Paul Jolliffe
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Posts posted by Paul Jolliffe
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10 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:
The Dallas Police executed a search warrant on Saturday, November 23, 1963 at the home of Ruth Paine. During that search, police claimed to have found pictures of Oswald with a rifle and handgun in a holster on his hip. ( Stovall Exhibit D ) But the itemized list of things they recovered during that search ( Stovall Exhibit B ) does not include the photographs or negatives, or an ad from Klein's they recovered showing the alleged murder weapon. Why not ?
Not only are they missing from the evidence list, photographs of the evidence recovered show no "backyard photographs" or ads for Klein's. Why not ?
So are we to believe that they had this rock solid evidence linking Oswald to the rifle and the handgun, both murder weapons, and they didn't even put them on the evidence list and didn't even photograph them with the rest of the evidence they confiscated ?
What the fudge-and-cookies ?
Because the photos did not yet exist, Silly Rabbit!
They couldn't cook up the photos until they knew for sure exactly which "murder rifle" was to be assigned to "Oswald"!
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12 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:
There is ample evidence that JFK had no intention of completely disengaging from South Vietnam, and that he had every intention of aiding South Vietnam to prevent a communist victory there. Let us start by reviewing the official statement of U.S. policy on Vietnam that JFK approved at the 10/2/1963 NSC meeting:
1. The security of South Viet Nam is a major interest of the United States as other free nations. We will adhere to our policy of working with the people and Government of South Viet Nam to deny this country to Communism and to suppress the externally stimulated and supported insurgency of the Viet Cong as promptly as possible. Effective performance in this undertaking is the central objective of our policy in South Viet Nam. (Record of Action No. 2472, Taken at the 519th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, October 2, 1963)
This was reinforced in the McNamara-Taylor report that JFK approved in NSAM 263:
a. The security of South Vietnam remains vital to United States security. For this reason, we adhere to the overriding objective of denying this country to Communism and of suppressing the Viet Cong insurgency as promptly as possible. (By suppressing the insurgency we mean reducing it to proportions manageable by the national security forces of the GVN, unassisted by the presence of U.S. military forces.) We believe the U.S. part of the task can be completed by the end of 1965, the terminal date which we are taking as the time objective of our counterinsurgency programs. . . .
c. The political situation in Vietnam remains deeply serious. It has not yet significantly affected the military effort, but could do so at some time in the future. If the result is a GVN ineffective in the conduct of the war, the U.S. will review its attitude toward support for the government. Although we are deeply concerned by repressive practices, effective performance in the conduct of the war should be the determining factor in our relations with the GVN.
d. The U.S. has expressed its disapproval of certain actions of the Diem-Nhu regime and will do so again if required. Our policy is to seek to bring about the abandonment of repression because of its effect on the popular will to resist. Our means consist of expressions of disapproval and the withholding of support from GVN activities that are not clearly contributing to the war effort. We will use these means as required to assure an effective military program.
Note that the first paragraph assumed that U.S. forces would remain in South Vietnam until the end of 1965, and that this “terminal date” was an “objective,” not an unalterable, fixed determination. So, rather than indicating that JFK would initiate a complete withdrawal and disengagement as soon as he won reelection, NSAM 263 assumed that U.S. forces would be in Vietnam until “the end of 1965,” and even that was not set in stone but was an “objective,” since, after all, the “overriding objective” was “denying this country to Communism.”
Here is what JFK was going to say about Vietnam in his speech at the International Trade Mart on 11/22/1963, the speech that he never got to deliver:
About 70 percent of our military assistance goes to nine key countries located on or near the borders of the Communist bloc – nine countries confronted directly or indirectly with the threat of Communist aggression – Viet-Nam, Free China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. No one of these countries possesses on its own the resources to maintain the forces which our own Chiefs of Staff think needed in the common interest. Reducing our efforts to train, equip, and assist their armies can only encourage Communist penetration and require in time the increased overseas deployment of American combat forces. And reducing the economic help needed to bolster these nations that undertake to help defend freedom can have the same disastrous result.
JFK said the following in his 5/22/1963 news conference when asked about withdrawing troops from South Vietnam:
QUESTION: Mr. President, the brother of the President of South Viet-Nam has said that too many American troops are in South Viet-Nam. Could you comment on that, and give us some progress report on what is going on?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I hope we could-- we would withdraw troops, any number of troops, any time the government of South Viet-Nam would suggest it. The day after it was suggested, we would have some troops on their way home. That is Number 1.
Number 2 is we are hopeful that the situation in South Viet-Nam would permit some withdrawal in any case by the end of the year, but we can't possibly make that judgment at the present time. There is still a long, hard struggle to go, and we have seen what happened in Laos, which must inevitably have its effect upon South Viet-Nam, so that I couldn't say that today the situation is such that we could look for a brightening in the sky that would permit us to withdraw troops or begin to by the end of the year. But I would say, if requested to, we will do it immediately. As of today, we would hope we could begin to perhaps do it at the end of the year, but we couldn't make any final judgment at all until we see the course of the struggle the next few months.
JFK made no secret of his desire to bring troops home from South Vietnam, but notice that JFK clearly made withdrawing troops dependent on the situation in South Vietnam. Note that he said "there is still a long, hard struggle to go." Of course, JFK knew full well that South Vietnam's leaders would never request a withdrawal of any kind unless they were confident it would not endanger the country's survival, so that was really a non-issue. And note that he added that he could not make a final judgment until "we see the course of the struggle the next few months."
Then, in his 11/14/1963 news conference, just eight days before the assassination, he once again talked about withdrawing troops from South Vietnam in response to a question:
QUESTION: Mr. President, in view of the changed situation in South Viet Nam, do you still expect to bring back 1,000 troops before the end of the year, or has that figure been raised or lowered?
THE PRESIDENT: No, we are going to bring back several hundred before the end of the year, but I think on the question of the exact number I thought we would wait until the meeting of November 20th.
Not a word about ending aid or completely disengaging, not even an indication of an intention to withdraw all the troops anytime soon.
On 9/9/1963, JFK was asked about South Vietnam on NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report. He said the following:
Mr. Huntley: Mr. President, in respect to our difficulties in South Viet-Nam, could it be that our Government tends occasionally to get locked into a policy or an attitude and then finds it difficult to alter or shift that policy?
THE PRESIDENT. Yes, that is true. I think in the case of South Viet-Nam we have been dealing with a government which is in control, has been in control for 10 years. In addition, we have felt for the last 2 years that the struggle against the Communists was going better. Since June, however, the difficulties with the Buddhists, we have been concerned about a deterioration, particularly in the Saigon area, which hasn't been felt greatly in the outlying areas but may spread. So we are faced with the problem of wanting to protect the area against the Communists. On the other hand, we have to deal with the government there. That produces a kind of ambivalence in our efforts which exposes us to some criticism. We are using our influence to persuade the government there to take those steps which will win back support. That takes some time and we must be patient, we must persist.
Mr. Huntley: Are we likely to reduce our aid to South Viet-Nam now?
THE PRESIDENT. I don't think we think that would be helpful at this time. If you reduce your aid, it is possible you could have some effect upon the government structure there. On the other hand, you might have a situation which could bring about a collapse. Strongly in our mind is what happened in the case of China at the end of World War II, where China was lost, a weak government became increasingly unable to control events. We don't want that.
On 9/2/1963, JFK told Walter Cronkite that ultimately it was up to South Vietnam to win or lose the war, that we would help them but that it was their war, and that he was against withdrawing because that would be “a great mistake.” He also suggested that our effort to defend Asia may need to be equal to the effort that we made to defend Europe:
. . . in the final analysis it is the people and the government itself who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear, but I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. I know people don't like Americans to be engaged in this kind of an effort. Forty-seven Americans have been killed in combat with the enemy, but this is a very important struggle even though it is far away. . . .
We took all this--made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate--we may not like it--in the defense of Asia. . . .
What, of course, makes Americans somewhat impatient is that after carrying this load for 18 years, we are glad to get counsel, but we would like a little more assistance, real assistance. But we are going to meet our responsibility anyway.
It doesn't do us any good to say, "Well, why don't we all just go home and leave the world to those who are our enemies."
I'll take these statements, along with Bobby's April 1964 statements and Schlesinger and Sorenson's silence over any plans for a complete disengagement, over anything that McNamara, O'Donnell, Powers, and Mansfield later said.
Mike,
The Taylor McNamara report was only partly approved by President Kennedy.
Which was the only part he specifically approved in NSAM 263?
I B (1-3)
B. Recommendations.
We recommend that:
1. General Harkins review with Diem the military changes necessary to complete the military campaign in the Northern and Central areas (I, II, and III Corps) by the end of 1964, and in the Delta (IV Corps) by the end of 1965. This review would consider the need for such changes as:a. A further shift of military emphasis and strength to the Delta (IV Corps).
b. An increase in the military tempo in all corps areas, so that all combat troops are in the field an average of 20 days out of 30 and static missions are ended.
c. Emphasis on "clear and hold operations" instead of terrain sweeps which have little permanent value.
d. The expansion of personnel in combat units to full authorized strength.
e. The training and arming of hamlet militia to an accelerated rate, especially in the Delta.
f. A consolidation of the strategic hamlet program, especially in the Delta, and action to insure that future strategic hamlets are not built until they can be protected, and until civic action programs can be introduced.2. A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.
3. In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.So in NSAM 263, prepared for President Kennedy on October 2, discussed and verbally approved on October 5, and formally approved on October 11, 1963, our plan was to withdraw from Vietnam.
That Kennedy directed that his policy be enacted in a low-key manner proves that he knew he faced ferocious opposition from his own National Security State (and likely from members of his own cabinet, not the least of whom was McGeorge Bundy . . . )
Mike,
This is not new. Revise all you like, but it won't work. Quoting self-interested parties decades after the fact blaming our debacle on the "anti-war" crowd or Congressional Democrats is incredibly weak sauce.
This has been discussed for decades - Kennedy was getting out, regardless of whatever was happening in Vietnam. You can cite as many ambiguous campaign statements by Robert Kennedy in the spring of 1964 as you like, but there is no substitute for the official U.S. policy under President Kennedy: read it and weep.
Under President Kennedy's policy in 1963 at the moment of his murder, we were getting out.
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On 8/28/2022 at 12:24 AM, Benjamin Cole said:
LBJ's quixotic venture venture into Vietnam remains inexplicable.
Ben,
I have long suspected the LBJ knew exactly what happened to JFK, and LBJ long suspected who had a hand in it. (The JCS.)
This is not to say he knew everything about it, nor that he was entirely correct. (The ultimate sponsors were beyond the JCS.)
Merely to point out that President Johnson was afraid of being murdered by his own National Security State.
And with good reason . . .
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On 8/26/2022 at 1:41 PM, James DiEugenio said:
Furthering the last, Nixon was a real prevaricator on this subject.
