Greg Doudna

The following document from 1967 at the link claims that 1000 feet of film from WFAA was found at the Grinburg Library (ABC) in New York. "It is not possible to tell who took all of the footage, but the likely candidates are Ron Reiland, Malcolm Couch, A.J. L'Hoste and Tom Alyea." Description given by a viewer of this film (bold added): "Extensive footage of the rifle on the sixth floor being lifted out of its hiding place. Lt. Day dusting a live cartridge for prints near the spot where the rifle was found. A clipboard being examined by a policeman near the same spot ... Scenes outside the Texas Theatre apparently before the arrest. Several police cars can be seen arriving and police milling around outside. (It is known that WFAA cameraman Ron Reiland went into the Theatre before the arrest and took movies of the arrest from the stage.)" (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62434#relPageId=5 ) Questions: -- Is this 1000 feet of WFAA film known and accessible today? -- Is it true Ron Reiland filmed the arrest of Oswald from the stage of the theater? If so, where is that film? -- Oswald's clipboard of unfinished orders was supposedly found weeks later on the 6th floor near where the rifle was found, and turned in to the FBI. Is this a filming of that clipboard on Nov 22? What's up with that? WFAA films police finding a clipboard, not taken in as evidence because thought not important, or not realized related to the assassination? Tossed aside on Nov 22 where it was... remains there until later retrieved and turned in to the FBI?

My analysis: Oswald had 2 jackets, a gray one (not in evidence) and CE 163. NOT CE 162, the Tippit killer's off-white light tan jacket dropped by the Tippit killer as he fled. CE 162 was NOT a plant. It was NOT Oswald's gray jacket. It is CALLED Oswald's gray jacket but it WASN'T. I know of no photo of Oswald in his gray jacket in Dallas (or in his blue jacket in Dallas either for that matter). I think a photo of Oswald in his gray jacket may exist though, in Minsk, in that group photo of coworkers with Oswald--look at the jacket Oswald is wearing in that photo closely, what jacket is that? Marina said Lee had his gray jacket while in Minsk, and the jacket in that photo seems to correspond to Buell Frazier's verbal description of the true gray jacket of Oswald. All the LN camp seems to simply just disregard and blow off Buell Frazier's description of Oswald's GRAY jacket. And yet Frazier saw Oswald wearing that jacket multiple times up close, sitting right next to him in the car. The Tippit killer's jacket was most commonly described in color by the Tippit crime scene witnesses as light tan or off-white or even white, not gray, in agreement with CE 162 which can be verified today to be off-white light tan in color. It was called gray by a few early witnesses and ALWAYS by the Warren Commission, but that was certainly a minority color label applied to that jacket from the beginning and I suspect even those (times it was called "gray") may have been under the influence of indoor fluorescent lighting which would wash out the warmth of the actual color. The reason the Warren Commission LABELED CE 162, misleadingly, as "gray", which has been followed widely by everyone since then even though not the best-accurate color description, is so as to have it be identified as Oswald's (actually) GRAY jacket, and I imagine perhaps also because the Warren Commission was not working from color photos of it. (It could be defensible on WC's part, as distinguished from the most accurate color description, since the original police report writeup of Westbrook of CE 162 called it "gray".) As to what happened with Oswald's ACTUAL gray jacket which on the strength of Buell Frazier's credible testimony Oswald did wear to work that morning of Nov 22, I have developed a 117-page study with my analysis of these jackets--the two actual ones of Oswald (gray, and CE 163 blue), and the one of the Tippit killer (CE 162), three distinct jackets--which goes into the various issues, Marina's testimony, etc.: https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/T-Jackets-112.pdf .

