Greg Doudna

1 hour ago, John Cotter said:

Yes indeed, Matt, the conspirators were just so lucky that the building from where JFK was purportedly shot was the same building in which the man they’d been sheep-dipping for seven months worked.

And what does Ruth Paine have to do with that? She made a cold-call phone call to Truly asking him to consider Lee. Meanwhile Buell Wesley Frazier, who actually worked there and had standing, also inquired on behalf of Lee. But it all depends on Truly doesn't it? You can't have an advance plot to get a hapless Oswald into the TSBD unless you control Truly too. Because Truly could have said, "we'll keep it on file, thanks ma'am, we have all we need at this moment".

And planning on having a lady in Irving make a cold-call phone call to Truly on this critical point, as the way to ensure it happens?? Seriously? Makes no sense. Whereas what does make sense is Ruth making that phone call to try to be helpful to Lee and Marina.

This focus on Ruth Paine and Linnie Mae as villainesses, instead of Truly, is downright bizarre. If there was a plot, you have to control Truly. And you have to control either Oswald himself or all of the previous employers he applied to, to ensure they would say "no". But if you control Truly to ensure he will say "yes" when Oswald applies, then you don't need Ruth Paine to call him! 

Unfortunately these smears of well-meaning people--Ruth and Linnie Mae (and I don't think Truly and all of Oswald's prior potential employers who turned down Oswald for a job before Truly were being run by the CIA either)--have just taken root and become fixated as if they are "facts" in CT-land. And there will be a life forever of these things, repeated and repeated, forever and forever, as long as this forum exists and there are CTs who have not solved the JFK assassination.

Someday may there be repentance for the damage done to innocent people such as Ruth Paine.

By superstitious villagers who have had a crop failure, don't know what caused it, and fixate upon a suitable nearby witch as the cause. The crop failure being the JFK assassination, and the suitable witch being Ruth Paine, in the analogy. Not a shred of evidence that she did any nefarious deed. "But just look at her, how suspicious we say she is, therefore she IS evil" logic. Witchhunter logic. Fingers pointing at the accused, mob participants feeding off each others' energy...

"No good deed goes unpunished".

Ruth Paine calling Truly ... to try to help a man with a wife about to have a second baby find a job. 

Robbie one more detail ... Regis Blahut, the CIA liaison to HSCA before Joannides, was so brazen the first thing he did with Dan Hardway, the HSCA staff investigator, was secretly try to recruit Hardway into paid CIA employment, while Hardway was working for HSCA! According to Hardway, who says he said nothing doing and filed an outside contact report with HSCA about it. https://www.swtimes.com/story/news/crime/2020/11/17/cia-obfuscation-clouds-hsca-insiders-efforts/114969740/. 

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Are you aware of the whole Hootkins affair, which happened before the assassination?

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28181-the-coveralls-wearing-customer-in-shasteens-barbershop-in-irving-was-that-oswald-or-a-mistaken-identification/

Comment on Ruth and the Soviet embassy letter

I don't see any obvious incrimination of Ruth in that. As the story stands (Ruth's explanation, which is the only source there is) Oswald wrote the letter, leaves it out as if intentionally for her to see. She sees it, wonders if Lee could be a spy (Ruth spoke of her question of whether Lee could be a spy). Although Ruth said she never met an FBI person prior to the Nov 1 Hosty visit to her home, Ruth wants to cooperate with the FBI (she liked her meeting with Hosty, liked Hosty, per her account). Another thing which has received little attention, but it would not surprise me if Michael was in contact with the FBI prior to Nov 1, to give them heads-up on Marina living in his wife's and his home in Irving. I am not aware that Michael ever was asked directly whether he had contacts with the FBI. 

Looking at what is fact, it is fact that Lee wrote the draft of the Soviet embassy letter because there is non-controverted expert testimony that that is his handwriting. So there is that fact, plus Ruth's testimony, as the only two sources on what happened. (Possibly there is a slight bit of testimony from Michael basically backing up Ruth. But Lee was dead and Marina I don't think had anything to offer on it.)

As the story stands Lee looks for all the world like he was leaving the note out for Ruth to find or see. This would be consistent with Lee working as an operative, with intent that Ruth see it and report it. Ruth being a good citizen type would be expected to report to police or in this case FBI this suspicious letter.

The implication would be that Lee had some other handler, not Ruth, unknown identity of Lee's contacts. The alternative that Ruth was that handler makes little sense to me. Or that Michael was that handler, I just don't see that either. (Michael possibly could have informed to FBI on Lee, unknown, but that is not a handler of Lee.) And as to which agency Lee was working for, Lee's agent provocateur-like activities going back through from New Orleans and Mexico City just do not seem like normal FBI agency activity which seems to have been basically only informant information collecting. Lee's Soviet embassy letter looks instead to be in continuity or continuation from Lee in Mexico City and New Orleans with all of the issues in those things of agent provocateur activity, perhaps CIA or CIA related. Rather than visions of Lee going out to Irving on weekends to get his CIA instructions for the next week in front of his wife and kids from Ruth in her tiny living room, think rather of Lee meeting someone covertly in downtown Dallas during lunch or work hours at TSBD. (Recall Buell Wesley Frazier: nobody paid much attention or knew where Lee went for lunch usually. He did not eat lunch with fellow employees as a rule from any known fellow employee testimony.)

The Soviet embassy letter fits so well as in continuity with the Mexico City contact with the Soviet embassy there and the fortuitous discovery that Lee's contact there was a KGB wet operations specialist, and this was used as part of implicating the USSR and Castro following the assassination. That is where my suspicion goes on this in seeing the Soviet embassy letter as more than meets the eye.

Now Ruth gets mixed up in this with CT's because they think she is "in on it" with Lee, or some think without any evidence whatever that she forged the whole letter herself and was trying to incriminate an unwitting Lee. Both of those scenarios--Ruth and Lee in collusion re that letter; Ruth framing an unwitting Lee via that letter--are as misguided as notions that Ruth and Linnie Mae Randle were part of a plot acting on instruction from "their handlers" to manipulate Lee into the TSBD and keep him there without Lee's knowledge etc. These ideas come from looking at circumstantial facts and reconstructing a storyline to account for them starting from suspicion of one of the persons involved, in a sort of circular reasoning.

According to Ruth's testimony Lee left his draft letter all day just lying out in the open on that desk secretary on Sun Nov 10. If that testimony is true, and I do not doubt that it is, that just looks intentional on Lee's part. Ruth reads it, makes the copy, with consideration of reporting it to the FBI, wonders if Lee could be some sort of spy (i.e. for the Soviets).  

It is a bit puzzling that Ruth does not call the FBI immediately, rather than wait and sit on it until giving the letter to the FBI following the assassination. The best interpretation of that might be that, as a first order of business, she did try to show the letter to and talk it over with Michael (Ruth tells of this) but Michael blew it off, told Ruth he didn't think it was important and besides it wasn't their business or concern (Ruth's testimony of how Michael didn't take it seriously). Could that have influenced Ruth to "sit on it" before turning it in to the FBI with all that could mean negatively for Lee? Recall that Ruth sympathized with Lee on Lee's complaint that FBI inquiries had harmed his job prospects. Ruth told of discussing with Hosty Nov 1 that issue and how reassured she was that Hosty told her how the FBI respected people's civil rights. Did Ruth have reluctance to immediately turn the Soviet embassy letter copy (that she had surreptitiously copied because she found it suspicious) over to the FBI for that reason? Because the letter is not obviously criminal or subversive--on its face it is Lee discussing his known efforts to get his visa--but still it was a little off-key and suspicious to Ruth. But was it suspicious enough to cause Lee to be investigated over it and possibly wreck his life and maybe Marina's too, if it wasn't clear anything was actually wrong--and Michael, to whom she had tried to talk about it, didn't think it was too important?