In his book No More VIetnams, he wrote that he never considered bombing the dikes or using atomic weapons.
False.
He did so twice. Once with Duck Hook, and once during the Easter Offensive. The first is on paper and the second one is on tape. This is why RMN fought with a fleet of lawyers not to declassify his records. It did not really happen until after his death. The guy had a lot to conceal.
Even a rather sympathetic biographer, Ambrose, once said that Nixon was actually a little nutty when it came to Vietnam. After doing some work on the issue of RMN and Vietnam, I agree.
Jim,
Do you think Nixon may have feared what might have happened to him personally if he accelerated a quick American withdrawal from Vietnam?
I suspect that Johnson did indeed have such fears.
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2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:
You're not getting it. Since the prints were not complete, then they are of no value.
The prints could do only one of two things. One, they were complete enough to be linked to a person. Two, they incomplete and could not be linked to any person (but could rule out someone).
They are of no value because...
If it is shown that they do not belong to Oswald, then that still doesn't rule out the idea that Oswald was the killer and simply did not touch the patrol car. The prints do not need to be a full print in order to rule someone out.
However, they do need to be complete enough (12 points of match) in order to state that the prints do indeed belong to a particular person. The prints lifted by Barnes weren't complete enough to give 12 points of match (but were complete enough to rule out a person, since less points are needed to rule out a suspect than to match a suspect).
Face it, as Barnes testified to, the prints were of no value and now you (should) know why.
Greg, if you were to track down Crafard's prints, Barnes (basically) tells you that there would not be enough matches between the prints he lifted from the car and the prints of Crafard because the prints lifted were only partial. You would be left with one of two conclusions. One, the prints do not belong to Crafard because enough non-matching points would be available to rule out Crafard. Two, the prints could possibly belong to Crafard but there would not be enough matching points to state as a fact that they are Crafard's prints. Therefore, even if you had Crafard's prints, the prints lifted from the patrol car would be of no value.
This isn't rocket science.
Isn't the $64,000 question whether today's fingerprint technology CAN make a match?
We all agree that the DPD claimed in 1963 that they didn't have enough to make a match, and maybe that was true then. Or, as Greg has suggested, maybe it wasn't even true then.
But what is indisputable is that by 1994, it was possible to rule out "Oswald" as the one responsible for the most suspicious prints on Tippit's car.
We all agree that these prints might have been left by an innocent bystander. And it may be that even with today's technology, not enough was recovered in 1963 to make a 12 point match today.
BUT . . .
Maybe these prints with today's technology CAN make a match with a suspect. If so, a very important lead might open up.
The real possibility, no matter how slight, that these prints in 2022 may yet lead to a suspect means an effort should be made.
And that is something that no reasonable person should disagree.
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2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:
The revolver was found on the ground four miles from Tenth and Patton. There is absolutely no reason for it to be considered "a second possible murder weapon for Tippit".
Hmm.
At the time it was found, early Saturday morning, "Oswald" was very much alive, Jack Ruby was not yet infamous, and nobody had any idea who Craford was.
So it's true at that moment the second .38 was not likely to be considered a possible murder weapon. But once we read that both Ruby and Craford (by Craford's own admission) had been very near where that .38 was found an hour or so later, then things change.
Surely the FBI suspected that the DPD request on November 25 to trace a .38 (found early on the 23rd) was related to the case.
After all, just a few days later the FBI tracked down Craford.
Sorry, Bill.
While I have disagreed at length with Greg elsewhere on other key aspects of the case, on this one, I think he's on to something.
That .38 is very suspicious.
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Thanks, Jean Paul. Flip de Mey's analysis of the Martha Jo Stroud letter is convincing.
As to whether Adams did or did not say she saw Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor, De May has hedged his bets a little (page 24: "The Commission misused a mistake in the Adams-testimony (the sighting of Shelley and Lovelady on the ground-floor), or perhaps even added that element to her deposition.")
In my view, the Ernst/Armstrong debate about whether Adams did or did not identify Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor is not likely to get us anywhere.
William Hoyt Shelley remains a very suspicious figure, regardless of whatever Adams did or did not say.
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At the 1 hour and 16 minute mark, Brewer is interviewed for the CBS 1964 Warren Report promotion.
Note that the interview cuts away from a visibly nervous Brewer just as he tells us that "Oswald" turned and walked up to the theater. Instead we see the camera on the sidewalk and the interview jumps to Brewer's statement "I walked up the sidewalk and watched him go in. Then, ah, I walked up to the theater and I asked Miss Postal, the cashier, if she had sold a ticket to this man wearing a brown sports shirt, you know his description. Uh, she called the police and Butch covered the front exit and I went down to the back exit and waited there until the police came . . . "
Thanks, Johnny. So helpful. You described what you couldn't see, based on a man whose clothing did NOT fit either the Tippit killer.
Even in this CBS whitewash, it is obvious that any ticket transaction was invisible to anyone on the sidewalk unless they were right next to the theater.
So exactly why did you walk down the sidewalk to the theater, Johnny? Who urged you? Did you let the truth slip out in your interview with Ian Griggs 25 years ago - you were prompted by two mysterious "IBM" men, who helpfully remained at the shoe store, and even volunteered to close the shop for you!
Again, begin at the 1 hour and 16 minute mark:
Ian Griggs' 1996 interview with Brewer is invaluable. I think by 1996, Brewer was much closer to the truth about two key facts: he knew on sight and remembered our "Oswald" as a previous (unpleasant) customer, and he did NOT go up to the Texas Theater on his own volition.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=16235#relPageId=8
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1 hour ago, Sean Coleman said:
Brewer defo telling porkies
Absolutely right.
Here is second promised clip (with the bizarre interruption at the same moment!) from "Four Days in November" in which Brewer himself stands in front of Hardy's. At the same time, the camera pans down the street toward the theater. Brewer tells his his actions "the man walked out, up toward the Texas Theater" . . . yes Johnny? What happened next precisely?
But at that exact moment, the narrator interrupts to confirm the "official" version. Begin at the 1:30 mark.
The theater ticket booth is invisible from Hardy's and the makers of this documentary knew it. That's why they stopped Brewer's recorded statement.
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On 9/14/2021 at 9:08 AM, Greg Doudna said:
Micah, the point 5 on Tommy Rowe is completely bogus, fiction (I looked into that earlier).
On the other points, I don't see Johnny Brewer having done anything wilfully wrong that day except make a mistaken ID of Oswald (and that is what I think it was, a mistake) as the man who entered the theatre past Julia Postal without paying. The two IBM friends in his store I don't think have anything to do with anything. I do not see Johnny Brewer as a conspirator that day. I think Johnny Brewer and Julia Postal's summoning of the police so quickly saved Oswald's life that day--the police presence preventing Oswald from being killed in that theatre by the killer of Tippit who was in the theatre.
Greg,
I too am suspicious about the "Tommy Rowe" story. It is distant hearsay, and completely uncheckable.
However, the critical thing about Brewer is this: he knew "Oswald" by name and sight, and did not like him!
Our "Oswald" had been a customer in Hardy's Shoes and was obnoxious and memorable. A pair of shoes from Hardy's was inventoried by the DPD in "Oswald's" meager possessions.
As Brewer told Ian Griggs "I just didn't know who I was looking for", yet Brewer did know! Brewer remembered "Oswald" from several weeks earlier that fall!
Key question: why didn't Brewer recognize the man in the vestibule of Hardy's Shoes as the same man he knew and detested?
Because the man in the vestibule was NOT our "Oswald." (Maybe it was Crafard, maybe not.)
Yet Brewer was more than willing to point out NOT the man in the vestibule, but his old customer instead. Some witness.
The mysterious "IMB men" really did prompt Brewerto walk down the sidewalk and speak with Julia Postal.
How do we know?
Because Johnny Brewer admitted to Ian Griggs that "he didn't really know why he was there . . ." Why not?
Because the universally told story that Johnny Brewer witnessed the unknown man duck into the theater without buying a ticket was a lie.
No one can stand on the sidewalk in front of Hardy's Shoes and see the ticket booth at the Texas Theater. The booth is recessed back from the sidewalk. The only way to see the booth is to walk to the front of the theater. Any transaction at the booth would have been invisible to Johnny Brewer unless he was standing almost in front of the theater. Yet the very reason he claimed he was suspicious was because he saw the man duck in without paying. Brewer could have seen no such thing from any location on the sidewalk anywhere near Hardy's.
Incidentally, as I pointed out years ago, all three early audio/video taped interviews with Johnny Brewer all contain the same bizarre interruption of his narrative, just as he about to describe how and why he went down to the Texas Theater.
For one example, here's Vincent Bugliosi himself, interrupting Brewer at the 3:42 mark ("and thereupon you") just as Brewer was about tell us what happened as he stood in front of Hardy's Shoes. This interruption kept Brewer from mentioning any possible prompting from any "IBM men."
(If anyone is interested, I can post the other two examples from the 1960's):
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On 12/12/2021 at 2:52 AM, Vince Palamara said:
Thanks Vince for posting this.
Watching Chief Curry here reinforces my general view that he was probably not a conspirator. He comes across as sincere and a bit worried, but not cognizant of what was about to happen. I read his "The JFK Assassination File" years ago, and although he publicly blamed our man "Oswald" in 1963, it was clear that by 1969, he had plenty of doubts about the case.
Here's Peter Dale Scott's interview with Chief Curry on the grassy knoll in the 1977 in which Curry admits flat out that a shooter was on the knoll:
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16 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:
On the notion of Oswald impersonators
Paul J., I hope you will not object that I quote a portion of a post you gave this morning at a different topic on the Forum ("The Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald--Part II"). I prepared a response which goes off topic there but is relevant here. The main point is that the assumption of Oswald impersonators in the Dallas area in the runup to the assassination has no sound basis, no matter how deeply rooted it is in so many conspiracy theory books. This means the Furniture Mart Oswald sighting also will have been either Oswald or a mistaken identification, one or the other, but will not have been an impersonation (an actor pretending to be Oswald), since there is no sound evidence that phenomenon was happening in Dallas in any other case, therefore it is unlikely in this case for which there also is no evidence. In what you write below there are a couple of factual mistakes noted which is not my intent to embarrass but are common misconceptions worth clarifying. You write there (in part):
1. Someone went to the Sports Drome Rifle Range and used the name "Oswald". Actually, on one occasion, two men went, and one of them used the name "Frazier". This would seem to be evidence of a pre-assassination plot to frame Buell Wesley Frazier and "Oswald."
I have long believed that the plotters intended the conspiracy to be known as a pro-Castro plot, complete with multiple shooters. All of the "single-bullet-theory" nonsense was necessitated by the decision to pin everything on the dead "Oswald."
2. Ralph Yates did pick up a hitchhiker who used the name "Oswald" (complete with a rifle!) and dropped him in Dealey Plaza. This person was not our "Oswald".
