Jeremy Bojczuk

Sandy Larsen writes: What exactly does Sandy find objectionable? That I described David Josephs' claims as "unintentionally hilarious"? Or that I described his evidence for those claims as "laughably flimsy"? Both of my remarks were accurate, and neither of them insulted David personally. What's the problem? David's first claim was that photos exist which show Oswald's shoulders sloping at different angles, and that this demonstrates that the photos are of different people. David clearly didn't bother to consider any of the obvious explanations for what we see in the photos. He thought that drawing lines on those photos, to emphasise that the angles were different, was all he needed to do. His second claim was that photos of Oswald show "different size heads". I posted a link which explained clearly why David's claim about "different size heads" was mistaken, for the benefit of anyone who couldn't work it out for themselves or who wasn't aware that the HSCA explained the phenomenon decades ago. David made two mistaken interpretations of that photographic evidence. In each case, the mistake should have been obvious to anyone who looked at that evidence objectively, which David clearly didn't do. The mistakes were so obvious, and the evidence so flimsy, that any sensible, open-minded person who read David's claims would find them unintentionally amusing. Again, what exactly does Sandy find objectionable about this?

Jonathan Cohen writes: I particularly enjoyed David's unintentionally hilarious remark about "sloping shoulders, different size heads". He found photographs of Oswald taken at different times, from different angles, while Oswald was standing in different poses and wearing different clothes. Then he drew lines to show that Oswald's shoulders were sloping at different angles in some of those photos. Hey presto! That means the photos were of two different people! [Slaps forehead.] Even funnier is David's evidence for "different size heads". Look at the photo of Oswald in front of a size chart, in which the horizontal lines are one inch apart. The distance between the top of Oswald's head and the bottom of his chin is 13 inches. This proves that his head is 13 inches tall! But in other photos, Oswald's head, like most people's heads, is noticeably less than 13 inches tall. Therefore the photo of Oswald with a 13-inch head must show a second Oswald! [Slaps forehead again.] This is the sort of laughably flimsy evidence that no-one apart from the true believer would take seriously. But it's good enough for David. Is it any wonder that some people equate critics of the lone-nut idea with those who believe in alien abduction stories or that the moon landings didn't happen? Incidentally, that old 'Harvey and Lee' staple, the notion that Oswald had a 13-inch head, has a perfectly plausible explanation: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1412-the-13-inch-head-explained-for-sandy

Lance Payette writes: Here's an alternative to Lance's "absolute bare minimum" assumption: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2679-sorry-lance-but-you-re-getting-another-dose-just-because#41340

Lance Payette screams: Using bold face and capitals doesn't turn a weak objection into a sound one. If YOU refers to me, I did in fact explain why it wouldn't matter where Oswald was during the shooting. If your plan is to kill Kennedy in a way that implicates the Cuban or Soviet regimes, you don't need your Cuban- or Soviet-linked patsy to do the shooting. You just need to link him to the rifle, and link the rifle to the shooting. Requiring the said patsy to be out of sight on the sixth floor, or in the second-floor lunchroom or wherever, just adds unnecessary complication, and increases the risk of something going wrong. The notion of an international communist conspiracy was widely believed back then. It wouldn't have taken investigators long to learn that the guy who appeared to have ordered the rifle was the same guy who had defected to the Soviet Union and later became a public pro-Castro propagandist. 2 + 2 = Castro or the Soviets did it. As for the transformation from Oswald the communist conspirator to Oswald the lone nut, the lone nut theory was imposed by politicians for straightforward political reasons: either they were frightened by the prospect of demands for war, or they feared that the domestic population might increase its distrust of established political institutions, or both. This transformation implies, of course, that those politicians probably weren't among the people who planned the assassination. It also implies that the assassination wasn't planned down to the smallest detail, and, needless to say, there weren't any Oswald doppelgangers chasing each other around Dallas, or presidential body-snatching squads, or any of that sort of nonsense.

