Edward Jay Epstein

[William Kelly]

We'll never know.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-epstein/a...e_b_366400.html

Annals of Unsolved Crime - The Oswald Mystery

The endless tangle of questions about bullets, trajectories, wounds, time sequences and inconsistent testimony that has surrounded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and has obsessively fascinated, if not entirely blinded, two generations of self-styled assassination investigators, probably never will be satisfactorily resolved. Each new release of documents from the various bureaucracies involved in the nearly half century old investigation may only deepen the apparent contradictions.

Within this morass of facts. however, there is a central actor, Lee Harvey Oswald. His rifle, which fired the fatal bullet into the president, was found in the sniper's nest at the Texas Book Depository. So was his palm print. He had also bought the ammunition. His cartridge cases were found near the body of a murdered policeman on the route of his flight.

In light of such evidence, the issue that ought to have concerned Americans was not Oswald's technical guilt but whether he was involved with others in the assassination. Oswald was not a "loner" in the conventional sense. Ever since he was handed a pamphlet about the Rosenberg prosecution at the age of 15, he was a joiner, seeking affiliations with groups at home and abroad. When he was only 16, he wrote the Socialist Party, "I am a Marxist and have been studying Socialist Principles for well over five years," and he requested information about joining their "Youth League." He subsequently made membership inquiries to such organizations as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Labor Party, The Gus Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee, The Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Communist Party, USA-- correspondence that brought him under surveillance by the FBI.

0swald also joined the Marine Corps. And after a two-year stint as a radar operator, Oswald sought still another affiliation: in October 1959 he became the first Marine to defect to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, he delivered a letter stating: "I affirm that my allegiance is to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." Not only did he publicly renounce his American citizenship, but he told the U.S. consul that he intended to turn over to the Soviet Union military secrets that he had acquired while serving in the Marines, adding that he had data of "special interest" to the Russians. Since he indeed had exposure to military secrets such as the U-2 spy plane, his defection had serious espionage implications. Oswald thus had not only compromised the secret data he had come in contact with in the Marines, but put himself firmly in the hands of another country. He was now completely dependent on Russia for financial support, legal status and protection.

Before disappearing into the Soviet hinterland for a year, Oswald spelled out his operational creed in a long letter to his brother. From Moscow, he wrote presciently of his willingness to commit murder for a political cause: "I want you to understand what I say now, I do not say lightly, or unknowingly, since I've been in the military .... In the event of war I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the American Government --", and then ominously added for emphasis, "Any American." His willingness to act as an assassin was now known to anyone who read this letter, which included not only his Russian hosts but American intelligence, since his letter was intercepted by the CIA and microfilmed.

Oswald returned from the Soviet Union in June 1962, joined by his Russian wife Marina, and settled in Dallas. He then acquired the means for killing. He purchased a rifle with telescopic sights and a revolver from a mail-order house under a false name. He also lectured a small circle of friends on the need for violent action rather than mere words. His particular focus was General Edwin A. Walker, an extreme conservative, who had been active in Dallas organizing anti-Castro guerrillas. For example, he suggested to a German geologist, Volkmar Schmidt that General Walker should be treated like a "murderer at large." He did not stop at fierce words. For weeks, he methodically stalked Walker's movements, photographing his residence from several angles. He then had his wife photograph him, dressed entirely in black, with his revolver strapped on a holster on his hip, his sniper's rifle in his right hand, and two newspapers, The Worker and The Militant, in his left hand. He made three copies of the photograph--one of which he inscribed, dated "5--IV-63" and sent to a Dallas acquaintance, George De Mohrenschildt (who had also seen his rifle). He then left with his rifle wrapped in a raincoat, telling his wife he was off to "target practice," but his target, General Walker, was out of town that night. Five nights later, Oswald returned to Walker's house, and fired a shot at him that missed his head by inches, demonstrating to those that saw the photograph that he had the willingness to kill.

