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Greg Doudna

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Everything posted by Greg Doudna

  1. Good argument on this point Gil. The argument has always been that it looks like a smoking-gun incrimination, too much to be coincidence, that of all TSBD employees, Oswald's is the only known TSBD employee fingerprint match found on those cartons in the location from which a shooter was seen and three shell hulls found. But Gil Jesus has just shown a plausible explanation for why Oswald's, and not any other TSBD employee's, fingerprints might reasonably turn up on those cartons there, in a way not necessarily implicating Oswald in shooting: his work filling orders for Scott Foresman books (assuming that lettering on the side of that carton in the photo of the arrow in the illustration confirms Scott Foresman books; I cannot quite verify that from reading it myself). To advocates of the Oswald LN interpretation, this is no problem because Oswald still could have done it. But it starts to go in circles when convicting someone on the basis that he could have done the crime, as distinguished from proof that he did. Also, I would like to add something to my earlier hypothetical (below)--that hypothetical is on the assumption of today's known information as the basis for the then-juries' consideration in the hypothetical. In a real trial, if Oswald had lived to come to trial and had pleaded not guilty (and not by reason of insanity), he or his counsel could well have sought and obtained through discovery and/or direct testimony from Oswald unknown other information, such as e.g. Oswald as an informant, or working with, say, the ATTU (Alcohol, Tobacco, Tax Unit, today's ATF) on a mail-order firearms investigation being carried out by the Dodd committee in Congress, related to the rifle, or whatever. So the hypothetical below is likely not based on everything of importance that juries might have considered in reality, since what additional Oswald might have brought forward with the assistance of counsel is not known.
  2. I doubt very much your first sentence is correct--expert testimony I have read says the least bump on a scoped rifle, as inevitable in a breaking-down and reassembly, would throw that sighted-in scope out of whack. So the response from your position (LN Oswald shooter) must be that he fired through the iron sights, which was the HSCA firearms panel position, because firing the JFK assassination shots using the scope was considered just not reasonable to those HSCA experts. But to stay with this point a moment: I have just reread Pat Speer's chapter 4g recommended by Tom Gram, https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4g-thoughts-on-shots-and-the-curtain-rod-story. After all of the sniper experts, gun experts, failed attempts at replication, etc. cited up and down by Speer saying that Oswald from logistics and expertise considerations could not realistically have landed those shots accurately on JFK from the 6th floor window as the Warren Commission concluded, given the specifics of the weapon and Oswald's degree of skill and lack of practice, to say there is "reasonable doubt" that Oswald was the gunman who killed Kennedy is an understatement. Can you truthfully say you have read Pat Speer's 4g and what is brought out there does not cause any cognitive dissonance, any reasonable doubt, to you, on this point? Surely the JFK assassination was done by professionals whoever did it, and LHO was not a professional, nor is there any indication he was other than a mediocre and inexperienced shot, nor is there any indication he practiced at all in the weeks prior to the assassination (the Sports Drome sightings are not since it can be excluded that that was Oswald), and the best interpretation of the gunshot residue test on his cheeks is that Oswald did not fire his rifle that day. Do these things not call for reasonable doubt, despite the things that look incriminating? Not over the rifle found on the 6th floor having been his. But over Oswald having fired that rifle that day. Here I have to go back to my two studies which I believe have brought a new fact to the table--namely that Oswald with Marina's assistance on Nov 11 removed the rifle from Oswald's belongings in Ruth Paine's garage, took that rifle to a gun shop in Irving, and had the scope base repaired and the original scope put back on and the rifle sighted-in. After which there is an 11-day gap in which nothing presently is known with certainty of where that rifle was or who had it, until its presence becomes known again on Nov 22 on the 6th floor of the TSBD. My two studies on this are the Furniture Mart study (https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/JFK-Furniture-Mart-mystery-105-pdf2.pdf) and Irving Sport Shop study (https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Irving-Sport-Shop-109-pdf.pdf). I don't even know what the correct interpretation of this Nov 11 finding and the 11-day gap is or should be. All I know is that the Nov 11 scope reinstallation on that rifle by Oswald that day is a fact, and there is an absence of evidence concerning where that rifle next went and in whose custody or possession it was for the next 11 days after Oswald had that scope put back on and the rifle sighted-in on Nov 11. That heretofore-unrecognized FACT (as I believe a fair reading of my two studies should make clear to a fair reader that that is what it is) raises several questions related to the scope vs iron sights issue on Nov 22. First, the scope that came with that rifle from Klein's of Chicago was crap, everybody agrees on that. The rifle itself was serviceable and not crap, but the scope was crap, such that it is no surprise that Oswald (or somebody) would simply in frustration with it just unscrew it and take it off. We know that happened with Oswald's rifle, the evidence being that it did not have the scope on it when it came out of the garage on Nov 11, even though it had been shipped to Oswald in March 1963 with the scope installed. The question that follows is, why would Oswald on Nov 11 go to expense and effort to get a crappy scope put back on, that was really worthless and unusable by Oswald? And next, why would Oswald not only have the scope put back on, but have the rifle sighted-in, if he was going to break it down again to put it back into the garage, which would destroy the boresighting for which he was charged and paid $1.50 that morning of Nov 11? But this last point is not quite unequivocal. For Dial Ryder at the Irving Sport Shop, alone in the shop that day, Veterans Day, was doing that job for cash for a walk-in stranger, not a recognized or familiar customer of the shop. And it is possible that Ryder overcharged Oswald because he could (incentivized because the cash from Oswald was going into Ryder's pocket, bypassing the cash register in that transaction). I believe either Ryder or owner Greener testified that commonly when scope installations were done at that shop the boresighting would be done as an additional courtesy without charge, although the shop would be within its rights to charge $1.50, the posted price if someone came in just to get a boresighting. Ryder quoted to Oswald for the scope installation AND additional for the boresighting, instead of doing the boresighting for free on that job as, apparently, was commonly done with other customer scope installations. This could raise a slight uncertainty whether the boresighting was what Oswald wanted done, or whether Ryder told him it had to be done, required as policy by the shop or something. We do not know exactly how that worked with that cash transaction. But if that boresighting was done because Oswald wanted it done, then it could be said as a further fact that logically follows, that Oswald did not return the rifle broken-down back into the garage, for that would make no sense (it would mean wasted money just spent on the boresighting). But, there is that slight uncertainty over whether the boresighting was Oswald's idea or whether Ryder sort of took advantage of a cash-paying one-time customer who did not know any better. But leaving that detail aside, one has to ask why Oswald goes to all that trouble and expense to get a known crappy scope repaired and reinstalled on Nov 11, and the rifle sighted-in, when Oswald was not using the rifle at that point, had no known cleaning supplies, no ammunition for it was found in his belongings, and he never did a speck of target practice with it after Nov 11 ... yet he fixed it up on Nov 11 as if readying it for some reason. What reason? A sale? A trade? A "sting" (as in a government sting of some kind)? For use as a prop himself? Who knows! But whatever the purpose was, one purpose it seems not to have been: a plan to assassinate someone with it (because in that case he would target practice, have cleaning supplies, have ammo, etc.). And it seems Oswald's purpose was not so that he could go hunting with it either (when? how?). On the sale idea (if so), I have a pretty strong hunch that if Oswald was prepping it for a sale, Oswald would have had the buyer already lined up, because the effort and expense Oswald put into that scope repair and reinstallation does not ring plausibly for Oswald fixing it up with the idea of "maybe" finding a buyer afterward, or to maybe take it to some nearby pawn shop the same day where he would be lucky to recover the amount he paid to repair the scope on it, etc. And so taking out the uncertainties, the FACTS are that the rifle is last known in Oswald's possession, on Nov 11, in Irving, out of the garage, in fully intact form, scoped and sighted-in. And is next known on Nov 22, in fully intact form, on the 6th floor TSBD, claimed by FBI lab findings to have fired bullets at JFK. So it was Oswald's rifle, and the rifle by some means 11 days later had been infiltrated into the TSBD and was on the 6th floor involved in the assassination. But while it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that was or had been Oswald's rifle, and, according to the FBI that rifle was fired at the president, it is not quite so clear that Oswald was the one who infiltrated that rifle into the TSBD, and fired it at President Kennedy on Nov 22, as opposed to that rifle having been planted there and Oswald thereby framed, not necessarily as the shooter, but as the owner of the rifle which did the shooting. If the above considerations were brought out in a trial of Oswald by competent defense counsel, I can imagine it resulting in a series of hung juries, juries capable of neither finding that he did or didn't do it. From our perspective, sixty years later, we are interested not in whether there was legal basis to convict, but the historical factual question of did he do it, on preponderance of evidence criteria not necessarily the higher threshold of beyond reasonable doubt. The gunshot residue test on Oswald's face, and Pat Speer's argument that some of Oswald's clothing showed signs of gunshot residue testing which was done but not reported (because no gunshot residue was found on Oswald's clothing as would be expected, the logical suspicion!), alone could tip the preponderance of evidence criterion in favor of Oswald's exoneration as shooter of the rifle which was or had been his.
