Denny Zartman

Hi there, this might be the first thread I've started on this forum. I sincerely apologize if this has been covered in another thread. Whenever I start to browse the forum searching for it, I get caught up in reading and get off track. I have lost years worth of my JFK assassination notes and am having to recompile them from scratch. There was one story that I thought was interesting, but I no longer have the names, and was hoping someone could help me find them again. It was a newspaper story about a man and a woman, later married, that both served somewhere where Oswald served in the Marines. I don't think they served with him, but worked with people who did. I believe this couple were working at the base when the JFK assassination occurred, and they remembered the gossip that immediately surrounded them that Oswald was an intelligence operative. They wondered how such an open secret could ever be kept under wraps, and expressed some surprise that it did. Does this story ring any bells with anyone here? Thank you in advance!

You might be on to something here, Cliff. I can't think of anything that Humes reportedly did or said at the autopsy that is known not to be true. If I'm wrong, I hope somebody will point it out in this thread. Actually Robert already pointed out the probing-with-a-finger problem. How does one fit a finger into a small hole? Does flesh stretch? What other problems are known to exist? (We have to ignore what Humes reported afterward, because clearly that is full of l.i.e.s.) Hi Sandy. I believe flesh does stretch. Facelifts seem to rely on stretching the skin, and stretch marks likely wouldn't exist if skin didn't stretch to some degree. It would be hard to bend our elbows and legs, and would be difficult to open our mouths or fill our cheeks with air without stretching the skin. For those reasons, I don't feel that I can subscribe to Robert's theory that it wasn't possible for Humes to fit his finger into the back wound. Hi, Cliff, thank you for that analysis. I won't even pretend that I'm not confused by the medical evidence. I think your breakdown is sound.

I thought that was a very interesting article, and I agree that the Tippit shooting is underexplored. McBride names Dallas policeman Harry Olsen, Jack Ruby, and Ruby connected hoodlum Darrell Wayne (Dago) Garner as people of interest in the Tippit shooting. He also seems to confirm that William Duane Mentzel was the other officer sent in pursuit of Oswald at that time. In my opinion, the WC version of the Tippit shooting is wildly suspicious on its own. When you add the police car stopping outside Oswald's place and honking twice before driving away, I believe it's even more so. Why would a cop, believing he might have had the president's assassin in view, not call in for backup? That is one big red flag for me. Would that cop, seeing the most important suspect he might ever see in his life, wave him over and interrogate him through a car window in a casual manner? That is suspicious. Would the president's assassin walk toward a cop or away from a cop at that moment? I find it very unlikely that he would approach a policeman calmly, though I will concede that it's possible. Maybe Oswald (assuming he's a guilty lone nut) didn't know that his description was out at that point and wanted to remain plausibly unsuspicious. But, could the police car outside Oswald's rooming house explain why Oswald was amiable to approaching a police car at the time he was a fugitive from the law? Perhaps he had confederates who were cops or dressed as cops. Perhaps he was told a police car would be part of the getaway? After the window conversation between Oswald and Tippit, Tippit declined a second opportunity to call in for backup. This, IMHO, is an even bigger red flag for me. Clearly, by his subsequent actions of getting out of his police car and drawing his gun, Tippit thought Oswald to be a dangerous individual in need of further interrogation or to be detained. I think that Tippit not calling in to HQ after the window conversation is a clear sign that his intention was not to apprehend Oswald alive.

I found the article very interesting. Thanks for sharing it. I am always for getting a closer look at the Tippit murder, which remains a huge mystery to me. I think the article makes a persuasive case that Sgt. Kenneth Croy and Capt. W.R. Westbrook were involved with the Tippit shooting. There was a lot to absorb there, and I'm not sure I got it all, but upon first read it didn't seem to conflict with any known facts and seems to be a plausible scenario as I understand it. The information on Oswald's wallets was much appreciated. That has always been deeply suspicious. I'm looking forward to hearing any LN's debate the evidence presented in the link, if they find themselves so inclined. While even J. Edgar Hoover believed that someone was using Oswald's identity, I still have trouble believing that there was an exact double of Oswald running around. It seems implausible to me, but I can't fully dismiss it. The theory does seem to answer some questions: The alleged test drive at the automobile dealership, how George de Mohrenschildt believed Oswald spoke Russian like a native, ect. Right at the moment I remain unconvinced. I would have to study it some more.

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This was a very interesting speech. It was especially interesting when he pointed out that the telescopic sight at that distance, and on a bolt action instead of an automatic rifle, would actually be a hindrance when trying to re-aim between shots. And I read somewhere a few months back pointing out how silly it was to have three shells on the floor, since the third shell would not have been ejected had the shooter not been preparing for a fourth shot, which brings up the image of LHO seeing JFK's head explode and thinking "Ah, I might need one more to finish the job."

And Mr. King refers to the JFK assassination as "the same simple American story." A guy got lucky. In my opinion that's a very pat way of looking at it. It's easier to say, "a guy got lucky, happens every day" than confront the fact that many political assassins brag about their crimes instead of steadfastly denying them. And we wouldn't want to consider the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, which was both a conspiracy and featured an assassin who literally broke his leg rushing to take credit for his crime.

