Greg Doudna

Bill, do you have a comment on whether Oswald removed his jacket before or after he entered the theater and sat down three seats away from Davis just before the movie came on (at 1:20 pm), as Davis thought the timing was? 

On Brewer 15 minutes later, do you think it is possible Brewer could have misidentified Oswald in the theater as the man he saw through the glass door out front of his store? 

Or do you exclude that as beyond the realm of reasonable possibility—that a witness intending to be truthful could possibly misidentify a person as Oswald who wasn’t? 

19 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

I find it comical that I personally saw Cairns stand in a line that was forty-five minutes long to get their autographs.

@Johnny Cairns

You are better than this Bill. This is about the third or fourth time you have raised this entirely irrelevant point. I do not agree with everything Cairns says in his piece, I continue to think Ruth Paine has been mistreated by this community. But in fairness, Cairns standing in line for a signature or to meet for a moment his person of interest does not strike me as hypocritical or comical, and I do not know what you are on about on that. 

Better to stick to being responsive to the substance of what Cairns writes, not these ad hominem attempts and name-callings. 

Bill, 

6 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

I watched Jack Davis' Oral History interview with Gary Mack for the Sixth Floor Museum long ago.  He certainly didn't say that Oswald was sitting next to him during the opening credits.  In fact, he never said that Oswald sat next to him at all.  He said Oswald started to sit right next to him but then ended up sitting a couple seats away.  Also, Davis says nothing about Oswald sitting next to him during the "film's opening credits".  I'm not sure where you got that from.

As for Crossfire and Jim Marrs (I read the book over 30 years ago), when you consider the Sixth Floor Museum interview with Jack Davis where Davis never says Oswald sat right next to him, it becomes obvious that Marrs is misquoting Davis a bit (or Davis changed his story by the time he sat down with Gary Mack for the Museum interview).

The bottom line is, in the interview Davis gives with Gary Mack for the Museum, he does not say that Oswald sat next to him and he certainly doesn't say that Oswald was sitting beside him during the film's opening credits.  Maybe YOU should go watch the interview again.

As Stu says, Davis says at 8:00, "he set down by me--close to me", before he got up and moved to sit by someone else.

6 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

he certainly doesn't say that Oswald was sitting beside him during the film's opening credits.  Maybe YOU should go watch the interview again.

The "opening credits" is in either the Marrs or Burroughs interview of Davis. In this Sixth Museum video he says at 7:18 concerning the timing that he thought Oswald had sat near him when the movie was just about to come on: "the movie had already come on--had--just about to come on I think it was--and this person came in, and almost sat down behind me ... he was like going down in a sitting motion, changed his mind and moved two seats over ... to my right ... he set down by me--close to me"

3 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

His 1960's era windup wristwatch, which he claims read 1:10 when he arrived, was 5 minutes slow.

You could be right but there is another possibility: his watch was accurate and Bowley who I think first named that 1:10 time the next day was mistaken in memory of the time. A day-later memory of exact-minute  time from a tumultuous and eventful day with much sensory input could involve human witness error. If he told or wrote that time in real time or the same afternoon that would be a different matter, but to my knowledge there is no verification of that, only his later memory saying that was the exact time that day. 

19 minutes ago, Bill Brown said:

First, cite for Davis saying Oswald was ever sitting next to him.

You really don’t know, Bill? It’s in Marrs citing direct interview, Douglass citing another direct interview, and Davis himself videotaped in his oral history for the Sixth Floor Museum.  

1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

Oswald left the rooming house zipping up a jacket as he went out the door.

Oswald is seen by Johnny Brewer standing in front of the shoe store on Jefferson with no jacket.

Forget for a moment the murder of Tippit.  Forget Tenth and Patton.  Forget anything found under a car behind the Texaco station.

Why did Oswald ditch his jacket between the rooming house on Beckley and the shoe store on Jefferson?

Jack Davis inside the theatre said Oswald was inside the theater on the main seating level sitting next to him during the film’s opening credits which ended about 1:20, which is 15 minutes before Brewer. Oswald was already without his jacket at 1:20 in the theater. He must have taken it off either before or after he entered the theater. Most folks take their jackets off after entering a theater. Which do you think?

11 hours ago, Ed LeDoux said:

Lee was size SMALL and bought new clothing.

No other piece of the wardrobe is MED.

Hey Ed—no reflection on you since this has so often been stated (including I believe by Marina in testimony), and there was no way before 2016 for anyone to have known differently, but that is factually not correct that no item of Oswald’s clothing was “M”, that Oswald never wore Medium size.

Check a color photo closeup of the light maroon button-down dress shirt of Oswald (the one Oswald and TSBD coworkers said Oswald wore to work the morning of Nov 22), CE 151, shown on Pat Speer’s website. An inside collar photo closeup shows it is size “M”, medium. Pat Speer was the first to obtain a color photo of that shirt from the National Archives in 2016 (https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4b-threads-of-evidence). The collar reads: "Briarloom Traditional by Enro. M/ 15-15 1/2. An original design. All fine cotton."

I don’t think that jacket was Oswald’s either (though I do think it was the Tippit killer’s). But not because Oswald never wore size Medium, since that point is now settled from the color photo obtained and published by Speer. 

And the press conference where the late Helen Thomas asked why Bush II was intent on going to war with Iraq and the press secretary said with a straight face that the premise of the question was wrong, because “nobody, but nobody, wants to avoid war more than President George W. Bush”. 

And the polls showing at the height of the war fever as high as 65% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had done 911, and that was why Iraq was being attacked. Sort of like if the U.S. launched an attack on Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor. 

And it was intended to have the public believe that without ever actually claiming that. I noticed how Bush’s speechwriters had Bush, repeatedly, putting the words “Saddam Hussein”, “terrorism”, and “911”, in the same sentences.

Bush never outright claimed Saddam Hussein had done 911. There was total deniability that he ever said that.

But by putting those three terms into the same sentences, over and over, that is what caused 65% of Americans to think so.

1 hour ago, Stu Wexler said:

Greg, I would have to go back and find the study, but the issue with  fingerprint analysis (and potential flaws) has less to do with the intrinsic ability of examiners to make a blind match (or mismatch) but with confirmation bias. In this study, they sent fingerprint examiners a set of two prints for comparison-- one lifted from a crime scene, one from a fingerprint card. The examiners were almost universally correct in their assessments, just as in the study you posted. There was one problem: these were not truly blind sets of fingerprints but prints the examiners in question had analyzed for police/the prosecution in past cases. And in some alarming percentage--  like 25% of them-- they offered a *different* opinion than the one they gave years before. The study's researchers argued that it was because in their earlier analysis, the examiners were given background information from the cops or prosecutors. Which was the actual problem in the Mayfield case as well. I was told about this by the lats Dr. Cliff Spiegleman a decade or more ago. Cliff had made it almost his life's work to make sure crime labs conducted almost every analysis completely blindly (not just fingeprints) because of confirmation bias issues.

I would also add that there was a refutation--  "no match to Wallace"-- not long after Darby's match. From one of the former heads of a national fingerprint professional association. If you want an amazing presentation on the fingerprint issue-- find James Olmstead's 2003 Wecht Conference presentation on Youtube.

