Imagine you wanted JFK dead

[Guest Mark Valenti]

Just go with me for a minute here.

Say you hated JFK, you felt he was either wrecking the country or he was raining on your parade, whatever that may be - oil, arms, etc. You're a person with deep connections. You can make things happen. And so you decide, let's do this and get it over with.

It's 1963. Thus far, several Presidents have been assassinated, but those were long ago, before modern technology. Mostly one lunatic with an axe to grind, even when conspiracy was the driving force.

Now there's instant global communication, sophisticated weapons - all to your benefit.

To your potential detriment, there's also a ubiquitous newspaper and TV presence everywhere JFK goes. Not to mention the dozens or possibly hundreds of individuals with cheap Japanese cameras, snapping photos of JFK's every move.

So can you get to JFK without all that attendant noise? Commit the deed without being seen? Probably not, unless you can find someone on the inside to accommodate you. Secret Service agent who also hates JFK? Too hard to find without raising red flags. Firebomb a restaurant JFK frequents? Shooting down AF-1? Bomb on the roadway ala DeGaulle? Too complicated, potentially risky.

Possible courses of action: Find someone else to do the job, on their own, without being traced back to you. OR find someone else to appear to have done the deed.

Looking at it from this front-end perspective, and knowing that LHO was eventually fingered for the crime, who are you?

What person/entity would have chosen LHO for this crime?

From what vantage point would you have known about the existence of LHO?

What kind of access to information would you need in order to find a guy like LHO?

And how would you make certain he would be in a position?

In other words, who had the means to know of, select and manage LHO for the several months it would take to put the assassination together?

[Brian Schmidt]

The problem with this approach, IMO, is that the powerful person or group in your scenario that would order the assassination would likely defer the planning and details to another group. In this case, their role would be further shielded and studying Oswald gets you no closer to the party that gave the green-light to the plot. If there were a pyramid with a rich and powerful person ordering the hit, I highly doubt they would know of LHO personally or follow him in the months leading up to the assassination.

In my view, finding a patsy like Oswald would be extremely hard without intelligence gathering services. How else would one find someone with the proper background for the narrative of an Oswald-type? Furthermore, I suspect that the CIA keeps dozens of assets like Oswald, whether they're actual "agents" or not, in case it needs to use them in black-bag jobs. This isn't to say that it would have to be the CIA or another intelligence service that actually pulled it off--Oswald could have been intercepted--but grooming a patsy is unlikely without some sort of intelligence gathering along the way, if that makes sense.

[Guest Mark Valenti]

The problem with this approach, IMO, is that the powerful person or group in your scenario that would order the assassination would likely defer the planning and details to another group.

That's right, and it's exactly my point. Who had the means, on the front end, to make it happen? Who could directly or indirectly make sure that these options were established, and were ready to be utilized? Who could coordinate Dallas, Miami and Chicago all at the same time?

Clearly LHO was on the radar screens of multiple intelligence agencies. Does it stop there? Is that all we need to know?

Who else had access to those files and could use them without leaving fingerprints?

Two factors are key: LHO worked in that building, and JFK's motorcade passed right by it.

Who had the opportunity to know both of those things were true?

Just based on what we know, here's who knew LHO worked there:

Ruth Paine

Michael Paine

Marina Oswald

Assorted Irving housewives

Buell Frazier

Linnie Randle

Roy Truly

OV Campbell

Bill Shelley

TSDB employees

James Hosty

Who among those had connections to anyone up the food chain who was powerful and capable?

[Brian Schmidt]

A lot of people would say the Paines or Hosty. I don't think any of the people you listed necessarily would have to inform higher ups that LHO worked there. If the CIA was using Oswald as an asset or trailing him, one of the most rudimentary things they would know is where he worked. J Walton Moore might have even known.