Lance Payette writes: Good! Of course, it's possible that the originals might not be clear enough to confirm or rule out Oswald as the figure on the steps. But there's no reason not to want the question resolved. If it turns out not to be Oswald, we'll be no worse off than we are now. But if it does turn out to be Oswald, all hell will break loose. It will be the single most significant development in the case. There's really nothing to lose. That objection only applies if Oswald had been designated in advance as the lone-nut patsy. It doesn't apply if the lone-nut explanation was not part of any plot and Oswald's intended purpose was merely to provide a link between the rifle and the Cuban and Soviet regimes. Most of the early speculation blamed the assassination on that well-known bogeyman, the International Communist Conspiracy; the lone-nut explanation was imposed later for political reasons. This is a reasonable question, but it relies on hindsight. Oswald wasn't to know that he had less than two days to live. He might have assumed, naively perhaps, that the Dallas police would conduct a genuine, honest investigation and let him go in a day or two. He might have assumed that, at worst, he would be able to make his case at a trial, and that international attention would ensure a reasonably fair trial, at least by the standards of Texas in the early 1960s. He might have assumed that the accusation was so preposterous that it didn't need to be denied immediately and in detail. It's also worth reading Greg Parker response to Lance's question, here: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2675-lance-p-is-1000-certain#41143 No, there's no need to suppose that Fritz was involved, let alone "deeply involved", in any pre-assassination conspiracy. See Greg Parker's comment in the link I've just given. Fritz was just doing what he did in numerous other cases. Indeed. There could easily have been (and may still be) clear, unambiguous photographic evidence that Oswald was nowhere near the sixth floor during or very shortly after the shooting. Again, such evidence would only cause a problem for a plot that required Oswald to have been on the sixth floor. If, on the other hand, the plan had been merely to implicate the Cuban or Soviet regimes in the assassination, all that was needed was the presence on the sixth floor of a rifle that could be linked to a TSBD employee who could in turn be linked to those regimes. This is a point that many conspiracy theorists also fail to understand. True. It's worth pointing out that a definitive identification of Oswald as the figure on the steps would destroy not only the lone-nut hypothesis but also a number of conspiracy theories. This may be why many conspiracy theorists appear uninterested in resolving the identity of the figure. If your pet theory requires the assassination to have been orchestrated by a group of all-powerful masterminds, and that every incident that actually happened must have been planned in advance and carried out in precise detail, you really need Oswald to be up on the sixth floor, not standing on the steps. Few, if any, of the Grand Unified Theories of the assassination would survive the identification of Oswald as the figure on the steps. Unfortunately for both lone-nut enthusiasts and everything-is-a-conspiracy theorists, the evidence that Oswald was on the sixth floor at 12.30 is pretty flimsy. The balance of the evidence suggests that he was on the ground floor when several witnesses saw a presumed gunman on the sixth floor between 12.15 and 12.30. I suspect that the attraction of the assassination for the tin-foil hat type of conspiracy theorists is that it allows them to play games by inventing ridiculously elaborate conspiracies. The possibility of any definitive answers must be a scary prospect. Realistically, the figure could be Oswald or very few other people. There are plausible grounds to eliminate (to varying degrees of certainty) non-TSBD employees as well as every TSBD employee who wasn't Oswald. The following article lays out the options: http://22november1963.org.uk/prayer-man-jfk-assassination The Prayer Man question isn't simply about an image of someone who looks a bit like Oswald. It's that an image exists which: not only bears some resemblance to Oswald but is consistent with what we now know about his often-misrepresented alibi, is unlikely to be anyone other than Oswald, and is consistent with all the other evidence placing Oswald on the ground floor when he was supposed (by lone-nutters and many conspiracy theorists) to have been on the sixth floor. Even without the Prayer Man images, Oswald is more likely to have been on the ground floor than the sixth floor during the assassination. Those images could confirm what the balance of the existing evidence suggests. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the details, you'll get a good account of the Prayer Man question from the following links: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/20354-oswald-leaving-tsbd/ (see Sean Murphy's posts in particular; it's a shame he isn't still around) https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t388-prayer-man-on-the-education-forum http://www.prayer-man.com/misc/prayer-man-in-a-nutshell/

Allen Lowe writes: Describing someone who does not resemble Oswald, and placing the encounter on the wrong floor, of course generates suspicion that the man Baker encountered was not Oswald. One might argue that Baker simply got some of the details wrong. He was in an unfamiliar building, and he'd never seen Oswald before or since. But in fact Baker did see Oswald afterwards. When Baker was sitting in an office in the police HQ, writing his statement (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338819/), Oswald was actually in the room with him! As Baker explained to the Warren Commission: Baker would surely have known that the description he gave did not match that of the suspect who was with him in "one of those little small offices". We might also expect him to have written that the man he encountered was the very man who had been arrested.

Benjamin Cole writes: I hope that's a typo! It should read: "... could not have accomplished all the shots."

