Joe Bauer

That is a great aerial view photo of New Orleans.

Graphic photos like this really help in getting a more informed context of the many New Orleans aspects of the JFK assassination story and research.

Thanks to DJ for posting this.

20 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Joe,

 

You wrote, "As I speculated earlier, if Marina was "assigned" some type of covert role in this whole affair, the unlucky straw she pulled before hand must have been the absolute shortest."

 

I agree.

 

I don't know if she was "assigned" here or not, or if she was "assigned", who "assigned" her and for what purpose.

Nor do I know if the people who possibly "assigned" her, had any inkling what her life was going to be like.

I've just been thinking out loud.

Somebody, and I can't remember who, wrote that the Mercedes St. address was in a really crappy part of town.

 

Steve Thomas

Steve.

Just to let you know...I read everything you post. Your research postings are that intriguingly interesting and thought provoking.

Your Revolt Of The Colonels thread especially .

On 2/2/2018 at 7:38 AM, Steve Thomas said:

Joe,

 

You had asked about the 100 dresses. You might be interested in this interview with George and Jeanne DeMohrenschildt.

I had never seen it before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqySTi0-1YY

 

Steve Thomas

Steve, I have viewed this You Tube posted video many times.

It is very intriguing.

One has to decide for themselves what to make of it and how much of the DeM comments they choose to believe as true versus less true.

The part about the 100 dresses indicates Marina was given many items of clothing from sympathetic White Russian community women. But how much did this honestly improve Marina's life with Lee for the next year and a half?

Marina obviously discarded most of these dresses by the time she was sleeping at other people's homes and finally moved in full time with Ruth Paine.

The interview actually bolsters my take on the stresses Marina went through all during her time with Lee point after point.

George DeM talks about the "tenement" housing Marina and Lee were living in when they first met them all the way back to mid-1962.

Jeanne DeM mentions Marina being helped out with basic needs for baby June such as a simple crib.

Marina and Lee's time together in the U.S. was one continuous basic needs stressful dependency on others. This had to be extremely degrading, humiliating and depressing for Marina.

As I speculated earlier, if Marina was "assigned" some type of covert role in this whole affair, the unlucky straw she pulled before hand must have been the absolute shortest.

Making Marina and her baby live all that time ( 1 and 1/2 years ) one step above humiliating homelessness alongside a depressive man who was talking about taking violent risks (or perhaps even carrying them out)  and that would terrify the average young mother, seems a spy assignment too depriving and sacrificing to believe.
 

Doug, it's stomach wrenching mind blowing to know this same doomsday madness is still with us and as much a possibility as not.

JFK knew this was madness. And it cost him his life in seriously trying to change course to prevent it.

On 1/31/2018 at 9:39 AM, Steve Thomas said:

Joe,

 

I do not want to make light of your thoughts. It's obvious that you have spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I respect that.

 

I do not know if Marina was a sleeper agent or not. I haven't come to a conclusion.

My only thoughts were:

If Gary Taylor can be believed, at 23 years of age, Marina was making four times what Lee was making in the Soviet Union. Who do you think was the breadwinner here?

Steve, thanks for the respectful response.

First, could you explain why Marina making more income than Lee in Russia is important? Maybe she thought this situation would reverse itself in America?

Marina marries Oswald six weeks after meeting him. (She did the same with Kenneth Porter. She married him one month after meeting him).

Millions of young couples marry almost immediately after they meet, especially one's from poorer backgrounds. I asked my wife to marry me after only two months of meeting her.

The mercurial 1 month Porter thing is curious, but maybe Marina was just that instantly and fully gratified by him?

She's got an uncle who's a colonel in the GRU. She's plucked from obscurity and flown halfway around the world. Eight months later she's writing the Soviet Union trying to get back. She says it's because Lee was forcing her to, but who knows?

Her explanation of being forced to do this by Lee is as believable as any other based on the known fact of Lee's domineering and controlling behavior toward her.

As for living in poverty here in the U.S., I think it was DeMohrenschildt who told the WC that she must have had over one hundred dresses.

I wonder, were these dresses new ones she picked out herself at a retail store and were purchased for her by the White Russians?

Or were they older generation style hand-me-downs she graciously accepted but would never really wear and kept so as to not offend her well meaning benefactors?

And wasn't it in the last months of her life with Lee that she acquired these? She also was given things for her baby, perhaps a decent bed after it was known June was sleeping in a suitcase?

And used clothes are one thing, how many times was Marina actually handed real funds for her personal use and to give her some actual self control and power in her life? 

When Gary Taylor moved them to Elsbeth St., he had to rent a trailer to carry their belongings. When Demohrenschildt moved her out of Elsbeth on a temporary separation from Lee, his car was so full, it was dragging on the ground; but when they moved from Elsbeth to Neely, they moved their belongings in a baby stroller. What happened to all their furniture?

Much of the bulk of their belongings was probably clothes like those 100 dresses and many other donated items. Marina must have discarded most of them by the time they moved to the Neely address.