Question: Do you think there were multiple scenarios that were available to the conspirators in the immediate aftermath of the assassination in case everything didn't go to plan? I think there must have been. How would they know definitively that someone wouldn't see Oswald in the lunch room (if he was indeed there) exactly at 12:30? Maybe one of them even involved Oswald not being the gunman. I've always thought that if need be, the conspirators could always go with a very low level plot involving Oswald and other employees of the TSBD. Bill Simpich believes that Buell Frazier was impersonated at the Sportsdome as well as Oswald. If true, it suggests this backup plan might have been in play.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Brian Schmidt

[David Andrews]

Do we assume Oswald cut off all association with New Orleans figures just because he moved to Dallas?

Edited May 8, 2015 by David Andrews

[Cliff Varnell]

Possible courses of action: Find someone else to do the job, on their own, without being traced back to you. OR find someone else to appear to have done the deed.

Shouldn't that OR be an AND?

"Find someone to do the job without being traced back to you AND find someone else to appear to have done the deed."

And/or find a number of someones to appear to have done the deed depending on contingencies -- a patsy chain that went from Oswald all the way on up to LBJ.

What did the men tasked with the murder of JFK need to know about Oswald?

What did the folks tasked with the murder of Oswald need to know about the murder of JFK other than time and place?

Given the compartmentalization of intelligence activity -- operations coordinated only at the highest levels -- why should we assume Oswald's handlers were connected to the operation to kill Kennedy?

Edited May 9, 2015 by Cliff Varnell

[Guest Mark Valenti]

Are we assuming someone had been tracking patsies in various cities?

"Let's see, who do we have in Santa Monica? JFK's heading out that way in February."

"Hmm...there's an ex-Army sergeant, Joe Blow, he was kicked out of the military for fighting. We can pay him a hundred bucks to walk up and down Ocean Boulevard with an anti-JFK sign. No, better still give him a pro-Castro sign and have him start a fight and get arrested. Then later we can get him a job cleaning floors at the Civic Auditorium. When JFK shows to make a speech, we can hide a sniper in the ceiling and make it look like Joe Blow did it."

"Great - now who are we tracking in Denver?"

"Denver's tricky - JFK's only making a speech at the airport, then he's flying straight to Phoenix."

"Perfect, we have three nut jobs in Phoenix.And get this - one of 'em's married to a Russian!"

[Vitali Zhuk]

I think Oswald answered to most of this questions in his interview in August 1963:

Edited June 12, 2015 by Vitali Zhuk

[Greg Parker]

Just go with me for a minute here.

Say you hated JFK, you felt he was either wrecking the country or he was raining on your parade, whatever that may be - oil, arms, etc. You're a person with deep connections. You can make things happen. And so you decide, let's do this and get it over with.

It's 1963. Thus far, several Presidents have been assassinated, but those were long ago, before modern technology. Mostly one lunatic with an axe to grind, even when conspiracy was the driving force.

Now there's instant global communication, sophisticated weapons - all to your benefit.

To your potential detriment, there's also a ubiquitous newspaper and TV presence everywhere JFK goes. Not to mention the dozens or possibly hundreds of individuals with cheap Japanese cameras, snapping photos of JFK's every move.

So can you get to JFK without all that attendant noise? Commit the deed without being seen? Probably not, unless you can find someone on the inside to accommodate you. Secret Service agent who also hates JFK? Too hard to find without raising red flags. Firebomb a restaurant JFK frequents? Shooting down AF-1? Bomb on the roadway ala DeGaulle? Too complicated, potentially risky.

Possible courses of action: Find someone else to do the job, on their own, without being traced back to you. OR find someone else to appear to have done the deed.

Looking at it from this front-end perspective, and knowing that LHO was eventually fingered for the crime, who are you?

What person/entity would have chosen LHO for this crime?

From what vantage point would you have known about the existence of LHO?

What kind of access to information would you need in order to find a guy like LHO?

And how would you make certain he would be in a position?

In other words, who had the means to know of, select and manage LHO for the several months it would take to put the assassination together?

I think I must have missed this when first posted - too busy with the pooper-scooper.

Breaking this case can be split into 3 categories.

PM

What Mark alludes to here

Oswald's background

This thread - like PM - should be pinned.

[Paul Brancato]

Vitali - what questions did Oswald answer in that interview that relate to the central question of this thread?

