Benjamin Cole

10 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

A great post Benjamin, I hope it gets the serious discussion it deserves.  I happened to pick the phrase "tipping point" in terms of motive and timing but operationally I think you are right on the money with "piggybacking".  I have no doubt that the conspirators piggybacked on a number of things the CIA was doing with Oswald's identity by the summer of 1963, some or all of which he knew little to nothing about.  The CIA, as with all the really professional intelligence agencies, are really good at "using" people in that fashion.  Personally I think that after his return most of Oswald's direct cooperation was with the FBI but that's another story. 

I would also endorse the fact that the Dallas attack was in a since a "small" conspiracy, involving only a handful of individuals with full knowledge, how it might have been incited or otherwise enabled is another story as well, but I really see it as a ninety day sort of thing from an operational standpoint.

Don't mean to tread on you post but I did want to jump in and support it, especially in terms of "piggybacking". 

Larry-

Thank you for your gracious response. Your excellent book, "Tipping Point" needs no praise from me for its circumspect depth on a very challenging topic. 

Certainly, in your book and elsewhere you have outlined groups of people capable and willing, on both practical and operational levels, of the JFKA. My guess is you are closer than anyone else to explaining the JFKA.

In some ways, I am venturing forward a hypothesis with a limiting condition, such as might be required on a history test.

For example, "Explain the JFKA with no more than five willing conspirators." 

If there is only 5% chance any one of conspirators breaks ranks and exposes the conspiracy, you have problems, as a plotter. (That is, 0.95 to the fifth---or nearly a one-quarter chance, with just five conspirators). 

Anyways, thanks for your forbearance, and I look forward to re-reading your superb book.

My small hope is that some researchers re-consider plots that include large numbers of knowing pre-event conspirators and conspiratorial interventions. 

 

 

10 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

Somewhere in the video record of Oswald's interactions with the press during his three days of captivity he says something that I've always construed as a limited admission of involvement: "I have committed no acts of violence."

Thanks for reading!

5 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

This is a very detailed interpretation of the events surrounding the assassination and Lee Oswald. But the devil is in the detail: your theory assumes three people to be on the sixth floor, including Lee Oswald. How could all these people escape given that neither Vicki Adams with Sandra Styles, nor Mrs. Garner heard or saw anyone. Mrs. Garner positioned herself to the stairway on the fourth floor and she witnessed Baker and Truly going up the stairs. Thus, there was no time for anyone to descend with rifles in their arms during about 2 minutes after the shooting, let alone three people. It was more difficult later on because the employees started to return to the building (e.g., Otis Williams).

Andrej--

Thanks for your comment. 

Actually, I assume only LOH and Eladio Del Valle on the Sixth Floor. The possible getaway driver and Grassy Knoll shooter are elsewhere. 

To be sure, the window of opportunity for leaving the TSBD unobserved was small, yet people have walked off the distance, and concluded LOH had enough time to get to the point where he met Truly/Baker.

OK, we know where LOH left his rifle.

You raise a challenging question regarding the second rifle on the Sixth Floor, that I posit. 

I am not an expert of all firearms, but it seems breakdown of a rifle would take too much time. Perhaps some readers know of a rifle that breaks down very quickly. 

On the other hand, we do not know the clothing of Eladio Del Valle on that day. Perhaps he was wearing an overcoat, and simply concealed the rifle underneath as we walked out of back of the TSBD.  There are reports of men leaving the TSBD quickly in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, from the rear, including a bald man. 

There are also other offices in the TSBD, that were used by other companies, and evidently were never searched. The search of the TSBD was not thorough, as it was decided rather quickly the perp had been apprehended. 

I certainly understand anyone who has doubts regarding my scenario, and for that matter, perhaps the lethal shots came from the roof of the Dal-Tex building, and Euins was just mistaken that he saw a bald man. 

But Euins, unlike others, gave his account immediately and contemporaneously, to a police officer on the scene. 

 

 

 

11 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Just read your entire conspiracy theory summary BC.

Whew!  

I never sleep and reading your JFK speculation/explanation post beat two hours of idle thought insominia tossing and turning.

So much to comment on. Agree with many of your plausible explanations.

Will chime in later with shared takes and thoughts.

 

 

Thanks!

OK, here goes. I have constructed a JFKA explanation that involves very few knowing participants before the event.  I think my explanation holds water, but beyond that, I wanted to hypothesize with the limiting condition that conspirators were less than a handful. 

I have also attached an identical word file. 

This runs about 7,000 words. 

Towards A Simple, Plausible Yet Explanatory Conspiracy Theory

That there was a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy is a near certainty, as the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979.

In the decades since the HSCA stumbled to its conclusion, the evidence supporting the conspiracy view of JFK’s death has only become stronger, including the certain debunking of CE 399, the infamous “magic bullet.” 

It has been shown beyond reasonable doubt that CE399 was inserted by the FBI into the evidentiary record, thanks to the superb research and detective work of John Hunt, Gary Aguilar, Josiah Thompson and others.

As it is beyond reasonable doubt—due to CE 399—that key evidence has been altered, even manufactured by investigative agencies, then other evidence that appears to connect Lee Harvey Oswald to the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination—or exclude others—is also suspect. Unfortunately, even witness affidavits appeared to have been altered to confirm with a storyline.

(As an aside, my humble opinion is that the famed Zapruder film shows at least three separate bullets striking JFK and Texas Governor John Connally (as insistently recounted by Connally, his wife and three Secret Service agents in the immediate follow car). The shots strike the victims in too-rapid succession to have been fired from a single-shot bolt-action rifle, such as the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found in the TSBD, and said to be the murder weapon. 

And there was still yet another unexplained but undisputed shot that day in Dallas, which struck a curb near the Triple Underpass on the edge of Dealey Plaza, a ricochet from which evidently struck bystander James Tague. 

So, the record indicates at least four shots that day in Dealey Plaza.  

Finally, the fact that so many people, including military veterans and police officers, smelled telltale gunsmoke in Dealey Plaza in the immediate aftermath of the shooting is also an indisputable clue. It is more than likely that a firearm was discharged in Dealey Plaza just as the motorcade passed.) 

So, let us posit a conspiracy in the JFK assassination.  

Then let us also posit that successful Presidential-level conspiracies need fewer, rather than more, knowing participants.

In this light, let us reevaluate the proposition that “Oswald had nothing to do with the JFK assassination.” 

A plausible scenario, to be outlined here, is that Oswald had something to do with the assassination, and that is what made him such a good patsy. 

But only if he was soon dead. 

Probably, Oswald Was Involved

No one disputes that Oswald was inside the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at the time of the assassination. Moreover, Oswald was almost certainly an erstwhile CIA asset, and the CIA of the 1960s operated frequently, perhaps even usually, through assets rather than staff CIA officers. 

The practice of using assets, among other attractions, provides plausible deniability, which came in handy when the CIA conveniently disavowed any connection to Oswald after the JFK assassination. A lie they have perpetuated to this day.

A Paradox

So we have this paradox, or jigsaw puzzle pieces that do not fit: Many believe, on solid foundations, that CIA or military intelligence elements or assets were responsible for JFK’s assassination, and that Oswald was a CIA asset. 

Then it is asserted that Oswald had nothing to do with the murder of JFK.

But really, does the scenario hold water that CIA asset Oswald was in the TSBD as JFK rode past, and then the president was shot in a CIA-hatched plot, but Oswald was unwitting and uninvolved in the whole matter? 

Not only that, as soon as Oswald heard gunfire at 12:30 pm, he left the TBSD, headed for home—even hired a taxi to speed his arrival—whereupon he armed himself, before seeking refuge in the Texas Theater? 

Moreover, does it make sense that the CIA or CIA assets chose to make the entirely uninvolved Oswald “the patsy” even though he had been a loyal asset for years? Finally, why would the CIA betray Oswald, who might then reveal his past with the agency and raise an epic hornet’s nest?  

Importantly, no one has ever claimed to have seen Oswald at the very moment the President was gunned down in Dallas. As gunshots rang out, Oswald was invisible. 

The JFK assassination scenario with Oswald as a totally clueless patsy has other logical flaws: For example, Oswald could hardly be made the trigger-man patsy if he had chosen to stand on the sidewalk staring at JFK—as he might easily have—shoulder-to-shoulder along with other TSBD employees and bystanders, very visible and photographed. 

At a minimum, for Oswald to reliably be made the trigger-man and patsy by the true assassins, then Oswald had to be sequestered at the time of the assassination, perhaps by a simple ruse. Even if minimally, in this scenario Oswald was involved as CIA asset who could be manipulated into patsy.

But it will posited here that Oswald played a much more active, but ultimately still a patsy role, in a CIA public relations stunt. 

Oswald

The story on Oswald is well known certainly in this community, and will only be abbreviated here. Oswald was a youth intrepid enough to get through US Marine boot camp at age 17, was subsequently promoted to skilled and classified work at the Marine Atsugi Airbase in Japan, and then received an honorable discharge (only rescinded when he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959). 

Upon returning unhindered to the US from Russia in 1962, the young adult Oswald visited local libraries to check out large numbers of often serious books, renewing an intellectual streak he had shown in high school, when he joined astronomy and chess clubs. Oswald had also been a chess player during his uniformed military career. 

Having served in the military, having lived abroad, having traveled through Europe, Russia and Japan, and fluent in Russian, the still-youthful Oswald upon return to the US could even be described as cosmopolitan, certainly in comparison to peers in his age group. 