3. The CIA deliberately withheld from the rest of the national security state (including the FBI) the key "information" (now demonstrably false, but at the time it would have seemed to be true) that the "Oswald" in Mexico City had met with a suspected KGB agent/assassination specialist, Valery Kostikov.
Such a message from the CIA would have triggered the security alarms around JFK, and our "Oswald" could not have been patsified by the plotters, if the Secret Service and the FBI knew about this (supposed) meeting with Kostikov.
4. The Sylvia Odio incident, complete with incriminating phone call. (I discussed that at length elsewhere, but my short version is that our man "Oswald" was indeed at the Odio apartment on Sept. 25 or 26 in the company of two virulent anti-Castro Cubans. I believe that "Leopoldo" placed his follow-up call to Odio to frame our "Oswald" ("He is loco. He says we Cubans have no guts. He says he would shoot Kennedy . . ." etc.) outside of "Oswald's" immediate presence. After all, if the original in-person visit was a deliberate impersonation of our "Oswald", intended to cast him as a violent, crazy anti-Kennedy maniac, our "Oswald" did not say or do anything in front of Odio to show it! Nothing! Not a word, not a sign! This proves beyond any doubt, that the original visit was NOT meant to frame "Oswald" as the assassin. No, that came a few days later in the phone call, when "Oswald" was not present to hear it!
5. The Downtown Lincoln Mercury incident in early November, in which an LHO impersonator claimed he would be in financial position in a couple weeks to buy a new car. This, of course, implied that our man was anticipating a payoff for some future (sinister) action. Our "Oswald" was never there, but someone was, used the name "Oswald" and made their visit memorable.
My response:
There is no evidence of impersonation in the examples cited. None of the Sports Drome witnesses reported hearing any shooter there naming himself or identifying himself as Oswald. No one at the Sports Drome self-identified or was identified there as "Frazier"--that story came post-assassination from one of the Sports Drome witnesses who saw a young man with his "Oswald", and since he believed it must have been Frazier, said it was Frazier. The Sports Drome was simply mistaken identifications, not impersonations.
Ralph Yates' hitchhiker never used the name Oswald or claimed to be Oswald. If one takes the Ralph Yates' hitchhiker story seriously, which with you I do, the hitchhiker was carrying a rifle-sized package--i.e. a rifle, which would become the next day the assassination rifle--to a dropoff at Elm and Houston near the TSBD; talked of the hypothetical possibility that someone could shoot the president from a tall building; asked if the driver knew of any changes in the parade route; and attempted to show the driver (maybe) a Backyard Photo of Oswald (Yates said he saw out of peripheral vision while driving that it was a photo of a man standing holding a gun but he did not look directly). All of these would heighten incriminating focus on Oswald after the fact by connecting the assassination rifle to a photo and workplace of Oswald, but it does not necessarily mean the hitchhiker intended himself to be identified as Oswald, even though Ralph Yates did suppose he was. If it had been impersonation Ralph Yates might have remembered the hitchhiker calling himself "Lee" or "Oswald", or referring to his time in the Marines, or discussing employment in the Texas School Book Depository, or having been in Russia, etc. something distinctive of Oswald, but there is none of that in Yates' account. The Yates' identification of the hitchhiker as Oswald can well be understood just as other known post-assassination mistaken identifications of Larry Crafard as Oswald, without credible reason to suppose Crafard intended or planned any of those mistaken identifications. (And I think Yates' hitchhiker was Crafard.)
Silvia Odio's Oswald was no impersonation since that was the real Oswald. A detail: "Leopoldo" who later phoned Silvia did not actually have "loco" Oswald saying he, Oswald, would personally shoot Kennedy, rather he claimed Oswald had taunted the anti-Castro Cubans for not killing Kennedy. Close enough to be about the same thing, but that is incrimination, not impersonation.
The Downtown Lincoln Mercury customer who gave his name as Oswald which was written down by salesman Albert Guy Bogard was no impersonation since that also was the real Oswald. The reckless driving related by Bogard is accounted for by Oswald's inexperience in driving. The main reason the Warren Commission rejected the Downtown Lincoln Mercury account as being Oswald was a timeline difficulty since Bogard said it was Sat. Nov 9 and that conflicted with Ruth Paine's testimony that Oswald was in Irving all day that day so could not have been there. However that difficulty is removed by the report of another salesman there that day at the Downtown Lincoln Mercury, Eugene Wilson, who convincingly told that that date accepted by the Warren Report was mistaken and that the correct date had been Sat. Nov. 2 (http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/W Disk/Wilson Eugene/Item 01.pdf). Nov 2 happens to be the one Saturday Ruth Paine said Oswald may not have been in Irving. The facts of Oswald at the Downtown Lincoln Mercury test-driving a car are sufficiently compelling that even Bugliosi was persuaded that could be the real Oswald.
Bugliosi brings up two other details on this of interest. Both Bogard and Eugene Wilson said it was raining that day, but both Sat. Nov 9 and Sat. Nov 16 were dry, ruling out both of those Saturdays. Bugliosi did not check out or report the weather for Sat. Nov 2 but I did: there was 0.3 inches of rain 8-10 am that day (https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/KDAL/date/1963-11-22); therefore that confirms the date. There has been an objection that the height of the customer was estimated by Eugene Wilson as only about five feet tall. But Bugliosi notes that the two other salesmen who gave height estimates for the Oswald customer agreed with Oswald's known height. Bogard: "medium" height. Frank Pizzo: "Maybe five feet, eight and a half inches". (Bugliosi's discussion, Reclaiming History [2007], 1030-1035.)
(There is another theory: there was a known "Oswalt" who had a car repossessed a couple of months earlier; some have thought maybe a man who had lost one car might be shopping for another and have been the Downtown Lincoln Mercury customer, though that was never verified; if that theory was true that also would be no impersonation. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95643#relPageId=287).
Please consider that this whole business of impersonations (as distinguished from mistaken identifications) of Oswald in Dallas in the runup to the assassination are 100% insubstantial across the board, without credible evidence of such in a single case. Consider that there was active pre-assassination incrimination of Oswald but no evidence impersonation was involved.
Hmm.
"No evidence" is not correct. On its face, the above is absolutely "evidence." What you meant, I think, is "no proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
If that was your position, Greg, then I tend to agree: the above is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that our "Oswald" was deliberately impersonated.
To take one example:
You dismissed a "Frazier at the rifle range" because one of the witnesses "saw a young man with his "Oswald", and since he believed it must have been Frazier, said it was Frazier. The Sports Drome was simply mistaken identifications, not impersonations. "
Yet you have no idea why Garland Slack identified the person with his "Oswald" as "Frazier" from Irving, Texas.
I don't know either, and thanks to the FBI's failure to ask Garland Slack about his apparent identification of "Frazier", none of us can ever say with certainty.
Maybe, Greg, your speculation that it was simply "mistaken identification" is correct.
Or maybe it isn't.
But since neither the Warren Commission nor the FBI followed up on this tantalizing line from Slack, we'll never know.
https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh26/pdf/WH26_CE_3077.pdf
Greg, your dismissal of Ralph Yates's statement to the FBI is beneath you (I hope.)
You've implied that you think Yates told the truth, but was merely mistaken. You apparently believe that Yates apparently picked up a hitchhiker (maybe Crafard) who had no connection to any later events in Dealey Plaza.
But . . .
No one can seriously your belief that Yates' hitchhiker - who was a ringer for our "Oswald" - talked of shooting the president and then claim, as you did, that it was " mistaken identifications of Larry Crafard as Oswald, without credible reason to suppose Crafard intended or planned any of those mistaken identifications. (And I think Yates' hitchhiker was Crafard.)"
You've got to be kidding me! If Yates told the FBI the truth, then there was NO WAY his hitchhiker was innocent! This could not be an "innocent" Larry Crafard! Whoever was the hitchhiker, that person was not innocent!
Not once we read that Yates told the FBI that:
"the man then asked Yates if he thought that a man could assassinate the president. Yates replied that he thought such a thing could be possible. The man then asked Yates if it could be done from the top of a building or out of a window, high up, and Yates said he guessed this was possible if one had a good rifle with a scope and was a good shot.
Yates advised that about this time the man pulled out a picture which showed a man with a rifle and asked Yates if he thought the President could be killed with a gun like that one. Yates said he was driving and did not look at the picture but indicated to the man that he guessed so . . ."
Sorry Greg. Your attempts to portray this as "innocent" are completely wrong or in bad faith. Either Yates was a complete fabricator, xxxx and fool (it is a federal crime to lie to FBI agents) or there was something very sinister going on here.
There is no 'innocent mistake" here.
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14 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:
Paul J.--
We agree on much, though I have a different slant.
BTW I think LHO did meet with Kostikov, and also was impersonated in Mexico City.
Around 1:04 mark, Kostikov says he met LHO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYI4PqtIyE0
Well, who really knows?
Ben,
Yes, I too have wondered about Kostikov's statement, although at the time he had no personal knowledge of "Oswald", so I don't see how he could know for certain whether he met our "Oswald" or an impersonator.
(Peter Dale Scott pointed out decades ago that after the breakup of the USSR, former KGB officers were belatedly willing to say just about anything.)
Also, I agree with you (and others, including Peter Dale Scott) that the assassination plot was probably piggybacked onto a "legit" U.S. intelligence operation, one which very definitely involved our "Oswald". Scott pondered whether such a "legit" operation even required that our "Oswald" be a witting participant - possibly, mused Scott, "Oswald" was directed (without his knowledge) by handlers who then used the "Oswald" file as part of a molehunt.
While that is an enormous topic, much discussed on this site in numerous other threads, I do think it bears repeating: at the very time the assassination plot was progressing in the fall of 1963, the CIA (at least James Angleton's Counter Intelligence office) was frantically trying to determine the identity of Igor Popov's mole within the CIA.
Did Angleton himself deliberately use his "legit" molehunt operation (which involved falsifying bits of information in the "Oswald" file) as cover to run an "off the books" assassination operation at the same time?
Many people think it likely.
I do too.
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20 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:
Paul Jolliff, I will run down some comments on the points you make.
That could be in the spring of 1963, but the problem with Oct-Nov 1963 is simple logistics: when? And if it was an affair, what kind of hot date is it to take Marina, cranky toddler and baby in tow, on an exciting trip to a local gun repair shop? If Marina asked, "why are we here at this sports shop?" what would she have been told? I do not think another man in Marina's life in Oct-Nov is very likely to have occurred without Ruth's knowledge. Why suppose that as the explanation of the Furniture Mart in the first place, instead of simply Lee with Marina?
Its possible (that that was the point of the anonymous phone calls). But anonymous tips often point to true things not necessarily false things. As I understand it you do see as true that a man representing himself as Oswald was at the Irving Sports Shop with a rifle. What I do not follow is how a later malevolent intent to show past linkage of Oswald to a rifle being used to frame Oswald means Oswald was not linked to that rifle, i.e. that the past link pointed to was fraudulent. That is the logical leap I am not following.
