PRAYER PERSON - PRAYER MAN OR PRAYER WOMAN? RESEARCH THREAD

[Chris Newton]

He arrived at work at 6:45 AM per his WC testimony. I've seen it stated elsewhere that he turned on "the boilers" or something in the basement when he arrived but I haven't seen the source for that. He watched Oswald come in the back door and stated he didn't notice Oswald carrying anything at all.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=35#relPageId=387&tab=page

[Thomas Graves]

He arrived at work at 6:45 AM per his WC testimony. I've seen it stated elsewhere that he turned on "the boilers" or something in the basement when he arrived but I haven't seen the source for that. He watched Oswald come in the back door and stated he didn't notice Oswald carrying anything at all.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=35#relPageId=387&tab=page

Chris,

Maybe he arrived for work so early every morning to pack up drugs for Civello or guns for the 112th guys.

-- Tommy

Edited September 6, 2016 by Thomas Graves

[Sandy Larsen]

Sandy,

It seems that your evolving theory accommodates the idea of LHO's being either inside or outside, but not guilty or innocent. Only innocent.

The reason I believe Oswald is innocent is because 1) I'm convinced that the assassination plot was produced by the CIA, and 2) there is no reason to believe that the CIA would choose Oswald to be a shooter. Given that the CIA would have compartmentalized the plot, I know that Oswald likely wouldn't have been privy to what exactly was going on. He didn't have the need to know, so he didn't.

Therefore, even if Oswald were somehow involved in the plot, he wouldn't have known that the goal was to kill the president. Therefore his innocence.

It's a good thing you didn't join Fetzer's and Cinque's "Oswald Innocence Campaign," because it seems as though they assumed that if Oswald was inside, he must be guilty. (lol)

Bob Prudhomme and you seem to think that the bad guys wanted Oswald to be outside while someone else shot JFK with "Oswald's rifle." So that it would look like a commie conspiracy and we would invade Cuba.

You seem to think that Oswald didn't know anything about the plot, didn't own the MC, and that someone else (Dougherty? Mac Wallace?) not only killed JFK, but set up LHO as a co-conspirator by planting a traceable-to-him rifle and encouraging him to go outside (by not preventing him from doing so) and watch the motorcade go by.

But didn't even the scenario of "Oswald The Commie Lone Nut Assassin" almost take Lyndon Johnson to the brink of bombing Cuba and / or Russia?

Well that's what LBJ told people, to get them to do what he wanted. But the Lone Nut story played out well and America was never at the brink of bombing anybody (other than Vietnam).

Or was that just a ruse, the result of someone's (Angleton's?) planting a "Oswald-Kostikov WW III virus" in order to prevent the plot from being uncovered, after the fact, by the investigators?

I know that some researcher believe that the Mexico City, Kostikov thing was designed to get Johnson worried about WW3, so he'd do the cover-up. (Call this Plan A.) And that may be the case. If so, that would mean that the assassination was never intended to be used as a pretext for war.

But I don't know if I buy that. We know that some among the chiefs of staff wanted to fight the Russians before they became militarily stronger than the United States. The Kostikov thing would have created the desired pretext for war. (Call this Plan B.)

The beauty part of Plan A is that the assassination plotters (CIA) and government cover-up (Johnson) would share the same post-assassination goals. The primary one being to keep the government from searching for a conspiracy (and thus the real plotters). In contrast, with Plan B the assassination plotters are at odds with the government cover-up. The former wants a conspiracy to be discovered, the latter... I'm not sure what the latter would want. But if they decided to hide the conspiracy using the Lone Nut option, that would be at odds with the goal of the assassination plot.

In summary, Plan A is smooth. But Plan B accomplishes the military's goal.

I wish I could figure out a Plan C that gets the best of both Plan A and Plan B worlds.

Okay, here's a possibility for a Plan C. Pay attention: The goal of the assassination was to replace Kennedy with Johnson, and to use Oswald and others (Cuban exiles and Mafia) to draw the FBI's attention away from the plotters in the post-assassination investigation. As simple as that. Unfortunately for them, there was a small group of renegades amongst them who were sympathetic to the military's goal of war with Russia. Unbeknownst to the main group, they implemented the Mexico City trip and Kostikov thing in order to create the pretext for war.

