Greg Doudna

14 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Even if Trump were telling the truth about what he thought he saw in the documents, we have no reason to believe his impressions were accurate. 

There are docs currently available which repeat rumors or theories presented in books. Trump, in his brilliance, may have thought the rumors or theories repeated in CIA docs were the theories of the CIA itself. 

I think this nails it as the most plausible explanation, and that Trump telling something like that to Carlson was Carlson’s secret source. Carlson probably promised confidentiality to Trump which is why he isn’t saying his source.

Pretty funny (if the topic was itself not actually serious).

Trump may have had some form of access to the classified materials (means), he was in frequent contact with Carlson (means), motive (the leak to Carlson intended to be leaked), opportunity… 

Trump who when he was president promised to release everything up until the last hour when he did a 180 and didn’t, tells Carlson (maybe) florid claims of how what he saw was horrible like you wouldn’t believe etc, and now promises on the campaign trail that he really, really will release everything if voters will elect him again, “trust me”! 

(Could someone get a binding pledge from Trump, collateralized by his assets donated to a specified in advance neutral charity if default, that he will resign as president one week after inauguration if he has not released all the records as promised in that first week?)

Where is the evidence in the Dallas Police documents that the torn bills were part of the Oswald arrest? Is that secure as a certain fact (that DOD records confirm that)? Or is that claim in the genre of unproven inference or conjecture?

Litwin’s docs are certainly convincing to me that jfk and rfk were intent on having Castro removed prior to the 1964 election (if Castro wasn’t willing to convert to being a US client). 

JFK in his visionary American University speech envisioned an end to the Cold War with the USSR, basic settlement of spheres of influence, respect for each other’s Monroe Doctrines, but as part of that settlement Cuba must be Castro-free in that vision (because regarded as in US sphere). Everything looks like JFK was intent on ousting Castro with intent that the USSR accept that and JFK did not wish war with the USSR. 

Litwins article brings to attention the documents showing that (re the Cuba angle of that).

Larry Schnapf, calling Litwin dishonest without saying specifically where in the present article is unacceptable rhetoric. 

/

5 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

What person goes to a car dealership, asked to test drive a car and then proceeds to drive like a "MAD MAN' while doing so?

Especially if he or she is sober?

Oswald may have driven around a residential neighborhood with Ruth Paine a few times. However, I doubt if she told him to go onto a freeway and "LET ER RIP!"

Sounds like Lee H. wasn't ready for freeway driving.

Surprised no one asked Ruthie more details about her driving lessons with Lee.

How far did you let him drive? How fast? How did he do? Was he nervous or calm and confident driving? Did you let him go onto the freeway? Was he ready to take a DMV test and pass in your opinion?

Very important questions.

Joe the name is Ruth, not Ruthie...

She was asked and did give details of the questions you ask. Here I am paraphrasing (not quoting), 90% fact and 10% humor:

5 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

How far did you let him drive? A few yards in a grocery store parking lot, except for the first time when he took my keys and drove me against my will eight blocks to get to that parking lot. Never again on a public street, I told him and vowed! How fast? 15 mph max I let him drive in the parking lot. How did he do? He can't parallel park. He can drive a little but I wouldn't trust him with my car. Was he nervous or calm and confident driving? Oh he was confident. It was me that was alarmed. Did you let him go onto the freeway? Are you crazy?? No! Not with my car, or me in it! Was he ready to take a DMV test and pass in your opinion? Not until he learns to parallel park, which is what I was working with him on and he was learning. Once he learns that, he might be able to pass the test. I still wouldn't lend him my car though. 

My earlier only dealt with nailing down the date of the Downtown Lincoln-Mercury test drive, not whether that was Oswald or someone else claiming to be Oswald. 

One theory could be Oswald wanted some freeway practice before taking his driving test and taking a test drive at a dealer was about the only way he could get that practice, since stuffy Ruth wasn't going to let him practice with her car. 

Apart from Bogard being scared out of his mind, and ticked off that Oswald burned up the remaining gas in the tank of the demo car without turning out to be a customer, Oswald verified for himself that he could handle a car on freeways for his test.

7 minutes ago, Steve Roe said:

Calling major BS, cite the doc Greg. 

Here it is

That's from an FBI report of interview of Ruby, Nov 24, 1963, showing the address where the Tippit patrol car was (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1137#relPageId=60). The "1/2" means at 410 but upstairs. Tippit's car was between 406 and 410 E. 10th St., with the front of the patrol car where Tippit was about to walk around when shot, being in front of 410 E 10th. No evidence Joyce McDonald and her child lived where Tippit was shot (or at 410 W. 10th either).

Here is Joyce McDonald's correct residence address: 424-1/2 W. 10th St. Apt. #3, from an FBI report dated Dec. 5, 1963.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10756#relPageId=537 and https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10489#relPageId=555.

On driving: Oswald was witnessed driving, the morning of Mon Nov 11, 1963: "The mystery of the Furniture Mart sighting of Lee and Marina Oswald and their children and its solution", https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1450.

On the Downtown Lincoln-Mercury, here is something new: the date is nailed down, provided one accepts the testimony of Eugene Wilson, car salesman there, that part of the dangerous driving of the man who said his name was Lee Oswald, reported by his fellow salesman Bogard, was because the roads were slick from having rained.

I have gone over and over the weather data of that month, Nov 1963, collected and reported from Love Field, and for a long time I was just extremely baffled, for accurate data records show there was no rain on either Sat Nov 9, the day Bogard said it was, or Sat Nov 2, the day Eugene Wilson more convincingly (rain issue aside) said.

At last ... the solution: the Oswald test-drive at that dealership was not Nov 9, and was Nov 2.

The solution goes to a well-known phenomenon in which first rain after a long dry spell, especially rains that are so light that they do not wash away road grime and grease, make roads dangerous and slick. That was exactly the case the weekend of Sat Nov 2, in which there was 0 precipitation Nov 2, but there was light precipitation at 1 and 4 am Fri Nov 1, first rain after a dry spell.

On danger of "rain and slick pavement", this FBI document advising agents of that in their driving bureau cars: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=198272#relPageId=2890.

Eugene Wilson telling the FBI "Bogard also said that the customer [Oswald] drove like a mad man, driving much too fast, as it had been raining and the pavement was slick": https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=59645#relPageId=148.

Eugene Wilson's correction of the published date adopted by the Warren Commission of Nov 9, to Nov 2, of the Oswald test-drive: http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/W Disk/Wilson Eugene/Item 01.pdf. 

Dallas, TX weather history showing precipitation on Nov 1, 1963 (and any other date information can be looked up): https://wunderground.com/history/daily/us/tx/dallas/KDAL/date/1963-11-1.

Article: "Verify: are roads really more slippery directly after it rains?": https://www.king5.com/article/news/verify/are-roads-really-more-slippery-directly-after-it-rains/281-d21e8c4d-ebea-439e-b646-86b84b5c10ee. Quoting a meteorologist:

"Cars on the road leak fluids, oil being one of the primary fluids ... So, any water will tend to float the oil to the top, just like in salad dressing. So, as soon as you have water on the roads, that floats oil up and it becomes immediately very slippery."

"Until the oil and dirt get washed away, the pavement will be slippery. That can happen in a matter of minutes during a downpour, according to Marriott. But, it's actually worse if it's simply drizzling, especially after a long dry spell. 