Agree Greg - it's an important thread and I hope it continues.

Mark Valenti's list isn't very useful in my opinion, since it only includes people that provably knew where he worked. However that list assumes that essentially the only intelligence operative who knew anything about LHO was Hosty.

I'd like to throw in a theory of mine here - that many CIA figures knew all about Oswald and were perhaps running him in operations monitoring Cubans in the US. Angleton, Phillips, Morales, Helms come quickly to mind.In addition, Otto Otepka seemed to know all about the defector program and had a special interest in Oswald, if we are to believe him. This connects directly with the Senate internal Security Subcommittee and therefore with William Pawley and his operations.

[Greg Parker]

Vitali - what questions did Oswald answer in that interview that relate to the central question of this thread?

Agree Greg - it's an important thread and I hope it continues.

Mark Valenti's list isn't very useful in my opinion, since it only includes people that provably knew where he worked. However that list assumes that essentially the only intelligence operative who knew anything about LHO was Hosty.

I'd like to throw in a theory of mine here - that many CIA figures knew all about Oswald and were perhaps running him in operations monitoring Cubans in the US. Angleton, Phillips, Morales, Helms come quickly to mind.In addition, Otto Otepka seemed to know all about the defector program and had a special interest in Oswald, if we are to believe him. This connects directly with the Senate internal Security Subcommittee and therefore with William Pawley and his operations.

The list may not be complete. My point is the thinking behind it - the methodology - the questions he has put.

He is absolutely on the right track.

[Paul Brancato]

Sure he is. Do we have to prove that the figures I mention knew where he worked? It would not have been difficult at all if Oswald was being followed. But I have never thought that the job had anything to do with the set up. The motorcade route did for sure.

[Greg Parker]

To be honest, Paul, I'd rather not be an active participant in this thread - just a very interested observer.

[Vitali Zhuk]

Vitali - what questions did Oswald answer in that interview that relate to the central question of this thread?

Agree Greg - it's an important thread and I hope it continues.

Mark Valenti's list isn't very useful in my opinion, since it only includes people that provably knew where he worked. However that list assumes that essentially the only intelligence operative who knew anything about LHO was Hosty.

I'd like to throw in a theory of mine here - that many CIA figures knew all about Oswald and were perhaps running him in operations monitoring Cubans in the US. Angleton, Phillips, Morales, Helms come quickly to mind.In addition, Otto Otepka seemed to know all about the defector program and had a special interest in Oswald, if we are to believe him. This connects directly with the Senate internal Security Subcommittee and therefore with William Pawley and his operations.

Hi, Paul!

In our days it is better to recognize the type of Oswald's mind. He was more romantic and emotional and unstable person rather than materialistic and Nordic. LHO considered himself a Marxist (not Communist) and it was his religion. (Lev Trotsky was a Marxist but Soviets assassinated him.) And LHO disappointed in Soviet Union and in Soviet Communism.

So to have deal with such a religious person you have to speak about global super idea - about true Communism in the World. Soviet Communism is not true Communism. Marxism is true Communism. So his faith was restored after he met new comrades. LHO fate was the fate of the ordinary revolutionary involved in terrorism.

The most probable version - 'Marxist comrades' was between LHO and the sponsor of assassination. And this sponsor has a strong impact on Marxist groups. Or may be LHO was patsy and was used by comrades.

P.S.

Smth similar was with Sirhan Sirhan. According to the wiki: "Sirhan changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches. Then in 1966, he joined the occult organization Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, commonly known as Rosicrucians." May be it was a religious gasket between Sirhan and the sponsor of RFK assassination.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Vitali Zhuk

[Jon G. Tidd]

Mark Valenti,

Who would have known about Oswald?

Put yourself in these shoes: You are an intelligence professional in 1963, having military and intelligence training from years back. Your job is to "monitor" the U.S. You have several sources of information. One is a secretary high-up in the FBI. One is a CIA contract agent who has a drug addiction you feed. Your job is to identify individuals, if any, who have been tracked by the FBI or by the CIA, but who is basically harmless.