Joe Bauer

2 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

That nice fellow nearing the end of his life was kind enough to tell you the truth. You should consider yourself extremely fortunate.

"most of them." ???

So, leaving the question of the origins of the others open? 

What do you make of his " Most of them are ours." statement?

He was a warrior for the truth.

21 minutes ago, Gerry Down said:

Oliver Stone himself has now distanced himself from the Mr. X scene in that it's central focus being on Lansdale is incorrect.

Really? There is so much more to that interchange between X and Garrison than just the Lansdale inference.  Stone shouldn't backtrack the entire scene because of the Lansdale issue imo. The X revelations were far more reaching and factually correct in their entirety.

12 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

But I have to admit that my work doesn’t address the shooter’s motivations or who, if anyone, might have been behind him. It’s just that with such a crappy rifle, I can’t really see anyone else being behind him (they would have given him a better weapon to use).

If Oswald was the designated patsy, it wouldn't matter that he had a crappy gun. If there were other shooters they would have been equipped with the best. 

Notice in the Garrison/Mr. X dialogue X tells Garrison that if the proper security were implemented in the JFK motorcade they ( special army intel group) would never have allowed open windows in high floor buildings along his route while JFK was being driven underneath them.

There would have been planted security amongst the crowds all along the route that would have been looking at things like open windows. There would have been security on higher building roof tops. Common sense would dictate these basic security measures.

Not one person in the entire Dealey Plaza area security had even binoculars?

Mark Lane interviewed the maintenance man of the Terminal Annex building ( J.C. Price ), which was on the Southern end of Dealey Plaza and like the Texas School Book Depository building was also six stories high.

Price went to the top of his building to watch the motorcade pass underneath. He had a 360 degree view of the entire Plaza area including the grassy knoll and saw the entire shooting scene unfold.

Imagine if a binocular and walkie talkie equipped security person had been stationed on top of the Dealey Plaza Terminal Annex building instead of just their maintenance man?

3 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:

The "Mr. X" scene from Oliver Stone's 1991 hit "JFK" where "Mr. X" ( played by Donald Sutherland ) explains to Jim Garrison ( Kevin Costner ) why JFK was killed.

https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/JFK Mr. X scene.mp4

The dialectic essence of the film. 

Dialectic: Logic Through Conversation

Dialectic is a term used in philosophy, and the fact that it is closely connected to the ideas of Socrates and Plato is completely logical—even from an etymological point of view. Plato’s famous dialogues frequently presented Socrates playing a leading role, and dialogue comes from the Greek roots dia- (“through” or “across”) and -logue (“discourse” or “talk”). Dialect and dialectic come from dialecktos (“conversation” or “dialect”) and ultimately back to the Greek word dialegesthai, meaning “to converse.”

Conversation or dialogue was indeed at the heart of the “Socratic method,” through which Socrates would ask probing questions which cumulatively revealed his students’ unsupported assumptions and misconceptions. The goal, according to the definition in our Unabridged Dictionary, was to “elicit a clear and consistent expression of something supposed to be implicitly known by all rational beings.”

Other philosophers had specific uses of the term dialectic, including Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Kantianism, Hegelianism, and Marxism. Asking a series of questions was considered by Socrates a method of “giving birth” to the truth, and a related word, maieutic, defined as “relating to or resembling the Socratic method of eliciting new ideas from another,” comes from the Greek word meaning “of midwifery.”

1 hour ago, Gil Jesus said:

There's a lot of historical FACT in this scene.

That's true.

So, just trying to evaluate which of the testimonies or written accounts presented here has the most validity regards where LeMay was when he first heard of JFK's killing? And when and how LeMay returned to DC?

And whether or not he at some point was at the JFK autopsy, if even briefly?

It seems the most promoted account of LeMay's whereabouts and actions that day is that he was hunting in Michigan and simply flew back to D.C. ASAP.

LeMay's own words?

I have not read LeMay's autobiography. Nor any other book on LeMay. That is why all I have to offer on the LeMay/JFKA story are questions.

Questions not easily answered seemingly because of a lack of documentation which in and of itself begs some doubt about the most true account of LeMay at that time.