After the failed assassination, another friend, Ruth Paine, drove Oswald and his family to New Orleans, where he became the organizer for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which opposed the efforts of the Kennedy administration to overthrow Castro. Aside from printing leaflets, staging demonstrations, getting arrested and appearing on local radio talk shows in support of Castro that summer, Oswald attempted to befriend leaders of and infiltrate anti-Castro groups that were organizing sabotage raids against Cuba. By this time, he apparently considered himself a sleeper operative, writing in August 1963 to the central committee of the Communist Party USA, and asking, "Whether in your opinion, I can compete with anti-progressive forces above ground, or whether I should always remain in the background, i.e. underground." During this hot summer, while practicing sighting his rifle in his backyard, according to his wife, he told her about his plan to hijack an airliner to Cuba, saying he might earn a position in Castro's government. Then, on September 9th, in a report that appeared on the front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Castro, who had been the target of a number of assassination attempts by the CIA, warned that if American leaders continued "aiding plans to eliminate Cuban leaders ... they themselves will not be safe."

The implication of this warning was not lost on Oswald. Telling his wife that they might never meet again, he left New Orleans two weeks later, headed for the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. To convince the Cubans of his bona fides-- and seriousness--he had prepared a dossier on himself, which included a 10 page resume, outlining his revolutionary activities, newspaper clippings about his defection to the Soviet Union, documents he had stolen from a printing company engaged in classified map reproduction for the US Army, his correspondence with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee executives, and, as if to demonstrate his lethal capability , the photographs linking him to the Walker shooting.

Oswald applied for a visa at the Cuban Embassy on the morning of September 27, 1963. He said that he wanted to stop in Havana en route to the Soviet Union. On the application, the consular office who interviewed him noted: "The applicant states that he is a member of the American Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Despite such recommendations, Oswald was told that he needed a Soviet visa before the Cuban visa could be issued. He argued over this requisite with the Cuban counsel, Eusebio Azque, in front of witnesses, and reportedly made wild claims about services he might perform for the Cuban cause. During the next five days, he traveled back and forth between the Soviet and Cuban embassies attempting to straighten out the difficulty. When he telephoned from the Cuban embassy to arrange an appointment at the Soviet Embassy with an officer called Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov, he set off alarm bells at the CIA, which had been surreptitiously monitoring the phone line. Kostikov was a KGB officer who had been under close surveillance in Mexico by the FBI. By the time the CIA had identified Oswald, and notified the FBI, he had left Mexico.

When he returned to Dallas, Oswald assumed a different identity--"O.H.Lee"--and, separating himself from his family, he moved to a rooming house. He also forbade his wife from divulging his whereabouts.

On October 18th, Oswald's visa was approved by the Cuban Foreign Ministry despite the fact that he had not officially received a Soviet visa, as required. Apparently unaware of this development, he wrote another letter to the Soviet Embassy, referring to his meeting with Kostikov in Mexico, and adding cryptically: "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business." When FBI counterintelligence intercepted this letter in Washington. it urgently requested its field agent in Dallas to question him.

The FBI agent, James Hosty, unable to locate Oswald, warned his wife she could be sent back to Russia. When his wife told him about the FBI warning he threatened to bomb its Dallas office. By this time, Oswald had a menial $1.50 hour job at the Texas Book Depository, which overlooked the convergence of the three main streets into central Dallas.

On November 22nd, at 12:30 pm, as the President's car passed the book depository, a burst of rifle fire fatally wounded him. Less than two hours later, a Dallas policeman had been shot and killed, and, near the shooting, Oswald was arrested with the murder weapon in his hand. He was charged with killing the policeman and, shortly afterwards, assassinating the President. Then, on November 24th, Oswald was shot to death in Dallas police headquarters by night club owner Jack Ruby.

The Warren Commission concluded--rightly I now believe--that Oswald fired all the shots that killed the President. But conspiracies do not necessarily require multiple rifleman to accomplish their purpose. And what the Warren Commission could not absolutely rule out, as two of its members pointed out to me, was the possibility that Oswald had acted at the behest of others. After all, he had advertised his willingness to undertake a high-profile assassination by circulating photographs connecting himself to the shooting of General Walker. Any party who was monitoring his activities in Dallas, New Orleans or Mexico City could have discerned from them that he was a potential assassin awaiting a mission. With his mind set on such violent actions as hijacking a plane, blowing up the FBI office, or killing "any American," not much would be required to prod him to violence. He had sought liaisons in dangerous quarters and someone could have provided him with an inducement. But with Oswald forever silenced by Ruby, and intelligence services capable of expunging embarrassing data about their contacts with a Presidential assassins from their files, it is doubtful that we will ever know who, if anyone, influenced Oswald to act on November 22, 1963.