"In that case, it's going to stay slippery a lot longer," said Marriott. "You just think about it whenever you try to run something off with water. If you're doing a very slow pace, it takes much longer to get it rinsed off."

"An examination of the first "wet day" of each of the last five years in Washington revealed that on those days, the Washington State Patrol responded to far more collisions than the previous day. The only outlier is 2020, whose smaller numbers are based on the stay-at-home order of the pandemic, resulting in far fewer cars on the road.

"That’s anecdotal, perhaps, but it jives with the physics of oil and water – which allow us to verify: Yes, roads are more slippery, right when it rains or snows. So, make sure to slow down when it does."

The objection that that driver who looked and acted like he was Oswald, who said his name was Lee Harvey Oswald, could not have been Oswald due to the conflict that he was at Ruth Paine's house is removed, since that objection applies to Nov 9 but not the morning of Sat Nov 2 (from Ruth Paine's testimony). 

On 7/1/2023 at 4:50 AM, Joe Bauer said:

Is there an official entry into the DPD records stating a car was discovered running with it's keys in the ignition ( but no driver ) in the alley way behind the Texas Theater as the police were swarming that area?

If so ...now THAT's suspicious.

Yes.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=217804#relPageId=104

(Dec 3, 1963 report of Dallas Police officer H.H. Stringer)

Joseph Backes, your analyses much valued. If this is a question that has been rehashed to death before I apologize, but I wonder if you could comment:

Accepting (provisionally) the analysis on the manipulation of the Oswald information prior to the assassination and tracing it back to maybe Angleton ... 

Since that was followed by an assassination of JFK it is a very powerful temptation, which many have done, to draw the connection that insiders, e.g. Angleton, were planning the assassination of JFK in what they were doing in the runup with the Oswald information.

And yet I just wonder--what the intelligence agencies and dark ops and Joint Chiefs etc. did was false flags. There are documents on that (Northwoods). There are precedents, there are lots of examples. A false flag attempt on JFK (to be blamed on Castro) would stand out for its audacity but would fall in the spectrum of the known, one might say common and routine, m.o. of those worlds. 

There may have been some really bad actors within or without CIA or wherever who hated JFK and would kill him for real, but under no circumstances that I can see could that have been a CIA-approved secret operation, as part of the planning of secret operations that did take place involving false-flagging Castro, and as the evidence suggests, manipulation of Oswald information--to knock off a standing president of the United States. At best there could be some insider faction giving winks and nods and looking the other way, etc. as something maybe was in the works. But it would have to be highly secretive, closely-held to only a few, highly risky, never officially approved, unknown to the rest of the Agency or above a certain level, the Agency's directorship.   

(I am just using reasoning, being less versed in this than people like you and Larry Hancock.)

Unlike the anti-Castro efforts which involved false flags, assassination plots, the works. Those were business as usual. Those were signed off on right up to directorship level and with intentional deniability but it just seems to me JFK and RFK knew but did not officially know, if you get my drift, what was being done by subordinates immediately below them.

 And yet, the fact: this pre-assassination some-kind-of manipulation of Oswald information related to that trip to Mexico City, contact with Kostikov etc and etc, was followed by the assassination of JFK.

What I am getting at is everything about CIA actions prior to that point works well as a false-flag not-real-assassination intended, i.e. what would look like an assassination attempt to be pinned on Castro that failed ... angering the American public and the world and justifying whatever "in response" against Castro's regime ... (business as usual for the dirty ops types). 

I would think at least 90% of the insider professionals who knew how to do dirty ops would balk if they had any idea that it involved a real assassination of a president no matter who the president was. It is not obvious to me that even Angleton would not balk at the idea of knocking off a president, if he knew that was what was going to happen. Even if he was up to his ears in this manipulation of Oswald information in the runup.

All of this is to say it just looks--no?--like some sort of Waldron thesis of some actor--some mob actors being the obvious suspect--somehow matched a real assassination to be pinned on Oswald (via the rifle, not by advance plan to frame Oswald as the shooter)--and all--all--of the coverup activity that followed the assassination could be explicable not as agencies having knowingly killed JFK but of having knowingly been party to manipulation of Oswald information (which was to false-flag Castro, what that was about), and a false-flag attempt to "launch war on Cuba and world war III" as it would look if it were exposed. 

That is: something--an incident--but certainly not fatal to JFK--was planned and operational that could have gone big-time into escalation to invasion of Cuba, overthrow of Castro, and chess moves against the Soviet Union. But actual assassination of JFK was not part of those operational plans. 

Just asking for your opinion on this: right track or wrong track in reasoning, in your view?

Well written Joe. I love that line: "I'll make you some coffee and a piece of pie while you get yourself a bath so we can talk without gaggin'". (You're a writer, some lines remind me of Dylan.) That was Craford's story, sudden decision to leave Dallas (after someone in a car just like him ditched a handgun on a city street in the middle of the night of the kind used to kill officer Tippit), supposedly sudden decision, starting out on practically no sleep, hitchhiking to Michigan with $7 in his pocket. That was his story. 

On the money part, what else was he going to say. Everything he received from Ruby was under-the-table, not reported for taxes. According to Laura Kittrell at the Texas Employment Commission, he was gaming the system getting unemployment benefits as an unemployed Teamsters union member even while not having a driver's license. When Laura Kittrell asked him about that she says he thought the question was hilarious. Anyone getting unemployment benefits is not going to admit being employed and paid in cash at the same time. But that doesn't mean Ruby didn't pay him. It just means he was paid in cash and there was no record of what Ruby paid him.

~ ~ ~

Judge Griffin writes in his book, referring to Craford and his Warren Commission testimony: 

"He died on April 19, 2011, at age seventy without writing a book or telling a different story to other investigators. I suspected that after nearly forty-eight years of silence, he was not withholding anything of importance." 

In terms of a confession of involvement in killing anyone in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963 or that he had knowledge of who did, that is true. But Craford did say some things later of interest that he never told the Warren Commission (if he was telling the truth later). This information was obtained largely due to the work of Canadian researcher Peter Whitmey, who contacted Craford decades later in Oregon (https://www.jfk-assassination.net/creatingapatsy.htm). (I see on p. 324 Judge Griffin notes Whitmey's article in his book.)

Here are some items from Whitmey's article.