That is my best guess as to interpretation of Ruth's delay in turning the letter over. After the assassination Ruth quickly came to believe, largely because of Marina and the missing rifle thing, that Lee was guilty, and Ruth then would want to get that letter turned in right away which she did--to the FBI, not to the local police. That she kept it confidential between her and the FBI and not to the Dallas Police who had invaded her space without a warrant and whom she did not know whereas she had talked with and trusted Hosty, is not too surprising.

In other words, Ruth's testimony hangs together without obvious signal that something is other than it seems. Of course one can always imagine some dramatically different sinister scenario and then just say Ruth was lying. That is par for the course with some CT's with respect to Ruth. 

Did Ruth violate Lee's privacy by looking at a letter Lee left out for hours in broad view in her living room? Well yes I suppose so technically but all I can say is, people be real, of course a woman is going to look to see what it is, out in the open in her own living room. The question is not that, but why would Lee leave it out like that? 

The options if one thinks Ruth is covering up or lying would be that Lee and Ruth were somehow complicit in some operation involving both of them in collusion and Ruth withheld that in her testimony. An idea of some CT's that Lee was unwitting to anything in the Soviet embassy letter is a nonstarter based on the uncontroverted expert verification that Lee's handwriting was the handwriting that wrote the draft. So that part of the story is a fact or starting point. The only issue then is whether the rest of Ruth's story is basically true as it stands (I think so) or some sort of coverup of some very different truth (I doubt it, in terms of Ruth's knowledge--though I think Lee was working for an agency, with a contact other than Ruth).

[deleted]

4 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Why does someone in an office with a view to the kill zone keep her door locked in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA, even as fellow office workers beseech her to unlock and open her door? 

This was the same office into which two cartons of rifles were delivered just two days before, on Nov. 20.

Hughes' boss, Warren Caster, said he removed the cartons from the TSBD on Nov. 20---but obviously, no one could tell if the cartons had the rifles inside. 

Whoah Benjamin on Carol Hughes. First of all, it isn't the same office where Caster, her boss, took the rifles. Caster's office would be a separate room adjoining where Carol Hughes was, to the east. The floor plan as David von Pein noted appears to be missing some inner partitions. The reconstruction is Caster had a private office and it was empty and locked that day. There is a door on the north side of Caster's office to a hallway, the doorway to the east of the one at which Geneva Hines knocked that was locked with Carol Hughes inside.

Carol Hughes on the phone after the shots is not too surprising since many people were trying to call someone. That she ignores someone at the door could be because she was on a long-distance phone call to a family member in a different city, or perhaps to a child, whatever, not to be interrupted. That the door itself was locked during a lunch hour with a woman inside, whether locked for the entire lunch hour or perhaps locked for the duration of the phone call so as not to be interrupted if the call was personal, also is not suspicious in itself. Leaving an hour later as did other TSBD employees and none of those leaving employees being physically searched by police is not suspicious of Carol Hughes specifically either.

It is known Caster brought brand-new purchased rifles into the TSBD, showed them off to people on the first floor; took them in their boxes to his office on the second floor, and after work went to his car and drove home that day with both of those same rifles with him at home where they remained years later. (He told Ian Griggs his family still had the same two rifles years later, which though I do not think Griggs verified that, would not have been volunteered if the rifles had not been as Caster said and could be checked, is how I reason on that.) What I noticed as in my earlier comment is as sensible as Caster's account sounds it is not airtight, since hypothetically it could be a mechanism for introducing a particular different rifle, sight unseen, into the TSBD, if a person was up to no good. However Warren Caster was a long-time executive at the TSBD, before and after Nov 1963, no known criminal record, convinced Ian Griggs he was clean and upstanding, and there is no evidence otherwise. Still, a rifle was on the sixth floor that was not supposed to be inside that building on Nov 22, and it got into that building some way; the issue is how. The objection to Oswald bringing it Fri morning Nov 22 is it is not proven that is how it happened: Buell Wesley Frazier insisting to the present day that the paper bag he saw Oswald with that morning was too short to have been the rifle; Frazier possibly denying to Dallas Police the night of Nov 22, supported by a polygraph as truthful, that the large bag police said was associated with the rifle was the same bag Frazier saw Oswald carrying (the polygraph supporting Frazier's truthfulness on that then covered up); no one saw Oswald take his paper bag of Fri Nov 22 (which Oswald told Fritz was his lunch which Oswald said may have been in a larger-than-normal size normal grocery bag) to the sixth floor; and there are issues of how Oswald could have assembled the rifle inside the building and the rifle then shoot accurately without the scope sighted in.

Oswald was seen by fellow roomer Cody of the Beckley rooming house in Oak Cliff, on a bus one morning (seemingly on his way to work at the TSBD as always) just before the assassination carrying a package in his lap--that has never been explained. Separately there is the Yates hitchhiker conveying a rifle-sized package to the front of the TSBD, who had talked about shooting the president from a high window and asked if Yates knew if the parade route had been changed, a man Yates thought after the assassination had been Oswald. That happened before Fri Nov 22 and also remains unexplained, just as Warren Caster's two rifles in the TSBD happened before Fri Nov 22 (which does have innocent though not airtight explanation). The question is can it be determined how the sixth floor rifle, the Mannlicher-Carcano traced to Oswald, got to the TSBD sixth floor to the exclusion of all other reasonable possibilities. Sometimes--certainly in detective fiction but also sometimes in real life--the answer that seems obvious is not necessarily the right answer. If Oswald had had known expertise in accurate sharpshooting; evidence he practiced shooting; and the paraffin test had not unexpectedly shown no evidence that Oswald fired a rifle that day, it would be a different matter. As it stands there are several conceivable trajectories by which the rifle could have gotten inside the TSBD and to the sixth floor, in the end devolving to interpretation in a wider context or solution to the crime. 

19 hours ago, Nick Bartetzko said:

More interesting, though, is the tale of one Claude Capehart of Glomar Explorer fame. It seems his girlfriend recognized his photo during the HSCA time and he supposedly admitted he was in the TSBD at the time. Judge David Minier and Deputy Dale Fore were on the way to visit with him when he had a fatal heart attack in about 1989. This subject has been covered here a bit and there are newspaper articles from papers in the Fresno California area If I recall correctly. Too bad there isn’t much information on the building tenants. But it’s understandable as the emphasis was pinning this on Ozzie. 

One article which may have escaped notice in those other discussions is this recent one from the Santa Barbara News-Press, Oct 10, 2021, not on the Mary Ferrell site, written by David Minier, former Santa Barbara district attorney 1967-1975: https://aarclibrary.org/the-capehart-case-what-is-the-cia-hiding/. Minier tells of his contact with and information from Capehart's girlfriend (who is named in the article unlike all Capehart articles on the Mary Ferrell site):

"He [Capehart] told her he had worked as a 'hit man' for the CIA on numerous occasions, retiring in 1975. He told Ms. Weaver he was present with Lee Harvey Oswald at the scene of the J.F.K. assassination. He said two others were with Oswald, and it was not Oswald who shot the president." 

And this is a CIA document on Claude Capehart dated Nov 20, 1963, the date Caster's rifles went into the TSBD: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=14179#relPageId=1.

In the 2021 Santa Barbara News-Press article, former district attorney Minier tells how in 1988 he and a district attorney investigator finally located Capehart (who had vanished in 1978), found him living in Parumph, Nevada. Capehart then suffered a suspicious death.

