Greg Doudna

May 4, 2022

The way paradigm level thinking works is no matter what individual fact is fact-checked, people will think well that's only that one, what about all the others which are still true. This is how paradigm thinking works, and why so few minds are changed by fact-checking on matters of politics or religion.

Ron Bulman, what hypothetically would it take for you to be convinced that Ruth Paine and Michael Paine never had files of Cuban sympathizers in their garage? The fact that the only officer who claimed that in his 1963 police report, explicitly repudiated that claim in 1964 in sworn testimony under oath? The fact that there never was at any time a single firsthand witness who claimed to have seen any such files personally?

What would it take for you?

May 4, 2022

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Greg,

I suggest that you go back study the original, detailed commentaries in the first several pages of this 2015 thread by James DiEugenio and Greg Parker. It can't be said any better. They review the evidence about the Paines, Allen Dulles, and the involvement of the Paines in helping to set up and, later, frame Oswald as the lone assassin of JFK.

This includes a review of the fact that Ruth Paine's own father and sister worked for the CIA-- something that she tried to cover up during the Clay Shaw trial.

And, incidentally, I don't bear false witness against anyone. Never have and never shall.

It's against my "ancient Near Eastern religion."

W., concerning your "Ruth Paine's history with the CIA" I read pages 1-5 and except for one mention of the Marina CIA/ACLU hearsay, no one in those pages even claims Ruth was CIA, let alone purports to offer evidence for such.

You add now "Ruth Paine's own father and sister worked for the CIA--something she tried to cover up during the Clay Shaw trial". Do you know that Ruth knew her sister was CIA at the time she was asked about her sister? No. Are you sure covert CIA persons with cover employment in the government tell adult siblings they are covert CIA (as opposed to the cover employment)? I very much doubt that you know that. Are you being fair, if you don't know, which you don't, to level that accusation against Ruth Paine?

Also, I could be wrong but unlike with her sister I don't think her father ever was verified CIA. I am not denying the possibility and I don't care here whether he was or wasn't. I am simply saying as a matter of factual accuracy I don't think that is a known fact. There is a hearsay of a woman who says Ruth told her her father was CIA but we don't know if that is accurate transmission since it is hearsay. Would Ruth know? In the Max Good film Ruth Paine says she doesn't know.

May 4, 2022

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

[I am putting on this thread some further material from the Max Good film, "The Assassination & Mrs. Paine".]

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! Would you want that man on your jury?

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?

May 4, 2022

Oswald, the job at the Texas School Book Depository, and the assassination: an update and correction

There are six persons who "got Oswald to apply for the job at the TSBD". They are:

Linnie Mae Randle--told Ruth Paine and Marina of TSBD job possibility. Told her brother, Frazier, that Lee needed a job.
Marina Oswald--urged Ruth Paine to phone TSBD about job for Lee. Urged Lee to apply. Got Lee to apply.
Ruth Paine--at Marina's urging called Truly at TSBD. Truly said Oswald invited to apply.
Buell Wesley Frazier--upon learning from Linnie Mae, checked with boss Shelley at work on Oswald's behalf. Shelley checked with Truly. Shelley returned to Frazier with word from Truly that Oswald was invited to apply.
Roy Truly--told Ruth Paine Oswald was invited to apply. Told Frazier Oswald was invited to apply. By those two actions Truly got Oswald to apply. Hired Oswald when he applied.
Lee Harvey Oswald--he got Oswald to apply at the TSBD too.

The problem has been that that looks for all the world like something that happened accidentally and opportunistically for Oswald without prior planning--an accident. Yet it turned out to be so important in the assassination that happened six weeks later. So the question has been: how to reconcile those two in terms of plausible mechanism--how would it work that Oswald became employed there on the assumption of an assassination plot?

I showed above that it cannot have been via the phone call from Ruth Paine (picking out Ruth Paine from the six above) because that could in no way realistically have been relied upon to accomplish ensuring Oswald's hire. But how then might it have worked? If the assassination was a criminal conspiracy prepared for Kennedy in Dallas.

Here I update and correct my earlier above and propose a better answer to that question, in which there is no need to suppose anything other than unwitting coincidence on the part of the five above other than Oswald, in the circumstances of Oswald getting that job--and yet Oswald's hire is interpreted as playing a role in a criminal conspiracy to assassinate the president nevertheless.

To start with some context, I think Lee was CIA or some agency working with CIA. I think Oswald was an operative infiltrating groups that an agency wanted disrupted, such as the FPCC in New Orleans. I think there was an intention by a circle within CIA to have the assassination pinned falsely on Castro by means of an Oswald connection.

I think the assassination plot was known as to its existence by a small number of persons in CIA but that CIA did not carry out, was not involved in, the on-the-ground of it, but that part was done by a mob interest--the planning and carrying out of the execution of the plot as an aspect of a larger context of CIA/Mob contacts and working relationships, in this case probably via Marcello of New Orleans since he controlled Dallas.