• "it is more likely that Jarnagin confused Oswald with Larry Crafard (who reverted to his real name 'Curtis Laverne Craford' in 1964), who had begun working in the Carousel Club in early October, 1963, after meeting Ruby at the Texas State Fair. He also stayed briefly at the YMCA upon arriving in Dallas, folllowing a trip to Memphis, where he had been working in a carnival. Craford was attempting to relocate his first wife and young child, who were living in the Dallas area. He had also been in Dallas earlier, and possibly met Ruby at that time."
• "He revealed to me that he had been a 'hit man' in the early sixties in San Franciso, prior to going to Dallas. While living there he got involved with the granddaughter of the local 'Don' ..."
• "[H]e claimed to have been selected for several covert operations as a demolition expert [while in the Army in Germany], which took him over the Berlin Wall as well as into southeast Asia ... Craford was vague about whom he was working for, but emphasized to me that there would be no written records related to his covert operations."
• "He also claimed to have been a crack shot while in the Army, and still had a keen interest in weapons, proudly showing me two high-powered revolvers that he owned".
• "[I]n a Griffin/Hubert memo written in March, 1964, they stated that Craford 'closely resembles Oswald.' In the letter I received from the Crafords in 1989, Curtis denied ever pretending to be Oswald, however."
• "[W]hen I met Craford, I was surprised, after seeing photos of him published in the Warren volumes, that he was noticeably shorter than I expected. Since I am 5'8-1/2" tall, Craford was definitely no taller than 5'7", even with a cowboy hat and boots on”.
• "During Craford's testimony at Ruby's trial, in March 1964, he did not even mention the argument with Ruby as the reason he abruptly left town, stating instead that 'When I get ready to go someplace, I go. I was ready to go, so I left.'"
• "Although Craford was interviewed at length by Griffin and Hubert in Washington, D.C. for the Warren Commission, which took three days and takes up over two hundred pages in the Warren volumes, Judge Griffin continued to be bothered by Craford's abrupt departure from Dallas on Nov. 23 in coming years. In an interview conducted by the HSCA in Nov. 1978, he stated that 'one of the most important issues we never resolved ... is why Larry Crafard split town like he did.' He went on to state that he had 'always been bothered by that very much, the whole circumstance of it. And I heard you haven't been able to locate Craford.'"
• "It is difficult to understand why the HSCA were unable to contact Craford [the HSCA never did], as he had been gainfully employed for many years in Oregon in the security field, was married with several children, and had family members living in the area, all of whom had listed phone numbers."
• "He initially [after leaving Dallas following the assassination] visited his aunt and uncle near Detroit (and their daughter, whom he seemed to have a crush on, suggested in a letter written to her from the Carousel Club). After revealing to them that he had worked for Ruby, whom he spoke positively about, Craford avoided discussing his time in Dallas, nor did he watch JFK's funeral, preferring to read comic books in the guestroom. He claimed during my interview that he didn't want to show his emotions to his relatives"
• "The next day he headed to his sister's cabin for Thanksgiving, who didn't live too far from the Canadian border, possibly planning to leave the country had the FBI not tracked him down."
• "He made no effort to contact the authorities in regard to having worked for Ruby, after learning about Oswald's murder while getting a ride to Chicago (where he told me he had visited someone associated with organized crime).
• "Craford couldn't account for the elapsed time involved in travelling to Michigan."
• "Craford quite willingly indicated that 'hightailing it' was an accurate description of his movements on November 23, 1963 (although he wouldn't elaborate). However, possibly fearing that he had said too much ... he later tried to convince me over the phone that I had misunderstood his comment."
• "When Craford was interviewed by Griffin and Hubert, he gave the impression he hadn't been interested enough to watch JFK's motorcade, and had allegedly been asleep when bartender Andy Armstrong woke him up with the news of the assassination, which took place a few blocks away. It should be noted, however, that Armstrong had a lengthy criminal record..."
• "During my interview with Craford, he did indicate that he was quite certain how JFK was shot, as though from first-hand knowledge. Unlike the Warren Commission, Craford believed one shot was fired from the storm drain, and another from the grassy knoll, one of which hit the president in the throat, exiting through the back of his head ... he seemed quite certain what had transpired, almost as though he had been there."
• "After what Craford revealed to me about his background prior to going to Dallas, the possibility that he was involved in Tippit's murder immediately comes to mind."
• "There is also the matter of a thin, light-coloured jacket found in a car lot, which had been allegedly discarded by Tippit's killer as he ran from the scene ... the jacket had two laundry tickets inside, one of which a patrolman in the area reported to the dispatcher as being 'B 9738' ... the FBI checked over 700 drycleaners in both the Dallas-Fort Worth and New Orleans areas without locating the business which had drycleaned it. Since the jacket was originally sold in California, maybe it actually belonged to Craford. As mentioned earlier, he had spent time in the San Francisco area prior to coming to Dallas, and apparently worked for a Berkeley company in the summer of 1960, so it is conceivable the jacket had been drycleaned there."
• "Even though Ruby gave the impression he was upset over JFK'S death enough to close his nightclub for several days, there is clear evidence that he was also under pressure to kill Oswald, which led him to show up for Oswald's Nov 22 midnight press conference, posing as a reporter. This might also explain why he decided to close the club even though his competitors didn't, so he could concentrate on getting the job done ... The following evening, according to a Dallas police sergeant, he received a warning from a familiar voice that he could not match with a name and face, indicating that Oswald would be shot during his transfer to county jail the next morning. The police officer realized when Ruby was arrested that Jack had made the call, as he had spoken to Ruby in the past. The pressure on Ruby was likely mob-related, given the comments overheard by Jarnagin about 'the boys in Chicago'."
• "[Bugliosi] concludes that various alleged sightings of Oswald in the company of Ruby were most likely based on the fact that Craford, according to Bugliosi, 'definitely resembled Oswald.' In his opinion, these were actually incidents involving Craford and Ruby."
• "Based on Craford's comments to both author Joan Mellen and myself, it is clear that he is holding back information that should have been divulged to either the FBI or Warren Commission. Both Burt Griffin and the late Leon Hubert were not satisfied with Craford's response to many of their questions either."
• "One aspect of their [Griffin and Hubert's] 'interrogation' involved Craford's trip to Michigan, which allegedly included several car rides. Although he claimed [in his WC testimony] his trip didn't involve any stopovers, he could not account for eighteen hours between the time he left on November 23 and when he arrived at his sister's cabin on November 25. However, when I interviewed Craford in Dec. 2001, he revealed that he had stopped to visit someone in Chicago, which supposedly is when he heard on the radio that Ruby had killed Oswald."
• "He also claimed to have met Charles R. Isaacs, the American Airlines employee, whose name, place of employment and Dallas phone number (as of 1961, but which was changed twice, although at the same address) were listed in Jack Ruby's notebook. In my opinion, Chuck Isaacs was probably the person referred to as 'Isaacs' in the Winnipeg Airport conversation overheard by the late Richard Giesbrecht on Feb. 13, 1964."

Note: I have made a first argument that there was an association of Charles R. "Chuck" Isaacs with Ruby and Craford at the Carousel Club in the story of James Estes, who was employed at the Carousel Club doing janitorial work in the summer of 1963. At the end of his life Estes contacted the FBI and said he had been told that medically he was going to die within months (which was true; that happened) and wanted to tell his untold story to the FBI. Estes said he had been hired to do janitorial work at the Carousel Club and paid in cash for his work by someone working for Ruby named "Chuck" whom he described, who has never otherwise been identified. I think that may have been Charles R. Isaacs, and that James Estes' 'Oswald" told in his story as someone he got to know at the Carousel Club (who Estes did not claim ever used the name "Oswald", but whose description matches Craford) was Craford (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29006-decipherment-of-the-james-odell-estes-story-carousel-club-july-aug-1963/).

Craford telling Whitmey that he knew Chuck Isaacs is different from what Craford told the Warren Commission in his testimony, when asked about names in a notebook of Ruby:

Mr. CRAFARD. I don't remember that. Corrigan, doesn't mean anything to me. 
Mr. GRIFFIN. Chuck Isaacs? 
Mr. CRAFARD. It doesn't mean anything to me. 
Mr. GRIFFIN. I can't read this. 
Mr. CRAFARD. Davis Kitter--something. 
Mr. GRIFFIN. Kitter something or other. 
Mr. CRAFARD. It looks like. 
Mr. GRIFFIN. But you don't recognize that? 
Mr. CRAFARD. No.  

