Mark Knight

Paul, my concern is that you don't seem to understand that, without some sort of legal authority to do so, the FBI can't just jump in on what is a state or local investigation...and that INCLUDED, in 1963, the murder of the President. Sure, there might be a "moral" question involved; but without LEGAL justification to get involved, even the murder of the President was simply a local crime. As I understand it, Hosty and the Dallas office of the FBI didn't get involved until the arrest of Lee Oswald. And, LEGALLY, that was as it should be. Now, you can preach all day about who should've done what, morally. But our country is one based upon the rule of LAW, and not necessarily what is morally correct [case in point: slavery]. What Walker did at Oxford, Mississippi--inciting a riot--was not ONLY immoral, but it was against the law. He wasn't arrested and placed in a mental institution because what he did was immoral; that happened because what he did was a violation of the law. [i understand how a Mississippi jury acquitted him, but that was a blatant miscarriage of justice.] Likewise, until a federal law was broken [or suspected to have been broken], the FBI had no legal authority under which to insert itself in the JFK murder investigation, with the sole exception of offering the use of its crime labs for the examination of evidence...and that offer was subject to acceptance of it by the DPD. It's really not a difficult concept to understand.

As for as James Hosty not following up on Oswald, your suspicion, Mark, does not add up to a conclusion; it is just as likely that James Hosty was simply lazy and incompetent. It's not uncommon. --Paul Trejo Paul, apparently you don't understand how the police hierarchy works in America. The FBI does NOT concern itself with the enforcement of state and local laws. The concern of the FBI is the enforcement of federal law, and federal law alone. THEY HAVE NO AUTHORITY to investigate state or local violations. So perhaps the SINGLE most important reason that FBI AGENT Hosty didn't follow up on the allegations of Lee Oswald beating his wife is: "It's not MY job." On humanitarian grounds, he might have had reason to report what he had discovered on the subject to local authorities. But that was not a LEGAL obligation, nor was it a requirement of his job. Generally, the FBI only gets involved in an investigation when there is a question as to whether FEDERAL law may have been broken...because that is the ONLY area under which the FBI has the AUTHORITY to act. In 1963, spouse abuse was not considered to have civil rights implications. There were no federal weapons violations involved. There was no interstate flight involved, as there was no attempt to prosecute Oswald by local authorities. Bottom line: Hosty and the FBI had NO JURISDICTION in domestic disputes, as there was NO APPLICABLE FEDERAL STATUTE involved. And therefore, any "police reports" of spouse abuse [or "wife beating, the term you seem to favor] made to the FBI were, for all intents and purposes, useless heresay. So your characterization of Hosty as "lazy and incompetent"--while that MAY or MAY NOT be true--has no basis in fact with regards to Lee Oswald allegedly beating his wife. It simply WASN'T HOSTY'S JOB to follow up. I would hope by now that you understand that. Mark, that's easy enough to understand. My point was targeted to one clause in your statement, that the FBI (Hosty) did not follow up on tracking Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas because "killing the President...wasn't a federal crime in 1963..." Now, I know you'll say that is a FACT, but it is a bizarre fact from the viewpoint of morality, because it suggests (as anyone can plainly see) that if the President of the USA is killed, the FBI need not take any interest in that action at all.. Most bizarre. Surely you can see the strangeness of your sentence when confronted with common sense, Mark. Now, John Newman wrote a well-known book, OSWALD AND THE CIA (1995) in which he lambasts James Hosty of the FBI for being lazy and incompetent insofar as Hosty was so slow in tracking the frequent address changes of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1962-1963. Now, I do agree that Hosty showed no interest in the "wife-beating" claims of Oswald's landlord -- and I can easily attribute that to an FBI attitude of, "that's matter for the local police." That's easy to understand. But the notion that Hosty would regard the killing of JFK to be a matter of the same magnitude as a local wife-beating complaint -- well, that's beyond common sense. Best regards, --Paul Trejo . Are you actually that illiterate on the subject of what the federal law was? On August 28, 1965, Public Law 89-141 was passed which put 18 USC Chapter 84 Section 1751 into place. PRIOR to the passage of PL 89-141, there was NO statute on the books which made the killing of the President of the United States a federal crime. And, unless a federal law was broken, the FBI had NO JURISDICTION IN THE CASE. FBI involvement in the case, post-assassination anyway, began when the FBI offered the use of their labs to examine the evidence in the case...and that offer was accepted by Dallas Police Department Chief Jesse Curry. Prior to that moment, despite the actions of the Secret Service agents at Parkland Hospital, despite what Hosty and other FBI agents may or may not have done...the FBI had NO JURISDICTION, as NO FEDERAL LAW HAD BEEN BROKEN. That was the reason PL 89-141 was passed in the first place: to GIVE that jurisdiction to the FBI by MAKING the killing of the President a federal crime. Prior to that, the murder of ANY President was ONLY a violation of the STATE law in whichever state the crime was committed. Sure, the FBI truly WANTED to investigate the assassination. But prior to being INVITED to help by Chief Curry, after his acceptance of the offer of the use of FBI lab facilities and personnel, the FBI's hands were tied...by law. And like you, once the American public learned that the killing of the President wasn't a federal crime, they, too, thought it was absurd and bizarre. Which is WHY PL 89-141 was passed. Have I made that clear enough yet? If not, try this reference: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/granule/USCODE-2011-title18/USCODE-2011-title18-partI-chap84-sec1751/content-detail.html In fact, it was BECAUSE no federal law was broken that the Warren Commission was formed. Check out the transcripts of the tapes of the LBJ phone conversations; the Warren Commission came to be primarily to circumvent Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr's investigation, the ONLY investigation with any legal standing at the time prior to the creation of the Warren Commission. And the creation of the Warren Commission is what gave the FBI a mandate to investigate the assassination, outside of assisting the DPD investigation...which was only by invitation, and not by the weight of any law. An appeal to "Common Sense" is an argument/device used by David Von Pein when the FACTS are not on his side. Surely you can do better than that, Paul.