John Cotter writes: I beg to differ. Read on ... None of the incidents John mentions necessarily imply that Oswald was being portrayed in advance as a potential assassin. Some of them may not have had any connection to "sheep-dipping" at all, such as "the firing range incident" and "the car showroom incident", which could easily be two of the many mistaken sightings of Oswald. I'll deal with a couple of John's incidents in detail. Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that Oswald himself in March 1963 purchased a rifle of the same type as that found on the sixth floor, as well as a pistol of the same type as that placed into evidence after his arrest. A non-conspiratorial explanation is available for the existence in the record of these particular weapons (whether or not they were actually used by Oswald): Oswald purchased these weapons on behalf of a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which in early 1963 was investigating the sales of weapons by mail order. Now, there's no positive evidence of Oswald's involvement, such as a memo or an invoice for expenses, signed by Senator Thomas Dodd, who headed the subcommittee. But it is conceivable that Oswald was involved: The subcommittee made use of individuals who purchased weapons on its behalf. Oswald's activities in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, in particular his well-documented association with Guy Banister, demonstrate that Oswald had the type of low-level intelligence connections that could have been utilised by the subcommittee when recruiting people to purchase weapons clandestinely. The two companies from which Oswald allegedly purchased the weapons, Klein's Sporting Goods and Seaport Traders, were under investigation by the Dodd subcommittee. Also under investigation by the Dodd subcommittee were other organisations of interest to Oswald. His address book contained the names and addresses of officials of the American N-a-z-i Party, and he interacted in New Orleans with Cuban exile organisations. Maybe Oswald was instructed to purchase the weapons specifically so that they could be used to implicate him in the assassination, eight months later. Maybe the weapons were actually purchased by conspirators specifically to implicate Oswald in the assassination, eight months later. Or maybe Oswald purchased the weapons on behalf of the Dodd subcommittee and the weapons were utilised much later to link him to the assassination. As for the shooting at General Walker, it was indeed officially interpreted after the assassination as evidence of Oswald's "disposition to take human life", but that interpretation is worthless. The Dallas police did not suspect Oswald at the time of the shooting. There are several aspects of the Walker shooting which make Oswald's involvement unlikely. The only witness claimed that there were two men involved, and that the men drove away from the scene in two cars; Oswald could not drive (at least, not legally) and did not have access to a car. And any conspirators who wanted to portray Oswald as a lone nut would not have had him working with a second person. General Walker himself claimed that the bullet was of a type incompatible with the rifle Oswald supposedly used in the JFK assassination. The Walker shooting was just an incident that was pinned on Oswald after his death. There is no reason to suspect that any conspirators set it up in April 1963 to frame Oswald for the assassination seven months later. And so on. It's a mistake to seize on every lone-nut talking point and try to explain it as part of an elaborate conspiracy, when a simpler explanation exists.

John Cotter writes: The point I was making is that if we have more than one explanation that is consistent with the known facts, we should choose the simplest explanation. The lone-nut explanation may be simple, but it is not consistent with the known facts. The question that was being discussed was whether Oswald was given a job in the TSBD by the conspirators as part of their plan to assassinate JFK, or whether the conspirators discovered that someone with some sort of intelligence connections already worked there, and that he could be utilised as a possible patsy. As Matt Allison has pointed out, Oswald got his job at the book depository long before the motorcade route was decided, and at a time when there was no guarantee that JFK would ever be within shooting distance of the TSBD. That fact seems to undermine the notion that Oswald was placed there for that purpose. I wouldn't rule out the notion that Oswald was placed in the TSBD for some other reason related to his intelligence connections. I've heard it suggested that Oswald's role might have been to keep an eye on Joe Molina, who was of interest to the authorities because of his active membership of a group of Hispanic military veterans. I'm not sure how strong the evidence is for that particular suggestion; it may well be that Oswald ended up working at the TSBD for purely innocent reasons.

Ron Ege writes: Of course, if Oswald really was carrying a gun, an innocent explanation would be hard to come by. I don't have time at the moment to look it up, but I recall that at least one witness at the Texas Theater suggested that the gun might have been planted on Oswald during the scuffle. And it isn't at all paranoid to suggest that the Dallas police of that era might fit up a suspect by planting evidence, particularly when the cops were arresting someone they thought had killed one of their colleagues. Benjamin Cole writes: It's certainly conceivable that Oswald was eliminated for one of those reasons. But it's also conceivable that he was eliminated despite not knowing anything at all about the assassination, simply because of the risk that the lone-gunman explanation would fall apart during a trial. The fear that Oswald might blab about his intelligence connections would apply even if he had played no active role in the assassination.