Did the Oswalds "ever" own much furniture? If they did, it probably wasn't more than second hand stuff not even worth keeping during moves.

And renting "one" trailer ( probably small compared to today's larger ones ) for a young couple with child doesn't seem any more indicative of a more provided for situation than less so.

Her sojourn in the U.S. could be analagous to a lower-level mob guy who's asked to sit it out for a couple of years in the pen and not rat the boss out, with the promise that the boss will make it up to him after he does his stretch.

Ha!  Regards this analogy...

Asking a young mother with an infant child (and carrying another for 9 months) to live as stressed, depressed and embarrassingly dependent on others as constantly moved around Marina usually was with Lee ( would in some ways be more "worried mom" stressful than a guy in prison with three meals and health care provided and no rent to worry about ) is asking more than I can believe they would. 

*shrug* I don't know.

I think that many in the Marina research community inadequately consider the true "real life" stresses Marina experienced with Lee beginning not long after arriving to the U.S. and increasing all the way up to and even beyond 11,22,1963.

Place yourself in Marina Oswald's shoes during all this time. I mean seriously and honestly so.

Imagine moving as many times as Marina had to move and usually into lowest rent, pretty run down places, all with an infant child to care for and going through another 9 months of pregnancy. And include months of having to live with others ( who you may not even like ) and being dependent on them for the most basic of needs? That is humiliating to most anyone.

And throughout this entire time your family never has a car and you must depend on others for the most basic transportation needs. You must occasionally wonder what you will do if your baby needs to see a doctor day or night.

You are much more confined to your residence and often alone in this way. You have no income of your own and your husband makes little income and is very controlling ( and reportedly tightfisted ) in deciding how to spend this.

You do not have any outside friendship or social life and your husband doesn't want this for you.

Being from another very different country and culture only enhances this feeling of isolation. What do you listen to on the radio? Everything is in English.

Your one indulgent desire to smoke is met with angry orders to stop by your husband.

You fight often with your husband. He is overly serious and prefers reading more than conversing.You have problems in the area of intimacy.

Your husband goes from one lowest pay job to another.

He is secretive and doesn't even tell you what he is up to sometimes ( his New Orleans political activities. ) He tells you things that are dangerous and scary sounding like hijacking planes.

He asks you to take pictures of him brandishing guns and holding provocative literature.

You know or suspect he has done something crazy like the Walker thing, which puts you and your child at great risk if he is found out.

Your physical health needs are seriously neglected ( teeth and prenatal care ) and only addressed through the assistance of others.

Finally you are forced to live full time with others and depend on them for you and your baby's needs. You are separating to the breaking point from your husband on every level.

Days after giving birth to your second baby you then are thrust head first into a terrifying historic crime nightmare beyond description and imagination. 

A police, federal agency and press hyper-scrutiny chaos beyond anybody's wildest nightmare dreams.

This is Marina's daily reality!

It is crazy and traumatic beyond imagination.How many women could get through this just days after giving birth? A women's mind and body and hormones are already drained and exhausted in that situation.

You don't have to exaggerate or embellish any of these facts regarding the massive stresses in Marina's life up to and through the JFK assassination.

Could Marina have had a secret spy agenda life ( even a "laying low" one ) throughout her time  with Lee here in the states through all this?

Yes, I must admit that scenario is still possible. 

However, if she did and was able to keep it all inside of her throughout those years of highest level turmoil, stress and suspicion minded scrutiny and also throughout the rest of her relatively long life, and no one to this day has come up with distinctly clear proof to verify that proposition, I would classify Marina as one of the most uniquely steeled and clever women to ever participate in the highest level of political spy games ever.  

 

 

Steve Thomas

 

My earlier post on Marina was not meant to be an immature and forum distracting joke.

Like so many others here I have occasionally considered Marina Oswald very seriously as potentially much more involved in the larger picture ( same goes for the Paines and George DeM ) in ways beyond just being a naive young wife and mother who innocently got caught up in all this through incredible and unfortunate fate. 

Marina couldn't help being looked at as a more intriguing character than not simply because of her childhood and young adult background in Russia which was provenly different enough in certain ways to arouse at least some valid suspicion regards her true character.

I admit I sometimes post personal observations and views on forum subjects that veer from the more serious research ones and apologize for this, as I know that too much of this isn't good for the forum in maintaining it's highly regarded integrity.

Still however, I do think that in regards to Marina Oswald research, it isn't totally frivolous ( or illogical ) to include stepping back and looking at her life with Lee Oswald here in America in a "real life-every day living" type way to at least some degree and how this may or may not figure into the much speculated and more sinister scenario that she was a sleeper agent with much more involvement in the whole affair than she has ever claimed.

In my practical life experience view, Marina's everyday life here in this country up until 11,22,1963 was overall extremely deprived, difficult and depressing, even dispiriting and exhausting.