2 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

It's referenced in an October 2017 article by Carl Schreck entitled: "Did Oswald Really Meet KGB 'Assassinations' Officer Before Killing Kennedy?" Excerpts from this article refer to a declassified document dated November 23, 1963, which states that - according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City - Oswald was at the Soviet Embassy on September 28, 1963, ostensibly seeking a Soviet visa to return. The CIA document states that Oswald called the Soviet Embassy on October 1, 1963, "identifying himself by name and speaking broken Russian, stating" that he'd spoken to Kostikov "and asking the guard who answered the phone whether there was 'anything new concerning the telegram to Washington.'"

The caller (who seems to not be Oswald) does NOT refer to Kostikov--that is the Russian person answering the phone at the Soviet consulate who volunteers the name.

(source: https://www.newsweek.com/transcript-lee-harvey-oswald-calls-soviet-embassy-revealed-jfk-file-release-701924)

Since it seems to be an impersonator calling, and the impersonator says "I cannot remember the name", could this be a phishing call? The US side knows Oswald went in and talked inside but does not know to who exactly, and is trying to find out more information? The phishing call gets lucky and a name is learned?

From Judge Burt Griffin's new book, JFK, Oswald, and Ruby: Politics, Prejudice and Truth (2023), pp. 56-57:

"At about 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 23, Ruby phoned Crafard from his apartment, telling Crafard to secure a small flash camera from the Carousel Club and wait for him and George Senator to pick him up. They drove to a billboard overlooking a Dallas freeway that proclaimed 'Impeach Earl Warren.' Ruby wanted to photograph it. He believed the billboard was somehow connected to a full-page ad attacking President Kennedy that had appeared that day in the Dallas Morning News. Ruby suspected that the billboard, the ad, and the assassination were connected. Ruby was going to solve the crime ... By about 5:45 a.m. Crafard was back at the Carousel Club. Ruby and Senator were on their way home.

"At about 8:30 a.m., Crafard telephoned Ruby ... Crafard told the FBI that Ruby's anger caused him to make a decision ... [he] set off hitchhiking for Michigan.

"To [Leon] Hubert and me, this was strange behavior. The president has been assassinated. Crafard joins Ruby to take photographs at 5:00 a.m. the next day, and a few hours later Crafard leaves Dallas without telling Ruby. Did Crafard know something that we did not know? ... We were able to bring Crafard to Washington to testify. He repeated what he had previously told the FBI: Ruby was difficult to work for; Ruby's behavior after the assassination was bizarre (my word, not Crafard's); Crafard had been thinking about leaving Dallas for about a week; Ruby had mistreated him; and he wanted to be with relatives in Michigan. Ruby had not said anything about killing Oswald. Crafard had no information about a conspiracy.

"For many years, I thought Crafard might be the Rosetta Stone to Jack Ruby and that someday he would tell a story that we had not heard. He died on April 19, 2011, at age seventy without writing a book or telling a different story to other investigators. I suspected that after nearly forty-eight years of silence, he was not withholding anything of importance."

Comment:

The strange story of the billboard photography functioned as alibi.

At 7:30 am that morning of Sat Nov 23 a snub-nosed .38 Special Smith & Wesson revolver in a paper bag (with an orange and apple in the paper bag, all the better to give weight to a paper bag being tossed from a moving car) was found near a street curb at Ross and Lamar, downtown Dallas, probably tossed there by someone wanting to disassociate themselves from a weapon used in a serious crime.

Such as maybe a recent murder done with a .38 Special.

The citizen who found it turned it in to the Dallas Police, who notified the FBI, but nobody else for decades knew of it--not Burt Griffin, not the Warren Commission. And nobody even among CT's thought to propose that was the murder weapon of the killing of Officer Tippit, shot and killed with a .38 Special only 18 hours before the citizen found the strange paper bag with the discarded apple, orange, and .38 Special Smith & Wesson.

The killing of officer Tippit was the only known homicide by handgun in the greater Dallas region at that time, a killing done by someone that Tippit crime scene witnesses thought agreed in physical description and resemblance to Curtis Craford (based on multiple mistaken identification sightings in which witnesses who had seen Craford thought they had seen Oswald, as the Tippit crime scene witnesses thought they had seen Oswald).

And the paper-bag revolver was tossed on the direct driving route one would drive from the Carousel Club (where Ruby picked up Craford), west on Commerce, north on Lamar, to get on to the nearest freeway by which to get to the location of the billboard in another part of town. 

And you know Ruby looks like he might have had something to do with the Tippit killing for this reason: that on Sun Nov 24, the same day he killed Oswald, Ruby told the FBI the street address where the Tippit cruiser was when Tippit was killed, as the street address of his dancer (and friend of Craford) Joy Dale [Joyce McDonald], even though that was not her address. Ruby by mistake gave as the address of Joy Dale where Tippit stopped his cruiser when he was shot and killed! And not to mention that where Tippit was killed was near where Ruby lived, and that Ruby was seen with Craford leaving a restaurant with Ruby at 2:30 a.m. on Nov 22 for Craford's ride home from work at the Vegas Club, from which Ruby could have driven Craford to Ruby's apartment, instead of to the Carousel Club, to sleep that night, leaving Craford by himself there within walking distance of the Tippit crime scene, after both Ruby and George Senator left the apartment that morning. And the killer of Tippit was seen going to the scene of the Tippit killing walking from the east from the direction of Ruby's apartment, and when he got there must have flagged Tippit to talk to him (rather than Tippit stopping him), and the killing looked professional ... 

And Ruby himself personally killed Oswald a day later, after the odd 5-5:45 am photography trip with Craford, driving a course which included at the beginning where a murder weapon of the kind used to kill Tippit hours earlier was dropped in a street at about the time that murder weapon was dropped in that street, Craford alone in Ruby's car in the back seat as Ruby in the front drove and Senator was in the passenger seat in front, Craford in the back seat perhaps with a window rolled down...

And as I showed in my paper which can downloaded here, https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1553, the witnesses inside the theater, civilians and police alike, support an interpretation that the killer of Tippit who went into the balcony was a different person than Oswald sitting on the ground level who had been there earlier. There was a vehicle out back behind the theater waiting with engine running and key in the engine and no one in it ... as the killer of Tippit went into the balcony intent on killing again: killing Oswald already there in the theater.

The same intent that his boss, Ruby, carried out later that weekend, after the theater attempt failed.

And the Dallas Police Department, and the FBI, covered up that paper-bag revolver's existence, and that revolver and all Dallas Police paperwork thereof was disappeared.

And so there is no issue that the DPD and FBI covered up. And what was that paper-bag revolver being covered up over? Isn't it obvious? The Tippit killing is the obvious default hypothesis, the hypothesis that makes so much sense only specific evidence or compelling scenario offering an alternative explanation for the paper-bag revolver is sufficient to dislodge it.

The issue on tampering with physical evidence is between whether the DPD and/or FBI tampered with/covered up only once, the paper-bag revolver (but were clean on the shell hulls matched to Oswald's revolver), or twice, the paper-bag revolver and the match of the shell hulls to Oswald's revolver.

If the paper-bag revolver was covered up/tampered with because it was suspected to be the Tippit murder weapon, right there is motive and precedent for manipulation of the shell hulls found at the crime scene to be matched to Oswald's revolver, as I have separately examined in this paper: https://www.scrollery.com/?p=1541. 

The paper-bag revolver was never known to the Warren Commission. No one from the Dallas Police or FBI breathed a word of it to the Warren Commission.

