David G. Healy]

THE ANNOTATED GARAGE - Bill Kelly's Review of Thomas Mallon's "Mrs. Paine's Garage."

There's Ghosts in the Attic, Skeletons in the Closet and Here's the Best of What's Left Out of Thomas Mallon's Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Assassination of President Kennedy.(Pantheon Books – Random House, 2001)

The answers to the most outstanding questions concerning the crime of the last century aren't in Thomas Mallon's book, Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Assassination of President Kennedy, though they say that at one time the primary evidence and the main suspect were once lodged in her house, where there's still ghosts in the attic and skeletons in the closet.

The first question that comes to mind is why Ruth and Michael Paine - the patrons and sponsors of the family of the man accused of killing President Kennedy, - how come they weren't primary witnesses before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) or the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB)?

Certainly their testimony under oath should be on the public record, and history shouldn't be left with their lame Warren Commission testimony and now this book by a would-be novelist on a foundation scholarship who got his facts right but the story wrong.

Mallon wanted to write this book as a fictional novel, and while some literature often comes closer to the truth than the most factually detailed history, this isn't one of them. It is to Mrs. Paine's credit that in order to obtain her cooperation she insisted he write non-fiction, but somebody should have explained to Mallon that in writing such a thing he should use footnotes, document his sources and include an index.

While Mallon is more comfortable writing fiction, this case is not myth or legend, nor even history yet, as in the lifetime of living contemporaries it remains an unsolved murder, and the contents of the Paine's garage are not historical artifacts but are legally considered to be evidence in a homicide.

What became of the evidence and the contents of the garage is interesting and that the major questions still go unasked, let alone unanswered, is typical of the perverted view exhibited by Mallon, who divides the world into two camps – the Conspiracy Theorists (CTs) and the Lone Nuts (LNs). Mallon is a LN, along with Ruth and Michael Paine, so he has sympathy with their plight, a situation mitigated by the general belief that there was a conspiracy and they were involved.

That the ratio of those who realize there was a conspiracy to those who believe in the Lone Nut thesis is 80% - 20% in favor of conspiracy doesn't make this truth a democratic decision. Mallon's book may be comforting to the LNs who want to believe Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy on a "spur of the moment decision," as Mrs. Paine puts it, but the evidence is supportive not only of the understanding of most rational people that there was a conspiracy, but that the assassination was a more specifically defined, well planned and successfully executed coup d'etat.

Alas, the world is not so simple as to be divided into just two camps, as there is also a third group that includes those who keep an open mind about such things as who is responsible for shooting the President of the United States in the head, and they try to approach the case as a homicide detective would. As with the assassination of civil rights activist Medger Evers, whose killer was convicted over thirty years after the crime, and the Birmingham bombings, the Mississippi Freedom Rider murders, the York, Pennsylvania race riot killings and other political crimes of the 1960s, the murder of President Kennedy will eventually receive belated but necessary justice.

When the authorities came to her house with a search warrant, Mrs. Paine did what every red blooded American housewife would have done, she went shopping while the cops rooted through her garage and bedroom.

If Mrs. Paine was subjected to the same justice that the Military Tribunal dished out to those who assisted John W. Booth in his flight from Ford's Theater after shooting President Lincoln, she would have been hanged whether she was part of the conspiracy or not. Indeed, as Philadelphia attorney Vincent Salandria has said, if there was true justice in this case, Ruth and Michael Paine would be indicted rather than treated as victims, and truth, if not justice, will be better served.

In the pursuit of justice, Mallon's book adds little other than what it doesn't tell us, which if examined closely, leads us closer to the truth for those that want to go there. Hopefully, justice will eventually follow. While most of the facts in "Mrs. Paine's Garage" are correct, the best parts are left out, and the Big Lie is the Big Picture that portrays the alleged assassin's family being taken care of by the generosity of Ruth Paine the Quaker, whose role as a Good Samaritan to the mad killer's family was a coincidental accident of history.

The lie is laid out clearly in the dusk jacket notes: "Nearly forty years have passed since Mrs. Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker housewife in suburban Dallas, offered shelter and assistance to a young man named Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife Marina….Mrs. Paine's Garage is the tragic story of a well-intentioned women who found Oswald the job that put him six floors above Dealey Plaza – into which, on November 22, he fired a rifle he kept inside Mrs. Paine's house. But this is also a tale of survival and resiliency: the story of a devote, open-hearted women who weathered a whirlwind of investigation, suspicion, and betrayal, and who refused to allow her enmeshment in the calamity of that November to crush her own life. Thomas Mallon gives us a disturbing account of generosity and secrets, of suppressed memories and tragic might-have-beens, of coincidences more errie than conspiracy theory…"

The entire premise of this book rests on the assumption that Lee Harvey Oswald is the assassin of the President. But what if it can be convincingly demonstrated that Oswald didn't shoot anybody that day, and the alleged murder weapon was purposely left at the scene to implicate him in the crime? It doesn't make any sense for him, as many LNs contend, that he killed the President to make a name for himself in history, but then deny the deed. When the evidence is looked at more closely than Mallon sees it, it is more than likely that Oswald was framed for the crime and was exactly what he claimed to be – "a patsy."

