More on the Paines

[Greg Doudna]

As one who knew Ruth Paine in the St. Petersburg, Florida Friends Meeting in 2002 and favorably, I will use this thread to make comments on the topic of Ruth Paine.

My bottom line with the JFK assassination is to see the guilty convicted and the innocent acquitted. It does no service in convicting the guilty to go after and lynch the innocent. 

I believe there was a conspiracy (because of more than one shooter; the unusual associations and activities of Oswald; the Mob-orchestrated hit of Oswald; the untimely deaths of witnesses in the aftermath and then in the context of the later HSCA investigation; the CIA-orchestrated attempt to tie Oswald to a false flag Castro attribution as a casus bellus combined with the seemingly-contradictory LBJ/Hoover coverup of investigation of conspiracy beyond Oswald; and that coverup), and that that terrible event involved ruling-elite involvement--i.e. it was not a wildcat operation, or Mob figures deciding on their own to declare war on and bring down on themselves the wrath of the entire US government just to get the Kennedys out of power--even if hardly anyone including in the sectors of ruling elite who benefitted from the assassination, knew the specifics. In that sense, practically everyone had deniability. As Dylan wrote, "The day they blew out the brains of the king/ Thousands were watching/ No one saw a thing/ It happened so quickly/ So quick by surprise/ Right there in front of everyone's eyes". 

Yet though I am certain there was a conspiracy, I believe Ruth Paine, and Michael Paine, were innocent of any culpability in the assassination, and that Ruth Paine did not speak untruthfully before, during, or in the aftermath. And to get out front on one other matter (although distinct), I also am certain that Clay Shaw had nothing to do with the assassination, and that Garrison went after and sought to judicially lynch an innocent person there (innocent of complicity or involvement in the assassination). But back to the Paines.

It seems almost bedrock belief in much discussion that Ruth and Michael Paine were criminally sinister figures. For purposes of clarification there are three classes of nature of the charges in this perception of the Paines:

Class #1: witting and proactive involvement in conspiracy to assassinate JFK.

Class #2: witting operative involved with framing Oswald as the assassin, e.g. manufacture or witting conveyance of fabricated evidence.

Class #3a: professional informant for an intelligence agency, covert and compensated.

Class #3b: unpaid provider of information, considered by an intelligence agency in an asset relationship, for informational purposes to keep tabs on and track Oswald and Marina.

There could be further subvariants, but for purposes of discussion this may be a working taxonomy. A further distinction needs to be made between Ruth and Michael Paine. My focus is on Ruth Paine whom I knew, liked, and respected as a fellow Friend. I never met Michael Paine, but as a working assumption I see no reason to see Michael Paine's status as significantly different in principle from whatever assessment is actually correct for Ruth. I am uninterested in allegations that Michael Paine may have had an unappealing personality, if he did. That is of no relevance here. 

I see absolutely no hard evidence of any kind for #1 or #2 and am certain neither of those is correct. A much-circulated essay asserting this by Vincent Salandria is in my opinion hallucinatory, with forceful impassioned conclusions asserted and no evidence establishing any conclusion related to #1 or #2 [https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/FalseMystery/ThePainesRoleInHistory.html].) I am not open to or interested in discussion of suspicions on either #1 or #2 in the absence of provision of actual hard evidence of any specific point. If there were hard evidence at any one point, I would entertain argument from suspicion on others. But in the absence of hard evidence for any specific point establishing #1 or #2, I have no interest or time for argument from suspicion concerning #1 or #2 at all.

My discussion from this point forward (in the absence of specific hard evidence shown relevant to #1 or #2) will therefore address only and entirely matters related to #3a and #3b.

I will take up some matters point by point in following posts, starting with this, a CIA document, declassified in 1996, which I discovered only several days ago following an exchange with James DiEugenio, a document that does not appear in George Michael Evica's 2006 book A Certain Arrogance nor do I see it discussed elsewhere to my knowledge: "The Intelligence Hand in East-West Exchange Visits", https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol2no3/html/v02i3a09p_0001.htm. 