"Mr. Poole and I planned to confront Mr. Capehart at home in an attempt to find out his true relation with the CIA. We arranged for a Nye County sheriff's sergeant to accompany us and agreed upon a date in two weeks. A few days later, Mr. Capehart was found in his front yard, dead of an apparent heart attack."

Capehart was either 63 or 64 years old at the time of his death. Minier filed a FOIA request to the CIA.

"Seeking answers, I filed a request with the CIA in 1992 under the Freedom of Information Act. I asked if Mr. Capehart had ever been employed by that agency in any capacity. The CIA refused to confirm or deny, because that information "would reasonably be expected to cause damage to national security." I then sued the CIA in federal court for the information. The CIA claimed national security. The court ruled for the C.I.A., and I appealed. In 1994, an appeals court ruled the CIA was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act's disclosure provisions. (...)

Minier's article claims CIA documents have come to light other than the one linked above:

"Only four days after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the CIA requested a 'name check' on Capehart from other federal agencies. ... a 1973 CIA 'letter of assignment and investigative transmittal' designates Capehart as 'covert,' instead of 'field'. The CIA's secret documents about Mr. Capehart end in 1975, the same year he told Sgt. Fore and Kay Weaver he retired from the agency."

The CIA document on Capehart linked above and on the Mary Ferrell site, shows no reason why that document existed, its purpose, who requested it or who generated it. Its just CIA, Capehart, and the date Nov 20, 1963, in association on an authentic CIA document.

No kidding that should have been investigated more than it was. Sure the whole thing is very easily a freak innocent accident, and Caster otherwise has nothing suspicious about him nor is there any evidence otherwise. But still, not to investigate a rifle inside TSBD taken to an office with a line-of-shot window facing the parade route, two days before the President is assassinated by shots fired from that building? Ian Griggs interviewed Caster in later years, gave a capsule biography, was totally convinced Caster was clean. There is no evidence otherwise. 

But there sure are coincidences involved that called for further checking just to verify nothing was there:

• There is an odd discrepancy in that Truly testified under oath to seeing Caster take the rifles out the front door of the TSBD during the lunch hour after Caster showed his new rifles on the first floor inside TSBD to Truly and a few others. Caster testifying under oath said differently however: that he took those rifles to his 2nd-floor office (the one looking out at the parade route), where they were that afternoon until Caster got off work. Then, Caster says he took the rifles from his 2nd-floor office out of the TSBD building with him to his car mid-/late afternoon when he left work. Question: how did Truly get that point wrong in his sworn testimony? 
• Most odd of all: there was an apparent assassination-related conveyance of a rifle-sized package from a N. Beckley freeway entrance ramp in Oak Cliff (the street of Oswald's rooming house) to Dealey Plaza dropped off in front of the TSBD, by a hitchhiker picked up by Ralph Yates, which Yates thought occurred about 10:30 am the same morning as Caster at noon took his package of two rifles into the TSBD, Wed Nov 20. Yates did not make up the existence of that hitchhiker because he told a coworker, before the assassination, about the hitchhiker, and immediately after the assassination told the same coworker he was going to report it to the FBI. It doesn't matter that Yates shortly after had a mental breakdown--Yates' hitchhiker happened. Yates willingly consented to be polygraphed and the polygraph found no deception. Less than two hours apart--these two unprecedented rifle/rifle-sized package (of someone talking in the cab of Yates' vehicle about assassination of JFK from a window of a tall building) arriving to/inside the TSBD. (The Wed Nov 20 date is not certain, Yates said it could have been either Wed or Thu but thought it was Wed Nov 20, though a billing paperwork for Yates' service call was dated Thu Nov 21 [the bill is dated Nov 21 without the bill specifically saying the service call occurred Nov 21 or any other date].) If the Yates hitchhiker occurred Wed Nov 20 as Yates thought, the juxtaposition in timing is one hell of a coincidence.

If there was foul play at work, there could be a mechanism to get a rifle into the TSBD by this means: Person Y buys two rifles retail during lunch hour as told, wrapped in package. Person Y brings both new rifles inside first floor TSBD and shows them off, as told. Person Y exits front door of TSBD with package of rifles (in agreement with testimony of Truly) and takes to his parked car nearby. At his parked car Person Y receives a different rifle and substitutes it for one of the rifles in his package, leaving the original newly-purchased rifle in his car. Person Y goes back to TSBD and up to his 2nd-floor office with the package of rifles (in agreement with Caster's testimony). Person Y takes the rifle of interest (the one not bought by him now introduced into the TSBD building) out of the package and conceals it inside the building. Person Y after that workday leaves the building with his package with one original newly-purchased rifle inside, takes to his car. Person Y drives home with both newly-purchased rifles, sales slip, witnessed purchase, for family use, still has both purchased rifles years later if anyone checks. The perfect mechanism of introduction of an untraceable rifle into the TSBD. (Note that this mechanism would clear up the discrepancy between Truly's and Caster's testimonies of where the rifles went after Caster showed them--both become correct.)

Its not that we shouldn't trust that Caster did not do that. Its that we shouldn't have to. (Trust, that is.) It should have been checked out to establish that something like that did not happen, as the saying goes, "out of an abundance of caution".

1 hour ago, Matt Allison said:

The idea that Ruth Paine set up Oswald at the TSBD to shoot JFK is pure nonsense.

Whoever originally floated the idea in the 60s was either uninformed and misguided, or was trying throw out a red herring to lead researchers on a goose chase and ultimately into a dead end.

Whatever it was, it got repeated enough times to become dogma, and therefore anyone questioning it was deemed a heretic.

Well said Matt. 

1 hour ago, Matt Allison said:

On November 14th 1963, there was still no motorcade route decided upon, still no luncheon site agreed upon.

The original pick, the Staler Hilton, is located at 1914 Commerce St.

Commerce is a one-way street, headed east. To get to the Statler Hilton, 3 blocks earlier you must pass the Allright Parking Garage at 1600 Commerce St. 

On November 14th, 1963, Lee Oswald, or someone posing as him, applied for a job at the Allright Parking Garage.

That's it! That may explain the not one but three job inquiries (three known, could be more) of Oswald or someone representing himself to be Oswald at the Allright Parking Garage on Commerce, the Statler-Hilton itself on Commerce, and the Adolphus Hotel on Commerce. The only detail to nuance in your above is the date is only variously estimated for the Allright Parking Garage visit from witness interviews at ca. 1-3 weeks before the assassination, date not securely fixed.

The Adolphus "Oswald" job inquiry is here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95675#relPageId=21, and https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95675#relPageId=22, and https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95675#relPageId=24. This Adolphus Hotel Oswald job inquiry seems dated earlier, in October on a date before the birth of his daughter on Oct 20. It could have been before he was hired at TSBD. The Statler-Hilton job inquiry, which may have involved a written application though the document did not survive, was dated Oct 31 according to the personnel director who was able to date it by means of someone else she remembered there at the same time who she thought had been one of two others accompanying Oswald, who was hired as a bellman, one James Murphy (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95675#relPageId=25). James Murphy left his job after the assassination and went to New Orleans, and when interviewed by the FBI denied he knew Oswald.  

3 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

But Oswald was not in Mexico City.

So you and some say.

I don't know for sure that Oswald was there but what I do know is Oswald said he had been there. In his own handwriting to the Soviet embassy. Verified by expert testimony to be Oswald's handwriting, no expert saying otherwise. That is hands-down evidence Oswald wrote that. 

Also, Silvia Duran's contact information at the Cuban consulate in Oswald's address book ... at the Dallas Police station at Fritz's office and copied by Hosty late afternoon Nov 22 ...

