Greg Doudna

"Oswald n Austin, Texas at the State Selective Service office, Sept 11, 1963" has been rewritten above

Oswald in Austin, Texas at the State Selective Service office, Sept 11, 1963

A completely credible account of Mrs. Lee Dannelly, Assistant Chief of the Administration Division, State Selective Service Headquarters in Austin, telling of a visit of Oswald to her office has been widely rejected. The Warren Report and Bugliosi say there is no corroboration of Mrs. Dannelly's account, and since it could not have happened on the Sept 25 date indicated by Mrs. Dannelly, WR/Bugliosi simply suggest, citing no basis whatever, that Mrs. Donnelly--a professional woman in a responsible position with no known history of prevarication who gave specifics and details with nothing at all outlandish--simply made the whole thing up out of whole cloth for unknown psychological reasons! On the other hand, some conspiracy theorists who believe in large-scale impersonations have added this to the long lists of false Oswald sightings, thereby (so the logic goes) all the better to prove the vastness and complexity of conspirators who exasperatingly remain to the present day unidentified. 

I would like to remove the mystification on this one: it was Oswald, plain and simple. Mrs. Dannelly simply picked a mistaken date which was the cause of the problem. Once the date is corrected all difficulty is removed in seeing this was a genuine trip of Oswald from New Orleans to Austin, the last known act in a strenuous but fruitless attempt on Oswald's part to correct his undesirable discharge status in his military records. 

That the individual Mrs. Dannelly encountered represented himself to be, and was, Lee Harvey Oswald there should be no real question. After the assassination when Mrs. Dannelly saw Oswald in the news she identified him both from visual recognition and memory of his name. He had come to her office wanting to get his undesirable discharge changed to an honorable discharge. He told her it was preventing him from obtaining employment. She reported back to him that she could find no record of his name in the file locator cards kept at that office. Later she found there indeed was a file locator card for "Lee Harvey Oswald" among the fifteen Oswalds in Texas for which there were file locator cards in that office. She said she must have looked only for "Harvey Oswald" instead of for his full name "Lee Harvey Oswald" and in that way missed it. She then gave him printed literature with details on who to write to make an appeal and referred him to his original draft board in Forth Worth to obtain the information he needed. She said she spoke with Oswald for about thirty minutes, and that he was courteous throughout. 

In fact Oswald had already submitted a written appeal which had been formally denied, by letter from the Navy Discharge Review Board dated July 25, 1963, sent to him in New Orleans by registered mail.

The FBI could not find anyone else in the Selective Service offices in Austin who could confirm Mrs. Dannelly's identification, which is not too surprising given the length of time that passed and the numbers of clients served.

On the date: Mrs. Dannelly knew the visit had occurred on a Wednesday, one of the biweekly Wednesdays on which she was paid. She originally said she was not sure of the exact date but estimated it to have been six to eight weeks before the assassination. Subsequent to that she came to a "firm belief" that the date was Wed Sept 25. But Mrs. Dannelly's "firm belief" that the date was Sept 25 conflicts with the accepted timeline of Oswald going to Mexico City. For the Warren Report, this is evidence that Mrs. Dannelly's story is imaginary. For some conspiracy theorists this is evidence calling the Mexico City trip and timeline of Oswald into question--both sides accepting unquestioningly as their premise that Mrs. Dannelly's "firm belief" as to the date was the foundational fact. Yet Mrs. Dannelly never knew that was the correct date; that was a reconstruction on her part. After checking with her bank she told the FBI maybe it wasn't Sept 25 after all but could have been Wed Sept 11, although she still thought Sept 25 was the most likely. That is her last known word in the FBI interview documents concerning the date.

Because Oswald can be located at the front door of Silvia Odio's apartment in Dallas in the early evening of Wed Sept 25, that date being fixed on the basis of argument elsewhere, as well as the logistics of the Mexico City trip, the conclusion here is that Sept 25 is excluded as the date, and the correct date for Oswald's presence in the Selective Service offices in Austin was indeed Wed Sept 11.

There is also a witnesses' claim to have seen Oswald in the Trek Cafe in Austin which, if the identification is correct, would be associated with this trip of Oswald to Austin. After the assassination a regular customer at the Trek Cafe, L. B. Day, told the FBI he had seen Oswald in the Trek Cafe "about six or seven weeks prior to" the assassination, and that he had brought to the attention of waitress Stella Norman that she had served Oswald, which she then confirmed. According to an FBI interview of Day of 1/17/64 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10864#relPageId=10) 

"When [L. B. Day] first saw the photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald in the newspaper a day or two after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, he was in the Trek Cafe located on South Congress in Austin. Present was Stella, the waitress at the cafe, whose last name was not known to him. On seeing the photograph, he said, 'Gol dang, Stella, don't you remember him?' Whereupon she answered, she did not.

"He then told Stella she had waited on that man, there in the Trek Cafe, about six weeks prior to this occurrence. He then told Stella that Oswald was sitting in the cafe one day when he, Day, was 'ragging her' (. . .) He reminded Stella that Oswald had been sitting on the third or fourth stool from the cash register and that he, Day, had sat on the last stool in the rear of the cafe. He reminded Stella that Oswald had what appeared to be a pencil in his hand and seemed to be 'jotting' on something; that Oswald kept looking in the direction of the kitchen.

"After reminding Stella of the above, Stella sat down and after appearing to give the 'matter some deep thought,' told him she too recalled seeing Oswald in the cafe on that occasion. (. . .) In conclusion, he wished to say that he was wrong as many times as he was right, but that he believed the man at the Trek Cafe was, in fact, Oswald."

This is from the FBI's interview of Stella Norman of 1/2/64 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10864#relPageId=6).

"This individual came into the restaurant and ordered coffee. He appeared very nervous. He kept fooling with the paper napkins and appeared to be writing or doodling on these napkins. He used three or four napkins and must have put these in his pocket before leaving as the napkins were not left on the table, ashtray or floor. The customer remained 30 or 45 minutes and had either three or four cups of coffee. He paid 10 cents for each coffee as the Trek does not give free refills on coffee. This customer was alone at all times. She did not notice his mode of transportation on leaving and neither did she notice the direction in which he left. Seeing he was nervous she tried to start a conversation with him but he did not respond. On seeing the photograph of the accused assassin in the paper that Sunday she exclaimed out loud, 'My God I know him.'"

Though it sounds consistent with Oswald, there has been a problem with reconciling Mrs. Dannelly's encounter with Oswald, with Oswald at the Trek Cafe if both occurred on the same day: Mrs. Dannelly was not certain which Wednesday it was but did know for sure that it had been a Wednesday, one of the biweekly Wednesdays on which she was paid. Stella Norman on the other hand did not work Wednesdays because Wednesday was her day off. Therefore it has seemed Stella Norman could not have been a waitress for Oswald on the day Oswald visited the Selective Service offices.

In studying the FBI interview reports on the Mary Ferrell site, I found that her employer, William Covington, owner of the Trek Cafe, had records, and while he confirmed that Wednesday was Stella Norman's day off, his records showed that despite that, she had worked two Wednesdays during the term of her four months of employment with him from July through November: Wed Aug 28 and Wed Oct 16.

If the visit of Oswald to Mrs. Dannelly's office and the person drinking coffee at the counter of the Trek Cafe was Oswald on the same day, the date must have been one of those two Wednesdays that Stella worked. The day Oswald visited Mrs. Dannelly was one of the Wednesdays on her every-other-Wednesday pay cycle: Aug 14, Aug 28, Sept 11, Sept 25, Oct 9, Oct 23, Nov 6, Nov 20. But of the two Wednesday possibilities for Stella Norman, the second, Oct 16, is excluded because it was not one of the Dannelly payday Wednesdays. The only overlap in the two sets of possible Wednesdays is Wed Aug 28.

However a different factor rules out Wed Aug 28: a Mrs. Dannelly bank records detail excludes Aug 28 in a way that is not the case for Sept 11 or Sept 25. The downtown location of her bank confirmed to Mrs. Dannelly that of cancelled checks Mrs. Dannelly brought and showed them, she had cashed two of those checks in person inside that location on Sept 11 and Sept 25, respectively, but no such check had been cashed by her inside that location on Aug 28, which Mrs. Dannelly remembered doing at that location the day she saw Oswald. 

The visit to Austin therefore cannot have been Wed Aug 28. Yet Oswald was not in the Trek Cafe any other Wednesday. Either Oswald was in the Trek Cafe after 5 pm on a Tuesday--late in the day before he visited Governor Connally's office the next morning (see below) and then Mrs. Dannelly at the Selective Service early afternoon on a Wednesday--meaning an overnight stay--or the Trek Cafe Oswald sightings are a mistaken identification.

In either case, the conclusion is Oswald went to Austin and was in Austin Wed Sept 11, 1963, at a time when he was living in New Orleans. After taking care of business in Austin he will have returned again to New Orleans. How did he get there and back? Probably by bus, his usual means of transportation when on his own. No one was seen with him in Austin--he went alone. He first went to the offices of Governor Connally in the morning that day. Then he saw Mrs. Dannelly at Selective Service a little after 1 pm. 

Today a New Orleans to Austin bus trip (511 miles one way) takes 10 hrs. 40 mins. Oswald could have saved money by sleeping on the bus both ways. However if it was Oswald in the Trek Cafe then there was an overnight, which would have the benefit of allowing Oswald rest and a shower for better presentation the next morning. The time of day of Oswald in the Trek Cafe would have been shortly after 5 pm since 5 pm is when Stella Norman's shifts began in August and September. (In Oct her shifts changed to starting earlier at 3 pm.) In early Sept in Austin the sun does not set until around 7:40 pm. A time shortly after 5 pm would have been daylight consistent with late afternoon.

If Oswald did stay overnight in Austin on the night of Tue/Wed Sept 10/11, no witnesses to that are known to have come forward. It is doubtful that any inquiries were made by investigators concerning that date. The lack of witness testimony emerging on its own to an Oswald overnight in Austin could be considered to weigh in favor of it did not happen, but on the other hand there is a known class of witnesses who, though knowing of an interaction with Oswald, wanted no part of coming forward and making themselves known out of fear and uncertainty. 

I think Oswald seen in the Trek Cafe sounds correct, and therefore Tue Sept 10, based on the witnesses' testimony, the description of not engaging in casual conversation which agrees with other witness descriptions of Oswald, nothing sounding unlike Oswald, and plausibility of Oswald in proximity. However nothing concerning Oswald in Austin Sept 11 is affected either way on this, other than the linkage of an overnight in Austin if the Trek Cafe sighting was Oswald. (There is no impersonation involved since the man never claimed to be anyone.)    

A Sept 11 date for a trip of Oswald to Austin, at a time when Oswald was still living in New Orleans, makes sense since Oswald was dealing with his military discharge issue when he was in New Orleans, not in Dallas. Oswald had been working with an attorney in New Orleans, Dean Andrews, on this case. Dean Andrews testified that Oswald had been to his law office at least three times and possibly as many as five times. Oswald's movements and whereabouts have unknowns and gaps during his time in New Orleans such that a trip to Austin on Sept 11 is plausible and nonproblematic on timeline grounds, in a way that is not the case after Oswald returned to Dallas Oct 3. Oswald's daily whereabouts and movements after his return to Dallas Oct 3 are known very closely with little room for a trip to Austin of which neither Marina nor Ruth mentioned or seemed aware of having happened at the time Marina was living in Irving. Sept 11 makes sense as the date in a way that Sept 25 or later does not.

Mrs. Dannelly's original estimate of "six to eight weeks" earlier than the assassination therefore becomes in reality ten weeks earlier, in agreement with Mrs. Dannelly's final word on the date in the FBI reports suggesting to the FBI that instead of Sept 25 it may have been Sept 11 (ten weeks before the assassination). 

Nothing is dissonant in the Austin witness descriptions from the real Oswald. There is no timeline problem once the date is corrected to Sept 11. Since this occurs about six weeks after Oswald had received notification that his appeal of his discharge classification had been formally denied, the trip to Austin could be interpreted as a last attempt on Oswald's part to appeal in person to Gov. Connally, the former Secretary of the Navy and fellow Texan, to whom he had already written about his case. The trip to Austin involves a known issue of concern to Oswald, the kind of thing that would prompt Oswald to go in person. 

From WC counsel Specter in questioning John Connally:

Mr. Specter. Governor Connally, in 1963 we were informed that Lee Harvey Oswald paid a visit to Austin, Tex., and is supposed to also have visited your office. 

It turns out that Oswald's first stop in Austin on Wed morning Sept 11 was the offices of Governor Connally. No written documentation has been brought forth confirming Oswald visited Gov. Connally's offices, and Connally himself testified he was unaware that Oswald had visited or attempted to visit. But there should be little doubt that Oswald did make that attempt. Was Governor Connally's response or that of his staff to the question of record of Oswald's visit limited to Wed Sept 25? Of course there would be no record of Oswald on Sept 25 for Oswald was not there on that date. The relevant issue is whether Connally's staff checked for Sept 11. 

The only account of Oswald's visit to Governor Connally's office is filtered through Oswald's telling and then Mrs. Dannelly's telling in a written statement of Mrs. Dannelly of 12/17/63 prepared by her for the FBI, and again in a newspaper story quoting her of that same month. It is clear Oswald is skewing what he says he had been told by others below. But overall it comes across as a very human and believable story of dealing with a bureaucracy. Mrs. Dannelly in her written statement to the FBI:

"I called Colonel Sinclair [supervisor] [on 11/24/63 after the assassination] and advised him I was positive this man [accused assassin of JFK Lee Harvey Oswald] had been to our office, approximately 6 or 8 weeks prior to that date (24 Nov 63). I could not recall any information that would make me positive about a specific date but that I was positive that it had been on a Wednesday. I have been having quite a bit of trouble with my back and legs for quite sometime, and the only times I have gone to town during my lunch hour was on our pay days to cash a check--we are paid on alternate Wednesdays. I was a few minutes late getting back to the office that day and Mr. Oswald was waiting to see me when I got back.

"Mr. Oswald stated that he had just come from the Governor's office to try to straighten out his discharge from the Marine Corps, which had been under other than honorable conditions. The Governor's office told him they did not have anything to do with such things but that maybe this office would be able to assist him. Mr. Oswald stated that at the time he was given the discharge under 'other than honorable conditions' he was told that if he lived an upright life for the next two years he could then make application to have the type of discharge changed to 'honorable.' He told me that he was having difficulty in obtaining a job, and holding a job, with that type discharge. Also, he said it was embarrassing to his family."

As told in a Washington Post article of Dec 20, 1963, quoting Mrs. Dannelly (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95629#relPageId=13 ).

"'He had been to the Governor's office to see how to get his discharge corrected. They sent him down here, because they didn't have any of the information that he wanted,' according to Mary Lee Dannelly, assistant chief of the administrative division of the draft system for Texas.

"Neither the regular receptionist in Gov. John B. Connally's office nor Larry Temple, Connally's administrative assistant who usually handles affairs of a military kind in the office, recalls or has a record of a visit from Oswald. 

"'He said he had first gotten an honorable discharge, but it was later changed to other than honorable conditions,' Mrs. Dannelly said. 'They told him at the time that if he lived an upright life, he could make application after two years. He'd been waiting more than two years. 'He said it caused him difficulty getting or keeping a job, and it was embarrassing his family,' Mrs. Dannelly said. 

"She said he gave his name as 'Oswald'; Mrs. Dannelly is 'positive' that the man was Lee Oswald. She recognized him on television. She thought he must have given her his first two names in some variation, because she could not find a card on him in Selective Service files at the time. She has since found a routine card under the name Lee Harvey Oswald."

It appears Oswald went to Connally's office, where he was perhaps told he could not see Gov. Connally and staff could do nothing to help him and referred him to the Selective Service office. Was there a phone call from the governor's office to Selective Service alerting them or tipping them off that they were sending him over? Then when Oswald got there and was able to see Mrs. Dannelly, she tried but could not find a file locator card for Oswald despite looking for it, even though there was such a file locator card on file for Oswald at all other times. Had it been temporarily removed for some reason unknown to Mrs. Dannelly who could not find it where it should have been?

And then Mrs. Donnelly, unable to understand how she could possibly have missed it, reconstructed the only explanation she could think of for how that could have happened, not realizing the real reason was because it had not been there. In any case Oswald spent 22 hours of round-trip time on that bus trip for nothing (even though Mrs. Dannelly sounds like she tried).

Conclusion: Oswald at the Selective Service offices in Austin was not a mistaken identification or impersonation. Oswald was there on Sept 11, 1963. 

1 hour ago, Pete Mellor said:

😅 Well, it's somewhat reassuring to me that others have snippets of info in the back of their minds, or needles in haystacks, that they have misplaced or forgotten where they originally came across said piece of information.  I'm certain that I read somewhere that a D.P.D. patrol cop encountered some suspicious person in the early hours of Fri 22nd around the TSBD, but have not come across it since & cannot recall in what publication it is in.  I'm thinking that this incident could have been involved in getting the 6th floor accoutrements in place.  Anyway, thanks for the reply.  Your posts contain many fascinating details provoking much food for thought.

Pete, strange to say I remember that too and also have seen no mention of it for a long time, and only a week or so ago tried to find it by searching on the Mary Ferrell site and elsewhere but could not find it. As I recall it was a report of a man wearing an overcoat or something, just standing on a sidewalk (under a street light?) outside the TSBD or at Elm and Houston, after dark the evening or night of Thu Nov 21. I don't think the man was identified nor was it known what he was doing there. I wonder what happened to that story. 

31 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Paul B. :And they are being baited into sending in troops, while we claim that any reasons they give will be manufactured by their propaganda machine. What about our propaganda machine?

 

Baited??? Paul, I generally like your judgments, but this is the closest I've seen to someone here rationalizing a Putin invasion of Ukraine, (though I'm sure Jeff can) And what is it based on, your over reaction to the  west propaganda machine? There 's no cause under any circumstances for Putin to unilaterally invade Ukraine. And the idea that Nato would is total stupidity.  This idea of Putin being "baited"  absolves Putin of any responsibility and is similar to the license people give Trump as being a victim. IMO

Don't the Ukraine people have a right to live in peace?