Stu

Thanks Stu, good points for sure. Do you think confirmation bias could possibly have played a role in all those Oswald print analyses? (Rhetorical question.)

One other thing about that study was how they determined whether an examiner got it right or wrong on a given match to a person. The definition of “correct match” was what other examiners said as consensus, not external objective independent knowledge. The study disclosed this so this is not anything the study itself did not say. But technically the study was actually testing for consistency or replicability of examiner findings, not actual truth of them, if, hypothetically, for some reason 100% of examiners were agreed on an identification of a fingerprint to a person that was however actually not correct. 

I recall two conclusions everyone seemed agreed on from these studies were the importance of blindness, and review of individual examiners’ findings, to reduce incidence of errors. But there was resistance to implementing these two things because it cost more money to do so. 

(duplicate)

On 3/28/2024 at 3:13 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Francois,

That claim in and of itself doesn't matter much to me because it is just the memory of one witness and has no corroboration.

Before something gets started on this, no, no witness ever said or remembered that. Someone hoaxed Grodon.

Greg Parker's old site: https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t559-geraldean-reid.

DiEugenio at the link Carlier gave: https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/groden-robert-absolute-proof

Someone faked that and Grodon bought it. No verification, no tape of the alleged interview whose only evidence is Grodon's claim to have interviewed her with no recording, and published in Grodon's book of 2014. Here is the obituary of TSBD clerical supervisor Mrs. Geraldean Reid who worked on the 2nd floor and died in 1973: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/145566340/jeraldean-reid. This was decades before Grodon's first claim to have interviewed TSBD employee "Geraldine Reid" of the 2nd floor TSBD, which Grodon was told and believed and tried to say was a second TSBD employee of the same-sounding name working on the same 2nd floor with no other TSBD employees ever noticing there were two Mrs. Reid's working on TSBD's 2nd floor with the same name. 

To my knowledge no one has persisted with the Geraldine Reid doppelganger claim of Grodon after the Parker forum and DiEugenio debunkings, so it really has nothing to do with anything at this point, except as one more item, if anyone is listing, of intentional attempts designed to tempt CTs on the JFK case to go down rabbit holes and become even more confused than CT's self-inflict without assistance.

Francois Carlier, I am sure you mean well, but perhaps be more careful about your wording or raising a question like this at all, as if you are purporting to be asking about a real witness claim for Oswald in a way that some persons will read and repeat it as if it is a real witness claim (such as just seen, even one of the moderators of this site).

6 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Seeing as Pat wrote a whole chapter on the box fingerprints, I think it’s worth a link: 

https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4d-the-myth-of-fingerprints-and-the-fingerprints-of-myth

Yes. It was that chapter of Pat Speer which led me to look up a study he cited at one point: Ulery et al., "Accuracy and reliability of forensic latent fingerprint decisions", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108/19 (2011): 7733-7738, which can be read in full here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3093498 .

The study was an early landmark study attempting to quantify how accurate fingerprint identifications were by real-world examiners. Ever since the Brandon Mayfield case in Portland, Oregon of 2004 this has received more attention --I used to live in Portland, I remember that case well, in which a Muslim man was arrested on a serious international terrorism charge based on stated unequivocal, positive fingerprint identifications by the FBI nailing him as guilty, except it wasn't true, it was a mistake, some Spanish examiners said "hey these prints DON'T match, you're wrong!" to the FBI, and it WAS wrong, and Brandon Mayfield was innocent!  

Anyway, back to this 2011 landmark study. What I found of interest was the difference between false positives (mistakenly claiming a match, like in the Brandon Mayfield case), and false negatives (mistakenly finding no match between prints that actually do come from the same person). There are not the same error rates for both of these.

Surprisingly, the false positive error rate found in that study is only a tiny fraction of 1%--it hardly ever happens (except when it does, as with Brandon Mayfield). 

But the false negative rate is very common--about 7%, or about 1 in 13 negative findings or exclusions is wrong, average of all examiners.

I post the abstract to this study at the end below. But consider this, in light of this data: two, not just one, expert and experienced fingerprint examiners stated unequivocally that a fingerprint on a 6th floor TSBD carton was a match to one Mac Wallace, who had no known business being on the 6th floor of the TSBD on Nov 22, 1963.

Not one, but two. In the 2011 study, no false positive (of the tiny fraction of 1% that did happen) was done by two or more examiners on the same print--all false positives were all one-off errors by lone examiners.  

There were two experienced examiners who independently positively identified a print of Mac Wallace on the 6th floor TSBD in a blind analysis, before one of those examiners learned that his fingerprint ID involved the JFK assassination. He had not known that when he signed his unequivocal, professional positive identification. Learning that, he backtracked, did not say he was wrong, but suddenly decided he was no longer sure at all! 

But the other, Darby, stuck to saying, to the end of his life and with all the force in him, that it was clearly an identification, that he knew what he was doing, that there was no mistake, that he could not understand how an unsigned, unattributed response from the FBI after a delay of only a whole year was issued to the press saying the FBI lab did not agree with Darby's Mac Wallace positive print identification, because, Darby insisted to the end of his days, it just was a match, "no question about it".

And I know, I have read Joan Mellen's book and chapter, citing another expert who says unequivocally that Darby's identification was wrong, and to nearly everyone that has seemed to settle it: Darby was wrong, end of story. 

But in the light of this 2011 study though, consider:

Lots of false negatives, those happen all the time (which is what the Mellen cited expert claimed, a false negative--a conclusive finding of no match to Mac Wallace). 

False positives--such as Darby being mistaken--hardly ever happen.

And zero--zero--cases in that study involving 169 latent print examiners, of two examiners' false positives on the same prints in that study. Which is what happened with those Mac Wallace print identifications before one of the two examiners learned of the stakes and suddenly realized he was no longer as certain as he was when he signed saying he was willing to put someone into prison for a long time based on his finding.

All I can say is, either the Darby case is another case exhibit of the Brandon Mayfield case phenomenon, of the very rare but it happens incidence of positive-identification fingerprint examiner error, or...

Or, the question nobody asks: what if the degree of critical scrutiny, which was intense, applied to take down Darby's positive TSBD 6th floor fingerprint identification of somebody who "shouldn't" have been there, were applied to the Oswald print identifications? But to my knowledge, there never was any such serious review of those Oswald fingerprint identifications, in the same way there was for the Darby Mac Wallace ones. Even if most of the Oswald fingerprint identifications held up under review, what if one or two or three actually did not, by the same standards used to take down Darby's finding? How might that affect things? 

(And leave out here the ad hominem toward Darby's lapsed credentials--the only evidence for that, which is denied by Darby's family, is the rather credible oral testimony of the fingerprint examiner cited by Mellen who also was an official in the organization which issued the credentials. But that could be some misunderstanding on Darby's part, and in any case has no bearing or relevance on Darby's expertise itself, only whether the retired Darby was wilfully untruthful in representing his credentials as current in the paperwork. I am not aware of any other allegations of wilful misconduct levied against Darby in his long and respected career.) 