But rather than take away the importance of Mrs. Paine's role in the affair, "The Patsy's Garage" makes its contents even more significant, as only your friends can set you up and frame you for a crime you didn't commit. Which brings us back to Michael and Ruth Paine, at whose home the accused assassin spent the night before the murder, and where the rifle said have been used in the crime was kept in the garage, even though no one has yet admitted to ever actually seeing it there.

Although George Lardner of the Washington Post said in his review of Mallon's book that the Paines weren't questioned by the HSCA and ARRB because everyone was "satisfied with their Warren Commission testimony," literally dozens of major issues remain unresolved, and the most frequent question the public asks Judge John Tunheim, the former chairman of the defunct Assassination Records Review Board is why the Paines weren't deposed and questioned under oath. Both Tunheim and Mallon try to answer this question, Tunheim's being that the ARRB, like the HSCA, just didn't have the time, while the real answer is that the government doesn't have the institutional willingness to ask the questions that it doesn't want answered.

That doesn't prevent us from asking them however, and the list of questionable issues regarding the Paines is long, but one day they may be answered.

For beginners, to believe the Lone Nut thesis, you must assume that Oswald killed the President by himself for his own perverted psychological reasons, that Oswald and his Russian wife met the Paines quite coincidently at a social party, that the Paines agreed to let Oswald's family move into the Paine home and obtain room and board and driving lessons in exchange for Russian language lessons, that Ruth and Michael Paine never knew anything about a rifle even though Ruth transported the gun in her car from Texas to New Orleans and back again and Michael packed and unpacked the car on both occasions, and that Oswald got the job at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) quite innocently through Mrs. Paine's morning neighborhood coffee klatch.

Of course the entire Lone Nut scenario falls apart if any one of these "coincidences" can be shown not to be so coincidental, and in fact all of them can be proven to be contrived. In order to address the most important issues I've set them up as Serials and placed them in the chronological order in which they occurred so we can better understand what is at stake, which is the bare bones, basic nature of democracy, truth and justice in America.

You would think that the first question would be how the Oswalds met the Paines [serial #1], which was at a February, 1962 party first suggested by George DeMohrnschildts to Volkmar Schmidt [Neither of whom appear in "Mrs. Paine's Garage"]. They thought that it would be interesting for Lee Harvey Oswald to meet Michael Paine, both of whom were interested in discussing "ideology."

DeMohrnschildt, Oswald's friend, and Schmidt, were both oil geologists with an interest in politics and psychology. Schmidt worked for Magnolia Oil Co., as did most of those who attended the party at Schmidt's house, which he shared with Everett Glover and two other men - son of a director of Radio Free Europe Norman Fredricksen and Richard Pierce, both of whom worked for Magnolia Oil and are also missing from Mallon's "Garage." [Nor would Mallon be expected to know the interesting tidbit that the widow of the founder of Magnolia Oil married Jim Braden's best friend and Braden would be taken into custody as a suspicious person at Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination].

The odd thing about the party is that the host, Schmidt, and one of the guests of honor, Michael Paine, were no-shows, but Ruth Paine met Marina Oswald and they enjoyed talking together in Russian, setting up their relationship.

But there are two instances on record suggesting that there was a connection between Ruth Hyde Paine and Oswald before they met at this party, the first being Ohio police reports of Oswald attempting to enroll at Ruth Paine's alma mater Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio [serial #2- Antioch], before he had a high school diploma and before he joined the Marines. Yellow Springs is where Ruth Paine's brother, a doctor, still lives, yet unquestioned about these things. The second instance is the Russian pen pal program that Ruth participated in [serial #3 – Pen Pal], a program that was monitored by the intelligence agencies and is said to have included others participants that knew of Oswald's defection to Russia after he was discharged from the Marines.

But it really isn't Mrs. Paine we should be interested in, it's her husband Michael, who owned the house and garage and is the principle character worth writing a book about.

Since Michael Paine didn't meet Oswald at the previously arranged party, Ruth set up a dinner engagement for them to get acquainted, and since Oswald didn't have a car, Michael drove from Irving to the Oswald's apartment in Oak Cliff, Dallas, to pick them up. Although he didn't mention it to the Warren Commission, a major bone of contention, Michael Paine did admit on a CBS TV special and to Mallon that he knew about the rifle from the first day he met Oswald because Oswald showed him the famous photo [serial #4 Back Yard Photo] – later found in the Paine garage, of Oswald with the rifle, pistol and two communist publications, one The Worker, the official publication of the Trotskite Socialist Workers Party.

Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Bolshevick revolution and the Communist Party in Russia, was exiled to Mexico City and executed there by Soviet trained assassin Ramon Mercader.

When Oswald and Michael Paine discussed this "Trotskite" publication, Paine quoted Oswald as saying, "You have to read between the lines to understand what they want you do." Well you have to read between the lines of Mallon's book too, if you want to learn the truth, as I will try to fill in the blanks he leaves out.

That Michael Paine and Lee Oswald would talk about communist ideology is a given, yet, it is inconceivable to me, that while talking about such "ideology," as George DeMohrenschildt and Volkmar Schmidt expected them to do, [serial #5 – Lyman Paine] Paine didn't bother to tell Oswald, the self-proclaimed "Trotskite," that his father – Lyman Paine was the founder of the Trotskite political party in the United States.