I find King's afterword very depressing. It's very sad to think that Fidel Castro five days after the assassination had more common sense insight into the crime than Stephen King, who had five decades to think about it. Mr. King says "...all of the accounts, including those written by conspiracy theorists, tell the same simple American story: here was a dangerous little fame-junkie who found himself in just the right place to get lucky. Were the odds of it happening just the way it did long? Yes. So are the odds on winning the lottery, but someone wins one every day." First of all, what kind of reasonable person looks at books like "Crossfire" or "Reclaiming History" and thinks either one of them is telling a "simple" story? When evidence is officially locked away for 75 years, does Mr. King really believe that there's "nothing to see here." Second, if Lee Harvey Oswald was a fame-junkie, why did he take every single opportunity to deny his crime? Third, King characterizes Oswald's circumstance to being in the "right place", and getting "lucky", and even "winning the lottery," when under the BEST circumstances LHO was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars before facing being put to death. In the worst circumstance (which Mr. King compares to "winning the lottery", and which actually did happen) Oswald is killed while in custody. Jack Ruby stalked Oswald at the police department, trying to go into a door when a cop said "You can't go in there, Jack." Ruby admitted to being armed during the press conference where he actually corrected a statement about Oswald and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (interesting that so soon after the assassination a nightclub owner knew more about LHO than the police and all the reporters, isn't it?) Ruby wrote a note saying he made up the "so Jackie wouldn't have to testify" excuse. He practically begged the Warren Commission to take him to Washington to testify because he had important information, and made remarks about how the truth wouldn't be known and implied that LBJ might have even been in on it. Even without all that, in my opinion you would have to be pretty gullible to believe that Ruby just up and decided that he was tired of not living behind bars and would gladly risk Death Row in order to spare a widow he had never met some anguish. It's stunning to think that a man of Stephen King's intelligence wouldn't find anything suspicious.

I am reading "A Citizen's Dissent" right now (strangely enough, I stopped reading "Praise From A Future Generation" to read Lane's book.) Boy, the BBC really did a number on Lane. They invited him to participate in a program with Arlen Specter following a screeing of the film "Rush To Judgment", and then seemingly did everything in their power to stack the deck against him. It was almost comic. Also a relief that the people watching the broadcast still thought Lane won the "debate." And the CBS shenanigans are pretty shocking. I'm reading about how they fudged the rifle tests. Many times they had to stop the test because of rifle difficulties, but didn't ever factor in the stops when calculating the average shooting times.

My current research seems to be pointing toward Allen Dulles as the head of the plot, but most sources I've seen also say Dulles would not have taken any action until he had approval from all the other high level people needed. I personally believe that usual standard deductive reasoning does lead to LBJ. He seems to have had the motive, means, and opportunity. When asked why he would agree to be JFK's VP candidate, LBJ reportedly made comments along the lines of "many presidents have died in office... I'd be a heartbeat away... I'm a gambling man, darlin'". And he did engage in the coverup almost immediately by insinuating that there would be nuclear war if the truth had gotten out. Here's a question: From what I can tell, apparently most researchers do not believe that Hoover and the FBI were the instigators of the plot nor were they involved in the actual assassination. So, it seems that at some point in time someone in authority who was involved in the plot had to have told Hoover how his investigation was going proceed and the predetermined conclusion of a lone shooter. There were phone outages in Washington D.C. immediately following the assassination, but of course Hoover could have been informed prior to November 22. So, who had the ability to contact Hoover, and who had the authority to tell him exactly how the FBI investigation was going to go down? Hoover and LBJ were apparently neighbors and close friends, but this doesn't preclude the possibility of someone like Dulles (who reportedly spent the weekend of the assassination in a CIA compound) giving the ultimate orders. Regardless, I would suppose the list of people that had the authority to tell J. Edgar Hoover what to do would be fairly short. Also, considerable effort was made to make Lee Harvey Oswald appear to be a Cuban or Russian agent. Was this intended to provide a justification for war against either country in addition to removing JFK? Did LBJ deviate from the goals of the plotters by insisting that LHO be named the lone gunman?

I haven't seen the show nor read the book, and don't plan to. It's hard enough trying to figure this case out without reading fictional accounts. Plus, King's writing quality has declined, in my opinion. After reading "Doctor Sleep" I have no interest in reading a new novel by him anytime soon. For what it's worth, apparently 11-22-63's executive producer and screenwriter Bridget Carpenter changed her mind and rejected the lone gunman theory after working on the miniseries. http://www.star-telegram.com/living/article60025591.html The relevant quote is pasted below. (I'm having terrible trouble copying and pasting for some reason. Is this a common problem on this site? Even pasting web page text into a word document and then re-copying and pasting it here doesn't seem to work consistently.) - Bridget Carpenter — the writer/producer who developed the new miniseries version of King’s acclaimed bestseller — used to accept the Lone Gunman Theory as fact, too. “But after two years of working on Stephen’s story, I don’t believe it anymore,” she says. “There were too many strange things surrounding Oswald for me to believe he did it completely alone.” Carpenter, the executive producer and showrunner for 11.22.63 (which debuts Monday — Presidents Day — on Hulu), suspects now that Oswald had to have been connected to the CIA, that maybe he went rogue in Dallas on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, that a massive cover-up was organized to hide the embarrassing truth.

Didn't the FBI initially conclude that three bullets hit the two men?

Hi everyone, I'm a forum lurker, and decided to join after hearing the news of Mark Lane's passing. He really was a pioneer as part of the first generation of JFK research and inspiration for many with his tireless work. The entire US government was working against him, and it's hard to imagine the resentment he must have also generated from average Americans merely for daring to defend Oswald. He also did this at a time when JFK research was literally in it's infancy. When you think of how much has been learned since 1964, it's pretty amazing how he was able to do so much with (relatively) so little. In the past few weeks I had been listening to his debates posted on YouTube, and am continually impressed with his passion, thoroughness, and wit. It's easy to hear that anyone debating him was up against a formidable intellect. The debate with William F. Buckley also demonstrates how unflappable Lane was. Thanks to everyone for sharing their personal moments with him.

I'm an actor, writer, and musician, currently living in Atlanta, Georgia.