The Warren Commission-media characterization of Oswald as a leftie-loner-loser could as easily, and probably more accurately, be re-fabricated as a “ex-Marine, moody, savvy, smart, and somewhat worldly, with exposure to US intelligence operations. Fluent in Russian, chess-player, in turbulent, international marriage.” 

Oswald II

The oft-told story is that Oswald traveled to New Orleans from Dallas in April 1963. In short order after arriving in the port city, Oswald was reliably seen in the office of anti-communist activist and former FBI agent Guy Bannister, and in the company of CIA asset David Ferrie, and CIA asset Clay (Bertram) Shaw. 

(BTW, researcher Jefferson Morley has revealed that George Joannides, CIA case officer who oversaw the CIA-funded Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), maintained a residence in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, despite the fact he worked in Miami, and had a house and family there.) 

Given Oswald’s unusual history of “defecting” to the Soviet Union, yet evidently returning without consequence, and Oswald’s associations upon returning (including friendship with CIA asset George de Mohrenschildt ) it is more than likely that Oswald was indeed a CIA asset, and thus could be utilized in a “legitimate” or sanctioned CIA scheme or PR stunt. 

To put it mildly, Oswald’s leafletting around New Orleans, or appearing on New Orleans radio and TV stations to publicly debate ideology, certainly suggest a man trying to create communist and Castro-supporter credentials. Oswald’s famous trip to Mexico City and the Soviet and Cuban embassies there was another bit a biography-building. 

Oswald III

It is a matter of record that the late Antonio Veciana was a prominent anti-Castro Cuban, a leader of the violent paramilitary Alpha 66 organization, and a former US military-intelligence asset.

In 2015, Veciana was recorded as he told a JFK research conference that he had worked for David Atlee Phillips, aka Maurice Bishop, a man who would eventually become the CIA chief of operations for the Western Hemisphere. Veciana also said that in September 1963 he met Oswald in Dallas, and most importantly, had met Oswald while in the company of Phillips. (Veciana’s account has been challenged by veteran JFK researcher John Newman). 

Among his many talents, Phillips was known for skill in public relations, related PR stunts, and successful propaganda campaigns to topple governments in Guatemala and Nicaragua.

So, let us posit in 1963 Phillips hatched a PR stunt, planned as an intentionally unsuccessful “false-flag” assassination attempt on JFK, made by a pro-Castro leftie-loner-loser who was affiliated with communist groups, who had defected to Russia, and who had recently visited the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City. 

In other words, the image of Oswald as crafted by Phillips and the CIA, with a compliant US media.  

What Newman Said 

In the 2008 version of his book Oswald and CIA, researcher Newman wrote of the “WWIII virus.”

The WWIII virus was the idea that Oswald had to be immediately and rigidly defined as a loser-leftie and most importantly as a lone assassin after Nov. 22, lest the US and Soviet Union end up in a nuclear war. 

Wrote Newman---

"In my view, whoever Oswald's direct handler or handlers were, we must now seriously consider the possibility that Angleton was probably their general manager,” wrote Newman. “No one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot. No one else had the means necessary to plant the WWIII virus in Oswald's files and keep it dormant for six weeks until the president's assassination. Whoever those who were ultimately responsible for the decision to kill Kennedy were, their reach extended into the national intelligence apparatus to such a degree that they could call upon a person who knew its inner secrets and workings so well that he could design a failsafe mechanism into the fabric of the plot. The only person who could ensure that a national security cover-up of an apparent counterintelligence nightmare was the head of counterintelligence."

The placement of a witting and compliant CIA-asset Oswald in a false-flag failed assassination attempt would have been a brilliant PR coup, whether conceived by Angleton, Phillips or possibly even Joannides. 

A Castro supporter—that’s Oswald—loosely affiliated with Havana and Moscow and shooting at a US President would generate a firestorm of support for renewed efforts to topple Castro. 

Indeed, even JFK might have second thoughts about leaving Castro intact in Cuba.

General Walker 

In this scenario, Oswald’s miss at short range— with a rifle, at about 30 yards—at General Edwin Walker, in April 1963, was likely a practice run, and a biography-builder. 

The story would emerge that wooden cross bar on a window pane had deflected Oswald’s bullet, saving Walker’s life. 

But photos of the window frame reveal it had been struck on the underside. That is, the purported deflection would sent the bullet on a lower trajectory, and indeed, that was the conclusion of the Dallas Police Department.  

 Yet, the bullet struck above and wide of  Walker’s head by such a margin that the former general initially assumed the shot had been a firecracker tossed into the house, by neighborhood kids. 

At least two vehicles suddenly left the scene after the Walker shooting, one without license plates. 

The inevitable conclusion is that Oswald (if he was the shooter) either— 

1. Was a lousy shot, to put it mildly 

2. Or, intended to miss

3. Or, had very faulty firearms 

4. But also likely had accomplices 

One way or the other, the Walker assassination attempt ultimately become part of the Oswald legend.

If the Warren Commission recitation is accepted, Oswald just happened to keep incriminating photographs and records of his Walker assassination attempt in his personal belongings, unsecured and easily discovered. Including the ever-mysterious Walker backyard photo that features the infamous 1957 Chevrolet, with the censored license plate. 

False Flags

The idea of ‘false flag” operations stage-managed by US intelligence is hardly farfetched. JFK researchers are familiar with “Operations Northwoods,” as outlined in a Joint Chiefs of Staff memo in March 1962, and which envisioned a kaleidoscope of ersatz attacks on the US and citizens, designed to enrage the public and tilt domestic and international opinion in favor of military actions against Cuba. 

Phillips

The CIA public-relations guru Phillips died of cancer in 1988, and never recited or confessed any stories of involvement with Oswald. At least not directly. 

But Phillips did leave behind an unpublished manuscript, one of the strangest tales every penned. In part, the manuscript is about a protagonist who laments, “I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”

Well, maybe not “precisely the plan.” But possibly something oddly close. 

Late in his life, Phillips also told JFK researcher Keven Walsh, unfortunately in an unrecorded conversation, “My final take on the (JFK) assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers.” 

An explanation of why Phillips would believe there was a conspiracy follows. 

A Plausible Scenario

In the scenario posited below, there are very few witting participants in the JFK assassination plot, which seems like a reasonable prerequisite. Later, there was a tsunami of what author Josiah Thompson calls “complicity,” but that is another matter.

In this false-flag plot there is Phillips, and then Oswald. It is logical that Oswald would have been promised a getaway car from the scene of the crime, and diversionary gunfire from the Grassy Knoll. That would limit the number of co-conspirators in the false-flag operation to just four, those being Oswald, Phillips, the driver and the Grassy Knoll shooter. And only two of those four, and possibly just one, knew they planned to shoot for real. 

Perhaps Oswald had been promised a safe house, or to be spirited out of the country, and then a new life in more highly-paid spy work.

However, it seems likely Phillips would not execute such a PR stunt without at least tacit if undocumented approval from superiors. 

So Phillips revealed his false-flag JFK assassination PR stunt to higher-ups—but at this high level, the plan either inadvertently leaked to the wrong people, or was intentionally passed on to the wrong people. 

Operation Piggyback

Many JFK researchers know the name Howard Brennan, the discredited “witness” who likely did not see anyone clearly that day in Dallas in the TSBD, but was seized upon by the Warren Commission to place Oswald at the scene of the crime. 

But there was another witness, often overlooked, who on Nov. 22 contemporaneously told Dallas sheriffs, indeed within moments of the shooting, that he had seen a man with a rifle shooting at JFK from the TSBD. 

That witness was Amos Lee Euins, a then 15-year-old youth on hand to watch the motorcade. Euins described to the WC a bald man, of undetermined race, shooting at JFK from about the fifth-floor of the TSBD. Euins’ eyesight was fine.

In March of 1964, Warren Commission lawyer Arlen Specter appeared exasperated that Euins, summoned to Washington to be interviewed, declined to classify the shooter he saw as either a white or black man. Euins would only say that the shooter was “bald,” as revealed when the gunman leaned out of the window to get a look at his work.  

Specter badgered Euins, noting that Euins had previously signed an affidavit for the Dallas Sheriffs, attesting that the shooter had been a white male. But in questioning by Specter, Euins stuck to his guns, and told Specter that he, Euins, had told Dallas Sheriffs that he was uncertain of the shooter’s race, and that his affidavit must be in error. Euins also recounted he heard four shots at the time of the assassination. 

Euins further recounted that a construction worker outside the TBSD had witnessed a bald man leave the building hurriedly in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and the worker had informed a police officer accordingly.  

Perhaps Specter meant to discredit Euins by challenging him on the matter of the shooter’s race. And indeed, if one imagines a dark black man vs. a light white man, Euins’ uncertainty seems to be discrediting, especially alongside the purported earlier affidavit that the shooter had been white. 

But as we now know, affidavits can be monkeyed with. 

In addition, G. James Robert Underwood was assistant news director at Dallas station KRLD-TV and was in the JFK motorcade, and passing the TBSD when the shots rang out. 

Underwood hopped out the open news car and milled around the TBSD where he overheard Euins being interviewed, within minutes of the shooting. 

This is what Underwood told WC counsel Joe Ball, in a Dallas interview:

UNDERWOOD. He (Euins) was telling a motorcycle officer he had seen a colored man lean out of the window upstairs and he had a rifle .... I went over and asked the boy if he had seen someone with a rifle and he said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Were they white or black?" He said, “It was a colored man.” I said, "Are you sure it was a colored man?" He said, "Yes, sir," and I asked him his name and the only thing I could understand was what I thought his name was Eunice.”

Of course, there is matter of semantics here, whether the word “colored” in the time and place referred only to American blacks, or might also refer to other non-whites, in Euins’ lexicon. 