W., I got my information from this NPR story, "The story behind 2022's secret Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations" https://www.nprillinois.org/2024-05-06/the-story-behind-2022s-secret-ukraine-russia-peace-negotiations. Featured guest interviews with Sergey Radcenko, Johns Hopkins University, and Samuel Charp, RAND Corporation, doing the analysis. So far as I can tell, the two guests combined mainstream credentials and expertise, point of view roughly (my sense) mainstream West position while attempting to be objective. The host of the program is Meghna Chakrabarti. I read this article after I listened to the Victoria Nuland interview in which she was asked about the story that Ukraine and Russia were close to an agreement but Boris Johnson, UK, advised against it and basically the US/UK thwarted it. The interviewer asked Nuland to say what happened, what about that. Nuland's answer was the critical starting point for me. Nuland basically confirmed the close to agreement business. Nuland then said (this is her version or account of what happened), at a late stage Ukraine had sought US advice. The US looked at the proposed agreement and found buried in the fine print in one of the annexes, or something like that, a poison pill (I don't remember if that was Nuland's exact term for it, but was her sense). What was the poison pill in the fine print that the US had found, according to Nuland? It was that Ukraine would be limited from the types of weapons it could deploy. Nuland said the US showed this to Ukraine and said that it would leave Ukraine defenseless, and not to agree to it. That was basically Nuland's answer to how the deal that was close, with both sides in basic agreement and an expected closure of the deal, was ended. Now in this NPR story I looked for what that particular sticking point could be about, of Nuland's reference to restrictions on Ukraine's deployment of weapons. I saw this: Speaking of an announcement on March 29, 2022 by Russian lead negotiator Medinsky, stating that the Ukrainians had agreed to principles for an agreement: CHAKRABARTI: He went on to say the principles include Ukraine's willingness not to join NATO, a renunciation of nuclear weapons, as well as possessing, acquiring, and developing of other weapons of mass destruction. A commitment to hold military drills with foreign military participation only upon agreement with guarantor states among which would be the Russian Federation ... The same day, the top negotiator for the Ukrainian side, David Arakhamia, told reporters that a final agreement could be near. So to answer your (fair) question, W., I interpreted this as the substance or content of Victoria Nuland's reference. When Victoria Nuland said the US advised torpedoing the anticipated agreement for ending the war on grounds of limits of the types of weapons which could be deployed, well, there it is. Now if in your research you could actually find and quote from the fine print in that annex or whatever it was that was Victoria Nuland's reference, and it was not talking about or referring to nukes, I am willing to be corrected. But that was my reasoning on that.

Wait a minute. First of all, I preface this comment by saying Putin is the aggressor in that war, full stop. But I listened to the Victoria Nuland clip. Then I checked and what I found is the KIND of weapons Ukraine was agreeing (in the near-agreement that the major powers advised Ukraine not to sign): nuclear weapons and WMD. Unbelievable—THAT is a reason Nuland says the US and UK advised Ukraine not to sign a deal ending the war right then and there. THAT is the reason? Worth hundreds of thousands of lives and casualties to preserve the right to have nukes? Do you find that a reasonable chief reason to kill a deal that was otherwise roughly acceptable to both sides to end a war? And I’ll bet that advice was more than simple elder statesman counsel to naive Ukrainian negotiators. If Ukraine didn’t follow that advice, they would risk losing support of US/UK as allies, which would be catastrophic. And why would US/UK care if Ukraine agreed to remain nuclear-weapons-free? Well maybe because US/UK interest is larger than Ukraine, as in deterrence against invasion of others such as Poland or whatever. But that then goes into matters larger than Ukraine and sounds like the proxy war description is right. Again, Putin is wrong, Ukraine wasn’t in the start of this war. But it’s come down to a CHOICE in response to that invasion to NOT end the horrific holocaust of destruction for basically two reasons: (a) the option to install nukes on Ukrainian soil; and (b) refusal to ratify Russian occupation of territories in which a majority of the people want to be part of Russia. Is that worth the devastation to an entire nation for the next two years, unimaginable and massive horror and suffering that we cannot imagine as Americans, in order to stand for those two moral principles—the right to install nukes, and the right to maintain control of territory where a majority of the people don’t want your control?

Not so. It was size "M". Oswald wore size "M" on some clothes as well as size "S". The evidence is a photo of the light-maroon dress shirt of Oswald in a color photo obtained by Pat Speer, which shows the label, size M, which can be seen on Pat's website. It is true that there was no known report or known evidence of an "M" size clothing known for Oswald before Pat Speer obtained and published on his website that photo. And it is true Marina said Oswald wore size "S" with no mention of "M". But the fact: Oswald did have that shirt in size "M", meaning he did wear some clothes in size "M". I don't think the off-white light tan CE 162 jacket was Oswald's gray jacket (because Buell Frazier said Oswald’s gray jacket he wore to work a lot was light flannel-woollike in material, gray in color, and that Oswald wore it the morning of Nov 22 rather than newly put it on at the rooming house, among other reasons). But the size “M” is not one of the reasons that can be cited against it.

