Michael Griffith

Now, of course, if one assumes that Oswald went straight to the post office before going to work, that would have put him at work at around 8:17, assuming he was first in line at the post office and that the money-order purchase only took two minutes. 17 minutes is still a significant timesheet fudge, and showing up 17 minutes late would likely have been noticed by someone at his work. Moreover, there is the thorny problem of how Oswald could have afforded to spend $21.45 on a mail-order rifle when he only had $16 to spend. In the seven weeks before he bought the money order for the rifle, he finished paying the $396 balance that he owed the State Department. State Department records show that his debt was cleared on March 9, three days before he bought the $21.45 money order ($205 in today's dollars, no small amount). But during those seven weeks, Oswald only made $490, and his rent alone was $68, leaving him only $16 to provide for his family (Anthony Summers, Not in Your Lifetime, pp. 193-194). So how could he have paid for a $21.45 money order with $16? How did he and his family eat and pay their other bills during those seven weeks?

The money order was purchased on March 12, so, yes, I should have said JCS, not TSBD. Now, the post office did not open until 8:00 AM. Oswald's timesheet shows that he checked in by 8:00 AM. The trip to the post office would have taken him at least 30 minutes--15 minutes there and 15 minutes back equals 30 minutes, and that's assuming he did not have to wait in line and assuming that the purchase transaction took only a minute or two. A 30-minute timesheet fudge is quite a fudge.

I was responding to DVP's odd, illogical comment to Sandy that any sensible, reasonable person would have to believe that Oswald bought the mail-order rifle. I doubt that Oswald had the rifle or that he ordered it. I'm inclined to believe his denials on those issues. His denials make sense. The idea that he was foolish enough to order a rifle by mail, and was also unbelievably stupid enough to have himself photographed holding it, strikes me as unlikely and illogical. Regarding the HSCA experts' examination of the backyard rifle photos, they ignored clear signs of forgery and omitted key evidence from their exhibits and analyses, as I discuss in The HSCA and Fraud in the Backyard Rifle Photos.

Oh yeah, of course. It's only "sensible and reasonable" to believe that instead of just going to a local gun store, buying a rifle, and leaving no paper trail, Oswald, who was highly intelligent, decided to order a rifle by mail so that it could be traced back to him. Moreover, we are asked to believe, he even had Marina take pictures of him holding that mail-order rifle, and, to top it off, he informed the police that his belongings were in Ruth Paine's garage, apparently not caring that the police might find the backyard rifle pictures! Oh, yeah, that makes total sense. Entirely logical and reasonable. You bet. And just never you mind that Oswald supposedly somehow bought the money order for the mail-order rifle at a post office while he was actually at work (and the TSBD required that timesheets agree with the clock-registered times). And just never you mind that not a single round of ammo and not a single piece of gun-cleaning equipment (pull-through cord or metal pole, cotton swabs, oil, small brush, etc.) were found among Oswald's possessions. Gee, one would almost surmise from these facts that he didn't own a rifle or that he never used it. And just never you mind that the only two gun stores in the Dallas area that sold ammo suitable for the Carcano rifle both insisted that Oswald had never been a customer. And, again, not a single bullet was found among Oswald's possessions. Nah, never mind all that.

But most of the Parkland and Bethesda witnesses described seeing the same large right-rear head wound that Clint Hill observed up-close for several minutes as he rode on the back of the limousine on the way to the hospital. Naturally, there is some minor variation in their descriptions, but their accounts describe a large wound in the rear part of the head and not a huge wound over the right ear.

Yes, and that is pretty much how I view Armstrong's research and the other material on his website. Much of his stuff is valuable and solid. I do believe that Oswald was being impersonated. I think that's clear. However, I'm not at all sure about Armstrong's two-Oswald theory. Regarding Oswald's Russian DLPT score, I have the advantage of having taken the DLPT many times in Arabic and Hebrew when I worked in signals intelligence in the military. Anyone who claims that Oswald could have guessed his score is either blowing smoke or doesn't know what they're talking about.

Leslie, I can certainly ask Mary about taking a call from you. Please email me to work out the details. michael.t.griffith@gmail.com.

Nice work, Sandy. Very nice work. The whole rifle-ordering affair has always struck me as smelling bad, sounding fishy, and making no sense. Why bother with getting a money order and postage and filling out an order form, when you can just walk into any gun store and buy a rifle in a matter of minutes--and without leaving a paper trail?

Thanks, Greg. For some inexplicable reason, I mistakenly typed "69" as the number carved into the left forearm--it was 26, not 69, as I stated in the first post of the thread. Mary Haverstick recently told me that she has a lot of information that she had to omit from the book for the sake of space. She would be glad to present this additional information in podcasts. I'm trying to arrange some podcast appearances for her. If anyone here does a podcast and would like to have Mary on as a guest, please message or email me.

