Michael Griffith

On 2/10/2023 at 11:39 AM, Lance Payette said:

You are a veritable Factoid Machine.

Hallmark had no idea whether "you know I'll be there" was in reference to the transfer of Oswald.

https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh20/pdf/WH20_Hallmark_Ex_1.pdf

Ruby had called for Wes Wise and instead got someone named Ken.

Mr. HALLMARK said he got the impression that OSWALD's transfer was to take place that afternoon, Saturday, November 23, 1963. He said that RUBY told KEN, "they have
started strewing the flowers at the scene of the assassination," and possibly the transfer (possibly OSWALD's), will be delayed. HALLMARK said he did not know what KEN told
RUBY, but JACK RUBY made a remark during the conversation, "You know I'll be there." RUBY then ended his telephone conversation and told HALLMARK thanks for the the use
of phone and asked for change. for a $10.00 bill.

You are likewise incorrect that the conversation was on "the night before" the transfer on November 24th. It was at 2:50 p.m. on the afternoon of November 23rd and Hallmark understood Ruby was referring to a transfer later that afternoon.

The other witness to the conversation, Thomas Raymond Brown, reported no similar remarks.

So many factoids, so little time.

The prosecution did not buy your innocent explanation of Ruby's phone call. You left out the fact that Ken Dowe said that Ruby asked him when Oswald would be transferred:

          Ken Dowe, a KLIF announcer, to whom Ruby made at least two telephone calls within a short span of time Saturday afternoon, confirmed that he was probably the person to whom Hallmark and Brown overheard Ruby speaking. In one call to Dowe, Ruby asked whether the station knew when Oswald would be moved. . . . (WCR, p. 346)

Now, gee, why was Ruby asking about the time of Oswald's transfer?

Shall we talk about Ruby's numerous calls to Mafia figures in the weeks before the assassination? Or how about the fact that we learned in 1967, from a note written by Ruby himself, that Ruby's professed motive for shooting Oswald was really just a legal ploy suggested by his first attorney (HSCA Report, p. 158)?

And, yes, the phone call was in the afternoon, not the evening.

I notice you said nothing about the HSCA's demolition of the myth that Ruby entered the basement via the Main Street ramp.

This is a sad and rather shameful exploitation of a simple, sincere old man who clearly knows little about the case. I wonder why the interviewer didn't ask Hargis how a shot from behind could have blasted blood and brain matter backward toward him with such force that he thought he himself had been hit.

Hargis actually said this in one of his early statements: "I thought at first I might have been hit." His full statement is even more revealing: "Then I felt something hit me. It could have been concrete or something, but I thought at first I might have been hit." Thus, the particulate matter that hit him struck him hard enough to make him guess that it might have been concrete. Hargis's windshield and part of his uniform were splattered with blood. 

The two lone-gunman theories to explain the backward head movement and the backward spray of blood, brain, and skull are silly, preposterous, and physically impossible. 

By the way, it's worth noting that the extant Zapruder film does not show a large amount of blood and brain being blown backward--in fact, it doesn't show any such matter being blown backward. Instead, it shows a blast of particulate matter blowing toward the camera, and then it magically disappears, all in less than two frames. Yet, we know, and no one denies, that a large amount of particulate matter from JFK's head was blown backward, and that a good portion of it slammed into Hargis's windshield and body. Again, it hit Hargis hard enough that at first he feared he himself had been hit.

On 8/26/2020 at 6:45 PM, Richard Booth said:

I'm an Oklahoma City bombing researcher and have done a lot of work on this subject. The materials I have gathered relating to OKC consist of FBI documents, Secret Service documents, trial transcripts, newspaper accounts, a great deal of court records relating to the McVeigh and Nichols trials and other materials.

I have also published a couple of articles about this case which have been curated by the editors at Medium. I'm writing a book about the OKC bombing right now, and want to get my writing out there on this case before the book comes out. 

Below are the pieces I have written on this case:

Surveillance Recordings Show Oklahoma City Bombing
Documents, Testimony, Detail FBI Seized Footage
August 13th, 2020 | by Richard Booth
https://medium.com/@rboothokc/surveillance-recordings-show-oklahoma-city-bombing-ca3e8a955418?source=friends_link&sk=686ed633320c0f614c7c2ecbd95fbe2c

Mystery in Cassville
The Oklahoma City Bombing’s John Doe #3 aka “Robert Jacquez”
July 27th, 2020 | by Richard Booth
https://medium.com/@rboothokc/mystery-in-cassville-cd7785cc5b5b?source=friends_link&sk=e771d78c78f90ef25333aaf6b280907c

I'm starting this thread as a place where I can post and add additional information as I continue to write stories on this case, and for when the time comes that my book is completed and published. 