This subplot became known only after the assassination, when the government cover-up was getting started. It was Spy vs. Spy. The sub-plotters knew that Oswald would be blamed and when word got out that he had strong Russian ties there would be public outcries for revenge. Johnson knew this would mean WW3. So he implemented the Lone Nut cover-up in order to prevent that from happening.

Hey, this is actually not a bad hypothesis. It does the same as Plan A above in that it gets Johnson in cover-up mode (albeit incidentally). And it does the same as Plan B in that it creates the pretext for war. In fact, it's Plan A vs. Plan B. Spy vs. Spy.

Why would the bad guys think that a two-man commie "conspiracy" (including Oswald) would be necessary to implement that ruse, especially if the "6th floor commie sniper" (not Oswald because he was out front!) were to never be caught?

I would say that the "two-man" part of the conspiracy wasn't strategic at all. It was just a way of executing the plan without having to worry where Oswald was at the time of the shooting. A mere practical matter.

Or did the mid level bad guys know that Angleton had planted that cover up "WW III virus," and tried to overcome it so that Cuba would be invaded?

That's certainly a possibility. (It's sort of like my Plan C!) We know that there were people trying to push the commie conspiracy angle in spite of the Lone Nut cover-up.

-- Tommy

PS It's too bad Oswald's last name wasn't Schrodinger, instead.

Sandy,

Under your "2-man commie conspiracy" scenario, things would have worked out a lot differently if Wesley B. Frazier had said within an hour of the assassination, "It couldn't have been Oswald because I saw him taking pictures / sipping from a full mug of very hot coffee with both hands on the front steps during the shooting! Why did he leave? Well, he did tell me on the way to work this morning that he's been wanting to see those movies they're showing at the Texas Theater, so maybe he went there. You know, with his mail order pistol that he bought under the name 'Hidell' because a boy likes to carry a gun?'"

"Oddly-shaped package"? -- [The Daily Mail] "'Not for one minute do I think Lee was on his own.'" ? -- [WBF] Sounds like a limited hangout.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3326233/I-drove-Lee-Harvey-Oswald-book-depository-don-t-believe-shot-JFK-52-years-assassination-Oswald-s-friend-says-convinced-patsy-real-gunman-grassy-knoll.html

-- Tommy

Tommy,

Under my latest hypothesis, the one than uses "Plan C," as I called it, for the CIA's involvement.... The CIA plotters didn't really care how the investigation played out as long as the FBI's attention was diverted away from them. They didn't care if a witness like WBF vouched for Oswald's innocence.

You're right that the aftermath of the assassination would have played out much differently had someone like WBF told the police that he saw Oswald on the front steps during the shooting. It would have been much more difficult for the government to pull off the Lone Gun cover-up.

So for my hypothesis to be believable, it is necessary to believe that the CIA plotters did not care how the investigation progressed or who was blamed, as long as it wasn't them.

I'm not sure if the CIA plotters would have been okay with that outcome.

Edited September 6, 2016 by Sandy Larsen

[Guest]

The primary feature of my hypothesis -- which you seemed to have missed -- is that the assassination plotters were not painting Oswald as the shooter. But rather as an accomplice. For example, that he supplied the gun. Therefore it would be okay for him to be seen by witnesses during the shooting and caught outside in some photographs and films. The purpose of this being.... well, read the hypothesis again. It makes a lot of sense.

No, I didn't miss it. I ignored it because it makes no more sense than my gnomes-in-my-garden hypothesis. So the CIA and its helpers went through the entire Harvey and Lee "fake-rifle-purchase thing," not to mention the "Oswald-imposters-all-over-the-place thing," and any number of other "pre-assassination things," and then planted the rifle on the 6th floor, merely to frame LHO as an accomplice, and they were so content with their fake purchasing and rifle planting they didn't even care that LHO was standing outside at the very moment of the shooting? The notion that conspirator LHO might have loaned a fellow conspirator his trusty Mannlicher-Carcano strikes you as a plausible conspiracy scenario that serious investigators would have fallen for? Explain to me again how the "fake-lunchroom-encounter thing" fits into this.