  3. A correction on my part: Secret Service inspector Kelley reported Oswald denied seeing the parade from an earlier interrogation on Saturday, not the final one of Sunday morning Nov 24. While I have your attention though, I wonder if you could comment on Gil Jesus's point about a broken-down rifle after reassembly would need to be sighted-in anew, involving shooting the rifle, in order to be useful with accuracy in the assassination. Gil Jesus cited expert testimony that multiple shots would be required to accomplish that. But Oswald did not fire target shooting in the TSBD on the morning of Nov 22--did not sight the rifle in in the TSBD that morning after a reassembly--before, according to the Warren Commission, being the shooter using that rifle to fire at and accurately hit the president using a rifle that had to have been sighted-in. Does it not appear that the Mannlicher-Carcano had to have been infiltrated into the TSBD intact so as to be sighted-in, i.e. not in broken-down form on the morning of Nov 22 and then reassembled in the building that morning and used without any mechanism for having it sighted-in? But if the rifle was infiltrated into the building intact and sighted-in, not in broken-down condition, then it was not infiltrated into the building by Oswald on the morning of Nov 22 but through some other mechanism which could even have been on an earlier day than Nov 22. Since you are knowledgeable of and advocate the LN view, what is the LN-view response to this? I am unable to find in Bugliosi's Reclaiming History, either from memory of prior reading or in the index just now, anywhere where Bugliosi addresses this. Do you know if Bugliosi addresses this? Do you address it on your website? Here is what Gil Jesus wrote on this point earlier in this discussion. Thanks in advance for your response to it.
  4. David, I'm mostly with you on this exchange you've been having with Sandy, but on this business with Kelley of the Secret Service there may be something to the possibility that Kelley was neither reflecting truthfully what Oswald said, nor misunderstanding something, but knowingly writing falsely in his written report to his superiors re the Oswald interrogation of Sun Nov 24. There is the direct contradiction between Hosty's note in which Oswald told Hosty he went out to watch the Parade, and Kelley's report in which Oswald told Kelley he did not. Either Oswald gave opposite answers at two different times, or one of the agents' interpretation or reporting of what Oswald said is the opposite of the truth. And it is difficult to imagine misunderstanding a yes or no statement of Oswald on the Parade watching issue as Oswald saying the opposite. Therefore, its either Oswald contradicted himself, or one of the agents (Hosty or Kelley) was fibbing. Between the two: Hosty's handwritten notes seem to have the stronger claim to being unfiltered and truthful. Here is the case for Kelley's report (not Hosty's notes) being the false one between those two: It is that Kelley appears to have falsely reported his interaction with Oswald on Sunday morning in general as a larger general statement. The chief exhibit on this is Kelley wrote in his report that there was no discussion of Mexico City ("It is my recollection that during this interrogation, Oswald was not asked about nor did he speak of a trip that he took to Mexico"; https://www.maryferrell.org/archive/docs/233/233094/images/img_233094_70_300.png). That is not what two witnesses said both of whom personally heard Kelley and Oswald talking together that Sunday morning. Postal Inspector Holmes testified under oath to the Warren Commission, unequivocally and in detail, how he heard Oswald discussing his Mexico City trip with Kelley that morning. And Dallas Police officer Graves appears to corroborate Holmes on that in his sworn testimony to the Warren Commission ("Well, I couldn't think of Mr. Kelley's name, the last time, but he questioned Oswald along the line of his activity in Mexico and in Russia"; https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=41#relPageId=267). Here again one is forced to choose between polar opposites as to who is telling the truth on a point: Kelley, or Holmes/Graves. For some reason practically everyone has favored Kelley as truthful, and decided Holmes was a flagrantly dishonest total fabricator under oath (even though Holmes is supported by Graves), here. Maybe its the other way around. I imagine Oswald trying to talk to Kelley, and did talk, some things with Kelley "off the record", that is, things that Kelley was not going to put on the record. (Another item: Kelley was said to turn up in following days in Chicago asking about "John Heard", i.e. the mysterious "John Hurt" of Oswald's Saturday night failed telephone call attempt. Where did Kelley get that name? Perhaps Sunday morning from Oswald? One of the things Kelley did not report in writing?) There may even have been early consideration to an idea of covering up Oswald's trip to Mexico City altogether if that could be done, though if so it was not carried out because it could not be convincingly totally denied. Certainly Oswald in Mexico City was not helpful at all to the emerging desired Lone Nut interpretive narrative (replacing the Communist conspiracy idea), so there could be motive to deep-six any Oswald talking re his having gone to Mexico City. Hosty's notes on Oswald saying he went out to watch the Parade are not reflected in Hosty's typed reports. One interpretation is Oswald did say that but that alibi claim of Oswald was viewed as unhelpful and preferred disappeared from the record, and in this case (unlike with the Mexico City trip) it was possible to do so. All it would take would be someone from FBI making a quiet background request to the Secret Service, perhaps in the name of LBJ, and the request honored even though the two agencies otherwise had a rivalry. The positive evidence Oswald said he went out to watch the Parade is Hosty's handwritten note on that point is not easily explicable as a misunderstanding on Hosty's part, and arguably reflected what Oswald did say. It is hard to know for sure, but my hunch is that Kelley's report did not tell everything of his exchanges with Oswald Sunday morning Nov 24, at a time when Leavelle elsewhere claimed he and Fritz had left Fritz's office (where Oswald was) and gone out for coffee, leaving Oswald to talk to Kelley privately. (Except Holmes and Graves were still there and heard some.) And I doubt Postal Inspector Holmes was the wilful li-ar in his Warren Commission testimony under oath that it is common in some circles to routlnely assume. It seems to me an easier thing to massage a written report to one's superiors in an agency in ways desired by one's superiors (e.g. Kelley's report of Sunday morning), than to deliberately flagrantly lie under oath in sworn public testimony, which is perjury and a crime (as many have supposed to be the case with Inspector Holmes' Warren Commission testimony), simply in terms of which has the higher threshold or barrier of intimidation factor. Perjury is a serious thing and can land one in prison. On the eating lunch after getting the coke after the assassination thing which makes no sense, that is a distortion or misunderstanding of what Oswald would have and surely did say. Oswald would have spoken of going up to the second floor to get a coke with his lunch before the assassination, the logical time to go up to get a coke. Then after the assassination he went up to the second floor a second time, this time not to get a coke but to make his way to the rear of the building and down the stairs and out a rear door unobtrusively, but he reversed direction when seeing and encountering Baker. At least that is a possible reconstruction (with credit to Andrej Stancak for the proposal).