Of course all young couples who have very little money or wages and no family help in this area have a "rough go" in the beginning acquiring decent housing and basic needs. Especially when they also have a baby to feed and care for. Sometimes it's simply too rough and the stress breaks them apart within the first few months or years.

Marina and Lee did not have such stress in Russia. That beginning stress free time together surely must have given them a feeling of security enough in their relationship to embark on their journey to America with more optimistic hope than not, as naive as that feeling was.

Marina grew up in a world hugely less materially affluent than what most Americans were used to.

Coming here and her first views of everything so different must have been at least somewhat exciting to her.

I could see her thinking, after arriving in America and getting her first separate housing with Lee, that just having a whole one bedroom apartment to herself, Lee and their baby was something special in itself, even if these apartments may have been somewhat rundown and in less than the better parts of town.

I could also picture her optimistic wonder at first seeing American chain grocery stores with more food available with incredible variety in beautiful displays than she had ever seen in Russia. I read once that Lee had written or mentioned Marina eating new foods too much and getting sick.

But, we all know the details of how life for Marina with Lee steadily changed in becoming more stressed in so many ways. So stressed that she and her baby's most basic needs were more and more unmet and had to be provided for by outsiders as Lee simply wasn't up to the task.

And Marina's personal relationship with Lee had also clearly deteriorated to serious talk of separation beyond that already present with her moving in with other families. If the JFK assassination hadn't happened, what would have happened to Marina and Lee and their relationship?

In my mind, the more I view in a real life practical way the list of all the heavy emotional, physical and financial/material stresses ( the list is long ) that Marina and her baby were experiencing with and then apart from Lee for many, many months up until 11,22,1963, I find it harder and harder not to believe that if Marina was involved in some risky covert activities beyond all this extreme daily stress that at some point her motherly love and concern for her baby's well being "alone" would drive her to confront her handlers with something like the desperate plea I made up in my earlier post.

It seems to me that Marina was far too occupied with the daily struggle of dealing and coping with and finding an escape from the more and more basic needs stressed life she and their child were experiencing with Lee than to be carrying out secret covert instructions from others.

I know the spy life has often been revealed as much less glamorous and much more mundane than the suave and first class travel Bond image, but Marina's life with Lee took on a level of unmet basic needs poverty and humiliating dependence on others so pronounced, that one has to consider why any secret agency would put a mother-with-child agent through this.

This was depression era stuff. 

With Marina's extremely attractive beauty, one would think a major spy organization would instead use her more in an Ellen Rometsch honey trap type role versus a vagabond poverty struggling one.

Just a "real world" thought here regarding Marina Oswald.

If Marina was in some way involved in a sleeper agent role, I could imagine her real life complaints to her handlers after two years of hard living with Lee Oswald.

Hey, I am tired of moving from one dumpy apartment to another ( one with cockroaches! ) in poor areas.

I'm tired of not having enough clothes or food for my baby and not even a proper bed. This guy Lee knocks me around, he's too often sullen and jealous, our sex life is lousy , we fight too often, he's into guns and cameras when we need basic living items more, he gets and leaves one low paying job after another, he can't even drive a car, my teeth need fixing, I can't smoke, I am always broke.

We are so dependent on others for basics it's humiliating, I'm forced to live with someone who I don't even like ( she reportedly didn't really like Ruth Paine ) Lee's mother is a bothersome nut case, ...comrades please!  I wouldn't have signed onto this assignment if I knew that living here would be harder and more desperate and humiliating than back home. Two years of this?

My baby deserves better.

If Marina's sleeper agent role involved going through all this, I would say this was one horrible way to attract new recruits for such assignments in the future. If there was a sinister "they" directing Marina she sure got one super lousy and depressing assignment and a quite sacrificing one for her baby's basic needs.

Paul, I think I understand the message you share regards "The Post" choosing to shine an inspiring and heroic light on the importance of influential individuals standing tall in the face of wrong doing, in this case the well known Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee and the part they played in the PP story,  versus a broader and perhaps more historically accurate Ellsberg centered story line.

We all know what the big movie business is all about in making films that draw in paying customers with the profit and loss dynamic being the bottom line one over any other.

And the time tested formula for success in this highly competitive and expensive entertainment market place is almost always film story lines centered around right versus wrong fighting heroes often no matter how possibly exaggerated and debatably inaccurate that portrayal may be.

Knowing all that and not expecting people like Spielberg and Hanks to veer from that formula I still find their film here, using a historical event of the importance of the PP as a backdrop for one of their feel good ending, debatable hero movies, crosses a line in respect to hampering other heroes who are still fighting forces that to this day are still working to promote a false alternative truth of this super important event which hurts all of us and the democracy we want and need to keep. 

The film actually enables and bolsters those PP alternative truth forces in ways that Jim Di outlines .

And will even more so when millions of people world wide see it is so prominently showcased and praised on the massive audience Academy Awards presentation.

Just read your review.

Very informing and thought provoking as always.

Much to mentally chew on.