Marina at first covered up but then told that Lee told her he had been in Mexico City... told her in New Orleans that he planned to try to get into Cuba (what Lee told Marina anyway, according to Marina, whether or not what Lee told Marina was true or not). 

Notions that physical evidence was fabricated days or weeks after the assassination to show Oswald had been in Mexico City--a completely, wholly baseless suggestion that Ruth Paine fabricated such physical evidence appears in Max Good's film--runs counter to motive which would be to cover up or deny Oswald's presence in Mexico City if it were possible to do so. As early as Fri night Nov 22 the word came down from the top--from LBJ himself (via intermediaries) to prosecutor Wade's office in Dallas that Oswald should not be charged as part of a communist conspiracy, and Sat morning Nov 23 LBJ and Hoover were talking LBJ's emphasis with Hoover's cooperation on not going toward a Cuban or Soviet connection with Oswald but instead Oswald as lone nut, intent to cover up any Cuban or Soviet connection so as to avoid risk of nuclear war. But the Cuban and Soviet connection is entirely what Oswald in Mexico City was about--LBJ wanted that covered up to the extent possible, and Hoover was on board with LBJ on that. That is the exact opposite of any motive to have Ruth Paine's supposed ubiquitous "handlers" instructed to tell Ruth Paine to fabricate and plant some more Mexico City physical evidence to be attributed to Lee, as insinuated credulously in some books and the Max Good film.

I don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems less complex to assume Oswald went to Mexico City with some coverup of what went on there and impersonation in addition to, not wholly in replacement of, Oswald there. If it had been possible to get away with covering up Oswald's presence in Mexico city altogether (in agreement with what some CT's want to have on this point), that would have been done. The only reason Oswald in Mexico City was acknowledged in the Warren Report is because it was not technically possible to deny it. If it had been, it would have been. Oswald in Mexico City serves nothing in support of the Warren Report's investigation conclusion. It was the major problem LBJ and Hoover had in making the argument for the Lone Nut conclusion. As if LBJ and Hoover were taking stupid pills and having Ruth Paine forge and plant physical evidence going against interest! 

Again, the way it is common to see Oswald's letter to the Soviet embassy just blithely explained by some CT's with a wave of the hand as forged and not Oswald's handwriting, without a shred of expert testimony in support, and opposed to expert testimony which says it is Oswald's handwriting, is just jumping the rails of reason. 

And if Oswald wrote the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., that he had been in Mexico City, it does not seem too much of a stretch to suppose maybe he had been in Mexico City during the days he was gone from Ruth and Marina and his whereabouts not securely proven to have been elsewhere during those days. 

Both on the Castro/Cuban side, and on the US side (LBJ/Warren Commission), there was motive to deny Oswald was in Mexico City if it were possible to do so (because Oswald was the accused assassin of JFK with all that meant). I have wondered if the claims of lack of photos of Oswald entering and leaving the Mexico City Soviet embassy and Cuban consulate are explained in that context. 

15 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Sure, but if your motivation for inviting someone to live with you is totally non-altruistic then I think it’s disingenuous to say that you did it out of charity or kindness, even if the arrangement benefits the invitee. 

But Tom--since Ruth never claimed she was having Marina live with her out of kindness or charity, why hammer her for the red herring. Two women with small children each headed for divorce sharing a household meeting mutual needs is nothing to be condemned. I've known a number of single moms and it isn't easy. What was Ruth doing that was "disingenuous" in taking in Marina as a compatible person to live with her?

15 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I’m not criticizing Ruth. I may be wrong but I don’t think Ruth ever claimed that she invited Marina to live with her out of charity.

Correct, Ruth never claimed it was charity.  

15 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

I just don’t think that Ruth should be praised for taking in Marina as the kind Quaker charity lady when the evidence is pretty clear, even from Ruth herself, that her motivations were selfish. 

Again you cite the red herring, never claimed by Ruth (so why bring it up?), and after saying you're not criticizing Ruth, you call her "selfish" which is generally considered a pejorative term, generally considered a criticism. Just curious: think of the people you have known who live in housemate situations who benefit from shared interests and companionship--do you call all of your friends in such situations "selfish" persons with "selfish" motivations? 

Why are you calling Ruth "selfish"? Why? 

Have you ever been in a functional housemate situation? Would you appreciate being called "selfish" because the relationship benefits you and your housemates?

16 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

Ron Ege writes:

As far as I'm aware, only one person made that claim, and Oswald sat next to only two people.

Jack Davis told Jim Marrs in 1988 that Oswald sat next to him, then got up and sat next to someone else, and then went out to the lobby. Davis's next sighting of Oswald was around 20 minutes later, as Oswald was being arrested (Crossfire, p.353). Davis told the same story to John Armstrong some time later (Harvey and Lee, pp.840-841; Armstrong doesn't mention the date of his interview with Davis).

I'm not sure that Davis's anecdote, from 25 years after the event, is strong enough by itself to demonstrate that Oswald was actively looking for someone, although I wouldn't rule out that event completely. If Davis's account has any significance, it is in the timing: Davis has Oswald in the building just as the screening began, a few minutes before 1:20, when he was supposed to have been elsewhere, shooting Officer Tippit. Although Oswald's seat-hopping has no corroboration that I'm aware of, the timing of Oswald's arrival at the Texas Theater is corroborated by Butch Burroughs.

I do not understand this skepticism concerning Davis's testimony. I have watched Davis's oral history interview on file with the Sixth Floor Museum and it is just credible, notwithstanding how long ago. What Davis describes is not something likely to be mistaken or imagined, and there is no sign Jack Davis is a fabulist or fabricator. He was there. He tells what he saw. 

And second, there is corroboration: Butch Burroughs told that Oswald came out and bought popcorn from him. That corresponds to Davis's description of Oswald's movement through an exit out into the lobby after sitting next to him, Davis, before he saw Oswald reenter through a different rear entrance door into the seating area again to sit next to someone else. According to Burroughs, after Oswald reentered the seating area Oswald sat next to a pregnant woman in the main area, in about the location where Oswald was seated when the police arrived. This is a second testimony to Oswald's very odd behavior of sitting next to patrons in that theatre stranger to him, only in this last case, according to Burroughs, it was the person Oswald sat next to, the pregnant woman, who left and never returned, rather than Oswald getting up and leaving. I don't believe a pregnant woman as such appears in Jack Davis's version but it is the same "sitting next" to someone in a nearly-empty theatre. 

It is not as if these are only two stories of Oswald oddly sitting next to strangers in that theatre among dozens of other patrons who said nothing of it. Almost all of the other patrons never were interviewed at all. Davis is the only one who has an oral history recorded. 

Another detail, I believe the estimated number of persons in that theatre was less than the ca. 24 commonly supposed and cited. Here is Julia Postal's Warren Commission testimony:

Mr. BALL. Now, did many people go into the theatre from the time you opened at the box office until about 1:15 or so? 
Mrs. POSTAL. Some. 
Mr. BALL. How many? Can you give me an estimate? 
Mrs. POSTAL. I believe 24. 
Mr. BALL. Twenty-four? 
Mrs. POSTAL. Fourteen or twenty-four. I believe it was 24. Everything was happening so fast. 
Mr. BALL. You had sold about that many tickets? 
Mrs. POSTAL. That's right. 

The counts on the main floor of patrons added up from several descriptions including police officers there that day and including a diagram drawn by Davis of where he remembered persons were seated which is in agreement with other descriptions, all have less than a dozen persons total in that main seating area, not counting an unknown but small number of persons in the balcony. 24 seems too many compared to the specific memories of persons inside that theatre. For that reason I believe the correct number was Julia Postal's mention of 14 tickets she might have sold, not 24. The 24 sounds like a mistake. ("Fourteen or twenty-four. I believe it was 24. Everything was happening so fast.")