Both DeMohrenschiltd and Volkmar Schmidt, who met Oswald at another Magnolia Oil party, and Michael Paine, talked to Oswald [serial #6 – Walker Shooting] about shooting General Walker, Schmidt before and DeMohrenschildt and Paine shortly after someone – ostensibly Oswald, took a pot shot and barely missed killing Walker.

After that incident Oswald decided to relocate back to his hometown New Orleans. When Mrs. Paine drove the family to the Dallas bus station, Mrs. Paine suddenly suggested that Marina and the baby stay with her until Oswald got settled with an apartment and a job and then she would drive them there, which was quickly agreed upon. [serial #6 – Rifle Movement] Because Oswald didn't take the rifle on the bus with him, Mrs. Paine must have drove the rifle to New Orleans, and then back again the following October, when she drove Marina, the baby and the belongings, including the rifle to Texas, while Oswald went to Mexico City.

Michael Paine packed the car for the trip to New Orleans and unpacked it when they returned, yet testified he didn't know there was a rifle among the effects, saying that he suspected the gun wrapped in a blanket was "camping equipment," which was kept stored in the garage.

Mallon's book has one photo – on the dust cover jacket – of Mrs. Paine, Marina Oswald and her two children and Oswald's mother Margarete in the Paine kitchen, while a non-published photo of the Paine garage shows how cluttered it was. One of the Paine's three cars, a 1956 Chevy station wagon with a luggage rack on the roof, was kept parked in the driveway in front of the garage. [serial #7- Oswald's Driving]. Although it is often claimed Oswald didn't drive, Mrs. Paine's Warren Commission testimony is quite clear on this – she gave him lessons, he knew how to drive, he knew where she kept the keys to the car and he did drive, much to Mrs. Paine horror, sans insurance.

Among the other evidence found in the garage was [serial #8 Blanket] the blanket that that rifle was supposedly kept wrapped in, another photo of Oswald with the guns and magazines, and [serial #9 – Minox Cameras] a Minox camera, which Michael Paine later claimed as his own. In the house were other items of evidence, including a [serial #10] typewriter that Oswald used to write a letter to the Soviet Embassy, a book that contained [serial #11 – Letter] a letter Oswald wrote to Marina with instructions on what to do if he was caught after the Walker shooting incident, and one of three of [serial #12 – Wallets] Oswald's wallets.

Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is.

In a review of the evidence against Oswald, it's apparent that it comes down to the rifle.

Although no one has said that they actually saw the rifle in the garage, the blanket the gun was supposedly wrapped in was mentioned by Michael Paine, Ruth Paine and Marina, but for some reason that should catch the attention of homicide investigators, the well oiled and greased gun that was wrapped in the blanket not only didn't have any clear fingerprints, but it didn't have any microscopic fibers from the blanket, a practical impossibility.

If you read the Warren Report on the fiber evidence, they found ONE single fiber on the stock of the rifle that DID NOT match the blanket, even in color, but the FBI forensic lab specialist testified COULD HAVE come from the shirt Oswald had on at the time of his arrest. It's just a shame he changed his shirt after the shooting so that wasn't the shirt that he had on when JFK was shot. To me, that's a plant, as the FBI didn't know

Oswald changed his shirt at the time.

While the photo of Oswald, the rifle, blanket, photos and Oswald letters to Marina and the Soviet Embassy are discussed in Mallon's book, the Minox cameras, multiple wallets and other questionable points are ignored completely.

Nor does Mallon bring out the full character in the slew of interesting characters that populate this story, beginning with Ruth and Michael Paine, Michael Paine's father Lyman Paine and mother – Ruth Forbes Paine Young, her friend and traveling companion Mary Bancroft, Michael's main mentor, step-father and Bell Helicopter inventor Arthur Young, Marina's biographer Priscilla Johnson McMillan, and their joint association with the World Federalists, whose founder Cord Meyer, Jr., was head of the CIA's domestic contacts division and later International Organizations Division chief under Alan Dulles.

The bottom line is that if JFK was killed by a lone, deranged nut case, then the President's death would be an accidental, unconnected anomaly and unrelated to the policies, politics and character of the man or the office of the Presidency. We have such killers in our history – such as Howard Unruh, who snapped and killed 13 neighbors in a killing spree, but Oswald isn't one of those type of killers, as Ruth and Michael Paine and practically everyone who knew him has acknowledged.

If the accused assassin is Lee Harvey Oswald – the former Civil Air Patrol cadet, USMC radar operator, trained in electronics, interrogation techniques and the Russian language, owned a Minox camera, the guy who defected to Soviet Russia, lived there for two years and returned with a Russian wife, went to Mexico City and knew exposed covert operators like David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, George DeMohrenschildt, Volkmar Schmidt, Ruth and Michael Paine and took a pot shot at General Walker, all before he was 24 years old, then the assassination MO – modus operandi was that of a clear and clean cut covert operation conducted by an state controlled intelligence network. If Oswald had anything at all to do with the assassination, he fits the Operational Profile and could not and did not commit the assassination on his own, as all intelligence analysists knew from the moment they knew his background.