LeMay was on the Joint Chiefs Of Staff on 11,22,1963.

Highest ranking man in the Air Force.

When a U.S. President is gunned down in broad daylight in front of hundreds of bystanders, and our government is instantly thrust into a state of highest level crisis and confusion, compounded by a cold war mentality of a highest threat possibility concern that a foreign government ( especially Russia) may be involved, you better believe and expect that our Joint Chiefs would drop everything from that moment on and be totally hyper focused on one task at hand only.

They and every branch of our entire military was immediately thrust into highest security alert status.

Our Joint Chiefs were part of the new emergency government at the highest level.

Did LeMay or any of his authorized biographers ever go into any detail ( beyond the  simple - " I was hunting and flew back immediately" ) account of his actions and thoughts from the second he heard of his President's death and the next 48 hours after?

LeMay "I was hunting...and then I flew back to D.C. as soon as I was informed of JFK's demise?"

That's it?

No personal feeling reflections recollected beyond someone else saying about LeMay's reaction to JFK's death..."he was angry and sad." ?

Navy Corpsman Paul O'Conner who was next to JFK's body from the time it was brought into the Bethesda morgue and all through the autopsy ( no debate at all regards this fact ) stated an unsolicited incident remembrance about Navy Commander James Humes complaining about the noise and other distractions from the cramped gallery all through the autopsy.

O'Conner stated he was tasked with confronting a military officer about the smoke from his cigar being just another distraction for Humes.

If one believes O'Conner ( like I do as the incident was just too off-the-wall quirky to make up or even bring up ) then you have to consider what other of the highest rank officer's in that scene would have had the gall to whip out a cigar and start smoking it under those circumstances? 

O'Conner wouldn't know Air Force general Curtis LeMay from any other officer in that gallery crowd. All he knew was he was asked to ask the person smoking it to stop.

I sure have suspicions about " 7 Days In May" LeMay in this whole picture.

LeMay's acceptance to run as JFK hating super segregationist George Wallace's VP kind of caps the whole LeMay story imo.

Wonder what LeMay thought about General Edwin Walker and JFK's decision to strip him of his command? Let alone RFK's placing Walker into a nut ward for Walker's extreme violent instigating actions in the Oxford Mississippi racial riots back in 1962.

LeMay was angry and sad upon hearing of JFK's demise?

Really?

It's been reported he hated JFK and considered him a commie softy if not a traitor.

And then he accepts the VP running mate position with the JFK hating super segregationist George Wallace?

I just don't see LeMay shedding tears upon learning of the JFKA.

And didn't JFK push the film "7 Days In May" to be made, partly because he ( JFK ) sensed a coup led by hostile military leaders ( like Le May ) a possibility in his term?

JFK knew LeMay and other's considered him a real threat to their vision of our national security.

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Great article.  Thaks for refreshing it Ben.  Anyone who has not read it should.

Just did.

Last year, my wife and I went to see the Spielberg film " The Fabelmans. " 

This was on a weekday and we got in for the "senior" price.

This was at our local cinema plex here in Monterey, California.

Lots of screens. Lots of seats.

Only maybe 8 to 10 people were in the audience for this weekday time playing film however.

All of us retirement age.

When the movie finished my wife and I walked out into the hallway leading to the lobby. Another leaving couple even older than us happened to walk next to us.

The other fellow's wife had to use the hallway lady's room at the same time as mine and so they walked in together.

That left her husband and I standing next to each other.

This woman's husband was a very friendly type like myself...and of course we said something funny to each other about our ladies not being able to make it home without relieving themselves before even leaving the theater.

It's a ritual for my wife.

This fellow and I clicked instantly. In just four to five minutes we had asked what each of us did in our careers. I mentioned that I was a common laborer all my life.

He said he worked in the aerospace industry in the Bay Area. Asking him in what capacity he hesitated and then said something like ... well...pretty important stuff. Can't really talk about it.

I can't explain why...but I just blurted out ... "Hey, are UFO's real?"

My juvenile off-the-wall question kind of stopped our conversation and at that same moment our ladies were coming out through the theater exit doors together where we were waiting for them. Still, before they could reach us, this person turned and said to me in response to my UFO question ... "Let me just say this - most of them are ours."  We parted seconds later.