Fourteen sold tickets sounds right, with most of those fourteen in the main seating area including Oswald whom I believe was one of those ticket purchasers, and who never was at any point in the balcony. The tickets were taken at the door not by Burroughs but by theatre regional general manager Callahan there that day. There is no record of Callahan ever having been interviewed by DPD, FBI, WC, HSCA, etc. nor have I found any information that he was ever interviewed by anyone in his entire life--never asked what he remembered and from whom he remembered taking tickets that day. I do not assume that no record of DPD questioning of Callahan means there was no DPD questioning of Callahan.

Jack Davis in his oral history does not offer any interpretation of Oswald's highly odd behavior of sitting down right next to patrons stranger to him including Davis, then getting up and moving to sit next to someone else, in a nearly empty theatre, only that Oswald did that. It is the extreme oddity of such behavior in a nearly-empty theatre that stands out as calling for explanation. That Oswald was trying to find someone he anticipated meeting is just about the only reasonable explanation that comes to mind. (There is no sign that Oswald was mentally disturbed, which would be about the only other conceivable explanation for such behavior.) 

I have developed elsewhere that a freak accident sighting of a man seated in a parked car for no known reason not far from the Texas Theatre in agreement with the time of Oswald's arrest in the theatre, is an excellent argument as to the party who may have been waiting for an appointed time to go to meet Oswald in that theatre, namely the person in a car traceable by license plate number to Carl Mather of Collins Radio Co., i.e. Carl Mather (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28004-oswald-tippit-and-carl-mather-connecting-some-dots/). 

However Oswald was arrested in the theatre before any meeting of Oswald and another party in the theatre took place. Mather left his position parked in a parking lot near the Texas Theatre for no known reason and returned to his home in far-away Garland following which Mather returned with his wife and children to Oak Cliff in a different car to the home of Mrs. Tippit that afternoon.

Sandy its a decent question. The short answer is I don't know.

Here is the longer answer. Oswald alone doing the assassination does not make sense because of his lack of practice and skill, lack of motive, and cause to think he was set up (referring to valid impersonations after the mistaken ones are removed). Yet for some reason Oswald is very content with that low-paying deadend job at the TSBD, makes no attempt to make friends there though he is always polite and does his job without causing any trouble ... as if he knows it is just temporary, just putting in his time, going through the motions there, until... something. And then goes into evasive movements leaving the TSBD after the assassination, which can be interpreted as the behavior of someone who did it but can also be the behavior of someone who didn't do it but who realizes he has been set up and his life may be in jeopardy.

As for the assassination itself, it has the appearance of security-stripping combined with steering the parade route past the TSBD. Just looks something like that, though the details are maddening to sort through, and how to tell the difference between an inside man in the Secret Service causing some of that, versus plotters' exploitation of existing security vulnerabilities. And there is suspected corruption in the Dallas Police Department but who knew and did what exactly. Tough questions.  

And then the nature of the setup: via the rifle as part of a Castro-linked conspiracy as the original idea, a rifle on which Oswald had the original scope reinstalled on Nov 11 preparatory to conveying that rifle to ... someone, not realizing it would end up on the 6th floor of the TSBD as an assassination weapon incriminating him. 

If there was a criminal conspiracy carrying out the assassination, which there was, the question is which came first: Oswald employed at the TSBD (then plan the killing around the TSBD)? Or plan the killing around the TSBD (then steer Oswald to be employed there)?

The problem with the latter--which you are so dead set on, as if there is no other possibility--is not only how to ensure Truly would hire Oswald when he applies but a more basic problem: how to account for all of the failed job applications of Oswald at other places prior to Oct 15. I have asked you this question, and neither you nor anyone who holds to the view you hold has responded. Anyone who thinks the TSBD as the assassination site was pre-planned prior to Oct 15 when Oswald started work there, and that that plan required Oswald to be employed there at the time of the assassination, has to explain all those failed job applications of Oswald prior to Oct 15. No way around it: you must explain those, if you are going to hold to that premise. Do you intend to address this?

Do you suppose Oswald had some hidden plan of going through the motions of applying in all these prior job applications (but for what purpose?), then actually covertly sabotaging or ensuring that each of them failed? Do you suppose Oswald had no intent to be hired at any previous application even though outwardly it looks for all the world like he was trying to get a job?

That is too much of a stretch for me to believe. Matt Allison is right: "It's fascinating how people want to dream up a 3 act Shakespeearean epic as the only way this could have happened."

I don't think all those applications and interviews before Oswald got the TSBD job were fake or sabotaged. If you want to say they were all fake-acted (because you need that for your theory) that's your choice, but not me.

Another thing to consider: after Oswald was hired at TSBD there were what appear to be three distinct instances of inquiries for jobs made by persons apparently representing themselves to be Oswald at tall buildings in downtown Dallas with line of sight sniper shot to the parade route. These are generally not given much attention, but these employment inquiries occurred in the late Oct-Nov time frame at the Southland Parking Garage, the Statler-Hilton Hotel, and the Adolphus Hotel. Were they by someone representing himself to be Oswald? It seems so. Was it Oswald? I doubt it. What was going on with that?

I know it violates your desire to have everything planned long in advance the way it happened on Nov 22, but the incongruities in supposing an assassination involving the TSBD, with Oswald there employed, planned long in advance prior to Oswald's employment at the TSBD--the incongruities in that assumption   say to me the location-specific planning at Dealey Plaza came about after Oct 15.

If Oswald had landed somewhere not suitable for carrying out an assassination, he could be moved to a location of choice later as a change of employment, or he could be lured to visit a site of the assassination on Nov 22 even if working elsewhere, or he could simply be elsewhere on Nov 22 and he and Castro linked to the assassination via a rifle traced to him. I am not recommending any of these possibilities, only saying there is more than one way it could have worked. Don't be so dogmatic in your assumptions.

8 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

So if i'm understanding John Newmans podcast, Birch O'Neal first set up the file on LHO when he defected. This file went to the Office of Security where Angleton then did not have access to it (see 87 minutes on thepodcast: https://www.spreaker.com/user/7338953/197-october-16-2022-with-intent-to-suppr ).

Jeff Morely often suggests that Angleton was the one who controlled Oswalds file. But apparently that is not true. The Office of Security controlled Oswalds file. And in the Office of Security, the person that was controlling the file was Bruce Solie?

Yes according to pp. 347-348 of Uncovering Popov's Mole (italics is Newman's, bold is mine):

"Here I would like to briefly recapitulate a few points from Chapter Two. There, I laid out the reasons for replacing the phrase The Angleton Molehunt with  the phrase The False CIA Molehunt. Taking this step finally pulled the curtain back to reveal a different wizard at the controls--a warlock more powerful, intelligent, and devious than the spectacled counterintelligence legend. Angleton did believe that the 1959 Oswald dangle in Moscow might surface Popov's mole from somewhere in the Soviet Russia Division. But that idea did not originate with him. It was Bruce Solie who convinced Angleton that the lair of the KGB mole was hidden in SRD.

"I reviewed my conversation with the Deputy Chief of the Office of Security (OS) Bob Bannerman. The evidence that was suddenly screaming at me had been there since the day we spoke on 8 August 1994. In addition to being the deputy director, Bannerman's OS portfolio included overseeing the Security Research Staff (SRS), then headed by Paul Gaynor, who was engrossed in the expanding OS mind-control programs--Bluebird and Artichoke--seeking to scramble the brains of communists through electric shocks, drugs, and hypnotism.