I am suggesting Oswald was framed with that rifle because it had been a rifle in Oswald's possession. That was the beauty of having that rifle believed to be the assassination weapon.
OK.
OK, except . . .
There is the claim of David Surrey, son of Robert Surrey, assistant to Gen. Walker, that as a young boy he accompanied his father and Oswald ("Lee") taken by his father to "the woods, which at that time would be modern day Richardson, a norther suburb of Dallas, to shoot" (told in Gayle Nix Jackson, Pieces of the Puzzle: An Anthology (2017), p. 225. Since this was told in a video made in 2012, a long time later, it is understandable to view this story critically, principally over the question of whether the Oswald identification in memory was correct. David was the older of two brothers. Gayle tracked down a younger Surrey son, William, and William too says he remembered going shooting with his father and Oswald, whom William too says was Oswald, though William claims Gen. Walker himself was with Surrey Sr. and Oswald and young William in going shooting (p. 226).
While that sounds far-fetched and maybe it is (but the full chapter of Gayle's book merits reading because there is more there than this), there is that separate story of Bradford Angers (a spooky sounding character to me, but he definitely was not stupid), the "private investigator" who used to work for H. L. Hunt and who claimed he had a taped account from Larrie Schmidt-- (Angers did not make the Larrie Schmidt identification of the person whom he kept anonymous but that is who it clearly is)--telling a version of the Walker shooting different from the familiar narrative (this in an interview in 1992 reported by Dick Russell).
"Somehow that spring of '63, the brother [= Robert Schmidt] had made friends with Oswald, who was trying to get close to Walker. But this fellow I knew [= Larrie Schmidt] had never met Oswald, I don't think, until his brother introduced them that night in April. The three of them got drunk together. They got in a car and the brother said, 'Somebody ought to shoot that no-good son of a bitch Walker.' And this fellow said, 'I've got news for you, I got him kicked out of the goddamned Army in Germany.' Then Oswald said, 'I've got a rifle, let's go hit the son of a bitch.' The three of them drove down St. John's Avenue, and stopped the car next to a little stone bridge that went over Turtle Creek. The brother and Oswald went down the creek, and Oswald laid on the embankment looking at Walker's house. Remember the great big window Walker had in the front? Walker was a nut, he would turn up a lamp and just pace back and forth reading in the room. They saw his shadow against the back wall and Oswald pumped off a shot. It hit the wall instead. Then they jumped in the car and took off." (Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much [1992], pp. 325-27)
Russell reports he contacted Walker (still living at the time) and asked him about this story, and Walker said he had been told that story and that it could be true (p. 327). I have read that Larrie Schmidt denied the story (cannot immediately locate the reference on the denial).
In one of the most amazing lacunas of the JFK assassination saga, Robert Schmidt--whom a veteran investigator in the surveillance equipment business with Army security background, has soberly alleged having been told by Robert's brother that Robert was with Oswald when the shot was fired through Gen. Walker's window--Robert Schmidt has never, to my knowledge, been interviewed or attempted to be interviewed by any researcher or journalist or investigator, ever. And he is apparently still alive today but nobody thinks that very important to check.
That there was something to do with Oswald, a shot fired through Gen. Walker's window, and a rifle, is not easy to say was a complete fabrication out of thin air. There is Marina. There is DeMohrenschildt's account of getting the pale, frozen look from Oswald when he, DeMohrenschildt, asked of Lee as a joke after the Walker shooting was in the news, "Did you take a potshot at Walker?" (DeMohrenschildt's claim of the question) or "How could you have missed?" (Marina's earlier version; that wording denied by DeMohrenschildt)--referring to neither of them liked Walker's politics. There is the letter in Lee's handwriting of instructions to Marina, dated about that time, of what to do if Lee was arrested. There is the photo of Walker's house found among Oswald's belongings. There is the Backyard Photo copy produced by DeMohrenschilt with epigraph in Marina's handwriting, written in Russian, making a joke about Lee: "Hunter of fascists. Ha ha!" There is this credible story told by Dallas Russian emigre Mrs. Natasha Voshinin (told in a 1992 interview of her by Dick Russell):
"[N]ot long after the Walker shooting, Mrs. Natasha Voshinin recalled de Mohrenschildt dropping by to see them one evening. 'He said, "Listen, that fellow Oswald is absolutely suspicious, you are right.' Thousands of times before, he would say we were wrong. "Imagine," George said, "that scoundrel took a potshot at General Walker. Of course Walker is a stinker, but stinkers have the right to live." Then he told us something about the rifle. But Igor [husband] and I felt Oswald had some connection with CIA. Anyway, I immediately delivered this information [from de Mohrenschildt] to the FBI.'
"That last statement seemed to me a remarkable one, for according to the Warren Commission Report, 'The FBI had no knowledge that Oswald was responsible for the attack until Marina Oswald revealed the information on December 3, [1963].' Yet Mrs. Voshinin was saying she had alerted the FBI of the possibility sometime back in April. Had the FBI looked into this at the time? Was the bureau's disclaimer of any foreknowledge in the Walker matter a fabrication, designed to cover up its prior awareness of Oswald?
"Not only the FBI but, according to de Mohrenschildt, the CIA knew about Oswald's connection to the Walker incident long before November 22, 1963. On the day of de Mohrenschildt's death, author Epstein asked him whether he had discussed this--and the gun-toting Oswald photograph that Marina passed along to the baron--with his CIA contact, J. Walton Moore. 'I spoke to the CIA both before and afterward,' de Mohrenschildt is said to have replied. 'It was what ruined me.'" (Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1992 edn, pp. 317-18)
Here is another random civilian who either is telling a glimpse of truthful testimony, or part of the ever-expanding number of civilian witnesses making up what you say are total fabrications about Oswald and the rifle.
It seems to me there is a false alternative set up: either Oswald was guilty in the narrative the Warren Commission set up, or he never had a rifle at all and everything--paperwork and witnesses--everything was forged, faked, suborned, and fabricated for the purpose of pinning a random rifle, which had nothing to do with Oswald, on Oswald. There have been plenty of law enforcement framings of innocent persons in history, but has there ever been a law enforcement conspiracy to falsely frame someone this grandiose, this far-sweeping, as you are supposing (referring to inventing a rifle for Oswald which he never had)? Breathtaking in scale, across multiple states, agencies, decades, broad swathes of civilian witnesses, the widow herself, and never a single of these false witnesses or agents involved in all that fabrication ever breaking ranks to tell of this vast operation for which not a single shred of actual evidence exists showing that it existed? Is there any falsification possible to that kind of thinking?
Interpretation (mine): I do not think Oswald had anything to do with the assassination of JFK or the killing of Tippit, but the Walker shooting is a somewhat different matter. There was something going on in which Oswald was involved there, but exactly what is not clear. Rather than either-or--either Oswald tried to kill Walker or the whole rifle/Oswald is entirely a fabrication--it should be considered that there are more than those two alternatives. There are already variant versions of that shooting, as noted above. There is the longstanding suspicion starting from Night One on the part of Dallas police, that Walker or Walker's people had staged it. Walker's very slight injuries, his fortuitous escaping of serious injury, and his instant (with no evidence) laser-like focusing of public nationally reported accusations on domestic communists as the culprit, heighten that question. There is the lack of actual knowledge of where Walker was at the time of the shooting (though he did have splinters of debris penetrating skin on his arm seen by reporters minutes after). There is the only one shot and not second or third followups. Only one shot is very likely not to kill, raising the question of whether one shot through the window was intended to kill at all but only to frighten, and whether the shooter (if Oswald) even believed Walker was in the room at the time of the shot. There is the fact of Oswald not being a very good shot anyway (no secret to Oswald himself), along with no evidence of serious target practice at any point.
There is the story of Mrs. Voshinin, and the separate story of Epstein claiming DeMohrenschildt told him he had told his CIA friend Moore about the Walker shooting and Oswald suspicions. Cases in which otherwise very strong suspects for crimes are mysteriously released by law enforcement or law enforcement looks the other way, often are because that person is protected by some agency and law enforcement is tipped off or quietly asked not to go there. There is the circumstantial appearance that that is what could have been going on with the Walker shooting and Oswald's involvement. The truth of the Walker shooting is misty and not clear. The still-living Robert Schmidt, whom nobody is ever known to have talked to or tried to talk to, conceivably could shed light on what happened, but apparently a living firsthand witness of the Walker household, whose own brother is alleged to have said he was with Oswald at the moment the shot was taken at the Walker house, is not considered of sufficient interest for any investigator to simply find and ask him.
And Walker, where something involving Oswald and a rifle happened but not clear exactly what, is the only connection of Oswald to firearm violence, there is no other.
I do not think the solution is to try to deny that Oswald ever had a rifle, and that the entirety of all of the documentary evidence and the entirety of the witnesses are all forged and lying, 100% of them across the board. Such an easy explanation! But not the right explanation! These false easy solutions--just say the whole body of disparately acquired evidence is all forged and all lies, simple as that!--function to prevent genuine inquiry from getting at what actually did happen.
I would not call it a benign reason. I would call it an alternative speculation as to why. I don't really know why. I just doubt that attempting to fabricate a connection of Oswald to the rifle was the reason in itself, since there are abundant other reasons independently indicating such.
I think there was. This is my theory of the case, which of course must be argued, but I think Tippit might have been a witness of Oswald at the time of the rifle conveyance, if not the conveyance itself, to the people who did the assassination, the day before the assassination. Tippit was witnessed present in the same restaurant at the same time as Oswald was there, eating at separate tables, by extremely high-quality witness testimony (a waitress who had known Tippit a long time). The rifle would be planted at Oswald's workplace and a "noisy" shooter would intentionally draw focus of attention to that window and that rifle, the rifle would be traced to Oswald, the rifle would have been seen the day before given by Oswald . . . the Backyard Photos . . . q.e.d. a Castro-sympathizer did it.
There was the Yates' hitchhiker attempting to show the random driver who picked him up carrying a rifle-sized package to the TSBD the day before, a Backyard Photo (?).
The anonymous tipoffs to the journalist and FBI of the past rifle sighting work at the Irving Sports Shop would be added bonus, if that too was phoned in by the ones who obtained the rifle from Oswald and did the assassination.
That the FBI/Warren Commission rejected the Furniture Mart and Irving Sports Shop Oswald presence is true. But I disagree that the reason the (FBI/)Warren Commission rejected that was because of fear that knowledge of an impersonator would be discovered. As if they knew better but were covering up the imposter.
I think the reason the FBI/Warren Commission rejected those stories was because they did not believe they could be true, in terms of timeline, the testimony of Ruth Paine, the driving of a car, and possibly Marina's denial (though this last may not have been so much a factor to FBI/Warren Commission).
