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The Paines


Tim Gratz

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I've always taken note of the strange parallel of the Paines and the Oswalds both living apart, yet in contact, just before the events of Dallas - as if the two operational families were on a 'mission' footing - whether knowingly or due to their controllers. Has anyone explored whys and the bona fides of the Paine separation at that time? The 'logic' for the Oswald 'split' has always seemed to me to be on this kind of thin operational 'ice' (when taken with the Gestalt of other things happening).

To me, quite obviously, the Paine house was used to set-up the patsy with incriminating evidence after they had played a hand in getting the patsy in the right location for events that day. That Michael Paine, who supposedly had little contact with Oswald knew much about him and his past and had some idea as to who really was manipulating the events, is very telling. More so, that he spoke crypticly about it [knowing his phone was tapped]. That they weren't brought before HSCA is most interesting, as well! One can almost see the outlines of the cover-up by who was NOT asked to come to the WC.

John Armstrong lets the reader draw his own conclusions, but makes it clear with documented

timelines that BOTH LEE AND HARVEY were associated with the Paines, and this was the reason for

HARVEY living apart from Marina on weekdays.

Lee was at the Paines' MONDAY THRU FRIDAY.

Harvey was at the Paines' SATURDAY AND SUNDAY.

Marina was with BOTH MEN. She later cryptically told interviewers, I HAD TWO HUSBANDS.

Read HARVEY&LEE and draw your own conclusions.

Jack

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I've always taken note of the strange parallel of the Paines and the Oswalds both living apart, yet in contact, just before the events of Dallas - as if the two operational families were on a 'mission' footing - whether knowingly or due to their controllers. Has anyone explored whys and the bona fides of the Paine separation at that time? The 'logic' for the Oswald 'split' has always seemed to me to be on this kind of thin operational 'ice' (when taken with the Gestalt of other things happening).

To me, quite obviously, the Paine house was used to set-up the patsy with incriminating evidence after they had played a hand in getting the patsy in the right location for events that day. That Michael Paine, who supposedly had little contact with Oswald knew much about him and his past and had some idea as to who really was manipulating the events, is very telling. More so, that he spoke crypticly about it [knowing his phone was tapped]. That they weren't brought before HSCA is most interesting, as well! One can almost see the outlines of the cover-up by who was NOT asked to come to the WC.

John Armstrong lets the reader draw his own conclusions, but makes it clear with documented

timelines that BOTH LEE AND HARVEY were associated with the Paines, and this was the reason for

HARVEY living apart from Marina on weekdays.

Lee was at the Paines' MONDAY THRU FRIDAY.

Harvey was at the Paines' SATURDAY AND SUNDAY.

Marina was with BOTH MEN. She later cryptically told interviewers, I HAD TWO HUSBANDS.

Read HARVEY&LEE and draw your own conclusions.

Jack

What do Ruth and Michael's children have to say about this Jack (or others) Do they remember Oswald being there during the week? Have any of them spoken about those times or times since?

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I've always taken note of the strange parallel of the Paines and the Oswalds both living apart, yet in contact, just before the events of Dallas - as if the two operational families were on a 'mission' footing - whether knowingly or due to their controllers. Has anyone explored whys and the bona fides of the Paine separation at that time? The 'logic' for the Oswald 'split' has always seemed to me to be on this kind of thin operational 'ice' (when taken with the Gestalt of other things happening).

Yes, Peter -- at least as much as it can be from the available records, which isn't much.

November 13, 1963: Ruth Paine files a petition for divorce stating she separated from Michael on September 1, 1962, and that for 6 months prior to separation, she had suffered a course of "unkind, cruel harsh and tyrannical treatment and conduct" at the hands of her husband. Ruth's attorney in this filing was Louise Raggio.[9] Recall that the Paine's and Raggio's attend the same church.

Send Lawyers, Guns & Money

The case was dismissed when no further action was taken after 6 months.