Edited November 27, 2009 by William Kelly

[Jim Root]

Thank you for posting this article William

The final statement in the article,

"But with Oswald forever silenced by Ruby, and intelligence services capable of expunging embarrassing data about their contacts with a Presidential assassins from their files, it is doubtful that we will ever know who, if anyone, influenced Oswald to act on November 22, 1963"

is, I believe, not true. The fact that we can prove that Hosty's third note was "expung(ed)" from the "embarrassing data" held by "intelligence services" points to the person who did not give that piece of evidence a Commission Exhibit number, John J. McCloy!

We know the note was written based upon the testimony of Hosty. We know that McCloy questioned Hosty about the note and even asked if Hosty had kept a copy. We must question how a man with the experience of John J. McCloy (Black Tom affair) would not see fit to give a document that identified exactly where Lee Harvey Oswald was working nearly three weeks prior to the motorcade driving past Oswald's window a Commission Exhibit number, is even possible without entertaining the idea that McCloy's failure in this particular incident was a necessary element in the cover up!

We know the CIA has never acknowledged that it had access to that particular note although we know for a fact that Hosty's two previous notes made it to the office of Richard Helms. Is this believable? It is not difficult to speculate that the need to make sure the people's names who had access to Hosty's third note would never be known would be a paramount requirement in order to protect those responsible for the assissination of John F. Kennedy and, in addition, does seem to clearly shed light on who was responsible for covering up this particular piece of important information (and perhaps the assassination as well)!

It is not unusual to find that a sin of omission is made to protect ones act of a sin of commission.

Do you know of any way that I could contact Epstein?

Jim Root

[William Kelly]

Thank you for posting this article William

The final statement in the article,

"But with Oswald forever silenced by Ruby, and intelligence services capable of expunging embarrassing data about their contacts with a Presidential assassins from their files, it is doubtful that we will ever know who, if anyone, influenced Oswald to act on November 22, 1963"

is, I believe, not true. The fact that we can prove that Hosty's third note was "expung(ed)" from the "embarrassing data" held by "intelligence services" points to the person who did not give that piece of evidence a Commission Exhibit number, John J. McCloy!

We know the note was written based upon the testimony of Hosty. We know that McCloy questioned Hosty about the note and even asked if Hosty had kept a copy. We must question how a man with the experience of John J. McCloy (Black Tom affair) would not see fit to give a document that identified exactly where Lee Harvey Oswald was working nearly three weeks prior to the motorcade driving past Oswald's window a Commission Exhibit number, is even possible without entertaining the idea that McCloy's failure in this particular incident was a necessary element in the cover up!

We know the CIA has never acknowledged that it had access to that particular note although we know for a fact that Hosty's two previous notes made it to the office of Richard Helms. Is this believable? It is not difficult to speculate that the need to make sure the people's names who had access to Hosty's third note would never be known would be a paramount requirement in order to protect those responsible for the assissination of John F. Kennedy and, in addition, does seem to clearly shed light on who was responsible for covering up this particular piece of important information (and perhaps the assassination as well)!

It is not unusual to find that a sin of omission is made to protect ones act of a sin of commission.

Do you know of any way that I could contact Epstein?

Jim Root

Hi Jim,

No I don't have contact with Epstein, but will try to find one.

His book Legend is a classic, though it is more significant for what it leaves out than what he tells you, a classic piece of disinfo, and that's disinfo in the official meaning of the term, as his sources include very high ranking intelligence officers.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to set him straight, or let him know that people are on to him, as he knows, and therefore we must "read between the lines," to quote an inside source.

I also wanted to get your feedback on the thread on Dr. Pierre Finck, the Army surgeon called to Bathesda to assist in the autopsy after the autopsy had already begun, so he arrived a half hour affter they began, and had already removed the brain and other organs.

Finck, who has seen hundreds if not thousands of gunshot wounds from combat, immediately went looking for the entrance wound to the head and was quite frustrated at not being able to locate the small bullet entrance wound to the back of the head, which would include the beveling inward of the skull bone. I don't know if he ever found it, but a week later he was called suddenly again and asked to witness the examination of the brain.

Although suspicious that the full weighted brain was the same one he saw at Bethesda a week earlier, and noting this in his report, Finck singned off on it, even though photos of the brain examined at this time show that it is full brain in size and weight and has the texture and color of a brain that had been in formaladyde for over two weeks, before JFK was killed. Thus there were two brains, and the second brain was apparently introduced by Dr. Hume for the expressed purpose of fooling Dr. Finck.