As Ruth Paine herself briefly suspected, as she testified to the Warren Commission that Oswald didn't "live" on Neeley Street, but that, like an agent, he was "operating from a base at 214 Neeley Street," and posed the question herself: "I may say, also, I wondered, as I had already indicated to the Commission, I had wondered, from time to time, whether this (Lee Harvey Oswald) was a man who was working as a spy or in any way (was) a threat to the nation, and this thought,…I am interested to know if this is a real thing or something unreal. And I waited to see if I would learn anymore about it. But this thought crossed my mind."

I too am interested to know if this is a real thing or something unreal, and would like to learn more about it, as this same thought has crossed my mind, and I look forward to having Michael and Ruth Paine help answer the important outstanding questions when properly questioned under oath. But since the answers aren't in Mallon's book, we'll have to look for the truth somewhere else.

Bill Kelly

bkjfk3@yahoo.com

thanks Bill.... btw can I post this to acj USNET board?

[Pat Speer]

Bill wrote: "Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is."

Bill, I don't remember if it was in Mallon's book or elsewhere, but somewhere I've seen that comment explained. They didn't mean that Oswald didn't do it, but that Marina had driven him to it. De Mohrenschildt's book takes a similar approach. IF Lee did it...it's because his bitchy wife drove him to it. This is unfair to Marina, no doubt, but it's interesting that the men closest to the situation immediately blamed her. She was apparently a bit of a shrew.

[William Kelly]

Bill wrote: "Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is."

Bill, I don't remember if it was in Mallon's book or elsewhere, but somewhere I've seen that comment explained. They didn't mean that Oswald didn't do it, but that Marina had driven him to it. De Mohrenschildt's book takes a similar approach. IF Lee did it...it's because his bitchy wife drove him to it. This is unfair to Marina, no doubt, but it's interesting that the men closest to the situation immediately blamed her. She was apparently a bit of a shrew.

Pat,

That can't be so easily explained by any debunker since the source is reportedly a security tap on the Bell Hell company phone (where former Nazi Gen. Dornberger was in 'Security') and any attempt to explain the actions of LHO or the actual assassin's psych is lame. It doesn't matter how the Paines or anyone tried to explain it, especially if they haven't been questioned under oath.

And David, you can cross post the review if you want to.

This review was originally posted by Kenn Thomas at his Steamshovel Press "All Conspiracy - NO Theory" web site when the book was first releasd in 2001.

BK

[David G. Healy]

Bill wrote: "Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is."

Bill, I don't remember if it was in Mallon's book or elsewhere, but somewhere I've seen that comment explained. They didn't mean that Oswald didn't do it, but that Marina had driven him to it. De Mohrenschildt's book takes a similar approach. IF Lee did it...it's because his bitchy wife drove him to it. This is unfair to Marina, no doubt, but it's interesting that the men closest to the situation immediately blamed her. She was apparently a bit of a shrew.

Pat,

That can't be so easily explained by any debunker since the source is reportedly a security tap on the Bell Hell company phone (where former Nazi Gen. Dornberger was in 'Security') and any attempt to explain the actions of LHO or the actual assassin's psych is lame. It doesn't matter how the Paines or anyone tried to explain it, especially if they haven't been questioned under oath.

And David, you can cross post the review if you want to.

This review was originally posted by Kenn Thomas at his Steamshovel Press "All Conspiracy - NO Theory" web site when the book was first releasd in 2001.

BK

Thanks Bill, the content is up, I'll bump the USNET posting and add this threads URL....

[Kathleen Collins]

Bill wrote: "Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is."

Bill, I don't remember if it was in Mallon's book or elsewhere, but somewhere I've seen that comment explained. They didn't mean that Oswald didn't do it, but that Marina had driven him to it. De Mohrenschildt's book takes a similar approach. IF Lee did it...it's because his bitchy wife drove him to it. This is unfair to Marina, no doubt, but it's interesting that the men closest to the situation immediately blamed her. She was apparently a bit of a shrew.

I know Norman Mailer is detested in Kennedy Researchers' circles, but the KGB records he could get said the Oswalds' apartment was bugged. Mailer cites transcripts in which Marina belittled LHO constantly. In my recollection, he didn't beat her up, at least not in Russia.

Kathy

Edited May 4, 2007 by Kathleen Collins

[William Kelly]

Bill wrote: "Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is."

Bill, I don't remember if it was in Mallon's book or elsewhere, but somewhere I've seen that comment explained. They didn't mean that Oswald didn't do it, but that Marina had driven him to it. De Mohrenschildt's book takes a similar approach. IF Lee did it...it's because his bitchy wife drove him to it. This is unfair to Marina, no doubt, but it's interesting that the men closest to the situation immediately blamed her. She was apparently a bit of a shrew.

I know Norman Mailer is detested in Kennedy Researchers' circles, but the KGB records he could get says the Oswalds' apartment was bugged. Mailer cites transcripts in which Marina belittled LHO constantly. In my recollection, he didn't beat her up, at least not in Russia.