Judge Griffin, whose book is a straight-up sincere well-written defense of the Warren Commission's investigation and conclusions from an honorable staff counsel on that Commission ... Judge Griffin by his own account "for many years" after the Warren Report thought Curtis Craford had held back, that Curtis Craford could be the Rosetta Stone for understanding Ruby. 

Judge Griffin may have been more right all those years on Craford than he realized--right in spades. 

The Dallas Police arriving in force at the Texas Theatre in hot pursuit of a killer at large of a fellow officer suspected to have run into that theatre, believed Oswald was that culprit after eyewitness Brewer told the police he was (after Brewer first tried to find the man he was looking for in the balcony but could not see anyone there). 

And Oswald's reactions and also having a .38 Special on his person, plus identified very quickly afterward as the assassin of JFK, and Tippit crime scene witnesses in the lineups picking out Oswald as the fleeing gunman they believed they had seen, quickly produced what seemed a conclusive, open-and-shut closure of the Tippit killing on Oswald.

But the witnesses inside the theatre, both civilian and police, support that the killer of Tippit was in the balcony (where he had gone from the street and where police encountered and talked to him), and that Oswald on the ground floor was not the killer of Tippit but that killer of Tippit's next intended victim. (See my paper of the link above for fuller argument on that.)

And so it was not a matter of--there was no advance plot to frame Oswald for the Tippit killing. There was no wallet with Oswald ID at the Tippit crime scene. It instead was an intent to kill Oswald the day of the assassination, right there in the theater, getaway vehicle all primed and ready to go, engine running, out the back of the theater for the killer to jump into and drive away after the deed was done. 

And the shocking idea that Oswald on the ground level may have been the Tippit killer's intended victim, Oswald having entered the theater as a ticket-purchasing customer, not the Tippit killer who passed Brewer's store and went into the balcony, has nothing to do in itself with being an argument for Oswald's innocence in the JFK assassination, any more than did the action two days later of Craford's chauffeur (the night of the tossing of the murder weapon) and employer in carrying out the extrajudicial execution, aka mob hit, on Oswald on Sunday morning.

All Oswald in the theater as intended next victim of the Tippit killer says is that Oswald was marked for death following the assassination, however that is to be interpreted. It does not make him innocent of JFK. It does not make him guilty of JFK. It only makes him innocent of Tippit.

In this different way of looking at that crime case, the Tippit crime scene witnesses and Brewer did the same thing as non-Tippit crime scene witnesses--misidentified Craford as Oswald, based on brief glimpses, no prior familiarity, influence from police and peer and news influence, and the physical similarity between Craford and the nondescript Oswald to witnesses who did not know better.

The information in those crime scene eyewitnesses' identifications is not that the killer of Tippit was Oswald, but that the killer of Tippit sufficiently resembled Oswald as to be capable of being identified as Oswald whether or not he was Oswald. 

Another Carousel Club employee of Ruby, Andy Armstrong, is the only alibi Craford has (other than Ruby and Craford himself) claiming Craford was elsewhere than the Tippit crime scene at the time of the murder, or at the Carousel Club the morning of Nov 22. Can Andy Armstrong be relied upon to have been truthful on that? Or could that have been a favor he was asked to provide? There is no other alibi for Craford.  

The paper-bag revolver looks like the smoking gun of the Tippit case.

Did not receive one syllable of mention in Myers' encyclopedic book on the Tippit case.

Nor did CT's make the connection of the paper-bag revolver to the Tippit case either. Just missed what was right there in front of collective eyes ever since Paul Hoch in the 1990s brought to light the previously-classified FBI document telling of it (and then some more FBI documents about it came to light).   

It must be considered that was the Tippit murder weapon, not Oswald's revolver.

It must be considered that was the smoking gun of this case, in this case literally.

Invisible to CT eyes for so long, even though in plain view. The Tippit murder weapon.

A weapon that was covered up and disappeared.

Although Judge Griffin suspected Craford was the Rosetta Stone to what Ruby was about, the Warren Commission had no knowledge of the paper-bag revolver and its significance which if pursued could have shown how right Judge Griffin was on that, if there had been then the knowledge that there is now of that paper-bag revolver's juxtaposition with the "strange behavior" of Ruby and Craford (and Senator) at 5 am that morning as Craford prepared his sudden departure from Dallas that morning.

There is an innocent explanation for Oswald carrying a .38 Special--self-defense, fear for his life. 

But what is the innocent explanation for someone tossing a .38 Special in the dead of night on a city street in a paper bag with an apple and an orange in it?

And why the coverup and disappearance of that paper-bag revolver?

Craford as Rosetta Stone may have been right. 

Disclosure: I am personally partial to Judge Griffin due to, by total accident, a close friend of my father in Akron, Ohio, long ago knew Judge Griffin of Cleveland from doing courtroom security and spoke well of Judge Griffin.

I received JFK, Oswald and Ruby: Politics, Prejudice, and Truth earlier today and have only read part of it. For any without or with the book, this three-part local newspaper's human interest feature interview of Judge Griffin at a time when he was writing the book is worth reading and shows a good man: https://columbusunderground.com/judge-griffin-and-the-man-who-killed-the-man-who-killed-kennedy-jb1/. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/06/robert-f-kennedy-jr-presidential-campaign-misinformation-maga-support/674490/ .

1 hour ago, David Von Pein said:

Frazier's latest embellishment/enhancement, which was added for the first time to his account of the events of 11/22/63 in the pages of Buell's new 2021 book, "Steering Truth: My Eternal Connection To JFK And Lee Harvey Oswald", is a tale about how Buell allegedly encountered a man with a rifle on the Elm Street extension road just outside the Book Depository Building within minutes of the shooting of President Kennedy.

This impeccably-dressed rifleman, wearing clothes and shoes that apparently (per Frazier) only a "professional" could afford, threw his weapon into the trunk of his car and then drove off, never to be seen or heard from again.

I could be wrong, but Buell's new late-arriving tale about a dapper gun-toting assassin (?), who was evidently displaying his rifle out in the open in front of the Depository for everybody to potentially see, is very likely an addendum to Mr. Frazier's story that even most hardened conspiracy theorists will have a hard time swallowing.

I too like Buell Wesley Frazier. I have a different interpretation of the incident you mention however. I have Frazier's book, Steering Truth, in which he tells of it. I believe it, and I also believe his story about being terrified for his and his family's lives by seeing a man in a car with a weapon outside their house a night or two after the assassination. Frazier recounts both of those incidents as being so frightening that he never spoke of them until so many decades later in writing his book. He literally thinks his knowing to keep his mouth shut about those two things may have saved his life.

No, those two things happened. They were just innocuous and misunderstood, is how I read it. The man in front of the TSBD with the rifle was a plain-clothed deputy sheriff. There are photos of deputy sheriffs that day with plenty of shotguns and rifles. The man in the car outside Frazier's house (whom Frazier saw an Irving police car pull up next to and speak to in a friendly way) was some security there to watch out for and protect either the Frazier/Linnie Mae family or the Ruth Paine house, not intent on doing them any harm.

That's it. That's what I think those two things were. Frazier frightened over two things that were innocent and misunderstood, but how would he have known. He had been verbally brutalized, apparently almost turning physical, by none other than Capt. Fritz at midnight, accused of having been part of the assassination, had no idea who did what and found himself in the middle of something a whole lot bigger than he was. Totally understandable reactions. Not fabrications or embellishments. Just misunderstandings (in those two particular instances).   