Bringing this all around to John J. McCloy, I found it odd that Finck wrote an After Action Report on being recalled from Vietnam in 1967 for the expressed purpose of viewing the photos and x-rays of the autopsy and the brain, and to sign an affidavit that testifies to the fact that the photos and x-rays don't change the autopsy report conclusion that JFK killed by shots fired from behind and above him.

Among the records released under the JFK Act and posted at Mary Ferrell is a letter from a CBS VP to John J. McCloy requesing that he intervein and get Drs. Hume and Boswell to talk about the autopsy on camera, because they have refused all requests for interviews.

Voia La ! (Is that French?) Suddenly, after four years of silence, Dr. Hume appears on a CBS News TV special on the JFK assassination, as does John J. McCloy, whose interview with Walter Cronkite is exceptional, if you haven't seen it or read the transcripts.

For once in his life Uncle Walt asked the hard questions and put McCloy on the hot seat, but of course, that was the whole purpose of the program, to convince people that Oswald acted alone and there was no conspiracy, or autopsy evidence of another gunman.

I was also thinking that McCloy's daughter worked for CBS at the time and might have had something to do with it. But most asurdly, McCLoy pulled the strings that got Finck to jump back from Vietnam to view, sign and lie about the autopsy photos and x-rays, and got Humes to open up and talk to CBS.

While I haven't done it, I'd like to see a chrono time line of the 1967 events, including the dates of the CBS-McCloy letters, the trip from Vietnam to DC by Finck, the CBS TV special, the state of the Garrison investigation at the time, and the secret reinterment of the JFK grave, that was happening around the same time.

After digesting, your thoughts on all this appreciated.

As for EJEpstein, I think he would rather not know the truth about Lee Harvey Oswald, his only suspect, the guy who he has focused much of his life's research on, who turns out to be the Patsy after all.

Bill Kelly

[Gary Buell]

Do you know of any way that I could contact Epstein?

Jim Root

Through his website : www.edwardjayepstein.com click on "Ask Ed (anything)

[Jim Root]

Do you know of any way that I could contact Epstein?

Jim Root

Through his website : www.edwardjayepstein.com click on "Ask Ed (anything)

Thank you Gary

[Pat Speer]

We'll never know.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-epstein/a...e_b_366400.html

Annals of Unsolved Crime - The Oswald Mystery

The endless tangle of questions about bullets, trajectories, wounds, time sequences and inconsistent testimony that has surrounded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and has obsessively fascinated, if not entirely blinded, two generations of self-styled assassination investigators, probably never will be satisfactorily resolved. Each new release of documents from the various bureaucracies involved in the nearly half century old investigation may only deepen the apparent contradictions.

Within this morass of facts. however, there is a central actor, Lee Harvey Oswald. His rifle, which fired the fatal bullet into the president, was found in the sniper's nest at the Texas Book Depository. So was his palm print. He had also bought the ammunition. His cartridge cases were found near the body of a murdered policeman on the route of his flight.

In light of such evidence, the issue that ought to have concerned Americans was not Oswald's technical guilt but whether he was involved with others in the assassination. Oswald was not a "loner" in the conventional sense. Ever since he was handed a pamphlet about the Rosenberg prosecution at the age of 15, he was a joiner, seeking affiliations with groups at home and abroad. When he was only 16, he wrote the Socialist Party, "I am a Marxist and have been studying Socialist Principles for well over five years," and he requested information about joining their "Youth League." He subsequently made membership inquiries to such organizations as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Labor Party, The Gus Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee, The Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Communist Party, USA-- correspondence that brought him under surveillance by the FBI.

0swald also joined the Marine Corps. And after a two-year stint as a radar operator, Oswald sought still another affiliation: in October 1959 he became the first Marine to defect to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, he delivered a letter stating: "I affirm that my allegiance is to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." Not only did he publicly renounce his American citizenship, but he told the U.S. consul that he intended to turn over to the Soviet Union military secrets that he had acquired while serving in the Marines, adding that he had data of "special interest" to the Russians. Since he indeed had exposure to military secrets such as the U-2 spy plane, his defection had serious espionage implications. Oswald thus had not only compromised the secret data he had come in contact with in the Marines, but put himself firmly in the hands of another country. He was now completely dependent on Russia for financial support, legal status and protection.