In 1955, in a plan to get access to intelligence inside the Soviet Union, the CIA and State Department formed a plan, approved by the President, to launch organized Soviet-US exchanges with that specific objective (in which groups from each country would be hosted by and visit the other country). As this and other documents make crystal clear, this was all about getting Americans physically into previously inaccessible areas of the Soviet Union for intelligence objectives. That is what, from the CIA's perspective who proposed and started this program, it was all about. The publicly stated rationale--and for most of the participants in this program their actual reasons--of breaking down barriers, encouraging better understanding, world peace, etc and etc (or as CIA might internally put it among themselves, blah blah blah), was, from CIA's point of view entirely beside the point. For the CIA, and the reason the President approved this program which would be done through the State Department, it was all about getting on-the-ground intelligence access physically inside the Soviet Union.  

The key strategy used by CIA to accomplish this objective was what was called a policy of "reciprocity". Soviet groups would be invited and generously hosted in the U.S. Then the State Department would negotiate, with their Soviet counterparts, "reciprocity" in which US groups would visit the Soviet Union.

In that same year in which this State Department program was approved by the President and begun, 1955, at a conference of North American Young Friends gathered at Quaker Haven, Indiana, an initiative was begun by Friends (Quakers) to initiate exchange visits and contacts with youth groups in the Soviet Union, for the purpose of lessening East-West tensions. This North American Young Friends conference adopted the following resolution, below. As is the manner of Friends, any corporate action of Friends is decided not by voting or authority of officeholders, but is proposed, considered in a "meeting for worship in which business is conducted" (meeting for worship conducted on the basis of silence in which anyone can rise to speak, with spaces of silence between speakings), and approved by, and only if there is, consensus. (The way this works is a "clerk" of the Friends Meeting--a person generally approved for that function along with other Friends' committee assignments annually [also at a business meeting by consensus]--does not himself or herself speak and advocate or influence the direction of the sense of the meeting, but is tasked to compose and frame accurately in words a statement expressing the "sense of the meeting" that has emerged on a certain topic or decision--that is then read, and if voices in the meeting approve it and there is no objection, the clerk then records that in the written minutes as "the sense of the meeting" and the decision is done.) 

"We are united in believing that if we are to express our Christian love most fully, we have no alternative but to seek out every possible way for expressing such love to the youth of Russia and of other countries where the need for understanding is greatest."

At that 1955 conference an East-West Contacts Committee was organized for that purpose--to bring exchange visits into being in an organized form. Three Young Friends are named in FBI interview documents as constituting the East-West Contacts Committee: Wilmer Stratton, Paul Lacey, and Ruth Paine, then known by her maiden name as Ruth Hyde (she married Michael in 1957). Each of these, young at the time (early 20s), went on to have careers of honorable standing among the Friends. Ruth was active with this at the outset and was the organizer of a pen pal program between citizens of the US and the Soviet Union writing each other, as part of the larger scope of this Friends initiative. The purpose of the Friends program started in 1955 was explicitly understood to be the objective of organized exchanges of visits between young persons of the two countries, which over the next several years came to fruition. According to Stratton, chair of the East-West Contacts Committee, there was no paid staff. They corresponded with a Soviet youth organization called the Committee of Soviet Youth Organization.

Other documents relevant to this: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v24/d111, and especially this, NSC 5607: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v24/d104. 

And so this raises the question: how did this coalescence of CIA objectives and a Young Friends of North America initiative undertaken by members of a religious group work exactly? Were the Friends of the East-West Contacts Committee knowledgeable of the CIA objectives and hand behind this State Department sponsored program with which the East-West Contacts Committee of the Young Friends was involved in implementing? What is the moral verdict on participation in a world peace initiative that major powers on both sides are using for their own strategic objectives? Where do lines get drawn, and to what extent does cooperation with a State Department sponsoring international exchanges become morally objectionable? 

