Creating the Oswald Legend : Part 6

[James DiEugenio]

This is one of the best parts of the series.  Very informative about Nagell, the Paines, New Orleans and the Power Elite.  A nice cross section of the JFK case today.

Plus its well written and easy to understand.  Thanks so much VV, really proud to host this at Kennedys and King.  Next up will be a summary and conclusion.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/creating-the-oswald-legend-part-6

[Greg Doudna]

Again on Ruth Paine, the same mix of blizzard of argument from associations and circumstances and suspicion, without evidence in all this time that Ruth Paine had anything to do with the assassination, framing Oswald, or being an operative for an intelligence agency. Not only is there no evidence or proof of guilt, influenced by having known her I believe she is factually innocent and there will one day be a burden of karma on those who out of zeal worthy of inquisitors of old, smear and destroy innocent people without qualms thinking that is doing justice for the Kennedys and King. Clay Shaw. Kerry Thornley. Ruth Paine. Dozens or hundreds more of innocent people smeared and lives damaged, caught up in witchhunt mentality generated by the fundamental trauma of the unsolved crime of the JFK assassination. Meanwhile, the ones actually responsible for the killing of JFK remain unfound and uncharged. Prosecutors focus on closing cases with anyone handy who will do. Rene Girard scapegoating theory in anthropology. 

I read the section on Ruth Paine and marked three allegations, not familiar to me, to fact-check. A frustration was that the footnotes do not cite primary documents but cite secondary sources which when tracked down, also do not cite a document but give a footnote to another secondary source, which is then unavailable on Mary Ferrell or anywhere else on the internet. That is frustrating when trying to fact-check claims smearing someone I knew. Here is what I found on the three.

#1. "Michael [Paine] was employed by the Franklin Institute, a CIA conduit."

I looked up the Franklin Institute on wikipedia and see it is a longstanding scientific organization, looks reputable. I verified that it is correct MIchael Paine was employed for about a year in 1951-1952 in a science lab with that organization. But what about the "CIA conduit" part? A footnote is given to James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed. I looked that up and the same assertion there is given another footnote to a Carol Hewitt article in Probe vol. 5, no. 1. Not available on Mary Ferrell. Not available anywhere on the internet. I googled "Franklin Institute CIA" and came up with nothing. Dead end. Maybe a document is cited in the unattainable Probe secondary reference. Who knows. 

#2. "[Ruth Paine's] father worked for the OSS during WWII".

A footnote is given to DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed. I looked that up and the same assertion appears with a footnote to a page number in Probe, vol. 3, no. 4, no author or article title given. Not available on Mary Ferrell. Not available anywhere on the internet. Dead end. Is it true? Who knows.

#3. "Ruth was also responsible for discovering the well-known 'Kostin letter' allegedly written by Oswald saying that he met Comrade Kostin (meaning Kostikov) in Mexico City. What makes this odd is that in an FBI interview of November 28, 1963, Ruth told agent Don Moore that she had no idea Oswald had been in Mexico."

I think the first sentence is not quite clear, in that the letter was actually first discovered by a govt mail-intercept program and the letter was known to the FBI before Ruth disclosed independently that she had her own handwritten copy of the letter, and a draft of it LHO had left behind. The author is trying to insinuate that Ruth Paine was serially fabricating fake evidence, which is why the language of "Ruth was also responsible for discovering..." But my fact-check interest was on the second sentence, the assertion that Ruth told an FBI agent "that she had no idea Oswald had been in Mexico", after she had seen and read and copied the letter from Oswald in which Oswald wrote of having gone to Mexico City! If true, this could hardly be interpreted as other than dissembling or dishonesty. I had not encountered that allegation before. I fact-checked it. There was no footnote in the article but I found the FBI document mentioned fairly easily, on the Mary Ferrell site, a telex from the Dallas FBI office to hq. But the wording reads slightly different from what was represented. It reads:

"Interview of Mrs. Ruth Paine reflects that she did not know Oswald was going to Mexico, and after Oswald showed up in Dallas on Nov. four, last, neither he nor his wife furnished any info to Mrs. Paine to the effect that Oswald had been in Mexico. In fact, Oswald claimed that he had been in Houston and then had been in Dallas a few days before he called his wife at Mrs. Paine/s home on Nov. four last." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57725&relPageId=158&search=don_moore paine)

Ruth Paine was not saying, at the time of this telephone FBI interview (of Nov 28, 1963) that she had no idea that Oswald had been in Mexico. She said she did not know that Oswald "was going to" Mexico, before Oswald left on that trip. The careless and slipshod alteration of wording, both on the part of the author of the article and the editorial oversight of the publisher, makes it sound like Ruth Paine was lying, when that was not the case at all. 