 

Chris, your first instincts were also to talk voluminously about the West and their propaganda machine. I'm glad you're walking back to state that Putin does have some responsibility here. I liked your article  about the alleged photos of troop movements and the construction of bridges etc. I've never believed these 130,000 troops , 160,000, and now 190,000 troops estimates, and nobody else should. You can effectively see arms buildup. But there's no way you can estimate how  many troops. Now with your latest clip, It's sounds like you're migrating to my position. I don't think anythings going to happen, but I might be wrong. 

Kirk, I am as mystified as anyone else reading the news of Ukraine and have not followed it carefully. As you know I am a Sanders/Biden Democrat generally with zero affection for Trump and Trumpers. However I do see another possible reading of the conflicting claims going back and forth re this Ukraine situation, though I do not think of it as more than a possibility. Nevertheless, would be interested in your take on this. (Also, I am not getting this from reading it somewhere; it is homemade.)

This is gut instinct, coming from a background of trying to read between the lines of public pronouncements. It is a given that Putin would like all or part of Ukraine, and feels threatened by the NATO/Russian border being close to Russia's border. I just assume that if he could get away with it, he would have had Russian troops in and annexed eastern Ukraine already, just as Crimea.

What I see ahead in my crystal ball is quite simply, partition (at best for Putin), and NATO troops inside Ukraine with the Ukraine government's permission on Putin's direct border (in the worst case for Putin).

My suspicion is that the talk of a Russian false flag (as plausible as it is) may be cover for an upcoming false flag or pretext from our own side, but whether or not that is the case it just looks to me--(but what do I know?)--like NATO will move into west Ukraine in the name of defending western Ukraine (minimally) or into all of Ukraine including east Ukraine under the same rationale. No one will call it an invasion of Ukraine by NATO because it will happen for the most legitimate and defensible and reasonable grounds, of defending Ukraine against Russian aggression, and will be at the invitation and cooperation of the Ukraine government. Sort of like South Vietnam inviting the US and its allies to defend South Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh aggression.

In this analysis (in my state of acknowledged ignorance on the finer points), what is said is that the NATO forces lined up on the other side of Ukraine are (a) not going to go into Ukraine to go to war with Putin if he invades; and (b) are there (mobilized and built up) for the purpose of preventing Putin from invading anyone beyond Ukraine. 

To which it occurred to me that there is a "c" going on not named: (c) preparation to move into west Ukraine justified as defending against the Putin threat.

End result: either NATO forces inside all of Ukraine with Putin having none of Ukraine, or NATO forces have west Ukraine and Putin has east Ukraine, partition. 

In terms of humanitarian concern, NATO in Ukraine would be better for the people living there because war is so horrifyingly destructive which is what it would be from Ukrainian resistance if Putin invades.

I have done business with a hair salon stylist locally who is from Latvia. She has told me in recent years of the situation in Latvia where her family and friends are. According to her, they just expect and assume that at some point Russia (Putin) is going to invade. I thought, how that must feel to live in areas of the world under fear and threat of invasion, something that we in the US do not experience.

I think back to Gorbachev of the old Soviet Union--and his vision of a Russia rejoining Europe and becoming a peaceful democratic-socialist nation re-integrated with Europe, working together with the US and the other major powers of the world toward solving common problems of the world. It was like Kennedy's American University speech except Gorbachev was making breathtaking significant strides toward achievement of that vision, but of course Gorbachev lost power and that was the end of that.

I hope one day another party in a post-Putin Russia will be a "second Gorbachev" in reuniting Russia with Europe. Of one thing I am very convinced: pan-european organizations such as the EU and NATO (not that they are the same) have prevented devastating european wars for the most part and are in principle the way to prevent future european wars which have so ravaged europe's history. Whatever problems and criticisms that exist in EU and NATO, I believe the situation is an improved EU and NATO, not an end to EU and NATO.  

But what do you think of the idea of an endgame to what we see being NATO forces either in part of or all of Ukraine, and second question, if that happens, on some level that may have been planned as distinguished from entirely brought about ad hoc in response to Putin's current actions? 

8 hours ago, Pete Mellor said:

Greg, once again, many thanks for your logical and detailed synopsis in this and previous threads.

I'm a little confused (some may say a lot) age related, but can you clarify your thinking regarding previous posts where you propose Oswald sold his Carcano after the Ryder scope fix repair.  If I recall correctly from these vast posts the rifle was sold to Crafard at Dobbs House and via Yates' hitch hiker to the TSBD on Thurs 21st.  This theory is a little far out for me, but that isn't unusual in this case.  I wonder how Oswald would have transported the Carcano from Irving to Beckley without it being noticed by any witnesses in & out of the rooming house etc.  (Jeez, my head isn't on straight regarding Oswald owning the rifle in the first place!)

However, as previously stated, your posts are certainly food for thought. 

Hi Pete M.--very good question. In my reconstruction I argued that the rifle arrived to outside the TSBD mid-day Thu Nov 21 based on the Yates' hitchhiker carried by Yates from the street on which Oswald lived in Oak Cliff to the corner of Elm and Houston where the TSBD is, on the morning of Thu Nov 21; that that Yates' hitchhiker was related to the assassination; and that the date of that Yates hitchhiker was Thu Nov 21 based on a work order document at Yates' place of work resolving Yates' own uncertainty whether the date was Wed or Thu Nov 20 or 21. The hitchhiker carried a rifle-sized package and I saw the Yates' hitchhiker as the mechanism for the rifle getting to the TSBD on Nov 21 coming from Oswald on Beckley in Oak Cliff that morning. I saw this reinforced in Oswald (if that was Oswald) having been witnessed at the Dobbs House restaurant near his rooming house at about 10 am that morning, Thu Nov 21. (The earlier discussion on the Furniture Mart and the Irving Sports Shop: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27502-the-oswald-family-at-the-furniture-mart-a-rifle-scope-installation-in-november-1963-and-why-it-matters-a-sale-of-the-rifle-before-the-assassination/.) 

So that is how I reasoned there was a sale or conveyance of the rifle from Oswald to that Yates' hitchhiker in Oak Cliff near Oswald's rooming house on Thu Nov 21, and I saw that very sale or conveyance explaining why Oswald had the scope put on the rifle in Irving on Nov 11, to prepare it for sale or conveyance. 

The difficult question or weak point in this reconstruction however is exactly your question: where was the rifle between Nov 11 and Nov 21, and how could the rifle get from Oswald in Irving Nov 11 to Oswald in Oak Cliff Nov 21 without having been remembered and reported seen by anyone.

In my own thinking in attempting to answer that question, I first noticed that there were two musicians who worked at the Carousel Club living across the street from the Linnie Mae Randle house, only about two or three houses away from the Ruth Paine house. (Was Wesley Frazier acquainted with them living across the street from him? So far as I can tell, unknown, question not known ever to have been asked or answered.) I asked myself, did maybe one of those Carousel Club musicians remove the rifle from the Ruth Paine garage one day? But I saw nothing else giving cause to suppose those musicians had anything to do with anything, and concluded the proximity of their home residence address was not distinguishable from accident or coincidence, and that idea went nowhere for me.

The answer I have had up to now (to answer your question now directly) was that after getting the rifle from Dial Ryder on Nov 11, paying for scope installed and sighted, Oswald broke down the rifle again and put it in what may have been the same 37" length paper bag made from TSBD wrapping paper bearing Oswald's fingerprints that later turned up on the 6th floor of TSBD on Nov 21. Oswald then (on Nov 11) drove that rifle package to a storage locker near the bus station in Irving where Oswald stored it overnight. The next morning, Tue Nov 12, Oswald purposely missed or skipped his ride with Wesley Frazier who normally gave Oswald a ride, but this morning Frazier drove in to work in Dallas without him because Oswald was late. Oswald would have walked the ca. 1 mile to the bus station if it had not been for Linnie Mae Randle driving Oswald to the bus station in Irving that morning in her car. (Linnie Mae recalls having done that once when Oswald missed his ride with Wesley, exact date unknown.) Oswald then took the package by bus to his rooming house in Oak Cliff that morning, stashed it under his bed, and then minus the rifle took a city bus to work at the TSBD as normal except arriving late that morning. (That Oswald's records do not show him arriving late on either Nov 11 or Nov 21, nor show him leaving early on Nov 22 either for that matter, is not an objection according to my understanding of the way Oswald's hours were reported at TSBD.)

That explanation assumes no one from Nov 12 remembered Oswald on a bus carrying a package; no one at the rooming house remembered or reported having seen Oswald enter the rooming house or his room with that package on Nov 12; and that heavyset Earlene the housekeeper did not get down on her hands and knees, bending down to look under Oswald's bed, motivated by curiosity wondering "I wonder what Mr. Lee might have under his bed?" sometime in the nine days between Nov 12 and Nov 21.

On the morning of Thu Nov 21 I have seen a newspaper article that I printed out which told of one of the other roomers at the Beckley Street rooming house saying he saw Oswald leave the Beckley St. rooming house, on or about the morning of Nov 22, carrying a package in his arms and Oswald with that package went to the bus stop near the rooming house to go to work as usual that morning. However I do not know where it is among my papers, and cannot find it again from google searching! But somehow that needle in a haystack among my papers will turn up! 🙂 (I realize that is not the best quality of footnote here.) (I might add that I recall the size of the package was remembered by that roomer in that article as smaller than the size of a rifle. But it was a package being carried in both hands as Oswald walked out the door that morning to his bus stop, as I recall.)

Is all of this plausible--that Oswald could get a rifle to and from his room in Oak Cliff, and have it in his room, without it being later reported by witnesses? I would say it is plausible. It is sort of an accident whether people would happen to notice and report someone carrying a package, especially weeks earlier, external to the rooming house. It is not certain how many would have seen it or thought anything of it if they did such that it would be remembered on a bus. At the rooming house itself is a different matter. But on the reasonable assumption that if Oswald did take a rifle into his room he would not want anyone seeing him do so, that could be done. 

The other possibility within this reconstruction--of Nov 11 Irving to Nov 21 TSBD--is that Oswald sold or conveyed the rifle to someone in Irving on Mon Nov 11, the day he had the scope installed, as one more item accomplished in that day's activities while Ruth Paine was gone and Oswald was using her car. In that case, that would remove all the issues of how Oswald could have gotten the rifle from Irving to Oak Cliff, for in this scenario the rifle never did went to Oak Cliff. In this scenario the rifle was gone from Oswald on Nov 11, and the Nov 21 Yates' hitchhiker rifle-sized package was a decoy, not actually containing a rifle but part of an intention to create a witness who would report it looked like a conveyance of a rifle.

Those are the two possibilities I see. The problem either way in this reconstruction is there is a "black hole" of information concerning the rifle's whereabouts between Nov 11 and Nov 21. So any filling of that black hole of missing information in those days is speculative. Within this reconstruction, somehow it is necessary that the rifle associated with Oswald in Oswald's possession on Nov 11 in Irving was taken into the TSBD by someone not Oswald not later than the night of Nov 21. The question then becomes when and how within that time frame. 

A person falsely claiming to be Oswald twice applies for a job as a bellhop in tall hotel buildings in downtown Dallas overlooking the JFK parade route, in advance of the assassination 

There are actually two, not one, reports of someone representing himself as Oswald applying for a job as a bellhop in high-rise hotels in downtown Dallas in the runup. The first report, at the Adolphus Hotel immediately across the street from the Carousel Club, read in isolation contains nothing inconsistent with having been Oswald. The question of impersonation would not arise in that case if it were not for the fact that a second "Oswald" applicant for an identical job as bellhop at the Statler-Hilton Hotel was not Oswald, thereby calling into question the truth of the identity of the Adolphus Hotel applicant who gave his name as Oswald.

First the Adolphus Hotel. Viewed in isolation this would look like Oswald looking for a job after his arrival to Dallas on Thu Oct 3, although there is no mention of an Adolphus Hotel job interest or application in any other known information concerning Oswald, nor is Oswald otherwise known to have ever sought employment as a hotel bellhop. 

Bear in mind in these reports that the Adolphus Hotel on Commerce St was 22 stories tall, and the Statler-Hilton on Commerce St was 19 stories tall, overlooking the parade route of an upcoming presidential visit in which that president was assassinated by sniper fire from a window of a building on that parade route. 

First the report on the applicant at the Adolphus:

12/10/63 FBI. (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10672#relPageId=489) 

"(. . .) W. D. Tyra, representing the Adolphus Hotel, Dallas, commented he believed Oswald applied for a position at the Adolphus several months ago. Jett also stated Mrs. Jo Fischer, Personnel Manager, Statler-Hilton Hotel, Dallas, remarked at the meeting that one of her employees believed Oswald applied for a position at the Statler-Hilton."

12/5/63 FBI. (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10489#relPageId=268) 

"W. D. Tyra, Superintendent of Front Services, Adolphus Hotel, 1321 Commerce Street, Dallas, Texas, advised that two or three months ago, a young man, he now believes was Lee Harvey Oswald, came up to him seeking employment as a luggage porter. Tyra said his interview with that person was brief, but he recalls that the young man indicated he would work mornings or evenings and he wanted to go to school. Tyra said he had this young man place his name and address on a 3x5 card, which Tyra destroyed about a month ago, and he seems to recall that the name "Lee Oswald" appeared on the card with an unrecalled street address in Irving, Texas. Tyra remembers the young man listed his address as Irving, Texas, because he asked him how he would get to work. He replied by stating he could get a ride to Dallas each day. Tyra informed the young man that if he was interested in employment at the Adolphus Hotel he would have to execute an application for employment in the personnel office, take a physical examination and a Truth Verification Test (polygraph). Tyra added that all Adolphus Hotel employees have to take the Truth Verification Test. Tyra believes he directed the young man to the hotel's personnel office. (. . .) He checked the hotel's personnel office but could locate no application executed by Oswald. Tyra believes the young man he briefly interviewed two or three months ago for employment was the Lee Harvey Oswald who was accused of assassinating President Kennedy."

12/10/63 FBI. (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10672#relPageId=487) 

"Tyra stated he recalls that the young man, he now believes was Lee Harvey Oswald, who applied for a job as luggage porter at the Adolphus two or three months ago, mentioned he had one child and his wife was expecting another."

Comment: the timing of "two or three months" before 12/5/63 would be consistent with Oswald's arrival to Dallas on Thu Oct 3, 1963 and his seeking of a job starting from that day involving an employment agency and the Texas Employment Commission. Craford meanwhile arrived to the Carousel Club, across the street from the Adolphus, a day later on Fri Oct 4, if the interpretation of the Jarnagin account as a witnessing of Craford and Ruby is accepted. Unfortunately there is no physical description of the Adolphus applicant in the Tyra interview reports. 

Now for the Statler-Hilton, same genre of job application, same kind of job (bellhop), same kind of high-story building, same downtown Dallas location. Who is this person?

12/11/63 FBI. (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10672#relPageId=490) 

"Mrs. Jo Fischer, Personnel Director, Statler-Hilton Hotel, 1914 Commerce Street, Dallas, Texas, advised that on November 26 or 27, 1963, Mrs. Laura Layfield, who was formerly employed as a receptionist in this office, and who is presently employed as a hostess in the Court Club, Statler-Hilton, Dallas, mentioned the following to her: On October 31, 1963, three young men came into the personnel office of the Statler-Hilton. Two of the men requested applications for bellmen, while the third man waited on the other two. The two men completed the applications and turned them over to Mrs. Layfield, who checked the applications for completeness and accuracy. Mrs. Layfield recalled that one of the young men indicated on the application he completed the tenth grade; he was married, with two children, one being two weeks old; he had been previously employed as a printer; and he spoke Russian.

"She informed Mrs. Fischer that since one of the men indicated he spoke Russian, which appeared somewhat unusual for a bellman applicant in Dallas, she asked the young man where he learned to speak Russian. He became very angry and informed Mrs. Layfield it was none of her business. He did state, however, he was married to a Russian girl. He left in a state of anger. Mrs. Layfield recalled the application was hand printed and she believed the name on the application was (FNU) Oswald. Mrs. Fischer advised that during her conversation with Mrs. Layfield about the above matter, she asked Mrs. Layfield what happened to the young man's application. She said Mrs. Layfield remarked at first that she apparently retained the application because she believed she noted in writing on the application 'Very Nasty', or some similar wording. Mrs. Fischer said during the same conversation Mrs. Layfield mentioned that the young man, while in a state of anger, grabbed his application from her and tore it up. Mrs. Fischer said she has no personal knowledge of the above matter. She added that Mrs. Layfield is prone to exaggeration at times and she (Fischer) would not express an opinion as to the authenticity of the above."

12/11/63 FBI. (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10672#relPageId=494) 

"Mrs. Laura Layfield, hostess, Court Club, Statler-Hilton Hotel, 1914 Commerce Street, Dallas, Texas, who resides at 1810 Mosier Street, Dallas, telephone TA 7-7877, advised as follows: She was employed as a receptionist in the personnel office, Statler-Hilton Hotel, Dallas, until recently. On October 31, 1963, while she was in the personnel office, three young men entered. She does not recall the exact time the men entered but stated, 'It was lunchtime', since the other employees had gone to lunch. Mrs. Layfield said her lunch hour was 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM and she believes the three men came into the personnel office shortly after 12:30 PM. She added she was the only employee present at the time but two or three unknown applicants were in the personnel office when the men entered.

"Two of the men requested applications for employment as bellmen while the third man waited on the other two. She added the three men appeared to be acquaintances. After completing their applications, she checked the applications for completeness and accuracy. One of the young men hand printed his application, and she seems to recall the name (FNU) Oswald appeared on the name line of the application. She said she recalls this young man in particular because he indicated on his application that he spoke Russian and it appeared somewhat unusual in Dallas for a bellman applicant to speak Russian. She also believes the young man indicated on his application (or she learned through conversation with him) that he completed the tenth grade; he was married, with two children, one being two weeks old; and he listed three prior employments, all as a printer or printer's helper.