I understand the law required that there be "fault" attributed for the failure of a marriage, and it's not unheard of that people will make false accusations to achieve a divorce where such laws apply. But by the same token, such allegations need to be substantiated in court, and it would have been fascinating to see how these particular ones played out. Especially given the bum rap LHO got as a husband.

Two points about this separation to bear in mind - it coincided with Mike's attendance at his first right-wing meeting. This was with the National Indignation Council. This was also the first target of CUSA through Larrie Schmdt. The timing would be interesting to check out to see if it overlaps.

The other point also involves CUSA - that is that there are a number of instances in the records of men ditching spouses just prior to actual or probable involvement in one type of operation or another. From memory, this includes at least two CUSA members, but also includes others in the right wing, criminal milieu and anti-Castro movements. Oh, and let's not forget Oswald himself.

MP's reason for attending various meetings:

Mr. PAINE - I have been to a number of rightist meetings and seminars in Texas. I was interested in seeing more communication between the right and the left; there isn't much liberal out there and so I wanted to be able to speak their language and know that their fears--and be familiar with their feelings and attitudes.

My gut feeling is that this was about "Third Way" ideology which attempts to draw the two extremes together. It is at least something that I see looming large, but almost unheralded, as one of the backdrops to the case (taking the case in the wider context of the Cold War). One of the main movement to emerge from all the maneuvering, infiltrating and posturing was the neoconservatives. Certainly, his father played a role in the emergence of that particular hybrid.

On the other hand though, he may have been just a good old fashioned FBI informant!

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I've always taken note of the strange parallel of the Paines and the Oswalds both living apart, yet in contact, just before the events of Dallas - as if the two operational families were on a 'mission' footing - whether knowingly or due to their controllers. Has anyone explored whys and the bona fides of the Paine separation at that time? The 'logic' for the Oswald 'split' has always seemed to me to be on this kind of thin operational 'ice' (when taken with the Gestalt of other things happening).

To me, quite obviously, the Paine house was used to set-up the patsy with incriminating evidence after they had played a hand in getting the patsy in the right location for events that day. That Michael Paine, who supposedly had little contact with Oswald knew much about him and his past and had some idea as to who really was manipulating the events, is very telling. More so, that he spoke crypticly about it [knowing his phone was tapped]. That they weren't brought before HSCA is most interesting, as well! One can almost see the outlines of the cover-up by who was NOT asked to come to the WC.

John Armstrong lets the reader draw his own conclusions, but makes it clear with documented

timelines that BOTH LEE AND HARVEY were associated with the Paines, and this was the reason for

HARVEY living apart from Marina on weekdays.

Lee was at the Paines' MONDAY THRU FRIDAY.

Harvey was at the Paines' SATURDAY AND SUNDAY.

Marina was with BOTH MEN. She later cryptically told interviewers, I HAD TWO HUSBANDS.

Read HARVEY&LEE and draw your own conclusions.

Jack

What do Ruth and Michael's children have to say about this Jack (or others) Do they remember Oswald being there during the week? Have any of them spoken about those times or times since?

I am only reporting John's research; I know nothing else.

Jack

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Ruth Paine the folk-dancing, madrigal-singing...

Jan,

I wonder about that folk-dancing. They went away together to folk-dance festivals both before and after separating. Another Unitarian also made time to attend those festivals - Ike's Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Percival Flack Brundage. Folk dancing was apparently his favorite past-time. Brundage is of great interest to me, as he was heavily involved in the Unitarian owned Swiss college named after Albert Schweitzer - the same college Oswald applied to in '59 prior to his Russian escapades. As the holder of the national purse strings, there was very little that went on overtly or covertly that Brundage was not either directly involved in or at least, privvy to.

As a side-note... according to some, Brundage was a lousy accountant, but even a worse dancer - though he thought he was brilliant at both...