Martin Nee, and Jean Ceulemans-- George Evica went into the Dodd Committee possible connection probably the most detail of anyone. See here: Two excerpts from that discussion, both sensational but ultimately disappointing in that never were sources or evidence shown. The first is George Evica: "Beyond speculation, however, I have learned that according to two unimpeachable sources, Senator Thomas Dodd indeed caused at least one Mannlicher Carcano to be ordered in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald (or in the name of "Alek Hidell") sometime in 1963." (Evica died never having named those two sources, who remain unidentified to the present day.) And the second is Charles Drago: "I can state for the record that, when Professor Evica wrote "[W]ere Senator Thomas Dodd and his anti-communist allies made mute on any Dodd committee access to Lee Harvey Oswald in the aftermath of the JFK assassination?", he was not simply posing a question." (Unaware of any further elaboration from Drago on that.) My comment: Who knows what information or sources were underlying Evica's and Drago's claims uttered with utmost gravity yet never confirmed. In the second case, of the idea of Dodd committee access to Oswald after--after--the assassination, I can imagine only one obvious mechanism: the secret (unreported) visit of Alcohol, Tobacco and Tax Unit (precursor of today's ATF) agent Frank Ellsworth, to interview Oswald, on the afternoon of Nov 22, 1963. He told Dick Russell in 1975 that he was called over by Fritz to interview Oswald regarding the rifle (https://ia601200.us.archive.org/27/items/nsia-OswaldLeeHarveyFalse/nsia-OswaldLeeHarveyFalse/Oswald Lee H False 103_text.pdf). There is nothing in extant records or notes of Oswald's interrogation about that.

But Michael, Clemons’ tall man you just noted was not the ONE gunman she saw, who she said was short. Her tall man across the street going the other direction from the ONE GUNMAN was not the gunman, not a gunman, but corresponds to Callaway shouting back and forth at the gunman and going in the opposite direction. And Callaway was tall. Bill B says that killer/Callaway “(what’s) going on?!” interaction that Clemons heard and Callaway said he shouted (same words if you notice: Clemons heard “go on!”) in the exchange with the killer, was too far down the block on Patton for Clemmons, who was standing at the corner of 10th and Patton with a view down Patton, to have heard. But there is no other killer/other man interchange known from the witnesses than the known Callaway/killer one. i don’t understand why the intense desire of so many to imagine phantom others, or multiple gunmen, or Vaganov, etc when Clemmons is simply describing seeing what the known witnesses saw happen.

I wondered about that too but from what I reconstructed the timeline won't work. Oswald was in Atsugi, then El Toro, in that order. Oswald and Thornley overlap at El Toro, only time they are in contact in the Marines, then Thornley goes to Japan, where the fake "Ravenhurst" Marine hoax happens, after any contact in the Marines with Oswald. So Oswald would not know of this in the Marines. Later, Thornley said he knew Oswald was in New Orleans when he was, and had thought of visiting him but never did, which of course was disputed. If there was any knowledge of Oswald of the Ravenhurst hoax Marine identification prank, it seems it could only happen in the summer of 1963 in New Orleans if Thornley or someone who also knew Thornley told Oswald about it, which is very tenuous. Incidentally, on the idea of Oswald doing informant work related to the Dodd committee investigation of mail-order gun sales, consider this of Oswald in New Orleans from Alba of the Crescent City Garage: "He recalled that on one occasion, the exact date of which he could not set, he had ordered a carbine from the National Rifle Association at a cost of $30.00. In discussing this, Oswald wanted to know if Alba could get one for him also. Mr. Alba stated he advised Oswald that he could get this gun at this price as a member of the National Rifle Association and each member was allowed to purchase only one. He continued that Oswald told him to go ahead and get the carbine and that he, Oswald, would make an offer on the gun that Mr. Alba could not afford to turn down." (FBI, 11/23/63, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=4254#relPageId=28) This from the frugal Oswald? Oswald who had no obvious use for a rifle (no known target range practice, no known gun club membership, no known hunting expeditions [after the one day with his brother on military leave that time])? And he already has a rifle. It looks like Oswald could be continuing informant/intelligence work in New Orleans related to mail-order gun purchasing. In this case, if this had gone through with Alba, could it show how ripe for abuse the mail-order system could be with his ability to get a rifle like that? Something like that?