This subject is one that does not have enough students, and one that is also polluted with a great deal of just bad information. I hear this all the time: "McVeigh was a patsy" and all this kind of thing. Timothy McVeigh was by no means a patsy and was absolutely driving a Ryder truck in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19th, 1995, which he parked in front of the Murrah Federal Building where he detonated a bomb.

Timothy McVeigh engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Terry Nichols and other individuals--most of whom have not been named, indicted, or apprehended--and this is the focus of my research.

My interest is in those people who were seen with McVeigh in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19th who have not been captured. McVeigh was spotted by over a dozen people that morning and every one of these people saw him driving the Ryder truck with another man in the passenger seat. The man in the passenger seat has never been identified. 

Many of the details of this case have been covered by the news media only to be forgotten and to disappear.

Here is one example of a news report that talks about this other suspect:

 

For those who are interested, you can find this news report along with hundreds more at the archive at TLI. You can also find there many FBI 302 reports from eyewitnesses who saw McVeigh in that truck that morning, with a passenger.

The articles I published on Medium have their sources cited and you can click on and view those sources for yourself. The sources are mostly FBI 302 reports and trial materials.

I agree that McVeigh was guilty, that he was not a patsy. I also agree that others were involved besides McVeigh and Nichols. I did a little research into the OKC bombing back in the early 2000s. I suspect that Middle Eastern extremists were involved and manipulated McVeigh and Nichols' violent anti-government feelings to bring about an attack on a federal building.

I tend to agree with Lisa Pease that Lowenstein's death had the earmarks of a hit carried out by a hypno-programmed killer. She discusses Lowenstein and his death in her book A Lie Too Big to Fail.

Oswald's use of the word "patsy" is revealing. He could have expressed his innocence in several other ways, but he chose to use the word "patsy," which indicated he was aware he had been set up. 

When I began to study the JFK case, Oswald's vehement assertion of his innocence and use of the word "patsy" jumped out at me. I thought to myself, "If Oswald killed JFK to satisfy his alleged craving for fame, to strike back at society for his perceived mistreatment, and/or to go down in history as a courageous revolutionary, surely he would have proudly and loudly taken credit for his deed."

Oswald's "deserved death"? No need for the formality of due process under the Constitution, right?

I'm guessing you also believe the fairy tale that Jack Ruby strolled down the Main Street ramp and shot Oswald in a spontaneous fit of grief in order to prevent Jackie Kennedy from having to endure the spectacle of a trial?

One of the most outstanding pieces of work done by the HSCA was their thorough demolition of the myth that Ruby used the Main Street ramp to enter the basement. 

And WC apologists almost never talk about the fact that at Jack Ruby's trial, the prosecution established that the night before Oswald's transfer, Ruby was monitoring DPD plans for the transfer and was overheard to say in a conversation about the transfer during a phone call at the Nichols Parking Garage, "you know I'll be there." The person who heard him say this was Garnett Hallmark, the general manager of the parking garage.

On 2/6/2023 at 7:59 PM, Lance Payette said:

That's right, the geniuses who ran the Harvey and Lee scam sent both Harvey and Lee to the same woman at the Texas Employment Commission! Ballsy! That might've seemed unduly risky to me, but what do I know? I'm stuck in the dull world of rationality and things like that.

More on the lovely Laura: https://www.joshuablubuhs.com/blog/laura-frances-kittrell-as-a-fortean. Bingo - the UFO connection! Somehow, I knew it.

Why would this have been "unduly risky"? At worst, they would have the word of a low-level civil servant that the second person who claimed to be Oswald looked different from the first one. Plus, they could always count on people like you to dismiss all such evidence because it doesn't fit your unrealistic, disingenuous concept of a conspiracy. 

Again, using your logic, law enforcement would never expose any conspiracies unless one of the conspirators came forward and confessed. Yet, if you were doing the investigating, you would reject the whistleblowing conspirator if he held any views on other issues that you viewed as suspect. 

Your paradigm is one giant circular stew. You insist that any JFK assassination conspiracy would have been a flawless one, and then you reject all evidence of conspiracy, no matter how compelling it is, with the argument that the conspiracy you are willing to envision would not have left behind such evidence. How do you suppose dozens of people, some of them very intelligent and successful, are convicted of conspiracy every year in the U.S.? They make mistakes; they overlook certain things; etc., etc.

Ah, and you attack Kittrell because she doubted the Warren Report and may have been interested in UFOs, never mind that she lived a successful life, never got into any trouble, and worked for the state government of Texas.