"...I can't believe Percival Brundage made it into the Hall [of Fame]. It is well-known his auditing was sloppy, his use of tax credits choked in the clutch, and he was anything but a PTPer w/r/t calculating EBITDA and EPS. And his "folk dancing" was nothing to write home about, either."

http://nightshadebooks.com/discus/messages/32/6790.html

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Some interesting tidbits on the Paine's, early on, in book Praise From a Future Generation. It was noted by some who spoke to Michael that he knew all about Oswald - more than he told the WC and also, significantly, that he was infiltrating right-wing groups.

Peter-

I recently purchased Praise from a Future Generation.

Do you recommend it?

Chris

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George DeMohrenschildt brought the Oswalds to the party in Highland Park, Texas, where Michael & Ruth met Lee Harvey & Marina.

Levenda is pretty direct in Sinister Forces:

It was Michael Paine who took Oswald to his first ACLU meeting. It was also Michael Paine who took Oswald to his first John Birch Society meeting. It was Michael Paine who engaged Oswald in political discussions in front of witnesses.
It was Ruth Paine who provided some of the most damaging circumstantial evidence against Oswald. It was also Ruth Paine who dragged her feet on getting Lee Oswald legal representation, even though both she and her husband were members of the ACLU. Ruth Paine the Quaker, Ruth Paine the liberal activist, Ruth Paine the pacifist who was studying Russian and writing letters to pen pals in the Soviet Union, hoping to bridge the gap between the two superpowers and promote peace, Ruth Paine the folk-dancing, madrigal-singing, friend of the oppressed... refusing to help the husband of stranded Russian immigrant Marina Oswald, and the father of Marina Oswald's two infant children, get legal representation?

Thanks for the reminder about the Oswald-Paine introduction.

Do you regard Sinister Forces as accurate?

I am not very familiar with it.

Thanks.

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I know I wrote an article about a decade ago on how the Oswalds met the Paines but I don't remember the title and can't find a computer copy. I must have posted it at JFKResearch or JFK Place.

In any case, George DeMohrenschildt was introducing the Oswalds to his circle of friends, and they took turns having parties that featured the Oswalds, billed as a "Russian speaking" couple.

Two parties are of particular interest, Feb. 2 and Feb 12, 1963, because they were specially held for Michael Paine to meet Oswald. Michael Paine is said to have met Everett Glover at a Unitarian Church reception, and thought Paine would be interested in meeting this recently returned defector.

The host of the party, Volkmar Schmidt, lived with Glover and another oil Geologist whose father worked for Radio Free Europe. Most of those in attendance worked for Magnolia Oil Company, which is also mentioned in the (Jim) Braden file.

What's weird about the first party is that the host, Schmidt, and one of the guests of honor, Michael Paine, weren't there (Schmidt says he was in Libya), but that's when Ruth Paine met Marina Oswald, and (whether by contrivance or cosmic coincidence), set many things into motion.

So another party was arranged for Michael to meet Oswald, and Oswald does meet Volkmar Schmidt (See interview with VS), who uses "reverse psychology" techniques on Oswald, suggesting that killing Walker would be like killing Hitler (BTW Schmidt's mentor, Dr. Keutsmeyer of Germany, was involved in the Eagle's Lair plot to kill Hitler which also involved Mary Bancroft and Hans Gisevius).

So now Lee and Marina are pals with Ruth and Michael, and both families have a lot in common, children with men who maintain separate apartments, etc.

After the Walker shooting, the Oswalds pack up and are splitting town to go to New Orleans, Oswald's hometown, but Mrs. Paine, at the very last minute, suggests to Oswald that he go to New Orleans alone and leave Marina and the baby until he was settled in with a new apartment. Oswald takes bus alone to New Oreans, obtains the apartment on Magazine Street with the help of an old neighbor and calls for Marina.

Ruth drives Marina AND THE RIFLE to New Orleans. April, 1963.