FWIW.

Did LeMay ever publicly say where he was on 11,22,1963? And mention his actions the next few days after?

Most everyone agrees the interrogation effort by the DPD of Oswald was that out-of-control bad and violating all the principles of good interrogation practice. No tape recordings? No notary present?

A breakdown in control with Captain Fritz being called out and distracted and others shouting questions at Oswald?

Yet there are no words that even come close to adequately describing the following, most epic criminal suspect security failure in American big city history.

The complete failure of the DPD to protect Oswald from harm with him being shot dead right inside of their own building while in their custody?

Mind blowing!

Oswald was the most important AND threatened criminal suspect in Dallas and maybe even American history.

So, in response, the DPD announces to the public they are going to physically transfer the lynch mob threatened suspect Oswald from the city jail to the county one. They announce the physical location of the transfer. The general time frame which is in broad daylight.

An angry crowd was assembling right across the street from the DPD building basement exit ramp. It was close to becoming a popcorn vendor, unicycle riders, T-Shirt selling affair.

Curry decides to allow a pushing, shoving, bright light shining press corps into the cramped basement and tight hallway area where his security team somehow misses a sleazy, armed strip joint owner who slips unnoticed into the press corps crush where he is able to leap out a couple of feet and get within inches of Oswald's totally unguarded front and blow his guts out.

Thus, we had the greatest criminal suspect security failure in American history.

Curry and anyone else on his staff who ignored the many seriously concerned warnings from others in his department to move Oswald at night and unannounced to the public should have been fired on the spot. 

One of the most important events both in early and modern American history was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on 11,22,1963.

On a level of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, Japan's surrender and the landing of Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969.

General Curtis LeMay wrote his autobiography ( with ghost writer ) " Mission With LeMay-My Story" in 1965.

Later biographies included Thomas Coffey's "Iron Eagle - The Turbulent Life Of General Curtis LeMay and later "LeMay."

It is quite suspicious in my mind that LeMay doesn't even mention where he was when JFK was killed in Dallas, Texas on 11,22,1963 in "Mission With LeMay."

He was on the Joint Chiefs Of Staff that day.  Head of our Air Forces.

His duty life was on 24 hour highest alert status. Every branch of the military was too. Hour by hour highest level decisions were being made by him in regards to the unprecedented crisis at hand.

Was Russia involved? Cuba?

LeMay doesn't feel this epically important event time in his life is worth mentioning, especially where he was that day and what he did upon first being informed and during those first hours and days after?

5 hours ago, Kevin Balch said:

To be fair, some claim that the three shells were planted. How is anything resolved when evidence is easily dismissed as fake, altered or planted?

Why would someone plant 3 spent hulls instead of two?

Harold Norman testified under oath that he and his two TXSBD buddies Jr. Jarman and Bonnie Ray Williams all heard "three shots" from right above their heads on the 5th floor of the TXSBD when the shooting began.

Norman said he even heard the ejected spent hulls ( 3 ) hit the floor above them

In my mind it was the killing of Oswald right inside the Dallas Police Department's own building under circumstances so incongruously illogical that it shouted conspiracy.

Everything Curry and Fritz decided to do in the transfer of America's most important and threatened criminal suspect in our history went against every logical security measure fathomable. 

They both purposely ignored the concerns of most of their staffs about moving Oswald in the day, within a general time-line and location broadcast to the public ( ? CRAZY!), and through a crush of pressing and pushing newsmen and their blinding lighting equipment, all crammed into a tight corridor of the parking garage. Then, they bring Oswald out totally exposed in his front with just two police guard escorts to his side?

Oswald is then walked to within just feet of the pressing crowd in which the Dallas Police allowed the armed strip joint owner Jack Ruby to access, mingle in and get into a perfect up-close position to leap next to Oswald within inches of his exposed gut.

No police scanned the press corps during Oswald's perp walk next to them?

Oswald had to be killed as soon as possible. And thanks to the crazy illogical and best security measures ignoring security plan to move him from the jail and pushed through by Curry and Fritz... he was.

America lost it's only hope of learning everything about Oswald and whether JFK's killing was more than his just getting lucky ( by himself ) and wanting to change the system.