OK that is a start. To spell out my own position clearly: I do not see specific evidence that Ruth Paine (or Michael Paine) had an informant role in the 1962-1963 period with respect to her dealings with Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald. If there was I want it to come to light. If not I want that to be known too. In any case I want to see Ruth's name cleared from all unjustified smearing, in which innocent people are pilloried on the basis of suspicion alone. I recognize that the case of Oswald and Marina is unusual, even if there had been no assassination. I just assume US intelligence was monitoring Lee and Marina in the background, in terms of surveillance, more than the occasional interview visits from the FBI. In this context I do not fault scrutiny cast on the significant persons in Oswald's and Marina's circles, and recognize the reasonable grounds for such questions.

I have not been in contact with Ruth either directly or indirectly via intermediaries since 2003, though in the small world of Friends, I know people who know Ruth. Based on what I know of Ruth Paine from the past personally, if I ever were to renew contact with her directly, I will say privately to her that which I say now publicly: if she tells me, as a Friend to a Friend, something specific is true or is not true, I will believe her. I believe she has been truthful in her testimony related to the JFK assassination, and I believe her walk as a Friend has been real.

The following is from a newsletter of Jan 2004 circulated to family and friends written by my wife, Anne Caroline, shortly after my return with her from Denmark where I had been on a research fellowship for one year during which we were married. The writing reflects English as a second language for her. In the middle of the left column she tells of meeting Ruth Paine. 

Edited July 13, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[James DiEugenio]

Greg:

Everything I have written about the Paines is based in fact.  No lynching.

I would argue that it was they who lynched  Oswald.

[Greg Doudna]

I know you write the way you see it, you're honest in what you write in that way. But Ruth would not have been party to framing an innocent person. If she had, or had specific knowledge of such, I am certain she would have been one of the early untimely deaths. Ruth may or may not have reported information on Marina and Lee in some ongoing capacity, I don't know, but not an operative, not a perjurer, not a criminal conspirer, not the cause of the assassination nor witting to any fabrication of material evidence. 

Something went horribly wrong with LHO, but Ruth had zero witting role in it, whatever it was. In reading Nechiporenko's book today and his account of the Oswald Saturday morning visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City--if it was as he says it was--according to Nechiporenko Oswald expressed real fear of going back to the US. Oswald pleaded, he sobbed, begging the Soviet officials to let him into either Cuba or to return to the USSR. He said he was in trouble back in the US and that if he returned it would "end in disaster" for him. The Soviet officials, who knew of Oswald's history in the USSR, stonewalled him, adhering to rules, not about to let him in; Nechiporenko says they wanted nothing to do with him. Nechiporenko says Oswald never threatened to kill Kennedy or anything of the kind. However according to Nechiporenko there was this foreboding of possible violence in the future, seen in retrospect: apart from the incident of Oswald showing them his pistol (quickly taken from him and the bullets removed), after they got him calmed down, according to Nechiporenko Oswald said concerning unspecified intelligence-agency persecution he was experiencing in the U.S., that "he would defend himself", implying maybe that he would use that pistol, though the statement was ambiguous at the time. If that account is true--who knows--one possibility is it was all an act, but could another possibility be that it was not an act and it actually was an Oswald mixed up in something in the US which he sought with every means he could to escape? But if so what? 

But that wasn't Ruth Paine's doing.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". To say Ruth Paine, with no evidence of any history as an operative, no record of criminal behavior, no evidence of perjury, a lifetime of living as a Quaker, was a witting party to one of the most illegal and reprehensible acts imaginable, the framing of an innocent person, with Michael Paine as witting accomplice and both of them keep the secret ... and both live another fifty years and still neither reveal it ... without any evidence stronger than unproven allegation and suspicion ... seems very far-fetched ... that is my perception. It is an extraordinary charge to say that of Ruth Paine, and it would require extraordinary evidence, which is to say actual hard evidence, for me to believe such a thing is even possible. That is how I see it and I hope you will respect that.  