Can you really not see when a "hypothesis" has toppled over from sheer silliness? Even if your hypothesis were plausible - i.e., the CIA and its helpers really might have gone through massive pre-assassination efforts merely to frame LHO (and only LHO) as "just one of the accomplices" - there would have been umpteen ways to more convincingly frame him without raising the red flags that would be raised by having him standing outside on the TSBD steps at the moment of the assassination. If PM is ever proven to be LHO through indisputable photographic evidence, you can pretty well take it to the bank that the CIA wasn't masterminding the conspiracy.

I'm not going to keep debating this since I'm occupied with setting traps for the pesky gnomes whom I hypothesize are attacking my garden, but I truly think self-respecting Conspiracy Theorists would be embarrassed by this sort of thing. There are one or more plausible conspiracy theories for the assassination, but none of them involves LHO standing in the shadows on the TSBD steps. In every field like this in which I've been involved, it's the willingness of Conspiracy Theorists and other True Believers to keep hypothesizing ever-expanding and more elaborate, convoluted and unrealistic scenarios that causes them not to be taken seriously. I bailed on the "alien abduction" phenomenon many years ago when the lack of hard evidence drove leading "researcher" Budd Hopkins (highly respected at the time) to the "hypothesis" that the aliens had - yep - mastered the art of invisibility.

Am I the only one who sees LHO there in the shadows on the left?

Edited September 7, 2016 by Guest

[Thomas Graves]

The primary feature of my hypothesis -- which you seemed to have missed -- is that the assassination plotters were not painting Oswald as the shooter. But rather as an accomplice. For example, that he supplied the gun. Therefore it would be okay for him to be seen by witnesses during the shooting and caught outside in some photographs and films. The purpose of this being.... well, read the hypothesis again. It makes a lot of sense.

No, I didn't miss it. I ignored it because it makes no more sense than my gnomes-in-my-garden hypothesis. So the CIA and its helpers went through the entire Harvey and Lee "fake-rifle-purchase thing," not to mention the "Oswald-imposters-all-over-the-place thing," and any number of other "pre-assassination things," and then planted the rifle on the 6th floor, merely to frame LHO as an accomplice, and they were so content with their fake purchasing and rifle planting they didn't even care that LHO was standing outside at the very moment of the shooting? The notion that conspirator LHO might have loaned a fellow conspirator his trusty Mannlicher-Carcano strikes you as a plausible conspiracy scenario that serious investigators would have fallen for? Explain to me again how the "fake-lunchroom-encounter thing" fits into this.

Can you really not see when a "hypothesis" has toppled over from sheer silliness? Even if your hypothesis were plausible - i.e., the CIA and its helpers really might have gone through massive pre-assassination efforts merely to frame LHO (and only LHO) as "just one of the accomplices" - there would have been umpteen ways to more convincingly frame him without raising the red flags that would be raised by having him standing outside on the TSBD steps at the moment of the assassination. If PM is ever proven to be LHO through indisputable photographic evidence, you can pretty well take it to the bank that the CIA wasn't masterminding the conspiracy.

I'm not going to keep debating this since I'm occupied with setting traps for the pesky gnomes whom I hypothesize are attacking my garden, but I truly think self-respecting Conspiracy Theorists would be embarrassed by this sort of thing. There are one or more plausible conspiracy theories for the assassination, but none of them involves LHO standing in the shadows on the TSBD steps. In every field like this in which I've been involved, it's the willingness of Conspiracy Theorists and other True Believers to keep hypothesizing ever-expanding and more elaborate, convoluted and unrealistic scenarios that causes them not to be taken seriously. I bailed on the "alien abduction" phenomenon many years ago when the lack of hard evidence drove leading "researcher" Budd Hopkins (highly respected at the time) to the "hypothesis" that the aliens had - yep - mastered the art of invisibility.

fairies.jpg

Am I the only one who sees LHO there in the shadows in the left?

Hi Lance,

I've been kinda collaborating (I like to thing of it as "brainstorming") with Sandy in private message mode recently, but I do think a good question to ask him is, "Why would LHO have lent 'his' Carcano to anyone in the TSBD, anyway? So he or she could take some potshots at the pigeons during lunchtime?"

How else could LHO be seen as the assassin or even just an accomplice if not through the planned "finding" of that rifle at the scene of the crime?