President Jimmy Carter believed in UFOs--he even claimed he saw one. Vice President Al Gore said he rejected the single-bullet theory. Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said he saw a UFO. Most of the members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations believed JFK was killed by a conspiracy. The HSCA chief counsel, Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, said it was a "historical fact" that the Mafia killed JFK. Senator Richard Schweiker called the Warren Report "a house of cards" and said Oswald had intelligence links. Gallup and Pew Research polling shows that about 2/3 of Americans believe there is life on other planets. And on and on we could go. Ms. Kittrell was in pretty good company. 

Are you aware that the FBI found evidence that the DPD story that Oswald tried to fire his revolver at the police in the theater was false? The DPD claimed that in the theater Oswald pulled his revolver on the police and tried to shoot but that the gun misfired. However, the FBI test-fired the revolver over 100 times and not once did it misfire (3 H 463). 

On the other hand, the FBI crime lab reported that Oswald's revolver was defective because the firing pin did not work (McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, University Press of Kansas, 2013, p. 146). Although this report lends credence to the DPD claim about Oswald's actions in the theater, it also, at the bare minimum, raises serious doubts about the charge that Oswald shot Tippit with that revolver. 

Did it ever occur to you that the police officers lied about how Oswald reacted when they arrested him?

On 1/30/2023 at 12:42 PM, W. Niederhut said:

        His only criticism is focused on some questions about LBJ's putative role in the murder plot, and the Israeli/Dimona nuclear proliferation angle.

If any nation and people on Earth deserved to have nuclear weapons to defend themselves, it was the Jewish state of Israel. JFK was shortsighted and morally wrong for trying to deny Israel this self-defense option. Given the Hitler-admiring, vicious nature of the leaders of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq at the time, and given the horror that the Jewish people had just experienced in the Holocaust, Israel had every rational, moral right to want to acquire a nuclear self-defense capability, the same capability we had allowed France and England to acquire.

Notice that I excluded Jordan's King Hussein from the list of vicious Arab leaders. However, when Hussein believed that Israel was about to collapse during the Six-Day War, he joined the war against Israel, thinking he would get to share in the spoils and "glory." But, his move backfired when Israeli forces drove Jordanian troops out of the West Bank and captured Jerusalem in the process. If Hussein had not joined the war against Israel, Jordan would still control the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Yes, the Israelis used signals intelligence deception to fool the Jordanians into thinking that Israel was on the verge of defeat in the Six-Day War, but nobody forced King Hussein to order the Jordanian attack on Israel. Hussein could have displayed real statesmanship and honor if he had refused to join the apparently successful Arab war effort, but he chose to join it and lost the West Bank and Jerusalem as a result. 

I just found out that a few months ago a major TWA 800 lawsuit was filed by the Boston law firm of Bailey and Glasser against several federal agencies on behalf of numerous family members of those killed on the flight. Bailey Glasser is a large law firm with offices in 14 states. The firm includes 27 Ivy League and/or Top 20 law school grads, one Rhodes Scholar, one Fulbright Scholar, and one Truman Scholar, and 80% of the firm's attorneys received education honors. Thus, this is no fledgling law firm taking on a dubious case to get publicity. Here's an article about the lawsuit:

Could the TWA 800 Cover-Up Finally Come Undone?

On 1/28/2023 at 9:02 PM, Gerry Down said:

This is possibly Ted Callaway and Oswald running in opposite directions after their brief interaction on Patton street.

Except that the witness specified that neither man resembled Oswald. 

When Mrs. Roberts looked out the window a few minutes after Oswald had left the boarding house, she saw him standing near the street. There is evidence that Oswald was in the Texas Theater several minutes before Tippit was shot. Two witnesses said they saw Oswald enter the theater a few minutes after 1:00.

The Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC) in New Mexico conducted an experiment with a center fuel tank in an attempt to validate the FBI-NTSB theory that a spark from faulty wiring ignited vapors in TWA 800’s center fuel tank, caused the fuel tank to explode, and blew up the airliner. The experiment actually provided powerful evidence against the theory, even though defenders of the government version claimed the opposite.

In the EMRTC experiment, the engineers were eventually able to get the fuel tank to explode from a spark they generated inside the tank. Defenders of the FBI-NTSB theory hailed the experiment as proof of the theory. However, even a cursory analysis of the video of the experiment proves it strongly refuted the FBI-NTSB theory. Consider the following facts:

-- The center fuel tank in the EMRTC experiment was from a Boeing 737, not a Boeing 747, and it was only one-fourth the size of TWA 800’s center fuel tank, as the chief engineer admits in the video.

-- The EMRTC experiment heated the fuel tank to 112 degrees because the FBI-NTSB theory is that running the A/C units under TWA 800’s center fuel tank while the plane was delayed caused the tank to heat up to average temperature of 112 degrees, which in turn produced enough explosive vapors to cause the alleged spark-induced explosion.

