Is the assassination a mystery or a puzzle?

[Pat Speer]

While reading something by Malcolm Gladwell the other day it hit me that the difference between LNs and CTs--besides their politics, which frequently differ--is in the way they view the assassination. LNs view it as a puzzle. A puzzle has pieces that fit together to make a picture. The more pieces you acquire, the clearer the picture becomes. You put together the rifle, with the palm print, with the backyard photos, etc... and a compelling picture emerges suggesting Oswald's sole guilt.

But they are wrong. The assassination is not a puzzle, or even a puzzle with a few missing pieces, but a mystery. In a mystery, the pieces are not always what they seem to be, and have to be carefully analyzed. There is room for interpretation.

Let's take, for example, the fiber evidence. LNs will cite ad nauseum that Oswald's shirt fibers were found on the rifle. To them it is a piece of the puzzle suggesting Oswald's guilt. But to someone viewing the assassination as a mystery, such as myself, it suggest the exact opposite. How? Why? Because it is not what it appears to be...

Oswald claimed to have put that shirt on AFTER he returned to his rooming house...

Nobody who saw him at work saw him wearing that shirt...

The only person who testified to seeing Oswald wearing the shirt BEFORE he returned to his rooming house (and after the shooting) was his former landlady, who hated him, and was so daft that not even the WC counsel taking her testimony (Joe Ball) pretended to believe her.

The FBI crime lab employee who found the fibers reported that they were wrapped around the butt plate ON TOP of fingerprint powder... That's right...ON TOP of fingerprint powder--which means the fibers were NOT on the butt plate when it was dusted by Lt. Day but somehow ended up there afterward... Now the crime lab employee guessed that maybe they'd been wrapped around the butt plate during the dusting of the rifle--via the swift brush work of Day, but this is LUDICROUS. IF DAY WAS SO INCOMPETENT THAT IT DIDN'T OCCUR TO HIM TO REMOVE AND KEEP AS EVIDENCE A TUFT OF FIBERS ON OR NEAR THE BUTT PLATE THEN EVERY BIT OF EVIDENCE HE CAME IN CONTACT WITH IS TAINTED.

But LNs will never see this. They are so busy priding themselves on putting together a simple puzzle, that they can't bring themselves to see that some, if not most, of the pieces they've used to complete the puzzle, are not what they appear to be.

Now...if LNs were to make the logically consistent argument that Oswald was guilty, but that the DPD and FBI were afraid he'd walk, and that they'd dummied up much of the evidence against him to prevent this possibility, then I think they might have a chance at eventually convincing some CTs of Oswald's sole guilt. But LNs won't do this. Because in their simple puzzle mind-set, there's no room to question the authenticity of the pieces.

[Walt Rollins]

It's a puzzling mystery. I'm a CT'er and I think that if the pieces that are hidden or have presumably been destroyed are somehow made public, those pieces would fit to support the conspiracy view as well.

Edited June 2, 2010 by Walt Rollins