Edited July 14, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[Joseph McBride]

Greg, how does this comment about Ruth Paine from a prominent Quaker author square with what you call Paine's "lifetime of living as a Quaker?" This is from

my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE:  A highly sanitized July 1964 profile of Ruth Paine in Redbook magazine, “Prelude to Tragedy: The woman who sheltered Lee Oswald’s family tells her story,” helped establish the pattern of glowing media praise for this intelligence operative. It was written by Jessamyn West, the Quaker author of "The Friendly Persuasion" and a second cousin of fellow Quaker Richard M. Nixon. The article paints Ruth Paine as a selfless religious do-gooder, praising her “acts of kindness, of unselfishness, of brotherly concern” for the Oswald family. West does express shock over Paine admitting in a rare moment of candor, “I was glad” when Oswald was killed; West chides her by saying, “There is nothing remotely saintly or even Quakerish about being glad that one man has murdered another man.” Redbook at the time was owned by the McCall Corporation, whose president was Marvin Pierce. He was the father of Barbara Pierce Bush, the wife of the already CIA-connected George H. W. Bush, whose involvement in the assassination coverup I exposed in two 1988 articles for The Nation (see Chapter 10).

Edited July 14, 2020 by Joseph McBride

[Greg Doudna]

Joseph McBride--it is clear that Ruth Paine, like most of America within the first hours, believed that Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy, and that Ruth Paine was angry with Oswald about that, in that belief. I agree with Jessamyn West in rebuking Ruth for that statement. It was not right or Quakerly. 

I have read that outside the Dallas police station the Sunday morning when Ruby killed Oswald, people cheered hearing the news. I struggled with my own version of this last week when hearing the news that Brazilian president Bolsanaro, whose Trump-like mockery of the use of face masks and public health warnings has caused Brazil to soar to #2 in COVID-19 deaths on a trajectory to overtake the US to be #1, had himself been diagnosed with COVID-19. I started to say, "It couldn't happen to a nicer g--", then held it. Most Friends speak of people who have behaved badly in terms of "holding them in the Light". A lifetime of "living as a Quaker" does not mean never a misstep. 

Edited July 14, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[Joe Bauer]

Greg D.

Did Ruth Paine ever actually personally say to you or anyone else ( as you propose ) that her vengeful non-Quaker eye-for-an-eye "glad" feelings statement, when hearing of Oswald's execution, was impulsively inspired simply because of her immediate emotion driven anger over JFK's death and only because of that reason? 

You offer this explanation for Ruth P. stating this "glad" statement in your post above.

Or are you speculating such?

I'm sure RP knew her interviewer ( a fellow Quaker) was shocked when she mentioned she was glad when she heard Oswald was shot and killed. Did Ruth immediately catch herself and pull back on her brutal vengeance comment in the interview?

Was Ruth P. ever later asked in her group talk appearances about this shockingly non-quakerish vengeance proclamation that you say was similarly shared by the cheering lynch mob crowd outside the DPD building that day?    They shot the bastard...YAHOO!

Asked whether she actually said this, and why? And if she did, whether she later regretted saying this?

If Ruth Paine ever publicly expressed regret over her reported, non-Quaker principles stated "glad" feelings upon hearing of Oswald's murder ( which also denied him a fair trial which she stated he deserved ) I could understand you giving her a "caught up in the JFK killing rage moment" pass on such a lynch mob mentality sentiment.

But if she didn't ... ?

So, again, did RP ever personally express to you or anyone else you know her glad feeling statement was made simply because she got caught up in the Oswald rage moment? And that she wasn't glad about his brutal demise later on?

In that video of Gerry Spence cross examining Ruth Paine in the link I posted, she sure didn't sound any less Oswald hating 23 years after the JFK event. No Christian minded softening of her "glad he was dead" hard take on him imo.

In fact she was still fuming that Oswald had the gall to type his lie filled letter on "her" typewriter! She still couldn't let go of her Oswald anger even after 23 years.

Edited July 15, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Greg Doudna]

Joe Bauer-- yes that was my speculation. I have talked with Ruth about the assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald, not at length. I never heard her say anything like that.