August, 1963, Ruth writes to Marina suggesting that they live together in Dallas/Irving until Marina's baby is born, and if Marina agrees, Ruth will pick her up in New Orleans and drive her to Texas. Ruth instructs Marina to write to her in care of Art Young, Paoli, Pa., if she agrees. Ruth picks up Marina in New Orleans on Sept. 23? - and drives her AND THE RIFLE to Texas while Oswald goes to Mexico City.

Now Michael Paine packed and unpacked Ruth Paine's station wagon twice, and he thought the rifle wrapped in a blanket was a tent pole.

Now Michael Paine is an engineer in reserch and development at Bell Helicopter where he helped design the Osprey, who obtained his job through the graces of his stepfather Art Young.

Back in Mrs. Paine's Garage, the rifle sat straped in a heavy wool blanket, until November 22, 1963 when it showed up on the 6th floor of the TSBD, where Oswald worked.

Oswald got the job there through the graces of Mrs. Paine's phone call after hearing about a job opening there from her nieghbor Lillie Mae Randal at an afternoon coffe clatch.

The two families meeting at the parties, the haphazzard getaway from Dallas when things got hot after the Walker shooting, getting the Magazene Street apartment just riding around the neighborood and seeing a sign, the return to Dallas and getting the job at the TSBD are all ostensible conicdences that for there to have been a conspiracy, must be shown to have been intentional.

BK

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  • 4 months later...
Ruth Paine the folk-dancing, madrigal-singing...

Jan,

I wonder about that folk-dancing. They went away together to folk-dance festivals both before and after separating. Another Unitarian also made time to attend those festivals - Ike's Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Percival Flack Brundage. Folk dancing was apparently his favorite past-time. Brundage is of great interest to me, as he was heavily involved in the Unitarian owned Swiss college named after Albert Schweitzer - the same college Oswald applied to in '59 prior to his Russian escapades. As the holder of the national purse strings, there was very little that went on overtly or covertly that Brundage was not either directly involved in or at least, privvy to.

As a side-note... according to some, Brundage was a lousy accountant, but even a worse dancer - though he thought he was brilliant at both...

"...I can't believe Percival Brundage made it into the Hall [of Fame]. It is well-known his auditing was sloppy, his use of tax credits choked in the clutch, and he was anything but a PTPer w/r/t calculating EBITDA and EPS. And his "folk dancing" was nothing to write home about, either."

http://nightshadebooks.com/discus/messages/32/6790.html

Ruth Paine was also involved in folk dancing when she lived in Philadelphia the first time.

She may have met michael at a Philadelphia folk dance.

I thought she would donate her papers to alma mater - Antioch College of Yellow Springs, Ohio, but that institution is having a hard time and may go under. Ruth's brother still lives in Yellow Springs.

The Papers of Ruth Paine are at Swarthmore College, Philadelphia.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/friends/ead/5109pain.xml

Has anybody checked these out?

BK

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  • 1 month later...
Ruth Paine the folk-dancing, madrigal-singing...

Jan,

I wonder about that folk-dancing. They went away together to folk-dance festivals both before and after separating. Another Unitarian also made time to attend those festivals - Ike's Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Percival Flack Brundage. Folk dancing was apparently his favorite past-time. Brundage is of great interest to me, as he was heavily involved in the Unitarian owned Swiss college named after Albert Schweitzer - the same college Oswald applied to in '59 prior to his Russian escapades. As the holder of the national purse strings, there was very little that went on overtly or covertly that Brundage was not either directly involved in or at least, privvy to.

As a side-note... according to some, Brundage was a lousy accountant, but even a worse dancer - though he thought he was brilliant at both...

"...I can't believe Percival Brundage made it into the Hall [of Fame]. It is well-known his auditing was sloppy, his use of tax credits choked in the clutch, and he was anything but a PTPer w/r/t calculating EBITDA and EPS. And his "folk dancing" was nothing to write home about, either."

http://nightshadebooks.com/discus/messages/32/6790.html

Ruth Paine was also involved in folk dancing when she lived in Philadelphia the first time.