  5. Yes it is an offhanded remark that in certain contexts practically anyone could say, true, but the point here is MIchael Paine's earliest testimony is so consistent and strong that he did not hear Oswald say that, even though decades later Michael Paine claimed he did hear Oswald say that. It is a straightforward secondary development in memory, in which what Michael believed Oswald believed though unspoken, became in his, Michael's, later memory literally though falsely remembered as if he had heard Oswald actually speak it. I do not think it is quite correct to interpret Michael Paine's negative portrayal of Oswald and political violence as being caused by "pressure" in any overt or brute sense from other persons or officials. At least I don't see it. My interpretation would be that Michael Paine, just like Ruth and the early Marina, believed that Lee had killed Kennedy; that belief can only have been incredibly traumatic; and as with all humans with gaps in explanation, the "why?" questions, get filled in with answers made up and generated if none already exist, because that is wired into how human minds work--if an explanation is not known, one will be made up to fill in the blanks. Lots of studies have been done on this phenomenon. In reading Michael Paine's Warren Commission testimony of his talks with his coworker at Bell the day of the assassination, and of the coworker, as they tell it first when Michael heard the report that the TSBD was connected to the assassination he wondered if it could have been Lee, but did not believe it could be, because it made little sense from what Michael knew of Lee. It was only when the report came in later on the news in which Oswald was named in connection with the killing of the police officer, Tippit, that tipped Michael to accept that Lee was guilty of both killings. (That account of both Michael and his coworker sounds very plausible to me as a sequence.) The point is Michael was, so to speak, convinced or forced against his instincts concerning Oswald's guilt by the force of the evidence as he understood it. And it had to have been traumatic and he, like anyone, would struggle to understand "why". In that vacuum, that drive to understand "why", I believe is the most likely reconstruction for how Michael fixed on this idea of a political violence belief of Oswald as his reconstructed explanation. If you mean Michael was "under pressure" in terms of the soft but powerful pressure of how others in society and peers are thinking, a human herd-think phenomenon, then yes maybe in that sense of "under pressure". I just doubt there were unseen handlers in the picture giving secret orders or threats or urgings to Michael Paine on what to say or think. Among other things, Michael Paine comes across as too independent-minded to easily allow someone else to tell him what to say or think. However, who knows for sure.
  6. In his later years Michael Paine repeatedly claimed in interviews that he clearly remembered Oswald having said to him, "change only comes through violence". That was probably the most central belief Michael Paine attributed to Oswald, and the most central quotation Michael Paine reported he had heard from Oswald. I don't think there is sufficient awareness or recognition that that was literally a manufactured memory on the part of Michael Paine. Not an intentional lie, Michael Paine thoroughly believed his own manufactured memory. But a manufactured memory nevertheless. Michael Paine probably forgot that in his testimony in 1964 to the Warren Commission he repeatedly testified explicitly that he never heard Oswald say any such thing. Mr. PAINE - He did not indicate or reveal to me how he thought it [economic change] would come about and I on several occasions felt by his, perceived from his attitude or felt impelled by his attitude to say that the values that I held dear were diminished in a situation of violence, to which he remained silent and I took it as disagreement. But I don't remember if he had said that. Senator COOPER - He remained silent when you spoke about that? Mr. PAINE - When I said I was opposed to violence or said, why, when I said that he remained silent and I took it-- Senator COOPER - You took it that he disagreed in any way by your statement? Mr. PAINE - Well, just by the way he would sort of withdraw. Senator COOPER - He did not agree with your position? Mr. PAINE - He did not agree; no. Senator COOPER - That violence was unacceptable as a means of change? Mr. PAINE - That is right, and I don't think he perceived also, was a war of the kind of values that I am--tolerance, for instance seems to me disappears when strained situations-- Senator COOPER - Did you discuss at least the kind of economic changes that had occurred in Russia by means of violence? Mr. PAINE - No; I was trying to find out whether he thought it was going to come by revolution or not and he never did say, I never got an answer as to how he thought this change was going to come. He did not reveal constructive, or from my point of view, constructive effort to make. Senator COOPER - Did he ever discuss the revolution in Russia where by means of violence the change had come about? Mr. PAINE - He did not. That would have been the kind of argument I would have accepted, a normal kind that you would have accepted it as evidence here is the normal way to produce it, but he never said that. Senator COOPER - Did he ever say any way in which he was expecting Russia or any other country to indicate that he felt the use of violence had produced good? Mr. PAINE - No. As I say he did not--I would have accepted that argument as a debating argument but he didn't bring it up. Senator COOPER - That is all. Mr. DULLES - Did he say or did you get the impression that he felt that violence was the only way to improve things, let's say, in the United States? Mr. PAINE - I felt he was so disgusted with the whole system that he didn't see a way that was worthwhile fussing around trying to modify the situation. Mr. DULLES - Other than violence or he didn't go that far? Mr. PAINE - He didn't mention advocating violence or didn't say anything in regard to violence but he did seem to me he didn't see dismissed as trivial, no difference between the parties so why join one party or another. They were all the same. Churches--there is no avenue out that way. Education--there is nothing there. So that he never revealed to me any constructive way that wasn't violent. Comment: because Oswald never told Michael Paine how he believed change would come about and appeared to disagree with Michael's advocacy of peaceful reforms as the way positive change would come about, Michael Paine interpreted that as Oswald believed in violence, even while repeatedly and explicitly testifying under oath that Oswald never advocated or spoke favorably of violence in Michael Paine's hearing. And Michael Paine appears to have misunderstood Oswald's silences or body language disagreement with Michael's peaceful reforms view, which Michael Paine interpreted as: therefore, Oswald believes in violence as the only way. In Oswald's political writings there is nothing advocating violence, no belief that violence is the only way, no call for violent revolution, nothing in support of the belief that Michael Paine attributed to Oswald. Oswald's political writings show Oswald's view or belief was that both Soviet and American systems would collapse on their own. Following that collapse--which would occur on its own, no role of violence by activists recommended or necessary to assist that in happening--then would be the possibility for better and more just non-oppressive economic and social systems following those collapses. What activists should do now, prior to those collapses, in Oswald's political writings, was not violent overthrow, but organize and prepare to be ready to implement better systems post-collapse. No violent revolution of activists mentioned in this picture, for Oswald, in his writings. Michael Paine misunderstood Oswald's silence to the "how change comes about" question and body language disagreement to Michael Paine's belief in peaceful political reforms as the way change would come about. Michael Paine was correct that Oswald did not agree, but misunderstood what Oswald actually believed. Oswald had no optimism that reforms in the existing systems would work, wasted energies so to speak from Oswald's point of view. But that did not mean Oswald was advocating violent revolution, which Michael Paine assumed was the only other possible alternative, which therefore Oswald must believe--Michael Paine interpreted wrongly with respect to Oswald's thinking. Then Michael Paine manufactured a memory that he had heard Oswald explicitly say that violence was the only way, even though Oswald did not.