Could the plotters really expect us to believe that Oswald had gone outside during the motorcade after having taken his rifle (per the limited reverse-psychology hangout of WBF) to the TSBD that morning and lent it to the sniper? Under this scenario, what was LHO thinking? "Well, I know they're going to tie that rifle to me, and I really don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing because, shoot fire, I'm just a commie accomplice in what will be seen as a 'probable communist two-man conspiracy,' and now I just hope the US won't invade my beloved Cuba because of this!"

Alternatively, could LHO really have been so stupid / gullible as to take "his" Carcano to the TSBD that particular morning for one of Hemming's buddies to buy? Or did he have to for some reason, and did he then put "two plus two together" and go outside so he could be noticed / captured on film during the "hit"? (But not too far outside, mind you, so that none of the other possible bad guys who might be hanging around wouldn't see him there, way - way back in the corner.) That makes more sense than the aforementioned scenario, above, to me. But not by much, mind you.

-- Tommy

Edited September 7, 2016 by Thomas Graves

[Guest]

Hi Lance,

I've been kinda collaborating (I like to thing of it as "brainstorming") with Sandy in private message mode recently, but I do think a good question to ask him is, "Why would LHO have lent 'his' Carcano to anyone in the TSBD, anyway? So he or she could take some potshots at the pigeons during lunchtime?"

How else could LHO be seen to have been the assassin or even just an accomplice if not through the planned "finding" of that rifle at the scene of the crime?

-- Tommy

To play Devil's Advocate against myself, one plausible scenario is that some fellow TSBD employee had told LHO he was interested in purchasing the magnificent Carcano, thereby causing LHO to bring it to work that morning. As I recall, Truly or someone had recently brought a new rifle to the TSBD to show it off, so LHO bringing his to show a prospective buyer isn't inconceivable. This would get the rifle into the TSBD for it to be planted by the "prospective buyer" without any knowing involvement by LHO (although one would think LHO might have mentioned this critical fact to the DPD and FBI). Regardless of whether the goal was to frame LHO as the shooter or merely as an accomplice, however, the only explanation for PM being LHO that "makes sense" (to use the term loosely) is that the conspirators were Stumbling, Bumbling Fools of the First Magnitude. Sandy's notion that the CIA masterminds were thinking "Hey, the fact that LHO's rifle is found on the 6th floor while he is seen and photographed in plain view on the steps of the TSBD would just scream conspiracy, and that would be great - even better than if he isn't seen and photographed, in which case everyone will just think he was the 6th floor assassin!!!" is just too goofy to take seriously. You and I can hypothesize in five minutes a score of more plausible ways to scream conspiracy without raising all the red flags that would be raised by patsy LHO being seen and photographed on the steps of the TSBD. If the conspirators were going to go to all the pre-assassination trouble of framing LHO and then plant "his" rifle on the 6th floor, they would damn well have controlled his whereabouts to the extent of making him a plausible gunman and planted their conspiracy evidence somewhere outside the TSBD.

Someone might ask me, "Well, then, why didn't the conspirators control LHO so as to prevent the lunchroom encounter with Baker and Truly?" The encounter, which I do believe occurred, is troubling to me, although far less troubling than PM. The encounter was undeniably some period after the assassination. The accepted 90-second timing may be off just enough to have allowed LHO to arrive in the lunchroom from the 6th floor with no major timing problem - i.e., he was in fact the lone gunman or the only member of the conspiracy located inside the TSBD. If LHO was purely an innocent patsy, the conspirators may have innocuously detained him somewhere else in the TSBD until after the assassination and then allowed him to fend for himself while they escaped, secure in the knowledge his rifle would be found on the 6th floor. (If we're honest about the evidence, I do think LHO's activities on the day before the assassination, the morning of the assassination, and immediately after the assassination are best interpreted as "Guilty" or at least "Definitely Involved." If he was truly an innocent patsy, he did an awful lot of unpatsy-like things.)

[Chris Newton]

Lance OK I'll bite.

Because of Oswald's meeting with David Phillips, as recalled and recently verified by Antonio Veciana, I think it would be hard to absolve Oswald of being a part of an operation. But... He could have been witting or unwitting and evidence that may have shed light on that was flushed down the toilet by FBI Agent Hosty and we are left with his "word" that this note was simply a threat about not questioning his wife (if it were so then it makes no sense to destroy it btw).