The printed record, the conflict between Euins’ affidavit for the Dallas Police Department, and his testimony before the WC makes the then-youthful Euins appear unreliable. But by the time Euins was being interviewed by the Dallas Police Department, what Thompson called “complicity” had already set in.

The case was being built against Lee Harvey Oswald, a white man. And so the DPD affidavit described the shooter as a white man. 

Cubans

Of course, there are other people in this world besides stereotypical whites and blacks, and they include Hispanics, who can be of any race and are often mestizo, and who can have straight or curly hair. 

Perhaps Euins had spotted firing from the TSBD one Eladio Del Valle, an anti-Castro Cuban exile, and in 1963 more than a little bald. 

Like so many figures in the JFK assassination, Del Valle met an untimely death, having been bludgeoned and shot to death in 1967 in Miami, nearly at the same time that CIA-asset and pilot David Ferrie rather dubiously died in New Orleans. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in 1967 had wanted to question both men to further his investigation of the JFK assassination. Both were dead before Garrison could. 

But Eladio Del Valle’s name would be heard again and again from the lips and pens of a JFK assassination experts, echoing over the decades.

Enter Blakey The Mob Hunter 

House Select Committee on Assassination Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey, before taking the HSCA job in 1977, had been a Mafia-hunter for the US Justice Department, and an earnest believer in civil service and good government. 

At the time he helmed the HSCA, Blakey believed what he was told by the CIA, but he has since had renounced his faith in the agency, in florid terms, having learned he had been duped (another story, and this article is already growing long). 

In general, during his tenure at the HSCA the organized-crime nemesis Blakey was suspicious of mobsters, such as New Orleans kingpin Carlo Marcello, in the JFK killing. So as a man with a hammer looks for nails, Blakey looked for mobsters.

And indeed there were tantalizing clues, such as Oswald being bailed out of a New Orleans jail in 1963 by a Marcello associate, and, of course, the mobbed-up Jack Ruby murdering Oswald in the Dallas Police Department basement on Nov. 24.

Nevertheless, Blakey, at a recorded seminar organized by the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas in October 2018, called out the names of Cuban exiles and hit-men Hermininio Diaz and Eladio Del Valle as individuals thought to have been in Dallas at the time of JFK assassination, and as suspects. 

Blakey thus reprised a story that has been circulating for more than a half-century, ever since Garrison had wanted to learn more about Del Valle. 

The Hermininio-Del Valle as JFK assassins story got a second wind in 1978, when an anti-Castro paramilitary soldier named Tony Cuesta told Cuban General Fabian Escalante, the head of Cuba's G-2 Spy Agency, that he, Diaz and Del Valle had been involved in the shooting of JFK. 

Cuesta had been imprisoned in Cuba, captured in an unsuccessful raid on the island in 1966, an ill-fated incursion that left Hermininio dead, and Cuesta horrifically injured by self-inflicted wounds as tried to avoid capture alive. 

Blakey, in print and in the conference, has posited it is possible Diaz and Del Valle convinced Oswald to shoot JFK, feigning to Oswald they were fellow left-winger Castro-ites. 

One of the pair was possibly sequestered behind the picket face on the Grassy Knoll, and fired a shot from that location during the JFK assassination, suggested Blakey.

A Better Explanation

The Blakey version of events, a Cuban-Mob hit on JFK that tricked Oswald into being shooter, loses traction on a few points. 

Most prominently, Oswald was almost certainly a CIA asset, not a communist or bona-fide Castro sympathizer or a Mob asset. Blakey, though wised-up to the CIA, appears unable to shake off the WC-CIA-mass media fairy tales regarding Oswald’s character and loyalties.

Back to the Piggybacking  

So instead, let us posit that inside the CIA, only a very few people in November 1963 knew of an impending false-flag assassination plot on JFK, featuring Oswald, and hatched by Phillips. 

A PR effort had been ginned up by Phillips, even in advance of the event—and indeed, the earliest post-assassination press releases were from the CIA-funded Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) (think Joannides) and they connected Oswald to Castro, and called for retaliation. 

But before the planned false-flag assassination attempt on Nov. 22, somehow the information about the pending Phillips-plot leaked, and somebody, either inside or outside the official CIA, put Diaz and Del Valle into action. 

One scenario might be the Diaz-Del Valle pair approached Oswald, and had bona fides as Cuban exiles, erstwhile CIA assets, and true Castro opponents.

The pair offered to help in the false-flag operation, provide transportation, perhaps provide diversionary gunfire from the Grassy Knoll. They might have name-dropped their CIA contacts. Perhaps they were even retained by Phillips, who was unaware of Del Valle’s true intentions. 

 So, Del Valle placed himself in or near the sniper’s nest, and when the time came on Nov. 22, fired in earnest, and tilted his bald head out of the window to check results, where and when he was seen by Euins, the 15-year-old youth. 

In this scenario, Oswald fired once, striking the curb near James Tague, who was in front of the Third Street overpass—a large miss, a shot measured as passing perhaps 20 feet over the President limo. Many JFK assassination witnesses described the first shot they heard as different in pitch and volume from succeeding shots, which were rapid. Perhaps after his lone shot, Oswald raced from the sniper’s nest, whereupon Del Valle quickly settled in and went to work. 

Of course, after the killing, Diaz and Del Valle vanished, hanging Oswald out to dry—making him “the patsy.”

Oswald, a crafty individual with the ability to plan and plenty of foresight—see his photographs and plans regarding the General Walker PR stunt—was left with no plan of escape.

Oswald Dodges A Ride

Why didn’t Oswald catch a ride from the TSBD? 

As Oswald left the TSBD on foot, he must have suspected he had been framed for murder, and not a garden-variety murder but an assassination of a US President, and not framed by simple-minded thugs but by expert US intelligence agencies. 

Of course, Phillips had arranged for an escape vehicle. So what happened? Why did not Oswald get a ride? 

Oswald, upon leaving the TSBD, deduced from the commotion that someone had shot JFK for real, and he was the patsy. Perhaps Oswald heard multiple gunshots, yet he knew he had only fired once. Oswald reasoned if he stepped into a CIA-provided escape vehicle, he would never see daylight again.

Somehow keeping composure upon leaving the TSBD, Oswald famously boarded a bus that bogged down in traffic, then hailed a cab, and upon arriving home armed himself and left on foot, perhaps to encounter Dallas Police Officer JD Tippet. Later, of course, Oswald was captured in the Texas Theater. 

Oswald’s departure from the TSBD, then the futile bus ride, and then the taxi, and his acquiring of his revolver from his rented room are all increasingly troublesome yet indicative aspects of his post-assassination behavior. 

If Oswald was truly unwitting bystander on Nov. 22, why would he arm himself in the aftermath of the JFKA? 

Why did Oswald not assume right-wing nuts, or even low-life thugs or mobsters, or just plain kooks took a pot shot at the President? 

Instead, Oswald immediately suspected, or deduced, that he was likely the suspect, or patsy. This only makes sense if he was involved in some way. 

Oswald was then in a hurry to get his gun. 

Accessories After the Fact

After the fact, the CIA realized it had a full-blown real and public-relations catastrophe on its hands. 

The CIA could not say, “Oh, we had staged a false-flag assassination attempt, but then Oswald shot for real.” Phillips may even have believed this is what happened, and hence his strange, unpublished confessional manuscript. 

Phillips also pondered if US intelligence agencies have played a role in the assassination. This makes sense too—Phillips knew he had revealed his false-flag plan to higher-ups in the CIA. Then somehow JFK gets shot for real, but Phillips reasoned it did not seem plausible Oswald could have done it alone, even if he had tried. Not with the single-shot rifle he had. That explains Phillips late-life statement to Walsh, that intelligence agents had been involved in the JFKA.  

But for the CIA, even admitting lesser sins was simply unacceptable. Even, “Oh, Oswald was our asset, but we had nothing to do with him in Dallas,” hardly works, especially in the wake of JFK having so recently having fired top CIA officials in the wake of the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. 

In the aftermath of the assassination the CIA was fast on its feet—after all, murder and propaganda in fluid environments are CIA fortes. 

As often storied, Oswald had visited in the Soviet Embassy in September of 1963, during his famous Mexico City visit, where he met Valery Kostikov. Whether true or not, the CIA on Nov. 23, in an internal memo, posited Kostikov was a case officer in the KGB’s 13th department, which handled “sabotage and assassinations” in the Western Hemisphere for the Russians.

But if the “Oswald worked for Russian wet-operators” story line got out and was seized upon by US hawks, then war with Russia could result. That was the story line the CIA handed to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in the immediate aftermath of JFK’s killing. 

This fear of nuclear war in part led to the famous “Katzenbach memo” of Nov. 25, which in part states, ”The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”

Katzenbach added, "Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off….”

Thus, while Oswald’s body was barely cold, he was posthumously framed—that is, framed for the JFK murder for the second time in three days. 

The third framing of Oswald would persist for years, in US mass-media circles. 

As recounted many times, LBJ would recruit a reluctant and willfully clueless Chief Justice Earl Warren to head the eponymous commission, but only after terrifying Warren with nightmarish visions of tens of millions of sizzled Americans and a radioactive homeland—unless the Chief Justice did his duty. Warren, in fact, hardly showed up for work at the WC, largely handing the reins over to former CIA Chief Allen Dulles, the very man JFK had fired from the CIA after the Bay of Pigs debacle. 

In light of the Oswald-Russia fears—the “WWIII virus” explained by researcher John Newman—the official story line for public consumption, and amplified by mass media, was that Oswald was a leftie-loner-loser, without co-conspirators.

