Jon G. Tidd

Tom Neal, FWIW, I've read a fair number of books and have found only a few worth reading. The histories: very few. Shelby Foote's history of the U.S. Civil War. DSL's "Best Evidence". Maybe Best Evidence isn't 100% correct, but it's a knife point. The enduring best books I've read include Tristam Shandy, by Laurence Sterne: I can't go on. Too many novels. Hemmingway said good writing was invention that was truth

Roger, You make a salient point. JFK, arguably, had many enemies for many reasons. It's commonplace to place blame for his murder on one or more of these enemies. I prefer to reverse-engineer the assassination. And ask, initially, how a potential assassin would have viewed JFK given JFK's many enemies. I believe a potential assassin would have perceived that [a] JFK was vulnerable, and his murder could be blamed, in the popular mind, on many. The potential assassin would perceive cover. What confounds a critical examination of the assassination is the difficulty in separating the post-assassination cover-up from the pre-assassination efforts to frame Oswald.

Who took part in the plot to kill JFK? Angleton Dulles Phillips Walker Giancana Marcello Trafficante Morales Sturgis E.H. Hunt H.L. Hunt D. Byrd Murchison Hoffa Nixon LBJ Mac Wallace Lee Oswald Jack Ruby Pinky Westbrook McGeorge Bundy Curtis Lemay Who have I missed besides James Files, Charles Harrelson, J. Edgar Hoover, and James Rowley?

Scott, I agree.

Paul, You have reached conclusions. FWIW, I believe there are facts but no firm conclusions.

Paul, The fateful rifle of Lee Harvey Oswald vs. her statement on Oprah. None of this matters as a matter of law. Truth is, Marina has swung from implicating her husband to exonerating him. Believe her every utterance, if you wish. But please listen to every utterance.

Ron, my intent was just the opposite. I was trying to state the facts as I understand them. The interpretation of the facts, whatever that might be, is up to everyone here. Want my opinion of Warren as a Supreme Court Chief Justice? It's that he got 40-percent correct. For example, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Warren writing for a 9-0 court said that undoing segregation in public schools must proceed with "due deliberation". Due deliberation meant the states could proceed at a pace that served reasonable needs. As a result, undoing segregation in public schools is an ongoing battle. Do I think Warren was heroic? No. He was a politically savvy fool.

Paul, Marina has made inconsistent statements. That makes her unreliable as a truth-teller. I assign a zero to Marina's veracity. That's a dispassionate zero. Ruth Paine: If Ruth today, assuming she has a clear mind, said, "Lee kept his rifle in my garage, wrapped in a blanket.", would you believe her? Would you want her veracity to be tested by cross-examination? There is no basis for believing either Marina or Ruth have been truth-tellers. Neither has been subject to cross-exam.

I've observed that intelligent, even well-educated, individuals sometimes behave as fools. I can give many high-profile examples, but the one I want to give is that of Earl Warren. Warren wasn't overly bright, but he was well-educated and, to the point, was really smart politically. He knew the PTB in the U.S. Government wanted the Commission to point the finger at Lee Harvey Oswald and no one else. He knew this was his charge. So he presided over a cover-up for the sake of national unity and domestic tranquility. Pretty smart of him. Except Warren had no sense of history. Which was a huge deficit. He couldn't see that lack of trust in the U.S. Government would replace total trust because of the cover-up. Warren bungled other things as well because he focused on the immediate situation. But that's another discussion.

Gene and Greg, Thanks. But question: if Lee and Marina weren't living at Neely Street, where were they living during the time period in question? This Neely Street matter strikes me as being of upmost importance, given the central importance of the BYP.

Will someone here please educate me as to why LHO never lived at the Neely Street address? I grasp what Greg is saying, but I'd like to know the pros and cons. Including where Lee and Marina lived during the time period in question. Many thanks.

Tom Neal, Your post #206 goes to the heart of the Warren Commission. Despite the words of the Warren Report, the Warren Commission never gathered testimonial evidence. Sure, it gathered testimony. But the testimony was never tested on cross-examination. Further, as Robert Prudhomme has suggested, the failure to allow cross-exam may have have allowed fabrication of witness statements. IMO, Warren Commission witness statements are completely, totally unreliable. A famous judge once wrote essentially this: cross-examination is the greatest means for producing truth known to human beings.

I imagine the Henry Marshall cause of death was changed because the coroner's verdict was patently wrong, not because of anything Billy Sol Estes said. Billy Sol Estes may or may not have been rehabilitated by his time in prison. That's a judgment call. For sure, he wanted consideration for ratting out LBJ and the other rats. He wanted a pardon for the crime(s) of which he had been convicted. The reason I asked when he started to tell the whole truth is that I hoped someone would ask: and nothing but the truth?

Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing reportedly said that Gerald Ford told him the Warren Commissioners knew there was a conspiracy to kill JFK but couldn't figure out who was behind the murder. Or some such thing. At this point, I'm inclined to believe what Ford allegedly said is true. The assassination produced one clear winner and lots of potential losers. The clear winner was LBJ. The potential losers ranged from Hoover to McCone to RFK and lots of individuals in between. None of whom wanted a full-blown, wide-ranging, open-to-the public investigation of the murder; an investigation that might go down any number of roads; an investigation that might reveal all kinds of hidden information having nothing to do, strictly speaking, with the assassination. Information that would ruin careers; that would prompt cries for even deeper digging. No one who had skeletons in the closet wanted to be the subject of any such investigation. The best possible course of action for all the potential losers was to rally behind the Warren Commission, knowing for sure that the Commission would have the final say in all the venues that mattered (especially the press); would say there was no conspiracy; and would thereby obviate a real, wide-ranging, unfettered, dangerous investigation. This view is consistent with the view Washington politics is cynical and self-serving. Which has become my view. I'm inclined, therefore, to believe the cover-up fell into place naturally and was not connected to the plot to kill JFK. I'm also inclined to believe the plotters knew there would be a cover-up if they offered a straw for the cover-up masters to grasp. The straw, Oswald, was grasped firmly and immediately. It was a beautiful plan.

Thanks, Ray.

Craig, your comment makes me wonder, did JFK know of Mockingbird?

When JFK was brought into Parkland, who was the first medical person to see him? Who removed his jacket, shirt, and tie? Who was present when these items of clothing were removed? Were the shirt and tie cut in order to remove them? If not, how were the shirt and tie removed?

At what point in his life did Billy Sol Estes begin telling the whole truth?

Did JFK or RFK ever plant, or have planted, stories in the press intended to sway Americans?

Greg, You may be correct about Asperger's. I don't know much about the disorder (some, not much). I imagine it would have made him an odd duck. I've come across a number of odd ducks: in my pre-college days, at the university, and in the army. Some of these guys were incredibly funny to my way of thinking, were incredibly unusual, and were looked down upon by their conventional peers. They all pulled their own strings. FWIW, I believe, based on my army training and experience, that although Oswald may have attracted the attention of the CIA, he never to his knowledge was used by the CIA to act on its behalf. It's one thing for the CIA, FBI, KGB -- and who knows what other intelligence services -- to have had an interest, even a deep and serious interest, in Oswald. He was an unusual guy, doing unusual and provocative things. Maybe he got some encouragement to do these things. Who knows? But for sure, any such encouragement would have played to his proclivities. I don't know whether you were kicking around in the U.S. in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was a time when soldiers of fortune were played up in popular culture. Oswald wasn't exactly a soldier of fortune, as Gerry Hemming portrayed himself. But he operated on the margin of society. He did that, I believe, perhaps with help, but of his own volition. So, Angleton kept two files on him. So what? Angleton would have been interested in Oswald. Because Oswald was an outlier. Angleton never kept a file on me. I was on paper quite conventional. Yet I got into Military Intelligence, spent 47 weeks at the Defense Language Institute, went through the Army Officer's counterintelligence course, ran agents in Viet Nam, and did other stuff about which I can't talk. Truth is, even though no one here has followed the path I followed, I was conventional. Oswald wasn't.

Douglas, I don't know anything about Ashton. He appears to have remarkable knowledge and petting skills. I like his posts.

The problem with conspiracy? Analyzing conspiracy theories requires separating fact from opinion. Fact: JFK was killed in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Opinion: The cause of death was [blank]. Blank: A needle containing poison inserted into JFK's throat by Malcolm Perry. Credit: Ashton Grey. No one here knows the cause of death.

Think about it. Casket switching. Body alteration. That had to be pre-planned. It wasn't spur-of-the-moment. I'm inclined to believe either DVP is correct, Oswald did it; or there was a deep and dark conspiracy. Not a conspiracy lite as Thomas Graves believes; not a conspiracy as Greg believes; but a full-throated conspiracy. Either you believe in conspiracy-lite or you believe in no conspiracy or full-throated conspiracy.

FWIW, I believe the second-floor lunchroom encounter didn't happen. But I don't care. For an important reason. I believe all the post-assassination cover-ups, lies, and fabrications, including the Warren Commission, had one purpose: to show the U.S. Government wasn't a banana republic, wasn't fractured and confused; was solid and on track. Think about it. The leader of the Free World has been killed. There must be an explanation why this happened. The simplest reason is that a lone nut did it. Americans like simple explanations for disturbing events. That like, that need, must be fed. At all costs. Warren understood this. He was a man of his times. He was wrong in many ways, including some of his 1960s Supreme Court opinions, but he understood his times.

Ashton, You know clearly and deeply a lot about Watergate. Clearly and deeply. Do you see a connection between the JFK assassination and Watergate?