Still, the historical reality remains that Nixon and his staff were truly majorly corrupt and their exposing and removal might very well had not happened were it not for the actions of a few key high position beltway people no matter their personal agendas.

And I have a hard time accepting L. Patrick Grey in this affair as someone much less complicit and knowingly unethical than the L. Patrick Grey in the film "Mark Felt" for the same reasons the confirmation hearing committee expressed.

Looking at Hunt's files with John Dean and Erlichman and then destroying these? Grey didn't fully understand the potential legal conflict of interest and consequences of this meeting and that action?

By the way, I am a huge fan of Neeson. And of Diane Lane.

Lane's part in the Felt film was limited but with her equally professional understated talent, she enhanced every scene she was in and her co-star's performance as well.

Is the "Most Dangerous Man In America" available on You Tube?

Last night, my wife and I viewed our latest mail received Net Flix film "Mark Felt- The Man Who Brought Down The White House" starring Liam Neeson as Felt.

Most of the critic's views and ratings of this film were less than good, but much of their reviews were based on structure, style and presentation as one would expect.

I am curious what others here, esp. Jim Di thought of the film from a content point of view.

The only mention of the Washington Post were two or three very brief scenes of Felt meeting or talking to Bob Woodward. Bradley and Graham were never mentioned once.

What was totally intriguing ( if true ) was what was really going on between Nixon and his criminal gang and the FBI and especially Mark Felt who apparently single-handedly prevented Nixon and his cronies ( including L.Patrick Grey and the nefarious William Sullivan ) from taking over control of the Agency to squash the entire Watergate affair.

Again, this story if true, reveals Mark Felt as a true American hero.  Much more so than I ever realized.

The film is heavy from start to finish and totally focused on a single plot line only ( except the search for Felt's missing daughter ) so I can see why it did so poorly at the box office. But it's message of government watchfulness and whistle blowing responsibility is timeless in it's importance

...and the film was "uncannily" reflective ( I mean SPOT ON ) of what is happening today with Trump and the current investigations into his possible criminal misdeeds.

Also, what always angers me about that time period was how Nixon and his entire cabal framed themselves as the "Law and Order", "Moral Majority" party that America so desperately needed to defend itself against free love hippies and black coddling commies like certified World War II hero George McGovern.

But even more outrageous is how the majority of voting Americans embraced that lie ( the 1972 election was a landslide ) and allowed our country to be run by those crooks who were THE OPPOSITE of ... the true good guys.

Americans who fell for that crap and voted for the lying crook Nixon should have been called to account for their stupidity, ignorance and irresponsible empowerment of that disaster ( TWICE! ) and told to "think and read more" about who is really good and moral when it comes to choosing who leads us. Especially now!

But, I feel those Nixon voters never gave a seconds thought to their huge and costly mistake in judgement and discernment in their voting choices back in 1968 through 1972...hence still voting for future Republicans who would again and again repeat that BS that they are somehow more moral than Democrats or others. Will the majority of future American voters ever learn? 

Mostly, up to now, they have not.

On 1/27/2018 at 5:01 PM, Pat Speer said:

FWIW, I've talked to Frazier four times now. Twice in 2014, once in 2015, and then again last year. And he comes across as deeply sincere. He has decided to cash in a bit on his celebrity, however. He set up a table at last year's Lancer Conference, and sold autographed paper bags filled with curtain rods for twenty bucks, as I remember. He also told me he's working on a book, describing his experiences. I told him he should make sure to provide some detail about his TSBD co-workers, as it's hard to get much of a feel for these people from the existing record.

(He told me Jack Dougherty was not retarded and was actually quite a pleasant guy, who loved to read. I told him that's not how people studying the historical record would perceive him, and told him he should set the record straight, about Dougherty, as well as Oswald.)

Beull Frazier has as much right to make some income from sharing his story as everyone else who has done so because they had ( simply by fate ) some more than minor personal interaction relationship with the main characters of the JFK event, especially close to and including the day of 11,22,1963.

And I'm sure the total of what Frazier has earned so far from sharing his up close personal interaction experience with Oswald is relative peanuts.

Buell Wesley Frazier always seemed to me a character right out of central casting for the Andy Griffith Show. A Gomer or Guber type person.

Seriously, I make this comparison not to make fun or disparage him, but rather to make note of what I believe was his innate innocent honesty.

Here is a poor country feller who kindly and generously gives another poor co-worker rides to and from work, in his cheap car that doesn't even start sometimes, without expecting gas money and who even doesn't mind Oswald not being a normally friendly ridemate who you would think might give BWF at least the appreciative courtesy of making pleasant small talk along the way.

Uncynical Frazier doesn't see Oswald's boorishness negatively,  and instead describes him as simply a "quiet feller."

And BWF changing his 11,22,1963 story "a little" after 39 years?  That's normal to me in the course of hearing stories from others after 4 decades of their first telling these.