The CIA then had to completely scrub its records of any association with Oswald. This has led to decades of deception by the agency, including the successful bamboozling of HSCA Chief Counsel Blakey.

The FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made sure his troops presented an air-tight case to the Warren Commission, for example, finding Oswald’s palm print on the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, but only after FBI agents obtained palm prints from Oswald’s corpse, as well as delivering the bogus CE 399, along with any number of squelched, dubious or altered witness affidavits.  

Despite the fact that Governor Connally, the governor’s wife, and three Secret Service agents in the car immediately following the presidential limousine all attested that three separate shots struck Connally and JFK—and despite a Zapruder film that shows Connally being hit by a separate bullet—Warren Commission found that only two bullets struck JFK and Connally, thus solving the problem of too many shots in too brief a time frame for Oswald’s single-shot rifle. 

As well-documented, the CIA turned US media into its megaphone on the JFK assassination, abject in all regards. In anyone doubts the craven complicity of trusted titans of US media at the time, let them consider this paragraph from Life magazine, which ran in Life's December 6, 1963 issue. 

At the time Life went to press it was thought JFK had been shot in the throat. But Oswald was behind JFK, in the TSBD. So, Life solves the problem and reports, 

"The 8mm [Zapruder] film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed to the sniper's nest [in the TSBD] just before he clutches it." 

This is truly creative lying, showing a scope and scale for deception and disinformation that must have impressed envious peers in Moscow and Peking. 

It is hard to conceive of a lower moment for US journalism. 

Conclusion

The scenario sketched above, that relatively low-level Cuban exiles CIA assets likely assassinated JFK, and were not authorized by higher-ups in CIA to do so, may not sit well with some, as this scenario in some regards “absolves” the CIA. 

But not so. 

For one, Phillips’ plan for an Oswald false-flag assassination PR stunt may have been intentionally or maliciously leaked to the “wrong people,” and possibly by high-ups inside the CIA. If not intentionally, then security was criminally loose inside the CIA. 

Even if the CIA’s role in the JFK assassination was the result of rogue elements, it does not change the nature of the CIA, which was to do the bidding and dirty work on behalf America’s international commercial class and to help entangle the nation in counterproductive, incredibly inhumane and fantastically expensive wars, including what James DiEugenio justifiably calls “the American holocaust” of six million dead in SE Asia.  

And, of course, the intent of the JFK false-flag assassination attempt was to surreptitiously entangle the US in a war on Cuba, an idea that was only shelved when LBJ committed to a much larger war in Vietnam.

To be sure, there are parts of the “JFK Assassination as PR-stunt gone bad story” presented here that are speculative.

But if we accept that Oswald was a CIA asset, and was made into a patsy, then we are then painted into a corner—how could the CIA, or military intelligence make Oswald a triggerman-patsy on that fateful day, if Oswald had decided to take lunch outside and view the president’s motorcade from the sidewalk? Or even take the day off to look for another job? 

To make Oswald a patsy with certainty, he had to be involved in some type of plot, but one he would willingly participate in, and certainly one that would have excluded a bonafide assassination. 

Even a simple ruse might have aroused Oswald’s suspicions, along the lines of, “Why am I being asked to an obscure location inside the TSBD just as JFK’s motorcade passes?” After all, Oswald was a creature of intelligence operations, had been in the military, lived in the police-state Russia, and was an avid reader of books on spycraft.

Thus, a reasonable deduction is Phillips set Oswald up as a willing participant in a false-flag assassination attempt—and then the CIA had to frame Oswald into the real thing after the fact. The skids were conveniently greased, as Phillips and the CIA had already prepared the PR and groundwork to place Oswald in a failed assassination plot. 

As Dan Hardway, an ace researcher of the HSCA, put it in 2017, “All the indications…(are that)…much of the propaganda trying to tie Oswald to Cuba was laid on in advance of the assassination so that it was ready for publication immediately after the assassination.”

Hardway is a tough and smart investigator, and it is fascinating how his observations jell with those of researcher Newman. 

But the Hardway scenario perhaps assumes some number of people, perhaps even many, in the CIA were participating in real JFK assassination plot, and for many months before the event. 

It may be Hardway is correct but with a wrinkle: people in the CIA were readying PR for the immediate aftermath of a false flag and failed assassination plot involving Oswald.  

Epilogue

Of course, in the hours after the JFK assassination there was a terrible vulnerability for the CIA, even as they quickly maneuvered into place the PR edifice of leftie-loner-loser Oswald as the one and lone assassin.

Oswald was alive on Nov. 22, having been captured without real incident by remarkably restrained Dallas Police Department officers, in the Texas Theater. 

The story that follows hardly needs re-telling: The mobbed-up nightclub operator Jack Ruby, an affiliate of New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello, gunned Oswald down Nov. 24, in the basement of the Dallas Police HQ, as Oswald was being transferred to the “more secure” county jail. 

Most likely, Ruby knew nothing specific about the false-flag assassination plans, or that Cuban exiles had piggybacked on the operation. He only knew he had been given the task of gunning down Oswald.

After the fact, some observers have asserted no serious organization would rely on such unstable people as Oswald and Ruby to fulfill such critical missions.

But we know the image of an unstable Oswald is PR-creation, and beyond that, was Oswald any more or less stable than known CIA operatives of the 1960s such as David Ferrie, or Gary Hemming? What of CIA officer Bill Harvey, an alcoholic given to waving guns at dinner table arguments and who teamed up with mobsters?

As for Ruby, while the resources of the CIA are vast, they are not infinite. After Nov. 22 CIA leadership was desperate and wanted Oswald dead quickly, and not by a hand that could be traced back to the CIA, but also by someone who could penetrate the Dallas Police Department. 

Really, how many operatives are floating around Dallas who were willing and could accomplish all that? 

The CIA was already in bed with the Mob, in efforts to rid Cuba of Castro. Lines of communication and trust already existed, and phone calls were made. 

If any part of the JFK assassination saga involved the overt collusion of higher-up officials of the CIA, the murder of Oswald was likely it. 

Even senior CIA officials uninvolved in the JFK assassination knew that if Oswald should reveal he had been a CIA asset, the agency’s image would be indelibly besmirched, the very existence of the CIA placed in serious peril. 

Moreover, it is likely only those with real authority to offer something in exchange could entice mob boss Marcello to put Ruby into action.

A deal was made, and Marcello held up his end of the bargain by providing Oswald’s murderer, thus concluding the vital and successful first chapter of the JFK assassination and cover-up. 

Blakey has stated, on the record, that efforts to curtail the Mob were sharply delimited in the LBJ Administration. 

---30---

Addendum:

In excellent conversations on the JFK Assassination Forum, the question of Oswald’s negative results from the paraffin test have been raised. 

To recount, a paraffin cast was placed on Oswald’s check on Nov. 22, about eight hours after the assassination, but showed no signs of nitrates that should have been there, or other elements—even when subjected to neutron activation analysis. 

So, Oswald never fired a rifle on Nov. 22?

Maybe. But ponder---

1) A false negative due to time delay. Oswald was not tested until eight hours after the event. And in the false-flag JFKA  version of events, LOH may have only fired once, not three times. The unreliability of the old-fashioned nitrate test makes a conclusion impossible. 

2) The story does not end there, however. Evidently, a  paraffin cast of Oswald’s check was sent Vincent Guinn (yes, that Vincent Guinn), Technical Director of the Activation Analysis Program of General Atomic Division of General Dynamics Corporation, to perform something called neutron activation tests. Long story short, Guinn was unable to detect much in the Oswald cheek cast, and he was looking for barium and antimony. 

However, as noted by researcher Pat Speer, “Another memo…notes further that paraffin casts were normally thrown out by the Dallas Police Department after testing, and that Louie Anderson, who'd analyzed the casts for the DPD, had washed them and taken them home, apparently as a souvenir.”

"Washed them"? That is, the cast of Oswald’s check had been “washed” before it was subjected to Guinn’s neutron activation tests. 

Speer notes that the Oswald cheek cast was outside the chain of custody, and could have been intentionally, if unsuccessfully uncontaminated. Of course, in the JFKA, all evidence is suspect. 

3) Perhaps Oswald did wash his face, maybe with a garden hose en route to the Texas Theater, maybe in the Texas Theater, or maybe even when taking a bathroom break at the DPD. He did not take a shower in DPD custody—but really, he never used the john either? Is anyone sure?

4) In addition, Oswald may have visited the bathroom when he retrieved his revolver. While the testimony of Oswald’s landlady Earlene Roberts is clear, she was never asked directly if LOH had ducked into the bathroom quietly. 

Would she have noticed—she was absorbed with “fixing” her TV to tune into the JFKA. It is not impossible that Oswald could have spent a minute in the bathroom at the rooming house. 

5) Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be much in the literature about perspiration, that is a sweating face. There is a report from the National Bureau of Investigations, an agency in the muggy Philippines, that “excessive perspiration” may “remove gunpowder nitrates on the skin.” Oswald was running around, at least during his jaunt to the Texas Theater. 

6) It sounds whimsical, but LOH could have put saran wrap, or possibly a sheet of paper, on his cheek when firing. 

7) The circular sniper's nest may have created a swirl of air outwards, which blew out when LOH fired his one shot. Evidently, wind direction can radically effect the amount of nitrates, antimony or barium, deposited on a shooter’s face. Also, if the interior of a building is hotter than the exterior, then the building will tend to exhale. 

Any mix of the above explanations might result in a false negative, even for Guinn’s neutron activation tests. 