I believe it is in the book, Walking the Razor's Edge: the Dutchman and the Baron (2019), by Tommy and Hilde Wilkens, drawing on papers of Willem Oltmans, that a story is told of De Mohrenschildt, in the context of his mental deterioration toward the end but when he was still at Bishop College, of De Mohrenschildt claiming, and Oltmams confirming (if I remember that right) strange things such as De Mohrenschildt claiming he would go out to his car at Bishop College and find it parked in a different place in the parking lot than where he had parked it. Supposedly Oltmans (who was not mentally out of his mind) confirmed a relocation of De Mohrenschildt's parked car at Bishop College.

A first reaction is that De Mohrenschildt was hallucinating or his paranoia was getting the better of him because that can't be true. However there is another possibility, "noisy" surveillance, in which a private investigator is hired to have the surveillance known to the target victim, as a means of harassment. The victim is not personally attacked or harmed, just messed with, including messing with their mind which in this case could be (if someone had a key or hotwired the vehicle) moving the car to a different parked location just to mess with De Mohrenschildt's state of mind.

Then there was that letter of De Mohrenschildt to his old acquaintance George Bush Sr., when Bush Sr. was head of the CIA in 1976, appealing to Bush to get the harassing surveillance on him stopped. Bush wrote back, acknowledged that he knew De Mohrenschildt, but said he had checked and no one knew anything about any surveillance so there was nothing he could do.

Whether or not the specific parked-car movement details were or were not true, that de Mohrenschildt was being harassed in surveillance seems to be true based on his letter to Bush appealing to get it stopped. The unanswered question is who was doing it and why.

Would whoever was doing that, if identified, have been possibly liable of charges of contributing to De Mohrenschildt's suicide?

Some government agency perhaps through a cutout (for deniability) seems the obvious suspect, and De Mohrenschildt's role and possible testimony in the JFK assassination case/ CIA contacts (referring to his contacts with Oswald, not that de M had any role in the assassination) would be the obvious suspicion. De Mohrenschildt himself interpreted his surveillance troubles (or so he said in his letter to CIA chief Bush) as caused by his writing his manuscript on Oswald ("I'm a Patsy!"). In his final interview of his life, the morning of the day he killed himself, he told Epstein (according to Epstein) that his (de Mohrenschildt's) reporting of Oswald taking the shot at Walker--both before (!) and after it happened, according to de Mohrenschildt--to the local Dallas Domestic Contacts office of the CIA, was what had been the ruin of him.  

That is the reported final interpretation of de Mohrenschildt on what had gone sour in his life and why, as HSCA wanted to get him to testify under oath, and he went back to his daughter's home and shot himself. 

He knew Oswald about as well as anyone in the Dallas-Forth Worth area other than Marina and Lee's family members, and he wrote sympathetically of Oswald in "I'm a Patsy". De Mohrenschildt is a tragic figure in this whole historical story. 

De Mohrenschildt's letter to George Bush, director of the CIA:

You will excuse this hand-written letter. Maybe you will be able to bring a solution to the hopeless situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are being followed everywhere. Either FBI is involved in this or they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to insanity by the situation. I have been behaving like a damn fool ever since my daughter Nadya died from [cystic fibrosis] over three years ago. I tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully, about Lee H Oswald and must have angered a lot of people — I do not know. But to punish an elderly man like myself and my highly nervous and sick wife is really too much. Could you do something to remove the net around us? This will be my last request for help and I will not annoy you any more. Good luck in your important job. Thank you so much.

Bush Sr.'s reply:

Let me say first that I know it must have been difficult for you to seek my help in the situation outlined in your letter. I believe I can appreciate your state of mind in view of your daughter's tragic death a few years ago, and the current poor state of your wife's health. I was extremely sorry to hear of these circumstances. In your situation I can well imagine how the attentions you described in your letter affect both you and your wife. However, my staff has been unable to find any indication of interest in your activities on the part of Federal authorities in recent years. The flurry of interest that attended your testimony before the Warren Commission has long subsided. I can only speculate that you may have become "newsworthy" again in view of the renewed interest in the Kennedy assassination, and thus may be attracting the attention of people in the media. I hope this letter has been of some comfort to you, George, although I realize I am unable to answer your question completely.

— George Bush, Director of Central Intelligence.

If De Mohrenschildt had not killed himself, it may have come out in testimony to the HSCA and been reported to the world that CIA had been knowledgeable of and informed about Oswald and the shot fired at Walker, via de Mohrenschildt, early in 1963, when officially CIA was saying they had no knowledge or interest in Oswald, and officially no one had any idea Oswald had shot at Walker until after Nov 22. (Even though one of the White Russian women later claimed as quoted in a Dick Russell book that she had told the FBI a few days after the fact, in April 1963, that de Mohrenschildt had told her that Oswald had taken a shot at Walker.) Of course de Mohrenschildt's claims of that nature would be denied, and de Mohrenschildt's claims would lack corroboration nor be capable of confirmation. 

But de Mohrenschildt killed himself just before his testimony could happen in the first place, in a context of a number of other high-profile potential witnesses in the 1976-1978 period dying suspiciously as HSCA was getting underway, so his testimony, as that of those others, was not a problem (the suicide itself probably de Mohrenschildt's own doing following the mental deterioration). 

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The SBT was conceived the night of the autopsy.  The autopsists saw two wounds in soft tissue with no exits and no bullets.  They flashed back to their youths in 1936 — a Dick Tracy strip in The Funnies which featured an “ice bullet” dissolving in the victim’s body.  

Humes asked Sibert and O’Neill if such technology existed.  Sibert called the FBI Lab to find out.  “We have the bullet—“ FBI SA Chuck Killion told Sibert, who told Humes.

That bullet had to account for both wounds.  That was the cover-up assignment.

This was an ad hoc cover-up with different bites at the apple — the Rydberg drawing, Fox 5 autopsy photo, the FBI re-enactment with two different back locations and the final autopsy report with two different back wound locations.

Ironically, it was the FBI who marked the wound in the correct T3 location.

Cliff, there are two main reasons why this ice bullet idea seems not right, apart from nobody ever heard of ice bullets being used in assassinations before.

First, wasn't the whole point of blood-soluble, ice bullets, etc. to conceal that a person had been shot in the first place, a sort of stealth assassination disguising the cause of death? But there is no conceivable argument that the assassins of JFK were attempting to conceal that they shot at him. Hence no motive or reason to use an ice bullet. 

And second, while an ice bullet would in theory account for the autopsists' lack of recovery of a missile inside JFK's body (because the ice melted), it does not account for the shallowness of the wound in the back. How in your ice bullet theory is the wound so shallow, and did not go into the lung?   

Some stomach-turning headlines re RFK Jr. "Pro-RFK Jr. Super PAC has deep ties to Marjorie Taylor Green, George Santos"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pro-rfk-jr-super-pac-160948638.html

There is one way RFK Jr. could show he is for real: by ripping the bark off the MAGA Trumper right, going after them both barrels: Bannon, Trump, toxic populism/fascism, the whole lot of them ... in continuity with his uncle JFK and father, RFK, who were at odds with the rabid right of Edwin Walker and the John Birch Society in the early 1960s.

Its the same thing. The same toxic populism weaponized by demagogues strain in American history.  

If RFK Jr. does not do so, then that is a pretty good signal to me he is not for real. 

Here is a deep-pocketed pro-RFK Jr. PAC with some of the most loathsome direct origins and connections to right-wing fascist wannabes in America. 