Just a thought:

We all saw how difficult it was for half a dozen strong men unloading the massively heavy and bulky bronze casket out of the hearse at Love Field and then walking it to and up into Air Force One.

Those men were really struggling the entire time. Especially walking it up the stern back stairs.

I remember once also struggling to lift a moderately sized casket with a body inside from a viewing table in a church, through the pew area and then out the door, down a dozen steps and then into the back of a hearse which carried it to our local grave yard.

I was 6 ft. 1 inch and 215 pounds and man, let me tell you, that was a heavy load. I worried about hurting my back.

JFK's Dallas "Bismark" sized coffin made the one I helped carry look like a pine box for the indigent.

The bronze Dallas casket was so big, heavy and bulky they had to remove ( or break?) one of its handles? And then remove three rows of seats just to get it into AF-1?

Watching the struggle at Andrews, same thing. They needed a mechanical lift to lower that Titanic tub to the tarmac and it looked like they doubled the number of men to move it  ( still grimacing with careful shuffling ) into the back of the grey naval hearse.

I watched that event live on TV that night. And many times since. Watch that scene yourself and notice how the back side of the ambulance dropped two feet when the that big Bronze baby was loaded into it? It drove away with it's back-side almost hitting the ground!

I could easily believe that somewhere in the logistical chain of command from Dallas to Andrews air base someone probably discussed the real problem of handling such a massive weight and came up with a plan to get JFK's body into a smaller casket upon arrival at Bethesda simply to avoid the epic struggling required to keep moving JFK's body from one place to another in that back breaking monstrosity.

Was JFK's body buried at Arlington in that Dallas Bronze casket?

If not, I could imagine it was melted down later and used to make an Aircraft carrier anchor.

3 minutes ago, Kevin Balch said:

Wouldn’t echos associated with two shots appear as four shots? While some witnesses reported hearing four shots, most heard three shots. If an observer did not change position during the shots, how could one shot echo and another shot not echo to produce 3 shots?

Exactly.   

And again...how does Lipsey explain 3 found spent hulls with only 2 shots?

This interview of Lipsey was when? 2018 or 2019? 

Has he been promoting his "2 shots only" claim all these last 6 decades?

If so, it's hard to believe he hasn't been confronted many times with the 3 spent hulls fact contradicting his 2 shots only claim. 

He pounds the Oswald lone gunman take too aggressively.  

The man wasn't even in Texas on 11,22,1963 and I sense he hasn't researched the JFKA in any thorough way imo.

The Baton Rouge audience cheered him wildly upon his introduction. Why?

Local Baton Rouge homeboy? Comes from a generational gun company family  there?

Just watched a Ted Talks interview of Richard Lipsey.

Army lieutenant aid to major general Phillip Wehle DC commander in November, 1963.

Lipsy claims there were "only two shots" fired in Dealey Plaza on 11,22,1963.

That any other shots reported by bystanders present there during the shooting were "echos."

Lipsy was in Washington D.C. the entire day.

This following fact makes Lipsy's "two shot" proclamation a joke.

The Dallas police department found "3" spent hulls just below the alleged TXSBD shooting perch window ledge. You don't get 3 spent shells with only 2 shots!

TED

https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_lipsey_the_jfk...

 

The JFK Assassination: one insider's personal story - TED

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks Tony.

And Joe, if you have not read Fetter's book, you really do not know how bad it is in every way. The stuff about Rayburn is just the beginning of a trail of folly.

I purchased both volumes and am reading the first one. I am an extremely slow reader however. Hopefully I can eventually get through it. Also, I am going through some extremely debilitating medical issues the last few months which distract me from reading more than a few pages at a time.

Just from what I have read however I am intrigued about the Air Force command involvement which I had never come across before. Le May especially.

On 5/1/2024 at 4:26 AM, Robert Morrow said:

Sean Fetter is right about one thing: one needs to look more towards the role of the AIR FORCE in the JFK assassination than merely the CIA. With LBJ at the peak of the pyramid.

Everything is just too simple.

I always wondered why Oswald kept a pistol and bullets amongst his personal effects.