"She seems to recall two of the employments were in Dallas, Texas, and one in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was unable to recall his former employers but believed he indicated his length of employment as one and one-half years, one year and six months. She also believes he listed a Fort Worth address on his application and that he had been in military service. During their conversation he mentioned he had been in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area for three or four years.

"Mrs. Layfield said she asked the young man where he learned to speak the Russian language, and he became very angry, shouting it was none of her business. He did state, however, he was married to a Russian girl. The young man said nothing further and left in a state of anger.

"She stated that the two men accompanying the above young man left with him but one of the young men, whom she identified as James Murphy, returned later that day and was hired as a helper in the hotel employees' cafeteria. Mrs. Layfield estimated that the above three men were in the personnel office from fifteen to twenty minutes. (. . .) A photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald dated August 9, 1963, was exhibited to Mrs. Layfield, and she stated the above individual closely resembles Oswald. 

"She said she checked the personnel office but was unable to locate the application executed by the above person. She seems to recall noting on the application in writing that the person interviewed was 'very angry' or some similar wording. However, she also seems to recall that this person may have grabbed the application from her hands at the time and tore it up. 

"She described the person interviewed by her on October 31, 1963, as follows:

"Name. Unknown, but possibly (FNU) Oswald

"Sex. Male

"Race. White

"Age. About 30

"Height. 5'8" to 5'10"

"Weight. 140 to 150 lbs.

"Hair. Medium brown or sandy, medium length, slightly receding hairline

"Eyes. Unknown

"Build. Slender

"Scars and Marks. None noticeable

"Characteristics. Deep voice; no southern accent; stared at person while talking"

12/30/63 FBI. (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=96522#relPageId=108) 

"Mrs. Laura Layfield advised she resides at 1810 Moser; her telephone number at home is TA. 7-7877. She said she has been employed at the Statler-Hilton Hotel in Dallas, Texas for about 14 or 15 months and is presently the receptionist and hostess at the Court Club in the hotel. She said that she recalled on October 30, 1963, she was the receptionist in the Personnel Department of the hotel and during the period 12:30 - 1:30 P.M. on that date, she was alone in the Personnel Office when three persons came in about the same time. One person was James Frederick Murphy whom she identified by viewing a photograph of Murphy; another person she thought was possibly Lee Harvey Oswald; and she was unable to identify the third person. She said this third person did not ask for or complete an application.

"Upon examining the New Orleans Police Photo No. 112723 dated August 9, 1963 of Lee Harvey Oswald, she said this photograph appeared to be of a much larger [= taller? gd] person than the applicant she had previously thought might have been Oswald, and on later reflection she said she believed the applicant whom she had believed to be Oswald, was in his 30's and he bore a strong resemblance to her step-brother. She said she recalled this applicant took the application form after it was completed and tore it up in her presence and she reiterated the fact as previously told in an interview with SA James E. Garrisk, that she had written the words 'nasty - ill-tempered' on this application before the person took it and tore it up. She said she recalled that the applicant gave a 'Fort Worth address, spoke Russian, and had a week-old baby'

"Mrs. Layfield said she recalled that the three men did not talk to each other during the time they were in the personnel office with her, and she said it is possible that the application and card which she made up for this person might have been pulled with the six months old records and destroyed inadvertently. She said she recalled that she had mentioned the unusual behavior of this applicant to a fellow employee, Margaret 'Peggy' Smith, after the three men left the Personnel Office and she said she thought she had remarked to Peggy that this applicant was a 'nasty human being'. She also said that Mrs. Smith was quite busy when she made this remark to her, and it is possible that she could have forgotten all about it. 

"Mrs. Layfield said that Mrs. Smith was never up in the front office during the period of time the three men were in the Personnel Office, and she recalled that these three men all left the office about the same time. She said she told them 'We have no openings' (she paused for a moment or so) and then remarked 'except for a cafeteria helper'. She said the applicant knew that he could not get a job as she felt sure that was his reason for not returning, and then she probably tore up the application even though she was not supposed to according to the rules of the hotel. She said it was hard to definitely recall each individual that she interviewed when she was working as a receptionist in the Personnel Office, due to the fact that some 300 to 400 applications are turned in each month to that office and it was easy to 'mix up the facts and not get them all straight'. (. . .) She again looked at the New Orleans Police Photo of Lee Harvey Oswald and said it was definitely not the picture of the person who made application for a position as a bell man and said that he spoke Russian before he got mad and left the office." 

Comment: 

That the individual represented himself as Oswald is indicated from the Russian language, the Russian wife, the printer employment history, and the two-week-old baby (Oswald's second daughter was born to Marina Oct 20, 1963), as well as her memory that he said his name was Oswald. Despite some sign of ill feeling between the witness and her former supervisor, the witness seems credible.

Yet that job applicant practically certainly was not Oswald. The "deep voice" is a particularly striking detail. Oswald did not have a deep voice. Buell Wesley Frazier described Oswald's voice as high-pitched and almost "girlish" (Frazier's word). From hearing the soundbites of Oswald filmed at the Dallas police station, Oswald's voice sounds male but high-pitched and not a deep voice.

Further, the anger and the reaction seems out of character. Oswald was not normally remembered as a "nasty person". 

From Oswald's known contacts at an employment agency and the Texas Employment Commission his job interest was in printing or office work and had nothing to do with being a bellhop in a hotel. 

Nor did either Marina or Ruth Paine say anything about Oswald wanting to work in a hotel, or having applied to be a bellhop.

The mention that the person "stared while talking" might or might not be significant; I am not aware of that idiosyncrasy being mentioned in the many descriptions of Oswald by those who knew him. 

And finally, whereas in her first interview she said a photo of Oswald did "closely resemble" the person she remembered, in her second interview two weeks later she said a photo of Oswald was "definitely not" the person she remembered, and that the person she remembered was not as "big" as Oswald in the photo she was shown. The "big" must refer to height rather than stocky since she described the applicant she met as "slender". The cases to be discussed of impersonation of Oswald consistently tend to have the impersonator less tall than Oswald who was 5'9". The impersonator was a little shorter than, not taller than, Oswald. Craford was 1-2" shorter than Oswald, and that correspondence in height is one of the arguments supporting identification of Craford as the impersonator.

Of the two men who were accompanying the applicant seen by Mrs. Layfield, one was identified and became an employee briefly for the Statler-Hilton, one James Murphy, 27 yrs old. He quit almost immediately following the assassination, on Tue Nov 26, and went to New Orleans. The FBI spent a lot of energy tracking down and finding James Murphy but found no Oswald connection to that person. This again adds weight in favor of the Statler-Hilton applicant not having been Oswald. However, he may have been known to Craford of whom less is known of his friends and acquaintances, and as developed later there is reason to suppose a New Orleans recent connection for Craford.

Conclusion: The Statler-Hilton applicant was not Oswald but an impersonator of Oswald. True identity very possibly Curtis Craford. That Mrs. Layfield was remembering accurately that an applicant giving his name as "Oswald" had expressed interest in a job as a bellman is supported by the almost exactly parallel report from the Adolphus Hotel that a man giving his name as "Oswald" had also sought to be a bellman there. 

The conclusion is that not only was the one at the Statler-Hilton not Oswald, but--although this is based on analogy rather than anything directly in the Adolphus interview report--by analogy and extension the bellhop applicant at the Adolphus across the street from the Carousel Club also was not Oswald, but will have been the same individual who applied at the Statler-Hilton, namely probably Curtis Craford in both cases.

The reference to Mrs. Layfield in her second interview to hearing the man speak "Russian" in the process of being angry and leaving (that detail does not occur in her first interview), if there were words in a foreign language spoken, perhaps may have been Craford, who served in the Army in Germany, speaking German, misunderstood by Mrs. Layfield as Russian. It is unlikely that Mrs. Layfield herself would know Russian to recognize it. She may have identified what she heard as Russian based on the man saying he knew Russian.

Rather than Oswald seeking a job as a hotel bellhop, for which there is no known corroboration of such an interest in the voluminous known information and witnesses concerned with Oswald, this was impersonation. Since impersonation is extraordinary and highly unusual it calls for explanation.

So put it together. This is in the runup to the arrival of President Kennedy to Dallas where he is assassinated, so the world was informed, by Oswald, and here someone impersonating that very person, the accused assassin of JFK, in advance of that assassination, is seeking employment in a building which would give access to a vantage point from which a sniper could shoot at the presidential limousine in the presidential parade. 

Of course that would only have been the case if he had gotten the job, which this applicant did not. (However an associate with him did get a job putting the associate inside the 19-story Statler-Hilton, before that person quit four days after the assassination and returned to New Orleans.)

Even if the bellhop job application attempts failed, they would be remembered as Oswald sought to find employment in tall buldings downtown. It seems to be an accident of history that this did not become a central feature of the narrative surrounding Oswald after the assassination.

Note that this impersonator of Oswald (for that is what he was, he was not Oswald) at the Statler-Hilton created a scene over a pretext that on its face makes little sense: Mrs. Layfield asks a reasonable simple question, how did you learn Russian?, and the man inexplicably explodes with anger--how dare she ask that! And grabs the application, tears it up, shouts, and storms out! Ensuring in a way that could not possibly be more effective that that "Oswald" would be remembered! That was probably the purpose of that particular stunt. The grabbing back of the application and tearing it up (and likely keeping possession of the torn pieces) would prevent the handwriting and content of that application from later being studied forensically and the impersonation discovered by investigators by that means. That may have been a reason for the retrieval and tearing up of the form as part of that created scene designed to impress a memory on a witness later to be told.

Such an extraordinary thing: to impersonate someone at all, and in this case, Oswald, three weeks before Oswald became presented to the world front and center as the Castro-linked communist credited with assassinating President Kennedy.

These impersonations of Oswald attempting to find employment, shortly before the assassination, in tall buildings overlooking the parade route from which a sniper could fire, can hardly be interpreted any other way than this: they are attempts in advance to incriminate Oswald, without Oswald's knowledge or doing. It is absolutely malicious, it is directly connected to the assassination soon to come, it directly--in these downtown high-rise hotel bellhop cases--is designed to create witnesses in advance of the assassination who will incriminate Oswald after the assassination.

Poor Oswald, with no knowledge this was happening!

Is there any conceivable innocent explanation for why, weeks before the assassination, without Oswald's permission or knowledge, anyone would do that other than as part of the criminal conspiracy which succeeded in killing President Kennedy on Nov 22, 1963? No.

Impersonation is so rare, so unusual, so extraordinary, and if it can not only be established that this was being done to Oswald before the assassination, but who was doing it, this could potentially be critical in going to the solution, or at least ballpark thereof, concerning who did it. 

Independent lines of argument suggest the impersonator doing this, setting up Oswald in this way in advance of the assassination, was Craford newly arrived to the Carousel Club of Jack Ruby--that he impersonated the man that immediately following the assassination Jack Ruby then killed, silencing Oswald from, among other things, protesting the cases of witnesses who believed the impersonations were him.  

In the case of the Adolphus, Craford did not need to walk too far for that one--just cross the street.

There was a criminal conspiracy to assassinate JFK in Dallas with planning underway by the first week of Oct 1963 at the latest. Identification of who was doing incriminating impersonations of Oswald in advance of the assassination points to who did the assassination operationally. If it is Craford, this points to the circles who hired and hosted Craford, and the ones behind Jack Ruby, as the criminal conspiracy which did the assassination itself, not simply silenced Oswald in its aftermath. 

4 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

The fact that you take the Paine's testimony at face value or always find an innocent explanation for their behavior will always, in my opinion, be a serious flaw in your overall analysis. This alone causes me to question your conclusions. 

I believe you haven't yet proven the Furniture Mart incident was truly Oswald based on the argument and evidence you've presented so far in other threads. It's puzzling that you take Ruth Paine to be honest, but then reject her assessment of Oswald's inability to drive.

Denny you are right, how one assesses Ruth Paine is going to affect other things. As you know, I knew Ruth Paine in the St. Petersburg Friends Meeting, but even if I did not it would not affect that I agree with 100% of the investigators of both major investigations, the Warren Commission and HSCA, none of whom found cause to question Ruth Paine's truthfulness and credibility as a witness or whether she was wholesale lying as you seem to assume. So if that causes you to find my analysis flawed, that's your view and it can't be helped, but I do share the judgment of Ruth Paine's truthfulness as a witness based on what I have seen and know of Ruth Paine, in keeping with 100% of the professional investigators in the major formal investigations of the case. 

4 hours ago, Denny Zartman said:

As I see it, your devotion to the concept of the Paine's being innocent and uninvolved in any sort of conspiracy exposes another weakness in your theory.

You approach your theory assuming only one person was impersonating Oswald in the lead up to November 22, and have settled on Craford. In my opinion, it doesn't make sense to eliminate the consideration of other possible impersonators. The pre-assassination impersonations of Oswald were, in some people's opinions, a co-ordinated effort.

It also doesn't make sense, in my opinion, to completely ignore the fact that Michael Paine would have had easy knowledge of Oswald's whereabouts, Oswald's schedule, and the places Oswald frequented. Along with Michael's access to Oswald's belongings, Oswald's family, and Ruth's car, Michael also had a strong resemblance to Lee Oswald. I know there was a difference in height between the two men, but unless a witness to a particular possible Oswald impersonation incident specifically referenced "Oswald" as being short or on the short side, to me, it's folly to consider completely eliminating Michael Paine as a possible Oswald impersonator.

I am glad that you are no longer arguing that the Lincoln Mercury test drive was really Oswald.

Certainly there were mob connected figures involved in the assassination of JFK, as there were figures connected to Cubans, Texas oilmen, ect. But the overall conclusion that the mob did it all is disproved by the fact that the Mafia, as powerful as it was, could not have gotten into the autopsy room at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Only people in the highest levels of government had that access.

The reason for the focus on only one impersonator in Dallas in late 1963 in the runup is because as I will bring out further there really is no hard or compelling reason to suppose more than one, and all else being equal, I am biased toward simpler explanations rather than complex ones, toward conspiracy theories that involve fewer moving parts rather than vast numbers of many moving parts all requiring secrecy. So the one-impersonator argument in Dallas 1963 is an hypothesis but from what I can see is sufficient to account for the facts.

Having an impersonator at all is extraordinary and unusual. If it is happening at all, one wants to know how it worked, did it involve formal training and where did that training occur and who was doing the training; was there an impersonator school; did an impersonator stay in acting/impersonation mode 24/7 or was it selective; did the impersonation involve a full range of sophisticated fake identification documents and creation of fictitious biographical history. Who ran the operation, where are the documents referring to an impersonation operation, what was the name of the operation, is there any evidence in any of the documents so far that a government agency ever ran an impersonation program domestically of the kind supposed uniquely in this case. What became of the impersonators after the assassination? Where are the ex-impersonators going on talk shows and giving lectures and writing books of "My life as an impersonator of Oswald".

The notion that some large scale of sophisticated impersonation-project apparatus and infrastructure involving many Oswald impersonators was being run by some lettered agency of the US government, for which there is just zero documentary or credible testimony as to the existence of such, does not make sense to me. As extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, there needs to be comparative examples and/or documentary evidence (or credible whistle-blower witness testimony) to make such things plausible, but there isn't. And without controls of evidence or showing a context of cases of similar comparative examples, that is the road to mystification which is not productive.

On Michael Paine as an impersonator of Oswald, going out in evenings for the purpose of pretending to be someone else other than who he was, I don't see any evidence for that or reason to suppose it or even to suspect it. 

For example, on the man talking as if he is Oswald to Johnnie Walker at that party in Grand Prairie (if that is as the witness said), that would not have been Michael Paine because he had no known tattoo on his left forearm, which would be known if he did, also there is no reason why that would be Michael Paine or why it is plausible he would be at a party of narcotics dealing circles, etc.

That the Mob could not control access to Bethesda Naval Hospital seems irrelevant to the question of whether there was a mob hand behind Ruby's killing of Oswald or behind the shooting of JFK. Non sequitur. That is like saying elements of the Dallas Police Department could not have been involved in the shooting (I am not saying they were; this is for illustrative purposes only) because the Dallas Police Department could not control access to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Non sequitur.  

A party in Grand Prairie, Thu Oct 24

FBI interview of Johnnie Walker, May 19, 1964 [Odum]:

[START FBI REPORT]

"Mrs. James Willie Walker, also known as Johnnie Walker, 2437 Varsity Drive, Grand Prairie, Texas, employed at Vaughn's Candy Kitchen, 29th Street, Grand Prairie, appeared at the Dallas office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and furnished the following information:

"She stated she wanted it understood that she would receive no publicity as a result of furnishing this information, and pointed out further that she is married and her husband is a long-time employee of Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV).

"Walker stated she is convinced that she spent about two hours with Lee Harvey Oswald between 8:00 and 10:00 PM, on a Thursday night, about seven days before Halloween, 1963. She stated she was supposed to be out calling for her church on a visitation program but a girl friend, Helen Seton, wanted to run around so she took her to the residence of Harold Zotch, Lakeview Drive, Grand Prairie, Texas, telephone AN. 2-6065, also an employee of LTV. She stated she knows that Zotch, in addition to working for LTV, is a bootlegger and a dope peddler, and she has furnished this information previously to authorities.

"On this particular evening, Junior Biggs was at Zotch's home and introduced Walker to Oswald Lee, who she believes is identical to Lee Harvey Oswald, after seeing pictures of him on television. She stated Lee received a telephone call soon after she arrived and his only comment on the telephone was "Yeh." Later, Lee told Walker he was working at either the Texas Book Store or the Taylor Book Store and he had been working there only eight days. Junior Biggs commented that Walker did not have to worry about Lee's wife, as she lived in Irving, Texas. Lee stated he had a room in Oak Cliff.

"Later on, some mention was made of coffee and Junion said Lee made real good coffee, and mentioned he had been to Lee's room. Walker asked Lee what nationality he was and Junior answered for him saying, 'He is Barbarian." Walker asked what a Barbarian was and Junior replied, "You've read about the Romans, haven't you?" Walker stated she still did not know what he meant, but dropped the inquiry.