  7. Whoah on this. Aaron Kohn was in the forefront of truthfully telling of the enormous economic power and influence on politicians of New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello. Marcello as one of America's leading mob bosses was denied above all by two persons in particular: local FBI agent Regis Kennedy, and District Attorney Jim Garrison, for both of whom, if one were to believe them, Marcello was an honest grocery wholesaler not one of the most powerful mob bosses in America. According to Kohn's information, which is pretty much standard to every historian today and was the view of Robert Kennedy of the Justice Department at the time, Marcello's organized and illegal billion-dollar gambling rackets alone made Marcello's gambling the biggest industry in Louisiana. That's not counting prostitution, narcotics, bribes to public officials, mob murders, and his legitimate businesses such as nightclubs owned through cutouts, one of which one report says was the Carousel Club of Dallas managed by Jack Ruby (who may have been Marcello's means of contacts with the Dallas Police). You can side with Aaron Kohn and Robert Kennedy and practically every authority on the mob today. Or you can side with Garrison who literally denied with a straight face that Marcello was involved in organized crime in 1963. Don't attack Aaron Kohn because he was right on that. What then was Aaron Kohn's crime? As if it is forbidden by DiEugenio to cite him? I do not know whether Aaron Kohn crossed the line in terms of acting illegally or unethically in assisting the defense of a man innocent of the charges Garrison brought against Clay Shaw. But Aaron Kohn is not to be faulted for an objective of calling out a wrongful prosecution of a man innocent of the charges Garrison was levying, if that is what is considered Kohn's crime. Are there more than maybe 2% complete diehard Garrison fundamentalists among researchers of the JFK assassination who can look themselves in the mirror and say they truly believe Clay Shaw was a witting, active part of assassinating President Kennedy? There was not a shred of evidence presented of that. Not one shred. Mark Lane didn't believe it. Garrison's assistant district attorney Volz, who ran the office while Garrison pursued the JFK assassination investigation, didn't believe it. Hardly any CT's today seriously believe it. A basic question: Is it OK to prosecute or legally lynch an innocent man, if its Garrison and its for a good cause? And the answer should be clear to any rational person: no, it is not. Just because Clay Shaw was mixed up with the CIA in some unclear way in an international trade area and did not answer honestly about that, or lied about not knowing Ferrie at a time when neither had been publicly outed as gay, does not make him logically a conspirator in the assassination of President Kennedy. What does, then? If you ask DiEugenio, he will tell you it is because Clay Shaw denied he was with Oswald in Clinton, Louisiana assisting Oswald in registering to vote and apply for a job in a mental hospital in that city, obvious evidence that Clay Shaw was plotting to kill JFK. Or, that Clay Shaw denied he was the caller who called Marcello-connected attorney Dean Andrews "asking" Dean Andrews to go to Dallas to defend Oswald in a manner Dean Andrews could not refuse, and also could not say who it was, "because he liked to continue breathing" as he told someone in explanation. Those denials of Clay Shaw, in the logic of DiEugenio, are evidence that Clay Shaw plotted to kill JFK. I don't think so. I am reading William Davy, Let Justice Be Done (1999), which argues in defense of Garrison. Davy claims Garrison did suspect the mob in the assassination and that any claim that Garrison did not is completely untrue "the charge that Garrison never considered the mob as a suspect in the assassination is once again the stuff of nonsense" (p. 155) ... and that Garrison believed the mob was responsible for the assassination, along with anti-Castroites "In June of 1967, the FBI had information that Garrison was pursuing the mob angle. An FBI source reported that 'Garrison believed that organized crime, specifically, "La Cosa Nostra" is responsible along with other Anti-Castroites for the assassination." (p. 156) ... and that Garrison considered involving Marcello in the JFK assassination "...Further proof [that the charge that Garrison never considered the mob is nonsense] is offered by intelligence operative Gordon Novel. The reader is already familiar with his deposition taken during his unsuccessful libel suit against Garrison and Playboy magazine. During the deposition Novel is asked: Q. What business did you have with Mr. Marcello? A. I was trying to locate a Mr. Haggeman, who was an arch enemy of Mr. Garrison, and at the time he informed me that Mr. Garrison was considering involving him in the assassination. Q. Marcello or Haggeman? A. Mr. Marcello." (p. 155) ... even though at the same time, Davy continues, Marcello was clean of any charge of involvement in organized crime in New Orleans: "As Garrison wrote in a April 17, 1968 letter to Donald Organ, 'Mr. Kohn had publicly admitted that it was he who made all of the information initially available to Life magazine. Inside the Grand Jury room, with the doors shut, Mr. Kohn admitted that he really did not have any evidence of any kind that organized crime was occurring in New Orleans.' Kohn also admitted as much in an interview with Garrison and his staff prior to his Grand Jury appearance. When one of the executives of Kohn's Crime Commission appeared before the Grand Jury, he admitted, 'No, we have nothing, we have no evidence to put before the Grand Jury.' The outgoing Grand Jury concurred when they wrote a blistering criticism of Kohn and his methods in their final report: 'Organized crime, as we understand the term, exists in areas that are saturated with corrupt officials. Wherever there is an alert Mayor, an honest and intelligent Chief of Police, with an upgraded police force, and an aggressive District Attorney's Office, organized crime cannot exist. 'If these officials do not all cooperate and participate in this scheme it cannot flourish because no one official is capable of protecting the illegal endeavors of the so-called "syndicate." A combination without any one official is doomed. 'To accept Mr. Kohn's view, in this particular area, we must assume the dishonesty of all the aforementioned public officials, plus a dishonest Governor. 'We, as laymen, acting for the community, can only evaluate what has been sworn to under oath. 'The allegations of organized crime in this Parish ha[ve] been fathered by the Metropolitan Crime Commission and published, with their approval, in Life Magazine ... We wish to emphasize that we are not against a properly handled Crime Commission, only against thought-less individuals who, without sufficient foundation, make allegations and then fail to produce proof of these allegations and refuse to give what information they might have to the proper officials.'" (pp. 157-158) Davy does not explain why, if these claims are true--that Garrison suspected the mob was responsible for the JFK assassination and considered going after Marcello--that Garrison did not undertake any investigation of Marcello related to the JFK assassination. Why no investigation of that particular suspect, among the suspects Garrison did name and go after? RFK and the Justice Department considered Marcello one of the leading mobsters in America. According to many sources such as Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, who had instructed his staff to make Marcello one of his top organized crime targets in America, suspected Marcello had killed his brother. Marcello was named by the US Congress at the conclusion of its investigation, along with Trafficante of Florida, as a "likely suspect" in the JFK assassination. If so, it would not be Marcello alone. It would be with Trafficante of Florida who may have supplied the gunmen (one of whom will not have been Oswald), such as, perhaps, anti-Castro Cubans of John Martino's circles and involved with CIA Miami. If Marcello and Trafficante are considered mid-level, not top deciders, in the assassination, most of the objections commonly expressed against the notion of the JFKA as a mob hit are removed and become straw man objections. Aaron Kohn and the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission were not the problem, for telling the truth about Marcello and organized crime in their city. Garrison was at fault for not lifting a finger to investigate it with respect to the JFK assassination. How it looks to me.
  8. Pat S., I echo the sentiments of Charles Blackmon. Your chapter on the INAA testing; the appearance of coverup in the reporting/disclosure of it or rather lack thereof; the fact that firing the Mannlicher-Carcano would leave GSR (gunshot residue) on Oswald’s face if he had done so and yet there was no GSR on Oswald’s face; your work on the little-noticed but apparent coverup of GSR testing on clothing of Oswald with likely unreported results … comes close to stand-alone exoneration of Oswald as a rifle shooter on Nov 22. Added to that: the absence of any evidence he was a good shot and a lot of indication he wasn’t (including the underappreciated force of a physical coordination aptitude test of Oswald at the TEC undertaken in 1962 and again in 1963 as told by Laura Kittrell with the 1962 results a matter of record in the WC exhibits but unremarked); the total lack of ammo or rifle cleaning supplies in Oswald’s belongings; the total lack of any practice shooting with the rifle in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to the assassination; and the absolutely inexplicable failure of a supposed lone nut fanatic on the 6th floor to shoot JFK in the perfect-shot approach on Houston (indirectly but powerfully suggestive of an ambush planned on the presidential limousine at a later position on Elm) … how could a jury presented by those considerations by a competent defense counsel fail to have reasonable doubt that Oswald personally killed JFK, and on the basis of clear reasonable doubt, acquittal? And the palm print on the barrel was said by Day to be an old print (therefore of no use in proving Oswald fired on Nov 22), and the years-later belated claim of a trigger guard print match to Oswald is just not credible in terms of convincing. A jury would be convinced the rifle had been Oswald’s. And Oswald’s behavior and seemingly gratuitously false answers to some questions in interrogation are strange, but fall short of establishing Oswald fired that rifle. From the known information, it could well have been contested, if Oswald and his counsel chose to contest it in court, whether Oswald was aware of the presence of his rifle in the TSBD on the 6th floor that day. Here is where what I believe to be a development in the case of my own contribution enters, the fact (as I believe it to be and believe I have shown to be the case sufficient to convince most reasonable informed readers who read the argument and think about it) that Lee and Marina removed the rifle from where it had been with other of Lee’s belongings in Ruth Paine’s garage, on Nov 11, 1963, following which there is a total black hole absence of information on where that rifle was, and in whose custody, for the next 11 days until it turned up where it did on Nov 22. As DPD Chief Curry put it, he did not deny the rifle was (or had been up to Nov 11) Oswald’s. But Curry said no one could put that rifle in Oswald’s hands at the moments the shots were fired, on Nov 22. And the resisting arrest, the apparent false answers after his arrest under interrogation, the fact the rifle had been his … I understand many states today do not allow even an overt confession alone as a basis for conviction of a capital crime unless there is independent corroborating evidence. (And of course Oswald never confessed; strenuously denied he had killed anyone and claimed he was being framed… then shot dead before he could come to trial.) Arguments of a suspect’s guilt from confession alone, or the even weaker “consciousness of guilt” genre of argument, I understand are today considered insufficient in many jurisdictions due to high incidences of false confessions and misinterpretation based on subjective interpretations of how suspects look and behave. And then your separate section on the threads reported found on the rifle butt matching to the arrest shirt which Oswald first put on that day at 1 pm (!) in Oak Cliff, after the shots were fired that killed JFK, is classic. And you obtained and published the first color photo of the button-down light maroon dress shirt Oswald actually wore that morning, and you have made all of your work open-access, on your website. I recently spent some time rereading Bugliosi and in particular what he claimed in conclusion were 53 evidences for Oswald’s guilt. I was surprised at how insubstantial about 3/4 of the points were, and the dozen or so I found of some prosecutorial force had reasonable alternative explanations with ambiguity, not certainty, as the correct conclusion, such that Bugliosi overstated the case against Oswald. Sadly, it looks like America had its own banana republic event in 1963 in which some faction shot a rival out of political office, and too many in power either didn’t know or didn’t want to know what had happened and did not have the will to find out. I was in a fourth grade public school classroom in Akron, Ohio, the day President Kennedy was shot. And then it happened again in 1968 with MLK, Jr. who was bringing about structural change in America, and then a month later again with Robert Kennedy, with Robert slain just as he was poised for likely electoral success and election as President in 1968 if he had not been slain.