John Cotter writes: Pat's scenario makes a lot of sense. The simplest solution is usually the most credible solution. Here, the simplest solution is that the conspirators made use of the fact that a suitable patsy already happened to be working in a building on the motorcade route. There's no need to assume the extra complication that Oswald's "sheep-dipping" - in particular, his creation of a false persona as a Castro sympathiser - was done specifically with the assassination in mind, even though Oswald's apparent pro-Castro sympathies were utilised after the event. The same goes for Ruth Paine's involvement with the Oswald family, as well as her and Linnie Mae Randle's (and Roy Truly's) role in getting Oswald a job at the book depository. The simpler the explanation, and the less complex the conspiracy theory, the more likely it is to be correct. Pat Speer writes: Any serious plot to kill JFK during a motorcade would not have put all its eggs into one Oswaldian basket. There must have been a Plan B, and no doubt a Plan C, as in the case of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in which a succession of shooters lined the route. I understand that Pat and Greg Parker have had their differences, but Pat might be interested to read Greg's suggestions about alternative patsies: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t2643-shoe-shopping#40737

Michael Griffiths writes: It's an intriguing story. I read a book years ago in which this incident was made out to be significant, but I didn't find the account convincing. In the absence of strong corroboration, I'd file it away with the other recollections of vaguely suspicious activity involving vaguely young white men who looked vaguely like that guy on the TV. Would the idea have been to fly Oswald to Cuba, or maybe onto the Soviet Union, in order to blame those dastardly commies for the assassination? This would have been a lot of effort for not much benefit, since the Cuban and Soviet connection had been made by the discovery of the rifle that could be linked to Oswald. Or was the idea to fly Oswald to somewhere remote, where he would end up in a hole in the desert? A car would have been a much more unobtrusive form of transport for that purpose (an objection that also applies to Robert Vinson's story about Oswald being whisked away from Dallas in a plane).

Denny Zartman writes: Unless Jack Ruby genuinely was so overcome by grief that he impulsively felt that he had to kill Oswald, the first part is true: someone wanted Oswald silenced. But this doesn't necessarily imply that Oswald possessed any inside information about the shooting. If he had had no involvement in the assassination, and no prior knowledge that it would happen, there was still a good reason to silence him: to prevent him testifying at a trial. Oswald appears to have told the FBI and the police that he was on the first floor during the shooting, either in the domino room or outside on the steps. As I pointed out in an earlier comment, there is corroboration for parts of Oswald's alibi. In a high-profile trial, with sufficient press coverage to ensure a degree of fairness (at least by the standards of the Henry Wade era), evidence might have been presented that would disprove the lone-gunman hypothesis. Any individual or institution that feared an honest investigation would have had the motivation to have Oswald eliminated before he went to trial.

Ron Ege writes: Ron, all I was doing was claiming that we should start from the default position (namely that Oswald should be considered innocent of any involvement at all until proven guilty) rather than from the position that every piece of evidence cited by lone-nut supporters needs to be explained as part of a conspiracy. Look at the items of evidence that lone-nut supporters have put forward to indicate Oswald's consciousness of guilt: the money and wedding ring he left at Ruth Paine's house; his alleged early exit from the book depository; his alleged journey by bus and taxi to the boarding house on North Beckley Street; his visit to the Texas Theater; and his apparent behaviour outside Johnny Brewer's shoe shop. None of them are conclusive either of guilt or foreknowledge of the assassination. They can all be explained as the actions of someone who had no idea beforehand that JFK was going to be shot, and no idea until his arrest that he himself would be suspected of involvement. We shouldn't jump to the conclusion that each of these talking points must have a conspiratorial explanation. If we do, two problems arise. Firstly, it plays into the lone-nut supporters' hands, by agreeing with them that all of these talking points are significant. Secondly, it leads people to construct implausibly elaborate theories of the assassination. The more lone-nut talking points you consider to be significant, the more elaborate your theory becomes. Before you know it, everything that was pinned on Oswald by the lone-nut camp ends up as part of a huge pre-planned conspiracy: the purchase of the rifle and pistol, the shooting at General Walker, the murder of Officer Tippit, the murder of President Kennedy, and Oswald's exit from the scene of the crime. Compared with a theory that tries to explain all of those things as elements of a conspiracy, the lone-nut explanation doesn't seem quite so bad. Well, says the average member of the public, there certainly are holes in the lone-gunman argument, but just look at the alternative! If the general public can be persuaded to see the assassination question as a choice of lone-nut versus implausibly elaborate conspiracy, there will never be enough public interest to get the case reopened. Oswald could just have been a guy who was told he wasn't needed at work that afternoon and thought he might as well go and watch a film before meeting his wife at a shoe shop. In the ROKC thread that Tom mentioned, Greg Parker suggests a plausible reason for Oswald's sudden interest in shoe shopping:

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (the most official-sounding site I stumbled across in a quick online search), $1 in 1963 would be worth $9.61 in 2022. If the amount Oswald left on the dresser was $170-$180, that would be the equivalent of around $1,600-$1,700 in today's money. This was clearly his savings, not just some cash for day-to-day expenses. We know that he and Marina had discussed renting their own accommodation, and wanted one of those new-fangled washing machines. He wouldn't have taken that amount of cash with him to work every day. Nor would he have stored the money in a poorly secured room in a boarding house full of short-term tenants with unknown backgrounds. There really is nothing suspicious about Oswald leaving the money in a secure house with people he (presumably) trusted not to steal it. On a more general note, this thread illustrates a common problem among those who criticise the lone-nut idea. The problem is in taking each piece of evidence put forward by lone-nut supporters and assuming there must be a conspiratorial explanation for that evidence. But those conspiratorial explanations can be just as unfounded as the lone-nut explanations. Oswald left his cash behind! That means he wasn't expecting to return, which means he was actively involved in the assassination plot! Oswald was on the first floor, eating his lunch in the domino room! That means he was keeping an eye out for his fellow conspirators, so that they could sneak into the building without being spotted! And it means there was an Oswald lookalike impostor on the sixth floor who must have been a Hungarian doppelganger who underwent a fake mastoidectomy operation at the age of six in a hospital that hadn't been built yet! Oswald went to the Texas Theater! That means he was trying to hide from the cops! And he sat next to two different people! That means he was looking for a fellow conspirator who was going to whisk him out of the country! And so on. But maybe these and other items of evidence are indicators neither of guilt nor of conspiracy. Maybe leaving his money behind was the sensible thing to do. Maybe eating his lunch alone, and popping out to watch the parade at the last minute, was consistent with his character; he was a solitary sort of person who disliked crowds. Maybe going to see a film was a reasonable way to occupy some time before surprising Marina and Ruth during their visit to one of the nearby shoe shops. Maybe he briefly popped out of the cinema to check if they were already in one of those shoe shops, before going back inside. Of course, it's possible that Oswald did play an active role of some sort, but this is far from certain and shouldn't be assumed to be the case. Given that any explanation of this meagre evidence will require speculation, we should at least consider the possibility that the simplest explanation is correct: Oswald had no active involvement in the assassination, and he had no idea until his arrest that he would be under suspicion, or even that JFK had been killed.

Ron Ege writes: As far as I'm aware, only one person made that claim, and Oswald sat next to only two people. Jack Davis told Jim Marrs in 1988 that Oswald sat next to him, then got up and sat next to someone else, and then went out to the lobby. Davis's next sighting of Oswald was around 20 minutes later, as Oswald was being arrested (Crossfire, p.353). Davis told the same story to John Armstrong some time later (Harvey and Lee, pp.840-841; Armstrong doesn't mention the date of his interview with Davis). I'm not sure that Davis's anecdote, from 25 years after the event, is strong enough by itself to demonstrate that Oswald was actively looking for someone, although I wouldn't rule out that event completely. If Davis's account has any significance, it is in the timing: Davis has Oswald in the building just as the screening began, a few minutes before 1:20, when he was supposed to have been elsewhere, shooting Officer Tippit. Although Oswald's seat-hopping has no corroboration that I'm aware of, the timing of Oswald's arrival at the Texas Theater is corroborated by Butch Burroughs.

Charles Blackmon writes: True: anti-Castro Cubans probably didn't have direct access to Ruby. But they were connected at one remove, via those elements of the mafia and US intelligence that were working together to oppose Castro. Everyone is aware of Jack Ruby's connections to the mafia. One connection that may be more significant is his relationship with law enforcement in general and the Dallas police in particular. There are several candidate groups who might have twisted Ruby's arm to get him to eliminate Oswald, but it was the Dallas police who allowed him access to their prisoner. The police's motivation would simply have been to cover up their inadequate investigation of the assassination and their fitting-up of Oswald. This was one case in which the innocent party could not have been safely packed off to prison and forgotten about. Oswald need not have been eliminated to prevent him spilling the beans about any involvement he might have had in the assassination. Ruby's killing of Oswald need not have been a pre-planned element of any conspiracy to kill JFK. Seth Kantor deals with Ruby's various connections in his book, Who Was Jack Ruby? The book isn't easy to get hold of these days, but you can find excerpts here (item 4 in this list deals with Ruby's links to law enforcement): http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/K%20Disk/Kantor%20Seth/