On the surface it appeared he didn't need one like 90+% of low income and working class people back then. A rifle was much more common due to the popularity of hunting.

Was a permit required to own a handgun back then?

Oswald didn't hang around criminal types. His work never entailed associating with characters like that or others who might harm him or his family. Why the gun?

Now Jack Ruby needed a handgun. Along with brass knuckles. He did associate with some dangerous characters.

One would think Oswald's rooming house manager Earline Roberts might have seen the gun in her occasional checks of his room if she was kind of snoopy. I assume Oswald didn't hide the gun well. His dinky room had what ... one small dresser? His one duffle bag in the small closet?

However, she told the police she didn't ever see the gun so it seems she did respect his privacy in that regards.

The first thing Oswald did upon returning to his North Beckley room after taking a cab there around 1:00 PM was to rush by Ms. Roberts without responding to her short comment, go into his room, change clothes and arm himself with his loaded gun ( with extra bullets ) and bustle back out to begin his fast walking journey to who knows where.

It seems obvious Oswald knew he was about to be in a life-and-death situation and he wasn't going down without a shoot-em-up fight.

Oswald's ownership of the handgun and keeping it close to his personal belongings tells me Oswald was up to things much more nefarious and personally dangerous than even Marina knew about.

IMO, he had "some" involvement with the JFK shooting. To what degree? Enough that he knew and feared "others" would kill him right after if anything went wrong.

And something had gone wrong with the shooting plan ( his escape ) and he knew it. He was running for his life.

I know this is a simple assessment... but Oswald did things simply, often "too simply."

Mostly because he was of the lowest income even poverty class, often unemployed and barely made enough when he did work ( minimum wage ) to basic needs provide for his family. A car and TV were beyond his income means. He ( and his wife and child ) got around on buses and simply walking? Even the Walker shooting was city bus transport.

Oswald needs Wesley Frazier and Frazier's constant battery dying junky car to transport him and his disassembled rifle to his work place the morning of 11,22,1963?

He wanders around in the building by himself most of the late morning and during the noon lunch break?

He then simply walks right out of the TXSBD building minutes after the shooting and jumps on a city bus? Held up in traffic he jumps off and hails a cab to get to his rooming house. His fare is 95 cents and he tells the driver to keep the extra nickel change from a dollar bill which is a highly unusual thing for the notoriously frugal Oswald.

He leaves his rooming house on foot ( again without looking at Earline Roberts or responding to her questions) and ends up walking a mile or more to an Oak Cliff main street movie theater where he then walks in without paying and once inside keeps getting up and changing seats enough times others in the theater notice his doing so. Soon enough Oswald is in a brawl with DPD officers and yelling "it's all over now" ???

The whole Oswald behavior action thing right after he leaves the TSBD building is too scatter shot to make any sense out of it except to look at it as a simple running-for-his-life mind-set scenario.  The question is ... who was Oswald fearing in this desperate run? The police or nefarious others who were part of the plot?

This isn't Ian Fleming or even E. Howard Hunt sophisticated spy novel stuff.

Peanut butter sandwich eating, 8 dollar a week room renting, Montgomery Ward dressed Oswald was no Savile Row tailored, brandy sophisticate " I'd say it was a 30-year-old fine, indifferently blended, sir... with an overdose of bon-bois", exotic beauty surrounded James Bond.

John Wilkes Booth had a better escape plan and several compatriots.

Yet...raggedy torn shirt wearing, bus taking Oswald manages to defeat an Army of armed security all by himself and take out a President who they are surrounding in broad daylight with the cheapest and least accurate rifle available?

Simple luck?  

Too simple.

19 minutes ago, Kevin Balch said:

One can be of above average intelligence and still have severe psychological issues.

Of course. Same goes for people of wealth. Stable genius.

Who was the director who was found dead in his little boat after going out for his daily morning sail?

Now THERE'S a fishy event death if there ever was one.

2 hours ago, Charles Blackmon said:

They don't want to stir up anything. Gotta keep the millennials and other young folks ignorant about the facts.

Agree.

5 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Sean Fetter is right about one thing: one needs to look more towards the role of the AIR FORCE in the JFK assassination than merely the CIA.

Agree.