Kathy

Not long before 9/11 Mohamid Atta's American girlfriend broke up with him, and he killed her cat and kittins, but that didn't stimulate him to fly a plane into the WTC.

Whether Marina belittled LHO or he beat her has no bearing on what happened at Dealey Plaza, or whether LHO was the patsy or the sole assassin.

It was preordained by other than Oswald and JFK would have died no matter what LHO did or thought.

BK

[Bernice Moore]

Here's another review....on the.. Pains of the Paines Garage

B

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MRS. PAINE'S GARAGE: A WORK OF DECEPTION FROM BEGINNING TO END

James H. Fetzer

The DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE (10 March 2002), p. 6F, has published a review of a book by one Thomas Mallon, Mrs. Paine's Garage (Pantheon Books, 2002), written by George Bennett of Cox News Service. Bennett's fawning praise provides conclusive proof that he knows no more about the assassination of John F. Kennedy than does Mallon himself. Most Americans today, alas!, the majority of whom were not even alive at the time of his death, are sufficiently ignorant about the history of this case to be easily deceived. Those who know more will recognize it as a work of deception from beginning to end.

Interest in this slender volume implicitly emanates from the proposition that Ruth H. Paine assisted Lee Oswald, the alleged assassin, obtain a position at the Texas School Book Depository PRIOR TO public knowledge that the President was coming to Dallas. Since the extraordinarily vague affidavit she submitted on 22 November 1963, with which this book begins, implies this occurred in mid-October, while announcements of the trip appeared NO LATER than 13 September, such a contention is simply false.

Once recognizing that there was ample time to bring the patsy to the President, the entire Paine affair begins to assume an ominous visage. Interest in Paine's garage, for example, derives from Oswald having stored his Mannlicher-Carcano, wrapped in a blanket, in that place. But no remnants of having been wrapped in a blanket were ever discovered on the alleged assassination weapon--not the least hairs or fibers--which is very curious, indeed, had the weapon actually been stored there.

The alleged instrument, a cheap, mass-produced World War II Italian carbine, has a muzzle velocity of around 2,000 fps, which means that it is not a high-velocity weapon. Since the President's death certificates (1963), The Warren Report (1964), and even more recent articles in The Journal of the American Medical Association (1992) report that JFK was killed by high velocity bullets, it follows that he was not killed by Oswald's weapon, thereby greatly reducing interest in Mrs. Paine's garage.

Indeed, though it may come as news to the author, many other students of the case, including Harold Weisberg, Whitewash (1965), Peter Model and Robert Groden, JFK: The Case for Conspiracy (1976), and Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone, High Treason (1989), have also made the same observation. These are not books cited in this study, however, which raises rather serious questions as to why someone whose knowledge of the assassination appears to be so meager would write a book about it.

He does not know that Oswald had a history with American intelligence; that Oswald was being "sheep dipped" in New Orleans; that Oswald was an informant for the FBI; that the "paper bag" story is a fabrication; that Oswald was in the lunch room on the second floor having a coke during the shooting; that Oswald passed a paraffin test; and on and on. A weightly body of evidence substantiates all of these discoveries, but none of them is even mentioned, much less disputed, by the author of this book.

The sources he does cite, moreover, are far from reassuring. His Acknowledgements, for example, lists six persons, including Mrs. Paine and her former husband, Michael, Priscilla Johnson McMillan and John McAdams. McAdams has gained a certain degree of notoriety for his one-sided defense of the "lone nut" hypothesis, which disregards overwhelming contradictory evidence, including proof that the "magic bullet" theory is not only false but anatomically impossible (http://www.assassinationscience.com).

Priscilla Johnson McMillan, however, is the most intriguing name on this list. It was she who "interviewed" Oswald on the occasion of his pseudo-defection to the Soviet Union; it was she who was selected by the United States government to accompany Stalin's daughter, Sevetlana, when she defected to the United States; and it was she who was chosen to "baby sit" Marina during those turbulent times in the aftermath of the assassination. Her CIA connections virtually qualify as "common knowledge".

As Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason (1997), has observed, the Paines were introduced to the Oswalds by George de Mohrenschildt, a member of the Dallas Petrolium Club, a friend of H.L. Hunt, an ex-Nazi spy, and a CIA operative who would commit suicide when he was about to be interviewed for the HSCA reinvestigation in 1977-78. The connections between de Mohrenschildt and George Herbert Walker Bush have been extensively explored by Bruce Campbell Adamson, Oswald's Closest Friend (1996). Any other author might have wanted to follow these leads, but not Thomas Mallon.

The book abounds with faulty comparisons and incomplete reports. Mallon remarks that Lee and Ruth were alike because they both had fathers in insurance, but does not observe that, unlike Lee, she did not have an uncle, Charles "Dutz" Murret, who worked for a Mafia chieftain, Carlos Marcello. And he belittles Marina's conclusion that Lee was framed, which diverged from her original position, without admitting she now knows vastly more about the assassination than was available to her then.

The skimpy information this book purports to provide that might be relevant to the assassination tends to exonerate Oswald. When Marina tells him in Russian that the President is coming, for example, he responds "with no more than an uninflected 'Da', a sort of verbal shrug most accurately translated as 'Uh, yeah.'" Taken at face value, that his hardly the type of response that one would expect from an ideologue whose strong beliefs would lead him to commit assassination.