So why did Oswald's hands test positive, but not his face? Many answers for this one. Perhaps his hands came into contact with (common) items that test positive, after the assassination. False positives, in other words.  Perhaps LOH really did shoot Tippit, many times, and with a revolver, and that left a strong "dose" of nitrates on his hands.

I am open to the idea that LOH, realizing he had been framed, and thinking he had been done in by powerful figures, was in a desperate frame of mind when he met Tippit. The timelines do not add up, but maybe. 

Addendum II

Serious JFK researcher Larry Hancock has an excellent book fresh out, Tipping Point: The Conspiracy That Murdered President Kennedy.

In my “false flag piggybacked” version of the JFKA, the triggerman is Eladio Del Valle, while Hancock names others who could have set up the JFKA, and those individuals did not need PR guru Phillips to do it. 

What is unclear is how the individuals named by Hancock managed to frame Oswald. How to convince Oswald to be out of sight when the shooting started? There could, of course, be a plan to frame Oswald anyway, even if stood on the street and waved at JFK. The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle would be found, and the trail would lead to Oswald.

However, there is more. The pre-assassination Oswald biography building, the unsuccessful Walker shooting, and the Kostikof episode all appear in advance of the JFKA, and reveal organizational planning and depth. 

Dan Hardway and Newman contend the CIA’s pre-assassination Oswald biography building is part and parcel of the JFKA—but the biography building seems beyond the reach of the fighters and Cuban exiles named by Hancock. Such pre-assassination ground-laying is also well beyond the ken of Mafia goons. 

That said, there is no reason that individuals named by Hancock could not have piggybacked on the false-flag and phony assassination plot posited here, run by Phillips (or Angleton or Joannides). I have posited Eladio Del Valle as he was bald and possibly seen by witness Euins. But perhaps there were other bald Cuban exiles. 

It is also possible that Hancock is right, that CIA higher-ups did in fact explicitly work with Cuban exiles and others to have JFK assassinated, and planned for a long time to so, and also planned to make Oswald the patsy. From my perspective, that scenario involves too many people. 

The point of my exercise was to develop and simple explanation to how the JFKA happened, with a very small number of pre-event conspirators. 

---30---

 

JFK latest-word.docx

2 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

Assuming Biden even makes it to October. There is a good chance he'll resign before then and it will be Kamala Harris who has to decide, and I don't think she will open anything up.

Recently, Biden's people have started modifying their various websites, changing it from saying "Biden administration" to the "Biden-Harris Administration" -- this subtle change reflects how she's being groomed to take over, with the traditional quiet VP role being elevated in prominence.

Then we have Biden's own flubs in language, which can be considered merely mistakes ... or perhaps representative of what Biden knows he intends to. Like he said "I'll develop some disease and resign."

Biden has said more than once "President Harris" and even referred to his administration as "the Harris administration."  I don't think these were merely flubs, rather these were representative of what Biden knows.

I think there is a better chance that Biden would open the files than Harris. He's got nothing to lose and no long future career to worry about, to the contrary. Whereas Harris knows what's good for her and has to think about her future.

Unfortunately, you are probably right. Biden recently referred to the filibuster rule being different when he "arrived in the Senate 120 years ago."  

Harris is defined only by ambition, so her decision will reflect that. And no one ever crosses the national security state if they wish forward progress in their political careers. 

 

5 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

Came across this article this evening, had some stuff in it that was new to me. Good piece. 

The mystery of disgraced CIA spymaster James Angleton’s “retirement”
by Emma North-Best 
October 19, 2017
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/oct/19/angleton-return/

This well-documented and sourced piece describes how James Angleton was immediately re-hired by the CIA as a contractor--at the same pay rate he received as chief of CI--upon his 1974 termination and that he continued working there for about a year, well into the fall of 1975.

Angleton testified before the Church Committee in 1975 a few times and it's clear now that he committed perjury when he erroneously claimed under oath that he had left the agency in December of 1974.

He failed to acknowledge or even recognize that he worked from January of '75 through September of '75 at CIA, where "all operational issues remained solely the preserve of Angleton" during that period.

Given that JJA is one of the chief suspects in the JFK assassination and subsequent cover-up I thought worth posting here for those with an interest.

A bit about Emma Best:

https://www.patreon.com/EmmaBest

Nice post. You can read organizational charts, but then there is the way things really get done...

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The day the Fairness Doctrine died was a turning point in modern US history.

As many who defended it at the end said, it was a way to protect the consumer.  He could petition for Equal Time if he was unfairly maligned. Today, only the rich can sue conglomerates like FOX. 

As we shall see with the cases of Smartmatic and Dominion.

Verily, Jim Garrison got his day on national TV.  

On July 15, 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Garrison was given a half-hour to respond to an NBC program that was highly critical of Garrison.

That will never happen again. 

 

This is not relevant, or maybe it is, and really strange:

If there were two American families further apart, intellectually, socially, economically and geographically than the Oswalds and the Bouvier-Kennedys, I would be surprised. 

But the Bouvier-Kennedys and Oswald had a common friend: George De Mohrenschildt.

"While in New York, de Mohrenschildt became acquainted with the Bouvier family, including the young Jacqueline Bouvier, the future wife of John F. Kennedy. Jacqueline grew up calling de Mohrenschildt "Uncle George" and would sit on his knee.^[19] He became a close friend of Jacqueline's aunt Edith Bouvier Beale.^[20]"

And Uncle George became a "friend" of the guy who (allegedly) shoots Jacqueline's husband. 

You can't make this stuff up. Why does anyone bother to write fiction? Real history tops the cake every time. 

That's why we leave fiction-writing to credentialed historians and CIA mouthpieces. 

The story of what happened to Jim Garrison is one of the darkest chapters in US history and journalism. 

Sure, Garrison made some mistakes, undermined, as he was, by several on-staff landmines like Bethell and the weight of the US government and even state governments, which would not even grant Garrison extradition on many key participants/witnesses. 

To say Garrison operated on a shoestring would exaggerate his resources. 

Yet, Garrison on to something and in the larger picture he was right. My guess is somehow someone in the CIA fed Garrison the real dope (as much as was known), and Garrison never even betrayed a whisper of that inside information. But of course, documentation was impossible. 

The Garrison plan was to open up the JFKA through the aperture of Clay, Ferrie and Oswald, and some other participants/witnesses who were not called to testify as they could not be extradited. 

Garrison nearly won in New Orleans anyway, with several jurors afterwards saying that they had "reasonable doubt" and could not vote to convict. 

It is interesting that George Joannides also maintained a residence in New Orleans in 1963, when he worked out of Miami and had house and family there. 

It is now known the CIA maintained hundreds of contacts in US media in the 1960s, some paid off. 

James D's book, "Destiny Betrayed" is must reading, not just for students of the JFKA, but for anyone who is interested in US post-war US history. To understand what passes for "history" you must also understand what forces are present who are shaping academic and popular history. 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, I believe the record in incomplete, and most of the vital information erased by now. 

Remember, a lot of this stuff was never put down on paper, and if it was, it could be incinerated. 

9 hours ago, Tommy Tomlinson said:

That's awesome Ben, those images allowed me to find exactly where it is on Google Earth and I'm now building a "Project" on that platform to show the locations involved and their relative proximity to one another.

Anyone know if there are any transcripts of those documents so I can get a clearer read? I had a look and in one part it seems to say that Walker was in "The most northerly room on the lower floor" whereas another states that he was toward the back of the house at the time of the shooting.

I understand that extensions may have been built in the past 55-60 years, but the most northerly room just doesn't apply to anywhere toward the back of the house, which is all at the southern side of the building. It wouldn't be an issue, but if the most northerly room as it stands, was where he was sitting, it's literally about 10 feet from the alley. I could have hit Walker in the head with a brick from the position a sniper would have stood. The very furthest room to the rear of the house doesn't have a north facing window, (though I could well imagine that I might wall off a window if I'd been shot at through it...).

That leaves the most obvious shot being through the window to the right of the French doors. Which, if you look on the interior photos generously donated by the online estate agent, is the only room that isn't a nightmare in cream and white, where there is a little study/den set up.

I have three Border Collies. As pretty as that house looks, trying to keep it clean seems like my idea of a living hell.  

Tom-Tom:

To be sure, in the intervening decades, the Walker house could have been expanded, and windows altered. Older wooden sash windows often turn to rot. 

I compared the present-day pictures of the Walker house to the famed Oswald photographs, and could determine nothing. 

I look forward to whatever you gin up. 

The only transcripts I know of the Walker shooting are the original DPD reports, and then the WC testimony of Walker. 

Add on: Walker initially thought kids had tossed a firecracker into the den where he was preparing tax forms. Walker had been in actual combat and had a long military career.  We don't know by how much the Walker shot missed, but how close could it have been?

Over the years, in increasingly fictionalized accounts, the Walker miss becomes narrower and narrower, and that only by lucky deflection. 

 

7 hours ago, Tommy Tomlinson said:

Ooh. Serendipity?

I haven't been around for a while, and was about to conduct a search on The Forum for any threads pertaining to this very subject, before risking starting one that had already been covered. Top Hole! (as no one in England says any more.)

It has always been confusing that Oswald was shown to be an OK shot with a semi automatic rifle on which he had received training, (and my experience with rifles is limited, but I always figured that semi-automatics would be easier to maintain aim than a bolt action...), but according to the Warren boys, using the manual bolt action rifle with which he'd had no formal training he was both stupendously hapless (Walker) yet made Carlos the Jackal look like a rank amateur with Kennedy.