"During the evening, Junior Biggs stated Lee was writing a book and would have it finished by Thanksgiving. Lee told Walker the book was about life inside Russia and he claimed to have been there.

"During this period of about two hours, Lee was drinking only coffee. The others, except Walker, were drinking beer and whiskey, but Walker, because she had to return to the church, was not drinking anything but coffee.

"During the latter part of the visit, Lee received another telephone call and said, "It's about time, ain't it?" Thereafter, he was on the phone for fifteen to thirty minutes, mostly listening, and occasionally interjecting "Yeh."

"About 10:00 PM, Lee left with a tall, dark-headed, young man, who was driving an old-model car. He had come for Lee. Walker could not further describe him.

"Walker stated she thought no more about this incident until the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on November 22, 1963. She then asked Helen Seton if she recalled meeting Oswald Lee and Helen replied that she was getting a divorce and did not have time to get mixed up in anything else. Walker also asked Junior Biggs about this man and Junior claimed that that evening was the first time and the last time he had ever seen Lee. Junior Biggs is no longer around Grand Prairie, although he frequented Zotch's home from February, 1963 until about Christmas, 1963. He is originally from Michigan.

"Helen Seton resides on Watson Street in Grand Prairie and Walker believes the number is 1448. It is the second house south of Varsity Drive. During the day, she keeps the children of her brother, "Buggie" O'Neal, who lives on Aggie Drive, Grand Prairie, telephone AN 2-2059.

"Walker described the person introduced to her as Oswald Lee as a white male, 24, 5'5", 140 lbs., medium complexion, dark eyes, dark brown hair, slicked down, wearing old clothes, clean and neat, having a tattoo of a dagger with a snake on his left forearm. She asked him what this meant and he stated it meant, "Don't tread on me." She then asked him what he meant by "tread" and he said, "You know, don't step on me."

"At the termination of this interview, Walker requested specifically that she be allowed to look at a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald. She was shown a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald made by the Dallas, Texas, Police Department, November 22, 1963, and stated she believes this is the same person she met, but she twice asked if the interviewer was positive that this was a photograph of Oswald. She stated the man she met looked younger, but she believes the man she met as Oswald Lee is Lee Harvey Oswald."

[END FBI REPORT]

Comment:  Despite how unbelievable the content sounds, the witness herself seems credible. She is fearful of having it become known that she was in compromising circumstances with respect to her husband. It is not clear, and perhaps the FBI interviewer did not wish to ask, whether this party involved sex and/or drugs. Yet despite possible personal embarrassment she is talking, giving contact information to other witnesses which could verify the story (there are no reports of any of the other witnesses she named having been tracked down to my knowledge).

On its face it is difficult to make sense of this. There are five distinctive details indicating an Oswald identity or claim to identity, yet there is overwhelming reason to reject the notion that this was Oswald. The five details sounding like Oswald are:

• he says his name is "Oswald Lee"
• he started work at a bookstore 8 days earlier [= when LHO started employment at TSBD]
• he is writing a book on his experience of life in Russia
• his wife lives in Irving
• he has a room in Oak Cliff

This either is a true claim of an Oswald identity from Oswald; a false claim of an Oswald identity from someone who is not Oswald; or a fabrication by the witness. That this was not Oswald is indicated in general terms not only because it does not sound like the company Oswald keeps, the kind of activity Oswald engages in, or a location where Oswald would be on a work night four days after his second child was born. More specifically the physical description and especially the "tattoo of a dagger with a snake on his left forearm" do not agree with Oswald, but do with Craford. The FBI verified Oswald had no tattoo and had not had one removed by the time he was buried. But one person who did have a tattoo on his left forearm was Curtis Craford, based on Craford being the identity of a witness's mistaken identification of an "Oswald" accompanying Jack Ruby in an electronics store about two weeks before Nov 26 (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=56999#relPageId=49). The witness who thought he saw Oswald with Ruby was Robert Patterson, part-owner of the electronics store. Craford in his Warren Commission testimony identified himself as having accompanied Ruby to that store, which makes sense since he was Ruby's handyman and Oswald is not known to have personally accompanied Ruby at any time. The man Patterson saw with Ruby--Crafard--had a tattoo on his left forearm, just like the man with whom Johnnie Walker spent time in Grand Prairie on Oct 24. 

This is as good of a time as any to note that whereas there are multiple attestations of Craford having been mistakenly identified as Oswald, at the same time the physical descriptions of Oswald and Craford differ in certain ways that can help distinguish the one from the other in witness descriptions. These differences are:

• height: Oswald is taller, 5'9". Craford was reported by the FBI as 5'8" but Peter Whitmey who met him years later in Oregon suggests he was shorter than that, saying that Craford was definitely shorter than Whitmey's own 5'8-1/2". Johnnie Walker estimated 5'5". Patterson estimated 5'8-5'9". 
• weight: while being shorter than Oswald, Craford also weighs a bit more, not a lot but maybe ca. 8-10 lbs. more (and for less height). Oswald could be described as slender but not Craford so easily. Patterson said of his "Oswald"'s [= Craford's] weight: "not too heavy, not too thin"
• Craford sometimes wears blue jeans (Patterson: "blue jeans, very tight fitting"; the Southland Hotel Garage "Oswald" applicant: blue jeans) whereas there is no known instance of Oswald wearing blue jeans, nor were blue jeans found among Oswald's clothes. 
• Whereas Oswald is light complexion, standard "white" person complexion, Craford is somewhat darker in complexion; as Johnnie Walker describes, "medium" complexion
• Craford was and looked a little younger than Oswald; age 22 (Craford) versus age 24 (Oswald). Compare Johnnie Walker's closing comments in her FBI interview that while she thought the "Oswald" she had spent time with at the party was Lee Harvey Oswald, at the same time she thought the man she remembered was a little younger than the photos of Oswald shown her.
• Craford had darker hair color than Oswald: hair dark brown (Craford) versus light or medium brown hair (Oswald)
• Craford had a scar on his upper lip that Oswald did not
• Craford had a tattoo on his left forearm, based on the witness reports of Johnnie Walker and Patterson. Oswald had no tattoo. (In fact the FBI said Craford when they found him in Michigan had no tattoo, suggesting Craford had had it removed by then, but he had it at least as late as the first half of Nov.)
• Craford is variously said to have been missing top front teeth (said to be from a fight in Oct 1963) and alternatively that is not noticed (did he wear dentures?); not the case with Oswald.

The judgment here is that Johnnie Walker's account is credible, not a fabrication; that the man she met in Grand Prairie certainly was not Oswald and probably was Curtis Craford; that Crafard was practicing role-playing as Oswald for the fun of it with this woman he just met (no malevolent purpose). Information gleaned from this is that it appears Craford may be running with underworld or narcotics circles and that he had access to information concerning Oswald. The credibility of Johnnie Walker's account is supported in that there are other apparent instances of Craford representing himself as Oswald, even though there is no known witnessed account of Craford and Oswald having met in person.  

Overview of (my) case for Craford impersonating Oswald, Part II

The key instances of impersonation that now convince me are:

• a party in Grand Prairie, Thu. eve, Oct 24
• applicant for job as bellman in 18-story Statler-Hilton Hotel on Commerce St., Wed or Thu, Oct 30 or 31
• Downtown Lincoln Mercury, test Sat Nov 2
• applicant for job at seven-story Southland Hotel parking Garage on Commerce St., first half of Nov
• hitchhiker, Oak Cliff to TSBD Dealey Plaza, carrying rifle-sized package and talking of presidential parade and shooting of president from tall building, Thu Nov 21

In all five of these cases there is credible witness testimony of intent by someone to be identified as Oswald who was not Oswald on the basis of argument. Though certainty is elusive, the true identities of the individuals in all five of these instances are well readable as the single individual Craford. The motivation or purpose served by the impersonations in the final four are creation of witnesses who will later come forward with incrimination of Oswald, although in the 2nd and 4th instance there may have been a simultaneous objective to actually obtain the job if it was possible to do so, so as to make possible access to good sniper positions depending on how the parade route was finally decided. To these witness-testimony cases can be added perhaps a dozen additional cases of witnesses' mistaken identifications of Craford as Oswald without impersonation, and consideration of possible though uncertain suggestions that Crafard may have used Oswald's name with reference to himself inside Carousel Club circles.

Finally, a reinterpretation of what attorney Jarnagin overheard between Ruby and Craford the night of Fri Oct 4, in which Jarnagin not only heard Ruby and Craford speaking of assassination of the "governor" and considering which was the best downtown Dallas tall building choice for a sniper given uncertainty of which of three downtown streets--Elm, Main, or Commerce--might ultimately be selected for the parade route ... but there was also discussion of Craford using Oswald's name--impersonation--and the making of a patsy, in the context of this conversation concerning a mob-contracted assassination involving shooting from a building at a targeted public official in a parade route going through downtown Dallas. In other words, while the Ruby/Craford meeting itself was not an impersonation of Oswald, the two discussed Craford impersonating Oswald.

By this revised reading of what Jarnagin tried to write to tell J. Edgar Hoover in early Dec 1963 of what he had heard, all of these things may have been under discussion as early as Oct 4, the evening Craford arrived to Ruby and the Carousel Club, which by accident Jarnagin heard and told, however imperfectly and however much Jarnagin himself and those he told may have misunderstood what he heard.

These witness credibility assessments are a minefield. They are in the end case-by-case judgment calls, and not everyone will make the same judgments. 

Overview of (my) case for Crafard impersonating Oswald,  Part i

As in my analysis developed elsewhere on this forum, the Furniture Mart sighting of Oswald and Marina and their baby and 2-year old girl remains a genuine Oswald and Marina sighting (not a mistaken identification; not an impersonation). Monday, Nov 11, 1963, Oswald driving Ruth Paine's car without her knowledge that day.

The Irving Sports Shop rifle scope reinstallation is genuine Oswald, because it is linked to the Furniture Mart. Also Nov 11.

The reports of Leonard Hutchinson of Irving of Oswald at his store, Hutch's Market, are genuine Oswald sightings. In the late afternoon or early evening of Fri Nov 8 Oswald unsuccessfully tried to cash a $189 check at Hutch's Market. On Mon Nov 11 Oswald drove Marina and children to Hutch's Market where Lee and Marina made some substantial food and household item purchases (perhaps after having found somewhere else to cash that $189 check?). Hutchinson saw Lee and Marina shop inside his store. An older woman in the same aisle thought by Hutchinson to be with Lee and Marina must be a mistake on Hutchinson's part, some woman in the store who was not with Lee and Marina, or if she was at that moment it would be because they met by chance that minute in the store. (That woman cannot have been Marguerite Oswald whom all parties including Marguerite agree was not in Irving at that time and never at that store.) Hutchinson also saw Oswald several mornings sporadically enter his store at about 7 am having arrived walking from and returning in the direction of Ruth Paine's house, buying milk, cinnamon rolls, and bread, which was Oswald's form of nourishment before walking back to catch his ride with Frazier into Dallas, on those mornings, including the morning of Fri Nov 22 (source of the bread bag ca. 25" x 5" Oswald took to work that morning).

Other genuine Oswald witness sightings: 

• regular customer for breakfast at the Dobbs House restaurant around 7 am, a restaurant right near his rooming house in Oak Cliff
• at a laundromat near his rooming house where he would wash his clothes in evenings, including until midnight the evening of Wed Nov 20.
• at a barber in Oak Cliff who remembered giving him two haircuts (presumed correct identification based on plausibility)
• at the Texas Employment Commission on the day of his arrival in Dallas after Mexico City, Thu Oct 3, and several but not all of the Oswald encounters Laura Kittrell told of that month
• another restaurant at which Oswald was a regular patron eating a hamburger platter in evenings after work (presumed correct identification based on plausibility)

Claims of sightings of Oswald which were mistaken identifications--neither Oswald nor impersonations

The driver of a car registered to Carl Mather of Collins Radio (based on the license plate) seen parked on Beckley Ave. at about 2 pm Fri Nov 22. There need be no mystery who this person was--it was the car's owner, Mather. A photo of a younger Mather in military service shows a face which resembles Oswald. The timeline of Mather and when he took off from work early that day is not inconsistent with his car's, and his, witnessed presence in Oak Cliff at the time reported, even though Mather was a long way from home or workplace (but Mather and family returned to Oak Cliff to visit newly-widowed Mrs. Tippit later than afternoon in a different car, after Mather driving alone returned with the car witnessed and verified by license plate number on Beckley). In any case it was not Oswald since Oswald was under arrest at that time after being in the Texas Theatre, not sitting as a lone driver in a parked car that was not his, then driving away in that car. Nor was that driver attempting to make himself known to anyone but drove off quickly without words when approached by the witness, as if not wanting to be seen. It was not Oswald and was not impersonation; it was a mistaken identification. What Mather was doing there and the reason for the later secrecy surrounding it is an interesting separate question but that is distinct from the issue here which is the identification. True ID: Carl Mather.

The Shasteen barbershop customer in Irving. There are so many reasons why this is a mistaken identification and was not Oswald. It certainly was no impersonation since at no time does Shasteen say the customer claimed to be Oswald, gave his name as Oswald's, or told a single thing specific about himself that pointed to Oswald. In fact at practically every specific point of detail an identity with Oswald is contraindicated. The contraindications include: association with a 14-year old boy (obviously the man's son once the Oswald mistaken identification is recognized); estimate of age early 30s; the customer driving a car there on days when Ruth Paine was at home and would have noticed, denied by Ruth; the customer's style of haircut with hair cut close to the scalp so that it was in between laying down and standing up, then slicked back with grease, not Oswald's hairstyle and shorter than Oswald's hair which was not cropped short so that it partly stood up; Shasteen testified the customer's hair "dark headed ... wasn't jet black, but most people would call him black-headed" (Oswald's hair was light or medium brown but not dark brown); the wearing of "big, loose-fitting" coveralls, not found in Oswald's possessions and never seen on Oswald otherwise, but suggesting something like a city maintenance or construction or highway worker of some kind, not the clothes Oswald wore coming out to Irving after work from the TSBD; the frequency of that customer's haircuts at @2 weeks inconsistent with several witness accounts (e.g. Hutchinson) who said Oswald looked like he needed a haircut; the customer wore yellow shoes not in Oswald's belongings nor seen on him otherwise; the customer told of regular trips across the border to Mexico with access to shopping, inconsistent with Oswald for whom no expected regular future trips across the border to Mexico are known; the customer's number of haircuts (ca. 5-7) and Shasteen's estimate of when they began have that customer's haircuts beginning before Oswald was returned to Dallas/Irving from New Orleans; the testimony of Frazier as well as Ruth and Marina that on Friday evenings Oswald would be dropped off and go to the Ruth Paine house to see his wife and children, not drive to get a haircut; the incongruity of driving about 1 mile from Ruth Paine's house when Oswald would walk to Hutch's Mart across the street from Shasteen's shop, as remembered by Hutchinson. The two other barbers both remembered the customer at issue. One, Glover, described him as "34 to 35 years of age, 5'11" in height, weight 140 pounds, hair dark brown, complexion ruddy", not one point of which except for weight agrees with Oswald. The third barber in the shop, who according to Shasteen had cut the customer's hair once himself, Buddy Law, denied any memory of having seen Oswald in that shop, after having seen numerous pictures and photos of Oswald in the news. That the 14-year old boy with Shasteen's ca. 30s-age-appearing customer was the man's son is supported by Shasteen witnessing the 14-year old boy one time come to his shop on his own for a haircut dropped off in front from a "1958 Ford...dark color" by an adult who waited, not a Ruth Paine car, probably another family member of the Shasteen customer. This family had nothing to do with Oswald. Nor was there any claim by that customer to be Oswald. It was neither Oswald nor an impersonation, but a mistaken identification. True ID: unknown.

The Sports Drome Rifle Range sightings. The person several witnesses claimed must have been Oswald after later seeing Oswald in the news after the assassination, never claimed to be Oswald nor apart from the claim of physical resemblance and firing a Carcano was there anything specific which would identify him as Oswald. This shooter behaved aggressively whereas Oswald was normally polite. This shooter was a crack shot, witnessed rapidly firing repeated bullseyes at distance, whereas all that is known of Oswald indicates he was a poor shot. According to Laura Kittrell, Oswald took aptitude tests at the Texas Employment Commission in Oct 1963 and received mediocre scores in physical coordination, which Laura Kittrell specifically from experience noted correlated with men being poor rifle shots; and according to Kittrell Oswald admitted to her directly that that was true, that he was a poor shot. The target shooter came in vehicles not associated with Oswald and seemed associated with persons not associated with Oswald. The times are in irreconcilable conflict with Oswald's whereabouts elsewhere. Taken together, this all means it was not Oswald though it was someone who sufficiently resembled Oswald to have been mistaken for him. This shooter was not Craford either, based on all witnesses having been shown photos of Craford and rejecting Craford as the identification. However as brought out by George Evica, ATF agent Frank Ellsworth reported that local gun shop dealer John Thomas Masen identified himself as having been at the Sports Drome Rifle Range with Minutemen associates, corresponding to the individual the witnesses thought looked like Oswald and the persons who were with him, and Ellsworth himself told of having seen Oswald at the Dallas Police station after his arrest and thinking at first he was looking at Masen. The only known verified photo of Masen, a high school yearbook photo, shows a face very much like Oswald's. So the shooter at the Sports Drome mistakenly identified as Oswald probably was Masen; in any case it was not Oswald and there is no basis whatsoever to call this an impersonation of anyone either. True ID: John Thomas Masen (probable)

(to be continued)

A possible breakthrough in solving the JFK assassination?

Curtis LaVerne Craford, known to the Warren Commission as Larry Crafard, was not interviewed by HSCA or AARB, yet could he be the key to solving the JFK assassination? There already is a strong case for identification of Craford as the killer of Tippit and would-be killer of Oswald on Friday Nov 22, argued elsewhere. That argument developed elsewhere puts Craford in the same class as his employer and landlord, Jack Ruby, and Ruby can fairly straightforwardly be identified as representing mob interests such as Marcello of New Orleans. However, to say that Marcello and Ruby did the killing of Oswald post-assassination leaves open the possibility that some others other than Marcello did the killing of JFK itself. This in fact is the argument of John Canal, Silencing the Lone Assassin (2000). (Canal accepts Oswald as lone-nut assassin but has the Marcello organization including Ruby and Ferrie silencing Oswald by killing him afterwards for reasons of coverup of Marcello organization criminal activity rather than involvement in the assassination itself.) 