Anyway, here is the abstract of the study:

The interpretation of forensic fingerprint evidence relies on the expertise of latent print examiners. The National Research Council of the National Academies and the legal and forensic sciences communities have called for research to measure the accuracy and reliability of latent print examiners’ decisions, a challenging and complex problem in need of systematic analysis. Our research is focused on the development of empirical approaches to studying this problem. Here, we report on the first large-scale study of the accuracy and reliability of latent print examiners’ decisions, in which 169 latent print examiners each compared approximately 100 pairs of latent and exemplar fingerprints from a pool of 744 pairs. The fingerprints were selected to include a range of attributes and quality encountered in forensic casework, and to be comparable to searches of an automated fingerprint identification system containing more than 58 million subjects. This study evaluated examiners on key decision points in the fingerprint examination process; procedures used operationally include additional safeguards designed to minimize errors. Five examiners made false positive errors for an overall false positive rate of 0.1%. Eighty-five percent of examiners made at least one false negative error for an overall false negative rate of 7.5%. Independent examination of the same comparisons by different participants (analogous to blind verification) was found to detect all false positive errors and the majority of false negative errors in this study. Examiners frequently differed on whether fingerprints were suitable for reaching a conclusion.

9 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:

Greg, if you look at WHERE Oswald's prints were located on the cartons, you'll see that Oswald's prints were ON TOP. It appears that CE 641 was lying on top of CE 648, so he picked it up from the bottom and rolled it over and placed it on top of the box under the window. That's how his prints ended up on the top of CE 641.

His right palm print wrapped around the top corner of CE 648 indicates that he lifted it up to read what was on the carton's inside.

Here's a better look at those Scott-Foresman book cartons in the so-called "Sniper's Nest". Courtesy ( believe it or not ) of David Von Pein's blog. Now you know why he's been silent on this issue. He knows it's fact. Cartons of Scott-Foresman books were stacked in the southeast corner, making up the "wall" that hid the "sniper's nest". Oswald was filling Scott-Foresman orders that day. A witness saw him at 11:55 coming from that area with a clipboard ( not a rifle ) in his hands. On the clipboard were the orders he was in the process of filling. The witness saw the orders. He testified to it.

Oswald's prints on the cartons are not evidence that he fired a rifle. You're correct that it's quite a leap that the Warren Commission and its apologists are willing to make. But the evidence indicates that Oswald was working in that area that day so his fingerprints on those cartons are worthless as evidence and NOT proof of his guilt.

Now, if Oswald had killed JFK by throwing cartons at him, I'd say there was proof there. If that sounds silly, that just tells you how silly the argument is that his fingerprints on the cartons are somehow proof that he fired a rifle.

I've offered a reasonable explanation of why Oswald's fingerprints were on the cartons in the southeast corner of the sixth floor. I've provided evidence in the form of photos and testimony to support that explanation. I challenge any of the Warren Commission supporters to refute anything on this subject that I've posted.

Thanks Gil for this additional. I see the clear “Scott, Foresman, and Company” labelings on the cartons there. 

My only thought in looking at the photos is in reconstructing how the hands would have worked in moving the cartons. I am not sure two hands on the bottom of a carton, then flipping it over on its back such that the hands and prints end up on top, sounds quite right to me. 

I would think if a carton on top of another was to be lifted to move it out of the way, such as CE 641 lifted off the top of CE 648, it would be done by using two full hands on opposite corners of the three-dimensional carton (one on the bottom for lifting and the other on the opposite corner on top for balancing), lift, pivot, then set it back down nearby, same side up. 

That would exactly account for the full left palm print location on CE 641 as one of the two corners held in that way to move the box (the hand on top for balancing). The other hand, his right hand, would be a full right hand cupped under the bottom of the carton at the opposite corner, even though no print was lifted from there. Not everywhere touched would necessarily leave usable prints. The additional right index fingerprint on the top of CE 641 would have been left in the course of moving or adjusting that carton but would not represent a full hand used in lifting the carton, which requires one full hand under the bottom of the carton. 

Then with CE 641 lifted and moved from off the top of CE 648, that right palm print on the top of CE 648 could represent a lifting up just a little of only that end of that carton for a moment, maybe in order to see if anything was written on the side of that end of the carton. That temporary lift of that end of the carton would be done with two hands, the left hand on the other end of the carton at the top holding it from moving, and the right end by pressure pivoting that end up a little as the lifter (Oswald) might peer down to check if maybe a label was there, then release that end back down to the floor again as before. Again, in this reconstruction of CE 648 both hands would have been used to lift that one end only of that carton a few inches up off the floor before setting it back down on the floor, even though a usable print was lifted from only one of those hand contacts.

Since there is no mention in the reports or visible sign of those cartons being opened, I assume the way this reconstruction would work is there must have been labelings (or maybe penciled information?—something) on the outside identifying contents inside, and Oswald would be checking or looking for that, looking for the right carton which would have what was needed for an order, which in this case the CE 648 carton was not (which would be why it was not opened).

Whether or not my proposed slight modification of how the hand movements would work in moving the cartons, as you bring out there is this alternative explanation for those carton prints of Oswald in which those prints, in themselves, do not strongly indicate Oswald was there to fire the rifle, as long assumed, even though those prints establish he was there. Thanks for bringing out your research on this. 

8 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:

According to Oswald’s supervisor, William Shelley, that morning Oswald had been filling orders for Scott-Foresman Publishing, one of the tenants of the Texas School Book Depository building. In fact, Shelley testified that Oswald filled mostly Scott-Foresman orders. ( 6 H 332 )

Superintendent Roy Truly testified that overflow stock of Scott-Foresman books were kept on the sixth floor and that Oswald, “had occasion to go to the sixth floor quite a number of times every day, each day after books.” ( 3 H 215 )

Studebaker Exhibit A shows evidence that cartons of Scott-Foresman books were in the southeast corner of the sixth floor and made up part of the “wall” that was the “sniper’s nest”.

In fact, Charles Givens testified that he saw Oswald coming from the southeast corner at 11:55 pm  ( 6 H 349 ) and he had his, "board with his orders on it."

So we would expect to find Oswald's fingerprints on cartons in that area if he were moving cartons in his search for books to fill those orders.

Good argument on this point Gil.

The argument has always been that it looks like a smoking-gun incrimination, too much to be coincidence, that of all TSBD employees, Oswald's is the only known TSBD employee fingerprint match found on those cartons in the location from which a shooter was seen and three shell hulls found.

But Gil Jesus has just shown a plausible explanation for why Oswald's, and not any other TSBD employee's, fingerprints might reasonably turn up on those cartons there, in a way not necessarily implicating Oswald in shooting: his work filling orders for Scott Foresman books (assuming that lettering on the side of that carton in the photo of the arrow in the illustration confirms Scott Foresman books; I cannot quite verify that from reading it myself).

To advocates of the Oswald LN interpretation, this is no problem because Oswald still could have done it. But it starts to go in circles when convicting someone on the basis that he could have done the crime, as distinguished from proof that he did.

Also, I would like to add something to my earlier hypothetical (below)--that hypothetical is on the assumption of today's known information as the basis for the then-juries' consideration in the hypothetical. In a real trial, if Oswald had lived to come to trial and had pleaded not guilty (and not by reason of insanity), he or his counsel could well have sought and obtained through discovery and/or direct testimony from Oswald unknown other information, such as e.g. Oswald as an informant, or working with, say, the ATTU (Alcohol, Tobacco, Tax Unit, today's ATF) on a mail-order firearms investigation being carried out by the Dodd committee in Congress, related to the rifle, or whatever. So the hypothetical below is likely not based on everything of importance that juries might have considered in reality, since what additional Oswald might have brought forward with the assistance of counsel is not known.  