However, we see in the video that it took the EMRTC engineers nearly three hours to heat the undersized center fuel tank to 112 degrees, even though they were using a high-powered industrial heater. However, TWA 800 was on the ground with two A/C packs runnings for right around 134 minutes. Since it took nearly three hours to heat the smaller fuel tank to 112 degrees, this proves that operating the A/C units under TWA 800’s center fuel tank for 134 minutes could not have heated the tank to 112 degrees.

In fact, in the video, the chief engineer says, “we've been heating this now for about three hours and we're finally approaching the temperature that we need for testing.” In other words, even after about three hours of heating the fuel tank with an industrial-grade heater, the fuel tank was only “approaching” the needed temperature of 112 degrees.

-- The video narrator says that the engineers sought to set the conditions “to mimic that hot summer day in 1996.” “Hot summer day”? TWA 800 took off at 8:19 p.m. When TWA 800’s delay began at 7:00 p.m., the temperature at JFK International Airport was 74 degrees (https://www.wunderground.com/history/daily/us/ny/new-york-city/KJFK/date/1996-7-13). This was hardly sweltering heat. As William Donaldson, a retired U.S. Navy Commander said,

          The NTSB would have you believe that Jet A fuel vapors are a virtual bomb waiting to go off, yet every day hundreds of 747s are sitting on hot runways in places like Saudi Arabia, India, etc., with empty center tanks and none have ever exploded. Every day aircraft with empty fuel tanks are hit by lightning, a spark thousands of times greater than necessary to ignite this vapor, yet these aircraft do not explode. (https://twa800.com/pages/fuel.htm)

-- The EMRTC engineers had to increase the electrical spark to 75 millijoules to get the tank to explode. They started with 4 millijoules, then 8, then 32, then 50. No explosion. The undersized fuel tank did not explode until they increased the charge to 75 millijoules. This was at the upper end of the range theorized by the NTSB, which was 5 to 100 millijoules.

Furthermore, a key point to note is that in the EMRTC test, the charge was not introduced through faulty wiring but from a charging probe placed in the fuel tank. The NTSB theorized that a short circuit outside the tank caused electrical energy to enter the tank through faulty wires connected to the fuel quantity indication system (FQIS). 

The NTSB was unable to duplicate this alleged energy transfer mechanism. In fact, when the center fuel tank's FQIS was recovered and tested, not one of the parts failed due to an electrical stress. The Boeing report on TWA 800 noted that "there was no evidence of electrical stress or arcing found on any of the FQIS indicators, probes, or wiring" (p. A-10).

Boeing engineers designed their tanks with the assumption that the vapors were always flammable; therefore, they took steps to prevent any energy from entering the tank through wiring to ignite these vapors. To do this, they added extra protection to fuel gauge wiring by adding a nylon sheath; they also included proper surge protection. Although only 120 volts were available on a Boeing plane to short into these wires, Boeing engineers tested their wiring up to 3,000 volts on new airplanes; they also did wiring testing after the crash of TWA 800 on many older airplanes still in service. No electricity ever escaped from the wiring in fuel tanks in any of these tests.

Perhaps this is why there was never an in-flight fuel tank explosion from an internal cause in any Boeing airliner before TWA 800 and why there has never been one since. The EMRTC experiment is powerful evidence that TWA 800’s center fuel tank did not explode from a spark from faulty wiring.

-- The EMRTC test made no effort to simulate the cooling effect that would have been produced when TWA 800 took off, increased speed, and gained altitude. As many experts have pointed out, when an airliner climbs, the air temperature outside the plane decreases. The higher the altitude, the colder the air gets. Plus, the effect of cool air blowing rapidly under the center fuel tank would have helped to decrease the tank’s temperature. In short, TWA 800’s center fuel tank would have experienced substantial cooling as the plane increased speed and gained altitude in the 12 minutes between takeoff and destruction.

I've had a casual interest in the case of TWA Flight 800 since the late 1990s, since a few years after it occurred in July 1996, but recently I began to seriously study the case. Of all the flimsy government explanations for controversial incidents, the government version of TWA 800's crash may be the most absurd of all. I've created a website on the subject:

https://sites.google.com/view/twa800/home

The website includes lots of video links, and also links to articles and other websites on the case. I make no money from the website, nor do I get any royalties when someone uses a link on my website to go to a site where they can rent or buy documentaries or books on the subject. I've created the website only to provide information on the case because I think it's important that we understand the enormous government cover-up that followed TWA 800's destruction.

Over 100 credible witnesses saw an object with an exhaust trail streaking upward toward TWA 800 before it exploded and crashed into the sea off the coast of Long Island. These witnesses were located on boats at sea, in aircraft near the explosion, and on land. A number of them were ex-military personnel.