  9. So you say. I don’t agree, and neither did a unanimous jury in New Orleans. Fred Litwin on his website has several articles that debunk the Clay Shaw / Clay Bertrand identification claim of Garrison, and is the best go-to information on that particular question; I recommend you familiarize yourself with Litwin’s arguments there. I think Dean Andrews did give a name when his secretary asked him over the phone who had called him about defending Oswald: Lane Bertram, heard by the secretary mistakenly as “Bertrand”, then misleadingly reported by Andrews himself to the Secret Service and FBI as “Clay Bertrand”. I connect Dean Andrews’ “excited utterance”, caught off guard, answer to his secretary of the Lane Bertram name, the name of the SAIC agent in charge of the Houston Secret Service office, to be in some way related to Secret Service assistance in conveying a request from Dallas on Marguerite Oswald’s behalf to her old friend and Marcello aligned lawyer friend who had helped her and Lee in the past, attorney Clem Sehrt. Clem Sehrt turned down the plea from Marguerite himself but I believe he or someone else Marcello-related informed by Sehrt was the actual caller to Dean Andrews. In my view, overpowering corroboration of a reconstruction that the call to Dean Andrews on the late afternoon of Sat Nov 23, 1963, re legal counsel for Oswald in Dallas, originated from Marguerite Oswald in Dallas (caller on behalf of her) and did NOT come from New Orleans Trade Mart director Clay Shaw who had nothing to do with it, is this: Monk Zelden, probably the leading and most celebrated criminal defense attorney in New Orleans, was called by Dean Andrews to be brought into a planned defense team for Oswald. Dean Andrews asked Zelden to go to Dallas immediately so that Oswald would have counsel, and Andrews would get to Dallas as soon as he could join Zelden there after he, Andrews, was discharged from the hospital. That was the plan as Dean Andrews envisioned and was discussing this with Zelden on the phone Sunday morning when the news hit that Oswald was killed, ending the plans for legal representation for Oswald. Here is the point: Zelden said, just as plain and as straight as could be, that the request for representation for Oswald to which Zelden had intended to assist Dean Andrews, had come from Marguerite Oswald, via intermediaries. Not from Clay Shaw. But from Marguerite Oswald in Dallas.
  10. The visit of Mrs. Hunter to Mrs. Whitworth's furniture store after 2 pm on a weekday to discuss tickets to the Richland Hills game surely happened. That is not in dispute. What is to be disputed is that simply was not the occasion of the visit of Lee, Marina, June, and baby Rachel in that store even if one or the other of the women placed it at that time and the other agreed. That family of four went from there to the Sport Shop less than two blocks away and the man gave his name as "Oswald". The woman was positively identified as Marina by the women and there was a 2-3 week old baby girl matching to Lee and Marina's baby girl born Oct 20. On the weekdays you suppose this happened at 2 pm, Lee was in Dallas at work and Marina was at Ruth Paine's house and not taking any trip to a furniture store with Lee. A different visit of Mrs. Hunter to the Furniture Mart on the morning of Monday Nov 11 Veterans Day is the day the visit of the family had to have happened, because it simply cannot have occurred any other day, unless you are going to argue for doppelgangers who look exactly like all four members of the Lee and Marina family and used the name "Oswald" (at their next stop at the Irving Sport Shop), yet were not Lee and Marina. You can see the same time-memory distortion phenomenon in the Sports Drome Gun range witnesses of the "Oswald" (who was not Oswald) there, how witnesses remembering the same event differed on which day in the past it was. The women would have said "Veterans Day" if they had associated the visit of Lee and Marina with that morning when they were there too. Did you adequately consider what I brought out about the cool weather, the "light wrap" temperature, remembered when Lee and Marina and June and Rachel were in the store? Unlike a misdating of the visit of the family by association with the wrong visit of Mrs. Hunter to Mrs. Whitworth's store, a memory of temperature at the time of the family's visit is probably not going to have been mistaken. That temperature memory proves whoever that family of four were, they were definitely not there at 2 pm in the afternoon. This point has nothing to do with whether or not it was Lee and Marina. It has to do with it cannot have been 2 pm whoever they were; Mrs. Hunter was just wrong. She was not wrong on visiting the Furniture Mart at 2 pm on a weekday to discuss Richland Hill tickets; but wrong on that as the day the family came in. There are very good weather records of temperature of every hour at Love Field, Dallas, from a federal agency for any day you want to check in 1963. You can look it up on any number of weather history sites, such as this one: https://weatherspark.com/h/m/8813/1963/11/Historical-Weather-in-November-1963-in-Dallas-Texas-United-States#Figures-Rainfall. Mrs. Hunter was just wrong about the man and woman with their little girl and baby, whoever they were, coming in at 2 pm because at 2 pm it was 80s-90s Fahrenheit temperature every single day at that time. Check and see for yourself! The weather detail establishes that the visit of this family of four occurred on a morning, and therefore not on the Wed or Thu Nov 6 or 7 game-tickets visit at 2 pm of Mrs. Hunter that did happen, just without the family showing up then. The family were in that store on some day which cannot have occurred later than ca. 10:30 am or so at about the latest. How does that square with these women placing that visit at the 2:00 pm visit on Wed or Thu Nov 6 or 7 when Mrs. Hunter was there that both remembered, talking about tickets to the game? It doesn't square, because that cannot have been when the visit occurred. It rules out that day. Any regular weekday Mrs. Hunter said she would wait until ca. 2:00 before going to hang out at the Furniture Mart with Mrs. Whitworth. There is only one day when a morning visit was possible: the holiday, Veterans Day, when Mrs. Hunter's daughter was not working and there was no 1-2 pm phone call which is why Mrs. Hunter waited until 2 pm. it could be on Veterans Day Mrs. Hunter had some juicy gossip she couldn't wait to tell Mrs. Whitworth, maybe something from the Richland Hills game, and went to the Furniture Mart Monday morning at opening time on Nov 11 on the holiday--who knows why. But that's the only day that works for the time of day--morning--when the weather data says the family were in the store. How do you propose to explain Mrs. Whitworth's memory of it being cool, and the little girl wearing a light coat or wrap in the store because it was slightly cool, when the family was there? This "fundamentalism" or "witness inerrancy" on witnesses' time dating of past associations of incident memories would be like quoting Marina remembering Lee practicing shooting his rifle in January 1963 as evidence that the March 1963 records of an Oswald rifle purchase at Klein's cannot have been Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle. When it was Marina's time memory in error (not necessarily in that case motivated for any reason, just simple error). But, you're free to stick to doppelgangers coming in to the Furniture Mart when it was blazing hot after 2 pm and witnesses mistakenly remembering 90 degree heat as if it was cool light-wrap weather cooler than 70 degrees. 🙂 We will just have to disagree here, because I don't buy that all four of this family, the use of the name "Oswald", an identically colored car to the one they had means, motive, and opportunity to drive on the morning of Nov 11, the witnesses' positive identifications of Marina in a face to face meeting, are to be explained as doppelgangers, when there is no need for that. And think Steve--what is there not to like about this identification? It does not go either way on adding or detracting from whether Oswald killed Kennedy in any direct way. I don't know fully what it means myself, only that the facts call for it. Why not consider the Nov 11 idea? Anyway thanks for your comments.
  11. My point was that the reasoning of citing control of the autopsy as logically exonerating mob boss over Dallas Marcello from complicity in the assassination is a logical non sequitur. It is like arguing that mob figures could not have controlled the government coverup of plots to kill Castro, therefore clearly mob figures are exonerated from the Castro plots and it was CIA agents instead in Cuba, not mob involvement, trying to off Castro. Even if mob figures confessed to involvement in the Castro plots they should not be believed because clearly it was the CIA, not the mob, who was doing that, as just definitively proven. Same logic, same reasoning. Do you see? In neither case does the conclusion logically follow from the premise cited.