What exactly was dumb about asking Jim if he still thought that Oswald was involved? What? This was a TV interview for a general audience, not some specialized JFK assassination forum. And Brian posed the question in a neutral, non-combative manner. Indeed, it came across almost as a leading question. I suspect the main reason you're so hard on Brian is that he is a conservative journalist who works for Fox News.

One, I repeat that Jerrie Cobb had the same left-clavicle leishmaniasis scar that the CIA June Cobb had, and had the same left-forearm "26" scar [not "69" scar, as I mistyped earlier] that Catherine Taafe had. Two, as Haverstick explains in the book, there was a real June Cobb and a real Catherine Taafe, and their identities were used by Jerrie Cobb. Three, the long list of remarkable similarities between the life actions and movements of Jerrie Cobb and the CIA June Cobb defy all odds of coincidence. Four, John Newman also interviewed a woman who claimed to be the CIA June Cobb, and she even sent Newman a photo. However, Fortuna Calvo-Roth, who knew the CIA June Cobb very well, said that Newman's photo of the CIA June Cobb was not the CIA June Cobb that she had known; but, Fortuna said that the two photos of Jerrie Cobb that Haverstick showed her were photos of the CIA June Cobb.

I'm not sure why you're being so hard on the interviewer, Brian Kilmeade. Brian was not hostile at all toward Jim, and Brian's intro was fair and even-handed. Moreover, Brian's question about echoes and a grassy knoll shot indicated that Brian does not buy the theory that the sound of gunfire from the knoll was just a result of echoes. Yes, Brian mangled Jim's name, but he quickly corrected "John" to "Jim" for the rest of the interview. I notice that no one is nit-picking the fact that Jim said the WC posited four bullets (starting at 2:00 in the interview), but you jump all over Brian Kilmeade for initially mangling Jim's name and for asking Jim if he believed that Oswald was involved in the shooting. Why was this a "dumb" question? Why did asking this perfectly valid, and helpful, question make Brian "dumb"? FYI, Brian Kilmeade is not a lock-step WC apologist by any stretch. This should be obvious just from his interview with Jim.

Oswald's DLPT score alone indicates that his Russian during his time in the Marines was decent, and this was before he went to Russia. James Norwood presents statements from a number of Russian speakers who knew Oswald and who said he spoke very good Russian: Oswald's Russian Language Proficiency (harveyandlee.net)

