Greg Doudna

Max Good, could you say what was your source on the claim that dozens of files related to the Paines remain classified? 

[I originally posted this Oc 6, 2021 on another topic thread, "An argument for actual innocence of Oswald in the Tippit case". I repost it because I believe it merits stand-alone attention--gd]

 

The Jackets as exculpation of Oswald as the Tippit killer: an analysis

by Greg Doudna

First the starting fact: Oswald had two, and only two, jackets, one gray and one blue. This starting fact is not in dispute. Note below that “light” (Oswald’s gray jacket) and “heavy” (Oswald’s blue jacket) do not refer to color tone but rather to the weight or warmth of the jacket.

“Marina was questioned further concerning clothing jackets which had been owned by Lee Harvey Oswald. She said to the best of her recollection Lee Harvey Oswald had only two jackets, one a heavy jacket, blue in color, and another light jacket, grey in color. She said she believes Oswald possessed both of these jackets in Russia and had purchased them in the United States prior to his departure for Russia. She said she cannot recall that Oswald ever sent either of these jackets to any laundry or cleaners anywhere. She said she can recall washing them herself. She advised to her knowledge Oswald possessed both of these jackets at Dallas on November 22, 1963.” (FBI interview, April 1, 1964 [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95957#relPageId=228]) 

But from this agreed-upon starting point diverge significantly differing narratives of the two jackets of Oswald and the one from the Tippit killer. The standard, conventional, narrative can be called the Two Jackets Theory, to be compared here with what I will call the Three Jackets Theory.

 

TWO JACKETS THEORY (Warren Commission)

·      Tippit killer light-gray jacket (C162) = Oswald gray jacket

·      Oswald dark blue jacket (C163)

 

Narrative (“blue then gray”)

·      Oswald wore blue jacket (C163) from Irving to Texas School Book Depository (TSBD)

·      Oswald left TSBD without jacket

·      Oswald in cab to Oak Cliff without jacket

·      Oswald entered rooming house without jacket

·      Oswald left rooming house wearing light-gray C162

·      Oswald killed Tippit and abandoned light-gray C162 in flight

·      Oswald entered Texas Theatre without jacket

·      Oswald arrested in Texas Theatre without jacket

·      Oswald blue jacket (C163) later found TSBD

 

THREE JACKETS THEORY

·      Oswald gray jacket

·      Oswald dark blue jacket (C163)

·      Tippit killer light-gray jacket (C162)

 

Narrative (“gray then blue”)

·      Oswald wore his gray jacket from Irving to Texas School Book Depository (TSBD)

·      Oswald left TSBD with his gray jacket

·      Oswald in cab to Oak Cliff with his gray jacket

·      Oswald abandoned his gray jacket en route to rooming house

·      Oswald entered rooming house without jacket

·      Oswald left rooming house wearing blue jacket (C163)

·      Oswald went to Texas Theatre and entered with blue jacket (C163)

·      Oswald took off blue jacket (C163) inside Texas Theatre

·      Oswald arrested in Texas Theatre without jacket

·      Oswald blue jacket (C163) later found TSBD

 

Buell Wesley Frazier

He knew what jacket Oswald wore very well having driven Lee back and forth to Irving many times and the morning of Fri Nov 22, and saw Oswald’s jacket sitting next to him in the car. Frazier said two things very clearly: first, that he had always seen Oswald wear only his gray jacket (not the blue) back and forth from Irving and that that was the case the morning of Fri Nov 22. And second, when shown C162, the Tippit killer's light-gray jacket, Frazier said definitely that was not Oswald’s gray jacket. From his Warren Commission testimony (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=38#relPageId=246) :

Mr. Ball. On that day [morning of Fri Nov 22, 1963] you did notice one article of clothing, that is, he had a jacket?

Mr. Frazier. Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball. What color was the jacket?

Mr. Frazier. It was a gray, more or less flannel, wool-looking type of jacket that I had seen him wear and that is the type of jacket he had on that morning.

Mr. Ball. Did it have a zipper on it?

Mr. Frazier. Yes, sir; it was one of the zipper types.

Mr. Ball. It isn't one of these two zipper jackets we have shown? [C162, the Tippit killer's light-gray jacket; C163, Oswald's dark blue jacket]

Mr. Frazier. No, sir.

This testimony of Wesley Frazier is strong testimony, as credible testimony as it gets. Frazier gave that negative answer repudiating that C162 was Oswald’s jacket without qualification. 

Linnie Mae Randle

"On the morning of November 22, 1963, Mrs. Randle stated that she looked out of a window of her residence and observed Oswald walking up her driveway, and to the best of her recollection Oswald was wearing a tan shirt and grey jacket" (FBI interview, Dec 5, 1963 [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57689#relPageId=117]). 

"He had a gray jacket, I believe ... no, sir [it was not C162], I remember its being gray" (Linnie Mae Randle, Warren Commission testimony [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=38#relPageId=258]). 

After saying Oswald's jacket that morning was “gray” and no color other than “gray” several times, Linnie Mae was asked, if she had to choose between C162 and C163, the Tippit killer's light-gray jacket or Oswald's blue one, which one did she see Oswald wear to work that morning. (The true answer being neither.) Forced to choose between two false alternatives, Linnie Mae answered, "I would choose the dark one [C163] ... but I, you know, didn't pay an awful lot of attention to his jacket". Whereupon Mr. Ball, counsel for the Warren Commission, misrepresented Linnie Mae Randle’s answer on that point into the record. (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=38#relPageId=258)

Mrs. Randle. It was gray, I am not sure of the shade. 

(. . .)

Mr. Ball. Here is another jacket [C162, the Tippit killer’s jacket] which is a gray jacket, does this look anything like the jacket he had on?

Mrs. Randle. No, sir, I remember its being gray.

Mr. Ball. Well, this one [C162] is gray but of these two the jacket I last showed you is Commission Exhibit No. 162, and this blue gray is 163, now if you had to choose between these two?

Mrs. Randle. I would choose the dark one [C163].

Mr. Ball. You would choose the dark one?

Mrs. Randle. Yes, sir: that I remember. But I, you know, didn't pay an awful lot of attention to his jacket. I remember his T-shirt and the shirt more so than I do the jacket.

Mr. Ball. The witness just stated that 163 which is the gray-blue is similar to the jacket he had on. 162, the light gray jacket was not.

Comment: Mr. Ball is not representing accurately. He forced an identification choice for Linnie Mae between two alternatives neither of which was the jacket she saw Oswald wearing that morning. Forced to choose, Mrs. Randle picked C163 between two false choices, after consistently saying several times up to that point that the jacket she saw Oswald wearing that morning was gray (not blue). The explanation for why Linnie Mae Randle picked the blue C163 instead of the light-gray C162 would be the same reason that, when shown C162 which was so light a shade of gray that it was almost white, she said “no, sir, I remember it’s being gray”. Oswald’s gray jacket—that Linnie Mae saw Oswald wearing that morning—was a darker shade of gray than the light-gray C162 (she did not say in response to C162, “no, Oswald’s was blue”).

Linnie Mae did not remember the gray jacket of Oswald as being as light in tone as C162, so, forced to choose, she defaulted to the only other alternative, the darker but equally inaccurate C163 (blue), even while never wavering from saying, repeatedly, that the jacket she saw on Oswald was gray. Mr. Ball misrepresented Mrs. Randle's forced choice between two wrong alternatives as if that represented a positive identification of one of those two alternatives, whereas an accurate representation of her answer would be that she judged C163 looked less dissimilar than C162 to the jacket she saw on Oswald that morning. In an accurate representation of Linnie Mae Randle’s testimony there is no positive weight toward identification of C163 as the jacket the witness saw Oswald wear that morning, contrary to Mr. Ball’s paraphrase of the witness’s testimony as if there was.

Marina Oswald

On the other hand, in contradiction to Buell Wesley Frazier’s testimony, Marina Oswald in her Warren Commission testimony did identify C162, the Tippit killer’s light-gray jacket, as the gray jacket of Lee. Commission counsel Rankin displayed one item of genuine clothing of Lee after another and Marina was identifying those items one after another then this (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=37#relPageId=134) :

Mr. Rankin. 162?

Mrs. Oswald. That is Lee’s—an old shirt.

Mr. Rankin. Sort of a jacket?

Mrs. Oswald. Yes.

(. . .)

Mr. Rankin. Do you recall any of these clothes that your husband was wearing when he came home Thursday night, November 21, 1963?

Mrs. Oswald. On Thursday I think he wore this shirt.

Mr. Rankin. Is that Exhibit 150?

Mrs. Oswald. Yes.

Mr. Rankin. Do you remember anything else he was wearing at that time?

Mrs. Oswald. It seems he had the jacket, also.

Mr. Rankin. Exhibit 162?

Mrs. Oswald. Yes.

This is it from Marina Oswald concerning identification of C162 as belonging to her husband (the significance of that to become clear momentarily). Looking at these two Warren Commission testimony identifications directly, the first one in which Marina is shown C162 and said it was “an old shirt”, raises the question of how close the item was to Marina when it was shown her, and how carefully Marina looked before answering. Nevertheless, she did make the identification.

But the second identification in her Warren Commission testimony above, of thinking she saw Oswald with C162 on Thursday night in Irving—the night before the assassination—cannot be correct under the Warren Commission’s reconstruction of the case. For the Warren Commission claimed Oswald wore his blue jacket, C163, to Irving Thursday night and back to Dallas Friday morning, then left C163 at his workplace, went to the rooming house in Oak Cliff and picked up the light-gray C162 there, then killed Tippit and abandoned C162 in flight to the Texas Theatre. To my knowledge no defender of the Warren Commission narrative has considered Marina’s second C162 identification as other than simply wrong and mistaken on Marina’s part. That leaves Marina’s first C162 identification as the positive argument—actually the sole, solitary witness testimony in support of—the Warren Commission “blue then gray” narrative in which C162 is a jacket of Oswald. 