It is like 2004 when hard-right Republican operatives openly assisted the Rev Al Sharpton campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, with both serious money and serious political campaign management skills support, all openly and with Sharpton's approval. They didn't try to control or change anything he said. Sharpton out there on the left kept on being Sharpton unfiltered without change. But it was to weaken the Democrats. 

An example of one who did repudiate that kind of toxic support: forgotten now, and I'm not a particular advocate of him, but Ross Perot. I saw him look right into a camera on a national debate stage and in response to a question say "If you've got hatred in your heart toward other races, I don't want your vote", and gave every indication of meaning it. That stood out to me as as classy as John McCain's famous answer to the lady who wanted him to say Obama was evil. 

That was honorable. I hope to God RFK Jr. will do the same with these Trump MAGA types lavishing praise on him, and like... right now.  

Going unvarnished against Trump/the MAGA-right will alienate the white nationalist and racist sectors of Trump's base but they're a lost cause for progressives and a better America anyway. But there are among Trump voters evangelicals and non-evangelicals who are not racist, who are voting economic and alienation issues, and an unvarnished attack on the fascist right by RFK Jr. would win over many of those.

15 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

If you did not watch the speech, and there was clearly a blackout on it, you are really missing something.

He does not just talk about American University.  He also addresses: NSAM 263, Kennedy's fear of radioactivity in rain, King,  RFK, Johnson's escalation in Vietnam after JFK's murder, the letters exchanged by JFK and Nikita as a way of going around the hawks, Bolshakov, and get this:  Ike's Military Industrial Complex Speech.

Again, where do you get a candidate talking like this today?  No wonder Biden wants no part of a debate.

If you have trouble with Bobby's vocal chords, as I do sometimes, you can read the captions on this video.

 

Yes.

MSNBC is “far left” Michael? Just for perspective, it was routine when I worked in Denmark to hear America (which was overall liked in large part out of gratitude for WW2) criticized politically today for not being very democratic by having only two major parties (Denmark had ten in its parliament).

The two American parties were routinely described as one center-right party and one far-right party, Democratic and Republican Party respectively. 

No left party at all in America comparable to European Labor or Social Democratic parties.

Bernie Sanders would be acknowledged as true moderate left (in actual policies, socialist self-labeling aside) but as you noticed the Democratic Party was not about to run him as the candidate, even though by all polling he was the most liked and most electable candidate in America on the map when he ran and consistently polled stronger against Trump than did Clinton. 

Thanks Larry-- in support and agreement with your explanation that "Athenian" is what Oswald meant, apart from that is the word he wrote, is that Athenian democracy is a political term that Oswald would have read, whereas "atheism" has no obvious direct political system connotation. And as you say Oswald was seeking a third path that was neither Soviet communism nor American capitalism.  

From Nelson Delgado's WC testimony ...

Mr. Delgado.

Yes; and then he had this other book. I am still trying to find out what it is. It's about a farm, and about how all the animals take over and make the farmer work for them. It's really a weird book, the way he was explaining it to me, and that struck me kind of funny. But he told me that the farmer represented the imperialistic world, and the animals were the workers, symbolizing that they are the socialist people, you know, and that eventually it will come about that the socialists will have the imperialists working for them, and things like that, like these animals, these pigs took over and they were running the whole farm and the farmer was working for them.

Mr. Liebeler.

Is that what Oswald explained to you?

Mr. Delgado.

Yes.

Mr. Liebeler.

Did you tell the FBI about this?

Mr. Delgado.

Yes.

Mr. Liebeler.

Did they know the name of the book?

Mr. Delgado.

No.

Mr. Liebeler.

The FBI did not know the name of the book?

Mr. Delgado.

No. 

16 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

Ben, I'd encourage you to read samples of Oswald's 1963 writing as a benchmark, compare both the content and vocabulary to a 12  year old.  There are several pieces available in Warren Commission materials:

The Collective Life of a Russian Worker – WC Exhibit 92,   pg 287-336 Vol 16,

 

On Communism and Capitalism – WC Exhibit 25, pg 106-122 Vol 16

 

The Communist Party of the United States – WC pg 422-430 Vol 16

 

The Athenian System  / Outline and Principles pg 431-434 WC Exhibit 98 Vol 16

Trivia question Larry, but on that final title of Oswald, "The Athenian System", is it at all possible that is a misspelling (which Oswald's writing has in abundance) for "Atheian" as in "atheist" system? Oswald had no use for religion, that is known, but I know of no interest or theme in Oswald of fascination with ancient Greece. Nor is there anything in Oswald's "Athenian System" which relates to ancient Greece. And Oswald misspelled a lot. Of course "Atheian" from "atheist" is a made-up word, but why not. 

Has this ever been suggested before? It is what occurred to me when I saw it. That Oswald misspelled his own made-up word lol!  

Speaking of the content of these political writings, misspellings aside, it is striking that there is nothing outlandish, and the ideas themselves are coherent and sensible. No calls for violence or terrorism. A sort of limited-government socialism as an alternative to both Communism and American status quo (capitalism). It seems Oswald was more critical of Communism in contrast to seeing America as capable of being reformed in his vision. No calls to overthrow America, differing from most Marxists on that? 

Michael Paine said Oswald advocated violent overthrow of the US, but that does not seem confirmed in anything written by Oswald. And was Michael Paine's account corroborated by anyone else who knew Oswald? Not by de Mohrenschildt, not by Titovets, to my knowledge--and not in his writings. 

Not the writing of a 12 year old is right. Oswald was not educated, but was not stupid either. The notion that Oswald was barely literate or stupid is nonsense. 

26 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I think some of Baker's criticisms are valid and some are either wrong or exaggerated. 

My main concern about RFK Jr. is that he would be weak on national defense and would pressure Ukraine to make unreasonable and risky concessions to get Putin to halt his brutal invasion. I fear that China would see his election as a green light to attack Taiwan and to take control of key Asian shipping lanes.

Still, I would take RFK Jr. over Biden.

Since its basically inevitable that China will one day take over Taiwan, wouldn't it be less costly on all levels to simply announce a date Y some decades out ahead after which the US will no longer be defending Taiwan, and simultaneously (starting now) invite any Taiwanese who wish to do so immigration and resettlement assistance to the US? After date Y, any Taiwanese who chose to remain there would be on their own for defense alliances.

Do you really think a continuation of the current Ukraine war and a future US vs. China military showdown over a Chinese move into Taiwan, both threatening global centuries-long holocaust, is the better alternative?

What is the endgame to this?

Its either the superpowers respect each others' respective Monroe Doctrines (in which Taiwan is at the mercy of China, and Cuba and Latin American countries are at the mercy of the U.S.); or a permanent war footing with every year being another Russian Roulette roll of the dice (current status quo); or negotiated international arrangements in which disputes between nations become settled in courts rather than by war, and a unified multinational military command like the Star Trek "federation" idea.

What do you see as the endgame among those alternatives? Or do you not think that far ahead to endgame, focusing only on short-term horizon of this or next year?

Three alternative endgames:

• gangster-turf model with respect for other gangsters' turfs 
• gangster-turf model with takeover of other gangsters' turfs, biggest, meanest, baddest on the hill model aka warmongering model.
• gangsters negotiate toward a federation model and centralized military command along analogy of the American colonies' federalizing, with wired-in checks and balances and bills of rights, built upon that document almost all nations in the world have already signed as a benchmark, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It sounds like you are wired into the second of the three above? Am I right? What odds do you give that a hundred years of that will not go nuclear catastrophically on a world scale wiping out every grandchild's future? Maybe as high as all the way up to maybe fifty percent? What do you think? Better that than serious pursuit of the third option (which is not being seriously pursued)? 