On the circumstances of how Oswald came to get his job at the TSBD with respect to Buell Wesley Frazier, I may not have gotten that right, and this reflects an update and correction.

The point I brought out that stands is an important one: the idea that a serious plot for an assassination would rely upon--plan in advance to use--a cold-call phone call from a complete stranger in Irving, Ruth Paine, to ensure Oswald would be hired, makes no sense. Since that makes no sense, the plot planning had to have some other way of accomplishing the setup for the assassination than that. And since that phone call of Ruth Paine cannot have played any central role in the actual plot planning, there is nothing to distinguish that phone call of Ruth to Truly at TSBD as other than what it has always appeared to be, Ruth making a phone call to try to help Marina's husband who is in a bad situation and needs a job. That the assassination happened at the TSBD six weeks later becomes coincidence as far as Ruth Paine is concerned, no different than the way a thousand other incidental human acts could be so interpreted looked at backward from a Big Event.

I suggested an alternative possibility that had not received attention: that it was via Buell Wesley Frazier (himself a recent arrival to Dallas and recent TSBD hire) as a mechanism to have an "inside man" know details of timing, connections to key persons, and then put in a personal word, as raising the chances of success of Oswald in being hired. The main problem in suggesting that is it has no more positive evidence than the ideas that Ruth Paine called Truly at TSBD at the behest of the CIA, that is, nothing. Like Ruth Paine, Frazier had a family association--Frazier's stepfather in Huntsville, according to Frazier as he told the authors of Lone Star Speaks, was Dixie Mafia. The Dixie Mafia groups in Texas worked with (always under) Marcello of New Orleans. So there was an argument from association and juxtaposition of timing with the building, TSBD, which could fit into a Marcello-plot idea. That was the argument I saw. The strength of the argument is that an inside man (such as Frazier) is a mechanism or would be in a good position to assist in bringing about a hire of someone else. The weak point is that there is no evidence, its all imagination of possible reconstruction, in that sense almost as bad as the notion that the CIA got Oswald hired at TSBD downtown by means of having total stranger Ruth Paine from Irving make a phone call and TSBD would hop to it.

I am now thinking I assumed too much, such as that the TSBD was picked in advance as essential to the plot. There are other ways it could have worked. The basic situation, thinking it through, is that there is a plot intended to take place in Dallas during the presidential visit to Dallas involving a parade. However the route is not known and even if there was an inside man involved in the route planning, there are many uncertainties. It is essential in the reconstruction that Oswald (CIA or agency working with CIA) be part of the plot approved and run by Marcello. The way that could work is Marcello might be asked to use Oswald (Oswald's uncle in New Orleans had worked in the Marcello organization which could grease that connection [the uncle, Murret, died 1964]). Meanwhile, Oswald would be asked to be an informant on the plot. Oswald gets double-crossed by being sacrificed as the patsy, after he thought he was working as an informant.

Rather than a complex reconstruction in which Oswald or others arranged for all of Oswald's prior job interviews to fail before the hire at TSBD, replace that with a simpler construction: that Oswald was after any job that could have a good chance of being on a parade route, which could include a hundred or more possibilities, not just TSBD (even though TSBD was very good strategically as it turned out). The evidence that this was what was going on--Oswald seeking any job that would have a good chance of maybe being on the parade route--comes from several indications I see. First, there is that early police talk about finding a map of Oswald marked with what looked like the parade route and places marked on the parade route, at least that is what early reports said the Dallas police thought it looked like. Later that was explained as a misunderstanding as only being Oswald job applications (but that is the point, here). (Incidentally, is any image of that map accessible which has Oswald's markings clear enough to be seen? I have seen a photo of that map, which had been given to Lee to use by the Paines and had some unrelated Paines' markings on it before Oswald had it, but the photo I have seen is not clear enough to intelligibly see the markings on the map after Oswald had it.)

One of Oswald's earlier job applications, at Wiener Lumber Company on Oct 14 where he was interviewed and turned down, the day before he applied to and was hired at TSBD, was retroactively suspected as possibly connected to a motivation on Oswald's part of securing a job at a location on the most likely parade route. From an FBI interview report 11/27/63.

"Mr. Samson Wiener, Proprietor, Wiener Lumber Company, Inwood Road at Maple Avenue, telephone ME 1-1111, who stated he is a member of the Crime Commission in Dallas, furnished a copy of an application for employment daed October 14, 1963, in the name of Lee Harvey Oswald, born October 18, 1939, place not given, which was filled out in his handwriting. Wiener stated that he was mildly impressed with Oswald as a prospective employee until Oswald was asked to show his Honorable Discharge Card, inasmuch as he alleged to have been in the U.S. Marine Corps. When he was unable to satisfy him regarding his alleged former service with the U,S. Marine Corps, he was not hired, according to Mr. Wiener.