As for as James Hosty not following up on Oswald, your suspicion, Mark, does not add up to a conclusion; it is just as likely that James Hosty was simply lazy and incompetent. It's not uncommon. --Paul Trejo Paul, apparently you don't understand how the police hierarchy works in America. The FBI does NOT concern itself with the enforcement of state and local laws. The concern of the FBI is the enforcement of federal law, and federal law alone. THEY HAVE NO AUTHORITY to investigate state or local violations. So perhaps the SINGLE most important reason that FBI AGENT Hosty didn't follow up on the allegations of Lee Oswald beating his wife is: "It's not MY job." On humanitarian grounds, he might have had reason to report what he had discovered on the subject to local authorities. But that was not a LEGAL obligation, nor was it a requirement of his job. Generally, the FBI only gets involved in an investigation when there is a question as to whether FEDERAL law may have been broken...because that is the ONLY area under which the FBI has the AUTHORITY to act. In 1963, spouse abuse was not considered to have civil rights implications. There were no federal weapons violations involved. There was no interstate flight involved, as there was no attempt to prosecute Oswald by local authorities. Bottom line: Hosty and the FBI had NO JURISDICTION in domestic disputes, as there was NO APPLICABLE FEDERAL STATUTE involved. And therefore, any "police reports" of spouse abuse [or "wife beating, the term you seem to favor] made to the FBI were, for all intents and purposes, useless heresay. So your characterization of Hosty as "lazy and incompetent"--while that MAY or MAY NOT be true--has no basis in fact with regards to Lee Oswald allegedly beating his wife. It simply WASN'T HOSTY'S JOB to follow up. I would hope by now that you understand that.

The U.S. Army doesn't have SEALs....the NAVY does. If you're going to use quotation marks, make sure your quotes are accurate. I don't care if it IS your best recollection, to not know that the Army has Special Forces and Green Berets, while the SEALs belong to the Navy, demonstrates your lack of commitment to accuracy. My college training was in journalism. Back then, when accuracy in reporting was the standard, if we didn't know something, we looked it up. And you have the entire vast World-Wide Web at your disposal, something we didn't have in 1974. I spend a lot of time on the Internet. Even though I'm not in journalism, I still research my claims, to be able to back them up. I probably spend more time doing research than actually writing anything. Why do I do this? Because being wrong hurts my credibility. And if I'm wrong over and over and over again, I suddenly have NO credibility. Ever hear the phrase, "Mind the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves"?? Facts work the same way. Keep ALL the little things straight, and the big things will "magically" be accurate as well. I'm beginning to see a pattern here. NO neighbor phoned the police to report Lee Oswald for beating his wife. And when A "police agency" was informed that Lee Oswald "probably" was a wife beater, it turns out that Hosty and the FBI didn't follow up...because they had no reason to follow up. WHY? Because, just like killing the President, beating your spouse wasn't a federal crime in 1963 either. So why are you so concerned at making sure you paint Lee Oswald as a wife beater? You've already said that has no bearing on whether he shot the President or not. So I'm STILL wondering why it would have any bearing on whether he shot at Walker or not. Whether he did shoot at Walker or not, it doesn't matter if he was a wife beater or not. And whether he did beat his wife or not, it doesn't affect whether he shot at Walker or not. I think you're clinging to a connection that [a] isn't there, and doesn't matter even if it did exist. Wife beaters are not necessarily folks who attempt to murder others [i.e, Walker or JFK]...and folks who attempt to murder others are not necessarily wife beaters. I think only God knows whether ANY of Marina's testimony is true...and He hasn't clued me in on the truth of her testimony up to now.