This thread develops an argument for tying the post-assassination killers of Tippit and Oswald to the planning and carrying out of the assassination of JFK itself. The way this is done is by an argument that I have previously rejected, but believe now I erred in that rejection: it goes to the issue of impersonations of Oswald in the runup to the assassination. Previously I have argued that all cases of Oswald identifications in Dallas in the runup were explicable as either genuinely Oswald or mistakes in identification, one or the other, with no third category of intentional impersonation. I will explain what has changed my mind on that. This will involve discussion of cases. I will present what I have in a series of pieces or posts rather than one super-long one. This may take a few days.

The argument has the potential to be significant. For I see an argument that among all the static caused by mistaken or uncredible witnesses, there nevertheless are specific cases of intentional impersonation; that the impersonator need not forever be a mystery but is identifiable in several cases as Curtis Craford; and that all cases of genuine impersonation--speaking of Dallas in the 2-3 months runup to the assassination--are compatible with explanation in terms of the actions of just one impersonator, Craford (i.e. no number of impersonators greater than one need be assumed).

IF this argument is correct--that there was someone impersonating Oswald prior to the assassination, and if the one (or ones) doing that impersonation can be named and identified, and if the impersonations were related to the assassination--that in turn establishes

• that there was conspiracy, a plot, i.e. more than one involved, in the assassination

and

• narrowing of identification of who carried out the assassination (since impersonating Oswald with intent to frame Oswald prior to the assassination = JFK assassination plotters) 

In short, if Craford is identifiable as an impersonator of Oswald prior to the assassination and if those impersonations are related to the assassination, this pretty much points to organized crime, the mob-did-it theory, the same as did the cleanup killing of Oswald and some other witnesses in the aftermath. It comes close to being a smoking-gun argument. 

I would like to be clear that this is not headed toward a Waldron interpretation that Mobsters decided on their own to even a score with RFK and JFK and blackmailed the US government into not prosecuting them. To say that the Mob did the JFK assassination operationally--not simply the cleanup afterward of having Oswald killed after the fact--leaves wide open the question, never investigated by the FBI or Warren Commission, of not simply did the Mob do it, but was there or was there not collusion or a green light or nod, an "OK". This may never be known, or it may become known, to historians, I do not know. I strongly, strongly suspect no Mob figure would assassinate a sitting US president unilaterally. The reason is because if they did, the wrath of God from the US government would come down on them. If there was a wink or a nod of approval, a nod to "go ahead" from a faction within the government, to take out JFK--then the assassination of JFK indeed may have been effectively a real coup and not a wildcat low-level assassination plot that succeeded--that is what it looks like to me on an intuitive level. Proving such of course is a different matter. But it is possible, if the present argument is deemed sufficiently strong, that the two points below can be proven now, in the sense of established beyond reasonable doubt:

• intentional impersonation of Oswald with intent to incriminate him, in the runup to the assassination, proves conspiracy: a plot involving premeditation and more than one person, and
• the identity of the impersonator, if that can be shown and established convincingly, will pretty much nail who to look at who did the JFK assassination operationally

A final point to preempt criticism of a Mob-did-it theory: mob figures were working with the CIA to assassinate Castro. Everyone knows this now, even if it was not well-known then. To say JFK could not have been killed by Marcello, or some other Mob interests, because it is not realistic they could have done it alone or the coverup that followed, would by the same logic argue against the Mob having been involved in killing Castro. A Mob theory or Marcello-Trafficante theory, if correct, would be like nailing the gunman to a killing. But it would not tell who hired the gunman, or sent that gunman. Any lone-mobster theory is in principle as suspicious as the lone-nut-Oswald theory. 

Some method considerations

There is so much craziness around the subject of impersonation. What I develop in this thread runs counter to my own previous opposition to the idea of impersonation happening at all in Dallas in the runup. Too often lists of witnesses who claim somebody they encountered a few weeks or months earlier was Oswald are cited as examples of "evidence of impersonations" when there is no evidence that the person claimed to be Oswald. If a witness mistakes someone for Oswald who was not Oswald, that is not impersonation, that is a mistaken identification. (I have been told I look like a certain Seattle television newscaster whom I have never met. I am not impersonating him nor he me, etc. My brother from a certain angle is the spitting image of Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida. Again, not impersonation.) A witness saying someone looked like Oswald and the witness thinks it was Oswald is a necessary but not sufficient condition to that having been an impersonation. Impersonation requires evidence of someone who is not Oswald using Oswald's name, or by some other means making it clear that there was intent to have an observer think the identity was Oswald, not simply that the witness did think so.

For example the Sports Drome Rifle Range sightings. Several witnesses remembered a man they later claimed and believed was Oswald shooting there, based on their memory of his appearance after seeing Oswald's picture in the news following the assassination. But the person they saw at the Sports Drome never claimed to be Oswald, never said that was his name, or that he had a Russian wife or was working at the TSBD, etc. and etc., anything showing intent to identify as Oswald. Therefore that crack shot shooter at the Sports Drome may or may not have been Oswald, but if he was not Oswald, there is no basis for calling that an impersonation, since there is no evidence that that person made any claim or showed any intention for anyone else to think he was Oswald. (There is a claim of Sterling Wood of his father giving a ride of the man to Oak Cliff but that claim is questionable on good grounds and rejected for that reason; there is also a post-assassination claim of Gordon Slack that the man he thought was Oswald left with a companion named "Frazier" but that is well read as Slack making that post-Nov 22 claim based on reading of Oswald's association with Frazier in the news, not that the young man himself ever claimed to Slack to be Frazier, which on other grounds he was not.) Therefore there is no sound basis for calling the Sports Drome witness claims instances of impersonation. Those witness claims either were correct identifications of the real Oswald, or (as the evidence actually indicates) mistaken identifications, but there is no evidence or indication impersonation was going on in any of those Sports Drome cases.

The other method consideration is a reaction against the all-too-common throwing many and disparate witness testimonies gathered from far and wide, no matter how outlandish, all thrown together scattershot against a wall, call them all "impersonations", and because taken in aggregate they have no rhyme or reason and cannot possibly be accounted for from the same source, call that evidence of a conspiracy so vast and complex that we mere mortals cannot hope to decipher it, because the unseen, unknown conspirator operatives were so many, the conspiracy was so far-reaching, it reached almost literally everywhere.

No, let us instead go through the witnesses case by case carefully, make judgments and focus only on strong credible cases, and assess those. Rather than vast and incomprehensible complexity let it be considered that there was only a single individual impersonating Oswald in Dallas in the runup, that there may be enough information to identify that individual, and that identification of that individual may put us directly into the the circle of who carried out the assassination of JFK, and go some ways toward cutting through the mystification that has plagued this subject.

I invite those who have been the rational debunkers of impersonation ideas, as I have been myself, to cross-examine and push back on the specific interpretations and arguments that I wlll be offering in specific cases. (If I can make a plea to the Harvey and Lee people, please allow this discussion to develop without derailing into Harvey and Lee territory which can be taken up on other threads--much appreciated, thanks!)

I also want to make clear that the analysis to follow focusing on the figure of Curtis Craford (as previous argument making the case that Craford was the killer of Tippit) has not originated with me but builds on earlier work of others. Two articles I would specially like to acknowledge are Peter Whitmey, "Creating a Patsy" (first published Aprl 1998 in JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly, rev. and expanded here: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/creatingapatsy.htm) and Hasan Yusuf, "Did Larry Crafard kill J.D. Tippit?" Dec 2014 (https://jfkthelonegunmanmyth.blogspot.com/2014/12/did-larry-crafard-kill-jd-tippit.html). While I do not agree with everything in these articles, as no doubt readers here will not agree with everything in my analyses, no matter, we learn from each other and each of these articles develop valuable points and information. In the case of Whitmey, he more than anyone else is credited with tracking down Crafard and interviewing this figure for whom so little biographical information is known beyond basics.   

The suggestion that Oswald was impersonated by Curtis Craford itself goes back as early as Joachim Joesten, How Kennedy was Killed (1968): "What are my reasons for believing that Larry Crafard is the person who deliberately impersonated Oswald over a period of several weeks, manifestly for the purpose of planting false clues that would incriminate Oswald after the assassination and thus divert attention from the real murderers of the President? . . ."

John Butler, on the preceding post the quotation you quote is not from me but from Pat Speer. Could you get that corrected? Thanks.

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Like I said, Sandy, if you ask anyone familiar with 8mm film, anomalies are expected, and not proof of alteration. These are tiny images created in a split second, of a moving object, by a hand-held camera. The level of clarity and consistency you seem to think should be expected just wasn't possible at that time. Or even today. 

A similar kind of thing happened with the Dead Sea Scrolls. After their first discovery or being brought to light to the world in the late 1940s, there was a brief original period of legitimate scholarly debate over whether they were medieval or modern. The leading exponent of the medieval argument was Solomon Zeitlin, who was one of the leading Jewish studies scholars in the world. The wholesale medieval-dating question was then answered in favor of authenticity, when radiocarbon datings were done, as well as a huge amount of additional knowledge concerning palaeographical dating and the archaeological find circumstances and associations. It happened that Zeitlin would not accept that despite massive evidence, and continued to the end of his life maintaining the medieval-dating argument long after the answer was in (on the dating) to the satisfaction of 99.9% of other scholars. Today this is regarded as a curiosity in the history of scholarship. Nobody seriously argues Zeitlin's position today. Zeitlin's other scholarly work stands. Sort of analogous to Linus Pauling and vitamin C, or in physics Roger Penrose, widely acclaimed by peers as one of the great astrophysicists but few if any peers like his cosmological theory of a heat death of the universe being followed by a Big Bang like the one that started ours (not being sufficiently educated in physics to understand the reasons his peers reject it, I actually like Penrose's theory myself!). 

But there is a postscript. In the late 1990s somebody with no training or expertise looked at the photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and noticed strange specks and dots in the margins and spaces between the letters in the photographs. In fact these are artifacts of the photography. He did not agree. He collected examples and put them together in making an argument for medieval dating. Like finding that happy face in the Mars moon rock. It was Rorschach Inkblot seeing shapes at work. But he was 100% passionate and believed what he was saying was true. He reasoned that the only reason scholars today were rejecting his findings could only be because they were in on a plot to hide the truth. He found difficulty getting his work listened to by established scholars. He solved that problem by going to major-city daily newspapers with submitted articles which were run as features in Sunday editions, and published in at least a half-dozen such cases, maybe many more I don't remember. He also attracted the loyalty of a journalist, no expertise or training himself in the subject matter, but an otherwise reputable city newspaper reporter who took up his cause.

My name came up in his newspaper articles not of my will or doing. I had obtained the second battery of radiocarbon datings on the Dead Sea Scrolls done in 1994-5, and had written what for some time was regarded as the leading popular-scholarly article on Dead Sea Scrolls radiocarbon dating, a chapter in a 1998 Flint and Vanderkam, eds., volume titled The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years. In that article I discussed the problem of sample contamination possibly affecting some of the radiocarbon dates, along with other range of issues involved. He misunderstood and misrepresented what I wrote and quoted me by name as suggesting all the scrolls' radiocarbon datings were wrong, which was not what I said at all. I argued with reasons given why most of the radiocarbon dates were accurate and unquestionably in the correct era (Second Temple/late hellenistic-early Roman period, in no way could the scrolls be medieval), with the issue being whether among the accurate radiocarbon datings were "salted" a few inaccurate ones slightly offset by a century or two due to sample contamination. That is a fairly uncontroversial proposition itself today, fairly uncontroversially was the case, though the specifics remain debated.

The journalist advocate called me and I talked to him by phone. He was convinced by the specks and anomalies in the photographs argument. I tried to tell him, based on hundreds of hours of studying those photographs myself, that his friend was imagining significance in those specks which were not from the scrolls themselves but in the photographs. But he was just convinced. They would go back to the early years and cite the original questions which had been raised concerning authenticity of the scrolls, the early Solomon Zeitlin debates. I tried to say that was the right question to ask at the outset--absolutely the right question to ask when claimed new finds come to light not from controlled excavations--but the point was that that question had fairly quickly been answered, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, such that it is not a question now. But it did no good.

Why it is implausible that Oswald would have thought he was helping Castro by assassinating JFK

Claude, I cannot understand the idea that Oswald would be part of killing JFK out of love for the Cuban revolution, whether on his own or at the instigation of real or fake Castro agents—unless there are also invoked ad hoc assumptions of irrationality on Oswald's part for which there is no evidence.

There is some logic and rationality for the US directly or through third parties to get rid of Castro, for those plans involved followup and regime change in Cuba, whether with or without invasion, favorable to US interests. Assuming there was no war with the USSR or other unacceptable costs, killing Castro would advance US interests in this calculus. 

But it does not work in reverse. Castro knew the Kennedy administration was trying to kill him and Castro could bluff and say, "you better look out yourself" hoping his letting them know that he knew, and might retaliate (by means of some terror attack or killing on some lower level, would be the logical interpretation of that) . . . but there is no rational sense for Castro to actually assassinate JFK, because it would not be followed by regime change in the US favorable to Cuba's interests. On the contrary it would unleash the wrath of God on Cuba from the US. Cuba would risk annihilation. Unless Castro had kamikaze logic he would be deterred, on any rational grounds, in a way that is not the reverse with the US trying to kill Castro.

Oswald knew that. His writings show he was intelligent and reasoned rationally. He said himself directly in his interrogation that changing one US president for another was unlikely to make a difference in policy toward Cuba.  

Even if real or fictitious Castro agents--they could not be real on the reasonable assumption that Castro was no kamikaze and was not suicidal, so would have to be impersonators--told Oswald that a killing of JFK is what Castro wanted done, how would Oswald reason in his own mind that the revolution in Cuba was going to benefit? There is no reasonable calculation of a benefit to the Cuban revolution from a Castro assassination of Kennedy. It would not have a public relations benefit of killing a hated evil figure—JFK was loved by the world! Therefore one can only postulate this kind of scenario or logic with Oswald by invoking an additional component of irrationality. But the problem is there is no plausibility or grounds for such an assumption. Where in Oswald's makeup or writings or words to those who knew him is there indication of irrationality? There isn't. 

It is unclear that the Walker assassination attempt was a real assassination attempt as opposed to a fabricated one as some Dallas police thought, but if it was real there would be a certain logic to it. With Walker, he was viewed like a potential Hitler. Assassination of Hitler of Germany would have meant policy differences likely in Germany. Even if it was still Na-zis running Germany the main charismatic one would be gone and other Na-zis did not necessarily share the same military strategies or ambitions. But killing Kennedy in order to have LBJ as president instead, as making a difference for the better for Cuba? Especially if Castro was held responsible for the killing? That makes no sense.

And who might the alleged impersonating Castro agents be, influencing Oswald? None of the known associates or contacts of Oswald in Dallas or New Orleans are easily identifiable in that category, meaning such a theory has to further suppose or invoke secret associates, secret contacts, unknown in all the known information about Oswald.

And Oswald never said a word against Kennedy! All who knew him said he loved Kennedy! 

Yes there is a case for Oswald dreaming of ending up in Cuba. But killing Kennedy as the price of getting there? Makes little sense. 

There is also a case that Oswald was a US agent, with leftist views that were real enough but still working for US agencies underneath the optics, including when he was in the Soviet Union as a defector, perhaps for the specific purpose and intent of being recruited as a Soviet agent and serving as a double agent for the US (that would make sense of some things). Oswald pointedly did not defend Soviet aggressions in the world, and pointedly did not advocate violent revolution in his personal papers, though he did write of what might be called a left-libertarian vision something like democratic socialism minus a powerful state. A theory that Oswald was used, chewed up and spit out, an imperfect covert agent because he did not do well with authority or state apparatuses and thereby made himself disposable as opposed to dependable ... would that be an approximate description of Oswald?       

Because the below notes from interviews of Perry Russo in 1992 seem information worth preserving but are not published in any print form; nor do they seem to be on the Mary Ferrell site; nor does it seem there is much awareness of their existence, I post this here as a backup in case the single known link where this appears were to go dark. (The link: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/prusso.htm). It is a conference presentation by Peter Whitmey in 1996. There is a description of Peter Whitmey's conference presentation in Fair Play #12 (Sept-Oct. 1996 [https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=217847#relPageId=48]) but without the notes below summarizing the content of Whitmey's Perry Russo interviews in 1992.--gd

START QUOTE FROM WHITMEY

I first wrote to Perry on Feb. 20, 1990 after having read about the Shaw trial extensively, and received a brief reply dated March 5, 1990, in which he supplied me with the business address of Judge Garrison (which I already had, having written to him several times beginning in 1987 in regard to my Giesbrecht research. Although his secretary assured me he received my letters as well as my initial article on Giesbrecht, which was returned at my request, I never did receive a reply from Garrison over a five-year period.) Perry expressed interest in several comments I had made in my letter and wondered about the "direction" of my research, possibly fearing that I was out to discredit him.

In his second reply to a follow-up letter, he stated that he was in regular contact once again with Garrison, and appeared to be anxious to talk about the assassination, wondering if I had access to a WATS line (which I didn't). He recalled having learned about the assassination while leaving a class at Loyola University, in response to my comment about having just left a class at the University of Washington when I heard the news (initially I was told that the shots missed.) Perry's next statement was quite startling: "I was shocked but satisfied. Kennedy destroyed this country." At this point, I realized that I was dealing with someone who had no love for JFK, who sounded quite bitter, but who at least was honest about his feelings.

I also learned from Russo's second letter that a movie was in the works, based on Garrison's book, to be directed by Oliver Stone. Despite their political differences, Russo seemed to be pleased to be in regular contact with Garrison, who was probably like a father-figure to him (his own father, who went to jail in 1963 for tax evasion, had died some years ago; his mother died of cancer in early 1963.) Russo didn't hide his political leanings by describing Reagan as "one hell-of-a-president".