Under normal circumstances an identification from a wife, Marina, would seem to outweigh testimony that conflicts, given that she lived with and knew her husband, washed his clothes and would be in the best position to know her husband’s clothes. But the most important item of information here is not what Marina stated to the Warren Commission, but what is missing: any identification from Marina of C162 as Lee’s in an FBI interview prior to her Warren Commission testimony. The significance of this has been little-remarked but prima facie is a significant omission. The FBI which had that jacket of the Tippit killer as well as other physical evidence interviewed Marina many times in the days and weeks following the assassination. A confirmation from Marina that C162, the light-gray jacket abandoned by the Tippit killer, was Lee’s, would be a significant corroboration (from investigators' point of view) that Lee had killed Tippit. It appears extraordinary that no such question or opportunity to make such an identification of C162 would have been presented to Marina. But in all of the FBI reports of interviews of Marina, there is no record that that question was asked. Either Marina never was asked or it was not reported in writing if she was. It does not inspire confidence that an identification by Marina of C162 as belonging to her husband was obtained for the first time as late as her Warren Commission testimony.

Here is Marina identifying C163, Lee’s blue jacket, to the FBI:

“A faded blue cloth jacket with padding bearing label ‘Sir Jac’ with zipper front was exhibited to Marina. She immediately identified this jacket as being the property of her husband, Lee Harvey Oswald. She said she recognized the jacket because she has handled it and washed it for Oswald.” (FBI interview, Dec 19, 1963 [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1139#relPageId=507])

That is straightforward, concerning a jacket with no association with the killing of Tippit. It is exactly this kind of straight question and answer concerning C162 which is missing in any record of an FBI interview of Marina. In terms of the known documentary record, Marina was asked about C162 for the first time many months later—in her Warren Commission testimony in which she gives yes, yes, yes, yes answers to genuine items of Lee’s clothing and then C162 another yes, before she immediately threw her own identification of C162 into disarray by saying she thought she saw Oswald wearing C162 in Irving the night before the assassination.

The argument that Marina was mistaken in her first identification of C162 as well as her second one, in her Warren Commission testimony, is powerfully and independently supported from these two items not to be underestimated: first, the missing FBI interview question and answer from Marina on that identification in the time period between the assassination and Marina’s testimony before the Warren Commission. And second, the sober testimony of Buell Wesley Frazier saying exactly the opposite concerning C162 than the more stressed and mercurial Marina. It is fair to say without much dispute that most investigators have judged Wesley Frazier a more reliable witness than Marina as a general statement—and Frazier testified with certainty that C162 was not Oswald’s gray jacket.

In light of these factors, the testimony of Wesley Frazier that C162 was not Lee’s gray jacket is judged here as of greater weight (more likely to be correct) than Marina’s identification of C162 as Lee’s gray jacket in her Warren Commission testimony. The mechanism of the mistake would be that Marina knew Lee had a gray jacket and Marina assumed that C162 shown her from an unknown distance was that item and answered agreeably.

Marina’s saying she thought she saw C162 on Lee Thursday night, even if incorrect, nevertheless supports Oswald having had his gray jacket Thursday night (mechanism for mistake: similarity of color), in agreement with Wesley Frazier’s testimony that Oswald wore his gray jacket on the return trip to Dallas Friday morning.

At the Texas School Book Depository

Charles Givens. “He [Oswald] never changed clothes the whole time he worked there, and he would wear a grey looking jacket.” (6H349)

Bonnie Ray Williams: “to the best of his recollection, Lee Harvey Oswald was wearing a grey corduroy pair of pants and a greyish looking sport shirt with long sleeves on November 22, 1963.” (FBI interview, Dec 5, 1963, https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10408#relPageId=317)

Most analysts have correctly interpreted Bonnie Ray Williams’ statement of remembering a greyish looking shirt, as Oswald’s gray jacket. I am not aware of any coworker testimony at the Texas School Book Depository that Oswald wore a blue jacket that morning (or any other morning there). 

Whaley and the cab to Oak Cliff

Minutes after the assassination, at about 12:35 pm Fri Nov 22, Oswald left the Texas School Book Depository wearing the same gray jacket which he wore from Irving that morning to work, on the evidence of Whaley the cab driver who drove him to Oak Cliff. Whaley’s testimony has been garbled and misunderstood. From a Nov 23, 1963 FBI interview: 

"[Whaley] recalled that the young man he drove in his cab that day was wearing a heavy identification bracelet on his left wrist, he appeared to need a haircut and was dressed in gray khaki pants which looked as if they had been slept in. He had on a dark colored shirt with some light color in it. The shirt had long sleeves and the top two or three buttons were unbuttoned. The color of the shirt nearly matched the pants, but was somewhat darker. The man wore no hat." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57698#relPageId=174)

Comment: As will become clear why, I think there can be little dispute that the reporting FBI agent above miswrote "shirt" (in the final bolded) where Whaley meant "the color of the jacket" (not the color of the shirt which was dark colored). It was Oswald's jacket (not his shirt) which “nearly matched” Oswald's gray pants—this is what Whaley said or was trying to say. That this is so can be seen by comparison with Whaley's Warren Commission testimony. Note the parallel in wording with the above. Whaley:

"He was dressed in just ordinary work clothes. It wasn't khaki pants but they were khaki material, blue faded blue color, like a blue uniform made in khaki. Then he had on a brown shirt with a little silverlike stripe on it and he had on some kind of jacket. I didn't notice very close but I think it was a work jacket that almost matched the pants." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=38#relPageId=263)

A “jacket that almost matched the pants” is what Whaley saw on the passenger in his cab who was Oswald. It was Oswald’s gray jacket which "nearly matched the pants" or "almost matched the pants" which in Whaley's original statement and in agreement with other testimony were gray pants (not faded blue). (Oswald wore gray pants to work that day.) Gray pants and gray jacket except the jacket was a little darker shade of gray than the pants is what Whaley saw on the basis of his earliest account. Continuing with Whaley’s Warren Commission testimony (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=38#relPageId=268) :

Mr. Hall. Here is Commission No. 162 [Tippit killer’s jacket] which is a gray jacket with zipper.

Mr. Whaley. I think that is the jacket he had on when he rode with me in the cab.

(Comment: although the jacket Oswald wore in Whaley's cab cannot have been C162 under either reconstruction, Whaley is responding to the color gray, Oswald's gray jacket.)

Mr. Ball. Look something like it? And here is Commission Exhibit No. 163 [Oswald’s dark blue], does this look like anything he had on?

Mr. Whaley. He had this one on or the other one.

Mr. Ball. That is right.

Comment: Although both the stenographer and Mr. Ball heard "or", based on what follows did Whaley actually say "over", "he had this one on over the other one"?

Mr. Whaley. That is what I told you I noticed. I told you about the shirt being open, he had on the two jackets with the open shirt.

Mr. Ball. Wait a minute, we have got the shirt which you have identified as the rust brown shirt with the gold stripe in it.

Mr. Whaley. Yes, sir.

Mr. Ball. You said that a jacket—

(I am putting interpretive comments in brackets below.)

Mr. Whaley. That jacket [Tippit killer’s light gray, nearly white C162] now it might have been clean [lighter in tone because it has been cleaned], but the jacket he had on [Oswald gray jacket] looked more the color, you know like a uniform set [matching jacket and pants in color], but he had this coat here [C163 dark blue] on over that other jacket [over the Oswald gray jacket which Whaley mistakenly thinks is C162], I am sure, sir. 

Mr. Ball. This is the blue-gray jacket, heavy blue-gray jacket [C163].

Mr. Whaley. Yes, sir.

Comment: Whaley is certainly not correct that Oswald was wearing both of his jackets at the same time, his dark blue one over his gray one. In his original FBI statement Whaley said nothing of a second jacket (the dark blue one) but referred only to Oswald wearing one jacket that "nearly matched his [gray] pants", even though in that early FBI statement Oswald’s gray jacket was mistakenly termed "shirt". Whaley's testimony as to Oswald wearing a gray jacket was accurate. Months later in his Warren Commission testimony, Whaley added the part about the dark blue jacket being worn over the gray one (and also changed the color of Oswald’s pants from accurate gray to inaccurate faded light blue). Why Whaley later added the part about wearing the blue jacket over the gray jacket, who knows. But his earliest description was correct, his earliest description had no second jacket, and the gray jacket was always there in his testimony.

At the rooming house on N. Beckley

After Whaley dropped off Oswald on N. Beckley a few blocks from his rooming house, Oswald intentionally let Whaley see him walk in the opposite direction before making his way to the rooming house. Lee entered the rooming house with no jacket, per housekeeper Earlene Roberts. The gray jacket which Oswald had on in the cab (evidence of Whaley) he did not have on when he entered the rooming house (evidence of Earlene). Therefore Oswald abandoned his gray jacket at some point after leaving Whaley’s cab but before he entered the rooming house. What became of Oswald’s gray jacket is unknown, presumably found at some later point by some private party who never was aware that it had been Oswald's.

Entering the rooming house Oswald went to his room and emerged again seen by Earlene zipping up a jacket on his way out which Earlene described as dark. 

“Oswald did not have a jacket when he came in to the house and I don’t recall what type of clothing he was wearing. Oswald went to his room and was only there a few minutes before coming out. I noticed he had a jacket he was putting on. I recall the jacket was a dark color and it was the type that zips up the front. He was zipping the jacket up as he left.” (Earlene Roberts, affidavit taken by Secret Service, Dec 5, 1963. [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=41#relPageId=449])

In her later Warren Commission testimony, when shown the Tippit killer's light gray jacket C162, Earlene objected, 

"it seems like the one he put on was darker than that." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=35#relPageId=449)

After Oswald entered the rooming house not wearing the gray jacket worn that morning, Oswald has now picked up his warmer dark blue jacket, confirmed by Earlene, the only witness who saw Oswald enter and leave the rooming house that day. She saw Oswald leave in a dark jacket (not light gray or nearly white), which is to say, Oswald’s dark blue jacket, C163.  

