When Did the Framing of Oswald Begin?

[Ron Ecker]

When was the earliest the Bad Guys could have known for sure that JFK would be lunching and speaking at the Trade Mart Building instead of at the Women's Center?

--Tommy

Someone else would have to answer that. All I remember is that JFK's people wanted the Women's Center, but Connally insisted on the Trade Mart, and someone (O'Donnell maybe?) said that they had to let Connally have his way.

But don't trust my memory on that. I still remember watching the Dallas casket arrive in front of Bethesda on live TV!

[Jon G. Tidd]

Greg,

You may be correct about Asperger's. I don't know much about the disorder (some, not much). I imagine it would have made him an odd duck.

I've come across a number of odd ducks: in my pre-college days, at the university, and in the army. Some of these guys were incredibly funny to my way of thinking, were incredibly unusual, and were looked down upon by their conventional peers. They all pulled their own strings.

FWIW, I believe, based on my army training and experience, that although Oswald may have attracted the attention of the CIA, he never to his knowledge was used by the CIA to act on its behalf. It's one thing for the CIA, FBI, KGB -- and who knows what other intelligence services -- to have had an interest, even a deep and serious interest, in Oswald. He was an unusual guy, doing unusual and provocative things. Maybe he got some encouragement to do these things. Who knows? But for sure, any such encouragement would have played to his proclivities.

I don't know whether you were kicking around in the U.S. in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was a time when soldiers of fortune were played up in popular culture. Oswald wasn't exactly a soldier of fortune, as Gerry Hemming portrayed himself. But he operated on the margin of society. He did that, I believe, perhaps with help, but of his own volition.

So, Angleton kept two files on him. So what? Angleton would have been interested in Oswald. Because Oswald was an outlier. Angleton never kept a file on me. I was on paper quite conventional. Yet I got into Military Intelligence, spent 47 weeks at the Defense Language Institute, went through the Army Officer's counterintelligence course, ran agents in Viet Nam, and did other stuff about which I can't talk. Truth is, even though no one here has followed the path I followed, I was conventional. Oswald wasn't.