"Mr. Wiener advised that one of his employees advanced the theory that Oswald may not have come to Wiener Lumber Company purely by accident, that it was entirely possible that a motorcade from Love Field to downtown Dallas could have passed by this lumber company at Inwood Road and Maple Avenue. Wiener pointed out that in his opinion it would have possibly been even a more direct route to the downtown area than the route which was taken subsequently by the Presidential Motorcade when President Kennedy visited Dallas. He felt that the possibility existed that Lee Harvey Oswald may have contacted other places on what he may have thought to have been a potential motorcade route from the airport to downtown Dallas for the President." (https://www.maryferrell.org/archive/docs/095/95616/images/img_95616_113_300.png)

And after Oswald got the Texas School Book Depository job there are at least three known instances (could be more) of what I believe can only be interpreted as plot-connected attempts to get plot-connected persons hired into jobs in tall buildings on downtown arteries. All three apparently involved false use of Oswald's name even though in none of those cases was the person Oswald. That is, Oswald's job in TSBD was not all the interest there was in tall buildings with good sniper possibilities in the runup to JFK's visit to Dallas.

But there is the fundamental question: how can a sniper assassination be planned before the parade route was known which was only finalized at close to the last moment? One possibility is, even though the route was not known, some things could be anticipated on the basis of fairly good guess, or analysis of necessity. And in the main uncertainty--which of the three arteries, Elm, Main, or Central--the motorcade would take through downtown--some tall buildings could cover two of those, and it would only take two or three hires on those main downtown arteries and there is a good chance whatever parade route was selected would be covered; Kennedy would be vulnerable. That is on the assumption of no inside man inside the motorcade-route planning end of it. If there was an inside man in a position to influence or order alteration in the route, that would be an even easier explanation--just have a good sniper location set up and have the motorcade routed by it. The key point is that the fixation on having Oswald be at the Texas School Book Depository specifically--for the plot--may be overthinking this. The idea would be that Oswald would get any job on one of the main downtown arteries or which otherwise might reasonably be anticipated to have a good chance of being on the parade route. The plot would then develop the rest of the sniper planning around that location wherever Oswald was. I think the original framing plan for Oswald was not to have him be tagged as the shooter or that the shooting be done by one person but rather a criminal conspiracy blamed on Castro by means of Oswald as the supplier or owner of a rifle used in the shooting and found afterward (the Flip DeMey argument).

And in further support of this: the Laura Kittrell Texas Employment Commission story of her dealings with Oswald.

"I want an office job, downtown"

Laura Kittrell's backward-remembered account of her dealings with Oswald in the course of her position with the Texas Employment Commission, building from writing of her memories starting as early as Dec 1963, is conflated with memories of Larry Crafard whom she also dealt with and whom she confused with Oswald, creating incongruities such that her entire story was given no interest by the FBI and relatively little interest by researchers. Note that there has never been an issue whether Laura Kittrell was who she said she was at TEC nor was there ever any denial that she worked with Oswald. Nevertheless, her story was deep-sixed and did not enter into formation of the Warren Commission narrative. The retroactive conflation of Oswald and Crafard created incongruities providing justification for rejecting her story in toto, without considering that there was information underneath Kittrell's confusion of the two persons if the confusions in identity were disentangled. I think her story may have been covered up. Provided Laura Kittrell's account is subjected to critical analysis and interpretation--distinguishing Oswald from Crafard, disentanglement of the two--there is information of significance.

(Among other things, there is a report of a physical aptitude and coordination test taken by Oswald in early Oct 1963 indicating Oswald would be a poor rifle shooter, and Oswald agreeing with Kittrell who pointed that out to him that that was true, that he was a poor shot with a rifle--that alone could be possible motive for coverup of her story.)

There are a number of things of interest in the Kittrell account, but for present purposes there is this: Oswald is at the Texas Employment Commission in early Oct 1963 wanting a job and Kittrell's job is to help him. Apparently Oswald had been classified for blue-collar or general work. Oswald came back and was sent over to Laura Kittrell to get upgraded to white-collar and he said he wanted a job in a downtown building. Kittrell started writing her story Dec 1963. This is Laura Kittrell writing of Oswald in her office in early Oct. 1963 (pp. 33-34 of Kittrell mss.):

"He [Oswald] wanted me to drop everything else and make him out an extra application for office work, and I was feeling the time slip away, and did not want to.

"He won his argument with me by dredging up some office experience. At first it seemed to me that just as he had, upon seeing the ad for the electronics assemblers, invented needed but unverifiable experience as an electronics assembler, (in Russia!) so he had now invented white-collar experience to go with his sudden notion that he should have an office job, downtown.