The FBI-NTSB-CIA claimed that the streaking object that over 100 witnesses saw heading upward toward TWA 800 was really just the burning fuselage flying upward after it separated from the nose of the plane. Not only does this theory defy the laws of physics, but it is refuted by the radar data, which show that the aircraft did not fly 1,500 to 3,000 feet upward. The radar data show that the fuselage did not even fly 300 feet upward, much less 3,000 feet. Instead, the radar data show that the plane traveled a very short distance, then began to turn, and then literally dropped out of the sky, which is also what the witnesses described seeing.

The FBI and the NTSB claimed that the explosive residue that was detected inside and outside the plane was residue left over from a training exercise six weeks earlier in which explosive packages were placed in the plane to train bomb-sniffing dogs in St. Louis. This explanation was proved false. Private researchers interviewed the police officer who conducted the training and learned that he did the training on a different plane. They also learned that the TWA 800 plane was boarding passengers in preparation for a flight at the same time the bomb-sniffing training was being conducted, so on that basis alone the training could not have been done on the TWA 800 aircraft.

Government investigators claimed that the red residue that was visible in a distinct horizontal pattern on some of the seats in the plane was just 3M glue, but when Dr. C. W. Bassett at NASA tested the residue, he found that the residue was not 3M glue. When one of the TWA investigators gave a sample of the red residue to a journalist to have it tested, the testing, done by a recognized lab in California, found that the residue contained a high concentration of metals, indicating that it was residue from explosive material.

I don't think Lance Payette is interested in serious discussion. I think he is here to spread his poorly researched version of the assassination, and nothing more. I think it is a waste of time to try to reason with him. 

The refusal of WC apologists to deal logically and objectively with the evidence of conspiracy reminds me of the refusal of a small band of Nixon diehards who still refuse to admit that the 18-minute gap in the 6/20/72 Watergate tape resulted from a deliberate criminal act.

When people don't want to admit the occurrence of a criminal act, virtually no amount of evidence will cause them to change their minds. As long as the innocent explanation is theoretically possible, they will cling to it, no matter how wildly improbable and ridiculous it is.

It is theoretically possible that Rose Mary Woods accidentally erased 18.5 minutes of the 6/20/72 Watergate tape by mistakenly pushing the "record" button and then holding her foot on the recording machine's pedal while allegedly talking on the phone. Nearly everyone then and now rejects this explanation because experts determined that the tape had been erased in five distinct places, that the erasure consisted of five separate segments, and because Ms. Woods herself said she could not have erased more than 5 minutes of the tape.

However, Nixon diehards can argue that perhaps Ms. Woods was telling a white lie when she said she could not have erased more than 5 minutes of the tape. After all, maybe she didn't want to admit that she had gabbed on the phone for over 18.5 minutes. 

The fact that the erasure was not continuous but was split into five segments is compelling evidence to logical people, to virtually everyone in this case, that the erasure was not accidental. However, someone determined to reject the sinister explanation could say that Ms. Woods took her foot off the machine's pedal several times and that this is why the erasure consisted of five segments.

The explanations offered by WC apologists to explain the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray, for example, are even more strained and unbelievable than the tale that Ms. Woods accidentally caused the 18.5-minute gap on the 6/20/72 tape. At least the Woods story includes a possible method by which the 18.5 minutes could have been erased--it's very unlikely that this method occurred, but it could have happened.

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I'm drawing a blank as to when Marina saw Lee leave. My recollection is that she said she woke up when he got up but then went back to sleep. Can you point us to where she said she saw him with a bag? 

Mr Rankin :

Do you know whether your husband carried any package with him when he left the house on November 22nd?

Mrs Oswald :

I think that he had a package with his lunch. But a small package. (1 H 73)

1 hour ago, Gerry Down said:

I didn't realize they tested the blanket too for gun oil. 

Cadigan testified that he examined the bag with a magnifying glass specifically looking for traces of gun oil, so one would assume that he did the same with the blanket. Cadigan said he found no physical evidence on the blanket that linked it to the rifle, so one would logically assume that Cadigan, or someone else in the lab, checked the blanket for oil traces, given that the rifle had supposedly been stored in the blanket for months. If they checked the bag for oil traces, surely they also checked the blanket for such traces.

21 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Why on Earth CTers still cling to this worn-out canard is another mystery. A "well-oiled" gun indicates that the INTERNAL PARTS are "well-oiled". Why would you think the OUTSIDE of the gun would necessarily have to be dripping with oil?

You ignore the fact that, according to the lone-gunman theory, the rifle was disassembled before being placed and carried in the bag. So, according to you, you have the several parts of the disassembled well-oiled rifle wrapped and carried in a bag for at least half an hour, yet not one speck of oil was found inside or outside the bag. Anyone who has any experience with guns knows this is an extremely far-fetched scenario.