The thing that I've never been able to get my head round is the Walker situation, because I've never been able to find a decent break down of the circumstances. The basic time table and descriptions of cars coming and going round the church are available, but I'd love to see a layout of the area, showing line of sight/distances etc. Does anyone know where such a thing may be found?

It does make some sense that if the conspirators wanted to establish an active militant Communist presence in Dallas such a move against someone with Walker's profile would help, and I don't imagine many of them would have been too upset if it had gone wrong and Walker HAD been hit.

And Benjamin, you missed a trick not stealing from Sherlock Holmes and referring to "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" when the dog not barking led Holmes to realise that the horse thief was someone who worked at the stable... (Sorry... I digress)

Tom-Tom:

Verily, I had the Sherlock Holmes story in mind, but couldn't summon it forth. Thanks for reading and the reminder.  

Yes, but in this case the dog didn't bark as it was sick...or poisoned. 

I am unaware of any overhead diagrams of the Walker house, and surroundings. The timeline is pretty well laid in police documents. 

Final chit-chat: The Walker house is actually up for sale presently, though I suspect it has been duded up over the decades. $4.4 million, and that is Dallas, where property is (usually) reasonably priced. 

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4011-Turtle-Creek-Blvd-Dallas-TX-75219/26693449_zpid/

3 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Yes true - yet he blamed Oswald for the rest of his sorry life. 

Paul B--

Well, Walker had a lot of views on the matter. See my answer to Tony K. 

4 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

Mr. LIEBELER. Now, have you any information of any kind that would indicate or suggest who actually took that shot at you? 
General WALKER. None

More than a year had passed, and Walker had nothing to indicate Oswald was involved.

Tony K: 

General Walker was mercurial, to put it mildly. Evidently he always believed something larger was afoot than a lone assassin, in his case or the JFKA case. 

In 1991, Walker authored this letter to the DPD, suggesting JFK knew LOH had taken a potshot at Walker, but set him free. 

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth337177/

In a strange way, Walker's knowledge of the military and government may have led him in the right direction, but down the wrong path. 

It truth, the executive branch of the US government, likely elements of or connected to military intel, put LOH up to shooting at Walker, and then set LOH up as the patsy in the JFKA.  

Walker may have still had sources in the military who related scuttlebutt to him. And the scuttlebutt was that military intel was involved in both the Walker shooting and JFKA. 

In my opinion, Walker erred in surmising that JFK had knowledge of CIA operations, especially an LOH operation of the type that was conducted in the twilight world between government and contractors. 

Side note: Walker had reason to think JFK was out to get him. RFK had Walker put into an insane asylum in 1962, for an intended 90-day observation, primarily due to Walker's extreme (and loathsome) pro-segregation viewpoints.  The ACLU and others had to intervene to get Walker out. 

 

 

General Edwin Walker, Lee Harvey Oswald, the Bad Shot, and The Dog That Didn’t Bark 

 

Part of the official JFKA lore is that Lee Harvey Oswald armed himself with his Mannlicher-Carano rifle on the night of April 10, 1963, and took a bus close to the Turtle Creek neighborhood of General Edwin A. Walker, then a nationally prominent right-wing political activist. 

Oswald then walked to behind the Walker residence, into an alley.   

Resting his rifle on a latticed fence about 100 feet from Walker, who was seated behind a desk inside his home in front of a large first-floor window, Oswald at 9 pm took a potshot at his target. 

And missed. Entirely. The shot went over Walker’s head, and into a wall. 

Walker, on surveying the latticed fence afterwards that evening with a lieutenant from the Dallas Police Department, remarked that the unknown would-be assassin was a “lousy shot.” 

A police officer reviewing the layout and shooting that night replied, “He couldn’t have missed you.” 

The official version is Oswald, after shooting at Walker, then “buried” his rifle somewhere, and rode a bus back home, where he confessed to wife Marina details of his expedition.

Also entered into the lore was that Oswald would have struck Walker, save for a window pane that deflected his shot. 

But a review of the Dallas Police Department documents reveals just the opposite—whoever shot at Walker that night would have missed even more badly, save for the deflection of the window pane. 

First, here is a photo of the Walker window pane and the damage caused by the passing bullet. Obviously, the damage is on the lower edge of the crossbar of the wind plane, and likely would have deflected the bullet lower.  

And that is how the Dallas Police Department saw it. 

“Officers observed a bullet of unknown caliber, steel jacket, had been shot through the window, piercing the frame of the window and going into the wall above comp's (Walker’s) head,” according to DPD report filed on April 10 (italics added). 

The report continues, “The bullet struck the window frame near center looking device. From the point where the bullet hit the window frame to the point where it struck the wall is a downward trajectory.”

It is hard to escape the conclusion that whoever shot at Walker would have missed by even more, except for the deflection. The shooter missed Walker from a distance of about 100 feet, armed with a rifle resting on a fence for support.  

Careful readers will also note that a “steel-jacket” bullet was found at the scene of the Walker shooting. JFKA researchers know, of course, that Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano used copper-jacketed ammo, from the Western Cartridge Company. 

One thing about cops is that they tend to know guns and ammo, and one might assume that the DPD assigned some of their best detectives to the Walker shooting, given his national prominence in 1963. 

But after the JFKA, the DPD sent the steel-jacketed Walker bullet, stated in police reports to be a 30.06 calibre, to the FBI.  The projectile was then transformed into a 6.5 slug from the Western Cartridge Company, and copper-jacketed.

In a more-innocent era, one might assume the DPD made a mistake, after all, mistakes happen, and bullet was mangled after passing through a wall in the Walker residence. 

But since then the profoundly dismaying history of CE 399, the “Magic Bullet,” has been revealed: the famed nearly pristine slug was almost certainly introduced into the evidentiary record within the FBI facilities in Washington. The curious “pointy head” slug found on the Parkland hospital hallway Nov. 22 has disappeared, and almost certainly had nothing to do with the JFKA anyway.  

So, with the Walker bullet one reasonable supposition is that the FBI again fabricated and switched in evidence, replacing the steel-jacketed projectile from Dallas with a copper-jacketed Winchester Cartridge 6.5 slug. 

There is much more to that evening in April 1963; for example, outside Walker’s home at least two vehicles sped from the scene in the wake of the gunfire, as seen by multiple witnesses. 

Also, a Walker neighbor’s dog, known as an active barker, was conveniently ill that evening. 

“The neighbor's dog to the east of the Walker property is a fanatical barker but on this incidence did not make a sound,” according to an April 12 DPD report. 

Concerning the dog, a neighbor told the DPD that, “Dr. Ruth Jackson, who lives next door to the General, has a dog that barks at everybody and everything. The night that this offense occurred Dr . Jackson's dog did not bark at suspects. Investigating Officers received further information…that Dr. Jackson's dog was very sick yesterday [the date of shooting] and is also sick today. Reason for this illness is unknown at this time.”

And of course, everyone’s favorite is the backyard black-and-white photo of Walker’s house, purportedly found in Oswald’s possessions, featuring the infamous two-tone 1957 Chevrolet---with its identifying license plate mysteriously cut out. 

But for the purpose of this article, the WC treatment of Walker shooting is the interesting part.

In all likelihood, whoever shot at Walker—

1. Was a lousy shot, to put it mildly 
2. Or, intended to miss
3. Or, had very faulty firearms 
4. And had accomplices 

None of above surfaces in the WC treatment of the Walker shooting. 

Indeed, the version that the “window pane deflection likely saved Walker” is allowed to survive unchallenged in the WC version of events, and grew in mass media literature over the years. 

My own interpretation is that Oswald was the shooter that night, had accomplices (hence the cars racing from the scene), did not use a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, and missed intentionally. 

In a later, more complete article I will contend the Walker escapade was part of Oswald biography-building exercise, to practice and test Oswald’s nerve for an intentionally unsuccessful assassination attempt of a prominent figure. 

Evidently, Oswald passed.

 

—30—

 

For the DPD documents, see: 

 

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/pdf/WH24_CE_2001.pdf

 

13 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Jeff Morley has organised a petition on JFKFacts and requested people to write in with support for release of files/docs etc.

Peter Mellor: Excellent. 

8 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

No doubt, our M$M will keep the American public fully informed about the status of these suppressed and missing JFKA records.  Because, as CIA contractor Jeff Bezos says, "Democracy Dies in Darkness."  🤥

Ditto.

In October, Biden can give the thumb's up or down on total release of the JFK files. I suppose it is a lost cause, but is anybody organizing an e-mail letter-writing campaign, or PR effort?

Are there any prominent figures known to support full release who could write (or ghost-author) an op-ed for Wapo and the NYT?  Yes, Oliver Stone, but I am thinking of someone in the business-political world. 

5 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Matt Douhthit exposes this late, and hopefully, last attempt by the Commission survivors to conceal what they really did.

Which was to construct an official story that I do not even think they really bought into.

They got the last VInce Bugliosi and Blakey to appear as talking heads on this debacle.  They never give up.  Howard Willens might be the worst of what is left. Shameful.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/truth-is-the-only-client

 

Thanks to James DiEugenio and Matt Douhthit, and the rest of the indefatigable band of earnest researchers who have actually tried to pry the JFK assassination truth from government hands, or unyielding circumstance. 

There seems to be a spate of this JFKA-disinformation in the media lately, the Woolsey book and so on. 

My guess is that the renewed (again) JFKA disinformation campaign is groundwork for October, when Biden must decide whether to open the remaining 15,834 JFK files or not. 

https://jfkfacts.org/cia-director-bill-burns-will-advise-biden-on-secret-jfk-files/#more-30908

So, you see, since the WC was right, or the Russians did it, or the JFKA community is just a bunch of kooks, then it won't matter if Biden opens up the remaining JFK files. 