Frazier does also mention years later the "fear factor" in his mind that day and for who knows how long afterwards. Many people who were witnesses to the Dealey Plaza nightmare on Elm Street on 11,22,1963 ( and reported other related interactions involving Oswald, Ruby, etc, ) have related this same feeling of fear. 

When you see something as bloody and horrific as they did and seconds later the almost unbelievable gun drawn, trigger nervous, mad dash, siren blaring tension all around you with scores of police running to and fro in frantic pursuit of suspects, of course you may not want to thrust yourself even further into that frightening chaos. Sharing what you personally saw that day became even more ominous later, when there were newspaper reports of threats ( reportedly some even from the police themselves ) to people for doing so.

In Beull's Frazier's case, this scenerio is magnified 10X as he is aggressively sought out and thrown into a police car ( as an accomplice suspect!) and during hours of confrontational questioning eventually dragged into Captain Fritz's office where he is actually confronted by a desperately angry and shouting Fritz who demands he .... "sign a confession!"

Frazier would of course be fearful, who wouldn't be? Most people would be terrified and exhausted at this point.

But Frazier is also no shaking mouse and far from real life dumb.

 He knows what's going on here. And he is of a tougher self and truth telling honor defense fiber than Fritz may have assumed and tells Fritz where to shove his confession and that if he wants to dog fight over his refusal to sign it, he'd better figure on being hit with some real good licks on Frazier's part.  Fritz backs down!

But if anybody in this whole affair would have a rational reason to be totally scared about talking under such lynch mob dangerous circumstances and maybe saying something that could bring harm to themselves or their families, it is BWF.

Who wouldn't be prone to unintentionally leaving out, not remembering or misstating some details of such a traumatic event, especially when they are so aggressively manhandled and can see that they themselves are being considered as possible suspects in the horrific crime?

Mute Ed Hoffman's father lied about his own's son's veracity...to save him from what the father perceived as a life risking danger of seeing things he shouldn't have seen.

Helen Markham lied and changed her Oswald/Tippit murder testimony so much she came across as a total looney bin. She willingly did this out of total fear. Fear of knowing or seeing too much for her own sense of self preservation.

Just giving some general true examples ( could cite more ) that we all know about regarding 11,22,1963 eye witnesses feeling fear about sharing what they saw that day to the authorities which imo validates BWF's explanation for his initial same day interview statements and why there might be contradictions compared to his 4 decades later ones.

1 hour ago, Don Jeffries said:

 

The Post is the kind of film that exemplifies everything wrong with our media, and our society. The entire gist of the film is to make establishment liberal-type heroes (the kind of man Tom Hanks imagines himself to be, I suppose) out of an editor and publisher who, in reality, did everything they could to appease the powerful elite in this country. More importantly for those interested in this particular subject, they slandered the true heroes who investigated a crime that "professionals" wouldn't, and did everything they could to cover up the truth about the JFK assassination. 

I believe that most Americans today are historically illiterate. They don't even know anything about the "fake" official narratives, so how do we expose the lies and cover ups behind them? I only read some of the threads here now, and am frankly shocked at the level of discourse. Jim DiEugenio has a great deal of patience. If you've studied this case to any degree at all, you should know how big this conspiracy was, and how the cover up continues. And you certainly should be able to spot a piece of disinformation like The Post for what it is. 

Here! Here!

Steve, I just read the entire Raigorodsky testimony...deposition?

Whew, had to take many breaks in so doing.

A lot of interesting stuff.

My injured body mind can't come up with anything substantial to say about it all right now. However, will comment later when I can do so.

George DeM.  What a character. His fellow Russians were sure bent on portraying his personality negatively. Constantly mentioning him as an immature man in that he told jokes at parties and laughed a little too much.

In my view, DeM was a person you'd "want" at a social gathering to keep things light. Those other Russians seemed far too serious and maybe DeM just had to knock them over a little bit to lighten them up.

The Dallas Russians seemed extremely "class conscious." Always citing their own higher education and corporate accomplishments. Judging others and dismissing them as lower class if they didn't have the right breeding. 

I have to assume that in his regular visits to Houston that DeM had to have interacted with oil man G.H.W. Bush. Weren't there a lot of dots connecting George and Herman Brown to Bush?

1 minute ago, Cory Santos said:

Ha, yes in the early 1980s I believe and it was nothing.

It was a disgrace!

How much?

Just viewed the U.S.S. Liberty video.

Dear God !

Were the Liberty victims ( including families of the deceased ) ever offered or given any reparations?

On 1/25/2018 at 6:25 AM, Ray Mitcham said:

Maybe Hosty just fancied Marina.

Ray, your stated thought and question above regards Hosty fancying Marina ( and so many other men in the whole Marina and Lee story ) is a more important one deserving of more consideration than just trivial asides joking imo.

Marina's youthful, physically attractive appearance was always a real dynamic in how it effected her's and Lee's relationship in that it caused much jealousy in Lee when he saw how drawn to Marina other men were and especially men of better means than Lee.  I am sure that Lee felt that Marina was offered assistance and sympathy by some of these other men for more reasons than simple platonic humanitarian concern.