Before disappearing into the Soviet hinterland for a year, Oswald spelled out his operational creed in a long letter to his brother. From Moscow, he wrote presciently of his willingness to commit murder for a political cause: "I want you to understand what I say now, I do not say lightly, or unknowingly, since I've been in the military .... In the event of war I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the American Government --", and then ominously added for emphasis, "Any American." His willingness to act as an assassin was now known to anyone who read this letter, which included not only his Russian hosts but American intelligence, since his letter was intercepted by the CIA and microfilmed.

Oswald returned from the Soviet Union in June 1962, joined by his Russian wife Marina, and settled in Dallas. He then acquired the means for killing. He purchased a rifle with telescopic sights and a revolver from a mail-order house under a false name. He also lectured a small circle of friends on the need for violent action rather than mere words. His particular focus was General Edwin A. Walker, an extreme conservative, who had been active in Dallas organizing anti-Castro guerrillas. For example, he suggested to a German geologist, Volkmar Schmidt that General Walker should be treated like a "murderer at large." He did not stop at fierce words. For weeks, he methodically stalked Walker's movements, photographing his residence from several angles. He then had his wife photograph him, dressed entirely in black, with his revolver strapped on a holster on his hip, his sniper's rifle in his right hand, and two newspapers, The Worker and The Militant, in his left hand. He made three copies of the photograph--one of which he inscribed, dated "5--IV-63" and sent to a Dallas acquaintance, George De Mohrenschildt (who had also seen his rifle). He then left with his rifle wrapped in a raincoat, telling his wife he was off to "target practice," but his target, General Walker, was out of town that night. Five nights later, Oswald returned to Walker's house, and fired a shot at him that missed his head by inches, demonstrating to those that saw the photograph that he had the willingness to kill.

After the failed assassination, another friend, Ruth Paine, drove Oswald and his family to New Orleans, where he became the organizer for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which opposed the efforts of the Kennedy administration to overthrow Castro. Aside from printing leaflets, staging demonstrations, getting arrested and appearing on local radio talk shows in support of Castro that summer, Oswald attempted to befriend leaders of and infiltrate anti-Castro groups that were organizing sabotage raids against Cuba. By this time, he apparently considered himself a sleeper operative, writing in August 1963 to the central committee of the Communist Party USA, and asking, "Whether in your opinion, I can compete with anti-progressive forces above ground, or whether I should always remain in the background, i.e. underground." During this hot summer, while practicing sighting his rifle in his backyard, according to his wife, he told her about his plan to hijack an airliner to Cuba, saying he might earn a position in Castro's government. Then, on September 9th, in a report that appeared on the front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Castro, who had been the target of a number of assassination attempts by the CIA, warned that if American leaders continued "aiding plans to eliminate Cuban leaders ... they themselves will not be safe."

The implication of this warning was not lost on Oswald. Telling his wife that they might never meet again, he left New Orleans two weeks later, headed for the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. To convince the Cubans of his bona fides-- and seriousness--he had prepared a dossier on himself, which included a 10 page resume, outlining his revolutionary activities, newspaper clippings about his defection to the Soviet Union, documents he had stolen from a printing company engaged in classified map reproduction for the US Army, his correspondence with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee executives, and, as if to demonstrate his lethal capability , the photographs linking him to the Walker shooting.

Oswald applied for a visa at the Cuban Embassy on the morning of September 27, 1963. He said that he wanted to stop in Havana en route to the Soviet Union. On the application, the consular office who interviewed him noted: "The applicant states that he is a member of the American Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Despite such recommendations, Oswald was told that he needed a Soviet visa before the Cuban visa could be issued. He argued over this requisite with the Cuban counsel, Eusebio Azque, in front of witnesses, and reportedly made wild claims about services he might perform for the Cuban cause. During the next five days, he traveled back and forth between the Soviet and Cuban embassies attempting to straighten out the difficulty. When he telephoned from the Cuban embassy to arrange an appointment at the Soviet Embassy with an officer called Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov, he set off alarm bells at the CIA, which had been surreptitiously monitoring the phone line. Kostikov was a KGB officer who had been under close surveillance in Mexico by the FBI. By the time the CIA had identified Oswald, and notified the FBI, he had left Mexico.

When he returned to Dallas, Oswald assumed a different identity--"O.H.Lee"--and, separating himself from his family, he moved to a rooming house. He also forbade his wife from divulging his whereabouts.