Inside the Texas Theatre

After leaving the rooming house, Oswald intentionally stood at the northbound bus stop where he knew Earlene would see him out the window, a feint as if heading north, before out of Earlene's sight taking a bus south to the Texas Theatre where he bought a ticket as a paying customer, entered and took a seat. However, when he was arrested thirty or so minutes later in the theatre he had no jacket on. 

That he would have no jacket on in the theatre despite wearing one to the theatre is not unusual; inside a warm theatre most people take off their jackets, especially a heavier, warmer jacket such as C163. The anomaly therefore is not that Oswald had no jacket on inside the theatre after arriving with a jacket, but rather a different question: what became of the jacket he wore leaving the rooming house--the blue jacket, C163--which would have entered the theatre with Oswald before he took it off. 

The dark blue jacket that Earlene saw Oswald putting on as he left the rooming house (identified by Earlene as dark, color unknown), unless he abandoned it for some reason before entering the theatre, he would have taken off inside the theatre and set somewhere. As it happens there appears to be a heretofore-unrecognized witness account from a theatre patron who saw Oswald inside the theatre that day wearing a jacket before he took it off.

This is from George Applin who was sitting only a few rows away when Oswald was arrested, the one theatre patron taken downtown that day by police to give a statement. This is from typed interview notes dated Dec 2, 1978, identified as statements of George Applin, apparently written by reporter Earl Golz. Here is Applin according to these typed notes:

"'Big, heavyset plainclothes officer with a cowboy hat on asked Oswald, "Did you kill him." 'It look[ed] like he was trying to knock a home run through his back,' Applin says he told Warren Commission attorney or police officers. 'He, he (Oswald) didn't yell police brutality. What I said is what he said. The officer asked him why he shot the president, why he killed the president or shoot the president. And he said, "Hell, I ain't shot nobody." (. . .) I was on the third aisle setting about seven rows down. Almost in the middle section. I seen his face. And there was just nothing about it. I believe he was wearing a suit ... it was a dark suit. I know that much. What color a dark--it could have been gray or it could have been light blue.'" (https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t371-suspect-behind-the-texas-theatre)

Oswald was not wearing a suit but this sounds like Applin seeing Oswald wearing a jacket, his dark blue jacket, C163, mistaken for a suit jacket in a darkened theatre. Applin seems to be seated and Oswald is walking toward him (since Applin sees his face). After finding his seat Oswald might have taken the jacket off, but where Oswald would have set it or left it is not clear. According to witnesses Oswald left his seat to buy popcorn and moved around to several different seating locations after his arrival.

Ordinarily we would assume a jacket would be on a seat next to the theatre patron. But there is no report of officers seeing a blue jacket with Oswald at the time of the arrest. The whereabouts of the blue jacket therefore may be considered in the context of Oswald’s other acts of evasiveness that day—feints of wrong directions of travel, and the jacket change at the rooming house altering physical description. In keeping with this it can be conjectured that he might take off the jacket and stash it somewhere removed from him. It is not that the jacket would not have been found soon after Oswald’s arrest, but if it was it may not have been immediately associated with Oswald as distinguished from some other theatre patron’s lost jacket. 

Although there was said to be a search of the theatre after Oswald’s arrest at the time police were writing down patrons’ and staff names and addresses so they could be interviewed, there is no police record of a finding of a blue jacket or any other jacket of Oswald. There is also no police record of those theatre patron names officers wrote down. Also, it is not obvious that an item associated with Oswald found by police in that theatre would necessarily be logged in as evidence. There is a witness account of a knife having been found after Oswald's arrest in the area where Oswald had been seated, by an officer heard to say to a fellow officer that it must belong to Oswald, but that knife was not turned in.

“Police at this time were searching the area around the seat [Oswald] was sitting in. They found a switchblade knife (. . .) we had come back from the managers office to the theater area, and an officer was looking down the aisle where Oswald had been sitting. He bent over and picked up a knife and showed it to another officer standing a few feet away. That officer said, ‘That’s where he was. Must be his.’” (page 8 at http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/F Disk/Fensterwald Bernard 1990/Item 004.pdf)

The blue jacket (C163) turns up in the Texas School Book Depository

Oswald’s blue jacket later did turn up. A dark blue jacket was turned in to the FBI on Dec 17, 1963, by Roy Truly, Superintendent of the Texas School Book Depository, with Truly first explaining that the blue jacket had just been found the day before (Dec 16) in the course of cleaning in the first-floor “domino room” used by employees. On March 7, 1964, interviewed again, Truly said the jacket had been brought to him three or four days after the assassination (i.e. about Nov 26) by an employee whose name Truly could not remember, not said to have been in the course of cleaning. According to this second version, Truly held on to the jacket for about three weeks and then turned it in to the FBI agent who understood Truly to have told him it had been found the day before. (FBI interviews of Truly of Dec 17, 1963 and Mar 7, 1964 [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57742#relPageId=19 and https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11133#relPageId=261])

This blue jacket, C163, was positively identified by Marina as Lee’s blue jacket in an FBI interview of Dec 20, 1963, noted above. In addition to that, “Several head hairs were found in the debris removed from the Q350 [blue C163] jacket. These hairs match in microscopic characteristics the previously submitted K7 hair sample of Oswald and originated either from him or from another Caucasian person whose head hairs exhibit the same microscopic characteristic. It is pointed out that hairs do not possess enough individual microscopic characteristics to be positively identified as originating from a particular person to the exclusion of all others” (FBI lab report, Dec 31, 1963 [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96524#relPageId=53]).

But despite this find of Oswald’s blue jacket, C163, in the Texas School Book Depository after the assassination, none of Lee’s coworkers remembered ever having seen Oswald wear that jacket that he had supposedly left there.

"Truly said that he had been unable to ascertain through inquiry among employees that this was Oswald's jacket or that anyone had specifically observed Oswald wearing it.” (FBI interview, Dec 17, 1963 [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57742#relPageId=19])

This is a surprising piece of information--that a jacket of Oswald (as it later turned out confirmed to be) would be found at his workplace but nobody who worked with him could remember seeing him wear it. It agrees with a reconstruction which is the reconstruction here that that blue jacket of Oswald’s had originally been found in Oak Cliff and relocated to the Texas School Book Depository to be newly found. The impact of the failure to find even a single Oswald coworker who remembered Lee wearing that jacket was however softened by Truly. Truly "stated, however, that he himself had a vague recollection of having possibly seen Oswald wear a jacket similar to that one in the past” (same FBI interview, Dec. 17, 1963).

The reconstruction here is the dark blue jacket (C163) left the rooming house with Oswald, went inside the Texas Theatre with Oswald, Oswald was seen inside the theatre with the jacket by Applin, then Oswald took it off inside the theatre, set by Oswald intentionally some place physically removed from where Oswald was seated watching the movie. The jacket may have been found or turned in to police that day, although it is also possible someone else found it later and turned it in to the police. Either way (as reconstructed) it came into the hands of police but was not logged in as evidence, and instead was relocated to the Texas School Book Depository to be “found” there.

At the time the police converged on the Texas Theatre the light-gray jacket abandoned by the Tippit killer had been found (C162). In the aftermath of Oswald’s arrest the police believed they already had Oswald's jacket, since it was believed that Oswald was the Tippit killer who had abandoned the C162 jacket and entered the theatre without a jacket. If an Oswald jacket inside the theatre did come to police attention following the Oswald arrest, it would come close to being exculpatory, or at least create a serious problem in interpretation of how one killer, seen entering the theatre with no jacket, could have a second jacket belonging to him inside the theatre.

But it is not necessary to suppose the police were immediately confronted with that dilemma, even if the jacket were to come quickly to their attention. What may have happened is the blue jacket of Oswald was found somewhere else in the theatre and taken by police and not reported until someone could figure out what to make of it and sort out what was going on. It may not have been immediately clear it was Oswald’s. At some point it would become a sort of hot potato item of physical evidence, difficult to explain why it had not properly been processed as evidence and potentially exculpatory to Oswald if verified to be Oswald's, so the solution was to have it found at the Texas School Book Depository where it was then handed off to the FBI to deal with. 

Conclusion

The Warren Commission/standard reconstruction of Oswald's jackets that day was a “blue then gray” sequence. That sequence has only two items in its support: a premise that the Tippit killer’s light-gray C162 jacket was Oswald’s; and the find of the blue jacket in the Texas School Book Depository. This is contradicted by overwhelming and compelling testimony of witnesses at every stage of Oswald’s movements that day, concerning the color of jacket he was wearing, which in clear signal testify to an opposing “gray then blue” sequence.

The “gray then blue” sequence of the Oswald jackets on Nov 22, 1963 is established on the basis of the strength of the witness testimonies. The C162 Tippit killer light-gray jacket/Oswald gray jacket identification is rejected and the find of C163 in the Texas School Book Depository combined with no one there remembering having seen Oswald wear that jacket, is consistent with a police relocation of that jacket under obscure circumstances from an actual find in Oak Cliff to the Texas School Book Depository to be found there.  

1 hour ago, John Butler said:

The blue jacket found at the TSBD is WC CE 163.  Here is two photos of CE 163 and a blue jacket Oswald wore in Russia.  Are they the same?

1 and 2 look slightly different.  2 looks like the jacket worn by Oswald in Russia.  

None of these examples is a light blue jacket, or a light grey jacket, or a white/tan jacket.

Oswald in Dallas had a heavier-weight dark-blue jacket (C163) and a lighter-weight medium-gray jacket (no photo known; per argument not the light-gray almost white jacket C162 of the Tippit killer).