Many men are like lustful wolves when they come across a beautiful young woman who is in a vulnerable marriage situation and vulnerable themselves..like Marina totally was.

Does anyone actually believe that Jeanne and horn dog George DeM would have become as involved with the Oswalds if Marina looked like Nina Khrushchev? 

Or anything like the Cold War posters of heavy set, thick ankled, weathered faced, missing toothed, grey babushka and dirty farm coat wearing Russian women standing next to the family plow?

The constant eyeing and circling interest of these wolves around Marina must have driven Lee Oswald batty at times. 

When I first saw Marina Oswald giving that "Marina, what do you do all day?" nationally televised interview, I too was instantly smitten. She was simply gorgeous, even with her missing tooth which she so self-consciously tried to hide. 

She seemed totally vulnerable in that scene which made her even more attractive.

Marina's youthful and vulnerable beauty combined with her Russian mystery background created a main character that made the entire Lee and Marina story much more attractively intriguing and clearly effected the actions of those who willingly interacted with them.

If Lee Oswald had married a frumpy, thick necked, farm plow pushing Russian woman instead of a gorgeous young Lee Remick look-a-like, who knows ... maybe Oswald's life after returning to the U.S. from Russia may not have taken the tragic history changing turn it did.

Not saying Wallace shot at or killed JFK.

I do believe he killed Henry Marshall.

LBJ'S employing, protecting and promoting a convicted murderer for many years clearly implies a "Godfather" type role and relationship between he and Wallace.

I'm always amazed at how successful LBJ's defenders have been in keeping the truth of his massive corruption out of the main stream historical record.

Same with Hoover.

3 hours ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Joe, you are right on in what you perceive and write about above.

In her book, “Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas,” Professor Joan Mellen goes to extraordinary shameful lengths to attack and darken the character of U.S. Marshal Clint Peoples, a truly great American whom  I feel privileged to have known.  Mellen’s book, nevertheless, is definitely worth reading to get an overall picture of what Texas was like when LBJ and his crooked cronies ruled the state unchallenged. Mellen focuses in her book on Malcolm (Mac) Wallace, whom Billie Sol asserted was a stone cold killer that LBJ used when necessary. In her book, Mellen writes, “Mac Wallace is a case in point, his history with Lyndon Johnson is a window into Johnson’s methods. Wallace’s story is so intriguing because, unlike other of Johnson’s acolytes, it is difficult to prove what he did for Lyndon Johnson and what Lyndon Johnson did, in turn, for him. More than any other of Johnson’s protégés and acolytes, Wallace’s connection to him remains cloaked in secrecy.

“In the major events of Mac Wallace’s life, Lyndon Johnson remains invisible. Yet one truth is irrefutable. Everything that was positive and promising in Wallace’s life came to him before he made the acquaintance of Lyndon Baines Johnson and joined Johnson’s circle.”

 

Was Malcolm Wallace LBJ's personal "hit man?"

I believe he was.

Mac Wallace's brazen, middle of the day, multiple witness, confessed murder of John Douglas Kinser and his subsequent beyond belief suspended sentence by a crooked Johnson crony Judge "forces" anyone with a rational mind to view Mac Wallace as potentially every bad and dangerous character he has been alleged or accused to be afterwards.

Wallace's psychological decent into murderous craziness was real. No debate there. As was his odd and beholden connection to LBJ.

Wallace' positive achievements ( many high academic ones) as a young man seem shockingly out of character versus his manic chasing down of Kinser and filling him full of bullet holes.

I am sure almost every reader of the Mac Wallace story finds this Kinser murder turning point ominously intriguing.

Wallace was obviously quite mentally damaged in carrying this out.

A totally different man than the idealistic young University of Texas student who led liberal campus movements and who even taught on that level later.

Wallace's transformation from that young, more innocent values man to bold daylight murderer begs serious questions with answers that may help reveal the truth regards his involvement in further murders.

Did Wallace's hot affair relationship with LBJ's sex nymph sister Josefa ( who Kinser was also having sex with and using as a pawn in a blackmail scheme against LBJ ) descend him into an obsessive madness that caused him to lose his grasp of common sense reality and right and wrong values? One had to be crazy to do what Wallace did with Kinser without thought to all the witnesses present.

Was it at this Kinser murder time that Wallace's drinking problem turned into full blown alcoholism?

But whatever the answers to these questions...Wallace after Kinser had crossed that line into a proven killer. 

The suspicions of Wallace being Henry Marshall's killer are totally rational based on his Kinser murder actions and his debt to LBJ ( who Marshall was a real threat to ) for getting him off after his jury conviction and long sentence for this.

The reality of Mac Wallace and his life after Kinser and his connection and debt to LBJ make Wallace a true and solidly verified suspect in who-knows-what other nefarious actions LBJ and his backers may have had in mind with a need for his kind of services.