I had to go to a photo site to reduce these to a size this site would accept...but I then had to download them back to my computer to upload 'em here.. I have my original scans that I can email to anyone who might be interested. PM me your email, and they're yours; hopefully, you'll have better success uploading them here than I did.

In the early part of last week, I received an envelope and a letter from Tom Purvis. Tom has published some information on the JFK assassination and the Warren Commission "investigation" in his local newspaper. Tom sent me a reduced-size version of a two-page newspaper article, and asked me to scan and post the information on this forum. Due to limitations of my scanner, I had to scan 1/2 page of Tom's information at a time. THEN, to get this site to accept the scans, I had to FURTHER reduce them in size. So if any information has been lost in the process, I apologize in advance. [if someone on the Forum has the ability to post the full pages, I would appreciate any assistance they might offer...I'm not a total Luddite, but my computer skills ARE somewhat primitive.] Here is my somewhat feeble attempt at posting the information that Tom Purvis sent me:

You folks still haven't figured out Lamson? He's not going to give you any answers. He's only here to tell you what fools you are, and hope you'll respond over and over and over again...which you have. I'm not going to call him any names here, but elsewhere on the internet, that's what's known as a "xxxxx". Apparently here, that's what's called a "researcher" by many, but I'm not among those who see Lamson's posts as containing any positive contributions. And Fetzer and diEugenio keep falling for Lamson's bait again and again and again.

So you don't think this thread being discussed on another forum in large part by current and former members of this forum is germane here? No...I do NOT think that a "tempest-in-a-teapot" drama on another forum deserves to be discussed on the JFK forum over here. Now, if this was a forum for the discussion of drama queens and the drama they seem to attract, I might be persuaded to change my mind. But this is a forum for the discussion of the JFK assassination. The whiny elementary-school playground wars should NOT have a place here...especially when the playground war didn't originate here. Recess time, Len...take your juice box and your teddy bear, and take the juvenile drama back where you found it.

Why must you drag a crapstorm--or a potential crapstorm--from one forum to another? Are you not getting enough attention here? If I really cared what went on over there, I'd be there on a regular basis. And I'd wager that goes for the rest of the folks here. If you wish to sling manure at each other--as you apparently do--why not confine it to that other forum, and leave this one out of it? It's not unusual for monkeys to sling feces; but I for one would rather you kept your beef with THEIR forum confined to THEIR forum.

Let's consider this: Zapruder shows the JFK head shot at Z313...and Connally says he heard the shot AFTER Z322. The Z-film allegedly ran at 18.6 frames per second. The difference between Z313 and Z322 is about half a second. IS IT POSSIBLE that the "bang" from firing the bullet that struck JFK wasn't actually HEARD by Connally for as much as half a second after the bullet struck JFK? Could it be that the sound simply didn't REGISTER in Connally's conscious mind until after Connaly was hit? Not trying to criticize; just trying to add a real-world angle to all this.

Clay Shaw was a real live human being: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Laverne_Shaw

Paul, I think all this dovetails quite nicely with your primary theory about the motivations behind the WC Report. If JFK--whom the Minutemen considered a Communist--was killed by an alleged Communist, as the Warren Commission decided, then their predicted "revolution" against JFK and the Communists was defused, and a civil war was averted. But by finding that the alleged Communist assassin had no connections to Castro, those who would have had us invading Cuba and tempting Russia to get involved in what surely would have been World War III was also averted. So for the sake of "national security," the official story was that JFK was assassinated by an alleged Communist, but by one not aligned with any Communist nation. And for those reasons, the truth was to be buried for 75 years...at which time all the principals would surely be dead. Adding in the Mafia and KKK to the mix may also have been intentional...just to sidetrack those who might have decided that the WC Report stunk to high heaven, and put them off on false trails...wasting precious time and energy that might otherwise have discovered the truth. Don't get me wrong...I believe that the KKK may well have been involved in the training camps. But I think their inclusion had a purpose far beyond just getting some sharp-shooting country boys to take out Castro...or JFK. I think that the involvement of the KKK was to muddy the waters regarding just who was behind the assassination...which I think was at least being discussed in some quarters since the Bay of Pigs.

Monk, I think you and I are on the same wavelength here...I believe the 6.5mm ammo from a USMC purchase order had the CIA and the military shouting "INCOMING!" and falling in 100% behind the coverup conspiracy... a reflexive CYA action. Which, I believe, was the sole purpose of using [or simply planting, as the case may be] THAT weapon in THAT caliber with THAT ammo.