You are saying the FBI/WC rejection of the Furniture Mart and Irving Sports Shop Oswald events was a bad-faith rejection when secretly FBI/WC knew better (knew their imposter working for them had been there with Marina). I think the rejection of the Furniture Mart and Sports Shop Oswald events was a good-faith rejection (in these two instances) which they just got wrong. Just like Ruth Paine's absolute certainty it could not have happened was in good faith and also wrong.
Greg,
Very simply, I do reject the credibility of these various witnesses. All of them are compromised, to wit:
When it was really, really important for DeMohrenschildt to testify about any specifics at all of his (supposed) April 1963 sighting of "Oswald's" rifle, DeMohrenschildt did not do so. Whatever his true observations and feelings about "Oswald" were, are now clouded, thanks to his shocking death in March of 1977, immediately after speaking with Edward Epstein, and just before Gaeton Fonzi. As I pointed out to you earlier, no one, not even you or I, can ascertain the details of the (assumed) rifle at Neely incident from DeMohrenschildt's later manuscript. Its authenticity will remain forever unknownable.
Any story linking "Oswald" to Surrey or the Schmidt's as part of a "Oswald shot at Walker with the rifle" scenario needs to be fully fleshed out. Instead, what you've presented is the most convoluted third-hand hearsay from fanatical men who, at the time of the assassination, said nothing at all! As you've admitted, the DPD immediately suspected that Walker's own men had staged it themselves. Their belated "story" tying in "Oswald" did not even persuade General Walker himself! ("it could be true . . .")
I suspect, Greg, that you are willing to lend great credence to this Oswald/Walker story not because the support for it is strong, but because it fits your thesis.
So be it, but, as evidence, it is hard to imagine anything weaker. (You didn't even cite it yourself originally.)
As for Voshinin, I bet she did relate to the FBI what she heard from DeMohrenschildt about "Oswald's" supposed involvement in the Walker incident. Precisely when she alerted the FBI after the April 1963 Walker incident is unknown. Dick Russell used the word "soon". (Hours? Days? Weeks? After November 2, 1963, perhaps?)
My point is that if Voshinin is to be believed, then the FBI (allegedly) allowed "Oswald" to continue doing . . . what exactly? The suspicion that our "Oswald" was some sort of informer for the FBI was first discussed by the Warren Commission themselves, and was so disturbing, they didn't transcribe the infamous January 27, 1964 session until 1974!
Did our "Oswald" have some sort of clandestine relationship with the FBI? So it would appear from the extant record.
Was the Walker house photo (complete with a hole punched through photo right in the license plate of a visible vehicle) really a part of "Oswald's" possessions seized by the DPD, or was it planted later? I don't know, but if it was authentic, it strongly lends itself to some sort of intelligence recon, not the drunken, half-assed buffoonery as related in the Surrey/Schmidt version of the Walker incident.
By the way, if the photo was taken by "Oswald", then why did he keep it? It only served to incriminate him! (Which, of course, was exactly what the conspirators wanted.)
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On 4/6/2021 at 12:07 AM, Tony Krome said:
A trained Marine loads a crappy revolver with odd rounds.
Oswald leaves the TSBD thinking he might be framed for shooting someone, so he shoots a cop and attempts shoot another.
Oswald leaves the TSBD thinking he might be framed for shooting someone, so he catches a bus thats on the way back to the scene of the crime.
The whole bus, cab, Beckley, gun scenario is truly laughable. It really is time to move on.
Anomalies abound. But I am not sure that our "Oswald" actually knew that shots had been fired, let alone that the president had been hit. Most of the crowd outside the TSBD did not know that for several minutes.
If our man "Oswald" did indeed catch the McWatters bus, it must have been on someone's orders. This alone makes "Oswald" part of the conspiracy, whether he knew of the intended assassination or not. Personally, I have long been intrigued by the Roy Milton Jones affidavit: Jones said that two unidentified Dallas cops boarded the McWatters bus and "searched the passengers for weapons. "
I think that was always the conspirators' plan - get our man on that bus, and then kill him during a "search" a few minutes later. (Except, of course, that he was no longer on the bus.)
I agree with you that the revolver evidence is crappy. Our man never owned or possessed that or any revolver. He was given it in the Texas Theater by his contact, the person he was to meet. That person then called the DPD - repeatedly! - to alert them that the patsy was in place, ready to be arrested. It was only after the unknown caller resorted to a flagrant lie ("an unknown white male entered the Texas Theater with a shotgun over his arm") did the Dallas cops finally react en masse.
Incredibly, that moment was captured by a local TV station reporter Ron Reiland, who narrated live on Friday afternoon exactly what the Dallas PD told him as he filmed it around 1:45:
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13 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:
I can't speak for serious JFKA researcher Larry Hancock, but he also has said the post-JFKA cover-up has an ad-hoc, frenetic, unplanned look and feel about it.
The above is my explanation of the JFKA, which explains a lot, but cannot be proven. LHO as an inadvertent patsy.
A stray thought:
In 1954 Puerto Rican nationalists sprayed gunfire inside the US Capitol building. They obviously did not plan to get away, but were making a statement.
Suppose the true assassins of JFK were not so concerned about getting away with it. But they escaped anyway, as the White House-national security state decision was made to make LHO the patsy.
Keep the thinking caps on....
Ben, it is good to consider all possibilities, but I don't see any reasonable way to assume that our "Oswald" was selected as the designated patsy after the fact. There are too many pre-assassination anomalies to consider:
1. Someone went to the Sports Drome Rifle Range and used the name "Oswald". Actually, on one occasion, two men went, and one of them used the name "Frazier". This would seem to be evidence of a pre-assassination plot to frame Buell Wesley Frazier and "Oswald."
I have long believed that the plotters intended the conspiracy to be known as a pro-Castro plot, complete with multiple shooters. All of the "single-bullet-theory" nonsense was necessitated by the decision to pin everything on the dead "Oswald."
2. Ralph Yates did pick up a hitchhiker who used the name "Oswald" (complete with a rifle!) and dropped him in Dealey Plaza. This person was not our "Oswald".
3. The CIA deliberately withheld from the rest of the national security state (including the FBI) the key "information" (now demonstrably false, but at the time it would have seemed to be true) that the "Oswald" in Mexico City had met with a suspected KGB agent/assassination specialist, Valery Kostikov.
Such a message from the CIA would have triggered the security alarms around JFK, and our "Oswald" could not have been patsified by the plotters, if the Secret Service and the FBI knew about this (supposed) meeting with Kostikov.
4. The Sylvia Odio incident, complete with incriminating phone call. (I discussed that at length elsewhere, but my short version is that our man "Oswald" was indeed at the Odio apartment on Sept. 25 or 26 in the company of two virulent anti-Castro Cubans. I believe that "Leopoldo" placed his follow-up call to Odio to frame our "Oswald" ("He is loco. He says we Cubans have no guts. He says he would shoot Kennedy . . ." etc.) outside of "Oswald's" immediate presence. After all, if the original in-person visit was a deliberate impersonation of our "Oswald", intended to cast him as a violent, crazy anti-Kennedy maniac, our "Oswald" did not say or do anything in front of Odio to show it! Nothing! Not a word, not a sign! This proves beyond any doubt, that the original visit was NOT meant to frame "Oswald" as the assassin. No, that came a few days later in the phone call, when "Oswald" was not present to hear it!
5. The Downtown Lincoln Mercury incident in early November, in which an LHO impersonator claimed he would be in financial position in a couple weeks to buy a new car. This, of course, implied that our man was anticipating a payoff for some future (sinister) action. Our "Oswald" was never there, but someone was, used the name "Oswald" and made their visit memorable.
6. J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo on Friday afternoon, around 4 pm Washington time (long before any interrogation of "Oswald" had been completed, or any examination of any physical evidence could possibly have been determined anything), that "there was no need for further investigation as true subject has been identified."
"True subject has been identified" ???
How the hell would Hoover have any idea, unless he knew in advance?
Ben, these impersonations (and others, including the much-debated Furniture Mar/Irving Sports Shop incident - see my comments elsewhere on this site) were real and deliberate, which is precisely why the FBI and the Warren Commission had to bury them. Further, these impersonations were all "before the fact." They were all intended, in advance of the assassination, to provide evidence that our "Oswald" was an assassin.
I have long believed that the confused, frenetic, ad hoc frame after the fact was the result of a development completely unanticipated by the conspirators: our "Oswald" was very much alive and in the custody of the Dallas Police on Friday afternoon! I am certain our "Oswald" was to be killed while "escaping." ( I think it likely he was to be shot on the McWatters bus when the two unnamed DPD officers boarded and "searched the passengers for weapons." Only the fact that he had just left the bus saved him. Famously, his arrest at the Texas Theater almost resulted in his death. Again, only his quick actions saved him.) "Oswald's" death on Friday afternoon was crucial for the conspirators - if he wasn't dead, he eventually would talk about whatever he knew.
Does this confusion (over whether the frame was to cover multiple patsies or just "Oswald") explain the (near) arrest and frame of Buell Frazier on Friday night? Does this explain the bizarre handling of the rifle (whatever it was) from the TSBD? Does this explain the need for both the planting of a bullet at Parkland, and the switch of that bullet while it was in the custody of the FBI? Does this explain a million other senseless discrepancies in the evidentiary chain?
I think it does.
The plotters never figured that "Oswald" would make it through Friday afternoon alive, and they had to improvise like crazy once they learned he was NOT dead.
Incidentally, it was at this very moment on Friday afternoon that former CIA director Allen Dulles sequestered himself at "The Farm" (the CIA's secure training facility in Virginia) for 48 hours, until Sunday night. What Dulles was doing, who he called, with whom he met, any decisions he made are all unknown because the CIA to this day will say nothing of his three days there.
But we know - he was directing the coverup.
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2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:
What would you say was the single most important reason to you that persuaded you Lee never owned the rifle (C399), if you are willing to say, Joseph?
(This is not a question of holes in chain of custody and reasonable doubt arguments which given strong and effective legal counsel could well have been fought through in court at least to hung jury if not acquittal if it had come to trial. Rather, what tipped/tips it for you to certainty that he never owned the rifle?)
That is a good question, Greg.
We agree that the legal case against rifle ownership could never be proven in court, what with the chain-of-custody issues, the forged money order, the dubious order forms, the phony fingerprint evidence, etc.
But you're asking something different: how do we know he didn't own a rifle?
Well, to me, it comes down to many small things, each pointing against ownership.
For starters, "Oswald" denied ownership.
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/21/us/interrogator-s-notes-say-oswald-denied-assassination-role.html
On its face, that may not seem like much, but "Oswald" readily admitted to a number of things later used to incriminate him. He readily admitted to working at the TSBD, and then leaving the TSBD shortly within minutes after the motorcade passed.