One of the problems with reading words quoted from someone in a magazine or newspaper article is it is sometimes hard to know context or sense. I am assuming the words themselves are probably accurate since I imagine a high-profile national story would involve taping of the interview, rather than Jessamyn West writing from memory or written notes only. In this case, it matters very much whether Ruth said or meant to Jessamyn West, "I was glad [at the time] Oswald was shot" or whether she meant "I am glad [now] that Oswald was shot [then]".

Your question is a good one, and I am unable to answer it. 

Certainly the killing of Oswald was an immeasurable loss, not only for Oswald but for America. Not only did Oswald not get due process and a fair trial, but what he knew and what he could have told will never be known. 

I would be surprised if Ruth held as a serious continuing view over time a belief that it was good or best that Oswald had been killed. If there were a second or third quotation from some later point in time after this one in 1964, that would be a different matter, but in the absence of evidence that that was a continuing view, I would not assume that that is her view today.  

[Joe Bauer]

If you watch the Gerry Spence cross examination of Ruth in that 1986 mock "Trial Of Lee Harvey Oswald" production for British TV, you will clearly see that one of Spence's Oswald defending tactics is to bring out of RP her extreme personal hostility toward Lee Oswald.

Not just in the later months of 1963 but what she still harbored 23 years later.

It's amazing how successful he was in doing so. 

You can easily see her facial expression disgust and loathing of Oswald in her describing him so negatively with hardly any compassionate balancing of this one sided view.  She described him being a poor provider, deluded with his own self-importance, unpleasant to be around, bristling with anger, not demonstratively appreciative among another half dozen awful disparaging traits.

Spence had to interject in defense of Oswald that one could view Oswald in a less disparaging and damning light if they chose to try to understand Oswald more as a person going through a painful separation and stress on his marriage, just as Ruth Paine was going through in her and her husband's painful separation.

Spence asked RP if she could understand Lee in this way and she said grudgingly ... I suppose so.

Ruth's extreme personal hostility toward Lee Oswald must be considered in contemplating her possible motivations in her testimony against Oswald that biasly added to his incriminations as the killer of JFK imo.

Edited July 15, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Greg Doudna]

Joe Bauer, I watched the clip of Ruth Paine and the cross-examination by Gerry Spence in the "Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald". She does not remember Oswald well, that is true. She was asked and answered that she didn't like him, although her behavior in the two months before the assassination was that she nevertheless made Oswald welcome in her home when he visited.  

Yes, a witness's view toward a person needs to be considered in assessing their testimony. I do not assess that Ruth Paine's personal feelings impeaches her credibility or truthfulness on matters of fact, items in the garage, names and dates and knowledge of events, etc. But everybody assesses witness credibility for themselves. 

Of course Gerry Spence, a formidable defense attorney, was doing his job. But watching that my heart was with Ruth, as Spence attempted to imply Ruth's helping Oswald get the job in the Texas School Book Depository was more than "coincidence", and other things. The problem with propinquity as basis for accusation is how does a person so accused prove their innocence.

~ ~ ~

Change of subject, but above when I wrote about the Nechiporenko book, a further comment: in the end that story of Oswald in the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City is the story that that Soviet official, KGB to the hilt, has chosen to present to the public. There is no way at least that will ever be accessible to us to verify or cross-check that account, even if the book does read more or less on the level of a Kissinger memoirs, probably more or less equivalent in credibility. 

Incidentally, Nechiporenko writes that he and fellow Soviet officials just considered it obvious, as a plain matter of fact, that Oswald's leaving that handwritten letter to the Soviet Embassy out on Ruth Paine's desk was because he intended for Ruth Paine to see it.

I think both Oswald and Marina not only assumed they would be surveilled, but that they each, both Lee and Marina, may have suspected the Paines were part of such surveillance. 