She may have met michael at a Philadelphia folk dance.

I thought she would donate her papers to alma mater - Antioch College of Yellow Springs, Ohio, but that institution is having a hard time and may go under. Ruth's brother still lives in Yellow Springs.

The Papers of Ruth Paine are at Swarthmore College, Philadelphia.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/friends/ead/5109pain.xml

Has anybody checked these out?

BK

Forum members who are intruiged by the Paine's, may find the following website of more than just passing interest.

http://www.cranberryisles.com/sutton.html

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  • 11 months later...
  • 6 months later...
Interesting article on Ruth Paine:

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/04/15/Floridia...ar__a_few.shtml

You can watch a ten-minute interview with Ruth Paine here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpaine.htm

interesting article on Ruth Paine:

http://www.sptimes.com/2004/04/15/Floridia...ar__a_few.shtml

Since Kathy wanted to talk about Ruth Paine, and bug her house, I revived this thread.

Although Ruth and Michael Paine testified at length before the Warren Commission, they were treated with kid gloves, especially by Gerald Ford and Allen Dulles, who didn't bother to mention that Michael's mom was good friends with his girlfriend and fellow Valkyrie agent Mary Bancroft.

Ruth Paine did testify about some interesting things, like teaching Oswald to drive and letting him use her car, and how she looked at Oswald "operationally."

I don't think there's any need to bug her house. You can call her on the phone and she'll talk to you if your polite. She should be required to testify under oath about things we've learned about since 1964, since, despite public pleadings, the Paines weren't called to answer questions by either the HSCA or the ARRB.

BK

Edited by William Kelly
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Guest James H. Fetzer

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

James H. Fetzer

Published in Assassination Research 1/1 (2002).

Reprinted in The Dealey Plaza Echo 6/2 (2002), pp. 26-32

Reprinted in Kennedy Assassination Chronicles 8/1 (2002).

513P7BXSK3L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU02_.jpg

[Editor's Note: The reasons Thomas Mallon undertook this work related to the assassination of President

John F. Kennedy are truly obscure. Although the book is subtitled, "AND THE MURDER OF JFK", virtually

every page reveals his incompetence to deal with this subject. While it was not written as a novel, it is

a work of fiction.]

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), writted 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.

Oswaldsrifle2.jpg

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 (Editor's note: See "The Lone Nutter Refutation" in this issue.).

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, Svetlana, 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.

og981x.jpg

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 [or else the newspapers were introduced too large when these photos were faked].

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.

LHO33.jpg

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.

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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.

Edited by James H. Fetzer
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I don't think there's any need to bug her house. You can call her on the phone and she'll talk to you if your polite. She should be required to testify under oath about things we've learned about since 1964, since, despite public pleadings, the Paines weren't called to answer questions by either the HSCA or the ARRB.

BK

I was looking forward to the house bugging Bill. Nothing demonstrates the need for the truth, liberty and justice more than illegally entering someone's property and secretly listening to their conversations. While we are there we can also steal some DNA. I don't know what we'd with it once we had it but hey ho.

I think it wise to bump the thread because although we all believe in a variety of Rosetta Stones concerning the JFK case - this is the one for me.

The coincidences. The rifle. The backyard photos. The translating. The Minox camera. The notes. The letter. The storage cabinets. The contradictions between values and actions. The trip to Mexico. The extended famillies. The testimony. John Abt. The US/USSR cultural exchange program. The backyard photograph's camera. Robert Oswald. George DeMohrenschildt. Peter Gregory. George Bouhe. The list just goes on and on...

"While we are there we can also steal some DNA. I don't know what we'd with it once we had it but hey ho."

On the light side, perhaps we could analyze it and find a clue to the mystery of why Ruth's hideous hairstyle has remainined unchanged for the last 47 years.

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