  12. Ferrie left for his trip to Galveston or Houston later that day. There is no dispute over Ferrie’s being with Marcello in court on Nov 22, 1963, or denial from Ferrie on that. No he didn’t. Andrews told his secretary, according to the secretary, it was “Bertrand”, Clem or Clay “Bertrand”. Andrews first tried to deny the call ever happened (in which he had been asked and had agreed to go to Dallas and represent Oswald). It was Garrison who made the case that Bertrand was Clay Shaw. The name the secretary gave sounds a lot like the head of the Secret Service’s Houston office, Lane Bertram, or the first name of the lawyer who likely actually made the call, Marcello connected and old friend of Marguerite Oswald who sought his help on Nov 23 for her son, Clem Sehrt. Marguerite in Dallas was desperate for an attorney for her son on Sat Nov 23 and was in custody of the Secret Service by mid-day that day. And it is known that some kind of inquiry from or on behalf of Marguerite came in to Marcello circles in New Orleans that weekend seeking a lawyer for Lee. Whether the mechanism of that contact involved any use of the name of Secret Service agent Lane Bertram I do not know but the similar sound of the names is curious. The secretary, meanwhile, would not have known what “Bertrand” meant, only that is the answer Andrews (despite Andrews denials) gave her and she told, which then put that phone contact to Andrews into a position that had to be explained. If the contact did come from Clem Sehrt, it would not be admitted to have come from Sehrt because that would go to Marcello. There would be a motive to frame Clay Shaw with that alias claim. Just another way to look at that case. If you don’t think Clay Shaw could possibly have been framed in that charge of using a Clay Bertrand alias and you are certain that would or did not happen in this case, then the Marguerite appeal and Clem Sehrt contact need to be explained in some other way.
  13. Again, I don’t know whether Marcello had actual involvement in the JFK assassination or, if he did have foreknowledge or played a role, how exactly that may have worked (although Marcello’s jailhouse conversations with the FBI informant, who said Marcello was in his right mind when he told him these things—some conversations said to be in the cell on tape and others in the prison yard by Marcello—had Marcello claiming control and actual hidden ownership of the Carousel Club in Dallas; that Ruby owed Marcello big financially; that Marcello knew of Oswald and had contacts of his people with Oswald not disclosed to authorities, and that Marcello claimed he had had JFK killed). (The FBI had those tapes and planted the informant on Marcello in pursuit of an unrelated investigation, and apparently on that grounds did not feel a confession by Marcello of the JFK assassination, that came about incidentally to the informant in the course of that, qualified as JFK assassination records which Congress’s intent was should fully be disclosed, which I believe is the FBI’s present logic and position. It certainly was not considered by the FBI as cause to reopen any investigation of the JFK assassination, or disclose to the public or other investigators or to Congress that extended confession reports had been obtained from a man considered by Congress one of the three leading suspects in America in the assassination, i.e. reports that someone “had talked” after all.) Whatever truth there may or may not be underlying the Marcello “smoke”, one point is always raised as a supposed argument there is nothing there: that Marcello could not control the autopsy. But neither could the CIA, but that is rarely cited as an argument for exoneration of the CIA. There is some kind of logical disconnect in how the autopsy argument is wielded to logically fallacious conclusions argued in backward reasoning to the possible identity of who carried out the hypothesized hit on the ground.
  14. My reaction too. And what is even more bizarre about Garrison’s complete lack of interest, in having his office conduct even a single known interview or inquiry of Marcello, is that two of the key figures said by Garrison to be in his headlights among the dozens all over the map, directly went to Marcello although one never heard that from Garrison. David Ferrie was said publicly by Garrison to have been a leading suspect, after a suspicious death of Ferrie that immediately followed a debriefing of Ferrie by Garrison’s office of what Ferrie knew. Ferrie, who had certain past contact with Oswald and, in one of the Marcello confessions, more recent contact in 1963, was directly working for Marcello’s attorney on a Marcello court case, and Ferrie was WITH Marcello in a courtroom in New Orleans on the day of the assassination. Then in 1967 he is debriefed by Garrison’s office expressing terror and fear for his life, following which he is dead within hours, ruled natural causes by the coroner. Garrison said the Ferrie death was suspicious but never apparently thought to suspect Marcello in that death. And attorney Dean Andrews Jr, who did legal work for Oswald in New Orleans, worked for Marcello, was an attorney for Marcello. Garrison prosecuted him on a perjury charge. On the day of the assassination Andrews was in a hospital which Dean Andrews III, Dean Andrews’s son, has said in a recent book (a) his father was in that hospital because of an attempt on his life; and (b) that Marcello had befriended his father because there was a mob contract out on the life of his father but Marcello saw to it that it would not be carried out (in Jeffries and Law, Pipe the Bimbo in Red [2023]). What are mob friends for, if not to stop something terrible from happening to one, such a shame if it did. Another interpretation of that is Dean Andrews was under threat of his life and knew it with every word he said, under complete control of Marcello. Hence Andrews’ dissembling re the source of the “request” to him to go to Dallas immediately and take control of Lee Harvey Oswald’s legal representation in Dallas, including under oath, would have been under duress and not objective at all, from start to finish, and the truth of who actually asked him (from someone Andrews could not say no to) would go back to the man himself, the one who could lift his finger up or down on Andrews’ life and Andrews knew it. But Garrison knew and saw nothing of Andrews’ connection to Marcello, as Andrews said every crazy thing and threw smoke around the identity of the source who had wanted him to go control Oswald’s legal representation in Dallas, with Garrison attempting to convince the world that came from non-Marcello related Clay Shaw. That could not have been more serving of Marcello’s interest if district attorney Garrison had himself been in Marcello’s hip pocket, as word on the street in New Orleans said Garrison was (Vaccara, Carlos Marcello: The Man Behind the Assassination [2013]).
  15. No FBI agents allowed to look into Marcello post-Nov 22. Marcello not mentioned in the Warren Report. Marcello named as one of the top three leading suspects for doing the JFK assassination by the HSCA which concluded there was a conspiracy and that Marcello (and Trafficante) had means, motive, and opportunity (but the HSCA did not claim to have found evidence), which HSCA recommended be further investigated. The FBI, which did not further investigate these figures HSCA recommended, kept on paper the investigation opened until Marcello was reported to have confessed--literally confessed. At that point the FBI Dallas office informed FBI hq that that report of a confession of the leading suspect logically was grounds to close down the on-paper-still-open investigation of the JFK assassination altogether, without investigating the person who made the confession further. FBI Dallas explained that they had interviewed Marcello and he had denied making the confession. FBI Dallas did not believe that denial was true. FBI Dallas believed Marcello had confessed, yet at the same time FBI Dallas did not believe that confession, which the FBI accepted had happened, was true, i.e. to be believed, on the grounds that Marcello was: sometimes not in his right mind; sometimes in his right mind but pretended not to be in his right mind; and sometimes in his right mind. Therefore on the grounds that no confirming evidence had come forth in their past years of non-investigation of Marcello to substantiate the new news of the confession, FBI Dallas concluded Marcello's confession should be classified as one of those times Marcello was not in his right mind. And FBI Dallas reasoned that a confession of someone not in their right mind did not merit further investigation any more than any other "excited utterance" not said intentionally by a person. I do not know of any direct evidence that Marcello did or was involved with the assassination any more than any of the people Garrison went after, other than Marcello's confession and some confessions of mobsters who knew Marcello. But there is reason to suspect Ruby of Dallas had some connection to the JFK assassination and, if one accepts that Ruby was not acting alone in killing Oswald, he had to have been answering to or working for either Giancana or Marcello, it about comes down to one of those two. He had contacts with both that would make either plausible. With Marcello, Ruby was in Marcello's #2 sub-mob boss of Dallas who had direct contact with Marcello, Campisi's, restaurant the night before the assassination. Ruby had recent trips to New Orleans, had hired Jada who was heavily tied into the New Orleans Marcello mob scene, etc. and etc. Lots of smoke to connect Ruby to Marcello. And when Marcello confessed, the FBI Dallas office with hq approval responded by declaring Marcello no longer a suspect because the investigation is ended, as direct cause and effect. Then Marcello confessed some more, to a credible FBI informant, and the tapes of Marcello being wired in weeks of jailhouse conversations with the informant are not released to the present day. (Almost as if there is something someone doesn't want to come out, there.) Unless one takes the position that the killers of JFK are known in a closed case, Marcello would seem to be a non-excluded suspect--a leading suspect according to the HSCA, and that was before the confessions, plural, credibly reported coming from Marcello himself. Why didn't Garrison go after Marcello? I believe Garrison's explanation was he saw no evidence Marcello was involved in organized crime in any serious way. Denied Marcello was a significant mobster. Denied what the Justice Department, Robert Kennedy, and everybody in New Orleans knew.