I'm guessing you don't handle guns much, or else you'd know that after you oil a gun, some oil--not a lot, but some--will sometimes seep out to the gun's exterior, especially at/around the trigger, the magazine assembly, the bolt, and the ejection port. Plus, when you oil a rifle, you often get some oil on the rifle's exterior. In the Army, I learned early on that I needed to wipe off my rifle after I oiled it because in most cases at least a little bit of oil got onto the exterior. Thus, I find it odd that not one trace of oil was found on/in the blanket in which the rifle was supposedly stored for months. 

We both know that if gun oil had been found on the bag and on the blanket, you would be citing this as evidence that the rifle was carried in the bag and stored in the blanket. 

Another possibility is that Oswald was telling the truth when he said that the only bag he brought to work that day was a bag that contained his lunch, and that Frazier was mistakenly referring to another day. Marina said she recalled that Oswald left the house that morning with a bag containing his lunch. 

We should keep in mind, also, that Frazier said the bag that Oswald carried was a standard grocery bag. I find this interesting because for years I used standard brown grocery bags to carry my lunch to work. Yes, the bags were much bigger than my lunch, but they were free and handy, so I used them as a lunch bag. 

14 minutes ago, David Von Pein said:

Thanks for your post above, Greg. It's refreshing to hear a conspiracy believer utter the words "I do not have a good answer to it" when talking about a particular sub-topic associated with JFK's assassination. Thank you for admitting that.

In putting myself in the shoes of the CTers who believe in Oswald's innocence, I've been straining my brain today trying to come up with some kind of at least halfway logical and semi-sensible reason for why an innocent Lee Harvey Oswald, if he really had brought some curtain rods with him to work on Nov. 22 (instead of bringing his Carcano rifle to work with him that morning), would have had any desire at all to want to tell the police after his arrest that he hadn't brought any curtain rods into the TSBD Building on that day.

And I'm coming up blank. Because I can't understand why Oswald (via the scenario in which he really did take curtain rods to work instead of his rifle) would have thought it was actually better for him to tell a lie to the cops about the curtain rods instead of simply telling Fritz & Company the truth about the rods (and the associated reason for why Oswald decided to not take those rods with him when he left the building at approximately 12:33 PM on 11/22, which seems to me would be another sticky problem for conspiracists to reconcile in a scenario which has Oswald totally innocent of shooting the President).

The chronology of Captain Fritz' interrogations of Oswald, per Fritz' written report, indicates that the "curtain rod" subject (and Oswald's denial of all knowledge of that topic) occurred during the interrogation session on Saturday (November 23) at 10:25 AM. And by that time on Saturday, of course, Oswald had already been officially charged with JFK's murder and Officer Tippit's slaying.

So when Oswald denied all knowledge of the curtain rods, he certainly knew the full reasons for why he was being held in custody by the DPD, which makes any "curtain rods" denial coming from an innocent Lee Oswald all the more perplexing. For Lee certainly didn't think that possession of an innocuous and harmless item like curtain rods on the day of the President's visit to Dallas would (or could) be looked upon as something suspicious that he would want to hide from the authorities. Right? Right. So what would be his incentive for denying any knowledge of the curtain rods story?

The answer to my last question is, in my opinion, very simple and very logical (after weighing the sum total of evidence in the JFK case). But the answer comes from my perspective as a "Lone Assassin" advocate, instead of coming from an "Oswald Didn't Shoot Anybody" point-of-view:

Oswald's incentive for denying that he said anything to Wesley Frazier about "curtain rods" was:

Mr. Oswald was (quite obviously, IMO) attempting to distance himself from that large paper package as much as he could because he knew that that package contained the rifle that he used to shoot President Kennedy.

I'm guessing you summarily, automatically rule out the possibility that the DPD misrepresented some of Oswald's answers, right? 

However, I can think of an entirely logical, innocent reason that Oswald would have falsely denied bringing curtain rods to work that day: He knew it would look bad if he admitted to carrying a sizable package into work that day, even if the package had merely contained curtain rods, since it was already obvious to him that the police were using phony evidence to falsely blame him for JFK's death. Recall that Oswald told his brother not to believe "the so-called evidence" against him.

And, are you ever going to explain how the well-oiled rifle could have failed to leave a single trace of oil on the paper bag or on the blanket, given the claim that the bag supposedly carried the disassembled rifle, and given the claim that the rifle was allegedly stored in the blanket for many weeks? 

21 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

I agree. He's not. At the '86 mock trial, Buell admits that the bag could have been "protruding" out in front of LHO's body, but in other interviews he insists that the package HAD to be under Lee's armpit AND cupped in his right hand.

So, you're right, he's not a good (or reliable) witness to that part of the day's events. He has, in effect, admitted that he really has no idea just how Oswald was carrying the package as he walked toward the TSBD on 11/22.

