David Andrews

Ochsner producing Oswald's posthumous "Greatest Commie Hits" album ("Self-Portrait in Red") should set off alarm bells. But I withhold judgment on his entire reported involvement with medical and assassination conspiracies and personalities. Ochsner's verifiable relation to the history of vaccines and diseases, between the polio years and the HIV years, ought to be established.

Although you often come across as an Oswald accuser like everyone else on this thread, I have the feeling that your HEART isn't really in it. I don't think the arrested Oswald shot Kennedy, alone or otherwise. My gut feeling from all circumstances, as I've said before, is that he was acting under orders to "observe and report," probably by a faction which he thought was Kennedy-friendly. Either they betrayed him, or he was cut out by the actual plotters. As in the circles around Richard Case Nagell, I suspect there were many factions at work in that season. Like Nagell, Oswald may have been confused and without a scorecard. What if it's not faction A or faction B that betrayed and/or killed Oz, but a faction C? Nagell's professed experiences with Oswald really ought to be examined for clues to the events between the assassination and Oz's arrest. Do I think Oz was "practicing tradecraft" that day? Yes. A spook for years? Oh, hell, yes! How else do you acquire the twin curses of the Paines and the DeMohrenschildts? Not by being an innocent. However, one place my heart isn't is in concluding that Oz was "dumb" or "pathetic." Wrong moves and divided motives when people are setting you up or stalking you do not constitute a curriculum vita. But - having reasons for people setting you up or stalking you, that implies a certain type CV. But could you PLEASE explain the "rubber stamp" and "Warrior" thing above. A hyperbolic joke on "tradecraft" and "scoutcraft."

Aw, I liked the "sexual pervert" reference and don't hold it against Ray. It almost saved my marriage. I wish Ray would write his book so we can see what he's on about re: Oswald's complete innocence. Myself, I know Oz had his "Warrior" rubber stamp kit in the way of tradecraft, and was working his way up to one of these when his life was tragically ended:

If JFK believed this - and it's not out of consonance with other remarks of his - then he really should have ordered the bubble top. Not to go anywhere near the "It's Kennedy's fault" bandwagon - but did the man have a death wish? Was he daring them to shoot? I should know this - but was his motorcade and other auto travel in Ft. Worth 11/21-22/63 anywhere near as nonchalant as his last ride?

Harry, for those of us who can't read the CROSSTRAILS manuscript, can you tell us what date and on what occasion (public? private?) JFK said this? If it's common knowledge - I've forgotten it.

And in the north: The Federal Reserve General Dynamics Big Oil Bell Helicopter The heroin trade CIA The Joint Chiefs It was Murder on the Orient Express - They all dunnit, and covered up for each other.

Kathy what evidence do have for the above? The story makes no sense, whose house did they supposedly share? Auchincloss’? Why would Vidal spend time at his ex-stepfather house? His mother remarried in 1942 the same year Auchincloss married Jackie’s mother. A lot of this can be solved by reading Vidal's memoir Palimpsest. If I have to order it from the library and reread it, I will. It won't be a chore, because it's a good book. Unfortunately, as I've said, Vidal has given thousands of interviews, in which the Kennedys are a frequent topic, and his family revelations can be hard to find, especially online, and they're not (or not all) collected in book form. I guarantee, though, that he's been cutting and catty on the family, increasingly so in interviews after 1980, even more so in the 1990s. In my lifetime as a Vidal watcher, it didn't occur to me to catalogue his Kennedy family references - for which I'm suffering here today.

What is pure blind faith is saying he was a Marxist when: 1.No one has ever surfaced of that stripe who said he knew Oswald. In fact, the commies who have surfaced suspected Oswald was a CIA agent. Yeah - I notice there were never any Peter, Paul and Leon albums...

Didn't Mark Lane first peg Oz as a spook in Rush to Judgment?

Ray, can you tell us in two brief paragraphs how Oz is not a spook and how he was made the patsy? For brevity, you can go with informed but unsourced "suspicions," as I did.

I'll find it, Ray. I've seen the "smile" footage more than once. "Smirking" is a lie by Ruby and an obfuscation built on it by Posner.

As with Rush to Judgment and RFK Must Die, I'm constantly shown how invaluable the early accounts (written within, say, three years) of a controversial event are to unearthing fact and presenting important contemporary context and opinion that can be lost during later investigation.

Ray Carroll: David: Am I correct in thinking that you have not found a source for the claim that oz smiled at Ruby? Notice Oz's head turn (followed by a film break, or a "film break") toward Ruby at about 00:41 in this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awy3h5QK7WI I'm searching for the above-angle film clip where the smile is most apparent. I am not the only person who has seen the smile and referred to it.

I suspect that Oz, from the time he returned from Russia, was used as an FBI informant and a CIA operative, playing a "Lefty Lee" character, a sort of passive-aggressive agent provocateur. I suspect that this character was intended to make him look like a commie and lone nut (with help from the DeMorenschildts and Paines), and he really didn't realize how thoroughly he was being double-sheep dipped. I suspect that he was given an "observe and report" infiltration role at TSBD, by an intel group he believed was pro-Kennedy, but which actually set him up as the playground patsy. Perhaps Oz was led to believe that JFK security and abort teams would stop the assassins. I suspect that soon after the killing, Oz may have figured that the lone Soviet defector and professed Marxist at the TSBD was an obvious fall guy, and may have tried to seek a rendezvous for escaping Dallas (and hooking up with pilot Dave Ferrie?) at the Texas Theater. One of my nagging interests is in what cop cars were doing honking and otherwise prowling for Oswald after the assassination. I'm trying to develop a theory of the purposes of all of Oswald's activities and involvements after leaving TSBD, including any involvement, or not, in the Tippit crime scene. So, Ray - why is Oswald not a spook, and innocent as well? You can work from informed "suspicion," as I have. Oz filmed in captivity seems a lot more fatalistic about his arrest than a man with no foreknowledge of the assassination would be.