If the photo in the middle is verified Oswald the jacket the jacket he is wearing is not the dark-blue C163 to both left and right above, but could be the first known photo of Oswald's medium-gray jacket that he wore to work Fri morning Nov 22. Where did you get that middle photo above John. Can the photo be verified as Oswald?

 

9 hours ago, Jeremy Bojczuk said:

The Blue Jacket Cannot Have Been Planted

But the way the blue jacket was "accounted for" did not support the Warren Commission's case that Oswald was on McWatters' bus. The discovery of the jacket in the book depository contradicts the claim that Oswald was on that bus. It cannot have been planted by anyone who wanted Oswald to have been on that bus.

The authorities needed to show that Oswald got away from the book depository without assistance. The only option they had was to claim that he was on McWatters' bus. All three of the supposed witnesses to this event stated that the man in question was wearing a blue jacket. If Oswald owned a blue jacket, the authorities needed to show that Oswald was wearing that jacket when he got on McWatters' bus.

The discovery in the book depository of a blue jacket, attributed to Oswald, refuted the authorities' claim that Oswald was on McWatters' bus. The jacket simply cannot, as Jim claims, have been planted by the authorities! They had every reason not to plant the jacket.

Incidentally, this doesn't prove that Oswald was the young white man who got into the car as seen by Roger Craig and two motorists. Oswald was a generic-looking young white man, at a glance easily mistaken for any number of other young white men.

What it does prove is that, if the three witnesses were correct that the man they saw was wearing a blue jacket, that man cannot have been Oswald.

The existence of a blue jacket in the book depository demonstrates that the man on McWatters' bus was not Oswald. This leaves a big hole in both the lone-gunman theory and the ridiculous 'Harvey and Lee' theory.

Jeremy, while I don't agree with the Lee and Harvey business at all, on this blue jacket I think you might be interested in another way of looking at it in which: Oswald wore the gray jacket from Irving to work that morning; wore the gray jacket out of the TSBD; wore it on the bus and in the cab; ditched it somewhere on Beckley; entered the rooming house; put on the blue jacket; went to the Texas Theatre (by bus south on Beckley after feinting going north for the benefit of eagle-eyed housekeeper Earlene's benefit); arrived to the theatre with the blue jacket; either took off the blue jacket outside before buying a ticket and entering or after sitting down inside the warm theatre and then moving around in seating; after his arrest (not wearing a jacket) the blue jacket was found either inside or immediately outside the theatre; it was not reported as coming from there but some days later was planted and claimed to be discovered at the TSBD, where no employee ever saw Oswald wearing that blue jacket. Full argument at my "The jackets as exculpation of Oswald as the Tippit killer: an analysis", https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27367-an-argument-for-actual-innocence-of-oswald-in-the-tippit-case/page/2/, about 3/4 down on the page.

 

OK Sandy.

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

I have not studied items 1-6 but I thought some might find my take of interest on numbers 7-16. 

7. One Oswald never had a driver’s license and could not drive while the other had a valid Texas driver’s license and could drive, including doing work for Jack Ruby in 1963 involving cars.

The real Oswald never had a drivers license but could drive in an inexperienced way, with difficulty parallel parking. On the Texas drivers license claimed seen in the office, if that was real I would say it is evidence of an identity theft or impersonation. (An impersonation does not mean a second Oswald. It is a different person who is not a second Oswald, strategically using an alias at one or more times optionally backed up with documents.) However a simple mistake in memory or witness error needs to be excluded first. 

8. American-born LEE Oswald appeared in Baytown, TX on Labor Day weekend in 1963 attempting to purchase rifles from Fidel Castro’s friend and gun supplier Robert McKeown. At the time, Russian-speaking HARVEY Oswald and his family were on holiday with the Murrets at Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana.

I have not studied this one. Suspect it was mistaken identification, not Oswald (nor impersonator claiming to be Oswald)

9. In October 1963, two different young men, both claiming to be “Lee Harvey Oswald,” appeared before Texas Employment Commission employee Laura Kittrell, the first on October 3 and again a few days later, the second on October 22. Ms Kittell told the HSCA’s Gaeton Fonzi that the second Oswald “looked the same,” and had “the same general outline and coloring and build, but there was something so different in his bearing.”

I have studied this much. It is clear this was not two Oswalds. It is one Oswald and one Larry Craford, pure and simple. Laura Kittrell confused the two, and that is the explanation of everything there. Witness error, witness confusion.

10. While the other Oswald was elsewhere, LEE Oswald visited the Sports Drome Rifle Range on Oct. 26, Nov. 9, Nov. 10, and again on Nov. 17, several times creating a scene and once shooting at another guy's target.

No. Oswald was never at the Sports Drome Rifle Range. Witnesses' mistaken identifications. It was not an impersonation since the person the witnesses thought was Oswald never claimed to be Oswald (no impersonation). ATF Agent Ellsworth made a good argument that the person was Thomas Masen, but in any case it was neither Oswald nor an impersonator (whoever it was never claimed to be other than himself). 

11. On Nov. 2 one LHO visited Morgan's Gun Shop in Fort Worth.

No. Mistaken identification. Not an impersonation since the person never claimed to be Oswald or other than himself.

12. Also on Nov. 2 LEE Oswald visited the Downtown Lincoln Mercury dealership where he test drove a car at recklessly high speeds saying he would soon come into enough money to buy a new car. (Remember that Russian-speaking HARVEY Oswald did not have a driver’s license.)

Although an argument can be made this was Oswald on Nov 2, I believe the weight of testimony of Bogard of the reckless or high-speed driving is consistent only with a confident driver and is inconsistent with an uncertain or cautious inexperienced driver which Oswald seems to have been from all other evidence. (The slight chance that it still could be Oswald would suppose Bogard's testimony on the driving is distorted, but I do not think so.) This IS an impersonator. It is not a "second Oswald" in the sense of a second full-time Oswald. But it is someone who has some real identity otherwise and normally but who, on this occasion, was claiming to be Oswald. It is of extraordinary interest in a solution to the assassination that that person be identified if possible (but I do not know that person's identity).

13. On Nov. 6 or 7 LEE Oswald visited the Irving Furniture Mart for a gun part and was referred by the ladies there to the shop where Dial Ryder worked.

Monday Nov 11. Yes, really was Oswald and Marina, Lee driving Ruth Paine's car without her knowledge. Lee getting the original scope shipped with the rifle, which had previously been taken off because it was unusable, reinstalled for purposes of conveyance or resale of that rifle, and needing bore and tap because the threads had been stripped. I did an analysis of this on another topic header and I believe I have established this as fact to my satisfaction. No impersonator, no second Oswald. Incidentally, an implication (if my analysis is correct) is that this is one point upon which Marina remains not truthful to the present day--she has always denied and continues to deny she was the woman in the Furniture Mart which the two women there said were her. I believe the argument that that was Marina on Nov 11 is so strong that it outweighs whatever weight one might see in Marina's denial of that to the present day. 

14. On Nov. 15, LEE Oswald went to the Southland Hotel parking garage (Allright Parking Systems) and applied for a job and asked how high the Southland Building was and if it had a good view of downtown Dallas.

(That date is not certain nor known exactly.) NOT Oswald, but IS an impersonation, someone claiming to be Oswald. Not a full-time second Oswald. Someone else with a different true identity who, on that occasion and at that event, pretended to be Oswald. A possible identification could be Craford but that is uncertain; inconclusive who it was. But not Oswald. 

15. On Nov. 20 “Oswald” hitch-hiked on the R.L. Thornton Expressway while carrying a 4 foot long package wrapped in brown paper and introduced himself to Ralph Yates as “Lee Harvey Oswald,” discussed the President's visit, and asked to be dropped across the street from the Texas School Book Depository (where Russian-speaking “Lee Harvey Oswald” was already working).

This is a tough one. For reasons which must be postponed in updated explanation until later, I think the Yates' hitchhiker was not Oswald but an impersonation of Oswald. Not a second Oswald but a different person who at that specific time intended to be remembered by random witness Yates as Oswald. Despite Yates' personal breakdown which soon followed, I think Yates' hitchhiker story is mostly if not fully true. 

16. On Nov. 22, both LHOs were in Dealey Plaza. One left in a bus and then a taxi; the other got into a Nash Rambler station wagon.

No. There was only one Oswald and he got on the bus. The one who ran to the car--which actually was a green-and-white Chevy station wagon belonging to a woman who was the ex-wife of Meharg, who recognized the vehicle--the one who ran to the car was not Oswald and was not an impersonator of Oswald (never claimed to be Oswald). Roger Craig's identification of Oswald as the running man was a mistaken identification based on similarity but not identity of physical description. I believe Meharg identified the vehicle, and may have identified the most likely candidate for the man who ran to the car too. Nobody has developed this solution to the Roger Craig story other than an earlier article by Lee Farley which needs to be built on and further developed. Bottom line: Oswald went by bus and taxi to the rooming house in Oak Cliff (then to the Theatre directly not by way of killing Tippit). The man running to the green-and-white Chevy station wagon seen by several witnesses looks like possible involvement in the assassination though that is not confirmed. But that green-and-white Chevy station wagon and its driver and passengers had nothing to do with Oswald. No impersonation of Oswald or second Oswald. Roger Craig mistake in identification of the running man, even though Craig was not mistaken on the fact of the man running or the vehicle (which was not a Nash Rambler but a Chevy wagon based on the Meharg information correctly analyzed). 

There is no reason to suppose that any of the genuine impersonations (Nos. 12, 14, and 15 only among the above items listed) were done by a person who lived full-time as a second Oswald, or that each of these impersonations were necessarily done by the same person (they might have been been but that needs to be argued not assumed). i suspect all of the cases of genuine impersonation I have suggested involved intentional setup of Oswald, unknown to Oswald, by malevolent parties involved in the runup to the assassination, conceivably identifiable.