  16. Denny, I have the new Admitted Assassin book. I believe there probably was a physical diary of Roscoe White but the claim that an original Nov 22 entry in that diary spoke of killing JFK and Tippit I believe is BS. Also, the Savastano article in your link above is pretty good in debunking that the FBI would have stolen the diary. More likely someone disappeared it rather than have it be opened to examination to find nothing sensational and also authentic, at the same time, there. About half of Admitted Assassin is a detailed publication and exposition of the green scrapbook later found in the metal canister. Here there are similarities to the rollout of the Lafitte datebook published in Coup in Dallas. In both cases, no authentication or forensic testing or disclosure thereof; potential for huge sums of money if the artifact can be believed genuine; similarity in page after page of cryptic words, short phrases, mysterious allusions, given detailed commentary, made the center of discussion while simultaneously bypassing and resisting basic prior issues of authenticity. The similarities between the scrapbook and the datebook are such that it is tempting to speculate these two artifacts might stem from common origins, both seeking to utilize and bamboozle and consume energies of families and conspiracy-oriented researchers not themselves the hoaxers or fabricators. Consider just this: page 196 of Admitted Assassin discusses page 10 of the green scrapbook, which has a photo of Abraham Lincoln with the head torn off. Quoting Admitted Assassin, which frequently makes favorable direct comparisons to the Lafitte datebook as if citing parallel credible evidence: ”Interestingly, a Lincoln-head penny with a hole through the head of President Lincoln’s image was found taped inside the previously mentioned 1863 datebook of Pierre Lafitte.” Then a photo is shown of a “Penny taped inside Pierre Lafitte’s datebook” with a hole drilled through Lincoln’s head. Both the scrapbook alleged to be a mysterious, cryptic scrapbook of Roscoe White, and the Pierre Lafitte datebook with alleged cryptic allusions of Lafitte in 1963 to later JFK lore and names and etc, share the use of almost poetic allusive mysterious short phrases, with aura of profundity and deep significance. That “style” is common to both texts, and both texts emerged first to known existence in their present forms in the 1990s even though in the Lafitte datebook case that was only first published after Albarelli’s death a couple of decades later, and in the case of this Roscoe White scrapbook, in 2023, 33 years after discovery of the artifact, and giving almost an appearance of attempting to consciously associate with the Lafitte datebook. In both cases it might be suspected a real notebook/datebook of the person credited in 1963 possibly with a few innocuous genuine entries was utilized or appropriated and a later hoax with additional writing built up upon that. A red flag in the Admitted Assassin presentation concerns the sensational alleged military orders to Roscoe White found in the same metal canister of the green scrapbook. Apparently there was some forensic evaluation done of those military orders and the finding reported was consistent with forgery. However, the authors of Admitted Assassin do not disclose that with transparency and publication of that report. Compare the Lafitte datebook and a forensic ink analysis that was done and remains a tightly-held secret with public threats of punishing legal consequences if any scientist involved in such testing were to dare go public into the sunlight with that secret data which goes to the heart of the authenticity question.
  17. How it is known that Mon Nov 11, 1963 (Veterans Day) was the date of the Furniture Mart/Irving Sport Shop visit? Yes, Edith Whitworth alternatively said she had no way of remembering the specific day it happened, then said it was when she and Mrs. Hunter were discussing tickets for the Fri Nov 8 high school football game. And Mrs. Hunter at first said she reconstructed the date by linkage to what she said was a bus trip of her husband (no further information concerning that or its independent date), then that was dropped with no further explanation and Mrs. Hunter too said it was when discussing tickets for the Fri Nov 8 game. Mrs. Hunter said it had to have been mid-PM (when weather history data says it cannot have occurred; the cool "light wrap" temperature remembered is compatible ONLY with a ca. 9 or 10 a.m. time before the day heated up) based on she made her practice of going to visit Mrs. Whitworth at the Furniture Mart--where she liked to hang out for a couple of hours at a time--after talking to her daughter in a phone call during the daughter's 1-2 pm lunch hour at an office job. That reasoning of Mrs. Hunter is perfectly sensible except for the holiday, Veterans Day, when offices--her daughter's job--were closed for the holiday, and there would be no lunch hour phone call from her daughter on that particular day because her daughter was not at work that day, and hence no reason for Mrs. Hunter to delay any trip to hang out at the Furniture Mart that day (the Furniture Mart as a big-ticket retail store, unlike banks, the post office, and most office businesses, open on Veterans Day). The FBI verified Fri Nov 8 as the firm date of the high school football game referred to, so that date is fixed. We have a man who looks like and is identified as Oswald, who talks proudly of his 2-3 week old new baby girl. A young woman who is positively identified as Marina in the most basic form of positive identification there can be, a face-to-face meeting and conversation of the women set up by the FBI (Marina denying up and down, not too convincingly, that she had been in that store or seen those women there). Like Marina, the young woman with the man (Oswald) in the store never speaks English, has a 2-year old girl and a 2-3 week old baby. The women in the Furniture Mart see both the 2-year old girl and the the baby so that is not made up. The FBI as thoroughly and conclusively as it was capable of doing, established via investigation that there was no such local or area family with children of those ages or recent births of a baby girl, other than Lee and Marina. But asking about furniture for an upcoming apartment move, sounds like a local? Who could it possibly be in Irving of that description? The couple with their two children matching exactly to Lee and Marina arrive in a car of the exact colors of the only possible way Lee and Marina could have gotten there without Ruth Paine driving them: via Michael Paine's blue and white old car, parked on the street in front of Ruth Paine's house unused since late Oct when Michael Paine had bought it and parked it at Ruth's. I have cleaned windows for countless retail store owners in my life on routes--some that grew quite large-- that I would develop whenever I felt like moving to someplace new and scenic. The frequency was established--e.g. every two weeks, monthly--but with only a few exceptions I would leave flexibility on the precise day I would show up, adjusted to weather and workload issues. The customer just knew I was reliable and would show up at the frequency agreed though the exact day of the week would vary. I would remember doing particular jobs but not exactly when in the past (typically I would have to consult paper records to know that). They all run together in the past in memory--one has only a rough approximation of how long ago even though remembering the specific details of the job or a personal interaction. (Everyone has experienced this with remembering a visit of relatives clearly but the exact date being not so clear.) This was the case with Edith Whitworth, busy store owner, and Mrs. Hunter with Lee and Marina in that store. The issue of the date only comes up post-Nov 22, and they try to remember what exact date it was. They were influenced by talking with one another. And neither the FBI nor Warren Commission asked either of these women to recount visits of Mrs. Hunter to the Furniture Mart after Nov 8. But the date cannot have been a weekday prior to Fri Nov 8 if it was Lee and Marina because (a) Lee was at work at the TSBD in Dallas those days; and (b) Marina's whereabouts were known to Ruth Paine at all times those days because she was living with Ruth, and Ruth Paine said Lee and Marina never drove any car to a furniture store to her knowledge. And the time cannot have been the 2 or 3 or 4 pm that Mrs. Hunter thought with certainty it was--Mrs. Whitworth said she had no idea of the time of day--no matter who it was, because of the weather data history. As Mrs. Hunter got the time of day wrong, so she got the calendar day of the week wrong too. Easy mistake to make! They just were mistaken, because the evidence says they were. Not by much though. Nov 11 is not that much different from Nov 6 or 7, from a post-Nov 22 memory trying to fix that past date for the first time. Two commenters above (the discussion is welcome even if there are differences), like the Warren Commission, take the date reconstruction memory as fixed and fix on that as argument against the only possibility that date can work for Lee and Marina, Nov 11. One of the commenters concludes therefore it cannot have been Lee and Marina, which was the reasoning of the FBI and Warren Commission. The other commenter seems not to be pleased to say whether it was Lee and Marina or not on a non-Nov 11 date, even though that question requires an answer. Here is more: why the Irving Sport Shop visit had to have been Mon Nov 11 The Furniture Mart and Irving Sport Shop Oswald job ticket visits are linked and are the same day, because Oswald or the Lee and Marina and baby doppelgangers, whichever it was, went from