On October 18th, Oswald's visa was approved by the Cuban Foreign Ministry despite the fact that he had not officially received a Soviet visa, as required. Apparently unaware of this development, he wrote another letter to the Soviet Embassy, referring to his meeting with Kostikov in Mexico, and adding cryptically: "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business." When FBI counterintelligence intercepted this letter in Washington. it urgently requested its field agent in Dallas to question him.

The FBI agent, James Hosty, unable to locate Oswald, warned his wife she could be sent back to Russia. When his wife told him about the FBI warning he threatened to bomb its Dallas office. By this time, Oswald had a menial $1.50 hour job at the Texas Book Depository, which overlooked the convergence of the three main streets into central Dallas.

On November 22nd, at 12:30 pm, as the President's car passed the book depository, a burst of rifle fire fatally wounded him. Less than two hours later, a Dallas policeman had been shot and killed, and, near the shooting, Oswald was arrested with the murder weapon in his hand. He was charged with killing the policeman and, shortly afterwards, assassinating the President. Then, on November 24th, Oswald was shot to death in Dallas police headquarters by night club owner Jack Ruby.

The Warren Commission concluded--rightly I now believe--that Oswald fired all the shots that killed the President. But conspiracies do not necessarily require multiple rifleman to accomplish their purpose. And what the Warren Commission could not absolutely rule out, as two of its members pointed out to me, was the possibility that Oswald had acted at the behest of others. After all, he had advertised his willingness to undertake a high-profile assassination by circulating photographs connecting himself to the shooting of General Walker. Any party who was monitoring his activities in Dallas, New Orleans or Mexico City could have discerned from them that he was a potential assassin awaiting a mission. With his mind set on such violent actions as hijacking a plane, blowing up the FBI office, or killing "any American," not much would be required to prod him to violence. He had sought liaisons in dangerous quarters and someone could have provided him with an inducement. But with Oswald forever silenced by Ruby, and intelligence services capable of expunging embarrassing data about their contacts with a Presidential assassins from their files, it is doubtful that we will ever know who, if anyone, influenced Oswald to act on November 22, 1963.

Epstein knows full well that Oswald did not threaten to blow up the FBI office, and is only saying so because it helps sell his thesis that Oswald had a violent nature, and would kill Kennedy on behalf of others.

Epstein, apparently, has never come to grips with the possibility Oswald was set up, or framed. Perhaps because those involved were his sources...

[Antti Hynonen]

I used this Epstein webite a few years ago to ask him a question related to Mr. DeMohrenschildt. I never got a reply. E.J. Epstein was one of the last persons to talk to DeM before he "killed himself", in fact he met with him just an hour or so prior.

Do you know of any way that I could contact Epstein?

Jim Root

Through his website : www.edwardjayepstein.com click on "Ask Ed (anything)

[Guest Tom Scully]

Epstein knows full well that Oswald did not threaten to blow up the FBI office, and is only saying so because it helps sell his thesis that Oswald had a violent nature, and would kill Kennedy on behalf of others.

Epstein, apparently, has never come to grips with the possibility Oswald was set up, or framed. Perhaps because those involved were his sources...

Pat,

You hit the nail on the head!

Epstein seems to have been the CIA surrogate liason to the news media that Joannides was, on the surface, to the HSCA. One was a young an upcoming "journalist", and the other was a "retired" spook, posing as an honest broker helping the HSCA to find "truth".

Only later did we learn that Joannides was on a secret mission. Why wouldn't we believe by now, that Epstein, was too?

http://books.google.com/books?q=epstein+ev...=1&oi=spell

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK‎ - Page 87

Peter Dale Scott - History - 1996 - 424 pages

Revealing his inside connections, Epstein even tells us the response of his good friend James Angleton's...

he reveals and equally in what he suppresses, Epstein tells us quite a lot ....

What would be the point of directly asking Epstein a question? Would you expect that he would contradict any part of the scripts he was instructed to write?

Edited December 2, 2009 by Tom Scully

[William Kelly]

We'll never know.