Rather than rely on what Frazier said in 1986, how about if we consider what he said when the events were still fresh in his mind in late 1963 and 1964.

Frazier told the Warren Commission that the bag he saw Oswald carrying was about two feet long, and that it was the kind "you get out of the grocery store." Weeks earlier, on December 1, 1963, FBI agents asked Frazier to mark the spot on the back seat of his car where the bag reached when it was placed there with one end up against the door. The agents reported that the distance between that spot and the door was 27 inches.

Frazier's sister, Linnie Randle, who also saw the bag, likewise said it was 27 inches long.  

There's no way that a disassembled Carcano could have fit into that bag, much less an assembled one. 

Sylvia Meagher made some cogent points about the paper bag that Oswald allegedly used to carry the rifle:

But there is no evidence to back the Commission's assumption that Oswald took wrapping paper and sealing tape from the wrapping bench. On the contrary, Troy West, the wrapping clerk, testified that to his knowledge Oswald had never borrowed or used those materials and that he had never seen Oswald near the roll of wrapping paper or the tape dispenser. Moreover, Harold Weisberg in his book Whitewash has pointed to a significant fact which escaped mention in the Warren Report: when tape is pulled from the Book Depository tape dispenser it is automatically moistened by a mechanism like a water wheel. . . .

According to the Commission's findings, Oswald must have carried the paper bag concealed on his person when he accompanied Frazier to Irving on Thursday. Frazier saw no paper bag or any sign that Oswald had concealed on his person the six-foot length of wrapping paper necessary to construct a bag consisting of two sheets, each about three feet long, sealed at the edges. Neither Marina Oswald (1 H 120) nor Ruth Paine (3 H 49, 77) noticed anything which provided the smallest corroboration for the Commission's assumption. . . .

The Commission has offered no firm physical evidence of a link between the paper bag and the rifle. The Report does not mention the negative examination made by FBI expert James Cadigan. Cadigan said explicitly that he had been unable to find any marks, scratches, abrasions, or other indications that would tie the bag to the rifle. Those negative findings assume greater significance in the light of an FBI report (CE 2974) which states that the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository was in a well-oiled condition. It is difficult to understand why a well-oiled rifle carried in separate parts would not have left distinct traces of oil on the paper bag, easily detected in laboratory tests if not with the naked eye. The expert testimony includes no mention of oil traces, a fact which in itself is cogent evidence against the Commission's conclusions.

Equally significant, there were no oil stains or traces on the blanket in which a well-oiled rifle ostensibly had been stored—not for hours but for months. This serves further to weaken, if not to destroy, the Commission's arbitrary finding that the Carcano rifle had been wrapped in that blanket until the night before the assassination. (Accessories After the Fact, pp. 47-48, 62)

3 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Important Paper Bag Addendum....

On October 22, 2019, Patrick Jackson (in this post at Duncan MacRae's JFK Assassination Forum), noticed something in one of the original DPD photographs taken on the sixth floor of the Book Depository on 11/22/63 that apparently nobody else had ever noticed prior to that time in 2019. Jackson noticed that the empty paper bag (which became Commission Exhibit No. 142) was actually visible in this picture (also seen below) which shows the boxes around the sixth-floor Sniper's Nest.

The paper bag, with its creases and folds plainly visible, is sitting on top of some of the Sniper's Nest boxes. I've drawn a blue box around the paper bag, which has been, quite literally, hiding in plain sight for over 50 years:

And here's an extra-large zoomed-in version of the photo, produced in 2019 by Patrick Jackson, highlighting the paper bag on top of the boxes (click to enlarge):



The Warren Commission utilized the above photograph showing the outside of the Sniper's Nest as Commission Exhibit No. 508. And the back side of the original photograph taken by the Dallas Police Department indicates that that photo was taken on "11-22-63" on "6th floor, 411 Elm, SE Corner where shots fired from window".

And here's another high-quality version of the very same photo (from the Dallas Municipal Archives). Click for a bigger view:



So, the above 11/22/63 photo showing an empty paper bag sitting atop boxes which are bordering the Sniper's Nest (which is a location just a few feet from where the police originally discovered the folded-up paper sack) is providing pretty good evidence for CE142 being a legitimate and valid piece of evidence in the JFK murder case.

Because if there was never any paper bag found near the Sniper's Nest at all on November 22nd, as many CTers claim, then how can they explain the presence of what certainly looks like the CE142 bag sitting on top of those SN boxes on November 22?

After looking at the above picture, will conspiracists now contend that the evil DPD cops decided to haul their "fake" paper bag back up to the sixth floor and place it atop the Sniper's Nest boxes?