 

The tenaciousness of baseless beliefs

Those who would condemn any president or assassinations record board for not releasing Ruth Paine's tax documents do not understand the law. Those who condemn Ruth Paine for refusing to allow release of her tax records do not know if Ruth Paine has even been asked, and probably have not considered or thought through carefully what it would mean if Ruth Paine were asked and declined.

There is a case example that may shed light on this. A naive person under the illusion that ideas which gain traction in the JFK assassination conspiracy community are affected by matters of evidence and that people who hold and promote such ideas are responsive to facts, might think, if only Ruth Paine would release those tax returns (if she were asked for a first time)--if only she would do that--that would go a long way toward clearing things up, and people might be less unreasonable with her. So, by this reasoning, it is partly her fault that people are suspicious of her, whether or not she is innocent. She could clear this up. And she will not (if she refused the request). This gives reasonable grounds for suspicion, doesn't it? How could anyone possibly deny that?

We have a case example that tells exactly how well releasing exculpatory documentation works out in the real world, not the naively assumed world: Obama birtherism. Obama birtherism for a long time focused on the question of why Obama (unlike any prior president for whom no such demand had previously been made) refused the simple demand of birthers who were suspicious of Obama that he produce his birth certificate to show he really was a native-born American and not a Kenyan imposter, and satisfy their questions on the matter. That is how Trump rose to national prominence politically in the United States. He got the start of his political career on this issue. The fact that Obama was the first black president was of course said by birthers to be only coincidence. The image was Sheriff Trump throwing the black man up against the side of the cruiser because he did not like his looks and demanding "your papers!". 

For a long time Obama did not and looked like he would not ever release his long-form birth certificate. Some actions in court were brought by birthers attempting to compel Obama to do so. Obama spent some money on lawyers to oppose and defeat those actions in court, one after another. Obama's opposition to being compelled to do what no previous president had been demanded, was interpreted by birthers as further evidence he was concealing the real truth, that he was not a legitimate native-born American, had no right to be president--he was an IMPOSTER American. Across the land, those suspicious of Obama saw this as evidence that their suspicions were justified. They just could not imagine any other rational explanation for Obama's refusal. 

Then Obama did voluntarily (not compelled by any legal action) have his long-form birth certificate released, in April 2011, by the relevant agency in the Hawaii state bureaucracy which had those records. A 2017 Newsweek article shows how well that worked out in the body politic of America. This is 2017, six years after the long-form birth certificate had been released (and no real reason to think it would be much different today):

"Survey results released by YouGov Friday show that 51 percent of Republicans said they think former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, compared to just 14 percent of Democrats. Perhaps unsurprisingly, respondents who voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election were especially convinced of Obama's African origins: Fully 57 percent said it was 'definitely true' or 'probably true' that the 44th president came from Kenya.

"The data--which included responses from 1,500 adults polled between December 3 and 5--proves that the birtherism conspiracy theory is alive and well, despite the fact that Obama hasn't been in office for nearly 11 months. And Trump may be to blame. Obama was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961, but the billionaire spent years saying otherwise. Since latching onto the idea that Obama was born in Kenya, he's tweeted about it nearly 40 times, according to Slate. He cast doubt when Obama released his long-form birth certificate in 2011, famously writing that 'an "extremely credible source" has called my office and told me that Barack Obama's birth certificate is a fraud'." (https://www.newsweek.com/trump-birther-obama-poll-republicans-kenya-744195)

(More on the 2017 poll showing over half of Republicans believe birtherism is true and Obama never was a real native-born American, six years after the long-form birth certificate had been released: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/poll-persistent-partisan-divide-over-birther-question-n627446.)

Here is a hypothetical question: if you were Ruth Paine and you were innocent, would you release your tax records if JFK assassination conspiracy believers asked or demanded you do so who falsely accused you of having been a CIA spy, of having wittingly helped assassinate President Kennedy, and of having fabricated mountains of physical evidence out of a motive to see Oswald falsely incriminated?

What advantage would it be to an innocent Ruth Paine to disclose those tax records to public scrutiny? Can you think of any? 

3 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

Thanks for proving conclusively that dozens of records related to the Paines are being kept classified, Greg.

Doesn't it make you suspicious that dozens of their tax records are sensitive enough to still be kept under lock and key for 59 years and counting? According to you, the Paines are innocent. If that were truly the case, then what could these tax records show? And yet for some mysterious reason these nearly six decade old tax records of these innocent Quakers are mixed in with other documents that are characterized as being potentially threatening to US national security today. Is that just a coincidence? An accident? If so, and these tax documents of the Paines don't show any connection to the CIA, then let's give researchers access. What could be the harm in that? I don't think revealing Ruth's income and deductions from 1962 could jeopardize either Ruth or United States national security now, do you?

You believe the CIA would never conduct domestic activities. Interesting.

Fine by me but I'm not the one to ask. The law says you have to ask Ruth Paine.

No it does not make me suspicious that the law is being followed. Nor do I have any doubt that that (following the law) is the reason those tax records are not being released by the Assassinations Records board, not contents.

It also would not make me suspicious if Ruth Paine, if she were asked (I don't know that she has), would tell people like you who have abused her beyond all reason, the Quakerly equivalent of "screw you". (That is me being rhetorical.)

You are following the logic that Ruth Paine must be guilty because otherwise why would the law possibly protect a citizen's tax documents? 

Sounds exactly like the old Obama "birther" conspiracy theory. Obama must be covering up a secret birth in Kenya because otherwise he would accede to demands to show his long-form birth certificate.

The Secretary of State of Hawaii later did release that at Obama's consent. It showed he was born in Hawaii, the same place that two newspaper announcements of Obama's birth published the week of the birth had appeared in Hawaii, the same place that the physician who delivered Obama as a baby said he had done it. In a shocking development nobody could have foreseen, birthers were not convinced but charged the Hawaii vital statistics records on Obama were fake. 

Sandy, the issue is not that Ruth Paine is a saint but that Ruth Paine is innocent of things people have accused her. Of being party to the assassination of President Kennedy. Of forgery and fabrication of physical evidence for the purpose of framing a dead man. Of accusations that she was a CIA spy and operative. All nonsense and rubbish. All without a speck of evidence.

You cite Simpich citing a document saying that there were 10,000 pages of documents of Ruth Paine. Here is the document to which you refer: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57758#relPageId=132 

The film "The Assassination & Mrs. Paine" ends with words across the screen. The viewer sees this, one sentence on the screen after another, in order:

"At the urging of the CIA, President Trump postponed the release date of the final JFK files until October 2021."

"In October 2021, President Biden chose to continue blocking the release of the files."

"Dozens of files related to the Paines remain classified."

"Michael Paine passed away in 2018."

"Ruth Paine lives in Northern California."

If a viewer is on the fence concerning the accusations aired in this film concerning Ruth Paine, these closing words on the stark screen, "Dozens of files related to the Paines remain classified", have impact. Those words gave even me a start when I viewed the film. I had a twinge of wondering, could there possibly be something there I don't know about--some surprise? And if I thought that, the rest of viewers will even more. That is the power of those closing words. It is the last thing viewers see, the last thought that they take away from this film.

But it just isn't true.

I checked with Robert Reynolds, of National Chi Nan University in Taiwan, an authority on the JFK Assassination Records Collection. He has a blog at http://jfkarc.info/, which people can look at to find out more about his research on these records. 

All files on Ruth Paine and Michael Paine have been released except tax records. No file remains withheld except for tax returns which are forbidden by law from being released under the law which mandates the release of all JFK assassination documents. There appears to be one Paine-related document which, though released, still has a redaction in it, the name of a source. The number of tax return documents are perhaps two dozen. No decision of a president is capable of releasing those tax returns, by law. (Only the citizen or an Act of Congress overturning existing law is capable of releasing a citizen's tax records.)

That President Biden has blocked the release of files relevant to the JFK case is true, but that President Biden has blocked the release of any file related to the Paines is not true. All of those files are already all out now except for the tax returns--there is nothing more there on Ruth Paine. There is no CIA involvement for Ruth in any of the documents. It simply isn't there because it never was there in the first place.

(And that is hardly surprising, given that except for attending a Quaker conference in London in 1951, through to the time of the assassination and after, Ruth Paine did not travel outside the U.S., where CIA operates.)

Here are Robert Reynolds' findings, for which I thank him and this is quoted with permission:

4 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

Morrison immolated himself in front of the Pentagon, not the White House.

McNamara witnessed it and was troubled by it.

Thanks Joseph McBride you are right. 

On 5/4/2022 at 12:05 PM, W. Niederhut said:

Unless, of course, they were tracking commies for the Quakers... 🤥

BTW, wasn't Nixon-- the man who carpet-bombed Cambodia-- also a Quaker?

Not in the view of Friends he wasn't. 

He was raised in a Quaker home as a child.

I have met Nixon relatives who are Friends. They tried everything during the Nixon presidency to meet with him and appeal to him to end those actions in southeast Asia, tried to invite him to attend the Washington, D.C. Friends Meeting (since he was claiming to be Quaker). It did not work.

In 1965 Norman Morrison, 31 years old, member of the Baltimore Friends Meeting, immolated himself in front of the White House Pentagon in protest of the Vietnam war. That action horrified Friends as much as the rest of the nation, but I have read more than one account of how disturbing that was to some of the men in high places inside the White House running their operations of great darkness on other peoples of the world. who looked out their windows and saw that.

18 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

And was not Michael doing that, smoking out commie symps,  literally across from a college campus at a student hangout.

Irrelevant to issue of the false statement regarding Ruth Paine's file boxes.

Also, "smoking out commie symps" a total fabrication, not a document anywhere claiming that of Michael Paine. The only two students he was known to have talked to in a Lubys cafeteria were not commie symps. 

Is it possible to acknowledge and apologize for a specific false accusation you made against a person who is innocent of that specific accusation that you made?