BILL KELLY WANTS TO KNOW WHERE ARE ALL THOSE DEBUNKERS WHO CORRECT THE RECORD? DID ANYONE CORRECT THE RECORD HERE, EVEN IF ONLY ABOUT THE ONE LINE THAT "HE BOUGHT THE AMMUNITION," WHICH CAN BE SHOWN TO BE FALSE AND SIGNIFICANT?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ed-epstein/a...e_b_366400.html

Annals of Unsolved Crime - The Oswald Mystery

The endless tangle of questions about bullets, trajectories, wounds, time sequences and inconsistent testimony that has surrounded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and has obsessively fascinated, if not entirely blinded, two generations of self-styled assassination investigators, probably never will be satisfactorily resolved. Each new release of documents from the various bureaucracies involved in the nearly half century old investigation may only deepen the apparent contradictions.

Within this morass of facts. however, there is a central actor, Lee Harvey Oswald. His rifle, which fired the fatal bullet into the president, was found in the sniper's nest at the Texas Book Depository. So was his palm print. He had also bought the ammunition. His cartridge cases were found near the body of a murdered policeman on the route of his flight.

In light of such evidence, the issue that ought to have concerned Americans was not Oswald's technical guilt but whether he was involved with others in the assassination. Oswald was not a "loner" in the conventional sense. Ever since he was handed a pamphlet about the Rosenberg prosecution at the age of 15, he was a joiner, seeking affiliations with groups at home and abroad. When he was only 16, he wrote the Socialist Party, "I am a Marxist and have been studying Socialist Principles for well over five years," and he requested information about joining their "Youth League." He subsequently made membership inquiries to such organizations as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Labor Party, The Gus Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee, The Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Communist Party, USA-- correspondence that brought him under surveillance by the FBI.

0swald also joined the Marine Corps. And after a two-year stint as a radar operator, Oswald sought still another affiliation: in October 1959 he became the first Marine to defect to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, he delivered a letter stating: "I affirm that my allegiance is to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." Not only did he publicly renounce his American citizenship, but he told the U.S. consul that he intended to turn over to the Soviet Union military secrets that he had acquired while serving in the Marines, adding that he had data of "special interest" to the Russians. Since he indeed had exposure to military secrets such as the U-2 spy plane, his defection had serious espionage implications. Oswald thus had not only compromised the secret data he had come in contact with in the Marines, but put himself firmly in the hands of another country. He was now completely dependent on Russia for financial support, legal status and protection.

Before disappearing into the Soviet hinterland for a year, Oswald spelled out his operational creed in a long letter to his brother. From Moscow, he wrote presciently of his willingness to commit murder for a political cause: "I want you to understand what I say now, I do not say lightly, or unknowingly, since I've been in the military .... In the event of war I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the American Government --", and then ominously added for emphasis, "Any American." His willingness to act as an assassin was now known to anyone who read this letter, which included not only his Russian hosts but American intelligence, since his letter was intercepted by the CIA and microfilmed.

Oswald returned from the Soviet Union in June 1962, joined by his Russian wife Marina, and settled in Dallas. He then acquired the means for killing. He purchased a rifle with telescopic sights and a revolver from a mail-order house under a false name. He also lectured a small circle of friends on the need for violent action rather than mere words. His particular focus was General Edwin A. Walker, an extreme conservative, who had been active in Dallas organizing anti-Castro guerrillas. For example, he suggested to a German geologist, Volkmar Schmidt that General Walker should be treated like a "murderer at large." He did not stop at fierce words. For weeks, he methodically stalked Walker's movements, photographing his residence from several angles. He then had his wife photograph him, dressed entirely in black, with his revolver strapped on a holster on his hip, his sniper's rifle in his right hand, and two newspapers, The Worker and The Militant, in his left hand. He made three copies of the photograph--one of which he inscribed, dated "5--IV-63" and sent to a Dallas acquaintance, George De Mohrenschildt (who had also seen his rifle). He then left with his rifle wrapped in a raincoat, telling his wife he was off to "target practice," but his target, General Walker, was out of town that night. Five nights later, Oswald returned to Walker's house, and fired a shot at him that missed his head by inches, demonstrating to those that saw the photograph that he had the willingness to kill.