Greg, now THAT's a Hemming quote I can buy into. Now, I've received a letter recently that speculates that the Mannlicher-Carcanos, and the purchase order from the US military for the WCC 6.5mm ammo may have been related to the attempt to create--and arm--an indigenous anti-Communist guerrilla force in North Korea prior to the armistice signed in July of 1953. Having the guerrilla force using such a weapon [of NON-US ancestry] would go far in covering the tracks of US involvement in the creation of such a unit [or units]; and of course these MC rifles had negligible resale value per unit...keeping the costs of such an "off-the-books" operation minimal, and much easier to to conceal in your average military budget. The only problem would be if any of the MC rifles procured for such purposes were to be involved in an operation that "came home to roost"...such as the JFK assassination. Not saying that's actually what happened...but...might be an angle to consider.

Nate, Chomsky was--and is--only an observer, from a distance. Hemming, if he could be taken at his sometimes contradictory word, was a lot closer to the action. My guess is that Hemming DID have SOME sort of firsthand knowledge of SOMETHING...whereas I'm pretty sure Chomsky didn't, and doesn't. So Nate, I respectfully think you're building a straw-man here...since you introduced Chomsky into a discussion of Weberman and Hemming.

What we DON'T want for the "face" of the movement is someone who characterizes anyone and everyone who disagrees with one single iota of their pet theory as a "disinformation agent." And unfortunately, that would eliminate many of the so-called "best and the brightest" of the researchers on the side of conspiracy. I would think Doug Horne would possibly qualify,..if only because of the volume of evidence he's had the opportunity to examine.

Tommy, Hemming and Weberman had a strange relationship. Weberman made Hemming famous, in a manner, and Hemming said that a lot of what Weberman "quoted" Hemming as saying was "bullxxxx." What we have to figure out is...whether it was Weberman BS'ing everyone, or whether it was Hemming BS'ing Weberman. But I find this passage to be believable...if the "curtain rod" story is believable. And I'm not so sure the curtain rod story holds up to scrutiny. We can do a LOT of "If...then..." postulating on what this means. For example, if the "curtain rod" story is fiction, then this whole passage falls apart. If the curtain rod story is true, then Jack Dougherty's story that Oswald wasn't carrying anything into the TSBD that morning comes into question. Or...IF they were putting down plywood on the 6th floor, THEN why would Hemming have Oswald hide the gun where it might be discovered "too soon" if the flooring crew was working faster than expected? Lots of questions come to mind...for which the answers may remain elusive.

I look upon the relationship between the KKK and the WCC as similar to that of the movements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. While the more radical group drew the bulk of the fire from critics, the aims of both were advanced. So while one group tended to keep a level of separation from the other, they moved their agendas down the road in tandem...ironically, another form of "separate but equal," IMHO.

Mr. Gordon, I believe your analysis and conclusions have considerable merit. And I believe the timing of Connally's wrist wound actually IS one of the keys to understanding what happened inside the limo. I, for one, believe you may be on the right track.

Can someone translate? I speak English, but apparently not this version. Not trying to ridicule anyone; I just wish to understand what is being said.

"After the first two shots were fired, Mr Hill could see Mrs Kennedy reaching for a piece of her husband's head as he leapt into their limousine. But he could not reach them in time before a third bullet struck the President." This sounds a LOT more like the Tom Purvis scenario than the Warren Commission fairy tale...and by the eyewitness closest to the action, as it were. From Hill's account here, JFK's skull was already shattered BEFORE the third shot...and Hill certainly DOES claim that the third shot "struck the President." Maybe someday, the COMPLETE truth will surface.

LOL a mod baits, then complains about baiting. I get it now. I read you loud and clear, Mr. Scully...and Mr. Colby. This forum is no longer about the JFK assassination; it's about the personalities of the few remaining argumentative posters, and playing "bait" and "gotcha." What a waste of such a once-valuable educational resource.

Jim Root and Robert Howard, members of this forum, have done extensive research on the Raleigh call. I understand that their research is ongoing.

And once again, you prove my point, Mr. Colby. This forum ONCE was about the JFK assassination. Now it seems it's about who can "one-up" the previous poster...and no longer about the evidence or theories related to the JFK assassination. Now the JFK assassination is the LAST topic to be discussed here. Seems the bickering and backbiting and one-upsmanship has taken center stage, and refuses to yield. And so I don't come off as being a hypocrite, I'll refrain from commenting further on this disturbing trend once I finish my comments in this post.

I made no such "announcement," Mr. Scully. I fully intend to continue my membership here, and I would hope that the quality of the discussion improves markedly...and soon. Not sure where you got the idea that I was asking to have my membership deleted. If that is NOT what you were saying, perhaps you should express yourself more clearly.