18 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

If the above considerations were brought out in a trial of Oswald by competent defense counsel, I can imagine it resulting in a series of hung juries, juries capable of neither finding that he did or didn't do it. 

17 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Whether or not the rifle's scope had to be "sighted in" after being reassembled is something that I don't think has been proven one way or the other. And it's largely a moot point when we consider that Oswald might very well have utilized the rifle's iron sights instead of using the scope on November 22nd.

I doubt very much your first sentence is correct--expert testimony I have read says the least bump on a scoped rifle, as inevitable in a breaking-down and reassembly, would throw that sighted-in scope out of whack. So the response from your position (LN Oswald shooter) must be that he fired through the iron sights, which was the HSCA firearms panel position, because firing the JFK assassination shots using the scope was considered just not reasonable to those HSCA experts. 

But to stay with this point a moment: I have just reread Pat Speer's chapter 4g recommended by Tom Gram, https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-4g-thoughts-on-shots-and-the-curtain-rod-story. After all of the sniper experts, gun experts, failed attempts at replication, etc. cited up and down by Speer saying that Oswald from logistics and expertise considerations could not realistically have landed those shots accurately on JFK from the 6th floor window as the Warren Commission concluded, given the specifics of the weapon and Oswald's degree of skill and lack of practice, to say there is "reasonable doubt" that Oswald was the gunman who killed Kennedy is an understatement. Can you truthfully say you have read Pat Speer's 4g and what is brought out there does not cause any cognitive dissonance, any reasonable doubt, to you, on this point? 

Surely the JFK assassination was done by professionals whoever did it, and LHO was not a professional, nor is there any indication he was other than a mediocre and inexperienced shot, nor is there any indication he practiced at all in the weeks prior to the assassination (the Sports Drome sightings are not since it can be excluded that that was Oswald), and the best interpretation of the gunshot residue test on his cheeks is that Oswald did not fire his rifle that day. Do these things not call for reasonable doubt, despite the things that look incriminating? Not over the rifle found on the 6th floor having been his. But over Oswald having fired that rifle that day. 

Here I have to go back to my two studies which I believe have brought a new fact to the table--namely that Oswald with Marina's assistance on Nov 11 removed the rifle from Oswald's belongings in Ruth Paine's garage, took that rifle to a gun shop in Irving, and had the scope base repaired and the original scope put back on and the rifle sighted-in.

After which there is an 11-day gap in which nothing presently is known with certainty of where that rifle was or who had it, until its presence becomes known again on Nov 22 on the 6th floor of the TSBD.

My two studies on this are the Furniture Mart study (https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/JFK-Furniture-Mart-mystery-105-pdf2.pdf) and Irving Sport Shop study (https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Irving-Sport-Shop-109-pdf.pdf).

I don't even know what the correct interpretation of this Nov 11 finding and the 11-day gap is or should be. All I know is that the Nov 11 scope reinstallation on that rifle by Oswald that day is a fact, and there is an absence of evidence concerning where that rifle next went and in whose custody or possession it was for the next 11 days after Oswald had that scope put back on and the rifle sighted-in on Nov 11.

That heretofore-unrecognized FACT (as I believe a fair reading of my two studies should make clear to a fair reader that that is what it is) raises several questions related to the scope vs iron sights issue on Nov 22.

First, the scope that came with that rifle from Klein's of Chicago was crap, everybody agrees on that. The rifle itself was serviceable and not crap, but the scope was crap, such that it is no surprise that Oswald (or somebody) would simply in frustration with it just unscrew it and take it off. We know that happened with Oswald's rifle, the evidence being that it did not have the scope on it when it came out of the garage on Nov 11, even though it had been shipped to Oswald in March 1963 with the scope installed. 

The question that follows is, why would Oswald on Nov 11 go to expense and effort to get a crappy scope put back on, that was really worthless and unusable by Oswald?

And next, why would Oswald not only have the scope put back on, but have the rifle sighted-in, if he was going to break it down again to put it back into the garage, which would destroy the boresighting for which he was charged and paid $1.50 that morning of Nov 11?

But this last point is not quite unequivocal. For Dial Ryder at the Irving Sport Shop, alone in the shop that day, Veterans Day, was doing that job for cash for a walk-in stranger, not a recognized or familiar customer of the shop. And it is possible that Ryder overcharged Oswald because he could (incentivized because the cash from Oswald was going into Ryder's pocket, bypassing the cash register in that transaction). I believe either Ryder or owner Greener testified that commonly when scope installations were done at that shop the boresighting would be done as an additional courtesy without charge, although the shop would be within its rights to charge $1.50, the posted price if someone came in just to get a boresighting. Ryder quoted to Oswald for the scope installation AND additional for the boresighting, instead of doing the boresighting for free on that job as, apparently, was commonly done with other customer scope installations.

This could raise a slight uncertainty whether the boresighting was what Oswald wanted done, or whether Ryder told him it had to be done, required as policy by the shop or something. We do not know exactly how that worked with that cash transaction.

But if that boresighting was done because Oswald wanted it done, then it could be said as a further fact that logically follows, that Oswald did not return the rifle broken-down back into the garage, for that would make no sense (it would mean wasted money just spent on the boresighting). But, there is that slight uncertainty over whether the boresighting was Oswald's idea or whether Ryder sort of took advantage of a cash-paying one-time customer who did not know any better.

But leaving that detail aside, one has to ask why Oswald goes to all that trouble and expense to get a known crappy scope repaired and reinstalled on Nov 11, and the rifle sighted-in, when Oswald was not using the rifle at that point, had no known cleaning supplies, no ammunition for it was found in his belongings, and he never did a speck of target practice with it after Nov 11 ... yet he fixed it up on Nov 11 as if readying it for some reason.

What reason? A sale? A trade? A "sting" (as in a government sting of some kind)? For use as a prop himself? Who knows!

But whatever the purpose was, one purpose it seems not to have been: a plan to assassinate someone with it (because in that case he would target practice, have cleaning supplies, have ammo, etc.). And it seems Oswald's purpose was not so that he could go hunting with it either (when? how?).

On the sale idea (if so), I have a pretty strong hunch that if Oswald was prepping it for a sale, Oswald would have had the buyer already lined up, because the effort and expense Oswald put into that scope repair and reinstallation does not ring plausibly for Oswald fixing it up with the idea of "maybe" finding a buyer afterward, or to maybe take it to some nearby pawn shop the same day where he would be lucky to recover the amount he paid to repair the scope on it, etc.

And so taking out the uncertainties, the FACTS are that the rifle is last known in Oswald's possession, on Nov 11, in Irving, out of the garage, in fully intact form, scoped and sighted-in. And is next known on Nov 22, in fully intact form, on the 6th floor TSBD, claimed by FBI lab findings to have fired bullets at JFK.

So it was Oswald's rifle, and the rifle by some means 11 days later had been infiltrated into the TSBD and was on the 6th floor involved in the assassination.

But while it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that was or had been Oswald's rifle, and, according to the FBI that rifle was fired at the president, it is not quite so clear that Oswald was the one who infiltrated that rifle into the TSBD, and fired it at President Kennedy on Nov 22, as opposed to that rifle having been planted there and Oswald thereby framed, not necessarily as the shooter, but as the owner of the rifle which did the shooting.