Mallon reports that, on 21 November 1963, Lee tried to convince Marina that she should move back with him as early as tomorrow. That he should have worried about such things at this late date--the evening before the assassination!—does not harmonize with a man intent upon a capital crime from which he was most unlikely to emerge alive. And the very idea that he should have formulated the intention to commit such a monstrous deed on his way to work defies credulity!

The book to which it bears closest comparison appears to be Oswald's Tale (1995) Norman Mailer's unfortunate descent into psychobabble. Following Mailer's lead, Mallon takes massive liberties with conjectured reconstructions of the thoughts of Ruth, Marina, and even Lee, even when they were never expressed in English or in Russian. Mallon may have received Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships in the past, but--if there is any justice in academia!--that should never happen again.

Mallon predictably makes a point of introducing the alleged "backyard photographs" of Lee with his trusty Mannlicher-Carcano in one hand and Communist newspapers in the other, wearing the revolver with which he is alleged to have shot J.D. Tippit. Robert Groden, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald (1995), pp. 90-95, offers a nice review of evidence that those photographs were faked, which has been confirmed in a study by Jack White. Using the known dimensions of the newspapers, White has proven the person shown in the photographs is too short to have been Oswald.

The book endorses the idea that Oswald was responsible for an alleged attempt on the life of Major General Edwin Walker that occurred on 10 April 1963. But there are many reasons to doubt it. The situations were very different: a high-powered 30.06 rifle versus a medium-to-low powered 6.5 mm carbine; a stationary versus moving target; a miss versus two hits out of three. It is difficult to imagine how their varied circumstances could have been less suggestive of a common shooter!

Unless, of course, their politics were similar--but Walker was a right-wing general, while Kennedy was a left-wing president. Kennedy had even relieved Walker of his command in Germany! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to conclude that these shootings were not performed by the same shooter. It does provide an opportunity for Thomas Mallon to compose another book. If Lee also had a 30.06, then he had to have stored it somewhere. We can now look forward to a sequel, Mrs. Paine's Attic.

Mallon also asserts that, "Oswald took a bus and taxi back to his rooming house in Oak Cliffs, where he picked up the pistol that he used minutes later to kill the patrolman, J. D. Tippit, who stopped him at the corner of Tenth and Patton". If he were correct about this--Mallon offers no reason for thinking so!--then Oswald must have been the only assassin in history to make his escape by public transportation. He also ignores evidence that Tippit was shot with automatic(s) when Oswald was packing a revolver.

Readers may have difficulty reconciling how an author of a book published in 2002 could be so abysmally ignorant of the current state of knowledge about this case as published, for example, in Assassination Science (1998) and in Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), both of which bring together the work of leading experts on various aspects of this case. Indeed, the evidence that the author was not dedicated to the search for truth becomes nowhere more evident than in trashing current research.

Surprisingly, the book contains so much filler that can only be properly described as complete drivel as to raise questions about the author's motivation. Examples abound, including Ruth Paine's extended prayer early on, which ends with her entreaty, "Dear God. Guide me. Oh, guide me.", to which the only appropriate response must be, "Dear God. Spare me. Oh, spare me!" Which causes a serious student of the case to speculate as to precisely what Mallon thought he was doing.

He concludes his work by attempting to ridicule presentations at JFK Lancer's NID 2000 Conference, which featured many of the contributors to these books. Mallon's attacks on this conference, which I co-chaired, are so selective, so biased and unfair that they remove any lingering shreds of credibility that this work might still retain. They establish conclusive evidence that his book abounds with deceptive falsehoods and that its true purpose appears to have been to assassinate assassination research.

Mallon even tries to discredit eyewitness Jean Hill, to whose memory this meeting was dedicated, by observing that, in addition to reporting sensing a shot from the grassy knoll, she claimed to have seen "a little dog" in the backseat with Jackie and Jack. Mallon implies that she is not credible, no doubt ignorant of the fact that photos have shown that Jackie had a small stuffed dog that was given her by a spectator!

He attacks Ian Griggs, Executive Secretary of the Dealey Plaza/United Kingdom Society, even though his report--that Oswald had stayed at an expensive hotel en route to the Soviet Union, a very odd aspect of the government’s story--provides another small piece to a puzzle that suggests the alleged assassin was working as an intelligence operative for the United States at the time. Mallon displays arrogance in passing such judgments given his own extremely modest knowledge.

He belittles other contributors to the conference--including, for example, Anna Marie-Walko, Larry Hancock, and Craig Roberts—but tells his readers nothing about the quality of their findings or other contributions, including that Roberts has authored an important book about the assassination, Kill Zone (1994), based upon knowledge he acquired as a military sniper, which led him to conclude that the official account could not be correct. This is a book that Mallon ought to read.

The author does not even describe the most important symposia held at this meeting, involving some of the leading experts on the assassination. He does not mention the contributions from Peter Dale Scott, David W. Mantik, Noel Twyman, Jim Marrs, and Stewart Galanor, among others. He thereby deceives his readers, who would not know of these omissions unless they had been there. This is a familiar fallacy that is known as special pleading, which serious scholars are taught to avoid. But not Thomas Mallon.