Here is an interview of Ruth Paine from Nov. 19, 2019 (with thanks to Kirk Gallaway for bringing this to my attention). One detail I noticed was Ruth's description of Marina as always a bit reserved toward Ruth, never fully trusting. Separately, I have read that when the Secret Service came to get the Oswald women away from their hotel with the Life magazine people to drive them into seclusion Sun eve Nov 24, Marina later told that she thought in that moment that this was like in the Soviet Union when government cars and agents take people away. When that did not happen she was relieved, and opened up and talked a little more than before.  

 

Edited July 15, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[Joe Bauer]

I am viewing the interview you linked. The Texas School Book Depository Museum "Living History" one.

RP recounted something that really stopped me.

It may be nothing but it sounded remarkably strange. Maybe Joseph McBride can enlighten us about this?

Ruth Paine sent Marina a childcare book in the Russian language that she thought Marina could use after she was sequestered by the Secret Service in the weeks right after 11,22,1963. She had also been sending Marina diapers and sympathetic letters and monies strangers had sent to her address in Irving.

Two days later a Secret Service agent and Russian interpreter came knocking on Ruth's door. They asked RP about a hand written note found in the childcare book Ruth had just sent to Marina.

I'm not specifically sure, but it sounded like the note/letter was supposedly written by Lee Oswald to Marina and it's contents had to do with the General Walker shooting with some implication of Lee's involvement in this?

What? 

This Oswald note to Marina written in Russian "just happened" to be in the book RP sent Marina? And Ruth "just happened" to miss seeing this in the book while she was wrapping it up and including it as part of her care package to Marina?

Please tell me this Walker shooting note incident turned into a nothing burger?

Otherwise, what in the world was that about?

 

Edited July 15, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Greg Doudna]

Hi Joe, let me comment on that. The only detail that caught me too is the part about not noticing the note in the book when it was sent to Marina. But then I think: I get used books from Amazon all the time with someone's old newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, hidden in the pages used as bookmarks or whatever, that somehow got through the previous owners' and booksellers intact. So it is not certain Ruth would have noticed it, yet if she had checked she would, so this is a little ambiguous to me. Let us suppose in light of the heightened circumstances that she did check through carefully whatever she was sending, and noticed it, what then? Well, its Marina's property, it belongs to Marina, its in Marina's book, leave it there and send it on its way to Marina. If she had noticed it, it is possible a good citizen in such circumstances might mention to the Irving police who did the pickup and conveyance, tip them off, "there's something in here written in Russian someone might want to take a look at"--who knows. Ruth did act surprised when she was later shown the note so I am not sure that happened. In any case the Irving police conveyed it to the Secret Service who for sure looked through that book and intercepted the note, before giving the book to Marina.

But look at the facts. The note does not say anything about a Walker shooting, or about committing any crime at all. It is a list of things for Marina in case Oswald is unable to return home for some reason, with the reason not specified in the note. That is what would be learned if there were only that note and no other information. Is this list for Marina, Oswald taking precautions in case he is arrested or detained? Or an unexpected trip away for a certain period of time? Or in case of accident or death? But under the "arrested" theory (from reading the note alone), there is nothing there that says arrested for what. For handing out FPCC flyers? For what? 

It was Marina who gave that note its explanation and meaning, told when it happened: Marina told the story of the Walker shooting, how Lee had left her that note, and how she had hidden it. She had put it in that book, her cookbook, specifically in order to preserve and hide it. 

The Walker shooting is a strange story, with a first question, odd as it may sound, being to determine if it was even attempted murder. (The police, according to some accounts, were skeptical.) But never mind that, the important point here is it is not Ruth, but Marina, who told of Lee's involvement with that. And the note is genuine--its Oswald's handwriting, its not forged. Nothing is forged here. Marina had that note, Marina hid it, Marina belatedly came forth with what it meant and Lee and the Walker shooting.