In the course of our written correspondence, Russo also sent me a Times-Picayune article about Roscoe White, which seemed to capture Perry's imagination, given the ongoing attempt to discredit Ricky White (the late Roscoe White's son), which wasn't very hard to do. Perry also stated in writing that in linking Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald together, his testimony stood "…uncontradicted and also uncorroborated." I learned from him that he had reached an out-of-court settlement back in 1968 with Time magazine for $1500 as a result of an article in which he was mistakenly referred to as a "drug addict" (although apparently Time didn't have to apologize in print for the "error".)

Perry never married or had any children (although he had a big dog), and eventually inherited his parents' home at 4607 Elysian Fields, where he was still living when I first contacted him (he later moved). He continued to work as a cabdriver for United Cabs, and was even interviewed next to his cab for an "Entertainment Tonight" segment when the movie "JFK" was released. Perry had been hired as one of many consultants for the film, and also played the anti-Kennedy loudmouth in the bar scene, who tells everyone there that Oswald deserves a medal. In addition, he helped with the bizarre sadomasochistic scene involving Ferrie, Shaw and "Willie O'Keefe" (a character whom Oliver Stone later regretted creating, in correspondence with researcher Jan Stevens), and was the voice on the phone in the call to Garrison's daughter. Perry indicated to me that he was agreeable to the creation of the composite character, O'Keefe, played by Kevin Bacon, undoubtedly relieved that he would not be depicted as the "star witness" (which I personally feel is a major shortcoming of the film, especially in using an uneducated, sexually depraved male prostitute as the principal witness, as opposed to a college-educated, clean-cut "Young Republican", who admired Richard Nixon and hated John Kennedy.)

In the course of my contact with Perry, I asked him if it would be alright if I wrote to his brother, who is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of New Orleans, and who had been briefly mentioned in American Grotesque. It was fine with Perry, and in response to my letter of Dec. 27, 1991, Professor Russo simply returned it with a few comments in the margins, indicating that he believed his brother's testimony was genuine. He also pointed out that it was common practice for witnesses to be rehearsed before they went on the stand. Although he personally liked the Kennedys, he did not feel his brother's animosity was that uncommon at the time. He didn't know why Perry failed to come forward immediately after the assassination (especially given that Ferrie was interviewed by Garrison's office, the Secret Service and the FBI, with local media coverage in that regard.) He did believe that it was true that Perry had been under psychiatric care as a college student for 18 months as alleged during the trial (which I now suspect was related to an earlier suicide attempt in 1960, and possibly an early sign of a mood disorder.)

When I first proposed "interviewing" Perry via audiotape, he was quite agreeable, but the initial recording, in which he simply described his experiences, was somehow partially obliterated. However, a second tape I received back based on 20 questions (dated August 9, 1990) was very clear, with a friend named Paula reading the questions, followed by Perry's answers. On Sept. 9 Perry returned a second tape in response to 20 more questions, with another friend, Deborah, reading the questions this time (I later tried phoning her but she wasn't available). Later that year, I sent Perry 20 more questions, which he returned on Dec. 23. 

I continued to correspond with him and learned in March, 1992 that Perry was suing GQ magazine for referring to him as a "grifter" (which was the title of an excellent movie available on video at that time.) He also indicated that he had become "burned out" as a result of doing over 20 interviews about the Garrison case since "JFK" was released. In Sept. 1992 he let me know he had moved to Navarre Avenue and gave me his unlisted phone number. (Prior to the release of the movie, his number had been listed for many years.) He continued to feel "burned out" and also was recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident, but kindly stated that, despite a lot of "negatives", there were some "positives" pertaining to ongoing coverage of "JFK" and that "you are one", which I considered a great compliment.

In response to having let Perry know about my correspondence with retired (and now deceased) journalist Jim Phelan (who appears to have been an FBI informant back in 1967, based on several documents provided to me by Jim DeEugenio, which a researcher located in the National Archives, although Phelan adamantly denied the accusation), he asked me to tell Phelan "…hello & go xxxx yourself. He knows what we talked about. We have the conversation recorded." This was in regard to Phelan's interview with Perry in the late 1970s for his 1982 book Scandals, Scamps and Scoundrels. Perry had earlier indicated that Phelan "…had come back from the dead trying to (stop) the movie. That guy is a real asshole. He called me with threats, etc., 8-10 times, Jan. - July, 1991."

In the fall of 1993, I phoned Perry and asked him if he could send me a copy of any local articles pertaining to the death of Judge Garrison (which occurred as the 1993 ASK conference was getting underway in Dallas), and he kindly sent me several. Although he decided not to attend the funeral, he did visit Garrison's family, and had become friends with one of Garrison's sons.

After writing to Perry in July 1993 as well as a year later, I received what turned out to be his last reply in a letter dated August 17, 1994 (in an unidentified friend's handwriting), in which Perry made reference to my previous questions and comments. He continued to feel "burned out", and was again recovering from an injury sustained after accidentally shooting himself in his cab back on May 28, 1994. I had asked him if he had known Clem Sehrt (who might have been "Clem/Clay Bertrand"), but he didn't recall ever meeting him, although he believed the name had been mentioned in Garrison's office during the investigation. He also wasn't sure if Dean Andrews and Clem Sehrt knew each other (they both had close links to Marcello as lawyers).

I had also sent Perry a copy of my article on Pershing Gervais and the attempt to frame Garrison, based on extensive coverage by the Vancouver Sun in 1972. He indicated that it was "…at the very least…remarkable." He encouraged me to write again if I wanted to, and hoped that his "black mood will have lifted by that time", strongly suggesting that Perry was suffering from depression.

Perry died as a result of an apparent heart attack in the fall of 1995, which was reported in Probe based on an Internet report (and which was finally an accurate report.) He will be greatly missed by those members of the JFK research community who still believe in the validity of the Garrison investigation. It is unfortunate he never attended any of the numerous JFK conferences that have been taking place since the trend-setting Fredonia conference of July, 1991, but hopefully this interview will be of some value to researchers in the future for both believers and skeptics. With Perry's permission, I sent a copy to Ulric Shannon in Montreal (now in Hull, Quebec) to add to his audio/video collection, and it can be purchased from Ulric for $3.00 [I'm not certain that Ulric has time now to continue this service, as he works for the Canadian External Affairs Dep't. I later sent a copy to Perry's brother, at his request, which he greatly appreciated obtaining.]

Peter R. Whitmey
Abbotsford, BC
July 4, 1996/Aug. 14, 2003

SUMMARY OF PERRY RUSSO'S COMMENTS

Part 1 - Aug. 6, 1990

-wrote to Garrison before Ferrie's death

-spoke to Baton Rouge newspaper initially

-wasn't hesitant about talking to Garrison about Ferrie when he was still alive

-didn't know that Ferrie had been interviewed by the FBI after assassination

-recognized Oswald and told some school friends that he knew him, but didn't place him at party

-didn't suspect Ferrie and Shaw were involved

-didn't think he had any useful information to provide

-decided not to speak to authorities after assassination

-had very little contact with Ferrie after assassination

-he found Ferrie to be "harried and hazzled"; seemed bothered by something

-didn't know Ferrie worked for Marcello's lawyer; heard Gill's name through Garrison

-didn't read Sat. Eve. Post article on Marcello in Feb. 1964

-never met Banister; had friends who knew him

-Banister seemed paranoid; never turned lights on and stayed inside most of the time up to his death in June, 1964

-never warned to keep quiet; was discouraged from getting involved; would be a "political football"

-saw Shaw once after assassination at Ferrie's gas station

-didn't think Ferrie was suicidal, but thinks he might have been murdered, possibly with chemical Ferrie had devised that would make a person appear to have died from an aneurysm

-didn't know Gordon Novel, but familiar with his nightclub

-doesn't know if he has ever moved back to New Orleans

-thinks someone might have been posing as Oswald at party, possibly James Lewallen, even though he was gaunt-looking and 38

-however, overall feels it was Oswald that he met

-didn't feel Garrison put pressure on him to say it was Oswald when it wasn't or vice-versa

-Ferrie was his "sounding board" for expressing his feelings about JFK, and may have "reinforced" his strong feelings

-feels JFK "stole" the election from Nixon

-believes Nixon was one of the "great" presidents of all time

-feels Kennedy caused the U.S. to "suffer" for thirty years because of his domestic policies

-refers to "promises never kept", "Camelot", "grandiose schemes"

-down on his civil rights policies, welfare policies

-too many people think "something is owed to them" which he feels started during Kennedy's administration

-too much lawlessness, directly due to Kennedy

-feels Kennedy and Johnson were "real losers"

-blames Kennedy for decline of U.S. as a society

-comes across as a racist, although he never refers specifically to minorities

-blames Kennedy for Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, whom he refers to in a negative manner

-felt he should contact Garrison's office before they approached him, fearing the possibility of being arrested along with Shaw

-indicated in his letter to Garrison that he would be "more than happy to give them as many answers as they wanted"

-sounds like he wanted to shift suspicion away from himself

-although he was bitter towards Kennedy, the people he "hung around may have been more bitter, may have been much more serious.."

-felt Cubans wanted to get rid of Castro and if they couldn't then they would get rid of Kennedy and blame it on Castro

-refers to Kennedy as a "dirty son of a bitch", which is how the Cubans felt about him

-went and saw Kennedy in 1962 because he was the president, even though he hated him

-the wharf where he saw Kennedy was also nearby

-saw Shaw there but thought he was a Secret Service agent, as he was standing at the back of the building and looking around, not at JFK

-admires Garrison even though they differ politically because he went against all odds and didn't give up, and didn't feel that he had done his job by interviewing Ferrie in 1963

-felt he, unlike Garrison, had "no duty to perform because the assassin had been caught"

-believes Garrison was quite close in his suspicions as supported by the HSCA

-describes Garrison as a "leader for what the truth is", but "stumbled" because he "went up against the federal gov't"

-felt it was up to the "academics" to determine what really happened

-indicates that he sees Garrison quite often, and speaks to him even more on the phone

-refers to movie by Oliver Stone to be based on Garrison's book

-expects to be involved and have a small cameo role

-asked Garrison about Giesbrecht for me but Garrison indicated he was "burned out on it" and didn't want any further "leads"

-knew Garrison's former assistant Mike Karmazin, whom I had contacted, but didn't have a very high impression of him

-feels Garrison is primarily interested in the movie, and is not in the position to do any further investigating, such as the Ricky White allegation which he mentions

-doesn't know why Giesbrecht wasn't called to testify

-doesn't know if Garrison has heard of Mario Garcia Kohly [extreme anti-Castro Cuban]

-willing to answer further questions and encourages me to phone sometime

Part 2 - Sept. 9, 1990

-didn't know who Oliver Stone was until he met him through Garrison

-impressed with his movie "Talk Radio," despite Stone's liberal bias; has also seen "Salvador" and "Platoon," but not "Born on the Fourth of July"

-thought Ferrie's plan to fly to Cuba made sense, "a natural exit", since he would be welcomed with open arms

-described Ferrie as a "pragmatic man"

-going to Mexico would also be okay because of a "lack of police power…and decent military"; police reaction would be slow

-even though Perry testified that Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald all agreed it would be best if they were in the public eye at time of assassination, he didn't suggest that Oswald was someone else posing as him

-whether it was really Oswald didn't matter, not significant in his view for some incomprehensible reason

-Ferrie felt it was okay for him to be part of discussions at the party because he had done "certain things with Ferrie" and had been "helpful to him in certain ways"

-felt he was considered a "good recruit"

-didn't know about Oswald's Fair Play For Cuba activities and didn't recall seeing him handing out posters or hearing him on the radio debating

-not sure if Ferrie was involved in assassination

-felt Ferrie was "broken man" in 1964 because he now had to take a day job at service station, and didn't seem to have access to large amounts of money anymore

-doesn't know why he had described Ferrie as an anarchist to Flammonde; some aspect of his character perhaps

-describes Ferrie as "a man driven by hidden motives of which he didn't share with other people"

-never recalled seeing Ferrie wearing heavy framed glasses, perhaps for reading, as Giesbrecht described the man at the Winnipeg Airport whom he later identified as Ferrie

-feels that Flammonde's reference to Ferrie working for an air cargo company after assassination was an exaggeration; he merely transported "a few things here and around because he knew how to fly a plane" (possibly including to Winnipeg?)

-there was a lot of pressure on Perry to change his position and say that Oswald was not the man at the party, between the hearing and the trial

-recalled being shown a picture of Lewallen at the trial by Diamond, whom he thought looked a lot like Oswald

-also agrees that it could have been Novel after studying a photo I sent him

-led a "sheltered and vigorously self-disciplined life" up to 1963

-mother given no more than six months to live in fall of 1962, which caused him to feel "confused"; she died on Jan. 31, 1963

-did not know that his father had been sentenced to six months in jail for tax evasion, delayed until his mother's death

-while his father was away, he had "a wild sex life"

-living in the house by himself; cleaning lady came in several times a week; had lots of "outlaw" friends over, including Ferrie

-lots of parties; drank a lot of wine; didn't care about school

-states that he was "willing to get involved in anything; it didn't make any difference"

-got involved in several "sit-ins" presumably with black friends looking for thrills

-felt that his state of mind at that time did not suggest he was "crazy", "border-line psycho" or "out on the moon"

-didn't have anything or anyone to stop him from partying non-stop but doesn't feel he was disturbed due to family difficulties

-agreed that Oswald might have had some hidden reason for being at Ferrie's such as being an FBI informer

-not familiar with Brener or Flammonde's book, both of which discuss him

-describes his contact with Walter Sheridan, and Sheridan's attempt to get Perry to meet with Shaw in Biloxi and then retract his allegation of seeing Shaw at Ferrie's on the NBC White Paper report; ends up referring to Sheridan as a "bullshitter asshole"

-didn't know why Garrison was not supposedly aware of Shaw's connections to Centro Mondiale Commerciale and Permindex (CIA fronts) until after the trial according to his 1988 book, even though they were referred to by Turner in his 1968 Ramparts article well before the trial (Garrison also cites Flammonde's reference in his pre-trial book) 

-Perry thought this connection would have been important to their case; felt it might have been due to lack of staff and finances

-didn't know that Garrison's children had been threatened before trial

-knew about protection for Garrison himself; he had protection too

-agreed that Marcello was a "logical choice for any involvement in assassination"

-didn't know if Marcello's power might have influenced the way Garrison conducted the trial

-describes in great detail his arrest for theft, which he indicated was actually the work of several young friends, who left a stolen key in his living room; eventually found not guilty 

-won a $3500 settlement against the local newspaper in 1983, after they called him a convicted burgler

-also refers to TIME accusation; he had never even smoked marijuana; considered himself a wino if anything

-believed the judge was trying to discredit him in regard to theft charge

-felt he was a novice when it came to whether he should allow himself to be hypnotized and given truth serum; didn't know how the police and prosecutors worked

-since Garrison did not acknowledge in his second book that Ferrie was with Marcello's lawyer on Nov. 22, and not in a dormitory in Hammond, Perry felt he might have been "soft-pedalling the Marcello connection"

-believes that Garrison and his staff learned he was at the meeting with Ferrie and Shaw from him and not from some other source [such as the Baton Rouge interviews]

-wasn't sure if Oswald introduced himself as "Leon" or "Lee"

-avoided answering my question as to whether he was certain it was Shaw at the party and not Banister for instance (suggested by Shaw in 1969 PENTHOUSE interview conducted by Phelan, which he sent me)

-stated that by 1969 he had been "threatened, bugged, ridiculed, slandered, libeled, etc. My life, because of the publicity, was a shambles."

-admitted (for the first time) that he made a "tactical decision to ease through the case (with) as low a profile as possible (in contrast to the hearing). Hopefully I would not take the brunt of the attack. James Alcock even asked me to 'get more forceful' in my replies on the stand. I said 'okay' but never did. I regret I ever got involved."

-in response to my suggestion that the discussion at the party might have been in regard to killing Castro, not Kennedy, especially in trying to get him "out in the open", which was very easy in the case of Kennedy, Perry stated that "the talk centered around assassinating Castro" but "if that couldn't be achieved, then shoot Kennedy and blame it on someone who could be linked to Castro (send U.S. to war with Cuba). Kennedy had to be shot out in the open; involve people to draw up an itinerary for him to be in the open."

Part 3 - Dec. 23, 1990

-Perry was told by Oliver Stone that he would appear in the film as "one of the grey, wall flower type characters" in the room "where the conspiracy was hatched"

-refers to various real people in cameo roles such as Ron Kovic and Abbie Hoffman in "Born on the Fourth of July" which he appeared to have finally seen

-mentions interview on 60 Minutes with Stone in which he stated that he doesn't "stick exactly to the truth, but holds with enhancing it for whatever reasons" and thought it was a good interview

-in response to my question as to whether he supported David Duke's attempt to become governor, he stated that he "didn't have any problem with David Duke."

-in response to my question as to why he had referred to Ferrie as a Marxist in an interview conducted by The Councilor in 1967 [a Shreveport, La. right-wing journal], Perry suggested that he "probably had said that because David Ferrie was a strange, complex person , and…because I was confused, I think, as to what he actually thought, but looking back, he was not a Marxist, he was a right-winger."

