Backyard photos

[Richard Booth]

There are yet more photos that came from that same camera that are interesting or unusual:

1) a picture of Oswald holding a baby, which looks like a doll

2) a picture of General Walker's house

With the Walker photo, there is a car in the driveway and the license plate is obliterated on that photograph, with a DPD officer claiming he found it that way. However later pictures from Jesse Curry's book which depict seized evidence show that the license plate was intact on the picture. So why was the license plate on the photograph obliterated and then lied about? 

[Chris Bristow]

Yes there is a photo of the back of his house, I think in New Orleans. It is a great example of pincushion distortion. The roof is curved down and the sides of the patio curve in.
 Skeptics point to the tests done on Oswald's Imperial reflex camera as showing proof the backyard photos are taken with his camera. Ok fine but if Oswald was being set up then they could have acquired his camera to make the Backyard photos. I believe it was in the possession of his brother prior to the assassination. If Ruth Paine's father was affiliated with the CIA through the SAID? project, and her mother was on the CIA payroll in Irvine CA, and her sister was a Psychologist in Langley,VA, we may assume that if there was a CIA plot and Ruth Paine was a CIA operative very close to The Oswald's they would have been able to get there hands on the Imperial reflex camera.

[David G. Healy]

On 9/3/2020 at 12:34 PM, Rob Clark said:

This is James Wagenvoord in the middle of myself and Doug in 2014...an editor at Life magazine in 1963. [...]

He also had "accidentally taken home" a copy of Life's copy of the original Zapruder film in 1964. He had it in his possession until his home was burglarized in the mid 70's. He had been talking to Geraldo's people about it, thinks his phone had been tapped. No signs of forced entry, and the Z film was the only thing missing...professional job by someone. [...]

 

Be interesting to ask Mr. Wagenvoord who LIFE contracted to make 8mm dupes of the in-camera original Z-film (once it arrived in Chicago) and who did the 16/35mm b&w-color blowups of same.

From what I heard moons ago, there were dupes of the 8mm Z-film just laying around in New Orleans during the Garrison trial. A few ended up with "private" collector's? Rumor also has it, that the Garrison trial was the last time the in-camera original Z-film was laced up in a projector and projected.

[Richard Booth]

48 minutes ago, Chris Bristow said:

Yes there is a photo of the back of his house, I think in New Orleans. It is a great example of pincushion distortion. The roof is curved down and the sides of the patio curve in.
 Skeptics point to the tests done on Oswald's Imperial reflex camera as showing proof the backyard photos are taken with his camera. Ok fine but if Oswald was being set up then they could have acquired his camera to make the Backyard photos. I believe it was in the possession of his brother prior to the assassination. If Ruth Paine's father was affiliated with the CIA through the SAID? project, and her mother was on the CIA payroll in Irvine CA, and her sister was a Psychologist in Langley,VA, we may assume that if there was a CIA plot and Ruth Paine was a CIA operative very close to The Oswald's they would have been able to get there hands on the Imperial reflex camera.

I agree

It's no coincidence that almost all of the incriminating evidence was found at Mrs. Paine's home, that Oswald got his TSBD job through Ruth Paine, that Paine got Marine to come live with her for the express purpose, I think, of being the method by which evidence would be funneled to the DPD post assassination.

Paine's CIA connections are very obvious: Her dad via USAID, sister as a psychologist, as you said.

Then we have Paine working in Nicaragua in the 1980s where she's asking "deeply personal" questions of aid workers which caused them to believe that she worked for the CIA.

[Benjamin Cole]

"Here's a question: assuming the photographs are real, what do we think Oswald was doing in posing for these? Why would he do that? Holding some newspapers to say "look I'm a Communist" and holding guns to say "look I'm violent" ?  It really doesn't make any damn sense in the context of "they're real", does it? The only way it makes sense is that they're phony and designed to incriminate."

 

-----

The backyard photos may be "real," along with the documents and photos regarding the General Walker shooting, and parts of Oswald's Mexico City jaunt. Oswald was willfully writing and docuenting the biography of a left-ing nut. In truth, Oswald was a CIA asset.  