I have even wondered if Mac Wallace was in on getting rid of Madeleine Brown's years long black nanny, after she witnessed Brown and LBJ in a personal relationship scene that LBJ decided was too risky to let this nanny see?

What if Wallace was sent to the Texas School Book Depository 6th floor to make sure a shooter there didn't chicken out of his shooting orders?

Houston Street eyewitness "Carolyn Walthers" stated a description of another man with a rifle in the upper TXSBD building window ( that she questionably stated was the 4th or 5th floor) and described him as being heavier set than the shorter white man and wearing a brown suit coat.

Mac Wallace did own a brown suit coat. I believe there is at least one picture of him wearing such, but not sure of the date of the photo.

Dorothy Kilgallen.

The most famous, interesting and deserving of a life story film American woman ...to never have one.

One of our most famous, high achieving, highly inspiring, high society and high drama women in the 20th century and not one major film production company has ever even attempted such a project?

The void there is so illogical it shouts suspicion.

Kilgallen's real life story "on it's own" is BURSTING with every formulaic audience appeal film element producers have always demanded but rarely get in such a complete way.

Much of Kilgallen's life and career story is at times even hard to believe.

Her coverage and reporting and influence on the Sam Sheppard case ( leading to a reversal of his conviction ) was the true story basis for the T.V show and film "The Fugitive." Just this "one episode" in Kilgallen's life would make for a very interesting and inspiring film.

And the high drama in her life just went on and on. 

Her top name celebrity feuds with the likes of Frank Sinatra and her inferences to his Mafia ties alone was another shocking episode and came credibly close to life and death risk taking.

J. Edgar Hoover himself was her enemy from way back.

Kilgallen's many years as a regular on the nationally broadcast TV show "What's My Line",  which was one of the most widely popular and viewed in the country,  is just another fascinating aspect of her life.

DK's life was one fascinating high drama and high society episode after another.

And what could be a more perfect dramatic film ending than Kilgallen's obsession with the JFK assassination and her efforts to get the greatest scoop of all time amidst a super murky and suspicious affair with a creepy younger man which all culminated in her receiving serious death threats and actually ended with her premature death which, on it's face, was clearly murder.

Even today's younger women would find something interesting in a Dorothy Kilgallen entire life story film. And it's all TRUE!

Almost too late for this idea? 

Would love to see Meryl Streep round out her film career catalog with something fascinating, courageous and historically relevant and important and "women empowering" like the Dorothy Kilgallen story. 

If for any other reason, to make up for her referring to Harvey Weinstein as "God" in one of her Academy Award acceptance speeches?

Ben Bradlee sneaks onto Mary Myer's property, looks to break into and enter her home ( garage, studio whatever) to ...look for and take her dairy?

And when he arrives he runs into J.J. Angleton who is already there cutting a lock?

Two powerful men brazenly breaking the law and so cozy socially they aren't ruffled by running into each other this way? 

Nuts! 

Bradlee was so obviously much more than what he is generally depicted to be.

Especially in "The Post."

And what would Bradlee have done with Mary Meyer's dairy if he had found it? I think we know.

How about a Speilberg film centered around the interesting, emancipated and high bred woman Mary Meyer and her fascinating life and mysterious murder followed by this crazy but real life scene with Bradlee and Angleton?

And also, like I said earlier....super accomplished and sacrificing and high society interesting Dorothy Kilgallen and her life and death story deserves a movie way, way beyond any Katherine Graham one.

Meryl Streep actually looks quite similar to Dorothy Kilgallen about the time Kilgallen was murdered.

With dyed hair and the right make up...she's a ringer for Kilgallen. She even has a receding chin like Kilgallen.

And Kilgallen's true life story is so interesting, they wouldn't have to embellish it hardly at all.

Stone would be willing to take the career risk of telling Kilgallen's story. Spielberg...no.

1 hour ago, Gene Kelly said:

Steve and David:

I am sure that CE-139 was never in Oswald's possession.  Its provenance is suspect, the records are falsified, and both the rifle and revolver were obvious "plants".  Behind this charade and setup were people like LAPD Lieutenant Manuel Pena (of RFK Special Unit Senator notoriety) who allegedly "traced" Oswald's telescopic sight to a California gun shop.    Pena's allegiances and affiliations are clearly unmasked in the RFK research.  Another intelligence plant in the police department (in that case LAPD as opposed to DPD).  We are led to believe that Pena was simply involved with Thomas Dodd's mail order handgun trafficking investigation (baloney).

What is more fundamentally wrong with the picture is a guy who doesn't apparently practice with any rifle (or the rifle) -- which is what real shooters do, especially for serious hunting and important events.  This seems irrefutable today, since Oswald's strange enigmatic life has been thoroughly dissected at this point.  Other than the strange behavior at the Sports Drome Rifle Range ( a bogus story, similar to Sirhan's "practice"), no one has ever attested to seeing Oswald shoot or practice.  This all comes across today (with 50 years of investigative knowledge) as a 'B' movie plot.  As Senator Russell Long states: "that dog don't hunt".