-Perry indicated it was alright for me to contact his brother and provided his address

-he hadn't seen Garrison for awhile, but dropped off my article on Giesbrecht at his office ["The Winnipeg Airport Incident Revisited" available at this site]

-I mentioned a series of examples when Oswald was referred to as "Harvey Lee Oswald" or simply "Harvey Lee" including when Shaw first spoke to the press, as well as by assistant d.a. Kohlman in a report to the Secret Service; by Donald Norton, an alleged CIA courier [whom I located earlier this year]; by Naval and Army Intelligence; by Morrow in his book BETRAYAL; and in a Feb. 1964 Secret Service report-six times; Perry did not recall Oswald being referred to that way by Ferrie, however

-contrary to Morrow's suggestion, Perry didn't believe there was any attempt at the party to get him drunk

-in regard to his previous comment of being "all right" in the eyes of Ferrie because he had done "certain things" for Ferrie, he suggested he was simply a "philosophical brother" over a two-year period (it seemed like an evasive answer to me)

-I suggested that possibly the plan being discussed involved trying to kill Robert Kennedy (which Hoffa had attempted to do with the help of Baton Rouge Teamster Edward Partin), but Perry insisted it involved "Jack Kennedy because of the Cubans and what he had done in the Bay of Pigs and what he had done (during) the Cuban Missile Crisis"

-I asked him if he ever knew Partin, but after hesitating, indicated that he didn't

-although he didn't think The Councilor had misquoted him, he felt Castro wasn't behind the plot to kill Kennedy, since he now feels Ferrie was a right-winger; again, he insisted the plan was to link the assassination to Castro and hopefully use it as an excuse to go to war against Cuba

-described Ferrie as having lost "his gusto" after the assassination

-didn't seem to be aware that Ferrie had been fired by Eastern Airlines for being a pedophile

-feels Ferrie was "in control of his life" earlier on now he was "just driftin'"

-felt that Layten Martens was "just a young kid" and didn't place any significance in a 1961 police report published in Coincidence or Conspiracy which described him as "second in command to one Arcacha Smith...who is conducting a counter-revolution movement against Fidel Castro. Also connected is one Captain David Ferrie"

-denied that he had been suicidal or schizophrenic as was suggested during the trial; indicated he went to a psychiatrist to get a medical exception related to a philosophy course he was doing poorly in at Tulane, when he was on the verge of flunking out. (He later switched to Loyola under pressure from his Catholic parents)

-didn't read much about himself and the Garrison case because at that time he was fed up with the case, especially when he had to testify again in regard to whether Shaw lied about not knowing Ferrie

-admitted that his stereo was bugged by Garrison's office along with other bugs at Garrison's request to record Sheridan and Phelan whom Garrison felt had ulterior motives

-Perry indicated that he took "the 5^th" during the second Shaw case because of all the publicity that was developing once again and from feeling trapped

-Perry agreed that statements made in Phelan's book that he suggested he didn't care what had happened to Shaw and talked about the case like it had happened to some strangers that he had read about, were accurate

-Perry recognized that by being hypnotized prior to the hearing, it was possible that he might have been induced into fantasizing and seemed to almost admit that this occurred; he certainly didn't adamantly deny that this happened

-Perry didn't know why Sciambra' memo, included in Kirkwood's book, made no mention of a specific plot to kill Kennedy being discussed at a party involving Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald as he alleged in court, and felt that this was Sciambra' problem, which he recalled Sciambra dealing with in court

-I wondered if he knew where in Canada Ferrie had taken Perry's friend, Al Landry, but he didn't know

-Perry seemed to feel that Ferrie was training Landry and others in jungle warfare in order to invade Cuba, not to "help liberate the South American countries" as stated in the Sciambra memo

-he didn't know whether Ferrie was able to travel back and forth to Cuba as stated in the memo

-he downplayed the threat made by Ferrie towards him, and felt he had simply forgotten what was behind it six months later when he invited Ferrie over

-in response to my suggestion that Ferrie might have been trafficking in drugs including heroin and LSD, Perry insisted that the only drug he referred to was the one that simulated death [by natural causes]

-in regard to four friends (one was a cousin) who had also seen Ferrie's beatnik-looking roommate as discussed in the memo, he avoided answering my question as to whether they were ever questioned as to whether he was Oswald or not; he did indicate that he still saw three of them (but not Landry)

-he wished me a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and hoped that whoever played him won an Academy Award

END QUOTE FROM WHITMEY

Several comments on this interesting post by Gil Jesus:

On the issue of the limousine stopping, I have thought that despite some witnesses expressing certainty that they saw a full stop, that could be an lllusion brought about in this way: when a vehicle slows suddenly, cars following closely behind will come to a full stop. If the presidential limousine had its brake lights on and slowed, and several cars behind came to a full stop before proceeding (perhaps several seconds later), spectators viewing that could have the mis-impression that the presidential limousine also came to a full stop for several seconds just like the cars behind. From a witness's point of view, it happens so fast, is unexpected, there is trying to remember... I notice also that in Vince Palamara's listing of 74 witness reports to a stopped or slowed presidential limousine that day in chapter 10 of Honest Answers (2021), no one from inside the presidential limousine is cited as claiming there was a full stop (and those inside the limousine might know best if it happened because a full stop could be felt, not simply seen). Therefore, while the limousine definitely slowed and there may be an issue of how long it was slowed, it does not seem obvious in the absence of any film evidence of such that there definitely was a full stop as opposed to a full stop of other cars behind a suddenly-slowing presidential limousine which then accelerated.

On Dan Rather reporting seeing in Zapruder JFK turn all the way around to face the rear when he was shot, I think the best explanation of that is neither that he saw a different version or that he was lie-ing. Instead, something underappreciated in television news reporting with charismatic talent (with which I have had very brief experience), is that they read what staff writes, as if it is their firsthand reporting. Dan Rather surely saw the film personally but I just assume there was someone else quickly composing, or perhaps already previously prepared, the narrative words to be read on air. Rather himself would have read it and if he did not see anything obviously amiss, would have studied it closely once or twice to mentally practice his emphasis and delivery, then gone on air with it, with the delivery in slow, somber, personal tones that we all have seen and remember (with Rather thinking it was all true as written for him). The one who wrote that, on the other hand, may have knowingly misrepresented. But I very much doubt that (a) Rather saw JFK turn backward; (b) Rather thought he saw JFK turn backward at the time he saw the film; or (c) Rather wrote that all himself unaided (even if that is the impression TV news wants viewers to have).

On Z312 (blurred) versus Z313 (clear), I am unable to confirm that from these frames of the "Costella Combined Edit Frames", http://assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/. Oddly, I don't think I am imagining this, but in those Costella Combined Edit Frames" looking at the top of the front windshield and of the framing behind the first row of seats, that looks unblurred in Z312, blurred in Z313, then unblurred again in Z314. Maybe other eyes can check this. Can a blur, if a neurological reflex, last only one frame? And why is this seemingly opposite of your information which has Z312 blurred and Z313 clear? 

On Rich DellaRosa claiming to have seen a portion of an original Zapruder showing the turn on to Elm from Houston, in which the presidential limousine almost goes down the wrong street, I looked up "The DellaRosa Report", Appendix E in Fetzer, ed., The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003). Indeed the DellaRosa sound clip you give sounds like strong testimony, but my question is are there corroborating witnesses to that? I do not understand also how DellaRosa can have seen this film three times in three separate years, with others, yet gives no exact dates, locations, other names, circumstances, etc. I understand he is now deceased, also it could well be that he had promised confidientiality or secrecy. Nor do I think he is dishonest in not having seen something. But there is just something odd about this, unless there is other corroboration. As Dellarosa tells it, the first two times he saw it he had not yet seen the "real" Zapruder (the arguably-tampered one we know). Only at the third viewing was he alert to the differences he says. I cannot help but think he has seen a better-quality version of the same Zapruder and has misremembered it. If there was an authenticated written statement from him available posthumously telling of the circumstances of how he saw it, or if there were authenticated notes written by him telling exactly what he saw within say 24 hours of when he saw it, that would be a different matter. Unfortunately, lacking this and lacking corroboration (if there is none), I cannot on present information find DellaRosa's witness claim of a missing turn on to Elm in an early Zapruder credible.

As for human memory being fallible in what it remembers seeing, I think of a true case a while ago in which a friend told me how when he was a teenager he remembered floating up off his bed into air, levitating, physically unsupported by anything, for a short period of time, before returning back down to the bed. No one else saw this. In answer to my question, he said he had taken no drugs or anything else which would influence perception. In answer to my question, he said he was fully awake. It was clear to me that he believed it had happened, believed his memory was true. Yet I judge it more likely that his memory is fallible than that the laws of gravity happened to be suspended in that moment of time and space without explanation. But this is a difference in interpretation. He was quite aware that what he remembered violated known science, and concluded that therefore known science isn't all that it is cracked up to be. I don't share that view--I think science is as good as it is cracked up to be in providing explanatory power to the natural world. The analogy is between my friend's claim of memory that he levitated, and DellaRosa's claim of memory to have seen that turn on to Elm in a Zapruder. In each case, a lone, unsubstantiated (if so in the case of DellaRosa, not sure about that) witness claim, with no knowledge or verification of when or how long after the event the memory in question was first claimed.

All this said, the power of what you bring out is how simple it would be if there was intent to modify what Zapruder showed, to do so by means of deleting frames. Then there is the whole business of Life magazine spending all that money for a film with no commercial exploitation of their investment, looking in retrospect for all the world as if the whole point of that was to keep the American public, for some unknown reasons, from seeing it!  

Also Claude--on Frazier saying Lee told him he was buying his lunch that day, note that testimony is months later. I read some of Wesley's testimony as him reconstructing what he thought was going on, and attributing that to Lee. "What's that in the bag there Lee?" (no answer from Lee) "Oh, I remember, you said you were going to get some curtain rods, right" (from which Frazier reasons Lee must be buying his lunch that day, from which Frazier reconstructs in memory months later Lee telling him that).

In fact Lee did not buy his lunch that day as is clear, and the only source for his lunch was the bag he carried with him that morning. So he must have brought his lunch with him. The only issue then is whether Wesley Frazier remembered rightly or wrongly Oswald telling him he was not bringing any lunch, not that Oswald did bring a lunch. I think Frazier could remember wrongly or mistakenly on the exact wording, without meaning Frazier was being untruthful (which involves intent). 

3 minutes ago, Claude Barnabe said:

Greg,

A couple of observations:

a) if you had a 24” bag containing a sandwich and/or an apple, would you carry the bag from the top with 1 or 2 folds or would you fold the bag down to the contents? Reducing the length from 24” to 6”.

b) review BWF testimony regarding how LHO carried the package. Right hand cupped at bottom of package, top of package tucked under his arm pit. Not practical for a largely empty package, seems rather awkward. BTW in his testimony BWF stated that LHO told him he was buying his lunch that day. Recapping, Whitworth places the package length at 15” to 18”, Ms Randle places package at 27” and BWF places the package at 24” to 27”. We know the carcano is disassembled, my position is there were no curtain rods and no lunch. The package as testified to, is too short for a fully disassembled carcano but it is the perfect size for a carcano receiver/barrel.

(a) good point, but removed if the long bread roll was still in the bag not yet eaten, then the bag would remain stiff lengthwise and carried as such

(b) what Lee carried into the Furniture Mart see by Mrs. Whitworth I have always assumed was just the scope, consistent with the 15" to 18" size and other dimensions remembered by Whitworth, that you note--not the entire rifle. 

Yes Joe I think it was worthy of posting, what you said is very sound to me, as long as it is clear that is what you were doing (showing incongruities in an existing story). My only mild suggestion is to put a serious ending sentence at the end saying that is what you were doing or meant. As is well known, subtlety sometimes does not come through well on the internet. Apart from that, sound thinking and a maestro with words, continue! 

Of curtain rods and paper bags

Getting back to Claude Barnabe regarding "curtain rods" the morning of Nov 22. I think Oswald carried neither a broken-down rifle nor part of one, nor curtain rods, in his ca. 25" x 5" paper bag of the size Wesley Frazier described which he did carry that morning. I believe what was in his bag was his lunch. If it had been curtain rods, there would be no reason for Oswald not to have said so to Fritz, and as you point out, told officers where to find those curtain rods at the TSBD or where he last left them. 

Oswald's paper bag that morning was not carrying a rifle either, not only according to Wesley Frazier but Linnie Mae who described Oswald holding the top of the bag in his hand at the end of his arm hanging loosely, with the bag going down almost to but not quite to the ground. A bag carried in that manner is consistent with the length given by Wesley Frazier, but inconsistent with the longer 34" length it would have had to be to carry a complete broken-down rifle.

All that needs to be assumed is that Oswald gave a false reason to Wesley Frazier as the reason for his unscheduled trip to Irving. In this light Frazier was truthful that that is what Oswald told him, and Oswald was untruthful to Frazier on the level of a white lie, on a matter which Oswald may have regarded as none of Frazier's business, but Oswald was truthful in the police interrogation on that. It is not clear that Oswald knew he was suspected of having carried a rifle to work that morning in a bag, at the time he answered questions about the paper bag as reported by Fritz and Bookhout et al.

Oswald having a 25 x 5" bag that morning, in light of the assassination that day, caused Linnie Mae to tell police she saw Oswald with a package that morning. I do not interpret that as any plot or lying on her part as some have supposed, other than trying to be helpful to the police, perhaps also to be quickly forthcoming in light of expected possible suspicion from police toward her (innocent) brother Wesley. I do not think Linnie Mae wanted to get Wesley into the ordeal he experienced with Capt. Fritz that day, when she told police of seeing Oswald carrying that bag that morning.

That Oswald had a longer-than-average paper bag that morning I therefore interpret as simple coincidence to the assassination happening that day, and not an unusual coincidence. First of all, Wesley's story of the paper bag's size is consistent, held up well including under polygraph, and therefore this is not a case of a coincidental match in size of that paper bag with the large paper bag made of TSBD wrapping paper, alleged (in my view probably correctly) to have carried the rifle found on the sixth floor. In my reconstruction that larger rifle-carrying paper bag also originated from Oswald (therefore unsurprising that his prints were found on it) but that bag was made from TSBD paper obtained by Oswald at an earlier date, going back to Nov 8 at the latest.

In this reconstruction Oswald had the scope reinstalled on the rifle on Mon Nov 11 in Irving, then would have taken the rifle to his rooming house in Oak Cliff on Tue Nov 12, where that rifle was located until it was sold or conveyed by Lee to another party, the Yates hitchhiker, on the morning of Nov 21. It is interesting that Wesley Frazier did not specifically remember giving Oswald a ride from Irving on any Tuesday morning, or on Tue Nov 12. There is also in the testimony that one of Oswald's days going to the TSBD from Irving--not specified which day but ca. early Nov--Oswald missed his ride with Wesley by not being on time, Wesley had already driven away, and that particular day Linnie Mae drove Oswald to the bus station in Irving, by which Oswald got to work that day.

Yet neither Wesley nor Linnie Mae told of remembering Oswald carrying a rifle-sized paper package at any earlier time than Nov 22 either. I therefore propose this for how Oswald could have gotten the rifle to Oak Cliff on Tue Nov 12 without having been seen by Wesley or Linnie Mae carrying a rifle-sized package. On Mon Nov 11, when Lee (with Marina and child and baby) drove Ruth Paine's car to the Furniture Mart and Irving Sports Shop, then to Hutch's Market spending some money there, without Ruth Paine's knowledge that her car was driven those places by Lee that day . . . to those trips of Lee taken with her car that day may be added one more: instead of taking the rifle--with scope newly installed--back to the Ruth Paine garage, Lee drove it to the local Irving bus station and stored it in a locker there, or some mechanism of storing it until the next day. Then Lee drove himself and Marina back to the Ruth Paine house. So the rifle did not go back into Ruth Paine's garage that night--and the rifle never again was in that garage after it was removed the morning of Nov 11. On Nov 12 the rifle would be in the large paper bag made from TSBD paper and Lee would have broken down the rifle again (ruining the sighting that Dial Ryder at the Irving Sports Shop had done and for which Oswald was charged and paid, which was always done at that shop when installing a scope per testimony).

On Tue Nov 12 Lee does not get a ride back in to Dallas with Wesley as usual. Instead, that is the unidentified morning when he missed his ride with (did not ride with) Wesley, and instead Linnie Mae drove him to the Irving bus station (which probably happened because Linnie Mae insisted, to help, even if Oswald planned to walk there himself). Linnie Mae drives him to the Irving bus station, drops him off. Lee retrieves the large TSBD-paper bag with the broken-down Mannlicher-Carcano from a storage locker, and takes it with him by bus to Oak Cliff, where he takes it to his room and stashes it out of sight. He then takes a bus to work to the TSBD arriving late to work that morning. His arriving late to work--on Nov 12 and Nov 21, two times at least--is not recorded on the handwritten time cards turned in by supervisor Shelley because Shelley, with the approval of Truly, is covering for Oswald. Oswald has his job at TSBD as a quiet favor to some agency, with Oswald witting and a participant in that (but not witting, any more than Shelley or Truly, to a planned assassination).

In this arrangement (as reconstructed) Oswald has ability to come and go during work hours at will without hassle and without being docked in pay. Somewhat unusually (so it would seem), the TSBD employees doing the book-order filling, of which Oswald was one, were paid biweekly literally in cash without paper receipts (not paid by check like other TSBD employees), nor was there a time-clock. The hours recorded were what Shelley turned in in handwritten form. All that needs to be supposed is Oswald could come in late or leave during the day and return as needed, with Shelley OK with that and that not turning up on time records. As Oswald's first landlady Bledsoe said Oswald told her the first week after Oswald returned to Dallas, Oswald anticipated possibly getting a job at Collins Radio. Oswald's seeming contentedness without complaint of the low-paying, deadend job at the TSBD could be if he knew that was only temporary and a better job was promised or anticipated (analogous to Oswald at Reilly Coffee in New Orleans thought he might be getting a good job at NASA). 

That is how I see the history of Oswald's rifle in the runup to Nov 22, 1963. It left his personal custody and possession and knowledge of its whereabouts after Thu morning Nov 21 in Oak Cliff. Oswald transferred the rifle--handed it over, broken-down in the large paper bag of TSBD paper it was in--to someone around 10 am on Nov 21 who then was picked up hitchhiking with it at the N. Beckley freeway entrance going to downtown Dallas, and was dropped off in front of the TSBD. That hitchhiker may have intentionally sought to implicate Oswald to random witness Yates, while conveying the rifle to the vicinity of the TSBD, into which the rifle and the shooter of the next day entered that night after business hours, unknown to Oswald, unseen by daytime TSBD employees, unknown to the Secret Service.

It is a reconstruction but above all it accounts for that Yates' hitchhiker.