If the above considerations were brought out in a trial of Oswald by competent defense counsel, I can imagine it resulting in a series of hung juries, juries capable of neither finding that he did or didn't do it. From our perspective, sixty years later, we are interested not in whether there was legal basis to convict, but the historical factual question of did he do it, on preponderance of evidence criteria not necessarily the higher threshold of beyond reasonable doubt. 

The gunshot residue test on Oswald's face, and Pat Speer's argument that some of Oswald's clothing showed signs of gunshot residue testing which was done but not reported (because no gunshot residue was found on Oswald's clothing as would be expected, the logical suspicion!), alone could tip the preponderance of evidence criterion in favor of Oswald's exoneration as shooter of the rifle which was or had been his.  

10 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Thanks for your thoughts, Greg.

A correction on my part: Secret Service inspector Kelley reported Oswald denied seeing the parade from an earlier interrogation on Saturday, not the final one of Sunday morning Nov 24.

While I have your attention though, I wonder if you could comment on Gil Jesus's point about a broken-down rifle after reassembly would need to be sighted-in anew, involving shooting the rifle, in order to be useful with accuracy in the assassination. Gil Jesus cited expert testimony that multiple shots would be required to accomplish that.

But Oswald did not fire target shooting in the TSBD on the morning of Nov 22--did not sight the rifle in in the TSBD that morning after a reassembly--before, according to the Warren Commission, being the shooter using that rifle to fire at and accurately hit the president using a rifle that had to have been sighted-in. 

Does it not appear that the Mannlicher-Carcano had to have been infiltrated into the TSBD intact so as to be sighted-in, i.e. not in broken-down form on the morning of Nov 22 and then reassembled in the building that morning and used without any mechanism for having it sighted-in? 

But if the rifle was infiltrated into the building intact and sighted-in, not in broken-down condition, then it was not infiltrated into the building by Oswald on the morning of Nov 22 but through some other mechanism which could even have been on an earlier day than Nov 22.  

Since you are knowledgeable of and advocate the LN view, what is the LN-view response to this? I am unable to find in Bugliosi's Reclaiming History, either from memory of prior reading or in the index just now, anywhere where Bugliosi addresses this. Do you know if Bugliosi addresses this? Do you address it on your website? 

Here is what Gil Jesus wrote on this point earlier in this discussion. Thanks in advance for your response to it.  

18 hours ago, Gil Jesus said:

any rifleman will tell you that once a rifle is disassembled, the scope has to be readjusted because you lose "Zero" ( the POI or Point of Impact ). The Commission's own expert on the scope, Sgt. James Zahm, testified that in order to scope the rifle in, Oswald would have had to have fired ten rounds through the weapon.  ( 11 H 308 )

(...)

There's no way he could have fired off ten rounds without anyone knowing and scoped that rifle in once he reassembled it.

Now, I've given you chapter and verse on why Oswald was not the shooter on the sixth floor at 12:30.

24 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

Sandy,

Why do you think Hosty's rough notes are more believable (and spot-on accurate) than Kelley's final report? Please explain that to me.

David, I'm mostly with you on this exchange you've been having with Sandy, but on this business with Kelley of the Secret Service there may be something to the possibility that Kelley was neither reflecting truthfully what Oswald said, nor misunderstanding something, but knowingly writing falsely in his written report to his superiors re the Oswald interrogation of Sun Nov 24.

There is the direct contradiction between Hosty's note in which Oswald told Hosty he went out to watch the Parade, and Kelley's report in which Oswald told Kelley he did not. Either Oswald gave opposite answers at two different times, or one of the agents' interpretation or reporting of what Oswald said is the opposite of the truth. And it is difficult to imagine misunderstanding a yes or no statement of Oswald on the Parade watching issue as Oswald saying the opposite. Therefore, its either Oswald contradicted himself, or one of the agents (Hosty or Kelley) was fibbing. Between the two: Hosty's handwritten notes seem to have the stronger claim to being unfiltered and truthful. 

Here is the case for Kelley's report (not Hosty's notes) being the false one between those two:

It is that Kelley appears to have falsely reported his interaction with Oswald on Sunday morning in general as a larger general statement. The chief exhibit on this is Kelley wrote in his report that there was no discussion of Mexico City ("It is my recollection that during this interrogation, Oswald was not asked about nor did he speak of a trip that he took to Mexico"; https://www.maryferrell.org/archive/docs/233/233094/images/img_233094_70_300.png). 

That is not what two witnesses said both of whom personally heard Kelley and Oswald talking together that Sunday morning.

Postal Inspector Holmes testified under oath to the Warren Commission, unequivocally and in detail, how he heard Oswald discussing his Mexico City trip with Kelley that morning.

And Dallas Police officer Graves appears to corroborate Holmes on that in his sworn testimony to the Warren Commission ("Well, I couldn't think of Mr. Kelley's name, the last time, but he questioned Oswald along the line of his activity in Mexico and in Russia"; https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=41#relPageId=267).

Here again one is forced to choose between polar opposites as to who is telling the truth on a point: Kelley, or Holmes/Graves.

For some reason practically everyone has favored Kelley as truthful, and decided Holmes was a flagrantly dishonest total fabricator under oath (even though Holmes is supported by Graves), here. Maybe its the other way around. 

I imagine Oswald trying to talk to Kelley, and did talk, some things with Kelley "off the record", that is, things that Kelley was not going to put on the record.

(Another item: Kelley was said to turn up in following days in Chicago asking about "John Heard", i.e. the mysterious "John Hurt" of Oswald's Saturday night failed telephone call attempt. Where did Kelley get that name? Perhaps Sunday morning from Oswald? One of the things Kelley did not report in writing?)

There may even have been early consideration to an idea of covering up Oswald's trip to Mexico City altogether if that could be done, though if so it was not carried out because it could not be convincingly totally denied. Certainly Oswald in Mexico City was not helpful at all to the emerging desired Lone Nut interpretive narrative (replacing the Communist conspiracy idea), so there could be motive to deep-six any Oswald talking re his having gone to Mexico City.

Hosty's notes on Oswald saying he went out to watch the Parade are not reflected in Hosty's typed reports. One interpretation is Oswald did say that but that alibi claim of Oswald was viewed as unhelpful and preferred disappeared from the record, and in this case (unlike with the Mexico City trip) it was possible to do so. All it would take would be someone from FBI making a quiet background request to the Secret Service, perhaps in the name of LBJ, and the request honored even though the two agencies otherwise had a rivalry.

The positive evidence Oswald said he went out to watch the Parade is Hosty's handwritten note on that point is not easily explicable as a misunderstanding on Hosty's part, and arguably reflected what Oswald did say. 

It is hard to know for sure, but my hunch is that Kelley's report did not tell everything of his exchanges with Oswald Sunday morning Nov 24, at a time when Leavelle elsewhere claimed he and Fritz had left Fritz's office (where Oswald was) and gone out for coffee, leaving Oswald to talk to Kelley privately. (Except Holmes and Graves were still there and heard some.)

And I doubt Postal Inspector Holmes was the wilful li-ar in his Warren Commission testimony under oath that it is common in some circles to routlnely assume.