"While OS had received cooperation from Angleton's staff 'and others,' Bannerman made it clear that the OS was the office of primary concern, and that most of his staff (i.e., SRS) were involved. Bannerman emphasized that Paul Gaynor and Bruce Solie were "very active" in handling the molehunt. But it was Solie's Research Branch (RB) that handled defectors and moles, and managed agent and personnel files. 

"CIA document registers reveal that all incoming messages and cables on Oswald from other government agencies did not go to where they normally would--the Soviet Russia Division (SRD). All of those incoming messages and cables were shunted off to OS by the Office of Mail Logistics (OML) and Records Integration Division (RID). OS then decided what to share or not share with Angleton and his CI/Staff.

"There is little doubt that Solie was the right person, in the right place, and at the right time into whose hands control of the molehunt fell. Solie--not Angleton--was the 'wizard behind the curtain' directing, as he saw fit, a false hunt for the KGB mole from his desk in the CIA."

Questions and comments of my own:

• I would like to better understand how Solie, who had two levels of reporting superiors above him in OS (Gaynor and Bannerman), managed to have himself tasked with finding the mole. 
• Almost no biographical information of Solie ... question of motivation ... how to explain why he would become a mole for the Soviets ...
• If the Solie as mole argument is correct, that could in itself account for wide-scale CIA coverup of how many were "taken in" by the successful Soviet mole operation? With spillover and implications to CIA coverup of what was going on with Oswald?
• Yet, a nagging question: is this "conspiracy within the CIA" theory re Solie too pat, too simple. Is it certain Solie is the right guy? A lot matches and becomes explained, but is the argument that it was Solie, which in the end is circumstantial without document, confession, or smoking-gun, correct? Yet the argument that there existed a mole is strong, the mole was never found, and it looks like the mole was in the vicinity of what and where Solie was working--that is the argument that it was Solie. I will be interested in the critical reviews sure to follow.  
• And a personal note: I have a special reason for curiosity in this story. Although I never knew him, the father of my long-time best friend was an officer in the Soviet Russia Division, CIA, of that era who was one of Angleton's victims in being suspected, along with the entire rest of the Soviet Russia Division, of being the possible mole, had his promotions blocked, etc. as a result. This was Vasia Gmirkin, called in Tom Mangold's book on Angleton, Cold Warrior, the closest thing the US has had in real life to James Bond. Vasia Gmirkin was involved in both the Golitsyn and Nosenko cases and debriefings among other things, and can be found in MFF site documents as accompanying Nosenko to Nosenko's testimony. He divorced my friend Russ's mother when Russ was two and Russ saw little of him and knew little of his activities except for a time when his father made an attempt to reestablish a relationship with Russ when Russ was a teenager. I remember Russ telling me of his father when I first got to know Russ in college in the early 1970s, how his father was somewhere in Africa and it was all secret and he and his mother did not know where he was. Where he was turned out to be Malta until his cover was blown by Philip Agee and he had to precipitously leave Malta. According to Russ his father never forgave Agee for making him give up his good life and great swimming pool he had in Malta. Around 1990, somewhere in there, I happened to be on a long-distance phone call talking to Russ, and while talking, Russ had his TV on in the background, and there was a 20-20 program (ABC's investigative show like CBS's Sixty Minutes). Russ interrupted me on the phone that he had to hang up because he was astonished to see his father on TV that very moment. Russ had no knowledge that his father, Vasia Gmirkin, had even been interviewed by 20-20 or that it was going to be aired that evening. On 20-20 Vasia Gmirkin told of how Angleton had blocked his and fellow officers' promotions, etc., suspected everyone in the SRD, and the effects this had had. Until hearing his father tell his story on 20-20 Russ had no idea his father's career had even been affected by Angleton. Unfortunately by the time the 20-20 program aired his father was already dead, dead of a brain tumor which started after the time he had been filmed. I remembered that former CIA director William Casey died of a brain tumor in the midst of some Iran-Contra investigations, a few rumors of foul play there, and I asked Russ if he thought the CIA might have had his father knocked off. Russ said he didn't know, he doubted it, there was nothing unusual in any medical records. I knew Russ well, also his mother, in those years but only heard about his father through Russ. Russ's son loved to give elementary school reports on his famous grandfather who was like James Bond.  

Sandy I could speculate some possible answers to your question of how a criminal conspiracy to assassinate JFK which was done with Oswald framed via his rifle at the TSBD could come about not dependent on planning prior to Oct 15 to involve the TSBD--e.g. plotters intent on killing JFK when he came to Dallas could wait to see where Oswald landed in Dallas in what a TEC employee who counseled Oswald recounted was an explicit, directly-expressed desire by Oswald to obtain employment in an office building downtown, then shaping the logistics of the hit around that--but I will save that for another time and place. It is off topic here. The baseless accusations that some CT's continue to fling on and smear Ruth Paine as if with absolute certainty surrounding her phone call to Truly to try to obtain an employment possibility for the unemployed husband of Marina--just like Ruth gave him a map, drove him places, took time to teach him parallel parking, etc., which if anyone else did those things one would say this is someone trying to be helpful, not more complicated than that--are the topic and issue here.

48 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

The fallacy you say you found is unrelated to my argument, and is therefore not a fallacy in my argument. Specifically, my argument said nothing about Linnie May Randall or Ruth Paine.

Do I understand you have no argument that Ruth Paine's phone call to Truly means she was CIA? 

This is a thread about Ruth Paine. If you are saying you have no argument that Ruth Paine's phone call to Truly means she was CIA, that is all we need to know here, thanks, glad to get that cleared up.   

7 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Greg,

So you believe that it was by sheer coincidence that Oswald got a job at the very same place the plotters executed the assassination plot.

Is that correct?

You do not have exactly right what I believe but never mind, what I believe is not at issue. What is at issue is what you are arguing. You asked where was the fallacy in what you were arguing--that Linnie Mae's and Ruth's activity in helping Oswald get the job at TSBD prove Linnie Mae Randle and Ruth Paine were CIA. I showed the fallacy you asked to be shown. Acknowledge or address the fallacy. 

On 10/24/2022 at 5:20 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

I don't know the details on how Oswald got the job. But anybody who claims they helped Oswald get the job either did so for the CIA or is lying. Because the only other alternative is that Oswald miraculously chose the right place to get a job, and I don't believe in miracles.

On 10/24/2022 at 10:04 AM, Denny Zartman said:

In my view, if one believes (as I do) that Oswald was the designated patsy in an organized and sophisticated conspiracy, it seems to me only logical to examine the circumstances that put him on the motorcade route.

The conspirators needed to place him in that building. Either they waited until they got lucky and he just happened to get a job there, or they engineered it to happen. I don't think they waited for it to happen and I don't think he was selected to be the patsy after he began work at the TSBD, which just happened to be a month and a week before the assassination. It's well known that Oswald's history had so-called "fingerprints of intelligence" all over it.

So how did LHO get to the TSBD? Ruth Paine cold-called Roy Truly.

On 10/24/2022 at 11:49 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Here's our argument in a nutshell:

Premise: The plotters chose Oswald to be the patsy for the assassination.

Argument:

1. The plotters planned to used Dealey Plaza for the assassination, and the TSBD specifically for at least some of the shots.
2. It took the plotters some time and preparation to be ready for the Big Event.
3. The plotters chose to place the patsy, Oswald, at the TSBD. How do we know that? Because that is where he was on the day of the Big Event. He certainly didn't get there by accident.
4. Therefore, the plotters were in control of Oswald getting the job at the TSBD.

Matt, where is the flaw in our argument?

On 10/24/2022 at 12:08 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

You seriously cannot see a flaw in my argument, can you?