David Josephs, you can go on saying every piece of evidence was forged involving casts of thousands, with no evidence ever come forth of a command central or nerve center coordinating all the witnesses and forged document coordination that your scenario presupposes... nope, I don't buy it. Its not plausible and there is no other comparative example in all of history for the scale of "all the evidence is forged" such as some imagine happened with Oswald and JFK. Oswald ordered a rifle, the order is in his handwriting, it is shipped to his PO Box, Marina told all about it against self-interest, nobody compelled or coerced or suborned perjury on that scale of testimony out of her as if she was a marionette who was scripted and rehearsed and learned her lines in secret practice sessions. Jeanne de Mohrenschildt saw the rifle. Oswald was photographed with it. George de Mohrenschildt knew about it, received a BYP in April 1963 before going to Haiti, and probably told the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts office about it in early 1963 since he probably was keeping them otherwise informed on Oswald. Oswald told Fritz in interrogation that the revolver was his, though he dissembled on how he had obtained it. The rifle was shipped to Hidell at Oswald's PO Box, and REI would have sent a postcard to Hidell at Oswald's PO telling him his package had arrived. You assert that the Post Office would not have put any mail addressed to Hidell in Oswald's PO Box, and would have returned such mail to the sender. Of course they would deliver mail to Hidell to Oswald's PO Box if Hidell's name was on the PO Box as authorized to receive mail there. Then all Oswald had to do was show his photo ID of Hidell with his, Oswald's, picture on it to a hurried counter person who was not up to speed on the finer points of military ID forgery detection, and he's got his goods shipped in any larger packages. I believe I have advanced the issue of Oswald and the rifle on one thing related to Nov 11, 1963, though for some reason it has not seemed to resonate with either LN people or non-LN people for different reasons, even though it makes extremely good sense to me and I am "sure" it is correct. https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Irving-Sport-Shop-109-pdf.pdf.

Thanks Martin, I read it. As you note it seems to have occurred in Thornley's outfit in Japan with Oswald not involved or part of it. In fact I can find only references to Thornley and Oswald being together at El Toro, not together in Japan at all. It is a great parallel in the imaginary hoax creation of a fake person who does not exist, but hard to reconstruct any actual connection or influence on Oswald's similar fictitious "Alek Hidell". One other detail I noticed in the Gorightly book: that Eurasian woman Oswald was said to have been involved with while at Atsugi ... this book says she was teaching Oswald Russian. I wonder if that is true and if anyone knows if that woman was ever identified.

Item: DPD crime lab paperwork or report on analysis of the fingerprints lifted from the Tippit patrol car. As it stands, unknown who even examined those prints and was responsible for the (later shown untrue) hearsay claim finding that there was no information to be had from them. Item: list of names and contact information of Texas Theatre patron witnesses. Existed. Then no existence. Item: any writeup on interview or questioning of general manager Callahan at the Texas Theatre that day, who among other things took tickets of patrons coming in the door that day. Supposedly never interviewed or questioned. True? Item: any paperwork on the ballistics witness interviews that FBI Odum is reported to have done among a group some of which Odum later claimed he never did.

Except it doesn't explain Oswald started to write out an order for bullets and a holster with the revolver order but crossed out both of those and did not add that to the order. Why start to write it at all if he was not thinking of ordering bullets and the holster mail-order? Then why change his mind and cross it out? Then after crossing that off his mail-order and not mail-ordering those, he does have both with his revolver! With the FBI unable to identify any store where he purchased them. Why would he cross them off his mail-order form? Maybe he had his order form written but not yet mailed, showed it or told it to someone, and the other person said, I can save you some money, here take this extra holster and here's a few extra bullets I don't need. Frugal Oswald, happy to save the expense, crosses it off the order and mails it? Looking for someone who has guns and ammo, in contact with Oswald, around March 10, 1963... Never mind the January date on the order. The order below was shipped late March indicating Oswald mailed this the same time as the separate order to Klein's for the rifle. So the January date is either an intentional back-dating or else Oswald had intention to order the revolver in January and filled it out then, but kept the form without mailing it maybe until he could afford it? But in March 1963 linked in time with the rifle order he mails both orders. But the rifle order looks related to the Walker shot. Therefore we might look for someone not simply into guns and ammo in some relationship with Oswald, but possibly involved with the Walker shot, if Oswald had accomplices on that. The witness of Kirk Coleman is pretty much smoking-gun evidence that he did (have accomplices on the Walker shot), with no evidence ever shown or even claimed by the Warren Commission indicating that Oswald did not have accomplices on the Walker shot.