I suspect Oswald was part of CIA "Northwoods"-type project, a phony JFK assassination attempt. Someone piggybacked on the operation, and shot JFK for real.  This left Oswald as the patsy.

[Joe Bauer]

On 9/6/2020 at 3:29 AM, Benjamin Cole said:

"Here's a question: assuming the photographs are real, what do we think Oswald was doing in posing for these? Why would he do that? Holding some newspapers to say "look I'm a Communist" and holding guns to say "look I'm violent" ?  It really doesn't make any damn sense in the context of "they're real", does it? The only way it makes sense is that they're phony and designed to incriminate."

 

-----

The backyard photos may be "real," along with the documents and photos regarding the General Walker shooting, and parts of Oswald's Mexico City jaunt. Oswald was willfully writing and docuenting the biography of a left-ing nut. In truth, Oswald was a CIA asset.  

I suspect Oswald was part of CIA "Northwoods"-type project, a phony JFK assassination attempt. Someone piggybacked on the operation, and shot JFK for real.  This left Oswald as the patsy.

Why Oswald would take such photos ( which couldn't be more incriminating ) will always be one of my main suspicion questions regarding his role in the JFK event.

The more you try to understand why Oswald would create these and keep them so close and findable and even write "Hunter Of Fascists" on one the more you are compelled to rationally consider them as a calculated part of a set up.

Oswald exhibits enough intelligence in his background and verbal engagement with others to indicate he wasn't a typical dim witted, dumb crime planning idiot.

Even the dumbest of major caper planning criminals would know not to take pictures of themselves ahead of time holding the weapons they knew they would be using in these and then keep them close and findable.

Oswald's reported personal interests included Russian language study, Russian opera listening, regularly visiting libraries and bringing home and reading books, reading newspapers, planning and carrying out world travel itineraries, learning Radar operations in the Marines, photography, using what Buell Wesley Frazier described as a vocabulary over his head and those of his TXSBD lunch room co-workers and an ability to keep a decent conversation going for at least awhile with the erudite Michael Paine and George de Mohrenschildt.

Elitist Michael Paine did dismiss Oswald later in his testimony as an uneducated fool however. 

Yet, the taking of the BYPs and leaving them laying around belies the intelligence we have been told Oswald possessed and that he used and exhibited in his odd adventures including New Orleans Pro-Castro public activism, his radio and television debate appearance there, his trip to Mexico City, his covert Alex Hidell alias effort and even his public statements made ( often shouted ) in that crazy Dallas PD room to room to-and-fro hustling through wall-to -wall crammed crowds of question yelling reporters.

Through all of this reported and recorded Oswald behavior, comments and actions, which displayed more intelligence than a typical dumb criminal, I ask you ... do you think Oswald was just that stupid, inept and/or naive to create something as incriminating as the BYPs?

Oswald is in such a unique background, activity and mental make up place versus all other 20th century high figure assassins imo.   

One that is simply...too unique.

Most all those others were mentally ill stupid. Not world traveled.

Oswald just didn't come close to that kind of common bond craziness in his regular life and role of husband and father and social engagement that was admittedly very limited but still open and offered to those who he felt could carry on a decent political philosophy discussion.

So much of Oswald's reported behavior, actions and words contradicts the dumb criminal profile to such an improbable degree ( the laughably incriminating BYPs ) that in it's totality suggests a promoted false reality historical portrait of him imo. 

 

 

Edited September 7, 2020 by Joe Bauer

[Richard Booth]

I pretty much agree with all that Joe.

The only scenario I can think of where we have Oswald taking these pictures is this scenario where he is painting himself as a radical or a militant as part of some sort of "cover" -- it would be a scenario that corresponds to what he was doing in New Orleans with the FPCC flyers and subsequent radio debate.

He takes the pictures and he wants to use them as evidence he's a Castro-loving communist radical. So in the conspiratorial scenario here we can imagine that Oswald's "handler" -- whomever is directing the FPCC actions, most likely -- tells him he needs to do this and send the pictures to The Worker and hope they are published, and that he can then use the copy of The Worker which has his photograph in it as "bona fides" in future operations. Meanwhile he's actually being set up with the photos.