Stewart Galanor, for example, discussed several of the paradoxes of the assassination, among which is that, since there exists extensive evidence of a shot to the throat from in front, yet the official inquiry concluded all the shots had been fired from behind, how could JFK have been shot from in front from behind? Moreover, since the head shot trajectory advanced by the Warren Commission, when properly oriented to correspond to the position of his head at the time of the shot as the Zapruder film displays, has an upward direction, how could JFK have been shot from below from above? Galanor has elaborated these points in his book, Cover-Up (1998), which Mallon also ought to read.

David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., presented evidence that the official account of a shot that passed through the back of the President's neck and exited his throat without hitting any bony structures before impacting Governor Connally and inflicting several wounds is not merely provably false but actually anatomically impossible. When the path it would have had to have taken is tracked from the official point of entry to official point of exit on a scan of a neck with the President’s dimensions, any such bullet would have had to impact cervical verteba. This explains why Arlen Specter did not simply ask the physicians their observations of the wounds but hypothetical questions that implied the official trajectory.

Another symposium with Mantik, with Noel Twyman, author of Bloody Treason (1997), and with Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D., author of Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) and of Cocaine Politics (1998), among his many books, discussed the difficulty of conveying discoveries about this event to the American people, especially via the mass media. This appears to be due to media reluctance to come to grips with the case and the influence of illusion and denial in presenting evidence that the American government played a role in the death of the 35th President of the United States, a difficulty compounded by "the silence of the historians". Mallon’s book is a stellar example.

This theme was also apparent in a symposium that included Jim Marrs, author of Crossfire (1989), a principal source for the movie, "JFK", and Charles Drago, who is often called "the conscience of the research community". Drago rightly asserted that anyone sincerely interested in this case who does not conclude that JFK was killed as the result of a conspiracy is either unfamiliar with the evidence or cognitively impaired.

Mallon might be excused for not knowing that the autopsy X-rays have been fabricated to conceal a massive blow-out to the back of the head caused by a shot from in front, that other X-rays have been altered by the addition of a 6.5 mm metallic object in an effort to implicate a 6.5 mm weapon, or that the brain shown in diagrams and photos at the National Archives is not the brain of JFK, as previous studies have established.

If he has never read Bloody Treason (1997) Cover-Up (1998), Assassination Science (1998), or Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), that reinforces his lack of qualifications as an expert on the death of JFK. But how can he feign ignorance of the important discoveries presented at the Lancer Conference he attended and pretends to critique? His selective and distorted discussion of this meeting proves that Mallon has produced a work as deceptive about assassination research as it is about the alleged assassin.

Mantik's demonstration that the "magic bullet" theory is anatomically impossible arguably qualifies as the most important presentation at this conference. At a single stroke, it pulls the rug out from under The Warren Report (1964), The HSCA Report (1979), and Case Closed (1993), which are based upon it. Yet Mallon does not even mention this development in reviewing the very conference where it was presented! That would have contradicted his depiction of assassination research as a sham.

It must have been ironic for Mallon to sit in the audience and listen to leading experts on the assassination discussing the difficulties of disseminating what we know about the death of JFK, when he himself was engaged in composing a book with the objective of publishing false and misleading information, not only about Oswald but about the conference itself. This was not supposed to be a novel, but it is a work of fiction.

Mallon himself has to be either incompetent or corrupt. If he did not know the current state of research on the assassination, then he was unqualified to write this book. And if he wrote it in knowledge of the current state of research on the assassination, then he is complicit in perpetuating a fraud on the American people. And we know by his own words that he was present for Lancer 2000. Thomas Mallon has to have known better.

The author has discredited himself with this spiteful, misleading, and disgraceful book, which should never have been published. Every one who wants justice for JFK has to expose charlatans of this caliber and the myths that they perpetuate. Mallon now joins the ranks of other authors, such as Norman Mailer and Gerald Posner, who have also written disreputable books about JFK that are destined for the trash bin of history.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James H. Fetzer, McKnight Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, is the editor of Assassination Science (1998) and of Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000). His academic web site may be found at http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/.

Edited May 3, 2007 by Bernice Moore

[Antti Hynonen]

Hi, Bernice,

Great photos. Whose the couple in the color photo?

Thanks.

[James Richards]

Hi, Bernice,

Great photos. Whose the couple in the color photo?

Thanks.

If I may jump in here. That is Ruth and Michael Paine. Here is another.

James

[Antti Hynonen]

Ok, thanks James. Can't/couldn't recognize them from the color photos. I'll take your word in this case.

[James Richards]

DeMohrnschildt, Oswald's friend, and Schmidt, were both oil geologists with an interest in politics and psychology. Schmidt worked for Magnolia Oil Co., as did most of those who attended the party at Schmidt's house, which he shared with Everett Glover and two other men - son of a director of Radio Free Europe Norman Fredricksen and Richard Pierce, both of whom worked for Magnolia Oil and are also missing from Mallon's "Garage." (Bill Kelly)

Bill,

Regarding Volkmar Schmidt, in 1964 he was working at Socony Mobil Oil Co. in their Dallas laboratories as a senior research technologist.