Last night I finished reading Mary Haverstick’s new book A Woman I Know: Female Spies, Double Identities, and a New Story of the Kennedy Assassination. I believe Haverstick has uncovered some truly historic information, and that her book is a serious work of scholarship that should be read by anyone who is interested in the JFK assassination. I decided to create a new thread on the book because the other thread is unfairly dismissive and was started by someone who apparently had not even read the entire book and seemed to rely mainly on a brief article about it. Here are the most important things that I get from the book: -- Haverstick definitely proves that Jerrie Cobb was the CIA agent who used the identities of June Cobb and Catherine Taafe. She proves, with photographic evidence, that Jerrie Cobb had the same “26” scar on her left forearm that two of Castro’s thugs carved into Catherine Taafe’s left forearm in February 1960. She proves, again with photographic evidence, that Jerrie Cobb had the same circular, two-ring leishmaniasis scar on her left clavicle that June Cobb had on her left clavicle. She proves that CIA records and other sources show an amazing activity overlap and checkerboard-like synchronicity between the lives of Jerrie Cobb and June Cobb and Catherine Taafe. Consider the amazing parallels between Jerrie Cobb and June Cobb: Both came from Ponca City, Oklahoma. They were the same height and weight. Both lived for a time in Norman, Oklahoma. Both were in the Civil Air Patrol, a rare thing for women back then. Both were fluent Spanish speakers. Both lived extensively in Latin America. Both left home in their twenties for South America. Both lobbied on behalf of the Indigenous tribes at the Amazon headwaters. Both visited the isolated Andes mountains in the early 1950s, when almost no white people had ever been there. Both advocated for causes related to the coca-leaf-chewing habits of the Andean natives. Both exited the jungle from their expeditions burdened by a lifelong jungle-borne disease (leishmaniasis). Once in South America, both worked for aviation firms serving identical countries—Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru. Both traveled into dark corners of the Amazon jungle, and both got there by flying with a new love who was also a pilot. Both considered their respective affairs to be the love of their lives, and both relationships ended tragically. Both traveled the same geographic circuit of cities in perpetual motion. Both had indications of wealth but no visible means of support. Both disappeared for extended periods of time during their lives. Both were well connected to the national and international press. Both opposed some of John F. Kennedy’s policies. Both were in Mexico City six weeks before Kennedy was killed. Both intersected with events surrounding Kennedy’s death. -- Haverstick interviewed a person who knew the CIA June Cobb well, Fortuna Calvo-Roth. She showed Fortuna nine photos that included one alleged photo of the CIA June Cobb and two photos of Jerrie Cobb. Fortuna identified the two photos of Jerrie Cobb as the CIA June Cobb. When Haverstick asked her about the photo of the CIA June Cobb, she said it was not June Cobb. -- Haverstick discovered that Jerrie Cobb was an experienced target shooter, and that she had excellent marksmanship skills. -- Haverstick makes a strong case that Jerrie Cobb was QJWIN. No other proposed candidate for QJWIN comes close to Cobb’s qualifications for being QJWIN. -- Haverstick makes a plausible case that Jerrie Cobb was the Babushka Lady. Haverstick’s ID of Jerrie Cobb as the Babushka Lady is strengthened by Cobb’s admission to her that she was the pilot of the suspicious plane at Redbird Airport on 11/22/63. The ID is also strengthened by Jerrie Cobb’s statement to Haverstick that June Cobb knew who killed JFK. -- Even if one rejects Haverstick’s Cobb-Babushka identification, she makes a very good case that the Babushka Lady’s conduct during and after the shooting was unusual and suspicious. -- Haverstick’s theory that the Babushka Lady was holding a gun disguised as a camera is entirely plausible and feasible. -- Haverstick’s research on Cobb’s use of multiple identities and on Cobb’s pretending to be pro-Castro and pro-Soviet gives us useful insight into Oswald’s pro-Castro/Soviet posturing. -- Haverstick makes a credible case that the ZR/Rifle program’s primary target was JFK, and that William Harvey and Arnold Silver were two of the main drivers behind it. -- Haverstick's segments on Oswald's activities in Mexico City and elsewhere, Ruth Paine, Michael Paine, and false defectors are valuable and insightful. Haverstick’s knowledge regarding the intelligence-related aspects of the JFK case is superb. However, her knowledge of certain other aspects of the case is somewhat faulty. She makes a few mistakes regarding non-intel elements of the assassination. She assumes that the initial police description of the sixth-floor gunman closely resembled Oswald. She appears to think that Oswald may have fired shots at JFK. And she assumes that Oswald shot Tippit. But, these errors constitute a very small segment of the book and do not detract from the historic information that she presents regarding Jerrie/June Cobb and the ZR/RIFLE angle of the assassination. We should keep in mind that Haverstick knew little about the JFK case before she became interested in Jerrie Cobb’s identity as June Cobb. And, again, her mistakes on non-intel aspects of the case are understandable, brief, and relatively unimportant compared to all the other information in her book. Mary Haverstick's background should cause any serious researcher to give her a fair hearing. She is a successful film director and writer. She has directed four movies, including the 2008 movie Home starring Oscar winner Marcia Harden and the 2018 movie The Last Horsemen of New York starring Oscar winner Liam Neeson. Another thing that makes her JFK research worth a fair hearing is that she had no interest in the JFK case for most of her life and only became interested in the case accidentally as a result of her work on a film about Jerrie Cobb’s aviation career.

As seems to be your habit, you once again misrepresent my arguments and ignore contrary evidence. I have never said, or even implied, that "everything is switched and faked." And once again you sound like a WC apologist making their strawman argument of "it was not a perfect conspiracy so there was no conspiracy because a conspiracy would have made no mistakes." A Mauser murder weapon would have made the three shells conveniently left in plain even more suspect. You brush aside the fact that Weitzman carefully examined the rifle, the same rifle that, according to you, had "MADE ITALY" and "CAL. 6.5" clearly stamped on it, but somehow, say you, mistook it for a 7.65 German Mauser. Again, swapping the rifle would have taken a matter of a few seconds.

The CIA did not bring down Nixon. Congressional Democrats, corrupt Democratic lawyers, Judge John Sirica, and the media brought down Nixon. The CIA had nothing to do with it. Nixon chose Ford to replace Agnew because Ford was the House Minority Leader and was well respected in the party. On balance, Ford was a decent, honorable man, and he actually did a moderately good job as President.