On 10/24/2022 at 1:12 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

No, I'm saying that the plotters were controlling whoever got Oswald to take a job at the TSBD. The plotters needed to make sure that Oswald got a job there so that he would be there to take his (unwitting) role as patsy.

If Linnie May and Ruth were not under control of the plotters, then how is it that Oswald just happened to get a job where the plotters needed hm to be? By sheer coincidence?

On 10/24/2022 at 2:18 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

It's a ridiculous notion that the plotters would leave up to chance where they would prepare and execute an assassination and escape plan. They probably had been planning for months. 

The flaw in this logic

First a disclaimer: I believe the assassination was a criminal conspiracy and that there was a framing of Castro and Oswald by those carrying out the assassination by means of having a rifle linked to Oswald linked to the assassination, put together with Oswald's communist associations and activity. But I do not believe Oswald's employment in the TSBD was foreordained. However you do assume this. I am going to show your logic collapses taking your assumptions.

Very simply, if TSBD employment by Oswald was foreordained as a necessary part of the plot, you must have the following participants under control of the plotters, in order to ensure that it will happen as planned:

• Above all, Truly at TSBD has to be instructed and ensured that he hire Oswald. That cannot be left to chance. No cold-call phone call from a woman in Irving, no matter how persuasive over the phone, is going to be enough to ensure that a Truly who is not involved with the plotters will hire instead of blowing off the phone call. ("I'm sorry ma'am, we have nothing now--he can drop off an application if he likes and we'll keep it on file in case our needs change in the future and give it every consideration at that time, but we just have nothing at present.") So, you've got to have Truly lined up in advance by the plotters. No ifs, ands, or buts about this, in terms of your scenario. (I believe in an earlier discussion you did agree to this so I do not anticipate you disputing this.)
• And, you must have Oswald instructed to take the job, by the plotters. That cannot be left to chance. If left to chance, Oswald might find a different job. Or he might decline to take the TSBD job for some unexpected reason. All the months of work of who knows how many handlers and coordinated plotters would be for nothing. Oswald has to be on board with the plotters in advance on this, of taking the TSBD job. No ifs, ands, or buts about this, in terms of your scenario.
• And, the plotters must have a plan to ensure that Oswald not be hired at any of the places he applied for prior to the TSBD. I won't list them here but there were several job applications and interviews done by Oswald where he was turned down for a job despite making an effort to be hired. The plotters cannot allow a hiring of Oswald other than at the TSBD. If follows (following your premises and logic) that each of the hiring decision-makers, in each of the businesses where Oswald applied, has to be under the control of the plotters--in order to know they are not to offer Oswald a job. The plotters must also control the placement counselor at the Texas Employment Commission who gave two job interview leads to Oswald to which Oswald went, in order to direct Oswald to the right places where the plotters have instructed those employers not to hire Oswald. 

With these three items established as necessary to ensure Oswald is hired at the TSBD, here is the logical fallacy: If both Truly and Oswald are on board with the plotters--as it has just been established they both must be--all that is needed is for Oswald to show up and Truly says "you're hired". Once this realization sinks in and is properly appreciated, there is no longer any need or necessary function or role for any persuasive phone call from Ruth Paine. It is irrelevant. It is unnecessary to the plot. Truly does not need to be persuaded by a cold-call from a housewife in Irving to hire a stranger (which cannot ensure that outcome in any case). Truly is going to hire Oswald who is going to take the job offered at TSBD, in the scenario, because that already is lined up on both of their parts. Ruth Paine's phone call becomes superfluous. Therefore there is no reason her phone call to Truly must have entered into the plotters' advance planning at all, since it plays no necessary role in anything, it cannot be guaranteed to accomplish anything, it is not needed to accomplish anything. Therefore Ruth's phone call to Truly will not have been preplanned by the plotters. It will have come about for a different, unrelated reason: she did that just as when she gave Lee a map, drove him to a written drivers license test location, taught him to parallel park, made him a birthday cake, etc.--on her own. Therefore, your argument that Ruth Paine is CIA because she made a phone call to Truly collapses because it rests on nothing logically.

Your premise, if true, requires Truly, Oswald, and the hiring decision-makers at places where Oswald applied for work prior to the TSBD, were under control of the plotters. Those are necessary to the plot for it to work, to ensure Oswald is employed at TSBD.

Ruth Paine making a cold-call phone call to Truly is not necessary for the plot to work. Not being necessary to the plot, there is no reason to suppose it would have been planned by the plotters at all. To assume otherwise is a logical fallacy. 

Cool, Bill! Well done.

Gerry, that is the document in Newman's appendix and which Newman discusses in chapter 3 of Uncovering Popov's Mole. The link you give on the Mary Ferrell site I see from comparison has a slightly fuller form of the CIA debriefing document. Newman's appendix has most of the document but is identified as "relevant excerpts" of it. In chapter 3 Newman gives an extensive back story to how the Papushin information came to light and its context. 

Two details: one is that though according to IJDECANTER, identified in Uncovering Popov's Mole as Sergei Papushin, Oswald was considered an agent by the Ukraine KGB, somewhat anomalously (according to what Papushin heard) Oswald never actually signed paperwork saying he was an agent which was normally done. Nevertheless they considered they were running him as one of their agents despite lack of Oswald's signature saying he was. The other thing according to Papushin's information is the spy agency relationship of Oswald ended in the Soviet Union and did not continue when Oswald returned to the U.S.

My copy of Uncovering Popov's Mole arrived yesterday. I am not well-read in the areas of the documents and matters Newman discusses so much of what Newman argues is out of my league, but I can nevertheless comment on what I understand. 

First, identification of Bruce Solie as the mole, the chief mole-hunter (who despite years of effort never could find the mole) being himself the mole, bamboozling Angleton just as that mole's predecessor Kim Philby had earlier bamboozled Angleton, is fascinating. I will be interested in more informed reviews giving opposing views or weaknesses in Newman's argument if any but I did not spot any obvious problems to what comes across as a convincing solution worthy of a Sherlock Holmes closing of a case. I immediately think of a comparative parallel: the American Indian Movement in its armed standoff at Wounded Knee in 1973. The chief of security of AIM tasked with identifying government spies and agents in their midst turned out all along to have been an undercover police officer and paid FBI informant (Durham). That came out in court and is a matter of record. A similar situation has been suspected with the IRA of Northern Ireland though I think that remains contested. So there is one and perhaps two good parallels to the idea of a chief mole-hunter being the mole. Of course that matters little except as irony, the argument depends on the evidence itself. 

In this analysis defector Golitsyn was for real and Nosenko, sent by the KGB and defended by Solie, was a fraud. Newman brings out a new document, a debriefing of an instructor in a Soviet counterintelligence school in Minsk from later than the time Oswald was there, reporting on other faculty at that school telling of having handled Oswald and Marina in Minsk. Oswald had been recruited and was an agent claimed by the Ukraine KGB. Marina was not claimed to be an agent but was a "swallow", asked to get into bed with Oswald for information, who then went her own way after coming to the U.S. This debriefing supports the same basic account of Oleg Kalugin, chief of KGB operations in the US in 1963, in Russo and Moses, eds., Where Were You? (2013), who said "Marina was planted just to find information ... Later the KGB made a deal with her that if she came here to the United States--she was recruited; let's put it that way. But she didn't perform the mission. She was actually thrown out of the Russian network of sources--totally useless". The document published in an appendix by Newman in Uncovering Popov's Mole, "The 2/27/90 CIA Report on the Debriefing of IJDECANTER", is fascinating and rings as the true story of Oswald in Minsk. According to the debriefing (also in agreement with Kalugin), Oswald was ultimately deemed unreliable and the Soviets were not in contact with him after his redefection back to the US.