But if the evil Dallas cops did something like that, why in the world wouldn't they have wanted to take a photograph of the fake bag in the place where they say it was originally discovered (the far southeast corner, on the floor)?

In my opinion, the above photo of the bag creates quite a problem for the many conspiracy theorists who currently reside in the "There Was Never Any Paper Bag Found On The Sixth Floor On November 22nd" club.

Lots More "Paper Bag" Discussion:

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/#The-Paper-Bag

And what evidence do you have that the bag lying on top of those boxes was the same bag that was allegedly used to transport the rifle into the building? One would imagine that paper bags were rather plentiful in a book depository, right? One also wonders why the DPD did not take an evidence photograph of that bag, i.e., a photo that was taken specifically of the bag and not a photo taken of an area and that just happened to include a bag.

Finally, would you venture a guess as to why not a trace of oil was reported as being found on the bag that was allegedly used to transport the rifle, given the fact that the rifle was well-oiled? 

It's important that we understand one key fact that often gets ignored in discussions on JFK's Vietnam policy vs. LBJ's Vietnam policy: JFK never had to deal with a large-scale escalation of the war by North Vietnam. Until JFK's death, North Vietnam only sent small numbers of NVA regulars to South Vietnam. However, in 1964, North Vietnam began sending much larger numbers of NVA troops to South Vietnam and began carrying out more attacks on South Vietnam than they had ever done before. (South Vietnam's small-scale sabotage raids and naval coastal attacks were in response to this increase in hostile activity by North Vietnamese forces.) 

Because of the increase in North Vietnamese infiltration and attacks in 1964, South Vietnan was in serious trouble by the end of 1964 and going into 1965. 

We simply do not know what JFK would have done in resonse to this situation because the situation in South Vietnam as of the day he died was much different than it was by late 1964. 

When Bobby Kennedy was specifically asked about a scenario where South Vietnam was about to collapse in his 4/30/1964 oral interview, his answer did not rule out the option "to go in on land," i.e., direct American intervention on the ground (infantry units and/or artillery units to provide direct artillery support to ARVN units):

Quote

Martin: And if Vietnamese were about to lose it, would he propose to go in on land if he had to?

Kennedy: Well, we'd face that when we came to it.

If you read the entire interview, you see that Bobby repeatedly said that JFK was determined to keep South Vietnam free, to aid South Vietnam until the war was won, etc.

I should add that when Bobby gave this interview, the war in Vietnam was facing increasing attacks in the news media (attacks that we know JFK considered distorted and exaggerated, as Selverstone notes). A number of news outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, had been voicing criticisms and doubts about the war effort since 1963, as had a few members of Congress.

Media skepticism about the war effort as of April 1964 was not nearly as loud or emphatic as it would be a few years later, but it was not slight or inconsequential either. So it seems doubtful that Bobby said what he said merely because he felt safe in supporting the war at that point.

And, as Selverstone documents, Bobby's later statements about JFK's intentions behind the withdrawal plan not only contradict his April 1964 remarks but contradict the documentary record of the plan's development and JFK's own private and public statements about his determination to keep South Vietnam free.

Anyway, the point is that no one knows what JFK would have done if he had lived and had faced North Vietnam's substantial escalation of the war in 1964.

The weight of the evidence seems to favor the view that JFK would have responded to that escalation with more military aid, more advisers, and probably air strikes (as Bobby indicated), and that he may have introduced infantry and artillery troops as a last resort but not to the degree that LBJ did. But we cannot know for sure.

My own personal opinion is that JFK would not have placed the absurd, suicidal restrictions on our air operations that LBJ did. I think JFK was made of sterner stuff when it came to such matters. But, we have no firm evidence that settles the matter, because JFK never had to confront a situation where air strikes would have had to be considered.

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Tonight he talked about Watergate and its relationship to the JFK case.

Its the infamous talk between him and Helms which Roger Stone thinks is one thing and Morley thinks is another.

Then he goes to how Woodward was not really a journalist but a naval intel officer.

He brought down Nixon so that Ford, the Warren Commissioner, could come in and keep the lid on both Watergate and the JFK case.

Man, I do not like Tucker very much at all, but man no one else is doing this stuff.  

Personally, I find Tucker rather refreshing because he has a strong libertarian streak, especially on foreign policy and individual rights, because he does not robotically follow the GOP line, and because he does not hesitate to disagree with neo-conservatives when he feels he must.

This is one reason that I like Reason magazine. Reason criticizes neo-conservatives almost as often as it criticizes liberals, and in a number of cases the magazine sides with neither side but takes an independent position. 

Anyway, yes, I, too, praise Tucker for discussing evidence of conspiracy in the JFK case on prime time TV. I'm sure that Ben Shapiro is not at all happy that Tucker is doing this (and I say this as someone who respects Shapiro and agrees with him about 60% of the time).