It seems to me an easier thing to massage a written report to one's superiors in an agency in ways desired by one's superiors (e.g. Kelley's report of Sunday morning), than to deliberately flagrantly lie under oath in sworn public testimony, which is perjury and a crime (as many have supposed to be the case with Inspector Holmes' Warren Commission testimony), simply in terms of which has the higher threshold or barrier of intimidation factor. Perjury is a serious thing and can land one in prison.

On the eating lunch after getting the coke after the assassination thing which makes no sense, that is a distortion or misunderstanding of what Oswald would have and surely did say. Oswald would have spoken of going up to the second floor to get a coke with his lunch before the assassination, the logical time to go up to get a coke. Then after the assassination he went up to the second floor a second time, this time not to get a coke but to make his way to the rear of the building and down the stairs and out a rear door unobtrusively, but he reversed direction when seeing and encountering Baker. At least that is a possible reconstruction (with credit to Andrej Stancak for the proposal). 

55 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Whew!

Geez Pat, now you're like the forum Michael Jackson, put up on a pedestal only to be ravaged. again!

You're obviously a survivor Pat, as I noticed 2 rather hostile titled  extended threads bearing your name here recently and I was thinking how many hours you probably had to expend reexplaining yourself. Anyway, glad you survived and were not shamed to death!

I knew Francois to be a LNer from his occasional stops on the forum, but you come off real well  as the interviewee.

Don't beat yourself up. I  certainly thought you were easily lucid enough to be President!

I don't agree with some of Pat's conclusions but I love his method. of putting evidence up to the test and if it doesn't cut it, in his mind, he looks for other answers.

If your journey into the JFKA has been very linear and you've largely accepted the story line you've been told. If you never read a JFKA  book, or an author that you first believed that you later called into question., or a super author  statement that you came to doubt., or put to test and resisted the newest forum groundswell theory.  Then you won't understand Pat.

Yes. 

1 hour ago, Robert Morrow said:

Greg Doudna - furthermore, anyone can make an offhanded remark that in most political systems in the world, change only comes through violence. Most countries are not democracies. I does not mean the person saying that is ready to start tossing Molotov cocktails.That means the social order is held through violence or implied violence if you get out of line. And it seems, for the most part, only violence can "change" those social orders.

I think MIchael Paine from 1964 onward was under pressure to present Oswald in the least favorable light and only as the decades wore on did the start to say stuff like Oswald thought that JFK was the best president in his lifetime.

Yes it is an offhanded remark that in certain contexts practically anyone could say, true, but the point here is MIchael Paine's earliest testimony is so consistent and strong that he did not hear Oswald say that, even though decades later Michael Paine claimed he did hear Oswald say that. It is a straightforward secondary development in memory, in which what Michael believed Oswald believed though unspoken, became in his, Michael's, later memory literally though falsely remembered as if he had heard Oswald actually speak it.

I do not think it is quite correct to interpret Michael Paine's negative portrayal of Oswald and political violence as being caused by "pressure" in any overt or brute sense from other persons or officials. At least I don't see it.

My interpretation would be that Michael Paine, just like Ruth and the early Marina, believed that Lee had killed Kennedy; that belief can only have been incredibly traumatic; and as with all humans with gaps in explanation, the "why?" questions, get filled in with answers made up and generated if none already exist, because that is wired into how human minds work--if an explanation is not known, one will be made up to fill in the blanks. Lots of studies have been done on this phenomenon. 

In reading Michael Paine's Warren Commission testimony of his talks with his coworker at Bell the day of the assassination, and of the coworker, as they tell it first when Michael heard the report that the TSBD was connected to the assassination he wondered if it could have been Lee, but did not believe it could be, because it made little sense from what Michael knew of Lee. It was only when the report came in later on the news in which Oswald was named in connection with the killing of the police officer, Tippit, that tipped Michael to accept that Lee was guilty of both killings. (That account of both Michael and his coworker sounds very plausible to me as a sequence.)

The point is Michael was, so to speak, convinced or forced against his instincts concerning Oswald's guilt by the force of the evidence as he understood it. And it had to have been traumatic and he, like anyone, would struggle to understand "why". In that vacuum, that drive to understand "why", I believe is the most likely reconstruction for how Michael fixed on this idea of a political violence belief of Oswald as his reconstructed explanation.

If you mean Michael was "under pressure" in terms of the soft but powerful pressure of how others in society and peers are thinking, a human herd-think phenomenon, then yes maybe in that sense of "under pressure". I just doubt there were unseen handlers in the picture giving secret orders or threats or urgings to Michael Paine on what to say or think. Among other things, Michael Paine comes across as too independent-minded to easily allow someone else to tell him what to say or think. However, who knows for sure. 

5 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

[Quoting from a 2018 newspaper article about Michael Paine.] In a 2013 essay he titled, “My Experience with Lee Harvey Oswald,” Paine recalled that Oswald once declared emphatically that “change only comes through violence.”

“I’d also heard him say that President Kennedy was the best president he had in his lifetime. Looking back on what happened, these two statements seem impossibly contradictory … how could a man want to kill a president whom he thought was the best president he’d had in his lifetime?”

In his later years Michael Paine repeatedly claimed in interviews that he clearly remembered Oswald having said to him, "change only comes through violence".

That was probably the most central belief Michael Paine attributed to Oswald, and the most central quotation Michael Paine reported he had heard from Oswald.

I don't think there is sufficient awareness or recognition that that was literally a manufactured memory on the part of Michael Paine.

Not an intentional lie, Michael Paine thoroughly believed his own manufactured memory. But a manufactured memory nevertheless.

Michael Paine probably forgot that in his testimony in 1964 to the Warren Commission he repeatedly testified explicitly that he never heard Oswald say any such thing.

Mr. PAINE - He did not indicate or reveal to me how he thought it [economic change] would come about and I on several occasions felt by his, perceived from his attitude or felt impelled by his attitude to say that the values that I held dear were diminished in a situation of violence, to which he remained silent and I took it as disagreement. But I don't remember if he had said that.
Senator COOPER - He remained silent when you spoke about that?
Mr. PAINE - When I said I was opposed to violence or said, why, when I said that he remained silent and I took it-- 
Senator COOPER - You took it that he disagreed in any way by your statement?
Mr. PAINE - Well, just by the way he would sort of withdraw.
Senator COOPER - He did not agree with your position?
Mr. PAINE - He did not agree; no.
Senator COOPER - That violence was unacceptable as a means of change?
Mr. PAINE - That is right, and I don't think he perceived also, was a war of the kind of values that I am--tolerance, for instance seems to me disappears when strained situations--
Senator COOPER - Did you discuss at least the kind of economic changes that had occurred in Russia by means of violence?
Mr. PAINE - No; I was trying to find out whether he thought it was going to come by revolution or not and he never did say, I never got an answer as to how he thought this change was going to come. He did not reveal constructive, or from my point of view, constructive effort to make.
Senator COOPER - Did he ever discuss the revolution in Russia where by means of violence the change had come about?
Mr. PAINE - He did not. That would have been the kind of argument I would have accepted, a normal kind that you would have accepted it as evidence here is the normal way to produce it, but he never said that.
Senator COOPER - Did he ever say any way in which he was expecting Russia or any other country to indicate that he felt the use of violence had produced good?
Mr. PAINE - No. As I say he did not--I would have accepted that argument as a debating argument but he didn't bring it up.
Senator COOPER - That is all.
Mr. DULLES - Did he say or did you get the impression that he felt that violence was the only way to improve things, let's say, in the United States?
Mr. PAINE - I felt he was so disgusted with the whole system that he didn't see a way that was worthwhile fussing around trying to modify the situation.
Mr. DULLES - Other than violence or he didn't go that far?
Mr. PAINE - He didn't mention advocating violence or didn't say anything in regard to violence but he did seem to me he didn't see dismissed as trivial, no difference between the parties so why join one party or another. They were all the same. Churches--there is no avenue out that way. Education--there is nothing there. So that he never revealed to me any constructive way that wasn't violent.