A man by the name of Herman J. Schmidt was President of Socony Mobil. Do you know if they were related?

Also, re Everett Glover, do you know if he came to the United States after WW2 from Germany?

James

[William Kelly]

DeMohrnschildt, Oswald's friend, and Schmidt, were both oil geologists with an interest in politics and psychology. Schmidt worked for Magnolia Oil Co., as did most of those who attended the party at Schmidt's house, which he shared with Everett Glover and two other men - son of a director of Radio Free Europe Norman Fredricksen and Richard Pierce, both of whom worked for Magnolia Oil and are also missing from Mallon's "Garage." (Bill Kelly)

Bill,

Regarding Volkmar Schmidt, in 1964 he was working at Socony Mobil Oil Co. in their Dallas laboratories as a senior research technologist.

JAMES, I HAVE A TRANSCRIPT OF A PHONE INTERVIEW I DID WITH VOLKMAR SCHMIDT THAT I THINK I ALREADY POSTED HERE SOMEWHERE. HE SAID HE JOINED MAGNOLIA OIL IN GERMAN AND MOVED TO DALLAS. MAGNOLIA MUST HAVE MERGED WITH SOCONY MOBIL.

I ALSO TALKED WITH JOYCE MCDONALD (NOT RUBY'S GIRL), WHO WORKED AT MAGNOLIA AND WAS AT THE PARTIES SET UP FOR THE OSWALDS TO MEET THE PAINES.

A man by the name of Herman J. Schmidt was President of Socony Mobil. Do you know if they were related?

I DON'T THINK SO, OR VOLKMAR WOULD HAVE PROBABLY MENTIONED SUCH A HUGH CONNECTION TO THE COMPANY. I ALSO FAILED TO ASK HIM IF HE WAS RELATED TO LARRY SCHMIDT OF WALKER FAME, BUT I DON'T THINK THAT IS THE CASE EITHER.

Also, re Everett Glover, do you know if he came to the United States after WW2 from Germany?

DON'T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT EVERETT GLOVER, THOUGH I THINK ED J. EPSTEIN TALKED TO HIM.

BK

James

[Kathleen Collins]

Bill wrote: "Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is."

Bill, I don't remember if it was in Mallon's book or elsewhere, but somewhere I've seen that comment explained. They didn't mean that Oswald didn't do it, but that Marina had driven him to it. De Mohrenschildt's book takes a similar approach. IF Lee did it...it's because his bitchy wife drove him to it. This is unfair to Marina, no doubt, but it's interesting that the men closest to the situation immediately blamed her. She was apparently a bit of a shrew.

I know Norman Mailer is detested in Kennedy Researchers' circles, but the KGB records he could get says the Oswalds' apartment was bugged. Mailer cites transcripts in which Marina belittled LHO constantly. In my recollection, he didn't beat her up, at least not in Russia.

Kathy

Not long before 9/11 Mohamid Atta's American girlfriend broke up with him, and he killed her cat and kittins, but that didn't stimulate him to fly a plane into the WTC.

Whether Marina belittled LHO or he beat her has no bearing on what happened at Dealey Plaza, or whether LHO was the patsy or the sole assassin.

It was preordained by other than Oswald and JFK would have died no matter what LHO did or thought.

BK

Hah? Are you saying that President Kennedy's death was an Act of God?

Kathy

[William Kelly]

Bill wrote: "Then there's what Mallon appropriately calls "The Limbo Hour," between the time of the assassination and the apprehension of Oswald, shortly after which Michael Paine is overheard talking on the telephone with either his father or his wife, and someone says that they know Oswald didn't do it and know who is REALLY responsible, but we are left in the dark as to who that responsible party is."

Bill, I don't remember if it was in Mallon's book or elsewhere, but somewhere I've seen that comment explained. They didn't mean that Oswald didn't do it, but that Marina had driven him to it. De Mohrenschildt's book takes a similar approach. IF Lee did it...it's because his bitchy wife drove him to it. This is unfair to Marina, no doubt, but it's interesting that the men closest to the situation immediately blamed her. She was apparently a bit of a shrew.

I know Norman Mailer is detested in Kennedy Researchers' circles, but the KGB records he could get says the Oswalds' apartment was bugged. Mailer cites transcripts in which Marina belittled LHO constantly. In my recollection, he didn't beat her up, at least not in Russia.

Kathy

Not long before 9/11 Mohamid Atta's American girlfriend broke up with him, and he killed her cat and kittins, but that didn't stimulate him to fly a plane into the WTC.

Whether Marina belittled LHO or he beat her has no bearing on what happened at Dealey Plaza, or whether LHO was the patsy or the sole assassin.

It was preordained by other than Oswald and JFK would have died no matter what LHO did or thought.

BK

Hah? Are you saying that President Kennedy's death was an Act of God?

Kathy

No, I'm saying JFK would have been murdered at Dealey Plaza no matter what LHO did or thought, as the assassination was in the hands of other mortals, more certain of their aim than Oswald.

And therefore the crime can be solved by mortals.

BK