one store to the other that day, whatever that day was. Therefore, whatever date is true or established for either one, fixes the correct date for the other. At the Irving Sport Shop it can be known that occurred Mon Nov 11, because Dial Ryder was alone in the store that day. We can know that because we know owner Greener was on vacation (from ca. Nov 1 to Nov 14), and because the only other employee of the Shop, a young woman secretary who probably also would help out at the front counter, normally was there but was not there the day of the Oswald job ticket. We can know that because that woman said she remembered no Oswald job ticket customer. And also, because it is clear Dial Ryder did that as a cash job with the cash going into his pocket not into the cash register, which is more consistent with being alone in the store. And the only day that makes sense for the secretary not to be in the store was Veterans Day, Mon Nov 11, when she had the holiday off to be with her husband and family, but Dial Ryder was in the shop because it was peak hunting season with lots of scopes (and other) activity and money flowing into the shop. A parallel to Dial Ryder doing the Oswald job ticket job for cash, doing the scope reinstallation on the spot, with the cash going into his pocket instead of into the cash register, is this parallel from a Secret Service interview of another transaction being investigated (some Nov 22 anti-JFK printed materials in Dallas): "Klause told his customer that he could make the film, and that he would have some ready during the early afternoon ... he made delivery to his unknown customer on that same day at about 4:00 or 4:30 P.M. He charged the customer $4.00 for the job, which was paid in cash. Klause did not write up this sale, as he said he saw a chance to make a few dollars on the side. Hence no record is available for this transaction. Klause said no other employees were at the shop, as they had gone home for the day." (Secret Service, 12/6/63, CE 2473, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1141#relPageId=687) "No record is available for this transaction" is exactly what Dial Ryder told the FBI agent who surprised him by a knock on his door on Mon Nov 25, 1963, and Dial at that time disclosed the Oswald job ticket which up to that moment he said he had only told to his wife. The reason there was only the Oswald job ticket, but no cash register record of the transaction, for Dial Ryder was the same reason as the above: Dial Ryder was working alone in the shop on Veterans Day and the cash went into his pocket. That also accounts for Dial Ryder's reluctance to tell Greener about that transaction, an awkward conversation. And so Mon Nov 11 is when that happened at the Irving Sport Shop, which agrees with (a) Dial Ryder telling the FBI agent on Mon Nov 25 that he remembered it as about "two weeks" earlier; and (b) the Oswald job ticket was notably handwritten in Dial's writing in pencil not pen, and Dial related that to a day or two back there when he seemed to remember atypically using a pencil, which corresponds to documented use of a pencil by Dial confirmed on Tue Nov 12. Then in what might be called an "excited utterance" when Marina, caught off guard and denying like crazy any association of herself with that rifle the best she could, at first said on Nov 22 she thought she had last seen a glimpse of that rifle about two weeks earlier and without a scope. (It was without a scope when Lee and Marina took it out of the garage on Mon Nov 11 to take it to get the scope base repaired and the scope put back on.) Later in her Warren Commission testimony Marina swore she never saw a glimpse of that rifle after early October--the true Nov 11 date allusion completely disappeared in her testimony. Because the Irving Sport Shop Oswald job ticket is dated to Mon Nov 11 because of Dial Ryder working alone, that establishes, or rather confirms, Mon Nov 11 for the Furniture Mart date as well, which by coincidence is the one and only time that that could have happened when Ruth and her children were gone from her house, and Lee and Marina had opportunity to obtain the car key out of some desk drawer and borrow, without Ruth's knowledge, the old unused blue-and-white car of Michael Paine parked out front, and drive to the Furniture Mart and Irving Sport Shop. Its been there all along. But the FBI, and the Warren Commission, missed this one. There is no reason why it needs to continue to be missed now and today though.
  18. Could you translate that into an answer to the question asked? Are you saying it was or wasn’t Lee and Marina?
  19. Neither woman, in the days and weeks after Nov 22 when they tried to remember backward when that had happened, said they could remember for sure. The argument it was Mon Nov 11 has many supporting independent points as developed in my two papers but the big one is it is the only possible time it could have been if it was Lee and Marina, without Ruth Paine knowing about it if it was any other time, and Lee was not even in Irving but in Dallas at work at the Book Depository on any other weekday. Now I ask you the same question I asked Steve Roe (which he answered and now I ask you for yours): do you accept that was Lee and Marina, and if so what other day do you think they were there, and how do you account for Ruth’s lack of knowledge of Lee and Marina driving to a furniture store in Irving on some other day when Lee was not in Irving but at work in Dallas at the TSBD?
  20. Disagree. Furniture stores, like car dealerships and other large-ticket retail outlets, holidays and long weekends are peak sales, should by default be assumed OPEN on a Veterans Day unless shown closed.
  21. I appreciate your engagement of this case too and you have an edge, your Dallas personal and family history. I believe the FBI sought to find any record of a birth of a baby girl within the ca. late October approximate time frame, part of a family which also had a ca. 2-3 year old girl, that could be another hypothetical possibility for the family in the Furniture Mart, but failed to come up with anything. Of course you can suppose the FBI missed something, or maybe there was an unreported home birth, or it was visitors from outside the area. On what you regard as inconsistencies, I go into all of those thoroughly. The times and the date uncertainty I go into, how the two women came up with the estimates they did. In one piece of analysis I believe is original with me, I showed why it is certain that the Furniture Mart episode took place on a morning not later than about 10 or 10:30 am--not in the afternoon as Mrs. Hunter mistakenly thought and Edith Whitworth who didn't remember assumed from Mrs. Hunter. Why? Weather history data. The women remembered the little girl wearing a light coat. The women remembered the temperature was slightly cool, just cool enough that one wears "a light wrap". But weather records show every single day in that time frame was blazing hot by midday and afternoon, 80s, 90s--sweating temperature if one was not in air conditioning. Only in the early morning hours before ca. 10 or 10:30 am was it below 70 F, in the 60's F, consistent with "light wrap" temperature of the temperature remembered. And that time is the exact time consistent with the window of opportunity on Mon Nov 11 after Ruth Paine took her children next door for babysitting and left in her station wagon at about 8:45-9:00 am for a trip into Dallas that would take a certain number of hours. The only reason Ruth Paine said she was sure Lee and Marina never went to a furniture store is because she knew they had not gone any time other than Monday morning Nov 11, and she believed Lee and Marina would have told her if they had gone Mon Nov 11, which Lee and Marina did not. They were there when she got home. Ruth had no knowledge of Lee ever driving a car on his own and it did not occur to Ruth that Lee and Marina would find a key to Michael's blue-and-white sedan parked in front of the house without telling her and drive that car somewhere. In other words Ruth had no actual basis for her knowledge on this point apart from trust, for where Lee and Marina were for the morning of Mon Nov 11. And there is no need to ask Ruth Paine to learn the color of Michael Paine's 1955 Oldsmobile sedan, parked in front of Ruth Paine's house on Nov 11 after Ruth drove off in her green station wagon. That has already been answered. Michael's 1955 Olds was reported by the Dallas Police, from seeing it, as "blue and white"(https://whokilledjfk.net/ruth_paine.htm). If this man, woman, small girl and baby girl, positively identified as Lee by the women from television recognition and positively identified as Marina by the women from face-to-face followup contact--if it was a random mistaken identification of other persons who had a newborn baby girl at the same time Lee and Marina's baby was born--isn't that a bit of a coincidence that the doppelganger man who looks like Lee, woman who looks like Marina and doesn't talk English, 2-3 yr old girl and 2-3 week old baby girl, also arrived in the identical color of old car that matches the only possible car Lee and Marina could have had access that morning and the only possible means by which they could have got to the Furniture Mart that morning? On Mrs. Hunter, I believe her that she had seen Marina and spoken to her on another occasion prior to the Furniture Mart. I discuss all that, and Marina's odd reactions. Fri Nov 8 as the date of the game indeed is an anchor point. This is a case where witnesses remembered another event but not exactly when it occurred other than approximately, so witnesses try to reconstruct by association to fix when in the past something else happened.
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