Comment: because Oswald never told Michael Paine how he believed change would come about and appeared to disagree with Michael's advocacy of peaceful reforms as the way positive change would come about, Michael Paine interpreted that as Oswald believed in violence, even while repeatedly and explicitly testifying under oath that Oswald never advocated or spoke favorably of violence in Michael Paine's hearing.

And Michael Paine appears to have misunderstood Oswald's silences or body language disagreement with Michael's peaceful reforms view, which Michael Paine interpreted as: therefore, Oswald believes in violence as the only way. 

In Oswald's political writings there is nothing advocating violence, no belief that violence is the only way, no call for violent revolution, nothing in support of the belief that Michael Paine attributed to Oswald.

Oswald's political writings show Oswald's view or belief was that both Soviet and American systems would collapse on their own. Following that collapse--which would occur on its own, no role of violence by activists recommended or necessary to assist that in happening--then would be the possibility for better and more just non-oppressive economic and social systems following those collapses.

What activists should do now, prior to those collapses, in Oswald's political writings, was not violent overthrow, but organize and prepare to be ready to implement better systems post-collapse.

No violent revolution of activists mentioned in this picture, for Oswald, in his writings.

Michael Paine misunderstood Oswald's silence to the "how change comes about" question and body language disagreement to Michael Paine's belief in peaceful political reforms as the way change would come about. Michael Paine was correct that Oswald did not agree, but misunderstood what Oswald actually believed. Oswald had no optimism that reforms in the existing systems would work, wasted energies so to speak from Oswald's point of view. But that did not mean Oswald was advocating violent revolution, which Michael Paine assumed was the only other possible alternative, which therefore Oswald must believe--Michael Paine interpreted wrongly with respect to Oswald's thinking. 

Then Michael Paine manufactured a memory that he had heard Oswald explicitly say that violence was the only way, even though Oswald did not.

On 3/21/2024 at 3:33 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Let me add this:

When people start using the likes of Aaron Kohn on New Orleans,  I mean its time to throw in the towel.

Kohn was in bed with Shaw's lawyers up to his neck.

Whoah on this.

Aaron Kohn was in the forefront of truthfully telling of the enormous economic power and influence on politicians of New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello. Marcello as one of America's leading mob bosses was denied above all by two persons in particular: local FBI agent Regis Kennedy, and District Attorney Jim Garrison, for both of whom, if one were to believe them, Marcello was an honest grocery wholesaler not one of the most powerful mob bosses in America.

According to Kohn's information, which is pretty much standard to every historian today and was the view of Robert Kennedy of the Justice Department at the time, Marcello's organized and illegal billion-dollar gambling rackets alone made Marcello's gambling the biggest industry in Louisiana. That's not counting prostitution, narcotics, bribes to public officials, mob murders, and his legitimate businesses such as nightclubs owned through cutouts, one of which one report says was the Carousel Club of Dallas managed by Jack Ruby (who may have been Marcello's means of contacts with the Dallas Police). 

You can side with Aaron Kohn and Robert Kennedy and practically every authority on the mob today. Or you can side with Garrison who literally denied with a straight face that Marcello was involved in organized crime in 1963. 

Don't attack Aaron Kohn because he was right on that.

What then was Aaron Kohn's crime? As if it is forbidden by DiEugenio to cite him?

I do not know whether Aaron Kohn crossed the line in terms of acting illegally or unethically in assisting the defense of a man innocent of the charges Garrison brought against Clay Shaw. But Aaron Kohn is not to be faulted for an objective of calling out a wrongful prosecution of a man innocent of the charges Garrison was levying, if that is what is considered Kohn's crime.

Are there more than maybe 2% complete diehard Garrison fundamentalists among researchers of the JFK assassination who can look themselves in the mirror and say they truly believe Clay Shaw was a witting, active part of assassinating President Kennedy? 

There was not a shred of evidence presented of that. Not one shred.

Mark Lane didn't believe it.

Garrison's assistant district attorney Volz, who ran the office while Garrison pursued the JFK assassination investigation, didn't believe it.

Hardly any CT's today seriously believe it.

A basic question: Is it OK to prosecute or legally lynch an innocent man, if its Garrison and its for a good cause? 

And the answer should be clear to any rational person: no, it is not.

Just because Clay Shaw was mixed up with the CIA in some unclear way in an international trade area and did not answer honestly about that, or lied about not knowing Ferrie at a time when neither had been publicly outed as gay, does not make him logically a conspirator in the assassination of President Kennedy.

What does, then?

If you ask DiEugenio, he will tell you it is because Clay Shaw denied he was with Oswald in Clinton, Louisiana assisting Oswald in registering to vote and apply for a job in a mental hospital in that city, obvious evidence that Clay Shaw was plotting to kill JFK. 

Or, that Clay Shaw denied he was the caller who called Marcello-connected attorney Dean Andrews "asking" Dean Andrews to go to Dallas to defend Oswald in a manner Dean Andrews could not refuse, and also could not say who it was, "because he liked to continue breathing" as he told someone in explanation.

Those denials of Clay Shaw, in the logic of DiEugenio, are evidence that Clay Shaw plotted to kill JFK.

I don't think so.

I am reading William Davy, Let Justice Be Done (1999), which argues in defense of Garrison.

Davy claims Garrison did suspect the mob in the assassination and that any claim that Garrison did not is completely untrue

"the charge that Garrison never considered the mob as a suspect in the assassination is once again the stuff of nonsense" (p. 155)

... and that Garrison believed the mob was responsible for the assassination, along with anti-Castroites

"In June of 1967, the FBI had information that Garrison was pursuing the mob angle. An FBI source reported that 'Garrison believed that organized crime, specifically, "La Cosa Nostra" is responsible along with other Anti-Castroites for the assassination." (p. 156) 

... and that Garrison considered involving Marcello in the JFK assassination

"...Further proof [that the charge that Garrison never considered the mob is nonsense] is offered by intelligence operative Gordon Novel. The reader is already familiar with his deposition taken during his unsuccessful libel suit against Garrison and Playboy magazine. During the deposition Novel is asked:

Q. What business did you have with Mr. Marcello?

A. I was trying to locate a Mr. Haggeman, who was an arch enemy of Mr. Garrison, and at the time he informed me that Mr. Garrison was considering involving him in the assassination.