But back to Hosty ...  his "surveillance" and interest in Marina and/or Lee (or perhaps Ruth) seem way off.  He was a Notre Dame graduate, so one would think he was a JFK supporter (not one of the many who characterized Kennedy as a "commie symp").  March through November seems an awful long time for FBI to keep poking around the Oswald's (particularly for someone taken off the watch list).  Hosty's interests seem to have shifted in the month before the assassination - to both Michael and Ruth Paine - and his visit on November 1st seems intended for Ruth ... perhaps he was interested in taking up Russian language lessons?   Or maybe he was a good guy, who got too close to the flame.

Gene

Good post above.

Gene a few years ago I came across a recording of one of the first emergency calls from the Ambassador Hotel to the LAPD regarding RFK just being shot there. 

What struck me was the response of the male police dispatcher to the emergency call in by a female employee of the hotel. The hotel caller was understandably upset and first just reported a shooting with victims. She then told the dispatcher that Robert Kennedy was at their hotel, without saying whether it was he that was shot. I assume she perhaps didn't know the details of the shooting.

The police dispatcher then says sarcastically "Big Deal" in immediate response to this woman mentioning RFK's name. It was kind of shocking to me that a person in the officers position would openly and publicly express his personal disdain towards RFK like that and especially under this emergency call in circumstance.

Thinking about the call and this insult toward RFK reminded me that the LAPD was known at that time as being very extreme right wing and Kennedy hating.  In my mind this arouses suspicion in important aspects of their investigation regards RFK's murder due to their known extreme right wing - Kennedy hating political sentiment.

Two questions:

Jeanne DeM asks Marina to show her around her and Lee's apartment and after opening a closet door she sees a high powered rifle with a scope?

Marina admits it's Lee's?

Paul, is this the same rifle you claim Oswald used on Walker? If so, how did non-driving, no car owning Oswald get the rifle back home to this apartment from Walker's residence?

Obviously not on any bus night or day. Obviously not by walking home with it during the day.

Did he simply run home with this in the dark cover of night? How far away was Walker's residence from Lee's?

Simple logical question whose answer may say something about driving help?

Also, we all remember the first personal TV interview of Marina.

"Marina, what do you do all day?"

What do others here feel about her English skills in that interview? It was just months after 11,22,1963.

I thought she understood the questions and answered these in a broken but not totally bad level of English.  Did she take English classes after 11,22,1963 to do this well? And she gave much thought to the questions, taking time to answer them. From that interview, I sensed she was very sharp, intelligent and controlling of her emotions and knew much more about Lee and his activities in NOLA and in Dallas than she ever truly let on.

My wife and I are movie buffs, although she is much more film savvy, having seen thousands since she was a child.

My wife does not however, share my interest in the JFK case, nor the RFK and MLK ones, at all.

I dragged her to see Tom Hanks "Parkland" which I have mentioned before was torturous for her to sit through.

Two weeks ago I incurred a spinal trauma including fracturing one of my vertebras with 3 accompanying bulging discs. For this reason I didn't accompany my wife when she saw "The Post" this last weekend.

However, I always ask her what she thinks of the films she sees without me. I enjoy her reviews.

I like to compare hers to other reviewers such as our own SF Chronicle's Mick LaSalle.

My wife liked "The Post" from a standpoint of film structure, plot drives, pacing, editing. All of this built and led well to a high emotion connecting ending ( a Spielberg specialty? ) which elicited some applause from a 2/3rds full audience.

She didn't give any historical accuracy opinion regards the film. She isn't a student of the film's Washington Post/ PP real life event subject beyond what I would think the average college educated baby boomer would be and I think, like 90+% or more of every other person who sees this film. 

It's a very small percentage of Americans who know anything close to the research knowledge shared on this forum regards the PP and everything else JFK.

After reading all the response postings in this thread I know I am going to feel more comfortable with Jim DiEugenio's take on the film ( I know, I still haven't seen it ) for the reasons he states which I conclude are based on his deeper and stronger reference research into this area, especially how the main characters ( Graham and Bradley ) are portrayed and their true relationships with secret agencies, LBJ and JFK himself.

Establishment critics hammered and still hammer Oliver Stone's "JFK" for his supposed inaccuracies and embellished dramatic license which they claim makes the film more a myth than not.

But my assumption from what I have read here is that Spielberg does the same thing with "The Post." Especially in his portrayal of Katharine Graham and Ben Bradley as over-sized more courageous heroes  ( versus Daniel Ellsberg? ) than they were in true life.

Both Stone and Speilberg are excellent story writers. And they both know that to keep making money in films, you must present something clearly larger than life.

And as far as Spielberg wanting to highlight the importance and courage of women, where the heck is a film about a true iconic and even heroic American woman ( more famous and accomplished than Katherine Graham ) ... journalist Dorothy Kilgallen?

 A woman who "sacrificed her life" in middle age to reveal truths she felt we needed to know.