"'I used to sell shoes', he said. 'That is office-work experience, isn't it?'

"'Well, do you want to sell shoes, then?', I asked crossly.

"'No,' he said, 'I want an office job, downtown.'"

(The typed version of the Kittrell manuscript is available at the John Armstrong Collection site at https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/poage-collections/john-armstrong-collection. Because I found it difficult to access at that site, to save others the same difficulty here is how: Hit "Search Collections". Search for "Kittrell". Click on first search listing, "Sightings of LHO, Oct. 1963--Laura Kittrell" (187 images). Click on "Download" button to lower left. A popup screen will give you three choices and ask what you want; click the choice, "Full Asset". Click "Download". It should now be on your computer.)

Conclusion

Therefore I am concluding now that Buell Wesley Frazier's mid-Sept relocation from a mobbed-up home in Huntsville (in the sense of a homegrown crime organization which cooperated with Marcello's organization in New Orleans), to the Dallas area and employment in the TSBD in a position to assist Oswald in being hired there a month later, may or may not have been accidental (I know of no way of knowing). In either case Ruth Paine's phone call to try to help Marina's husband get a job was accidental and played no role in the planning or execution of the plot.

I imagine a plot in which several sniper-friendly buildings were lined up ready to go prior to the President's arrival to Dallas, depending on how the parade route played out. If it was found necessary to do it from one of the locations other than where Oswald had found his job, that need not be an insurmountable problem in that the key original setup was (a) a Castro conspiracy (multiple shooters in evidence, no problem), that connection established by (b) linkage and implication of Oswald to a rifle (and perhaps Oswald's physical presence at the shooting site even if he was not employed there).

In a benign interpretation of Oswald, which has my strong sympathies, Oswald might be imagined to have informed on this plot and right up to the last minute expected intervention to stop it, though without knowing the detail that he was being set up with the rifle association. When the assassination happened without being prevented, that might have been a moment of panic for Oswald, but a backup contingency plan "in case anything goes wrong" might have been to get to the Texas Theatre for say a 3 pm meeting, which is what he did--where a killer arrived with intent to kill him there, though that is another story.

Bottom line: it is unnecessary to assume or conclude any of the six involved in Oswald's TSBD hire, including Ruth Paine, were CIA except Oswald. There is no evidence or necessity to suppose that any of those other five, including Ruth Paine, were witting to anything other than a young pregnant immigrant woman's husband needing a job in a bad way.

Since from most accounts Oswald had no unusual meetings or contacts at his rooming house in Oak Cliff, his mechanism for regular contact for his informant work would be during his lunch hour walking to one of the downtown offices or nearby to meet someone, during his work days.

May 3, 2022

2 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Greg,

There may be no direct evidence that Ruth Paine was CIA, but there is very strong circumstantial evidence indicating so. Circumstantial evidence requires corroborating evidence in order to remove "reasonable doubt," but there is plenty of other circumstantial evidence pointing to Ruth to do just that.

The plotters had to get Oswald to take a job at the TSBD so that he could play his role as patsy there. Testimonial evidence shows that Ruth was responsible for Oswald applying for a job there. The only reasonable way she could have known that Oswald needed to apply there is if she were taking orders from the CIA. And she would take orders from the CIA only if she were a CIA asset. Therefore she was a CIA asset.

You did not see my post on the other topic ("The Secret Service never told Marina that Ruth Paine was CIA"), where I directly responded to you on this very thing? Here, I will post it again:

Oswald and obtaining the job in the TSBD

Sandy, thanks for your answer. I think you may be jumping to unwarranted conclusions. Lets start with some common ground. I think Lee was either CIA himself or CIA was all over him in the sense of watching him, one or the other. I think Oswald was an operative infiltrating groups that agencies wanted disrupted, such as FPCC in New Orleans, and probably others. On Mexico City, that is a puzzle and I do not claim to understand it, but I have some thinking short of certainty: the big question to me is whether Lee was sent there or went there on his own to try to escape to Cuba or the USSR (and was followed, surveilled, and that visit exploited after the fact opportunistically by CIA). (I don't buy the idea that he did not go to Mexico City.) I do not think Oswald's encounter with Kostikov in the Soviet embassy was planned but was accident, and I think the monitored followup phone call of someone not Oswald to that embassy but pretending to be Oswald was a phishing phone call, to find out who Oswald had talked to inside there.

I think the assassination plot was known as to its existence by a small number of persons in CIA but that CIA was not carrying out the on-the-ground of it, but that was handed off to or being done by a mob interest, to plan and carry out the execution of the plot, part of a larger context of CIA/Mob contacts and working relationships, in this case probably via Marcello of New Orleans since he controlled Dallas.