The betting is, come October, Biden will keep the JFK files from the public eye. You know, why should the voters and taxpayers see these documents? Besides, national security will collapse if these half-century-old documents are released. 

I can all but guarantee that the mainstream media will not  make a cause celebre in October about opening up the JFK files. 

My congrats to the JFKA community. It's easy to win, to own or work for the New York Times, Disney or CBS, and "go along to get along."

It is lot harder to get beaten every day in the mass media, and keep coming back.

I know who I admire. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 2/17/2021 at 5:20 PM, Greg Doudna said:

Interesting Mark. On the shot originating from lower than the sixth floor, and also the evidence in your video clip that bullets shot through tree branches and leaves go straight and are not deflected, is it possible the shot was fired from the half-opened window, fourth from the right, on the second storey of TSBD facing Elm Street (the lower left window in this photo identified as taken at 12:42 pm Nov 22)? https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ad/f2/9b/adf29b8dd4e97d0f73cb1159303dc20f.jpg

The reason that window in particular might be of interest is because it is the window of an office, locked and believed unoccupied and not in use on Fri Nov 22 the day of the assassination--into which, according to testimony to the Warren Commission, a Mauser rifle had been taken and temporarily stored two days prior to the assassination, on Wed Nov 20. That is the window of the office of Warren Caster, district manager of the Southwestern Publishing Company. Caster himself had an ironclad alibi the day of the assassination--he was in Denton. Caster testified that after taking the Mauser to his office after lunch on Wed Nov 20, that around 4 pm that day he took the Mauser back out of the TSBD with him to his car and home that night, and that it remained in his family years later. 

Caster testified that he had bought two rifles that day (Nov 20) on his lunch hour (the other being a .22 gift for his son)--giving verifiable specifics concerning name of the store and time--and then brought them in their cardboard packaging into the TSBD where he showed them and they were handled, before taking them to his office until he took them with him driving home after work that day.

It is possible to imagine a mechanism for how the Mauser that was taken into that Elm Street-facing office on Nov 20, could have been present in that office two days later on Nov 22, that is also consistent with Warren Caster's family years later having the same Mauser he bought during his lunch hour that day and brought home that day. If the Mauser that entered the TSBD and was taken to that office on Nov 20 was a different Mauser than the one Caster had purchased, and then Caster left that day with only one of the two rifles, the .22, and then took home both the .22 and the Mauser he had purchased (which under this thought scenario did not enter the TSBD) ... that could be a mechanism for the Mauser that was taken to that office on Nov 20 also being in that office on Nov 22 at the time the JFK motorcade passed.

A private office with the door locked, believed to be unoccupied, would make an excellent location for a shooter without being disturbed or seen. Since the Southwestern Publishing Company's offices were very close to the stairway at the SE corner of the TSBD which descended directly to the doorway entrance on Elm Street, it would be much easier for an assassin in the ca. 15-30 minutes between time of the shots and police thoroughly searching the floors of the TSBD, to make an unnoticed exit from the building. The locked unoccupied office of Warren Caster on the day of the assassination has received little attention as a possibility for the shooting that day, it seems because of three things: assumption that the window was closed; assumption that the tree in front of that window which largely blocked vision to Elm Street and the motorcade would also make line of fire to the motorcade impossible; and finally no good reason to doubt Warren Caster's testimony or character. In any case there never was further investigation of the circumstances of a Mauser having been taken into and temporarily stored in a private office on the second floor of the TSBD which had a window facing the motorcade on Elm Street two days before the assassination--a Mauser which had been displayed and shown to a few other TSBD employees including Oswald on Nov 20 and handled by some (though not handled by Oswald).

Warren Caster was a long-time Southwestern Publishing Company manager and he had solid alibis concerning both his whereabouts Nov 22 and the disposition of the two rifles he purchased on Nov 20. There also is testimony that one of the secretaries of the Southwestern Publishing Company remained in the publicly-accessible reception area next to Caster's locked office on Nov 22 at the time of the assassination, and never volunteered having heard the sound of a shot fired from what she would have assumed was the unoccupied office adjoining hers. Ian Griggs believed Warren Caster, believed there was nothing further to this story than freak coincidence. But it is troubling that it was not investigated further so that exculpation could have been established on the basis of fact rather than trust, in the manner that leads are run down and people cleared otherwise in a criminal investigation. As Griggs reported, Warren Caster told him (Griggs) that nobody ever even verified Caster's alibi in Denton that day! (Caster noted that to Griggs as a negative aspersion on the quality of the investigation.) The lack of running down other leads, such as this one, of course fits into police and FBI thinking, particularly after LHO's death on Sunday morning Nov 24, that there no longer was need or purpose served in running down any other leads, since the case was now believed to be clear and closed. All of the many 6th floor line-of-sight photos and trajectory reconstructions and calculations--compared to none (?) at all from that 2nd floor window ... this is what came to mind to me from your comments on trajectory and the video.

Very interesting post. Fascinating information. 

4 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

My journey started going down the mob route too, Giancana, Marcello, Cuban casinos repossessed etc. The more I read the more logical it seemed the CIA were involved, and I am open to the military being involved too. How do you separate those two anyway? If Prouty is to be believed in regard to him explaining the network of CIA in the Pentagon, FBI, and other security apparatus. But, they are all facilitators, I believe the east coast establishment ‘eminence grise’ gave the nod. How do you separate the ‘Power Elite’ and the Yale allumni and other Ivy leaguers at the CIA at the time? I just think JFK wasn’t good for business and any personal grudges or other narratives are largely incidental. Sure Dulles and co hated JFK, as well as a lot of the mob and Cuban exiles where lots of motive is found. But, the profits from wars and regime changes represent something much bigger. “War is a racket” by Major General Smedley Butler really shed light on just how many ways the public can be deceived and exploited.
 

As a plotter of any such plan, it makes sense to have layers of deflection. LHO, USSR, Cuba, Mafia, and Cuban exiles provide plenty of subterfuge. Once the game was up with LHO being alone, the MSM propagated and precipitated the Cuban/Mafia stuff like wild fire. 
 

it’s one of the most intriguing stories of the 20th century. I often ponder what draws so many of us to this and causes us to use so much of our time?! Are we idealists searching for truth? Or do we just like a good murder mystery? 

I look forward to John Newman’s new book, anyway. 
 

Cheers

 

Chris

Smedley Butler....man, oh, man. What a name, what a character, and yes, his insights remain germane to this day....

8 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

I think one of the other schools of thought is that LHO had infiltrated a plot and was informing, or so he thought. Perhaps informing to the FBI. It's that one thing we don't know for sure, or if it was him who informed on the Chicago plot (the same day the Diem brothers were killed). LHO may have thought he was informing on the right wing loonies. All this stuff about an abort team listed in some books, mentioned by Tosh Plumlee further muddies the waters. 

The RFK thing is fascinating. But, would Garrison have had an informant that high up? If he indeed did. Or was there a backchannel between hm and RFK. If you understood there was 100% a conspiracy, then when RFK enters back into politics, you'd assume he would be a target and as his status elevates he becomes more so. Even on a less direct level, Garrison could have had access to all of the death threats getting rained on the Kennedy homes, targeting Ted and Bobby. One might assume they are not the work of nuts but a concerted effort to deter them from running for higher office. The contents of the threats are appalling, too heinous to even write here. 

I certainly look forward to reading your article when complete. 

Thanks for your sentiments. On and off I have been reviewing the JFK case since it happened. The advent of the internet has really invigorated the topic. I can actually remember getting LIFE magazine (as an eight-year-old boy) in 1963-4 and reading and re-reading it as gospel on the assassination. 

Over the years I have always wanted to read a plausible version of events. One with only few participants. I looked at the Mob-Marcello angle for long time (as did Robert Blakey).

But, when one ponders the LOH backstory, the FBI control and manipulation of evidence, the WWIII scare-story, the WC cover-up...then the Mob story looks weaker and weaker.  The Mob can't do all that. My guess is, if the JFK assassination was a simple mob hit, then US investigative agencies might have actually investigated, and brought the perps to justice. 

John Newman seems to working on US Army intel version of the JFKA, and let's see where that goes. But he is already on record (along with Dan Hardway) that the CIA had been handling LOH for quite a while. 

Well, stay tuned....

4 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

According to Larry King a wealthy Miami financier, Louis Wolfson, was giving $5,000 in cash--equivalent to $36,000 in today's money--per month to Garrison. Wolfson did this via Larry King and another go-between, Dade County State Attorney Richard Gerstein. According to Larry King, Gerstein received the $5000 in bills from Wolfson and personally conveyed it himself covertly to Garrison one month, and the other months Wolfson gave the $5000 to Gerstein who gave it to Larry King to give covertly to Garrison. 

Garrison needed the money to investigate the JFK assassination. But was there a quid pro quo? Why the envelopes of cash in secrecy instead of something above-board and disclosed? 

Gerstein, the central go-between figure in Larry King's account, is apparently said by a lot of people in Miami to have had Mob connections. https://justicebuilding.blogspot.com/2007/08/in-end-big-murder-case.html. 

"Someone could write a book about the Market Connection case. Gerstein had provable associations with Miami Beach gangsters. There are pictures of his top assistant, David Goodhart, meeting with them. Goodhart, an ex prosecutor, ex judge, ex defendant, ex inmate, and now convicted racketeer. No one alks about it anymore but it is out there and everyone who has a law license in this town pre 1980 knows it."