He admitted to being a "Marxist-Leninist". He admitted to punching a policeman. And so on.
So I think his denial of ownership ought to carry at least some weight. After all, if he really did own that MC rifle, his defense would not be that he didn't (or never) owned it, instead he would have claimed that he did not bring it to work that day.
In fact, that is exactly what you and I believe - he didn't bring it to work. But that's not what he said at all.
Secondly, I don't believe anyone ever had a conversation with him after he got out of the Marines in which "Oswald" showed much (or any) interest in firearms of any type. He was NOT a "gun nut", Marina's perjury and tortuous statements aside.
Other that the contested posthumous account from DeMohrenschildt which you and I have discussed at length, no one can put any firearm in his hands after his return from Russia.
"Oswald" didn't spend any time or effort thinking about or talking about firearms with any known witness.
Thirdly, "Oswald" didn't practice with or admire or hold or treasure any firearm, even assuming (heroically) that DeMohrenschildt belated account is true. Even according to that story, "Oswald's" rifle was carelessly on edge in a closet, not on a gun rack. Our man never went to a range. Our man wasn't any good during the only known firearms training he ever received in the USMC. If someone isn't any good at something, it is extremely unlikely they'll develop an interest in it later. Some gun enthusiast!
Fourthly, our man liked to talk: politics, culture, books, opera, etc. He was not some reticent wallflower, unwilling to make his opinions known about things important to him. He would both write and speak his mind, to the point of being obnoxious.
But about firearms?
He had nothing to say, ever.
Greg, I realize no one of these reasons is definitive, in and of itself. But together, they paint a picture of a man who didn't own firearms. If our "Oswald" actually owned this rifle (or any firearm), then we would know for certain because the case would be clear and convincing.
But it isn't.
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15 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:
Great observations by Gil Jesus.
Indeed.
What is mysterious is whether the frame of "Oswald" was entirely after-the-fact, at least when it came to the rifle. I agree with Gil that the paperwork for the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle is all phony. I agree that the FBI forged it, probably in the manner Gil described.
OK.
But the post-assassination paperwork framing was done early on Saturday morning in Chicago at Klein's.
So why didn't the plotters plant a rifle on "Oswald" that could actually be traced to him without all the late-night B.S.?
Was the Mannlicher-Carcano ever in the TSBD at all, or did it later enter the evidence stream as a substitute for whatever had been originally planted on the sixth floor?
If it was always intended to be "Oswald's" throwdown rifle, then why didn't the conspirators link it to him in any meaningful way before the assassination? Surely they had considered that part of the plan, right?
Yet they were even reduced to making anonymous phone calls to both the Dallas PD and the FBI on Sunday afternoon/evening to try to link "Oswald" with the Mannlicher-Carcano and the Irving Sports Shop!
This smells like a frenzied improvisation by the conspirators. If they couldn't get the FBI to go along with the fantasy that it was indeed "Oswald's" rifle, the whole frameup would fall apart.
I don't think the Mannlicher-Carcano was originally intended to be the rifle.
Sylvia Meagher wrote the same thing more than 50 years ago.
She was right.
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1 hour ago, Steve Thomas said:
Paul,
If I were to look at anyone, I would look at Alexander Kleilerer.
He was visiting Marina when she was living at Elana Hall's house in October, 1962. The Oswald's moved to Elsbeth St. in early November, 1962, and then allegedly on to Neely in March, 1963.
I haven't really fleshed this out, but,...
Kleinlerer was in the plastics business. So was Robert Webster.
The Soviets were very interested in the polymers needed for the high heat generated in their space reentry vehicles.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/hall_e.htm
Mr. LIEBELER - Do you know Mr. Alexander Kleinlerer?
Mrs. HALL - Yes. He was coming to my house while John and I were divorced. That was all.
Mr. LIEBELER - What?
Mrs. HALL - I said, that was all. He was coming, you know.
Mr. LIEBELER - Did Mr. Kleinlerer tell you that during the time that you were in the hospital and subsequently when you were in New York, that he came to the house to see how Marina was and how she was getting along?
Mrs. HALL - Yes. He didn't tell me, but Mrs. Clark told me, because when I came back from New York, John was in Fort Worth already, and we got married after 2 days and I didn't see him any more. I didn't see this Kleinlerer any more.
Mr. LIEBELER - Have you ever seen him since then?
Mrs. HALL - No.
Mr. LIEBELER - You had no discussions yourself with Kleinlerer about what Marina was doing or who was at the house while you were gone?
Mrs. HALL - No. Mrs. Clark told me that sometime he would take Marina to grocery store, and sometimes she would take her.Mrs. HALL - I don't know. Maybe Mrs. Clark or Mr. Kleinlerer paid for her.
Mr. LIEBELER - But you yourself did not pay for any of her groceries?
Mrs. HALL - No; I did not.See: Commission Document 1066 - FBI Gemberling Report of 28 May 1964 re: Oswald - Russia/Cuba
page 554
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11462#relPageId=566&tab=page
Kleinlerer was employed by Lomo Industries of Fort Worth, TX.
Max Clark and his wife have been “fairly good friends with Dimytruk and Kleinlerer for the past six or eight months.”
Robert Howard in the Education Forum 2/1/2006
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/659-lee-harvey-oswald/?page=2
“I have a very serious request concerning Lee Harvey Oswald's notebook. In it there is a listing for Lomo Industries, Inc. The Dallas Phone Directory as well as the Business Directory for the same year to my knowledge DO NOT have such a listing, however there is a Loma Industries, Inc with offices in Dallas and Ft. Worth. Can anyone enlighten me about this listing? Is it possible that Oswald's dyslexia, (he was dyslexic, right?) may have something to do with this? Any response is greatly appreciated.”
Jack White in the Education Forum 2/2/2006
LOMA PLASTICS (Loma Industries) was a local manufacturer of plastic goods, such as kitchenware, etc. They had a manufacturing plant in Fort Worth. I do not find them listed in the FW yellow pages.
Jack
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/kleinler.htm
AFFIDAVIT
Alexander Kleinlerer of 3542 Kent Street, Fort Worth, Texas, being duly sworn, says:
“I am and have for several years been a foreign representative of Loma Industries, a plastics production company, located at 3000 West Pafford Street, Fort Worth, Texas.”
Posted by James Richards 2/2/2006
Robert,
I'm going by memory here which is a dangerous ploy but I seem to remember that Loma Industries had a foreign representative named Alexander Kleinlerer who was friends with George De Mohrenschildt. I also seem to recall that this clique which included George Bouhe got together to provide clothes and the like for the Oswald family.
Loma Industries burned down in 1965 I think it was.
James
Lydia Dimytruk is Kleinlerer's girlfriend.
For more information on Lydia Dimytruk, see: (she is a piece of work!)
pp. 13-33, Suspected of being a Russian spy. Formerly married to Vasily Kostenko, also suspected of being a Russian spy.
She marries Pavel Dimytruk in 1956. Emigrates to the U.S. In 1959 and divorces him in 1960.
Sound familiar?
Steve Thomas
Hmm.
So this Alexander Kleinlerer had a divorced Russian-speaking girlfriend (one suspected of being a Soviet spy) and then, in the fall of 1962, magically, befriends another young woman (again, suspected of being a Soviet spy) whose marriage was pretty shaky.
I'd bet that Kleinlerer had links to U.S. intelligence, just as our man "Oswald" had links to American intelligence.
And Mrs. Hall knew that Kleinlerer used to "visit" Marina and take on her on errands when "Oswald" was not around.
And in the winter of 1962/63, while living at Elsbeth St. Apartments, neighbors could hear some pretty ferocious arguments between our "Oswald" and Marina.
One can only wonder about what they might have argued . . .
Thanks, Steve. This is provocative, indeed!
Old Marguerite Oswald just might have told Joachim Joesten the truth - for a few weeks in the spring of 1963 on Neely Street, Marina was living with another man, not our "Oswald"!
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19 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:
Below is what George DeMohrenschildt wrote in his manuscript, Lee Harvey Oswald as I Knew Him, according to the critical edition from DeMohrenschildt's papers published by Michael Rinella (2014, University Press of Kansas). Note this manuscript of DeMohrenschildt was prepared late in DeMohrenschildt's life when he is attempting to defend and to a great extent rehabilitate Oswald's name and reputation. In Rinella's introduction the preparation of this manuscript by DeMohrenschildt is dated 1969-1976 (DeMorhenschildt died in 1976). DeMohrenschildt explicitly heavily gives reasons in support of Oswald's innocence of the JFK assassination in this manuscript, and why the narrative that Oswald killed JFK, a president Oswald admired, made no sense and was highly doubtful to DeMohrenschildt based on everything he knew of Oswald personally. DeMohrenschidt's manuscript of Oswald contains mistakes and some minor confusions of memory (Rinella's detailed footnotes are invaluable here), and is clearly an advocacy on Oswald's behalf as orientation, but not obvious wholesale outright fabrications. Whether he embellished in the interests of storytelling, unknown, but the basic facts told appear to hang together coherently.
"Easter of 1963. On April 13, if I remember correctly, we were at last nearly ready to leave [for Haiti]. All our light belongings were packed and our furniture was ready to be sent to the warehouse. During the commotion before our departure we saw little of the Oswalds, and we knew that they were practically living like hermits. Nobody visited or invited them to visit, except maybe the Paines. Jeanne and I sat exhausted that evening after playing tennis. 'This is a big holiday,' she said. 'And the Oswalds are alone. Even Marina is abandoned by the conservative refugees as she has gone back to her "Marxist" husband.'
"I agreed with Jeanne and commiserated with Marina. Being left alone was a penalty for her because she preferred Lee, notwithstanding all the fights and the beatings.
"Jeanne had previously bought a huge toy rabbit, practically June's size, a pink fluffy thing for the poor child. The Oswalds' new apartment was on Neely Street, a few blocks away from their old place on Elsbeth Street. This was our first visit to their new abode which was infinitely better than the previous one. They had the second floor here, all to themselves. Huge trees shaded the structure and in the back yard the climbing roses hung up on the trellises. The house itself had a white frame of the usual type for a Southern structure.
"We rang the bell. The lights were off as it was obviously late for our sedentary friends. Although it was about 10 p.m. we had to keep ringing a long time.
"'Who is there?' asked Lee's familar voice.
"'Jeanne and George, open up, we have something for June,' I answered cheerfully. Lee came down, opened the front door and then led us up a dark staircase.
"Now Marina was also up and the apartment lights came on. Everything was clean and spacious but almost devoid of furniture. 'Isn't this a nice place?' confided Marina in Russian. 'So much better than the old hole-in-the-walls.'
"We agreed and congratulated them on finding such a good place.
"She was cheerful and Lee was smiling also, which hadn't happened often recently. He was happy that they were left alone by the emigres and even by the rare Americans they knew. Lee's feelings for the emigres could be compared to those a pro-Castro Cuban might have towards all the refugees now crowding the streets of Miami.