On the TSBD, I wrote in a different thread on that but I may not have gotten that completely right. The point I brought out that stands is an important one: the idea that a serious plot for an assassination would rely upon--plan in advance to use--a cold-call phone call from a complete stranger in Irving, Ruth Paine, to ensure Oswald would be hired, makes no sense. Since that makes no sense, the plot planning had to have some other way of accomplishing the setup for the assassination than that, in which whether Ruth Paine's phone call happened was not too important. And since that phone call of Ruth Paine cannot have played any central role in the actual plot planning, there is nothing to distinguish that phone call of Ruth to Truly at TSBD as other than what it has always appeared to be, Ruth making a phone call to try to help Marina's husband who is in a bad situation and needs a job. That the assassination happened at the TSBD six weeks later becomes coincidence as far as Ruth Paine is concerned, no different than the way a thousand other incidental human acts could be so interpreted looked at backward from a Big Event.

I suggested an alternative possibility that had not received attention: that it was via Buell Wesley Frazier (himself a recent arrival to Dallas and recent TSBD hire) as a mechanism to have an "inside man" know details of timing, connections to key persons, and then put in a personal word, as raising the chances of success of Oswald in being hired. The main problem in suggesting that is it has no more positive evidence than the ideas that Ruth Paine called Truly at TSBD at the behest of the CIA, that is, nothing. Like Ruth Paine, Frazier had a family association--Frazier's stepfather in Huntsville, according to Frazier as he told to the authors of Lone Star Speaks, was Dixie Mafia. The Dixie Mafia groups in Texas worked with (always under) Marcello of New Orleans. So there was an argument from association and juxtaposition of timing with the building, TSBD, which could fit into a Marcello-plot idea. That was the argument I saw. The strength of the argument is that an inside man (such as Frazier) is a mechanism or would be in a good position to assist in bringing about a hire of someone else. The weak point is that there is no evidence, its all imagination of possible reconstruction, in that sense almost as bad as the ideas that the CIA had Oswald hired at TSBD downtown by means of having total stranger Ruth Paine from Irving make a phone call and TSBD would hop to it.

I am now thinking maybe I have been assuming too much, such as that the TSBD was picked in advance as essential to the plot. There are other ways it could have worked. The basic situation, thinking it through, is that there is a plot intended to take place in Dallas during the presidential visit to Dallas involving a parade. However the route is not known and even if there was an inside man involved in the route planning, there are many uncertainties. It is essential in the reconstruction that Oswald (CIA or equivalent spook agency) be part of the plot approved and run by Marcello. The way that could work is Marcello might be asked to use Oswald (Oswald's uncle in New Orleans had worked in the Marcello organization which could grease that connection [the uncle, Murret, died 1964]). Oswald is asked to be an informant on the plot. Oswald gets double-crossed by being sacrificed as the patsy, after he thought he was working as an informant.

Rather than a complex reconstruction in which Oswald or others arranged for all of Oswald's prior job interviews to fail before the hire at TSBD, replace that with a simpler construction: that Oswald was after any job that could have a good chance of being on a parade route, which could include a hundred or more possibilities, not just TSBD (even though TSBD was very good strategically as it turned out). The evidence that this was what was going on--Oswald seeking any job that could have a good chance of maybe being on the parade route comes from several indications I see. First, there is that early police talk about finding a map of Oswald marked with places on the parade route, at least that is what the Dallas police thought it looked like. Later that was explained as a misunderstanding as only being Oswald job applications (that is the point). However, to the present day I have been unable to find any image of that map which has the markings clear enough to be seen. (There is a photo of that map, which had been given to Lee to use by the Paines and had some unrelated Paines' markings on it before Oswald had it, but the photo I have seen is not clear enough to see the markings on the map after Oswald had it.)

Oswald's first job application, where he was turned down for the job, was retroactively suspected by the employer as possibly connected to it being a location which would be where the presidential parade would go by. And after Oswald got the TSBD job there are at least three known instances (could be more) of what I believe can only be interpreted as plot-connected attempts to get plot-connected persons hired into jobs in tall buildings on downtown arteries. All three apparently involved false use of Oswald's name even though in none of those cases was the person Oswald. That is, Oswald's job in TSBD was not all the interest there was in tall buildings with good sniper possibilities in the runup to JFK's visit to Dallas.