Benjamin Cole writes: The point is that the figure standing in the shadowy corner of the steps is unidentified. The figure has some similarities to Oswald. Until a better-quality version of the Darnell or Wiegman films is released, we can't rule out the possibility that the figure is Oswald. A process of elimination leaves Oswald as the most likely candidate. All the other TSBD employees can be ruled out, to varying degrees of certainty. That leaves random members of the public, such as that hypothetical "middle-aged Latin woman". But this is very unlikely, because: All of the other people on the steps were TSBD employees. No-one mentioned seeing any non-employees pushing past employees to stand near the top step, an event many of them could be expected to have noticed. Non-TSBD people would have had easier access to better vantage points at the side of the street. If the figure on the steps isn't a member of the public, it must be a TSBD employee. Of the few TSBD employees whose claimed locations at the time of the assassination were uncorroborated, there is only one whose appearance is consistent with that of the figure on the steps: Oswald. It's possible that the release of better-quality images will rule out Oswald. It's also possible that it will confirm Oswald as the figure on the steps. Until such images become available, Oswald is the most likely candidate. It holds plenty of water. We can be sure that Oswald was in the first-floor lunchroom when he was supposed to have been on the sixth floor, sorting out his sniper's nest and assembling his rifle, for the reasons I gave in my previous comment, on page 6. Witnesses placed him on the first floor, and his story about seeing Jarman and Norman entering the rear of the building is corroborated by Jarman and Norman themselves. If, as appears to be the case, Oswald was on the first floor at the same time as a gunman was seen on the sixth floor, any involvement Oswald might have had in the assassination could not have included firing any shots. As I pointed out on another thread (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28238-why-lho-was-involved-in-the-jfka/?do=findComment&comment=475129), we only have the cops' word that Oswald had a gun on him when arrested, and there are reasons to doubt the cops' account. There is an innocent explanation for Oswald's presence at the Texas Theater: he had been told that he was no longer needed at work, and he was occupying some time before meeting Marina and Ruth at one of the nearby shoe shops. We know that Ruth Paine intended to take Marina shopping for shoes that afternoon. This too is something I explained earlier. Oswald needn't have been murdered to prevent him spilling the beans about any involvement he might have had in an assassination plot. He might just as easily have been murdered if he were completely innocent of any involvement, simply to prevent him testifying at a trial, when he would be able to explain his alibi in detail. Anyone who feared the collapse of the lone-gunman explanation, whether they had planned the assassination or merely fitted up the patsy after the event, would have had the motivation to eliminate Oswald. All the main suspects had connections to Jack Ruby.

Benjamin Cole writes: It's reasonable to assume that the surviving first-hand accounts of Oswald's interrogations have some truth to them, even though this evidence was misrepresented in the Warren Report. Oswald appears to have provided the FBI and the police with the following sequence of his movements: He began his lunch break at around mid-day. He went down to the first floor to eat his lunch in the domino room. He went up to the second-floor lunch room to obtain a drink. He returned to the domino room and continued to eat his lunch. He saw James Jarman and Harold Norman enter the rear of the building. He went out to watch the parade. While outside, he heard Bill Shelley state that there would be no more work that day. Corroboration exists for most of these claims: Several employees claimed that the lunch break began at around 11.45. Charles Givens (CD 5, p.329), Eddie Piper (WCHE, vol.6, p.383), and Bill Shelley (WCHE, vol.6, p.328) saw Oswald on the first floor during the lunch break. James Jarman (WCHE, vol.3, pp.201–202) and Harold Norman (WCHE, vol.3, pp.189–190) stated that they entered the rear of the building at around 12.25 (for the timing of this incident and a fuller discussion of Oswald's alibi, see http://22november1963.org.uk/lee-harvey-oswald-alibi). Carolyn Arnold claimed in her first statement (CD 5, p.41) to have seen Oswald just inside the front entrance. There are two films that show someone who resembles Oswald, standing in the doorway shortly after the shooting. If that figure turns out to be Oswald, it would be corroboration for an important part of his alibi. At least some of what Oswald claimed to have done is corroborated by other employees. Oswald appears to have been open and honest with the FBI and the police about his movements at around the time of the assassination. If that's the case, it leaves open the possibility that Oswald had no advance knowledge that anyone would be shooting at JFK that day. On the subject of this thread, it also leaves open the possibility that the second-floor encounter did not happen and was a contrivance based on a genuine encounter between Oswald and a police officer at the front of the building when Oswald was leaving the premises.