Thanks Martin. On the crossing out on his mail-order of ammo, good question whether that might be intentional with significance but I am having difficulty imagining any. I know nothing of ammo making a difference in category of investigation. In the absence of some intentional significance (of which I am not able to imagine any), the default would be Oswald changed his mind mid-order while writing it. How would that happen? I would guess someone was with him as he was writing it, and told Oswald he would give him some bullets for it, and then did when it arrived.

Oh he had money. His story of having only $7 in his pocket or whatever is baloney, just like his claim that he never was paid by Ruby at the Carousel Club. But it was cash off the books. Craford was trying to get unemployment compensation from some scam of being a Teamsters Union member from the Texas Employment Commission—Laura Kittrell positively identified Craford’s photo as who was in her office seeking that, and Kittrell confirmed existence of a file for Craford in her office. Craford was streetwise enough not to disclose in his testimony unreported income and unexplained sources of cash which could raise tax and legal issues with his TEC sworn paperwork application. Therefore, the baloney claim of only $7 in his pocket. Craford told Whitmey in later years that he stopped in Chicago and visited an unidentified mobster on his way to Michigan. Some money could have changed hands there. Craford was part of the cash or underground economy mixed with occasional gig legal employment.

Robert Morrow — thank you, answered the questions. That claimed confession is interesting, but how can one possibly verify a story like that 28 years later (maybe a little less if she told the story a little earlier) with no other corroboration is the problem. Is the ex-wife of that MP, the masseuse, still living? Could she be polygraphed? Did you try to find her? What about the MP himself? Any children of that MP he might have told?

Yes I was being facetious W.! I was writing like an “Onion” piece, satire. I’m going to add a “satire” label on that.

Robert Morrow— could you say (1) source for LBJ “regularly made death threats against Robert Kennedy”? Is that the same as the finger across the throat story re RFK, or different? (A gesture of a finger across the throat could be argued to mean politically destroy someone, not a literal death threat, or do you have a source for an unmistakeable spoken death threat?) (2) source for LBJ “in the middle of a cardiac event, blamed Lady Bird Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover for the JFK assassination”? (3) context for Willens saying LBJ “had the chops for killing JFK”? What did Willens mean by that?

Your comment from Belgium reminds me of when I studied and worked in Denmark. Repeatedly people talking to me would say things they admired about America but say they would never move there themselves or raise children there. Why, I asked. ”Because everybody is shooting everybody.” They saw that on TV. They feared they or their children would get shot. This was not just one Dane said this to me, but recurred. I tried to say what was on TV from Hollywood was a little exaggerated. Sometimes one learns things by seeing how others in the world see you. On the Hidell ID, as far as I can tell either the private express company for the handgun, or the Dallas Post Office for the rifle, would normally want to see ID before releasing a package over the counter. So Oswald shows them a Hidell ID with his photo, clerk has no idea it’s fake, hands over the package. This is at the receiving end in Texas. There would be no verification of ID at the Kleins end. I don’t think mail order firearms practices would vary much between states.

This is very interesting Martin! I have never heard this Thornley anecdote before. Can you possibly find any documentation or link on it. Yes it sounds exactly like in genre what Oswald may have been doing with “Hidell”, just for different purposes is all. Since he did not order ammo and the FBI despite trying hard was unable to identify any store Oswald did in-store purchase from in Dallas, it seems to me he was given such ammo as he had or used. But this goes against the common bedrock belief (not founded upon any physical evidence or sound witness testimony) that Oswald worked alone never with accomplices. That’s just my tentative reasoning or conjecture though, no direct confirmation for that.