But there is the fundamental question: how can a sniper assassination be planned before the parade route was known which was only finalized at close to the last moment? One possibility is, even though the route was not known, some things could be anticipated on the basis of fairly good guess, or analysis of necessity. And in the main uncertainty--which of three arteries, Elm, Main, or Central--the motorcade would take through downtown--some tall buildings could cover two of those, and it would only take two or three hires on those main downtown arteries and there is a good chance whatever parade route was selected it would be covered; Kennedy would be vulnerable. That is on the assumption of no inside man inside the motorcade-route planning end of it. If there was an inside man in a position to influence or order a key leg or alteration in the route, that would be an even easier explanation--just have a good sniper location set up and have the motorcade at the last minute routed by it, wherever it was. The key point is that the fixation (speaking to myself here) on TSBD specifically, may be overthinking this. The idea would be that Oswald would get any job on one of the main downtown arteries or otherwise on a portion of the parade route that might reasonably be anticipated, and the plot would then develop the rest of the sniper planning around that location wherever Oswald was. I think the original framing plan for Oswald was not to have him be tagged as the shooter or that the shooting be done by one person but rather a criminal conspiracy blamed on Castro by means of Oswald as the supplier or owner of a rifle used in the shooting and found afterward (the Flip DeMey argument).

And in further support of this: the Laura Kittrell Texas Employment Commission story of her dealings with Oswald. Kittrell's account of Oswald is mixed and conflated with memories of Larry Crafard whom she also dealt with and confused with Oswald, creating incongruities such that her entire story was given no interest by the FBI and relatively little interest by researchers. I think her story may have been covered up, and, provided it is subjected to critical analysis and interpretation, has information there of much significance (among other things, there is a report of a physical aptitude test in Oct 1963 indicating Oswald would be a poor rifle shot, and Oswald agreeing with Kittrell that that was true, he was a poor shot with a rifle--that alone could be possible motive for coverup). There are a number of things of interest, but for present purposes there is this: Oswald is at TEC in early Oct 1963 wanting a job and Kittrell's job is to help him. Apparently Oswald had been classified for blue-collar or general work and Oswald came back to get upgraded to white-collar and he said he wanted a job in a downtown building. (I found the typed version of the Kittrell mss. difficult to access; to save others time here is how. Go to the John Armstrong Collection site at https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/poage-collections/john-armstrong-collection. Hit "Search Collections". Search for "Kittrell". Click on first search listing, "Sightings of LHO, Oct. 1963--Laura Kittrell" (187 images). Click on "Download" button to lower left. A popup screen will give you three choices and ask what you want; click the choice, "Full Asset". Click "Download". It should now be on your computer.) Kittrell started writing her story Dec 1963. This is Laura Kittrell writing of Oswald in her office in early Oct. 1963 (pp. 33-34 of Kittrell mss.):

"He [Oswald] wanted me to drop everything else and make him out an extra application for office work, and I was feeling the time slip away, and did not want to.

"He won his argument with me by dredging up some office experience. At first it seemed to me that just as he had, upon seeing the ad for the electronics assemblers, invented needed but unverifiable experience as an electronics assembler, (in Russia!) so he had now invented white-collar experience to go with his sudden notion that he should have an office job, downtown.

"'I used to sell shoes', he said. 'That is office-work experience, isn't it?'

"'Well, do you want to sell shoes, then?', I asked crossly.

"'No,' he said, 'I want an office job, downtown.'"

Therefore I am concluding now that Buell Wesley Frazier's mid-Sept relocation from a mobbed-up home in Huntsville and employment in the TSBD in a position to assist Oswald in being hired there a month later may or may not have been accidental (I know of no way of knowing), but in either case Ruth Paine's phone call was an accident and played no role in the planning or execution of the plot.

I imagine a plot in which several sniper-friendly buildings were lined up ready to go prior to the President's arrival to Dallas, depending on how the parade route played out. If it was decided to do it from one of the locations other than where Oswald had found his job, that need not be an insurmountable problem in that the key original setup was (a) a Castro conspiracy (multiple shooters in evidence, no problem), proven by (b) linkage and implication of Oswald to a rifle (and perhaps visiting to the shooting site if not employed there).

In a benign interpretation of Oswald, which has my strong sympathies, Oswald might be imagined to have informed on this plot and right up to the last minute expected intervention to stop it, though without knowing the detail that he was being set up with the rifle association. When the assassination happened without being prevented, that would have been a moment of panic for Oswald, but a backup contingency plan "in case anything goes wrong" might have been to get to the Texas Theatre for say a 3 pm meeting, which is what he did--where a killer arrived with intent to kill him there, though that is another story.

Bottom line: it is unnecessary to assume or conclude any of the six involved in Oswald's TSBD hire, including Ruth Paine, were CIA except Oswald. There is no evidence or indication that any of those other five, including Ruth Paine, were witting to anything other than a young pregnant immigrant woman's husband needing a job.

Since from most accounts Oswald had no unusual meetings or contacts at his rooming house in Oak Cliff, his mechanism for regular contact for his informant work would be during his lunch hour walking to one of the downtown offices or nearby to meet someone, during his work days.

May 3, 2022

41 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

I wonder if the recent blitz of threads whitewashing Ruth Paine's history with the CIA might be an example of Cass Sunstein's "cognitive infiltration" strategy for "conspiracy theory" forums-- similar to the Fred Litwin nonsense.

Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee's Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory: Griffin, David Ray: 9781566568210: Books - Amazon

It is not, from me, in any way shape or form W.

There is no known history of Ruth Paine with the CIA to whitewash. You should, you must, if you care about truth, reword your statement. You are making false, unsubstantiated smearing of someone without evidence. How do you feel morally about that? "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor"--ancient near eastern code.

All documents concerning Ruth Paine except for tax records are now released--nothing more to get. Not one shred of evidence--document, witness testimony, nothing-- that Ruth was CIA.

You can say because her sister was and her father was USAID then you know she "must have been too" which would not be a problem if you labeled that accurately as unsubstantiated suspicion, unsubstantiated allegation. But you don't. You express it as bedrock fact.

When you started talking like this, my first reaction was "Et tu, W.?" Because I have followed your posts on Ukraine, Solzhenitsyn et al and they are thoughtful.

Are you familiar with Rene Girard and scapegoat theory? Girard argued that all cultures, going as far back into prehistory, resolve deep group tensions by fixing upon an innocent scapegoat, projecting guilt upon that scapegoat, and sacrificially executing that scapegoat. That was not the half of it. Girard also argued (this was work in anthropology, with a slight bit of Girard's Roman Catholic theology mixed in), that this phenomenon, which Girard argued was a cultural universal, also involved this: cultures when they fix upon and abuse and destroy their innocent scapegoats literally, literally--literally--cannot see that that is what they are doing when they are doing it.

What this community, and you (as in the story of David and Nathan the prophet in the Old Testament, with the parable ending with the words, "You are the man"), are illustrating here is picture-perfect Girard theory, case study.

My posts came about in response to the film "The Assassination & Mrs. Paine" released a month ago.

I would like to think that exoneration of an innocent person will advance, not weaken, the struggle to come to resolution and knowledge of the criminal conspiracy that assassinated JFK.

Even if you do not believe Ruth Paine is exonerated simply because no hard evidence has ever existed to incriminate her, why in God's name do you not acknowledge that most basic principle of American jurisprudence, "innocent until proven guilty", and apply that to Ruth Paine?

Even "The Assassination & Mrs. Paine" gets this most basic point straight up front:

Narrator: There are all kinds of claims and rumors about the Paines but no concrete evidence has ever directly linked them to the CIA.

And I do not know if you are aware of this--I suspect not--but there is almost a straight-line correlation between the top tier of JFK assassination researchers who do not speak of Ruth Paine as guilty, going down to the grassroots where Ruth Paine is considered the worst form of witch and devil and called horrible names. At the top tier, Newman, such substantial work over decades on the CIA, never goes after Ruth Paine. Talbot, who wrote the book against Dulles, exonerates--yes explicitly exonerates, Ruth Paine in his Dulles book. You don't find attacks on Ruth Paine in Larry Hancock's books, who is top tier of the top tier, in his oeuvre (corpus of published research). And Bill Simpich, who knows most if not all of the major names and is one himself, says all of the major names in his league, known to him, consider Ruth Paine exonerated from being part of the assassination plot, in "The Assassination & Mrs. Paine":

Bill Simpich: I don't know anybody who thinks that they were part of the plot to kill the President.

(In the interests of full disclosure, Simpich holds to a view that Ruth Paine, innocent of any witting role in the assassination, was unwittingly manipulated by others into doing things that advanced the plot, without awareness of it.)

If holding Ruth Paine innocent of the assassination in agreement with ca. 100% of the top tier according to Simpich, and stating the simple, plain, unvarnished truth that there is no evidence she was CIA, is what you think is cognitive infiltration, perhaps look at that top tier--all of the top tier of researchers known to Simpich--who hold to exactly what you appear to believe in your bones is subversive to the proper existential order related to JFK assassination conspiracy research.

May 3, 2022

Sandy I agreed with you Oswald is CIA or some equivalent and that there was a plot to blame Castro for the assassination via Oswald. You are picking at a point that does not affect or matter to the issue you and I were discussing, which is the TSBD hiring of Oswald.

I don't think the Silvia Duran twist party or the red-haired black dude who said he paid $6500 to Oswald, involved Oswald. I agree that the voice on the phone call to the Soviet embassy pretending to be Oswald wasn't.

You cite some things that question whether Oswald was in Mexico City, but none of those are airtight. What is airtight is that Oswald in his handwriting in a letter he purposely left out for Ruth Paine to find in her living room (to be reported and become record inside the government and perhaps made public), said he had gone to Mexico City. So its a matter of weighting the various elements of evidence and to me I see greater weight that he did go there. I suppose it could be argued that Oswald was witting to pretending that another person who went there and pretended to be him, was him, wrote down Silvia Duran's information in his address book, had paper items from Mexico City, etc. I am not as quick as some to leap to the all-purpose "everything was forged" (such an easy solution to everything, isn't it?) whenever an issue of physical evidence comes up, especially in this case in which the physical evidence at issue comes from diverse sources and circumstances the only thing in common being contact with Oswald.