Benjamin Cole writes: Did he actually go home to get a revolver, though? We only have the cops' word for that. It was not unknown for the police in those days to plant weapons on suspects when arresting them. More than one witness made a statement consistent with the revolver being planted on Oswald during his arrest. It would be mainly to prevent him giving his alibi at a trial. The case against Oswald is flimsy enough as it is, even with his side of the argument having barely survived. If he had gone on to testify at a trial, he would have been able to fill in the details of the two elements of his alibi that have been preserved: his sighting of James Jarman and Harold Norman entering the rear of the building at around 12.25, by which time a gunman had been sighted on the sixth floor; and his going outside to watch the parade. A trial would have been liable to destroy the lone-gunman explanation. The Dallas police would have been well aware of this, as would other institutions which possessed the ability to arrange Oswald's elimination. This assumes that the plan had designated Oswald as the lone gunman in advance, an assumption that may not be justified. We know that the shooting was interpreted originally as a conspiracy, and that the conspiratorial explanation was replaced by the lone-gunman explanation for political reasons (to divert attention from the Cuban, Soviet and US regimes, all of which were variously suspected of being behind a conspiracy). We can't rule out the notion that Oswald knew something about what was going to happen, or even that he played an active part. But since a simpler explanation is available, we should apply Occam's Razor and conclude, provisionally, that Oswald need not have known anything or had any active involvement.

People often assume that the way things are is the way things have to be. In the case of the JFK assassination, critics of the lone-nut hypothesis often assume that everything that happened must have been intended to happen. Many lone-nut critics over the years have jumped to the conclusion that the events of that day, including some of the tiniest details, were carefully planned in advance, and have concocted a variety of remarkably elaborate conspiratorial scenarios to explain these events. The more details that need to be explained as part of a conspiracy, the more elaborate and, usually, the less plausible the resulting theory will be. Often, the details that are explained only exist in the lone-nut hypothesis, and don't require a conspiratorial explanation at all. One such detail is the presence of Oswald in the so-called sniper's nest. We can be reasonably sure that any plan to incriminate Oswald would not have required him to be on the sixth floor himself, since he almost certainly wasn't there. As Greg points out, all that was required was for a rifle, which could be linked to Oswald, to be discovered in the vicinity of the crime scene. The implausibility of some of these over-elaborate conspiratorial explanations is counter-productive. As well as alienating reasonable members of the public, it allows lone-nut supporters to point out, correctly in some cases, that these claims are more implausible than their own implausible claim. The practical problem with the 'everything that happened was carefully worked out in advance' idea is, of course, that any carefully worked-out sequence of events is liable to be derailed by one small, unforeseen mishap, such as the predetermined sixth-floor-assassin patsy not showing up for work that day. If Oswald had phoned in sick, or if Frazier had phoned in sick, or if Frazier's 9-year-old car had refused to start or broke down on the 15-mile journey to work or was involved in a collision en route, or if some domestic emergency had occurred in the Oswald or Frazier households that morning, the patsy can't be placed on the sixth floor and the assassination gets cancelled. Likewise, if the rain that morning had continued until the start of the motorcade, and the glass roof on the car made a shooting attempt impractical, the assassination gets cancelled. Unless the assassination was the work of a lone nut or particularly amateurish conspirators, there must have been a Plan B. It could be argued that the Dallas motorcade was itself a Plan B (or a Plan C or D), following the cancelled motorcades in Chicago and Miami and the uneventful motorcade in Tampa. Maybe there was a Plan E, in case the Dallas attempt had to be called off. But it's also conceivable that the Dallas motorcade itself contained its own Plan B or C or D. After all, there were plenty of tall buildings in downtown Dallas, and it was impractical for every high window to be secured. Other opportunities, not necessarily requiring JFK to be shot, might have presented themselves before and after the motorcade: at the airport and at the Trade Mart. This scenario has the huge benefit, for any conspirators, of allowing for unpredictable changes of circumstances on the day. If Plan A is ruled out by, for example, the sudden unavailability of your sixth-floor-assassin patsy, go to Plan B, or Plan C. Maybe Oswald himself was the Plan B or Plan C that day. There is an uncontroversial historical precedent for this type of scenario. We know of the shooting of a political figure, half a century before the JFK assassination, that took place during a motorcade, in which several alternative assassins were in position along the route: the assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Joseph McBride writes (with strange paragraph breaks remmoved): I wouldn't argue with the first sentence, but the fact that the woman was panning her camera doesn't necessarily mean that she was taking a home movie. Panning is a standard technique with still cameras too. It takes a bit of practice, and it's easy to end up with a blurred picture. This may explain the Wikipedia quote: "Mack said that he was told by the Kodak executive that the photo was extremely blurry and 'virtually useless'". Gary Mack's comments to the ARRB include some interesting details that the Wikipedia article omits. Technicians at Kodak were asked to try to sharpen the picture, but replied that there was nothing they could do. Although the focus was "way, way off", the exposure was "terrific". It's conceivable that computer manipulation of the image, if it ever comes to light, would allow elements to be identified that were undetectable at the time by visual examination of the original slide. Mack thought there was a good chance that the woman whose film was developed by Kodak that afternoon was the Babushka Lady. I'm not so sure. The woman at the Kodak lab apparently claimed that "she was running from Main Street up to Elm Street across the grass, realized she wasn't going to get there close enough, stopped and took a picture. In the foreground were some people standing on the south curb of Elm Street." But images of the scene, especially the slide taken by Charles Bronson at around Zapruder frame 220, contradict this account in three ways: The Babushka Lady can be seen to be standing at the curb, stationary, a few seconds before the presidential car arrived. She was easily "close enough" and in a very good position to take a photograph. There are no spectators between her and the presidential limousine. A number of spectators did indeed run across the grass from Main Street towards Elm Street. Some were captured in Charles Bronson's slide. Although none of these spectators appear to be holding a camera, it is conceivable that another woman with a camera was in the area to Bronson's right, which is obscured by a pillar. So that makes two possible missing photographs of the presidential limousine, each of them taken while the shooting was happening: the Babushka Lady's photo (or home movie) and the blurred photo taken by the woman at the Kodak lab. At least one of those images would probably include the book depository, the Dal-Tex building, or other areas of interest. Here are Mack's comments in full: For Beverly Oliver's uninformative testimony, see pages 41-43 of that document.