Newman recapitulates a horrifying narrative of Cold War history and nuclear war planning of the 1950s and early 1960s as Kennedy came into the presidency. Newman argues in favor of the utterly terrifying argument earlier published by James Galbraith and Heather Purcell that there existed a Joint Chiefs plan in 1961, which was discussed, to launch a first-strike nuclear attack to wipe out the Soviet Union ca. 1963. At the time that argument of Galbraith and Purcell was disputed and somewhat persuasively countered as having been a misunderstanding of a contingency plan, not an actual plan to do it. Newman puts the original idea of Galbraith and Purcell back on the map, arguing there was significant support inside the Joint Chiefs for doing that, that it was more than simple contingency war-gaming. 

Reading Newman's account of the evolving nuclear war-fighting doctrine, the SIOP debates, of LeMay and Lemnitzer, the Dr. Strangelove logic in actual history, is for me psychologically like a descent into Dante's hell. What have humans come to? 

My simplified takeaway from Newman's analysis: the US had an overwhelming advantage over the Soviet nuclear arsenal, though this was secret, not publicly said by either USSR or US. That advantage was so overwhelming that apparently a majority of the Joint Chiefs believed there was a temporary window of time--a small number of years--in which the US could first-strike the USSR and China, destroying both communist superpowers (and killing and radiation-poisoning most of their people), and that compared to the alternatives that should be done. 

Then: the single most important legacy of JFK is he kept that nuclear war from happening. (Not a foregone conclusion.)

And then into the Conrad heart of darkness: the argument of a serious framing of the USSR, Castro, and Oswald for the assassination of JFK, as part of prior knowledge of planning of that assassination.  

Incidentally, trivia note: Newman is now referring to "Oswald (or an imposter) traveled to Mexico City (28 September-3 October 1963)" (p. 2). I could not find elaboration on that in the rest of the book. Newman also says in passing, without elaborating or arguing in this book, that a decision was made in 1962 to frame the USSR, Cuba, and Oswald for an assassination of JFK in 1963, and that that actual framing occurred in about a six-week period prior to the assassination in Nov 1963 (by which I think Newman means to include the Mexico City trip).

12 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

Again, no one saw the killer touch the front of the patrol car.  Yet, you continue to state that those prints belong to the killer.

Which direction the killer went moving away from the right front fender is not too important compared to that is where the killer was. Fingerprints from a right hand are right there on a surface inches below where the killer fired at Tippit over the hood. There was no video camera that day establishing that the killer did not touch that fender in his movements associated with that shooting, not have those fingerprints been shown to have come from some cause other than the killer who was there. It was established for the first time in 1994, a mere thirty-one years after the DPD said in 1963 "nothing to see here", that the fingerprints on that right front fender were left by the same individual who left the fingerprints on the right front door where the killer was seen leaning over talking into the patrol car through the vent window, and that all of the prints from those two locations came from only a single individual, the same individual in both places (and that that individual, whoever it was, was not Oswald).  

Again, no video camera proves the killer leaning into that right front door window did not touch it, where the fingerprints are.

Those fingerprints ought to be checked to see whether identification is possible. That you are categorically unwilling to support having such an examination occur in 2022 speaks volumes. 

An alternative explanation of why the killer of Tippit headed to the Texas Theatre where Oswald was: to kill him

Bill it was the guy who left the fingerprints on the Tippit cruiser's right front passenger door and right front fender who stood in the recessed entrance of that shoe store after ditching his jacket. The killer who left those fingerprints which were definitively found not, repeat not, to come from Oswald. The fingerprints you answered me that you will not lift a finger to help bring about a first, 59 years later, first, reported expert attempt at positive identification using present methods and databases. On the grounds that you claim internal certainty, in advance of any present attempt being made, that such an attempt cannot succeed, therefore you do not support asking a crime lab with expertise to take a look to find out.

The man at the shoe store, who had abandoned his jacket after killing Tippit, did not come from Oswald's rooming house. He came to the scene of the Tippit killing walking from the east, arriving from the opposite direction of Oswald's rooming house. Multiple witnesses saw the killer headed to the scene of the Tippit killing, on foot coming several blocks from the east, from the opposite direction of Oswald who was at his rooming house at 1 pm. Oswald went to the Texas Theatre, which has nothing to do with going to where Tippit was killed, where the killer of Tippit abandoned his jacket, the stop at the front of the shoe store.

There is a coming together of that killer, likely associated with Ruby, entering the Texas Theatre's balcony intent on killing Oswald next who was already in the theatre seated in the main level. A man in the balcony (killer of Tippit intent on killing Oswald), and a man already seated on the main level (Oswald).  

Despite witnesses saying the killer of Tippit was Oswald, there is reason to suppose those witnesses erred in that identification, and that that killer was no more Oswald than the customer in Shasteen's barber shop, the man Roger Craig saw run into a station wagon in front of the TSBD, or dozens of other mistaken identifications of Oswald duly written up in FBI reports.

If it had been Oswald, it would be expected that the fingerprints lifted from the Tippit cruiser in exact agreement with where witnesses saw the killer with respect to that cruiser would not have been excluded as matching to Oswald. Just as it would be expected that, if Oswald and Oswald's revolver had killed Tippit, the Dallas Police department would not have lost without a trace and without ballistics analysis the snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Special found by a citizen in a paper bag abandoned on a city street in downtown Dallas on the morning of Nov 23, 1963, less than 18 hours after the murder of officer Tippit carried out with a weapon exactly of that kind.

Fingerprints likely of the killer (exculpatory of Oswald) ... the Nov 23 paper-bag revolver which makes an excellent candidate for the murder weapon of Tippit (exculpatory of Oswald) ... the direction the killer was seen walking to the Tippit crime scene, as well as the Tippit crime scene itself, having nothing to do with, no rational explanation in agreement with, the killer having walked from Oswald's rooming house (exculpatory of Oswald) ... plenty of mistaken identifications of claimed Oswald identifications which weren't Oswald ... tremendous pressure on the Dallas Police that Oswald be guilty of the Tippit killing affected objectivity of both police and witnesses ... 

Some of my other discussions of the Tippit murder: 

"When everyone is agreed on something it is probably wrong" (with a comment on the Tippit case) 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28197-when-everyone-is-agreed-on-something-it-is-probably-wrong-with-a-comment-on-the-tippit-case/

The murder weapon of the Tippit killing? 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27932-the-murder-weapon-of-the-tippit-killing/

Tippit ballistics: is it established that Oswald's revolver was the murder weapon? 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28114-tippit-ballistics-is-it-established-that-oswalds-revolver-was-the-murder-weapon/ 

Oswald, Tippit, and Carl Mather: connecting some dots 

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28004-oswald-tippit-and-carl-mather-connecting-some-dots/

7 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

Regardless of the jacket's color, why did Oswald ditch his jacket between the rooming house and the shoe store on Jefferson?

The question is unanswerable as asked because I do not accept the premise that Oswald was at the shoe store on Jefferson (mistaken identification). I have discussed this elsewhere and I believe we have been through this before. If not see e.g. my 8th down on page 2 of the following link titled "More on Oswald entering the Texas Theatre earlier as a paying customer, not the man who snuck past and up into the balcony at 1:36", https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/28004-oswald-tippit-and-carl-mather-connecting-some-dots/page/2/, as well as my opening piece one page earlier titled "Oswald, Tippit, and Carl Mather: connecting some dots".

If your question is why was Oswald not wearing his heavy, warm blue jacket at the time he was arrested in the Texas Theatre on Jefferson, after having left the rooming house wearing it, I addressed that in the present article (he took it off in the theatre because it was warm).