We know that there was a major issue within the first weekend of the assassination of LBJ putting a stop to, and then covering up, a plot in some CIA quarters to blame Castro/USSR for the assassination. It seems to me that could be a pretty good motive right there coming from LBJ and Hoover to try to deny the idea that Oswald went to Mexico City, if it were possible to do so convincingly. As for the Cuban consulate witnesses, the two American informants inside the Cuban embassy only said they had not seen Oswald but they were not in the physical location where they would have seen him, so their testimony does not exclude Oswald there. Duran I think went both ways on whether it was Oswald. Azcue is the major and most compelling witness saying it wasn't Oswald. One possibility is he was right (which still leaves indeterminate whether Oswald was in Mexico City just not at the Cuban consulate). Another possibility is as a loyal Castro Cuban (as it seems he was despite US attempts to turn him) he said it wasn't Oswald because of how sensitive the situation was with respect to the charges being made against Castro, accusations that Castro did it, knew about and dealt with Oswald at that consulate, etc. Here is why I think Azcue privately maybe did think it was Oswald despite outwardly saying the opposite: because US intelligence picked up Castro referring to a report Castro received from the Cuban consulate and in that report Castro thinks there had been a scene with Oswald. Castro's private intelligence seems to have told him it was Oswald, and the source for that for Castro, would that not be Azcue in Mexico City? Azcue also could have been on the spot for his job personally over it. I don't know. I agree Azcue is a strong witness if he's telling the truth, but there is counterevidence going the other way, so it all has to be weighted. The photos of the blond-haired guy, how do we know who that was. Lack of photos of Oswald from the US side--perhaps relics of an early failed attempt of CIA/FBI to cover up Oswald going to Mexico City altogether?

There's another thing. I am not so sure that Post Office man Holmes, working with the FBI, was extravagantly lying under oath in his WC testimony--absolutely risking a prison sentence for perjury (if he was making it up)-- when he testified under oath to the Warren Commission that Oswald talked a lot about his Mexico City trip on the Sunday morning before he was shot. Nobody has paid much attention to that because nothing of Oswald talking about MC appears in the written reports of those Sunday morning interrogations, including I think Holmes' own. Which has greater weight--Holmes testimony under oath, or the written reports of the interrogations at the time which say nothing of Oswald talking of MC? What if the absence of it in the written reports was because at that early stage there was an attempt, if it could be gotten away with, to cover up Oswald in Mexico City, make it not to come to light that it had happened? (As part of LBJ/Hoover's decision to shut down the failed attempt to link the assassination to Castro.) I don't know. You can come down dogmatically on one side or the other on this and that's fine--I'm not as certain.

On Kostikov. From what I have read he was the person inside the Soviet embassy in Mexico City who, of the Soviet staff, would have been the one to deal with Oswald as a walk-in (I don't recall the exact reason but it related to defectors or something). Also, I have read that the story that he was involved in assassinations and wet ops was later questioned. In any case, his name only comes into the picture when the phishing phone call (voice impersonator of Oswald) picked up, by accident, from the Russian answering at the other end, a volunteering of the name, Kostikov, as a contact of Oswald inside that embassy (a phishing phone call that succeeded in obtaining that detail of information). Everyone has focused on Kostikov as being the setup of connecting Oswald to the USSR in the assassination while overlooking the more important addressee of Oswald's US/Soviet embassy letter. I think Kostikov's name coming up in Mexico City was an accident at the time of the Mexico City trip but what was not an accident is in the Soviet embassy letter, which, again, fact, was in Oswald's handwriting. Oswald addressed that letter to the leading KGB official in the US by name, and in the letter referred to "finishing our business", an ambiguous statement which can be read either innocently or with sinister meaning and may have been intentionally composed that way (Oswald wrote that letter in his handwriting but he could have had help in composition).

Either it was Oswald in Mexico City or Oswald himself was up to his ears in intentionally cooperating in making it sure look like he was there, from his end. That's about the best I can make of it. Again, you are picking an argument over something that does not really affect the discussion concerning the TSBD hiring of Oswald.

I have read claims that the Lopez report for HSCA, which is probably the best information that exists on the Mexico City trip issue, concluded Oswald did not take the trip. When I checked that, I found such claims were not correct but rather the Lopez Report concluded with uncertainty, which is not the same thing. What isn't uncertain is that somebody wanted to blame the JFK assassination on Cuba and then by decision at the top level of LBJ that was aborted in favor of going for the lone-nut solution. As long as we agree on that, maybe set aside the rest of the Mexico City debate for another time and place? Do you have anything to say regarding what I wrote concerning Oswald at TSBD?

May 3, 2022