Is it you just don't care? 

Gus Rose (he of the famous claim that he found a Minox camera that the DPD evidence photo does not show and FBI said they never received in the evidence shipment)--he also says he searched Oswald before the Boyd and Sims search. Gus Rose in Sneed, No More Silence (1998):

". . . As I looked up, I saw officers coming in with a man handcuffed behind his back who was obviously under arrest. He was talking loudly and was sweaty looking, so I stopped what I was doing and went to see what they were doing and what they had. It was explained to me that they had the guy that had killed Tippit. Now, up to that point, I didn't have any reason to believe that thee was a connection between the Tippit shooting and the murder of the President; in fact, I didn't even think about it. I just knew that he had supposedly killed Tippit. 

"So Officer Stovall and I took the man into the interrogation room. I asked him who he was, but he wouldn't tell me. He refused to give me a name. I then searched him and found two pieces of identification in his pocket: one had the name Alec Hidell, and the other had the name Lee Oswald. So I said, 'Which one of these are you?' He gave me a real strange look and said, 'Well, you're the cop, you figure it out!' That was his term. He became pretty ugly and cussed a little in talking to me as I  began to question him. He lied to me about every one of the questions. We hadn't established his identity for certain, so I then asked him where he lived; he gave me a fictitious address. When I asked him where he worked, he said, 'I'm a printer. I work in a local printing company.' That's the way he put it. I asked him if he had ever had any military service, he said 'no.' I asked him if he had any family in the area, and he again said 'no.' So he continually lied, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. When you're interrogating somebody, you try to establish a rapport with them, and you set about to do that without getting into the actual case. I did ask him about his arrest and he said, 'Oh, I was just sitting in the theater and officers came in and planted a gun on me and accused me of shooting somebody. I don't know nothing about that!'

"So it was that type of interrogation with him. When I first saw him, he looked okay except for being sweaty and the injury over one eye. He did settle down somewhat and became less nervous in this short interrogation, though he was still combative with his answers. I found him to be arrogant and belligerent and almost in a state of confusion. He denied emphatically that he'd done anything wrong, almost overdenial. I've been involved in lots of interrogations, and it was almost overkill on his denials. His attitude was 'I haven't done anything; I've been framed,' which wasn't bad from the standpoint of interrogation. We might have been able to overcome that. I knew, in my mind, that he had killed Tippit, but I didn't suspect anything about the President.

"Then, after a while, Captain Fritz knocked at the door and told me this; I remember it just like it was yesterday: 'We just got back from the Book Depository and there's an employee that's missing. They think he's the suspect in the murder of the President. I want you to get some officers to go with you and find that missing employee.'

"I said, 'Well, I would, Captain, but I've got the man in here that killed Tippit.' He said, 'Well, I'll have someone else handle that. I want somebody to go with you and y'all go find this missing employee.'

"'Okay, what's his name?'

"He said, 'His name's Lee Oswald.'

"At that point, I snapped real fast. 'Oh, hey, I think this is him. I found some ID on him that said Lee Oswald, and I believe that'll be him.' At that point he instructed me to locate any family of Oswald's that was in the area and bring them in for questioning. I didn't finish with the witness [= apparently Brennan being interviewed by him earlier--gd]

"Immediately after that, Captain Fritz gave me an address where Oswald's wife supposedly was . . ." (pp. 337-339)

Gus Rose searches Oswald, only identification (the wallet?) found. No five bullets found, which Rose surely would have noticed. 

Walker says he searched Oswald, finds Oswald clean. No five cartridges in his pants which Walker surely would have been noticed. 

It just makes sense that Oswald would have been searched upon arrival to the police station. (At the Texas Theatre it may be in light of the unruly threatening crowd outside there was urgency to get him into the car and out of there intact which could explain if he was not searched at the scene?)

The whole 4:05 first search always has looked really odd--wait two hours to search the suspect to see if he's armed or has on him a knife? and any such search would have to have picked up five bullets, if there had been five bullets there. Nobody doing a search could miss five bullets in a pants pocket!

This last point of the incongruity of waiting two hours before a first check to see if the suspect had a knife or other weapon, let alone what else he may have on him, is just prima facie crazy, supporting the Walker and Rose stories of having done those earlier searches even though both of those stories come over a decade after the fact and could, viewed in isolation, be criticized as mistaken or exaggerations in memory or less than certain, e.g. what if Rose had been handed the wallet of Oswald already removed from Oswald previously, and simply in retelling, by the time of Sneed, 35 years later, has himself pulling it out of Oswald's pockets. Did he? And Walker's testimony is first known 1978 fifteen years later to HSCA; did he really search as claimed? But it is that 4:05 (in addition to the officers' stories themselves) which makes minimally a real question of planted bullets on Oswald in that 4:05 search.

If the five bullets found by Boyd were planted on Oswald, I do not think it is necessary to accuse Sims. The 4:05 search was real enough; it may not have been the first search but Sims telling his participation in the 4:05 need not be untruthful. Sims found the bus transfer ticket; I don't see a problem with that or that having been missed by mistake earlier especially from patdown. (As to why its in his changed-shirt pocket, would be because Oswald put it into his new shirt pocket intending to use at the time he changed shirts, but it expired after the one hour validity before he could use it and it wasn't used; Oswald paid the fare to get by bus south on Beckley to the Texas Theatre; the ticket remained in his pocket until found by Sims at 4:05.)

The problem is those five bullets. If Boyd planted those five bullets it is doubtful he would tell Sims that. The point here is to reduce the number of officers required to be corrupt in the Boyd & Sims 4:05 from two to one (only Boyd, not Sims), in a scenario in which those earlier searches happened and those five bullets were planted on Oswald at the 4:05.

As to motive to plant the five bullets--suppose Oswald in the Theatre did have on his person a fully-loaded, never fired revolver and also was innocent of killing Tippit. The killer of Tippit either had a non-fully-loaded revolver or one that had been reloaded from carrying bullets in his pocket, one or the other. Both of those inconsistent with an Oswald arrested with a fully loaded revolver and no bullets in his pocket (if so). By planting the five Winchester bullets on Oswald that would make Oswald fit better as the Tippit killer, showing a supply in his pocket from which he could have reloaded thereby explaining Oswald's fully-loaded revolver at time of arrest. Recall that Gerald Hill had displayed the six cartridges taken out of Oswald's revolver to news cameras so the fact of a fully-loaded revolver found on Oswald was already public information. Remember Leavelle saying it was going to be difficult to nail Oswald on JFK (in terms of evidence and proving it in court) but if they could wrap him up real tight on Tippit then they've got him? Could be a motive to "improve" the physical evidence on Oswald by planting five bullets, in order to help nail him, from officers who thought he was guilty anyway? (That seems to be the most common form of evidence-cooking logic when scandals come to light--just trying to be helpful in getting bad people put away!) 

Its that delay until 4:05 for a first search which is the tipping point for me. Is there an innocent explanation of that length of delay for a first search of Oswald?

Nothing wrong with the question. What is the evidence-based answer as concerns Ruth is what matters. The problem is this structure of logic: "reasonable question" --> therefore proves --> dogmatic conclusion. 

20 hours ago, Mark Knight said:

Greg,

I had a brother-in-law whose older brother was recruited into the CIA in the 1950s [according to my brother-in-law]. My brother-in-law, who grew up a farm boy before moving to a manufacturing job in a city, told me that his entire family [parents, brothers and sisters] was trained in certain survival and escape/evasion tactics in case his brother's cover was ever blown and they were ever threatened.

Since this is second-hand information, I cannot vouch for its authenticity. My brother-in-law only told me this after his older brother had died of natural causes. But part of the training he mentioned was being taught to swim underwater for longer-than-average distances [my b-i-l never could swim on top of the water as most people do]. He was merely explaining to some of us on the family how he learned to swim as he did. And I had not cause to doubt him, as he was generally honest with me.

IF the scenario he described was typical of the CIA methods in the 1950s, I sometimes wonder if Ruth Paine is simply concealing what she might have been trained in. I trust his word at least as much as you trust Ruth Paine's word.

As a now-retired US government employee, on the day I was hired I took a lifetime oath to never reveal certain data I dealt with on my job. Perhaps, if Ruth Paine was trained similarly to my brother-in-law, she might be under such a lifetime secrecy oath. If so, to violate such an oath would also be a violation of her religious principles.

So I can only say that, based upon my own experiences, Ruth Paine might know more than she is ALLOWED to say. Or she actually may not know more than she has revealed. And we may never know which is 100% true.

Thanks Mark. Interesting anecdotes. 

On Ruth Paine having received secret training, or taken a lifetime secrecy oath et al, at least you characterize that as conjecture of possibility without claiming knowledge or that there is evidence for any of that. The fact remains that with Ruth there are strong denials and no evidence for secret training, recruitment, or secret oaths. I don't see very high plausibility of that either, even if it were not that I would take to the bank that the Ruth Paine I knew is truthful. Is there anything that signals she had secret training of anything? I sure do not know what it would be. Secret training in folk dancing? 

But never mind that, I'm not jumping on you, I appreciate your comments. Your final line is of course true at a certain level for just about everything in this world. 

On 12/31/2015 at 1:03 AM, James DiEugenio said:

But before we get to that end game, let us add in something that Jim Douglass so beautifully portrayed in his fine volume JFK and the Unspeakable. (In his autographed copy to me, he wrote that he went to school for his book by reading Probe. Therefore what he wrote there about the Paines he must owe to Carol.)

In addition to predicting that she would pick up Marina and bring her to live with her in the fall of 1963, Ruth did something else to put Oswald in a pretty bad predicament that fall.

Let me quote from DB 2, p. 163: "The Warren Report states that Ruth Paine heard through a friend that there was a job opening at the Texas School Book Depository. Ruth called supervisor Roy Truly at the Depository to arrange a meeting for Oswald. She then told Oswald about this arrangement that day, October 14. Lee interviewed on the 15th, and started work on the 16th. The Report tells us that the Oswalds were elated with his new job. What the report does not say is that an offer of a better paying job came in before Oswald started work at the Depository.