I have been majorly (not counting numerous minor instances) "burned" twice in the past by believing specific impassioned promises of presidential candidates. The first was Reagan who was going to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons on earth, and there was a reasonable, intelligent, breath-of-fresh-air leader on the other side, Gorbachev. I did not support Reagan on other grounds (horrors in Central America among others) and would not vote for him. But he sounded so real on this one that I half-believed, half-hoped, that he could be for real on that. Then Reyjkavik 1986, when Reagan--who by some credible accounts apparently did believe privately and personally his rhetoric in his public statements--and Gorbachev agreed to a four-stage plan to end nuclear weapons on earth, that was doable. Reagan's staff, horrified, walked it back, explaining that Reagan had been out of step with the Reagan administration on that, and that his promises were never intended to be taken seriously. The Pentagon objected that nuclear deterrent was less costly than fielding standing armies--a fiscal responsibility/budget argument against the Reagan-Gorbachev deal in keeping with Reagan's most central and heartfelt campaign pledges. But, you know, he tried. What's a poor president to do when his own staff won't cooperate in carrying out his campaign promises? But seriously, what an existential tragedy. A JFK matched with a Gorbachev could have gone into a peaceful world between superpowers in which so much could be possible for the world and humanity. So that was major Burn No. 1 for me.

Major Burn No. #2 was Obama, buying into the dream of a real change for the better. Such an effective campaign. Don't get me wrong here--I think Obama was a decent, good president in terms of the status quo. In the ranking of US presidents he was one of the better ones to me. That is not my criticism. My "burn" was that there was no "real change" in the critical issue of foreign policy and international diplomacy and removing the occasion for horrifying and misbegotten wars. The rhetoric was no more brought into fruition than Reagan's on bringing about a negotiated end to nuclear weapons on earth.  

Now to RFK Jr., positioned to become front and center a candidate for change in international relations. The negatives on RFK Jr. are: anti-vax prominence; right-wing company he keeps; prospect of throwing the election to Trump. A fourth major issue is the divisive issue of Ukraine in which some support and some oppose an end to the war through negotiated partition in which territories in Ukraine in which majorities of the population want secession or alliance with Russia would be ratified in a settlement. A fifth issue is he says he won't legislate re climate change. 

A comment on the Trump issue, which is indeed an existential prospect of hard fascism with white-nationalist overtones and probably tolerated organized vigilante death squads, the works, coming about in America if Trump were to get full control of the executive branch and the armed forces which could occur in a second Trump term that was not the case in his first term. Electability against Trump is probably on the short list of top one or two or three issues to most Democratic base voters. Well here is a comment on that: first, news bulletin, it is not at all clear that Biden is electable against Trump. After all that has come out negative about Trump, Trump is polling 6 points ahead of Biden in the most current matchup polling. Second, RFK Jr. would beat Trump. I am not aware of a matchup RFKJr versus Trump poll yet. But RFK Jr. already polls ahead of both Biden and Trump in favorability ratings across America. That is the next best to a direct matchup poll. 

And so RFK Jr. is a non-racist populist who may be the strongest candidate the Democrats could field against Trump, in terms of the electability issue solely considered. 

America has such a history of xenophobic and demonization-of-minorities and immigrants populism, precursors to fascisms of the twentieth-century kind, Sinclair Lewis "It Can't Happen Here" demagogues ... and RFK Jr. isn't that kind of populist, yet has the potential to peel off large numbers of populist votes from the horrible Trump and some of the Trump wannabes who are that kind of populist. 

On the climate change issue, RFKJr is well-known for being anti-fossil fuels and anti-nuclear, and is no shill for the oil industry which is the source of a large part of the air in the organized propaganda challenging climate science. There is no indication that RFKJr. is or would be bought off. The argument against RFKJr. isn't that he is bought off but that he is wrong on the anti-vax issue and other things, and is a stalking horse for right-wing interests seeking to wedge-divide the Democratic vote to elect Trump or some similar hard-right neo-fascist. 

The RFK Jr. foreign policy speech, if that was a real prospect for implementation in the world, would be worth giving any candidate a pass on some other criticisms, because it looms so central and major in a world in which current weapons have removed war as a viable option for settling differences between superpowers. 

But who would RFK Jr's cabinet be? What are the chances he could deliver--and be different from Reagan and Obama as described above?

It is usually better to vote the party not the candidate, based on core platform positions even if platform positions are not always implemented. 

Best case: right-wing interests think they are using RFK Jr. to wedge-divide the Democratic vote, and RFK Jr. wins and isn't what right-wingers had in mind for president but is a reform presidency bringing about the best in the Democratic Party platform and legacy of the earlier Kennedys idealism. Worst case: right-wing interests think they are using RFK Jr. to wedge-divide the Democratic vote and are right on that.

52 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

It didn’t show up on x-ray.

Wouldn’t that show up on x-ray?

That's a different issue. One question at a time. 

I wonder if you know the answer to the question asked, whether a frangible bullet from a normal rifle hitting and deflecting downward from a rib bone could possibly account for the medical wounds and the shallow wound--without invocation of a short shot or ricochet. 

If you don't know its OK, maybe someone can respond who may know, able to give an up or down yes or no answer to the question. That's what I'm after. Thanks--

On 6/4/2023 at 8:30 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

Those bullets never leave a shallow wound in soft tissue, and JFK suffered a shallow wound in soft tissue.

Cliff could you clear something up? Would it be possible for a frangible bullet hitting one side of a rib bone to explain the shallow back wound?

The thought experiment: from that O'Neill quote you cite: "“A general feeling existed that a soft-nosed bullet struck JFK."

I am no expert on ballistics, but from what I read frangible bullets (which vary in how they can be made) will remain intact through flesh until hitting something solid like bone or metal, then they "explode" into tiny pieces or dust in the immediate area.

Therefore if there was a shallow wound in the back which did not penetrate into the lung, and yet it cannot be explained as a short shot (would not have hit JFK at all), and ricochet of a military style bullet won't work as an explanation either ... and flesh alone would not stop a frangible bullet from going into JFK's lung ... how about this:

A frangible bullet hits a rib bone just under the skin or inside the flesh, but not straight head on but at an oblique angle on one side, enough to fracture and "explode" into powder the frangible bullet, and the hitting to the side, a lower side, deflects it "downward" in agreement with that 30 to 40 degree downward angle of the 1-2" felt by the autopsists. 

So hitting a rib bone explains (I am asking if this is plausible) the lack of penetration into JFK's lung of a normally-fired unproblematic frangible bullet from a rifle that hit JFK in the upper back, and explains the shallow wound afterward. The deflection from the bone explains the downward angle of the shallow wound.

The question I have is whether a frangible bullet going through JFK's suit jacket and skin and hitting a side of that rib bone enough to explode it, would break that rib bone. Would it necessarily?  

Would it be possible it might not break that rib bone but only "jar it". Could a referred effect of that blow or shock to that rib bone turn up as and explain the "bruise" reported at the top of JFK's right lung, without that right lung being penetrated by the bullet itself?

What would expert opinion be on this scenario? Is it a non-starter, dead in the water? Or could it possibly account for the facts? Thanks--