I'm a patriotic American. Did I say he was an evil spook?

Ray, how do we explain Oswald's whole career, from the Marine Corps through his death, except as that of a spook?

Jim - of course Oswald is a spook. I'm trying to figure out what a whole load of loose spooks and bad cops, maybe groups of such with different masters, are doing in regard to Oswald (and "Oswald") between the TSBD, Tenth and Patton, and Texas Theater. Like I said - one of the things that needs understanding is why both the Tippit murder and the Texas Theater apprehension happened. If we believe Oz was going to a rendezvous at Texas Theater - looking for an escape in a place where he could be captured or killed Dillinger style - then why is the Tippit scene necessary? A "unified theory," or competing theories, of post-assassination November 22nd would be useful things to read. Someday, I'm going to put up a list of the most needed book-length investigations on JFK topics. Anybody who wants to ought to run with one of them.

Well. then - is the entire back seat cast of the VP car reconstituted for the retouched Altgens 6? Maybe that's why Lyndon's head is a dark smudge. NB, we shpuld be evaluating the VP car backseat in contrast to what's going on simultaneously in the following SS car. See my post just above for others' thoughts on the SS agent's hand out the window.

LBJ has to be upright at the Altgens 6 moment, because Lady Bird and Yarborough are unfazed. In the SS car behind LBJ, the right rear door is opening, and the SS agent's hand outside the window has been suspected of having a firearm airbrushed out of it.

Is it possible that Oz practiced that quick turnabout business and attracted Tippit's attention, but also attracted other conspirators that Oz was trying to avoid - who then shot Tippit? Did Tippit get out of the car because another man or men was approaching while he was questioning Oz? Oz's progress and feints between TSBD and Texas Theater are the most frustrating logistical aspects of the assassination afternoon. Why are both the Tippit killing and the theater search necessary? Why not kill Oz at the Tippit scene? Why are police cars out looking for Oz on Tenth street and at his rooming houise? I have the feeling that there are several levels of operatives and plotters at work that day. Some of them, if you believe Richard Case Nagell's intimations in Dick Russell's book, may have been Mexico City KGB out to stop Oz, whom they identified as either the designated patsy or the assigned shooter. They may have been pro-Castro Cubans enlisted by KGB.

At least at one time, there had to be another version on film of the elements we see reconstituted in the edited Zapruder. Therefore --

If you check Dick Russel's much improved second edition, you'll get the story of Nagell's involvement with the KGB in Mexico City, which has certain resemblances to the No Way Out drama.

No Way Out is a swell modern thriller, with excellent supporting cast, directed by wise hack Roger Donaldson, the Australian who later made the decent mainstream Missile Crisis movie Thirteen Days with Costner. Richard Case Nagell's spy life had as much tension and personal cost as the Costner character's.

Caveat lector because Vidal's personal animosity toward the Kennedys has never left him. He's excepted Jack personally, whom he regarded as a friend and one-time political ally. Politics is somewhat mechanical for Vidal, though political differences and ideals, where they exist, are not - so it's both surprising and not surprising that he's rarely said a positive or negative word about Kennedy as Chief Executive,* though plenty negative about the family. The trouble with finding bootlegging references is that Vidal is asked about the Kennedys in many interviews above a certain length, he's written about them in reviewing historical works for the press, and his several volumes of memoirs are not sequentially nor topically arranged - so it's hard to locate that "A-ha!" reference, and if one did, it would be a quick description or epithet rather than an investigative finding. I'll poke about in what I have at hand and see what I can quote, but it would only be Vidal's insider status that would give it weight. Remember, too, that the Vidal-Auchincloss-Bouvier families would have shared a certain anecdotal knowledge with their growing children (Jackie, Gore), so this may be the origin of any "bootlegger" reputation for Old Joe in this circle.** So that's what caveat lector meant. I sometimes overestimate the extent to which Vidal is read among those interested in the assassinations, so I thought it would be self-explanatory within the terms of the Vidal-Bouvier relationship. People could do worse than start with his memoir Palimpsest, and might generally do worse by reading political non-fiction other than Vidal's. Taking a quick morning-coffee flip through Vidal's essay collection, United States, I'll note that you're more likely to find a reference to the sources of the Kennedy fortune in writings and interviews after 1980. * Rarely after 1970. In my memory, Vidal is kinder on Jack in his later interview comments. I forgot the many incisive and useful observations in the late-1960s articles that finally parted him from the family, "The Manchester Book" and "The Holy Family," both in United States, and which readers here would appreciate. (Also in that volume is "The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt," surely of interest regarding other topics on this forum.) ** Vidal's mother married first Gore's father, airline pioneer Eugene Vidal, and then Bouvier relative-by-marriage Hugh D. Auchincloss.

Mr. Von Pein, I'm under some confusion here. Was Roger Craig nearly killed for being a xxxx, and then finally annihilated by some militant moralist to whom we, who love truth, owe eternal gratitude? "Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping?" -- Hamlet