Michael Griffiths writes: It is probably the most far-fetched JFK conspiracy theory I've come across on this forum, and that's saying something. Michael is correct; this stuff discredits critics of the lone-nut theory. Imagine that you're a rational member of the public who is aware that there is a controversy around the assassination. You decide to look into the subject, and you discover that there are people who claim that JFK was killed to prevent him spilling the beans about the little green men who walk among us. You assume that it's a joke, but you look into it further and you discover that these people appear to genuinely believe this stuff. It doesn't give a good impression, does it? I'm not sure that Douglas Caddy has read the newspaper article he gave a link to. The article isn't evidence that crop circles are constructed by little green men. It's evidence that crop circles were and are constructed by normal-sized non-green men (and women), using lengths of string and bits of wood. Surely no-one these days thinks there's any other explanation for crop circles?

Sandy Larsen writes: Because, although it may be the simplest explanation, it isn't the simplest plausible explanation. Plausibility is essential. That's why poorly supported far-fetched explanations should be dismissed. Nice example of begging the question there. It reminds me of Wesley Liebeler's remark in his memo to the Warren Commission that "the best evidence that Oswald could fire his rifle as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he did so". As I explained, the fact that Oswald got a job in the book depository does not mean that this was necessarily part of the plan; it might have been a coincidence that was seized on by the planners. As I also explained, if it was actually part of the plan, this part of the plan only required the co-operation of one insider at the book depository, and that insider need not have known why he was being asked to employ Oswald. (The insider would have been Roy Truly, of course.) Again, you don't need a huge, complex and implausible operation to explain Oswald's presence at the TSBD. I'm not sure there's any good evidence for multiple shooters in the book depository. There's probably stronger evidence for no shooters in the book depository (although I'm not convinced of that, either). I'm afraid I am. The invention of overly complicated scenarios is not a good way to determine the facts. And the way to do that is not to construct elaborate theories to account for every trivial fact and anomaly. If you assume that everything that happened must have been part of a carefully thought-out plot, you're almost certainly going to arrive at an incorrect model of the conspiracy. Many open-minded members of the public have indeed been convinced, but many others haven't. The public has been told by the media that their only choice is between the lone-nut explanation and far-fetched, quasi-paranoid conspiracy theories. When open-minded people decide to look into the matter for themselves, and they find that the choice is indeed between the lone-nut explanation and far-fetched, quasi-paranoid conspiracy theories, which option are they likely to choose? And how sympathetic will they be to getting the case reopened and a proper investigation performed? Without pressure from the general public, a serious official investigation isn't likely to happen.

Deleted - wrong thread! Duh!