When Oswald returned form Mexico, he visited the Texas Employment Commission. In reply to that visit, Robert Adams phoned the Paine residence on October 15 with a better job offer for Oswald than the one he took. Adams said he spoke with someone there about a permanent position as cargo handler at Trans Texas Airport, a job that paid about 100 dollars more per month than the Depository. Adams said that he was told Oswald was not at home. He left a message that Oswald should call him about the job. Adams called again the next morning. This time he was told that Oswald had taken a different job. Adams therefore crossed him off his list.

When Ruth Paine was asked about this phone call from Adams, she first said she did not recall it, but she eventually did. Yet she said she heard of it through Lee Oswald. Oswald informed her that he had high hopes for it but it had "fallen through". This does not coincide with what Adams said. He tried to notify Oswald twice, since the job was still available. The job offer from Adams paid about 30 per cent more than what Oswald earned at the Depository. Therefore if Oswald had known about it, why would he not have taken it? Especially since Marina testified that Lee was not satisfied with the Depository job. He was searching through the newspapers for something better. Needless to say, if whoever had talked to Adams had told Oswald about the offer, he very likely would not have been on the motorcade route one month later." 

This James Douglass story repeated so many times is nonsense. See my updated "Did Ruth Paine knowingly fail to inform Oswald of a Trans Texas Airways better job? No. The baselessness of the accusation that Ruth Paine wilfully obstructed Oswald from learning of a better job opportunity", at https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27730-an-unjust-accusation-ruth-paine-and-the-tsbd-job-of-oswald/.

I hope with this information that this instance of abuse of Ruth Paine will cease forthwith, on the part of all for whom it matters whether an innocent person is smeared publicly. 

 

11 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Well you'd be right Greg if Oswald planned the shooting himself. But you are wrong because that is not what happened. Someone else planned the shooting and needed Oswald to be there to take his role as patsy. People who think that wouldn't be much of a coincidence for Oswald to accidentally get a job at the right place just don't understand probability. Hopefully they aren't in the business of betting.

Sandy did you see my updated "Oswald, the job at the Texas School Book Depository, and the assassination: an update and correction?" on my topic thread concerned with that issue (its toward the bottom of page 1 at 5/3/22 5:18 pm: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27730-an-unjust-accusation-ruth-paine-and-the-tsbd-job-of-oswald/)?

That sets out my (corrected) argument on that which I believe addresses the question of how a random helping of Oswald get that job on the part of what Steve Roe calls the "Irving Koffee Klatch", is (in my view) compatible with a very serious and intentional plot to assassinate Kennedy in his visit to Dallas, before the route of the motorcade was or could be known.

 

On coincidence and probability.

I don't think there is any remarkable coincidence that a person who helped someone get a job who (that second person) is later accused of a major crime--that the location where that person was accused of having committed that major crime might be the place where the person helped them get the job. That isn't much of a coincidence at all. That would sort of be what might be expected.

So I see, Sandy L., this as a logical fallacy. It is related to the same kind of fallacy that creationists use to prove evolution could not possibly have happened because look at the odds against how we each individually turn out. Well, the odds indeed are astronomical against any individual event having happened that way, or any individual roll of a thousand dice would have turned out the way those thousand dice turned out. It is a logical fallacy.

I could go into some interesting things on how common real coincidences are and how that phenomenon has actually been studied, but that would be extraneous here because I reject the premise that what Sandy L. is talking about as a startling coincidence is real as opposed to illusory (logical fallacy). 

[error]

The incredible allegation that Ruth Paine had files of names of Cuban sympathizers in her garage

In the Max Good film, "The Assassination & Mrs. Paine":

DiEugenio: When the Dallas police went to the Paine household, one of the detectives wrote a report about taking out several filing cabinets of notations and cards and maps etcetera of Castro sympathizers. This makes a very good case, I believe, that Michael and Ruth were involved in surveillance activities of the American left. These cabinets existed until the Warren Commission. Because there are several exhibit numbers in the Warren Commission that refer to them. But the big difference is when the Warren Commission went through them, they only found something like one letter from Ruth to one of her relatives. So in other words, if the original report is accurate, somebody fiddled with the contents of those cabinets.

This is an astonishingly irresponsible allegation which is known to be untrue. It is irresponsible in that the film does not disclose to the viewer that the officer, deputy sheriff E.D. “Buddy” Walthers, in his testimony under oath to the Warren Commission, denied that he ever had personal knowledge that that earlier report was accurate—a report uncorroborated by any other officer or witness either, and that he, the sole source of the claim, repudiated it

Even in Walthers’ original report of Nov 22, 1963 in which the statement was made that DiEugenio quotes, the wording strictly construed does not claim Walthers himself ever saw such or witnessed such (“also found was a set of metal filing cabinets containing records that appeared to be names and activities of Cuban sympathizers” [19H520]). No other officer reported any such thing, and Walthers, the sole foundation for the story, made it clear to the Warren Commission that the story is baseless. Here is Walthers’ testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964: 

Mr. Liebeler. What was in these file cabinets?

Mr. Walthers. We didn't go through them at the scene. I do remember a letterhead--I can't describe it--I know we opened one of them and we seen what it was, that it was a lot of personal letters and stuff and a letterhead that this Paine fellow had told us about, and he said, "That's from the people he writes to in Russia"; he was talking about this letterhead we had pulled out and so I just pushed it all back down and shut it and took the whole works.

Mr. Liebeler. I have been advised that some story has developed that at some point that when you went out there you found seven file cabinets full of cards that had the names on them of pro-Castro sympathizers or something of that kind, but you don't remember seeing any of them?

Mr. Walthers. Well, that could have been one, but I didn't see it.

Mr. Liebeler. There certainly weren't any seven file cabinets with the stuff you got out there or anything like that?

Mr. Walthers. I picked up all of these file cabinets and what all of them contained, I don't know myself to this day.

Mr. Liebeler. As I was sitting here listening to your story, I could see where that story might have come from--you mentioned the "Fair Play for Cuba" leaflets that were in a barrel.

Mr. Walthers. That's right--we got a stack of them out of that barrel, but things get all twisted around.

In an article published on the Kennedys and King site, “Oswald’s Intelligence Connections”, July 29, 2017, DiEugenio claimed of the original sentence in the Nov 22, 1963 report, fifty-four years after its author and sole proponent, Walthers, repudiated the error on July 23, 1964:

“This cinches the case that the Paines were domestic surveillance agents” (https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/oswald-s-intelligence-connections-how-richard-schweiker-clashes-with-fake-history). (emphasis added)

Talk about "hanging judge" logic! 

One is left speechless at this, in which any unverified claim put into print even one time, no matter how much contradicted by other evidence and later published corrections, retains its currency undiminished in sectors of JFK assassination conspiracy-believer circles fifty-four years later and is considered to “cinch” a case against Ruth Paine. 

The contents of those cabinets were Ruth Paine’s personal property and should never have been taken by Dallas police or sheriff's deputies. Neither police nor the FBI nor the Warren Commission had any right to Ruth’s personal papers without her permission or a search warrant. But never mind that—the important point here is that the contents of those file boxes were examined, reviewed, and known to the Dallas police and FBI and there was no surveillance of leftists in them or anything else of the sort, nor anything incriminating of Ruth of anything, all perfectly mundane personal papers. It is not as if there is some mystery over what was in that property of Ruth Paine's. What DiEugenio calls "fiddl[ing]" reflects the return of Ruth’s property, a citizen's property, to her. 

Nor is there any indication that Ruth or Michael were involved in surveillance of leftists independently of what was not found in those seven file boxes.

Apart from attendance at a Dallas Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) meeting, a respected mainstream civil liberties advocacy organization of which Michael and Ruth Paine were members, there is no known attendance of Ruth or Michael at any left-wing meeting in Dallas. No known association of either Michael or Ruth with leftists other than Lee as Marina’s husband. No document ever indicating Ruth or Michael were involved in “surveillance of the American left”. Neither Ruth nor Michael are known to have attended a meeting concerning Cuba or Castro sympathizers. 

There is also an issue of plausibility. Ruth was functioning as a single mom of two toddlers demanding pretty much full-time attention. Just in practical terms how would she surveil leftists. There is no trace of evidence of such and DiEugenio's representations of Ruth Paine in this way in this film without the producer doing elementary fact-checking before airing this is nothing other than a gratuitous and shameful smear of Ruth Paine pure and simple.

From the film:

Ruth Paine (a film clip speaking to an audience): I learned a lot about what is written isn’t always true, in newspapers and magazines. One magazine said the police took out seven file boxes of Cuban sympathizers’ names. Well, there were my three boxes of folk dance records [audience laughter], my three little file boxes of my college papers, and a projector for a 16 mm camera. Those were the seven boxes of Cuban names.

Max Good (displaying a metal file holder to Atesi): This is one of the so-called filing cabinets that contains—there’s a report that they contained names and info on Cuban sympathizers.

Joe Atesi (shaking head): Yeah I think that’s nonsense. This is who I used to work for years ago. [shows plexiglass embossed seal of “Defense Investigative Services, United States of America”]. I was a Special Agent, did background investigations for the government, and—just, you know, for security clearances—so I’ve got a natural curiosity. In 2013 I found out that Ruth Paine was living right here in Santa Rosa and a friendship developed, we’re not best of friends, but, you know, she knows me well and she likes me enough that she’s given me some very interesting items. This entire album here [showing album] is relating to the Paines and the many things they’ve assigned to me. This [showing cardboard box] is Ruth’s texts of FBI investigative reports that she obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. She’s read books, she’s got a collection, her notes are on here. And certainly I’m sure she went through all of this and read all of it. She’s an avid student of the assassination herself. This is Ruth speaking to me in August 2017 [holds letter]. She says “Thanks for all the work investigating what was available on the internet.” She wanted me to find out about this particular Warren Commission exhibit [a different metal filing box than the one Good showed but the same kind]. It says “Commission Exhibit No. 458”. [Continuing to read] “There is certainly a lot of misinformation traveling around the internet. All the things the police took were taken without my permission.”