[SATIRE ALERT in the below—gd] ”And thank God, Mr. president, you came out of Dallas alive.” (Followed by anticipated laughter from sympathetic audience in Austin.) LBJ was just a real card wasn’t he? Like six months earlier in May 1963 in Dallas, LBJ saying the president is like the pilot on a flight over the Atlantic. If you don’t like the way he’s flying the plane, you wait “until November” to “shoot him down” (LBJ’s words). These both have defensible innocent explanations, for any suspicious small minds who might imagine dog whistles that aren’t there. Yes LBJ could turn a phrase. It was just coincidental that those two good-natured remarks came from a man who had the most personal motive of anyone to see JFK not finish his term in office; whose mutual animosity with the Kennedy brothers was legendary; who had allegations of involvement in murder hits on his way up politically; who was directly involved in inviting and arranging jfk to visit Texas; who let it be known after the assassination that JFK had it coming and morally brought his own assassination upon himself because of JFK’s involvement in U.S. assassinations of others; and creepily tried to court the widow, Jackie, and offered to her to be a new Daddy to her kids. Jackie, one of those irrationally suspicious minds, though she can be forgiven due to her grief, believed LBJ had had her husband killed, and declined the kind and solicitous offer of the man she believed had widowed her to become a new “Daddy to her kids”. Another of the irrationally suspicious of LBJ was Jack Ruby who had the irritating habit to his jailers of repeatedly trying to smuggle out notes desperately insisting LBJ did it, in between when he was acting crazy or really crazy. No need to pay any attention to him. When Ruby pleaded with earl warren that his life was in danger and to give him federal protection and get him out of Dallas and he would talk, Warren, not fooled for a moment, saw through Ruby’s ploy and turned that down flat. Warren knew Ruby would have nothing to say that he couldn’t say perfectly well under the watchful eyes of the Dallas criminal justice system in which he was in custody charged with the murder of another person who had been equally safe in the custody of the Dallas criminal justice system. LBJ privately claimed to believe Castro killed JFK. LBJ wasn’t one of those so gullible to believe the finding of his own Commission that Oswald acted alone, no more than a majority of the seven members of the Commission privately believed their own unanimous published conclusion on that point. As Sen Russell put it, if it had been up to them, a majority of the members of the Commission, they would have found differently than they unanimously found on that point. LBJ claimed privately in confidence to people like Walter Cronkite, CBS news anchor, that Castro had killed JFK. But LBJ dialed down, if not called off altogether, the programs designed to topple Castro. Castro got along fine alongside LBJ. Even if LBJ did believe Castro had offed a US President and gotten away with it, LBJ was big enough and man enough and statesman enough not to harbor hard feelings simply over something like that. Some irrational and unreasonable, conspiracist-oriented minds at the time, such as the intelligence services of nearly every other nation on earth, were uncharitably seeing the JFK assassination as if the USA had become like one in Third World banana republics where one faction offs another via assassination. It took real statesmanship to navigate America and the investigation of the assassination of JFK through the brickbats of these marginal naysayers. [THE ABOVE IS SATIRE, my attempt at writing like an “Onion” piece]

No need to guess about it. Dodd in his two committees overtly and directly stated interest in (a) too easy access to mail order guns that could be gotten by children and criminals too easily, a public safety issue and need for increased federal regulation/gun control (one of the specific companies under the Dodd committee’s investigation: Kleins of Chicago); (b) foreign dumping on US markets of foreign military surplus small arms, cutting into domestic arms sales’ market share and profits (that was an explicit agenda of Dodd—straight-up protectionist interests on behalf of domestic sellers in the gun sales business); and (c) Commies (big-time interest of Dodd). q.e.d. compare “Hidell”/Oswald and what he mail-ordered on March 12 in the name of a person who did not exist. Incidentally I believe he sent the order for the revolver at the same time on March 12 too, not in January even though he dated the revolver order form in January: evidence for that being both weapons were shipped responsive to those respective orders on March 20, which makes little sense if the revolver order actually had been received in January. He used the fake Hidell ID to obtain the shipped weapons to Hidell when they arrived in Dallas. And the purpose was not to conceal connection to himself, Oswald, but to establish a connection with paper trail as part of the “sting” against the mail-order weapons sales system Dodd wanted to show had problems and needed federal legislation to correct. (Per the scenario.)