After the failed assassination, another friend, Ruth Paine, drove Oswald and his family to New Orleans, where he became the organizer for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which opposed the efforts of the Kennedy administration to overthrow Castro. Aside from printing leaflets, staging demonstrations, getting arrested and appearing on local radio talk shows in support of Castro that summer, Oswald attempted to befriend leaders of and infiltrate anti-Castro groups that were organizing sabotage raids against Cuba. By this time, he apparently considered himself a sleeper operative, writing in August 1963 to the central committee of the Communist Party USA, and asking, "Whether in your opinion, I can compete with anti-progressive forces above ground, or whether I should always remain in the background, i.e. underground." During this hot summer, while practicing sighting his rifle in his backyard, according to his wife, he told her about his plan to hijack an airliner to Cuba, saying he might earn a position in Castro's government. Then, on September 9th, in a report that appeared on the front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Castro, who had been the target of a number of assassination attempts by the CIA, warned that if American leaders continued "aiding plans to eliminate Cuban leaders ... they themselves will not be safe."

The implication of this warning was not lost on Oswald. Telling his wife that they might never meet again, he left New Orleans two weeks later, headed for the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. To convince the Cubans of his bona fides-- and seriousness--he had prepared a dossier on himself, which included a 10 page resume, outlining his revolutionary activities, newspaper clippings about his defection to the Soviet Union, documents he had stolen from a printing company engaged in classified map reproduction for the US Army, his correspondence with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee executives, and, as if to demonstrate his lethal capability , the photographs linking him to the Walker shooting.

Oswald applied for a visa at the Cuban Embassy on the morning of September 27, 1963. He said that he wanted to stop in Havana en route to the Soviet Union. On the application, the consular office who interviewed him noted: "The applicant states that he is a member of the American Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Despite such recommendations, Oswald was told that he needed a Soviet visa before the Cuban visa could be issued. He argued over this requisite with the Cuban counsel, Eusebio Azque, in front of witnesses, and reportedly made wild claims about services he might perform for the Cuban cause. During the next five days, he traveled back and forth between the Soviet and Cuban embassies attempting to straighten out the difficulty. When he telephoned from the Cuban embassy to arrange an appointment at the Soviet Embassy with an officer called Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov, he set off alarm bells at the CIA, which had been surreptitiously monitoring the phone line. Kostikov was a KGB officer who had been under close surveillance in Mexico by the FBI. By the time the CIA had identified Oswald, and notified the FBI, he had left Mexico.

When he returned to Dallas, Oswald assumed a different identity--"O.H.Lee"--and, separating himself from his family, he moved to a rooming house. He also forbade his wife from divulging his whereabouts.

On October 18th, Oswald's visa was approved by the Cuban Foreign Ministry despite the fact that he had not officially received a Soviet visa, as required. Apparently unaware of this development, he wrote another letter to the Soviet Embassy, referring to his meeting with Kostikov in Mexico, and adding cryptically: "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business." When FBI counterintelligence intercepted this letter in Washington. it urgently requested its field agent in Dallas to question him.

The FBI agent, James Hosty, unable to locate Oswald, warned his wife she could be sent back to Russia. When his wife told him about the FBI warning he threatened to bomb its Dallas office. By this time, Oswald had a menial $1.50 hour job at the Texas Book Depository, which overlooked the convergence of the three main streets into central Dallas.

On November 22nd, at 12:30 pm, as the President's car passed the book depository, a burst of rifle fire fatally wounded him. Less than two hours later, a Dallas policeman had been shot and killed, and, near the shooting, Oswald was arrested with the murder weapon in his hand. He was charged with killing the policeman and, shortly afterwards, assassinating the President. Then, on November 24th, Oswald was shot to death in Dallas police headquarters by night club owner Jack Ruby.

The Warren Commission concluded--rightly I now believe--that Oswald fired all the shots that killed the President. But conspiracies do not necessarily require multiple rifleman to accomplish their purpose. And what the Warren Commission could not absolutely rule out, as two of its members pointed out to me, was the possibility that Oswald had acted at the behest of others. After all, he had advertised his willingness to undertake a high-profile assassination by circulating photographs connecting himself to the shooting of General Walker. Any party who was monitoring his activities in Dallas, New Orleans or Mexico City could have discerned from them that he was a potential assassin awaiting a mission. With his mind set on such violent actions as hijacking a plane, blowing up the FBI office, or killing "any American," not much would be required to prod him to violence. He had sought liaisons in dangerous quarters and someone could have provided him with an inducement. But with Oswald forever silenced by Ruby, and intelligence services capable of expunging embarrassing data about their contacts with a Presidential assassins from their files, it is doubtful that we will ever know who, if anyone, influenced Oswald to act on November 22, 1963.