This is not what happened. We were already in South Vietnam and were actively trying to ensure that the country did not fall to Communist rule. Cuba had already come under Communist control, and we had no troops or bases in Cuba (except for the tiny toe hold of Guantanamo). Also, the record is clear that LBJ had no desire to massively escalate our Vietnam involvement. He wanted to increase our support for the Saigon government and to put more military pressure on North Vietnam, but he had no desire to deploy hundreds of thousands of U.S. combat troops. He wanted to focus on his domestic agenda and was worried that a major war effort in Vietnam would endanger his domestic policies. If you doubt this, read H. R. McMaster's book Dereliction of Duty. LBJ only--and with great reluctance--agreed to a large deployment of combat troops in response to Hanoi's massive escalation in early 1965, a situation that JFK never faced.

Nobody claims that "every piece of evidence is faked or altered." I should add that your side never hesitates to claim that pro-conspiracy evidence has been faked or doctored when you cannot deal with it otherwise. I have lost count of how many witnesses you guys have accused of fabricating their stories for fame and/or gain. You guys have accused some of the medical witnesses of purposely producing false wound diagrams (while claiming that the other troublesome wound diagrams are "mistaken"). You guys claim that the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter was forged. You guys claim that Jim Garrison and his staff fabricated interview reports (such as Lou Ivon's report on his last interview with David Ferrie). You guys claim that Garrison's office and/or Officer Habighorst fabricated the "Alias: Clay Bertrand" entry on Clay Shaw's fingerprint card. You guys claim that the Lafitte datebook is a hoax. And on and on we could go. So, it's not that you rule out the possibility of faking and tampering with evidence in all cases. You only rule it out when it comes to evidence you like.

The very idea that McClellan placed the large wound in the left temple is absurd on its face. Nothing he's ever said supports such a nonsensical claim. Why would McClellan have invented a large wound in "the right posterior portion of the skull" (6 H 33) in his WC testimony? It seems that Pat spends most of his time in this forum attacking the best evidence for multiple gunmen and conspiracy. If you were a newcomer to the forum and knew nothing about Pat, you might well assume that he favors the single-assassin view. The WC apologists who reside in the JFK Assassination Forum frequently quote Pat on the medical evidence.

Mary Haverstick has an interesting segment on Ruth Paine in her new book A Woman I Know. Haverstick implies that Ruth Paine was a CIA asset assigned to manipulate and monitor the Oswalds. Among many other things, Haverstick, having grown up among Quakers, questions Ruth Paine's Quaker credentials.

Here's an even better question: How in the world could Weitzman and Boone have missed the "MADE ITALY" and "CAL. 6.5" markings on the weapon and confused the weapon for a 7.65 German Mauser, bearing in mind that many Mausers have "Mauser" stamped on them and that Craig said the weapon was stamped "Mauser"? Even if you choose to believe Craig was lying, it is true that many Mausers are stamped "Mauser" and that the alleged murder weapon has "MADE ITALY" and "CAL. 6.5" clearly stamped on it. You can't imagine how one rifle could be quickly swapped for another without anyone noticing? Really? How long would it have taken to hand over one rifle and take the other? 3-4 seconds, if they were slow? But you can't fathom how this could have been done without anyone noticing? Of course not. Because you want the most benign, neatest, no-frills, sterile conspiracy possible.

The alleged murder rifle itself (CE 139) has "MADE ITALY" and "CAL. 6.5" stamped on it. It also has "Terni" and the Italian royal crown as part of the Terni factory symbol stamped on it. It is hard to imagine how anyone could have missed those markings. If this was an intel operation, which I think it was, there would have been a lot of compartmentalization. The sixth-floor team that hid their rifle in between the boxes may not have known that their rifle would be swapped out for a different weapon. I've always found it odd that it took so long for Lt. Day to depart the building with the alleged murder weapon.

The article repeats the claim that it was entirely understandable that a gun enthusiast such as Weitzman mistook the 6.5 Italian Carcano for a 7.65 German Mauser, never mind that the Carcano had "MADE ITALY" and "CAL. 6.5" clearly stamped on it. Both Weitzman and Boone identified the rifle as a Mauser in their initial written statements, but then later claimed they were mistaken.

Mark Shaw has written some outstanding books on Dorothy Kilgallen's JFK research and on her murder. Two of his best ones are The Reporter Who Knew Too Much (2016) and Fighting for Justice (2022). His 2022 book includes important disclosures from a WC whistleblower and additional evidence that Dorothy was murdered. Dorothy was one of the earliest skeptics of the lone-gunman theory. On several occasions she used her widely read newspaper column to present evidence of a conspiracy in JFK's death. For example, she interviewed Acquilla Clemons and noted in her column that Clemons' account contradicted the claim that Oswald shot Tippit.

I don't understand your thread title because the documentary certainly does not prove there was no exit hole in the back of the head.