Then on Fri Nov 22, Oswald's 25 x 5" paper bag had nothing whatsoever to do with carrying any rifle. It was total coincidence that it was a longer lunch bag than usual, and total accident that it became caught up in a police suspicion that Oswald had carried the rifle to work that morning in that bread bag.

For that is what it was--a bread bag. That Oswald left the Ruth Paine house early that morning, perhaps ca. 6:40 am, at a time when Marina and Ruth and the small children were still sleeping, and walked to Hutch's Market that morning, although not heretofore recognized in prior discussions, is soundly established on the basis of this:

• Hutchinson, the owner of Hutch's Market, testified that Oswald came in sporadically several times (more than once) to his store to buy milk, cinnamon rolls, and bread, always in the same narrow ca. 7-7:30 am range, right after his market opened at 7 am. This was not a one-time visit but what Hutchinson remembered as occurring sporadically during the time Oswald was in Irving, which would include through Nov 22. If Nov 22 were not included in Hutchinson's memory of this, the latest possible time for a visit of Oswald to Hutch's Market would be Nov 9-12, but Hutchinson's language and description suggests Oswald's visits to his store continued later than Nov 9-12, i.e. Nov 22.
• The time of morning Hutchinson remembered Oswald was there agrees with Oswald's schedule on days he rode with Wesley Frazier to the TSBD, whereas if Oswald was visiting Hutch's Market on non-workday mornings, such as Saturday or Sunday mornings, there would not be the strict need to arrive so early. Also, Lee's return to the house likely would have been noticed by Ruth Paine, whereas Ruth Paine said she was unaware of Oswald going to Hutch's Market. But if Oswald walked there prior to walking back to catch his ride with Frazier, he would not have returned to the Ruth Paine house, and Ruth Paine would not be aware of his going to Hutch's Market unless Lee happened to tell her, which there is no reason why that would necessarily have come up in conversation. 
• The strongest point--and this cannot be overemphasized--is that Lee had to eat something going in to work to TSBD, which involved physically demanding walking around and lifting and perhaps climbing of stairs, all morning. That cannot be done on an empty stomach without eating in the morning. That makes no sense, so much so that it can be determined as a finding of fact that that cannot have happened on the morning of Nov 22. Lee will have eaten that morning; the only question is how and when. Yet according to both women, Lee only drank a cup of instant coffee the morning of Nov 22 before leaving the house. There were no fruit peels, nothing cooked, no indication of cereal, plate or glasses used, toast having been made etc and etc. Just instant coffee in a paper cup, then out the door. Lee in Oak Cliff was remembered by housekeeper Earlene as having taken food into his room, bread and lunch meat and, specifically remembered by Earlene, large quantities of milk consumed by Oswald taken into his room, bought from a nearby store. Oswald walking to Hutch's Market to buy milk and something to eat on workday mornings before his ride with Frazier, simply is in keeping with what would be normal for him to do. And that this must have happened on Nov 22--Lee having that mechanism of eating something that morning--is supported by the testimony of Hutchinson, so it is more than simply reconstruction but has testimony in support. 
• This also solves a problem that has occurred to others--where did Oswald get his paper bags for his lunches, on the days he rode to the TSBD with Frazier? The answer on Nov 22--he got the paper bag from Hutch's Market, from his purchase there.
• The ca. 25 x 5" size of paper bag Oswald had that morning is a bread bag size. Frazier himself tried to tell the Warren Commission that what Oswald was carrying looked exactly like a normal thin-paper bag one receives in a grocery store. Hutchinson specifically testified he remembered Oswald would buy bread at his store. A long roll of bread of some kind--whether french or italian or whatever--in a bread bag accounts for everything. It even accounts for if the bag looked outwardly to Linnie Mae and Wesley like it had something in it lengthwise, if perchance Oswald had eaten only part, or perhaps none at all, of the bread in that bag.
• Wesley Frazier's (also Linnie Mae's) memory of the size and the way that paper bag was carried by Oswald that morning was correct, in keeping with the size of a bread bag but inconsistent with the larger and heavier TSBD wrapping-paper bag which carried the rifle, which also came from Oswald but earlier and unrelated to what Oswald was carrying on Fri Nov 22.

Of course a lot would have been avoided if Oswald had not told his "white lie" to Frazier that his reason for going to Irving on a Thursday was so he could get curtain rods. There never were any curtain rods in that bread bag Oswald took that morning carrying his lunch, nor was there a rifle in that bread bag either. There is no reason on earth why, if Oswald was unwitting to an issue involving his rifle and an assassination about to occur that day, that it would have occurred to him that there should be any reason not to carry a bread bag received from Hutch's Market that morning to work carrying his lunch that day, even if it was longer than usual. If Oswald realized why he was being asked about that paper bag, that could explain why he would deny having said anything to Wesley Frazier about curtain rods.

The mystery of the paper bag carried by Oswald on Nov 22 if he was innocent is gone. It was his lunch, and it happened to be in a 25 x 5" bread bag because that is what he had bought that morning, by sheer accident, which would mean nothing on a million other days, but on this particular morning was perceived by police as part of a narrative in which Oswald returned to Irving Thursday night to get his rifle, and carried it in that paper bag to the TSBD Friday morning.

But Frazier was right on the size (= bread bag) and appearance (= grocery store bag) of Lee's Nov 22 paper bag. Pat Speer has told of talking personally to Wesley Frazier and Frazier being adamant that Lee had no TSBD paper on his person carried to Irving on Thursday afternoon, which in the Warren Commission reconstruction Lee must have taken to Irving with him on Thursday and then fashioned the large rifle-sized paper bag in Ruth Paine's garage that night, using scissors and tape.

Frazier told the truth about the size of that paper bag and about what Lee had told him, and despite pressure held to his story, which held up under polygraph examination--because what Frazier told was true, even though that was not what the Warren Commission's counsel wanted to hear when he testified to that. The very truthfulness of Frazier's account of the size of Oswald's paper bag that morning, as verified under polygraph examination, may be the best explanation for why there was attempt to cover up the polygraph examination of Frazier.

So this is my take on that--it was not a rifle in that bag, not curtain rods, but bread. Hutch's Market. The explanation for how Oswald ate that morning rather than went to work on an empty stomach.

Gone--one of the strongest perceived evidences for Oswald's guilt that morning according to the conventional line of thinking.

10 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Puzzling that Oswald was trying to flee for his life after walking away from the TXSBD but had no specific place at all to go? 

He had absolutely no escape plan after he supposedly shot JFK from the TXSBD except to take public transportation back to his room, arm himself and then take off again walking quickly down nearby streets? To where?

It was so irrational and no thought spontaneous. Suspiciously so.

Was Oswald that dumb that he didn't have an escape plan after doing something he knew would instantly create a massive man hunt by hundreds of trigger happy police?

He had an escape plan for the Walker shooting. 

Oswald wanted to live not die. You would think he would have had a better escape plan than the mindless one he tried.

Plus, he gave Marina all his cash handy money the night before. Having $150 dollars ( easy $1,500 in today's dollars ) in your pocket back then sure might have helped in a more thought out after JFK survival plan.

Was Oswald's entire effort a suicidal one?

Like he knew he would be killed soon after the event.

But, he has a last minute change of heart and decides "aww heck" I might as well at least try to get away."?

He ends up in the downtown store area and again tries to evade capture and death by ducking into a theater? 

Guess Oswald wasn't suicidal. 

But for a guy who was fairly street smart his escape plan was the worst and most mindlessly meandering and risky anyone could figure.

I think you may be listing some incongruities in an existing story that do not add up or make sense, as a way of saying you question the existing story's accuracy, not that you accept the existing story despite marveling at the incongruities. But you do not give a conclusion or say. I cannot tell whether your closing sentence is meant seriously (marveling at an irony in what happened) or is sarcastic (meaning you don't actually believe it happened that way, and mean to show that makes little sense). I question your starting premise that Oswald shot JFK. Many of the incongruities in his behavior starting from that premise fall away if that premise is removed. 

13 hours ago, Jon Pickering said:

Got it - let us purge from history and our minds that he attended a picture show in his haste to flee

No "got it". I was trying to understand your point, and asking. I don't believe you are actually recommending purging facts from history. I think you are being sarcastic in saying that. Without being sarcastic, or after being sarcastic, are you able to say simply and clearly what you are trying to say-- a conclusion, your point? I'm not disagreeing with your point, I just don't know what it is.  

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Greg,

     I'm somewhat skeptical of a tabloid story written three decades after the trial, but I'll look into it.

      As I recall, the Hardup robbery/murder case was tried in court and the hypnotist, Bjorn Nielsen, was actually convicted of the crime and sent to prison!   Hardrup, himself was sentenced to a mental institution.

     Dissociative phenomena and hypnosis may seem far-fetched to people who haven't observed it.

     As with many psychiatric phenomena, people really need to directly observe and talk to afflicted patients to understand the phenomenology.  That is true of schizophrenia, mania, delusional disorders, and dissociative disorders.

      I first came into direct contact with patients suffering from multiple personality disorders on a private hospital ward here in the Denver metro area where I worked as a psychiatrist in the late 1980s.  The ward was a rare specialty inpatient unit for adult patients with MPD.  I was a bit puzzled and skeptical about MPD when I first worked on that ward in on-call coverage.  Patients would talk to me with the voices, personalities, and behavior of young children or teenagers, alternating with adult personas.  At first, I thought it was all fake.

      In time, I came to realize that the dissociative phenomena, and switching between alters, was absolutely real.  I also began to realize that we are all comprised of "alter" ego states/personalities -- a 5 year old self, a 12 year old, various adults, etc.-- but those of us who were not unduly traumatized developmentally have a relatively integrated experience of ourselves over time, without amnesia for experiences in various alters.

      As for hypnotic suggestibility and programming in susceptible people, I think it's quite real.  Milton Erickson has several volumes of case studies on the subject, which are extremely interesting.  Estabrooks' 1943 Hypnosis textbook is also worth reading, and contains numerous case examples.  He also discusses your questions about hypnosis in crime and warfare in considerable detail.

     Estabrook pointedly disagreed with Milton Erickson about the issue of whether susceptible people could be hypnotically conditioned to commit murders.  The American hypnotist William Joseph Bryan also disagreed with Milton Erickson on this question.

What you say rings true on the part about the multiple personalities, and so much is unknown. You have a better basis for knowledge than I. I have to keep reminding myself, "How easy it is, in this vain show, to speak of things we don't really know."  

8 hours ago, Eddy Bainbridge said:

Hi Greg, many thanks for the enormous amount of new information you have provided me with. My observation on your lists is that most of evidence of guilt relies on faith in the evidence collectors. The same is not true of the innocence list. I believe the evidence collectors had a motive for tampering and there are concrete examples of this (Minox camera)

I don't surmise from this he was innocent of the shooting. I find the Prayer man narrative quite persuasive as evidence he was a non-shooter.

Interesting point Eddy. One of the ironic things is that it was not assassination conspiracy people who first considered that the Dallas Crime Lab was fabricating evidence against Oswald, but rather the FBI liaison with the Dallas Police Department, Special Agent Vincent Drain, and the Warren Commission and chief counsel Rankin. That was the issue with the palmprint on the rifle barrel produced by Lt. Day. The print itself was verified as both from Oswald and from the rifle barrel by the FBI lab, but what is not excluded--if one goes the forged-evidence route--is that a genuine fresh palm print of Oswald, obtained from his corpse after he died, could have been secondarily applied to the barrel, then lifted from the barrel. Again, this was not conspiracy theorists raising the question whether Dallas Police had forged that item of physical evidence but the Warren Commission (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=59637#relPageId=7).

On obtaining of inked prints from Oswald's corpse:

"Yeah,' Rusty [Richard Livingston] responded in his characteristically modest tone. 'J. B. Hicks and I rolled them off Oswald down n the Parkland morgue after they had done his autopsy.'

"'But why did you go down there?' I couldn't recall at this point having read anything about this before.

"'Aw, it was just a routine thing. Normally when a person is killed in an accident or a homicide or sometimes even a natural death, if they had a record in our Identification Bureau, we'd go out and fingerprint them to verify that yes, that was the person in order to clear our files. J. B. Hicks and I went down to the morgue at Parkland Hospital and fingerprinted him.' (Gary Savage, JFK First Day Evidence [1993], 93)

"As stated earlier, Rusty has an original fingerprint card that he and J. B. Hicks made of Oswald following his murder while his body lay in the morgue at Parkland Hospital Sunday night. At that time, the Dallas Police Department used a small fingerprint card which was manufactured by the Faurot Company of New York. To use the card, an invisible chemical was placed on the victim's fingers, and the card was then rolled over them. The paper that the card was made from then reacted to the chemical from the finger, producing a print on the card. This type of card was originally used by detectives on deceased individuals in order to avoid leaving ink stains on a body already prepared for burial.

"The reason Rusty and J. B. Hicks took a photograph and fingerprinted Oswald in the morgue was actually a routine assignment for the Crime Lab. 

"Rusty told me, 'In fingerprinting, normally a lot of times we would have to go to a mortuary where a body had already been prepared for burial, and if we didn't get to it beforehand, we had to go to the mortuary and roll a set o prints. We did roll some prints while Oswald was in the morgue. He hadn't been prepared for burial.

"Rusty and J. B. Hicks rolled at least three inkless cards and one inked card of Oswald that Sunday night in the Parkland morgue. Rusty retained one inkless card for his reference. The inked card was taken back to the Identification Bureau and was checked the following day against Oswald's prints taken the previous Friday. Rusty told me it was typical that, when a detective back at the office verified that the prints were indeed from the same person, the fingerprint card was usually initialed by him, showing it had been done." (pp. 110-12)

Some different officers took a second set of post-mortem fingerprints and palm prints from Oswald's corpse after the body was at Miller's Funeral Home in Fort Worth, as told by newspaper editor Paul Mosely who was there, and Paul Groody the funeral director. The ones who did this have been reported as FBI (so reported by Mosely in the Fort Worth Press on Nov 25, 1963) but SA Drain, for example, the FBI liaison, knew nothing of and doubted the FBI took such prints since they already had Oswald's prints from when he was alive (Lifton, Best Evidence [1982 Dell edn], p. 454). Lifton reports he could find no FBI record or document telling of having taken those post-mortem prints (p. 454). (Is it possible some agency other than FBI took those prints and the attribution to FBI was in error?) Lifton confirmed in personal interviews from both Mosely and Groody who were there that this fingerprinting occurred. It appears not only fingerprints but also palm prints were taken:

"I asked Groody if there was ink on his [Oswald body's] palms. 'It was a complete mess of his entire hand, which would lead me to believe that they did take prints of his palms.'" (Lifton, p. 454)

I have dug a little into the subject of police fabrication of fingerprints in criminal cases (e.g. 13 such cases are analyzed here: https://www.victimsofthestate.org/CC/FE.html). The basic lesson is that there are several methods by which fingerprint evidence can be forged; forgeries are often difficult to detect requiring close scrutiny by experts; and even when the forgery would be easily detectible under scrutiny such close analysis or scrutiny typically is not done unless the prints are called into question (https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2745&context=jclc; https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/chronological-review-fingerprint-forgery; https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Chapter-2-Forgeries-of-Fingerprints-in-Forensic-Champod-Espinoza/0bcc5926d933c2d43f481384456d4b8073bfd2ae. This means it is really unknown how much undetected fabricated print evidence produced by big-city police departments has been used in court to convict persons charged with crimes, in addition to known cases. Those doing the fabricating often justify it by rationalizing they are assisting prosecutors and fellow law enforcement in the justice system in getting bad people off the street and put away, which requires getting sufficient physical evidence introduced into court according to the rules of the legal system.  

One of the most common methods of fabrication of print evidence is transfer of a print of a person lifted by tape to another physical item thereby causing a new print on that item. As it happens, the fingerprints and palm prints taken from Oswald's body at the Fort Worth funeral home on Sun Nov 24, taken for no clear reason and appearing in no document or reporting by any agency as having been done, are not known to be in existence today. Whatever the stated reason might be if whoever did that was asked, was an additional, or the actual, reason for those prints to have a reserve supply in case something was needed to help prove the case against Oswald, especially tempting now that he was dead and there would be no defense challenges in court, and the issue was making a satisfying presentation giving closure to the case? 

One sign of forgery that investigators have noticed is that forged prints often are unusually sharp and clear. That can be the case with genuine prints too, but genuine prints often are messy or less clear. This becomes of interest in light of the palm print of Oswald, noted as being unusually sharp and clear, found on the cardboard carton in the position where the sixth floor shooter might have sat before shooting--no known closeup photo existing for either that cardboard box or that palm print taken prior to Monday Nov 25, which is unbelievable given that the Dallas Crime Lab had a photographer taking photos with a camera in that location for two hours on Fri Nov 22. A person who did not know better might ask if closeup photos from Nov 22 of that cardboard box, or the Oswald palm print on that box or after having been taken from that box, do not exist today because there was no Oswald palm print on that cardboard box on Fri Nov 22.

W., of the one example you cite, the case of Palle Hardrup of Denmark, what do you think of the report that in 1972 in an interview published in the Danish newspaper B.T., Palle Hardrup confessed to making the whole thing up, cited in D. Streatfeild, Brainwash--The Secret History of Mind Control (2008), p. 177, according to a number of online sources (both sources inaccessible to me to check). Admittedly, B.T. is a weekly tabloid (I lived for a time in Copenhagen), but if the quotation is correct and uncoerced what do you think? 

Without even studying the case I don't believe the Palle Hardrup claim, even if there were not this report that Hardrup later confessed he had been acting and it was a hoax. I think of Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler about Soviet show trials of the early 1950s. Koestler made an influential explanation for how those confessions could come about from accused persons knowing they would be executed anyway. Koestler made a psychological explanation plausible along lines of the closing scene in George Orwell's 1984, the famous scene in which the beaten, broken hero is shown three fingers and asked what he sees, finds through blurry eyes he actually truly now does see four, as wanted. But Koestler's psychological explanation of the Soviet show trial confessions is pretty much discredited now. The ones on trial were not brainwashed, were in full control of their mental faculties. Their public confessions were rational calculations designed to prevent damage to their families and so on.