Yet I read, excuse me, really crazy, completely nuts in my opinion, stories about Ruth being somehow culpable in framing Oswald as if she was party to fabrication or forgery of that note! As if she was party to fabrication of evidence in a criminal case. Without the slightest evidence that Ruth Paine fabricated any evidence in her entire life. The charge is absolutely baseless. Its currency is entirely based on some (not all) assassination conspiracy researchers forming suspicions, then citing those suspicions as if that is evidence. 

How could someone in Ruth's position ever prove her innocence in this, to those who assume the worst? What should she have done? Not returned Marina's Russian cookbook that belonged to Marina? Taken the note out of it and turned it in to the FBI instead? Destroyed the note? Seriously, what should she have done differently with that cookbook and note?

How is this different in principle from medieval witchhunt logic? 

Edited July 15, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[James DiEugenio]

Greg left two  things out:

The Secret Service thought Ruth wrote the note.  Neither Marina nor Lee's fingerprints were on it.

When they asked her about this, she turned over things that were supposed to prove Oswald was In Mexico.  Because not only did Marina say nothing that first week about the Walker shooting, she also denied that Oswald said anything about being in Mexico.

Its pretty clear that Greg really liked Ruth when he met her.

[Greg Doudna]

Actually James, the detail about the Secret Service questioning her thinking she was passing messages to Marina goes a long way toward arguing that Ruth had not known and tipped off Secret Service/FBI about that note, i.e. it is in keeping with her own behavior of being surprised by it. Yes they first suspected the note of being hers, which it was not (from the handwriting). What does that have to do with anything? If police wrongly suspect someone, make inquiries, discover that it is not the case, is the very fact of the original police suspicion evidence they were guilty anyway? 

On turning over things of Oswald in her garage that linked Oswald to Mexico, you have no evidence those were fabrications or forgeries, or that Ruth was party to some plot to create material evidence in her garage to show he took a trip to Mexico City. That is just making up a narrative and using that narrative to prove itself. 

No I did not have any unusual liking for Ruth when I met her beyond being part of a close-knit Friends Meeting. There was nothing romantic, nor would I call myself a close friend. I was never in her house. I knew her in the Meeting and at Friends activities. 

But here is something strange which I do not know if you fully understand. From my point of view, it is not a matter of if I like Ruth. It is a matter of evidence and justice and of wrongful conviction, of someone who by sheer accident of circumstances, I happened to know eighteen years ago. 

Edited July 15, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[James DiEugenio]

Greg,

I never said there was anything romantic, or you were close friends. I have no idea if you were ever in her home.  I just said that to me it seems as if you liked her. 

The point about Mexico is this:  the FBI and Secret Service were trying to square the circle about Oswald in MC. The CIA said he was there.  The SS did everything they could the first week to try and get Marina to say that LHO said something about it to her.  She would not.  In fact, she was even mocking them about this.  When they were all watching TV and the matter came on the air, she would look at them and say, no, he  never told me a thing about it.

Now LHO denied he was there.  He never told Marina anything about being there.  As David Josephs has shown, the FBI could not find any genuine evidence that Oswald was there. In fact, Hoover famously wrote in marginalia that he did not trust the CIA anymore because they had pulled a fast one on him by saying Oswald had been there.  

But somehow, some way, in the face of all this--Ruth comes up with things that LHO brought back from Mexico. Just like she had come up with a note that she was not aware of that became the Walker note.  When, in fact, the Dallas Police, in seven months, has never even thought Oswald was a suspect in that case.

Then you say that there is no evidence that this was a fabrication or that there was a case that she was a conduit for needed evidence. And then you say I am making up a narrative? I am not  making up anything, everything I described happened. Just as I have written about it. Its not me who asked the Paines 6000 questions, and only asked Boswell about 20.  That was the Warren Commission. Why do you think that was?  

It was Ruth Paine who began to turn around the narrative on Oswald--and began to now put the pressure on Marina. Eventually Marina gave in, and Ruth and Mike became key witnesses against Oswald.  Their garage became the treasure trove and their words assassinated his character. Along with the Baron and Thornley.

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

I thought I heard Ruth Paine mention the book she sent Marina was one about "pinworms" and other childcare advice?