"Lee appeared satisfied with his job and proud of being able to provide a better place for his family. This was ther first time in quite a while that we did not see any conflict between him and his wife. Of course, what follows will prove that everything wasn't milk and honey for the Oswald family.
"Marina served soft drinks and began discussing some domestic affairs with Jeanne. Lee and I walked to the balcony and began to chat. He was very curious about my project in Haiti but up to now neither one of us was sure the work would materialize. Now it was a fait accompli. Lee envied my profession and the chance I would have to help an undeveloped country and the poor people living there. He knew Haiti from his readings and was aware it was the oldest, independent black republic in the world. He had learned that Haiti had helped the United States during the War of Independence, a fact not known to many Americans of his age and background. He also had heard about United States intervention in Haiti after World War I--actually at the end of the war--and of the long American occupation of that country. He even learned which part of the Espanola Island the Republic of Haiti occupied and her size.
"'You are very lucky going there, it will be an exciting experience,' he said. His opinion was valuable and encouraging to me because most of my friends and acquaintances had a very dim view of my whole project and thought it would be dangerous and a waste of time. It turned out to be one of the most useful and pleasant experiences of our lives. But most of these would-be advisors knew little about Haiti--and I mean well-educated, prominent people. To them it was an insane, tropical, and black locale with a rather ferocious dictatorship. Some had predicted the worst disasters if we lived there.
"Then we talked pleasantly of his job, of June who was growing nicely, and we also spoke of the unfortunate rise of ultra-conservativism in America, of the racist movement in the South. Lee considered this the most dangerous phenomenon for all peace-loving people. 'Economic discrimination is bad, but you can remedy it,' he said, 'but racial discrimination cannot be remedied because you cannot change the color of your skin.' Of course, he greatly admired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and agreed with his program. He frequently talked of Dr. King with real reverence.
"In the meantime Marina was showing Jeanne her bedroom, kitchen, and the living-room. There she opened a large closet, next to the balcony, and began showing Jeanne her wardrobe, which was considerable. On the bottom of the closet was a rifle standing completely in the open.
"'Look! Look!' called Jeanne excitedly. 'There is a rifle there.'
"We came in and I looked curiously. Indeed there was a military rifle there of a type unknown to me, something mounted on top.
"'What is that thing dangling?' asked Jeanne.
"'A telescopic sight,' I answered.
"Jeanne had never seen a telescopic sight before and probably did not understand what it was. But I did: I had graduated from a military school.
"'Why do you have this rifle here,' Jeanne asked Lee.
"Marina answered instead. 'Lee bought it. Devil knows why. We need all the money we have for food and lodging and he buys this damn rifle.'
"'But what does he do with a military rifle,' Jeanne asked again.
""He likes shooting at the leaves.'
"'But when does he have time to shoot at the leaves, and where,' asked Jeanne curiously.
"'He shoots at the leaves in the park, whenever we go there.'
"This explanation did not make much sense to us, but liking target shooting ourselves we did not consider this a crazy occupation." (pp. 64-66)
Yes, I have read that curious manuscript before too, and like everyone else, I wonder why DeMohrenschildt did not testify about the rifle back in 1964, under oath.
After all, the Warren Commission was looking for evidence that our "Oswald" had a rifle in the spring of 1963, and DeMohrenschildt (as you've correctly pointed out) was more than willing to paint a sinister picture of his "friend" posthumously when he, DeMohrenschildt, testified in 1964.
DeMohrenschildt was under heavy pressure to incriminate "Oswald" back in 1964, yet nothing like this appears in his testimony!
Curious, indeed.
To what, exactly, he might have testified before the HSCA, or said to investigator Gaeton Fonzi, in the spring of 1977, is now unknowable, given that DeMohrenschildt took a shotgun blast to the head on March 29, 1977.
Perhaps it is just a coincidence that just a few days later Billy Lord, "Oswald's" cabin mate on the trip across the Atlantic in 1959, wrote a letter to President Carter, pleading for help.
Lord claimed that "George Bush, Jr." (son of the previous CIA director, and future one-term president, George H. W. Bush) was one of two men harassing Lord for an interview as part of a secret project to "speak with" (pronounced "intimidate and coerce") every single living soul who ever had any contact at any point with our "Oswald" ever in his life.
Huh.
Just as Congress is gearing up for a reinvestigation, and just as this secret project is underway, DeMohenschildt is shot and then this manuscript appears.
Greg, I am dubious about putting much emphasis on this. How much of it (if any) represents DeMohrenschldt's true feelings is of course, unknowable.
Maybe it is 100% authentic.
Maybe it is 100% disinformation. (A classic "limited hangout.")
We'll never know either way.
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11 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:
Thanks for your comments Paul. On the suggestion that it was really Marina but the man was a different man than Lee, yet who represented himself as Lee ("Oswald") in the Irving Sports Shop and had sufficient physical description similarity that Mrs. Whitworth could mistakenly identify him as Lee . . . how would that work? Would Lee know about this other man taking his wife and children on expeditions to local Irving business locations? When would it have happened? It could not be Nov 11 because she was with Lee all that day. It is not easy to see how it could be on weekends or weekdays otherwise because Ruth Paine knew her whereabouts and said Marina never went off on her own or with someone else.
A prior question is what problem is this trying to solve? That is, what is the difficulty with the man with Marina appearing to be her husband and claiming the baby girl held by Marina was his own new baby girl, simply being Lee? What is the reason calling for invoking a stand-in lookalike, of whom neither Marina nor Ruth Paine ever said a word, when the genuine article is already there and requires not such extensive imagination?
You note the anonymous phone calls on Sunday Nov 24 could be intended to implicate Lee, from sinister origins--not simply a leak from someone Dial or his wife told--I agree that is possible. It is included in the possibility I named that the source of the Sports Shop scope installation could have been Oswald himself. The buyer of his rifle per my argument was connected to the ones who did the assassination (reason for that conclusion: the rifle turned up connected to the assassination the next day). My reconstruction proposes that Lee sold the rifle Nov 20 or 21, and that it was people connected to the buyer, not Lee, who took the rifle inside the TSBD to the sixth floor connecting Lee to the assassination the next day. I do not think Lee shot the rifle or that he knew the rifle was in the building. Therefore those anonymous phone calls on Sun Nov 24 could come from persons intending to implicate Oswald, as part of this larger pattern, making opportunistic use of information learned from Oswald at the time of the rifle sale. Although I suggested the accidental leak by a wife's family member or something of that nature matched in terms of details and timing and plausibility Dial's telling his wife of his discovery of the job ticket, and that the anonymity of the calls was self-protective because promises of confidentiality were being violated, the more sinister background to the anonymous phone calls is also possible. I do not know how to exclude one or the other on the basis of present information.
A point of detail: none of the anonymous call reports on Nov 24 indicated the callers knew the name of Dial Ryder.
Of possible interest in light of the "sinister" explanation of those phone calls is that officer Turner of the DPD who received the original anonymous tip from the journalist, said the tip was that Lee had had a rifle sighted at the Irving Sports Shop on Nov 21, the day before the assassination--the wrong date for Oswald at the Irving Sports Shop, but if it was the date Oswald sold the rifle and disclosed the information to the buyer (Lee telling the buyer about the professional work done on the rifle at the Irving Sports Shop), could that be related to the date confusion?
"Detective Fay M. Turner, Homicide and Robbery Division, Dallas Police Department, advised he recalls that on the afternoon of Sunday, November 24, 1963, following the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, he was on duty in the offices of Captain J. Will Fritz and he received a telephone call from one Ray John, who he knows to be a member of the news staff for Channel 8, WFAA-TV, Dallas. To the best of his recollection, this call was received in his office at approximately 3:45 to 5:00 p.m.
"He advised John told him that he, John, had just received a call at the Channel 8 offices from an anonymous caller to the effect that "Oswald" had taken a rifle to a gun shop located in the 200 block on Irving Boulevard on November 21, 1963, to have the rifle 'sighted-in.' Turner stated he checked the city directories in his office and determined that the Irving Sports Shop was located at 221 E. Irving Boulevard in Irving, Texas, and this appeared to be the only shop of its type within several blocks of that address. Turner stated he contacted the Irving Sports Shop and talked to a Mr. Greener, manager of that establishment, regarding this information as received from the anonymous caller and that Greener told him he and his employee, Ryder had discussed [this discussion would refer to Friday Nov 22 afternoon at the shop--gd] the matter of the assassination in connection with repair work they may have done in their shop but that neither could remember having done any work for Lee Harvey Oswald and in particular could not recall having performed any work on a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle which rifle was believed at that time to be the assassination weapon." (FBI, 5/15/64, https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=58994#relPageId=67)
So that is my basic reaction to the real Marina/imposter Lee suggestion. I am not aware of positive evidence or indication of another man in Marina's life in Oct-Nov 1963 or how that could logistically be possible given that she had no money or transportation and her whereabouts were known practically every minute by Ruth Paine except for that one exception on Nov 11 when Ruth was gone and she was with Lee that day. There seems to be no room that I can see logistically for another man in her life in this period that would be unknown to Ruth Paine, to Lee, and to history given the level of scrutiny and investigation Marina's movements received in that time frame. If the man was another man why would the car be blue and white the same as Ruth's car, instead of the other man's car not matching the colors of Ruth's car. And although you have obviously thought about this for some time and must have reasons for proposing it, I do not at this stage understand what reasons call for the proposal in the first place.
Please further defend yours if you feel I am missing some points, and thanks again for your comments.
Greg,
Perhaps the most intriguing bit of evidence (wholly ignored) is Marguerite Oswald's interview with Joachim Joesten in which she claimed that "Oswald" never lived on Neely Street (which he too claimed to Captain Fritz). Instead, said Marguerite, Marina "lived there with another man."
I don't know why "Oswald" denied ever living at Neely, if he actually did live there, yet he vehemently denied it! Read Captain Fritz's summary. (The so-called evidence "Oswald" ever lived on Neely is paper thin.)
I don't know why Marguerite claimed that Marina lived on Neely with another man, but that is what she told Joesten!
By all accounts, the marriage between Marina and "Oswald" was one punctuated by quarrels and separations. Is it so hard to consider that there was another man on the periphery of Marina's life?
(I realize that is speculative, but so is your thesis that "Oswald" sold the infamous Mannlicher-Carcano on November 21 to someone who then set him up with it. Possible, but we need much more evidence.)
Thanks for clarifying the detail that no record of the two anonymous phone calls mentioned the name "Dial Ryder." My mistake.
However, my basic point still stands: the point of these anonymous calls was to put a rifle physically into "Oswald's" hands.
Consider:
At that moment, late Sunday afternoon or early evening, the best the FBI had were some (very sketchy) order documents from Kleins. No one at the post office could put any rifle into the hands of the accused, whether he used "Oswald" or "Hidell" or anything else.