Has there ever been a conclusive falsification of the suggestion that Oswald starting in March 1963 was engaged in an operation to “test the mail-order system” for firearms related to the Dodd investigation, by showing that a literally non-existent person (“Hidell”) could successfully order a rifle to be shipped to and received by a Communist? Imagine how sensational that could be coming from Oswald (now outed as an informant all along) in some televised congressional hearing. In that light the paper trail was intentional because that was the point, to prove the existing system was ripe for misuse and there needed to be stronger gun control regulation. I am aware of the argument that that is speculation and unproven, but that is not the question. The question is has that idea been falsified, that is, known excluded as an explanation of the facts. Or reasonably rejected or excluded on grounds of implausibility. As to why, in the scenario, that did not come out as an Oswald-informant operation to test the mail-order gun sales system, maybe the “sting” was still ongoing in November 1963, not yet ready for Oswald to be outed in his informant role? (One only blows cover once and then it’s over.) All that needs to be supposed is after his arrest Oswald on advice remained in persona, pending intervention to save him, not realizing that would not happen for him because he was killed first. It is a complicated argument to make and the leading objection would probably be lack of any hard evidence Oswald was an informant or operative for any agency. But if you were an agency doing that gun control sting thing (and entirely innocent of the JFK assassination), and your informant/operative is arrested for having on his own killed the president using your agency’s mail-order firearm he did working for you, that would be 100 percent incentive to deny or conceal Oswald’s role with you if it could possibly be denied successfully (and higherups might assist in and back up that concealment). So that objection seems more ambiguous than decisive, in itself. The question is not if this has positive evidence for it, but whether it is a non-starter on grounds of implausibility or negative evidence. Such a scenario could be compatible with either Oswald’s innocence or guilt in the actual assassination itself.

Speaking of the history of “shock" transformation to free-market policies, one example of interest is in the 1980s in New Zealand with the David Lange Labour Party government. I was in New Zealand twice for a total of eight months in 1987-1989 so saw this firsthand, in utter amazement. The amazement was not simply the lightning speed with which the Labour Finance minister, Roger Douglas, implemented privatization of New Zealand's formerly state-owned and run major enterprises, but that this was done by New Zealand's major left party, the Labour Party. It was not done by the major center-right party, the National Party, which usually was in power. David Lange was the popular Labour prime minister--razor-sharp wit, charismatic--elected on a widely-supported platform to make New Zealand the first nuclear-free zone country in the world. (Actually it would be the second, Denmark already was, but that was OK because that was worked out confidentially with the U.S. without being publicly advertised. The US was infuriated at New Zealand going to just have the nerve to do this on their own, and publicly.) That is, no nuclear armed ships allowed in New Zealand's harbors any more than New York City would allow nuclear armed ships in its harbor. Lange got elected, and the Labour Finance minister Roger Douglas started a shock free-market divestment of government enterprises. To imagine how bizarre this was, imagine if Bernie Sanders had been elected president on a wave of popularity and then the left-platformed Democratic Party Sanders administration implemented a shock doctrine with libertarian economists moving farther and faster than Reaganomics toward free-market policies and rolling back the role of government in the economy. The bizarreness was that this was coming from the left Labour Party (roughly analogous to the left wing of the US Democratic Party), not the more conservative National Party (roughly analogous to the traditional US Republican Party). In the US the libertarian mantra was always "government cannot run things efficiently". That mantra was shown nonsense in the case example of New Zealand Air, the government-owned and run airline of New Zealand, year after year after year regarded the world over as the most excellent flight travel experience of any airline in the world. I flew on New Zealand Air. Real china and silverware and excellent meals during the flight, quality service and comfort, amenities, absolute best way to fly, and every tourist booking agency in the world knew it. And when I price-shopped (budget mattered to me) the fare rates were no different for New Zealand Air than market fares for the other airlines. It was a no-brainer to go New Zealand Air. But, but, but... (fuse blown in libertarian mantra brain circuits) ... how could that be? ... it was GOVERNMENT run! And governments cannot run anything well, so the libertarian doctrine went. Finance minister Roger Douglas sold off New Zealand Air. Then among other shock announcements which seemed to be in the newspapers every day it was announced Roger Douglas was going to sell off New Zealand Steel, the major steel company in New Zealand which up to then had been run by the government, a major employer in New Zealand. Then, it was announced a buyer had been found for New Zealand Steel, but the identity of the buyer for some unclear reasons was being kept secret. The press was up in arms--who was the secret buyer of New Zealand's national steel company? Why the secrecy? Well, I was in Auckland the day I, and everyone else in New Zealand, learned who and why. It came out immediately after Tianmanen Square, the Chinese government's violent suppression of demonstrators. The world saw it on TV. The Chinese government had let demonstrations go on for a bit, then cracked down hard and bloodily, and that was the end of that reform movement in China, or rather, it was forced to go underground after that. Anyway, lo and behold ... wonders of the glorious free market at work! ... the secret buyer Roger Douglas's finance ministry team had lined up to buy New Zealand Steel turned out to be the government of Communist China! If it had not been for Tianmanen Square, and if it had not been stopped for some other reason from going forward (in the news it was presented as a "done deal" which was going to be done), that would have happened. Well, if you're a libertarian, I suppose that's the logical consequence, if a freely-consenting foreign communist government wants to buy something from a freely-consenting finance minister who thinks unfettered free market is the way to go. Obviously, as bad as China looked with Tianmanen Square, as soon as the news broke on that, and that New Zealand Steel was about to be sold to China, the deal was dead in the water, called off (it was announced the Chinese buyers had withdrawn, is how it was publicly worded). I believe New Zealand Steel's selloff went forward with a different corporate buyer which was New Zealand based, China out of the picture. But I remember when that all played out in the news. What became of Roger Douglas? Belatedly, prime minister Lange decided to fire him. Roger Douglas then formed his own minor party, which continues today in New Zealand and is very far to the right. (The reason Roger Douglas had credibility in the Labour Party to begin with is his father was a famous union leader and Labour leader. Roger Douglas went to the US, learned free market ideology from some US economists, and returned to New Zealand to implement it through a Labour government as finance minister.) For anyone interested in this trivia note to history on the shock doctrine issue as it played out in different countries, here is an article from New Zealand a few days ago which refers and reflects back on those days: https://thestandard.org.nz/roger-douglas-has-a-lesson-for-the-left/#comments.