I suspect that Oswald realized he was a patsy probably immediately, which is why he left and why he got his gun, and him going to the Texas theater related to him meeting a "contact" there. He realizes he's being set up but remains optimistic that maybe he can get out of it by meeting his contact.

When he was shown the photographs at DPD HQ he knew right then what was going on, and that's probably why he said "I'm just a patsy"

[Joe Bauer]

4 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

I pretty much agree with all that Joe.

The only scenario I can think of where we have Oswald taking these pictures is this scenario where he is painting himself as a radical or a militant as part of some sort of "cover" -- it would be a scenario that corresponds to what he was doing in New Orleans with the FPCC flyers and subsequent radio debate.

He takes the pictures and he wants to use them as evidence he's a Castro-loving communist radical. So in the conspiratorial scenario here we can imagine that Oswald's "handler" -- whomever is directing the FPCC actions, most likely -- 

Wasn't David Phillips the highest person directing the FPCC front?

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Wasn't David Phillips the highest person directing the FPCC front?

Yeah, and Phillips met with Oswald in Sept. 1963, at least by the on-record account of Antonio Veciana. The very solid researcher John Newman says the timing is off for the Phillips-Veciana-Oswald meeting...but Newman is working only with 50-year-old paper records, that might have been monkeyed with. 

I attached a file for your perusal. I don't know where to publish this yet. 

JFK-word=9:7:2020.docx

[Joe Bauer]

It's been reported that David Phillips made a death bed confession to his surviving brother that he (David) was in Dallas on 11,22,1963.

Contradicting his long time claim that he wasn't.

His brother was very upset about this confession from what I remember reading about the death bed meet up.

[Richard Booth]

14 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Wasn't David Phillips the highest person directing the FPCC front?

He was, as far as the literature goes, and as far as I know from the books I have read, though two points to add:

1) This could be wrong

2) If Oswald was part of a FPCC counterintelligence ruse, he wouldn't be reporting to the highest level person

From the literature, we can also discern that others involved in the FPCC operations included George Joannides and James McCord. 

For McCord, this is cited in Newman, John. Oswald and the CIA. p. 138.

For Joannides, he was handling the DRE and we know from Oswald's encounters with Bringuer and appearance on that debate, what he was doing was linked to the D.R.E.

Other intelligence related folks who appear to be connected to Oswald's activities in New Orleans re: FPCC include the organization INCA w/ Ed Butler who was part and parcel to the debate with Oswald and whose organization later distributed a vinyl record of the recording which represented Oswald as some sort of Russia connected asset. Then we have Guy Bannister and the rest at 544 Camp who seem to be connected in some fashion, and we have FBI official Warren DeBrueys who seem to be connected to all this in some fashion.

There are probably things I have missed here, and it's always possible I may have got some details above wrong: I am not an expert on this but rather have a strong interest.

I believe that Oswald would have necessarily reported to a lower level person or a cutout and it would be unlikely he reported directly to Phillips. On the other hand, Phillips was a case officer and so he did have people who reported directly to him who were assets like Oswald appears to have been.

Phillips seems central to this in terms of his FPCC connections and his involvement in so many things on the periphery which touch upon Oswald. What are the odds that's just "happenstance" ? 

[Richard Booth]

10 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Yeah, and Phillips met with Oswald in Sept. 1963, at least by the on-record account of Antonio Veciana. The very solid researcher John Newman says the timing is off for the Phillips-Veciana-Oswald meeting...but Newman is working only with 50-year-old paper records, that might have been monkeyed with. 

I attached a file for your perusal. I don't know where to publish this yet. 

JFK-word=9:7:2020.docx 22.22 kB · 3 downloads

I love John Newman's work on this though reading his book Oswald and the CIA was a brutal and exhausting effort. I remember thinking at the time "this is really dry" but then again I was a teenager when I read it many years ago. 

I have recently read Vincent Salandria's review of that book and that left me howling and in stitches, it was that amusing. I can't rightly say that I agree with Salandria's assessment. It seems to me that Newman was trying to distance himself from the work of kooky nutters and to firmly entrench himself in the arena of scholarship but Salandria does raise some good points particularly about the people that Newman thanks in the book and some of his conclusions.