No one ever saw "Oswald" shoot anything with this or any other rifle. (Marina's obvious whoppers about shooting leaves in parks notwithstanding.)
George DeMohrenschildt did NOT claim personally to have seen a rifle in the "Oswald" closet in the spring of 1963. Instead he related that his wife had seen (what, exactly?)
No one at the TSBD saw "Oswald" with any rifle, ever.
No one at any local gun range saw our "Oswald" practice with a rifle, ever. At least, so claimed both the FBI and the Warren Commission.
No one at 1026 N. Beckley saw "Oswald" with a rifle.
Neither Ruth nor Michael Paine ever claimed to know that "Oswald" stored a rifle in the Paine garage, let alone see him with one. (No one has ever credibly explained how in the world the rifle, even one wrapped in a blanket supposedly, could have been transported from New Orleans to Irving in Ruth's station wagon without her having any idea it was there. )
No one in New Orleans ever claimed to see "Oswald" ever do anything with a rifle.
Everyone, even you, now recognizes that the money order used to pay for the rifle from Klein's is a fraud. (Your speculation about a possible "benign" reason involving John B. Hurt and national security is both fascinating and well-thought out, but ultimately there simply is no evidence.)
My point in reciting all of the above, Greg, is to emphasize that on late Sunday afternoon, the conspirators were desperate to place the rifle physically in "Oswald's" hands.
Before the Furniture Mart/Irving Sports Shop witnesses were identified by law enforcement, no one, and I mean no one, could actually put any rifle in "Oswald's" hands.
The conspirators knew this, and that's why the two anonymous calls were placed to first the DPD, and then the FBI. Both calls had the same misinformation ("Oswald" had a rifle sighted in on November 21"), but both were accurate about the Irving Sports Shop.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is this: if our "Oswald" took this rifle (or any rifle) to the Irving Sports Shop sometime in early November, the Warren Commission and the FBI would have trumpeted that news to the high heavens.
Instead they buried it.
They knew our man was never there, and they were afraid closer examination and publicity would reveal an impersonation, and therefore, conspiracy.
And that was something neither the Warren Commission nor the FBI would ever admit.
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11 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:
In my reconstruction the rifle would not have been removed from the blanket several times but only once, on Nov 11 when Oswald retrieved it to take it to the Furniture Mart gunsmith. I have an argument that Oswald sold the rifle, gave it to another party, on Wed or Thu Nov 20 or 21, near his Beckley Street rooming house in Oak Cliff. The question is how the rifle would get to Oswald's rooming house, and when. Based on Nov 11 and Nov 21 as separate arguments fixing those dates, this would mean he had to take the rifle with him in his ride in Wesley Frazier's car Tue morning Nov 12. After taking the rifle out of the blanket the morning of Nov 11, Oswald would have placed the rifle somewhere in the garage but not in the blanket Monday night Nov 11. The rifle would therefore be removed from the blanket only once.
What is your interpretation of the blanket found by police in the garage with "a distinct impression which matched the form of an intact rifle with stock and tapering barrel"? Are you suggesting the officers present that day planted that blanket? That Michael Paine was lying in claiming to have seen the blanket in the garage? That officer Gus Rose was lying re Marina showing the blanket?
Again, Greg, you've done much thinking about this, and that is a good thing.
I've long surmised that, contrary to some respected researchers, the Furniture Mart/Irving Sports Shop story was NOT wholly an illusion (Peter Dale Scott, in his 1993 "Deep Politics" for example, DID argue that both Furniture Mart and Irving Sports Shop visits were indeed complete fabrications!), but that real people, including the real Marina with her children did visit the Furniture Mart, as witnessed by Whitworth and Hunter.
However, even the Warren Commission admitted that while both Whitworth and Hunter were convinced that Marina was there, Hunter could not identify the man as our "Oswald." When shown some pictures of our man, even Whitworth could pick him out in only some of them.
My point is that the eyewitness identification of the alleged assassin as the same man in the Furniture Mart was shaky at best, as admitted by even the Warren Commission themselves!
If Marina was there with some other man, she would never, ever admit it.
Who then visited the Irving Sports Shop?
Dial Ryder never, ever said that it was definitely the accused assassin. The best that can be claimed is that someone came in a couple of weeks before the assassination and used the name "Oswald." That person may (MAY) have borne some resemblance to our man, if your interpretation of Ryder's statement of November 25 is correct. But even under FBI pressure, Ryder couldn't say for sure!
What makes me suspect there is something else fishy going on here are the two anonymous phone calls on Sunday afternoon/evening, after the news that "Oswald" was dead broke. These anonymous callers tied "Oswald" and "his" rifle not only to the Irving Sports Shop, but to the exact employee, Dial Ryder, complete with accurate spelling!
The first anonymous call was to a local TV reporter/journalist between 3 and 4 pm. When the reporter asked the obvious question "how do you know about this?" to the caller, the caller declined to answer and hang up.
Nonetheless, the TV reporter/journalist eventually did call the DPD later that evening, but didn't attach any particular significance to it.
In other words, there was no immediate effect from the anonymous call.
So, a couple of hours later, around 6 pm, an anonymous caller rang up the FBI with the same specific information, but this time armed with a cover story ("I overheard a bagger at a local grocery mention it"). This time, authorities acted. The FBI tried to get ahold of Greener on Sunday night.
I don't think these "anonymous" calls were innocent.
No offense, Greg, but your suppositions about the origin of those calls don't cut it. Whoever placed those calls had some very specific information and was determined to tie that gun to "Oswald" through the Furniture Mart and the Irving Sports Shop and Dial Ryder.
I agree with you that a couple of weeks before the assassination, someone went into the Irving Sports Shop, asked Dial Ryder to do some work on their rifle (whether it was even a Mannlicher-Carcano is unknowable), paid Ryder cash, and left with the rifle.
I agree with you that Whitworth, Hunter and Ryder were essentially honest and correct in their recollections.
I agree with you that Marina lied about never being at the Furniture Mart.
But I am unconvinced that the man with her that day was indeed her husband.
And there isn't any strong evidence that our "Oswald" was ever at either place.
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7 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:
Paul, I'm obviously no Vince but "Who told Roberts to order Lawton to stand down?" answers your other questions. Roberts order to Agent Ready on the running board when he stepped off in response to the shots in Dealy Plaza to get back on board is further confirmation of his involvement. Who Indeed.
All the way up to Dillon?
Yes, I think Douglas Dillon would be a prime suspect.
He had been intertwined with the Dulles family since he was a young man. Dillon's father and Foster Dulles, (older brother of Allen) were longtime friends from Foster's time at Sullivan and Cromwell. Douglas Dillon actually worked for the Thomas Dewey campaign in 1940 (the Democrats nominated Wendell Willkie, not Dewey) because of his connection to Foster Dulles.
In 1948, after Dillon served in WWII, Foster Dulles asked Dillon to work on foreign policy speeches for Thomas Dewey's presidential campaign. Dillon's three main coworkers in that office?
Allen Dulles, Christian Herter, and McGeorge Bundy.
All four men working together on shaping, influencing and determining American postwar foreign policy in that same New York hotel (Roosevelt Hotel) in 1948.
Huh.
And, as Dillon freely admitted, he was an old friend from boarding school and college with Joe Alsop, legendary columnist.
Why is that significant?
Because we know from the released tapes of presidential phone calls from the LBJ library that Joe Alsop was one of the first "outsiders" to pressure LBJ directly to create an "independent" review of whatever the FBI came up with. Alsop wanted LBJ to create a commission of men of great esteem to "settle the dust" of the aftermath of the assassination.
In other words, Joe Alsop was a chief architect of the whitewash that became the Warren Commission.
Listen for yourself as Alsop alternately cajoles, flatters, and pressures LBJ into agreeing to an "independent review."
https://www.discoverlbj.org/item/tel-00051
Yeah, I agree Ron. Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon undoubtedly put the screws (maybe via a subordinate) to the Secret Service to "stand down."
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1 hour ago, Karl Hilliard said:
"It was Oswald's rifle" is a pertinent issue to the thread. My two cents has always been that if he took it somehow to New Orleans with him that summer..how did it manage to make it back to Irving, and reside at the Paine house completely un-noticed by Ruth or her children [presumably] or Michael Paine while Lee was in parts unknown unless you believe the report that he went to Mexico.
Marina testified that Oswald practiced with the rifle alright by 'shooting leaves from trees at the park' and he also 'took it to Dallas Love Field Airport to shoot' 😆
Regarding the weapons orders...I believe that postal inspector Harry Holmes was involved mainly because he was also involved in some other assassination related issues. Holmes had access to everything related to the PO boxes that Oswald rented. Harry Holmes was a FBI asset and government insider.
What happened to the ammo? Ammunition was not found for the rifle in any of Oswald's possessions. Even Robert Oswald wondered about that.
About the rifle scope...It was mentioned that it was screwed into a mount allegedly furnished by Kleins Sports. It was simple to remove or attach. Supposedly the sniper smuggled the rifle disassembled into the building...reassembled and fired it. If that can be done, why would that person need a gunsmith for such a simple task?
These furniture store ladies would have likely remembered if they saw this family on Veteran's Day.
Highly speculative that Oswald 'borrowed' Ruth's car... That Ruth did not take her own car when she left...that Oswald would know how long she would be gone anyway or that there was any need at all for a gunsmith.
Karl,
I agree with your general sentiment that if our "Oswald" had ordered, paid for, received, practice with, stored at Neely St., traveled with and stored on Magazine St., bought ammunition for, somehow hid the rifle in the Paine's station wagon without anyone knowing, stored this Klein's rifle on the floor of the Paine's garage in a blanket without anyone knowing, and snuck it into the TSBD on November 22, 1963 without anyone knowing, then the evidence would be simple and overwhelming!
Instead, it is anything but.
Greg's speculation about John B. Hurt is fascinating, but it is a bridge too far to speculate that because our "Oswald" might (MIGHT) have somehow known Hurt and his wife, Drittell, therefore the government's fabrication of the rifle purchase order is benign.
No, that won't work.
The evidence that our "Oswald" did any of the above is laughable and would have been easily disproved in court at trial.
Which is exactly why he did not live to see a trial - the case against him as a "lone nut" would have collapsed, and the evidence of a high-level conspiracy to murder the president would have been exposed.
Was the assassination rifle posted to the Neely Street address?
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Tom,
Your suspicions about Marina might have merit:
Our "Oswald" himself denied living on Neely. Both Captain Fritz and FBI agent Manning Clements wrote reports about "Oswald's" residences.
Here is Manning Clements:
History Matters Archive - Warren Report, pg (history-matters.com)
No Neely.
Joechim Joesten even quoted Marguerite Oswald as claiming that Marina lived at Neely with another man!
(I'll post the link once I dig it out later this weekend.)