And nearly half of America is willing to vote for the object of a personality cult who expresses the same here. By the way, I read Gulag Archipelago, all three volumes, long ago, had a powerful impact on me. In Akron where I grew up, two houses away a family from the former Yugoslavia moved in, could barely speak English. The father had deserted the Army and the small children told of how they were told by their parents to be very quiet because their lives depended on it the night their family made their escape across a border. A family that had its problems, hard-working man. Something once came up, I don't remember what it was, but my father suggested to them to call the police, and the mother reacted with involuntary terror at the idea of getting a visit from the police. My Dad tried to explain she didn't need to fear the police, they would take a report and be polite, it was OK, but the terror of police was wired into her. Don't know why I thought of that, except something of your comments. Just all the millions--billions-- of average everyday people, and all these goddamn wars and holocausts.

As long as I’m veering off-topic, why not offer a naive solution to Gaza as well. (1) United Nations trusteeship (multinational troops under UN command) take over administration and rebuilding of Gaza, indefinitely until a peaceful Palestinian state and civil society is in place. (2) Israel renounce territorial ambitions for Palestinian territory. (3) Palestinians renounce violence against Israel and renunciation of practical contesting of existing borders (ie end of practical pursuit of lost territorial claims). On existing settlements, negotiated combination of partial withdrawal and compensation for annexation. (4) Israel agrees to negotiate partial compliance with right of return. (5) Hamas disbands, civil functions formerly carried out by Hamas transferred to new, peaceful institutions, no role for former leaders of Hamas. (6) any Palestinian party which advocates violence against Israel is outlawed. (7) If West Bank goes seriously unstable, same for West Bank (ie UN trusteeship takeover replacing Israeli troops). (8) through sports and cultural interchanges and economic redevelopment as baby first steps, begin long slow process of healing from current horrors. (9) In extremis, if both sides security were deemed to not be attainable any other way, put up a wall. You stay on your side, and you stay on yours. Until things settle down and fifty years from now tear the damn wall down when no longer serving any purpose. Not practical? Won’t work? Naive? Well, probably all true. Never mind, it was just a passing thought. Please, resume regular programming.