Of course Newman has made greater contributions in recent years when you compare that to the 1995 book.

Having said all this, I must say that I've always been rather suspect about Veciana's assertion he met with Maurice Bishop and Lee Harvey Oswald. Something about that story seems off to me. I could be wrong, as always. 

I believe that if Oswald was being handled in his FPCC efforts in New Orleans and later actions in Texas it was as an unwitting asset, where he doesn't know he's being manipulated or that if he was being handled there had to have been a cutout. I don't see Bishop/Phillips handling Oswald directly, if we are assuming he Oswald was being set up as the assassin, because whomever was doing it would want to ensure a buffer between the two. 

[Richard Booth]

11 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Yeah, and Phillips met with Oswald in Sept. 1963, at least by the on-record account of Antonio Veciana. The very solid researcher John Newman says the timing is off for the Phillips-Veciana-Oswald meeting...but Newman is working only with 50-year-old paper records, that might have been monkeyed with. 

I attached a file for your perusal. I don't know where to publish this yet. 

JFK-word=9:7:2020.docx 22.22 kB · 3 downloads

I agree with your conclusion that the Walker shot was an intentional miss.

That whole thing was designed to show that Oswald was violent, and I think it was also part of the script to show that Oswald needed a scope because he missed without one. The original script has Oswald getting a scope separately from the rifle. It has Oswald visiting Furniture Mart in November asking for work on his rifle. They refer him to an Irving sports shop. "Oswald" also tells the people at Furniture Mart that he will be coming into money in a couple weeks. Next up we have a repair tag found at Dial Ryder's Irving gun shop and a number of "anonymous tips" being given to DPD and FBI saying Oswald had a scope mounted by Dial Ryder. Then a front page newspaper article appears which says Oswald had his scope mounted. But, there is a problem: Dial Ryder denies that he ever mounted a scope for Oswald. He denies it to CBS News TV reporters and he denies it on the phone to other reporters. Subsequently, after November 29th, it is reported that Oswald's scope came with the rifle. As a result, the Dial Ryder repair tag for "Oswald" now makes no sense, and the phony street theater going on at Furniture Mart and Sports Drome rifle ranch are tied in to this thing.

Also of note is that the "Oswald" who appeared at Furniture Mart drove a car. Note that Ruth Paine was trying to get Oswald a driver's license. I think that was going on because the Oswald impersonator was seen driving (and talking about how he was coming into money) and so they needed Oswald to have a driver's license for those witnesses.

All this stuff about Furniture Mart, Dial Ryder's gun shop, and Sports Drome are in the WC volumes and WC testimony. I conclude all of the above from reading the WC testimony and exhibits: the script initially had Oswald missing Walker and deciding "I need a scope" then subsequently very visibly looking for, and eventually getting mounted a scope. We have impersonations and "witnesses" to Oswald looking for that scope and we have these very suspicious "anonymous tips" on November 23rd about mounting the scope.

The original BY photos, supposedly taken before the Walker shooting, depict a rifle without a scope on it. At least, that is what you can discern if you look at the original photographs. No scope visible. It's only the later very high quality LIFE magazine cover where you can all of a sudden see incredible level of detail and lo and behold there's a scope on the rifle. 

Edited September 7, 2020 by Richard Booth
typo

[Pete Mellor]

What to make of Jim Marrs' report from Robert & Patricia Hester who processed a BYP with no figure in the picture......& this was on the 22nd, before they were found in the Paine garage!

[Richard Booth]

12 minutes ago, Pete Mellor said:

What to make of Jim Marrs' report from Robert & Patricia Hester who processed a BYP with no figure in the picture......& this was on the 22nd, before they were found in the Paine garage!

I am skeptical of this because they took so damn long to come forward, over 20 years.

It reminds me a lot of the bogus story given by Gordon Arnold.

I believe that the conspirators, if they were making phony pictures, would have developed them themselves and not taken them to a non-secure commercial developer like the Hesters.