"The Market Connection caper was circa 1972. It involved one Frank(?) Martin, the owner of a gas station/grocery store that was supposedly the location where bribes were exchanged for judicial favors. Dave Goodhard was involved in this as was Gerstein and a number of his underlings who later became judges. The Miami Beach episodes were different and involved allegations, corroborated by photographs, that Gerstein was paid off by the mob. He allegedly took his payoff by visiting a haberdashery on the Beach where he would slip into the dressing room, try on a pair of pants where a pre-determined amount of cash was already inserted in the pants pocket and walk out after trying on the pants and not buying them."

The above are, it should be emphasized, anonymous comments posted to a Miami legal history blog, and other comments note that Gerstein was never convicted of any of these allegations which were brought by a political opponent governor. The blog editor himself say diplomatically and noncommittally concerning Gerstein: "there were rumors, whispers, and unsubstantiated allegations". So this is street talk or local hearsay, disputed by Gerstein's defenders. In fact in this obituary Gerstein is remembered as being an organized crime fighter in some prosecutions: https://miamiarchives.blogspot.com/2015/07/who-was-richard-e-gerstein-and-why-is.html. 

However the same Gerstein appears in Larry King's story as the go-between between Wolfson, the financier, and Garrison, courier of bags of large sums of cash.

Wolfson, the apparent source of the money (or was Wolfson himself a conduit?), had criminal troubles but I cannot find a reputable online source linking Wolfson to organized crime directly. (Disreputable sources such as Daniel Hopsicker and Alex Constantine have plenty of Mob allegations and claimed facts linking Wolfson to organized crime.)

Miami was where Meyer Lansky, head of the Jewish Mafia, had moved from New York. According to this source, Meyer Lansky was business partners with Santo Trafficante in ownership of at least one gambling casino in Cuba, the National Casino of Havana, prior to the takeover of Castro: http://cuban-exile.com/doc_126-150/doc0126.html (item 13). Trafficante of course was also of Miami and considered a leading figure of interest in the JFK assassination, with Blakey/HSCA naming Trafficante along with Marcello of New Orleans as having had means, motive, and opportunity to have done the JFK assassination (though no evidence found that they were), with HSCA recommending that FBI investigate those two (that never happened). 

And so, a question: what, if anything, did someone want from Garrison, in exchange for conveyance of unreported sacks of large sums of cash to Garrison? 

According to Larry King, Wolfson was a personal believer in conspiracy theories and that was the reason Wolfson supported Garrison in that manner.

Neither the FBI, the Warren Commission, nor Garrison ever looked at the Mob as involved in the JFK assassination, even though Ruby's killing of Oswald had all the earmarks of a Mob hit. 

If Larry King had not talked (and assuming Larry King's account is true), this unusual conveyance of bags of cash to Garrison may never have come to light. 

HL Hunt's right-hand operative, John Curington, told me that Garrison sought money from HL Hunt to finance his investigation, though HL Hunt did not give Garrison anything. Curington also told me that New Orleans Mob boss Marcello would make visits to Dallas and HL Hunt (and Curington) would meet with Marcello, away from the office.

Separately, it has been reported (with Curington apparently the source) that HL Hunt explained privately at the time why he would not financially support an investigation into the death of JFK as had been suggested that he do (perhaps referring to Garrison?): that (a) he, HL Hunt, knew, did not suspect but knew, there was a conspiracy in the assassination of JFK, and (b) if he, HL Hunt, were to fund an investigation of it, "he would be a dead man". This was reported in June 1977 in a National Enquirer story.

There are at least three untimely deaths related to the JFK case which look like they could go back to Marcello: Oswald, Ferrie, and Dorothy Kilgallen. New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews, who received a phone call from someone asking him to go to Dallas to give Oswald legal representation--on the same weekend that both Marguerite Oswald and a partner of Mob-connected attorney Clem Sehrt independently later reported Marguerite had phoned Clem Sehrt, her childhood friend, that weekend seeking legal assistance for her son--Dean Andrews feared he could lose his life if he disclosed who made that phone call to him. 

But Garrison never looked at Marcello or Trafficante or any other Mob direction in the JFK assassination. And Marcello was so little looked at by Hoover's FBI and the Warren Commission that Marcello's name does not even appear in the Warren Report's index. Even though Marcello by most accounts controlled Mob operations in the city of the scene of the crime, Dallas. And his name does not even appear in the Warren Report index?

And so this story of Larry King, of monthly conveyance of bags of large sums of cash to Garrison sourced from Miami and conveyed to Garrison via a Miami figure rumored to be Mob-connected, combined with Garrison's seeming avoidance of what any outside observer would consider on the short list of suspected operatives in the JFK assassination, just seems "odd". Was Garrison going to get around to investigating Marcello and Trafficante "later", at some point? Or had Garrison decided in his own mind that Marcello and Trafficante were cleared, exculpated, not figures of interest, from the getgo?

Did the bags of Miami cash going to Garrison of Larry King's story--if accurate--influence Garrison's decisionmaking with respect to directions of his investigation?   

Greg D.---

The mismatch in "the Mob got JFK" is in the history of LOH.

As John Newman and Dan Hardway have posited, LOH was being run by the CIA, to Russia and back, then into New Orleans, and down to Mexico City and back, and possibly even into the TSBD. A biography of LOH was created, and then even the story that nuke-WWIII would break out if LOH was not painted as a leftie-loser-loner. The Mob had nothing to do with any of that. 

The FBI enhanced the evidence and the paper trail, and the WC---well, you know the WC story. 

Robert Blakely was a mob-hunter prior to the HSCA. He saw the Mob everywhere. However, you can see Youtubes later in Blakey's life, when he says he thinks Eladio Del Valle and H. Diaz were involved, and (to Blakey's credit) that he now believes the CIA badly misled him. The Mob angle, even for Blakey, is not so compelling. 

My guess is the CIA turned to the Mob to get LOH, after the event. The CIA has vast, but not infinite, resources. They needed LOH silenced, but who could do it? LOH was in Dallas. They put their feelers out to the Mob, with whom they had bedmates on getting Castro. 

That led to Ruby. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

I think you’ve likely read far more than me or at least different stuff on this part of the plot. The whole LHO getaway and Tippett situation has been talked about a lot on here and there never seems to be agreement.
Perhaps he (King) was already on his extension. I guess the bigger picture is that he is fuelling conspiracy talk as opposed to suppressing it. If you’re the perpetrator you’d want sleeping dogs to lie. 
i had always assumed he was in the lunchroom when it happened and when he becomes aware that JFK is shot, he gets the hell out of dodge. If you were really firing at the president, you’d want to be there and set with some time to spare, not legging it up stairs and lacking composure. It’s my understanding that the motorcade was late too, did LHO have that info? Even if you are missing in the suggested false flag operation, I still think you’d want to be there with some time to spare. 
As for the pilot, I think he is never going to live if he sees and flies LHO. There is a suggestion by one ex-CIA guy in Lisa Pease RFK book “A lie too big fo fail” that the actual assassins were neutralised straight after Dallas, after being lured to a meeting. 
James W Douglas in “The Unspeakable” also talks about a flight out of Dallas with only a couple of people on board (suggested assassins). 
We also assume that Oswald’s definition of the word “patsy” is an accurate one. He doesn’t say he has been setup or framed. 
i think this is where the waters get very muddy. The pilot can be a drama seeker, and if he did indeed die of a heart attack, it could be natural.I think Larry is being honest. 

Verily, I am editing my "false-flag fake assassination version" as we speak. 

Everyone has their own take. If LOH was a know-nothing witless patsy, then why take a taxi home and get a gun? Why did not LOH assume right-wing loonies or a deranged nut, or even lowlife thugs took a potshot at the President? If he was uninvolved, then why worry about anything? 

One spooky thing was Garrison telling King, "They are going to shoot Robert Kennedy too." 

My guess is Garrison had a good source inside the CIA who was feeding him info. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Chris Barnard said:

It's a bit of a revelation. I am trying to think of a motive for Larry to lie or make that up, seemed very candid. 

Well...Larry King showed extraordinarily bad judgement in using $5k cash to pay his own IRS tax bill rather than delivering the cash to Garrison. Taxes? You can always get an extension in payment from the IRS, or go on payment plan. 

But, set that aside. Larry King probably did the hear the tape as described.

Of course (you are probably ahead of me on this) is the purported pilot on the tape telling a real story, or just a drama seeker? Or even a CIA plant sending Garrison up another box canyon? At this late date, and without even the tape, all that remains are ciphers. 

That said, yes I strongly suspect LOH had arranged for a getaway car (although LOH once said escaping somewhere by bus is not a bad plan, as cops do not check busses. Ironically, and perhaps tellingly, cops were checking busses after the JFK shooting). The car-ride dematerialized, or LOH decided not to take the ride, after the JFK assassination happened for real. 

The Larry King version, of course, suggests LOH played a role, one that became the patsy role, in the day's events. In the Larry King version, LOH was a patsy, who initially anticipated escape help. 

Add on---A bit shaky on this point: Who would hire a mercenary for $5k + $5k to provide an airplane ride to a Presidential assassin?

So the hired pilot figures out the next day, when he reads the newspapers, that he just gave a plane-ride to Mexico to the President's assassin. So the pilot mulls things over. I can keep quiet, but if LOH's escape is tracked back to my plane I then become an accomplice in a President's assassination.  I better squeal---meaning I say who hired me. 

I rather think LOH's get-away ride was a car, driven by a Cuban/CIA asset who was in on the intentionally unsuccessful false-flag JFKA. The ride never happened after JFK was shot for real.