Did he bring a weapon into the TSBD? The person who drove him to work says he didn't and the person who saw him enter the TSBD through the back shipping area says he didn't. Sheriff Decker says he can't put Oswald "in that window with that gun". So you have more "evidence" than they do?

Edited September 7, 2016 by Chris Newton

[Thomas Graves]

Lance OK I'll bite.

Because of Oswald's meeting with David Phillips, as recalled and recently verified by Antonio Veciana, I think it would be hard to absolve Oswald of being a part of an operation. But... He could have been witting or unwitting and evidence that may have shed light on that was flushed down the toilet by FBI Agent Hosty and we are left with his "word" that this note was simply a threat about not questioning his wife (if it were so then it makes no sense to destroy it btw).

Did he bring a weapon into the TSBD? The person who drove him to work says he didn't and the person who saw him enter the TSBD through the back shipping area says he didn't. Sheriff Decker says he can't put Oswald "in that window with that gun". So you have more "evidence" than they do?

Chris wrote:

"We are left with [Hosty's] "word" that this [Oswald] note was simply a threat about not questioning his wife (if it were so then it makes no sense to destroy it btw)."

Great point, Chris.

Regarding the too-short package Frazier claimed to have seen Oswald carry, that's one of the biggest enigmas of the whole case. Was Frazier playing a little reverse-psychology anti-limited hangout confidence game by saying it was, in so many words, kinda long but too short to have contained the disassembled Carcano? If it did contain curtain rods (which I've read Oswald's room didn't need), where did LHO put it when he entered the TSBD that morning? In the "domino room"? But why didn't Dougherty notice the package?

-- Tommy

Edited September 7, 2016 by Thomas Graves

[Chris Newton]

Tommy

IMHO, the gun being tore down and concealed in a home made paper sack to be smuggled into the TSBD and then re-assembled is a ludicrous supposition.

I have a Springfield '03, it doesn't resemble a Carcano at all but it is still a bolt action rifle with all major parts that a bolt action rifle of that era. Bolt assembly, barrel, stock, a hand guard, and lots of sundry screws and pins. It's not scoped but for giggles lets add that to the list.

How would you pack all these things in that bag without creating a complete clusterferk?

Did you need any tools to re-assemble it? A screw driver? Where'd you put ll the little parts?

Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling.

[Thomas Graves]

C

Tommy

IMHO, the gun being tore down and concealed in a home made paper sack to be smuggled into the TSBD and then re-assembled is a ludicrous supposition.

I have a Springfield '03, it doesn't resemble a Carcano at all but it is still a bolt action rifle with all major parts that a bolt action rifle of that era. Bolt assembly, barrel, stock, a hand guard, and lots of sundry screws and pins. It's not scoped but for giggles lets add that to the list.

How would you pack all these things in that bag without creating a complete clusterferk?

Did you need any tools to re-assemble it? A screw driver? Where'd you put ll the little parts?

Somewhere PT Barnum is smiling.

Chris,

I agree. So Frazier and his sister were either lying or Oswald took something else into, or close to, the TSBD. Something that was only about 18 inches long.

-- Tommy

Edited September 8, 2016 by Thomas Graves

[Chris Newton]

Maybe curtain rods went home with him and then he hung them? no... that would mess with the timeline too much.

On another note, we are way off topic let's take this elsewhere 'cuz I like this thread too much to blow it up.

[Thomas Graves]

Maybe curtain rods went home with him and then he hung them? no... that would mess with the timeline too much.

On another note, we are way off topic let's take this elsewhere 'cuz I like this thread too much to blow it up.

OK, Chris.

Do you think the person standing back in the far left corner was a man or a woman?

-- Tommy

Edited September 8, 2016 by Thomas Graves

[Robert Prudhomme]

Shouldn't there be a gender neutral choice as well?

[Robert Prudhomme]

It's only fair, isn't it?

[Thomas Graves]

It's only fair, isn't it?

You're hilarious, Bob. Could we please get back "on topic"? I'd hate to see this thread disappear.

-- Tommy