Narrator: When the issue of the contents of the file cabinets came up Ruth’s testimony was taken off the record, and the exhibit numbers were omitted without explanation. [Camera closeup of Warren Commission testimony showing going off the record.]

There are lots of “off the record”’s in the Warren Commission witness testimony transcripts. In the absence of knowledge of what was discussed, this is no basis for assuming something untoward was discussed and yet this is presented in the film as if that is being insinuated. The physical metal file boxes were returned to Ruth because they were her property. The Warren Commission had no right to the personal property of a citizen who was not under investigation and without a search warrant. That the Warren Commission left intact exhibit numbers which originally may have been occupied by Ruth’s metal file holders, without explanation in the Warren Report, is none of Ruth’s concern nor does it have anything to do with anything.

Is Ruth Paine due an apology from Max Good for airing this completely bogus accusation that "Ruth Paine had files of names of Cuban sympathizers in her garage", for not doing the most basic fact-checking of that claim of DiEugenio before airing it?

Where is the justice for Ruth Paine?

55 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

I personally do not think the Paines were involved in an assassination plot. However, there is enough innuendo to comfortably surmise their interactions with the Oswalds were not motivated solely by their individual interests. Their sudden appearance into the narrative just as deMohrenschildt was wrapping up his involvements is very curious. deMohrenschildt certainly had the trappings of being some kind of “handler” of Oswald (and has suffered exactly the same amount of suspicion as the Paines). Ruth Paine’s immediate and persistent engagement with Marina sticks out precisely because of this previous attention, which, according to deMohrenschildt, was encouraged by a person with Intelligence ties.

In my opinion, there was some degree of improvised subterfuge going on with the Imperial Reflex camera, of which Ruth Paine was a witting participant, and this required the sort of follow-up in subsequent investigations which did not, in fact, ever happen. Michael Paine’s claim in 1993 that Oswald showed him a Backyard Photo in April 1963 is also very sketchy and does not have an innocent purpose. To surmise that the Paines have not been forthright regarding their relationship with the Oswalds, and that they knowingly participated in the post-assassination framing of Lee Oswald, is not at all unwarranted.

That DeMohrenschildt was a babysitter for Oswald and had ongoing relationship with the CIA I think is fact, not question about that. But there is no evidence DeMohrenschildt and Ruth (or Michael) Paine knew each other before that party in Feb 1963 when Ruth met Marina (and DeMohrenschildt), and Ruth's presence at that party is well-explained on mundane, accidental grounds (invited by a friend in a madrigal singing group to meet a Russian-speaking couple returned from the USSR, a subject matter of Ruth's prior interest).

I hear it commonly said and repeated that Ruth Paine was part of the White Russian community, had been before meeting Marina. (People ask why she would want to learn Russian from Marina when she had all her White Russian community friends.) I don't think there is any evidence or basis at all that Ruth was friends with or involved with or knew the White Russian community in Dallas. 

I know the common thinking is that Lee and Marina would have had handler-continuity, DeMohrenschildt is one stage of that, he leaves for Haiti and who is next? So people look at Ruth Paine who gets to know Marina, and Ruth's father worked for USAID which might have been he was CIA though no actual evidence of that, and Ruth's sister it later turned out had a cover government job covertly employed by CIA (no evidence that Ruth would have known that at the time incidentally--did covert CIA people normally tell adult siblings living in other parts of the country of their classified covert status? is it normal for covert CIA persons for whom their CIA status is classified to tell adult siblings not living in their households? would it be OK to tell cousins too, and maybe a few close trusted friends? How does that work [maybe somebody here knows?]). 

Here is the problem I see with this basic narrative of Ruth Paine being successor-babysitter after DeMohrenschildt. Four points. First Lee and Marina went to New Orleans after DeMohrenschildt and Ruth Paine was not anywhere near or in closer touch than by letters to Marina that whole summer, not much of a babysitting relationship in New Orleans--if there is continuity in CIA handling after DeMohrenschildt would that not more logically be looked for in New Orleans? Second, all elements of Ruth's interest in Marina really are naturally explicable in terms of Ruth's prior history and interests in the Russian language, in the penpal correspondence with USSR to build bridges across Cold War tensions, and in taking the younger woman new to the country under her wing. There is nothing that obviously is not explicable in natural terms that calls for an unnatural or CIA explanation (the argument of suspicious juxtaposition of timing is not a strong argument). The third is Ruth has denied that was the case. And the fourth is there is no evidence impeaching Ruth's denial.

I question whether it is established, as distinguished from imagined, that Ruth "was a willing participant" in "improvised subterfuge going on with the Imperial Reflex camera". Is that an airtight argument? Just no other conclusion to be drawn from facts known? Or is that another of the many insubstantial reasonings by which horrible things get accused of Ruth and the allegations then come to be cited as their own evidence that the allegations are established facts? (I am willing to take that camera issue up with you as a separate dedicated topic if you wish.) 

On Michael Paine and the 1993 Backyard Photo, I think the BYP's were real and Michael Paine in 1993 was truthful on the BYP claim, which means he held back on that earlier. The question would be why he held back earlier. I do not think he said that in 1993 because a handler told him there needs to be some bulking-up of the case against Oswald in public opinion so why don't you just go out there and l*ie and falsely say you saw a BYP. I don't think that is the explanation. I think the explanation is he withheld it earlier (for whatever reason) and on his own (for whatever reason) told the truth in 1993, on that BYP. That is what I think.

 

41 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

The Luby’s engagement occurred more than once. Paine told the FBI he was in the habit of eating lunch on Sundays at Luby’s, and would engage in “intellectual conversations or debates concerning world affairs with various SMU students …”  (CD 1245, p. 196)

Michael Paine also attended right-wing meetings, such as a John Birch Society meet the night following Walker’s United States Day rally which Oswald attended (Oct 23-24, 1963). In turn the following night (Friday Oct 25), Paine took Oswald to the ACLU meeting.

Paine: “I have been to a number of rightist meetings and seminars in Texas.” (WCH II, p 389)   “I gathered he (Oswald) was doing more or less the same thing ... I didn’t inquire how he spent his free time but I supposed he was going around to right wing groups ... familiarizing himself for whatever his purposes were as I was.” (WCH II, p. 403)

What was Michael Paine’s “purpose” in attending disparate political meetings and engaging students in political conversation?

He could have been spying on right-wing groups. I agree that looks a little unusual. Michael's stated reason for attending was to bring about better understanding between left and right. However Michael is not known to have written an article, given a public talk, engaged in discussion, attempted to dialogue with, the extreme right-wingers whose meetings he attended ... If someone was attending meetings of "the other side" politically for ecumenical or better-understanding dialogue purposes, those are the kind of things that might be expected.

So in that light that is a point, it does give a perception spilling over into questioning the Lubys student conversations. However in the only known instance of a Lubys political conversation, those students were not radical right by any indication. How do you know Michael just wasn't one of those kind of people who like to discuss and debate politics with whoever is nearby? He was a Unitarian. I have known Unitarians. They are cerebral, liberal, like to discuss politics, if I were to describe Unitarian subculture. 

People are quirky. Some people attend for their own interest meetings of the "crazies" on the other side whom they oppose. I believe Ruth said Michael was that type, she did not think he was doing so as an informant. I have met the type. One can see the online equivalent when one checks in on some website repeatedly that is "crazy" on the other side just to see the latest whackadoo they are up to, get that good morning jolt of reconfirmation of the decline of Western civilization to start the day--better than caffeine. I myself, totally opposed to Trump, for a while there in the past would google "Trump" on Google News every morning just to see what jaw-dropper Trump had done in the past 24 hours (wouldn't want to miss out on knowing). 

5 minutes ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

Do you have a link to the statements of the students?

Yes, start from this page and a few pages following: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96443#relPageId=4 .

(I see why you asked the question, the original link I gave was not working but I have fixed that now above.)

 

More Rorschach Inkblot projection interpretation

From the Max Good film, "The Assassination & Mrs. Paine":

Bill Simpich: Michael liked to pose, provoking students to talk about their Cuba beliefs, portraying himself as a pro-Cuban guy, which he certainly was not. Very weird and suspicious activity. That’s what you do when you’re trying to smoke somebody out. 

This arises solely out of an account of two students who met Michael Paine on a Sunday after his Unitarian church at a particular Luby’s buffet restaurant, in which Michael struck up a conversation with two students standing next to him in line, then they took their trays and ate together and continued the conversation, which was about politics and Cuba. Michael told the FBI he enjoyed talking with students about politics. That is the sum total factual basis underlying the accusation above (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96443#relPageId=9 ).

There is no basis whatsoever for saying Michael was ever duplicitous in expression of his views on Cuba to anyone, whether on this occasion or any other.

The only reason this students’ account of meeting Michael Paine came to the attention of the FBI and there was FBI followup at all was because the FBI was investigating a report that according to one of those students Michael Paine had said something about Texas School Book Depository employment which conflicted with known information, but that turned out to have been a mistake on the part of the student.

It is not clear that the activity of Michael Paine at Luby's that day is different from the kind of thing that happens in coffee shops and cafes all the time the world over.

To the present day, this single incident, this one right here, is widely considered by some JFK assassination conspiracy believers, as bedrock, in-their-bones evidence that Michael Paine was spying on students, keeping files, surveilling.

The evidence? 

He enjoyed discussing politics with students at a Luby's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is there a possibility that somebody could get falsely accused by this kind of logic?