Q. Marcello or Haggeman?

A. Mr. Marcello." (p. 155)

... even though at the same time, Davy continues, Marcello was clean of any charge of involvement in organized crime in New Orleans:

"As Garrison wrote in a April 17, 1968 letter to Donald Organ, 'Mr. Kohn had publicly admitted that it was he who made all of the information initially available to Life magazine. Inside the Grand Jury room, with the doors shut, Mr. Kohn admitted that he really did not have any evidence of any kind that organized crime was occurring in New Orleans.' Kohn also admitted as much in an interview with Garrison and his staff prior to his Grand Jury appearance. When one of the executives of Kohn's Crime Commission appeared before the Grand Jury, he admitted, 'No, we have nothing, we have no evidence to put before the Grand Jury.' The outgoing Grand Jury concurred when they wrote a blistering criticism of Kohn and his methods in their final report: 

'Organized crime, as we understand the term, exists in areas that are saturated with corrupt officials. Wherever there is an alert Mayor, an honest and intelligent Chief of Police, with an upgraded police force, and an aggressive District Attorney's Office, organized crime cannot exist.

'If these officials do not all cooperate and participate in this scheme it cannot flourish because no one official is capable of protecting the illegal endeavors of the so-called "syndicate." A combination without any one official is doomed. 

'To accept Mr. Kohn's view, in this particular area, we must assume the dishonesty of all the aforementioned public officials, plus a dishonest Governor.

'We, as laymen, acting for the community, can only evaluate what has been sworn to under oath.

'The allegations of organized crime in this Parish ha[ve] been fathered by the Metropolitan Crime Commission and published, with their approval, in Life Magazine ... We wish to emphasize that we are not against a properly handled Crime Commission, only against thought-less individuals who, without sufficient foundation, make allegations and then fail to produce proof of these allegations and refuse to give what information they might have to the proper officials.'" (pp. 157-158)

Davy does not explain why, if these claims are true--that Garrison suspected the mob was responsible for the JFK assassination and considered going after Marcello--that Garrison did not undertake any investigation of Marcello related to the JFK assassination.

Why no investigation of that particular suspect, among the suspects Garrison did name and go after?

RFK and the Justice Department considered Marcello one of the leading mobsters in America. According to many sources such as Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, who had instructed his staff to make Marcello one of his top organized crime targets in America, suspected Marcello had killed his brother. 

Marcello was named by the US Congress at the conclusion of its investigation, along with Trafficante of Florida, as a "likely suspect" in the JFK assassination.

If so, it would not be Marcello alone. It would be with Trafficante of Florida who may have supplied the gunmen (one of whom will not have been Oswald), such as, perhaps, anti-Castro Cubans of John Martino's circles and involved with CIA Miami. 

If Marcello and Trafficante are considered mid-level, not top deciders, in the assassination, most of the objections commonly expressed against the notion of the JFKA as a mob hit are removed and become straw man objections.

Aaron Kohn and the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission were not the problem, for telling the truth about Marcello and organized crime in their city. 

Garrison was at fault for not lifting a finger to investigate it with respect to the JFK assassination. How it looks to me.

What a great interview, and interviewer.

.

Pat S., I echo the sentiments of Charles Blackmon. 

Your chapter on the INAA testing; the appearance of coverup in the reporting/disclosure of it or rather lack thereof; the fact that firing the Mannlicher-Carcano would leave GSR (gunshot residue) on Oswald’s face if he had done so and yet there was no GSR on Oswald’s face; your work on the little-noticed but apparent coverup of GSR testing on clothing of Oswald with likely unreported results … comes close to stand-alone exoneration of Oswald as a rifle shooter on Nov 22. 

Added to that: the absence of any evidence he was a good shot and a lot of indication he wasn’t (including the underappreciated force of a physical coordination aptitude test of Oswald at the TEC undertaken in 1962 and again in 1963 as told by Laura Kittrell with the 1962 results a matter of record in the WC exhibits but unremarked); the total lack of ammo or rifle cleaning supplies in Oswald’s belongings; the total lack of any practice shooting with the rifle in the weeks, days, and hours leading up to the assassination; and the absolutely inexplicable failure of a supposed lone nut fanatic on the 6th floor to shoot JFK in the perfect-shot approach on Houston (indirectly but powerfully suggestive of an ambush planned on the presidential limousine at a later position on Elm) … how could a jury presented by those considerations by a competent defense counsel fail to have reasonable doubt that Oswald personally killed JFK, and on the basis of clear reasonable doubt, acquittal? 

And the palm print on the barrel was said by Day to be an old print (therefore of no use in proving Oswald fired on Nov 22), and the years-later belated claim of a trigger guard print match to Oswald is just not credible in terms of convincing. 

A jury would be convinced the rifle had been Oswald’s. And Oswald’s behavior and seemingly gratuitously false answers to some questions in interrogation are strange, but fall short of establishing Oswald fired that rifle. From the known information, it could well have been contested, if Oswald and his counsel chose to contest it in court, whether Oswald was aware of the presence of his rifle in the TSBD on the 6th floor that day. 

Here is where what I believe to be a development in the case of my own contribution enters, the fact (as I believe it to be and believe I have shown to be the case sufficient to convince most reasonable informed readers who read the argument and think about it) that Lee and Marina removed the rifle from where it had been with other of Lee’s belongings in Ruth Paine’s garage, on Nov 11, 1963, following which there is a total black hole absence of information on where that rifle was, and in whose custody, for the next 11 days until it turned up where it did on Nov 22. 

As DPD Chief Curry put it, he did not deny the rifle was (or had been up to Nov 11) Oswald’s. But Curry said no one could put that rifle in Oswald’s hands at the moments the shots were fired, on Nov 22. 

And the resisting arrest, the apparent false answers after his arrest under interrogation, the fact the rifle had been his … I understand many states today do not allow even an overt confession alone as a basis for conviction of a capital crime unless there is independent corroborating evidence. (And of course Oswald never confessed; strenuously denied he had killed anyone and claimed he was being framed… then shot dead before he could come to trial.)

Arguments of a suspect’s guilt from confession alone, or the even weaker “consciousness of guilt” genre of argument, I understand are today considered insufficient in many jurisdictions due to high incidences of false confessions and misinterpretation based on subjective interpretations of how suspects look and behave. 

And then your separate section on the threads reported found on the rifle butt matching to the arrest shirt which Oswald first put on that day at 1 pm (!) in Oak Cliff, after the shots were fired that killed JFK, is classic. And you obtained and published the first color photo of the button-down light maroon dress shirt Oswald actually wore that morning, and you have made all of your work open-access, on your website. 

I recently spent some time rereading Bugliosi and in particular what he claimed in conclusion were 53 evidences for Oswald’s guilt. I was surprised at how insubstantial about 3/4 of the points were, and the dozen or so I found of some prosecutorial force had reasonable alternative explanations with ambiguity, not certainty, as the correct conclusion, such that Bugliosi overstated the case against Oswald.

Sadly, it looks like America had its own banana republic event in 1963 in which some faction shot a rival out of political office, and too many in power either didn’t know or didn’t want to know what had happened and did not have the will to find out. 

I was in a fourth grade public school classroom in Akron, Ohio, the day President Kennedy was shot. And then it happened again in 1968 with MLK, Jr. who was bringing about structural change in America, and then a month later again with Robert Kennedy, with Robert slain just as he was poised for likely electoral success and election as President in 1968 if he had not been slain. 

(...)