[Steve Roe]

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Again on Ruth Paine, the same mix of blizzard of argument from associations and circumstances and suspicion, without evidence in all this time that Ruth Paine had anything to do with the assassination, framing Oswald, or being an operative for an intelligence agency. Not only is there no evidence or proof of guilt, influenced by having known her I believe she is factually innocent and there will one day be a burden of karma on those who out of zeal worthy of inquisitors of old, smear and destroy innocent people without qualms thinking that is doing justice for the Kennedys and King. Clay Shaw. Kerry Thornley. Ruth Paine. Dozens or hundreds more of innocent people smeared and lives damaged, caught up in witchhunt mentality generated by the fundamental trauma of the unsolved crime of the JFK assassination. Meanwhile, the ones actually responsible for the killing of JFK remain unfound and uncharged. Prosecutors focus on closing cases with anyone handy who will do. Rene Girard scapegoating theory in anthropology. 

I read the section on Ruth Paine and marked three allegations, not familiar to me, to fact-check. A frustration was that the footnotes do not cite primary documents but cite secondary sources which when tracked down, also do not cite a document but give a footnote to another secondary source, which is then unavailable on Mary Ferrell or anywhere else on the internet. That is frustrating when trying to fact-check claims smearing someone I knew. Here is what I found on the three.

#1. "Michael [Paine] was employed by the Franklin Institute, a CIA conduit."

I looked up the Franklin Institute on wikipedia and see it is a longstanding scientific organization, looks reputable. I verified that it is correct MIchael Paine was employed for about a year in 1951-1952 in a science lab with that organization. But what about the "CIA conduit" part? A footnote is given to James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed. I looked that up and the same assertion there is given another footnote to a Carol Hewitt article in Probe vol. 5, no. 1. Not available on Mary Ferrell. Not available anywhere on the internet. I googled "Franklin Institute CIA" and came up with nothing. Dead end. Maybe a document is cited in the unattainable Probe secondary reference. Who knows. 

#2. "[Ruth Paine's] father worked for the OSS during WWII".

A footnote is given to DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed. I looked that up and the same assertion appears with a footnote to a page number in Probe, vol. 3, no. 4, no author or article title given. Not available on Mary Ferrell. Not available anywhere on the internet. Dead end. Is it true? Who knows.

#3. "Ruth was also responsible for discovering the well-known 'Kostin letter' allegedly written by Oswald saying that he met Comrade Kostin (meaning Kostikov) in Mexico City. What makes this odd is that in an FBI interview of November 28, 1963, Ruth told agent Don Moore that she had no idea Oswald had been in Mexico."

I think the first sentence is not quite clear, in that the letter was actually first discovered by a govt mail-intercept program and the letter was known to the FBI before Ruth disclosed independently that she had her own handwritten copy of the letter, and a draft of it LHO had left behind. The author is trying to insinuate that Ruth Paine was serially fabricating fake evidence, which is why the language of "Ruth was also responsible for discovering..." But my fact-check interest was on the second sentence, the assertion that Ruth told an FBI agent "that she had no idea Oswald had been in Mexico", after she had seen and read and copied the letter from Oswald in which Oswald wrote of having gone to Mexico City! If true, this could hardly be interpreted as other than dissembling or dishonesty. I had not encountered that allegation before. I fact-checked it. There was no footnote in the article but I found the FBI document mentioned fairly easily, on the Mary Ferrell site, a telex from the Dallas FBI office to hq. But the wording reads slightly different from what was represented. It reads:

"Interview of Mrs. Ruth Paine reflects that she did not know Oswald was going to Mexico, and after Oswald showed up in Dallas on Nov. four, last, neither he nor his wife furnished any info to Mrs. Paine to the effect that Oswald had been in Mexico. In fact, Oswald claimed that he had been in Houston and then had been in Dallas a few days before he called his wife at Mrs. Paine/s home on Nov. four last." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57725&relPageId=158&search=don_moore paine)

Ruth Paine was not saying, at the time of this telephone FBI interview (of Nov 28, 1963) that she had no idea that Oswald had been in Mexico. She said she did not know that Oswald "was going to" Mexico, before Oswald left on that trip. The careless and slipshod alteration of wording, both on the part of the author of the article and the editorial oversight of the publisher, makes it sound like Ruth Paine was lying, when that was not the case at all. 

Well stated Greg, thanks 

[James DiEugenio]

Steve, you would defend CE 399. Which is why I don't find you credible.

Its not well stated at all.

Greg avoids what I think is the best point in the article.

In an FBI interview Ruth told them that neither Marina nor Lee said one word about Oswald being in Mexico City when Oswald arrived. In fact Lee said he had been elsewhere in Texas in the meantime.  Yet, after the 2 police searches, she miraculously began to produce a steady stream of dubious evidence which depicted him being in Mexico. First, nothing about being in Mexico, then artifacts about being there.  And this will continue 8 months later with Priscilla Johnson. 

Greg, not even Wesley Liebeler bought that one. 

The other point is the Imperial Reflex camera.  If you have ever seen one of these, its  hard to comprehend how the police could miss this.  In fact, there was an  internal police inquiry later about how they did. But they did find smaller cameras --including the MInox.  (But let us not go there, Greg will have a stroke.)

The other two cameras were a Stereo Realist  and a Russian camera, a Cuera.  Small evidentiary camera problem: None of these could produce the infamous BYP's. Which were  done on 620 roll film.

But, as with the Mexico City stuff--and unlike the hapless blind DPD-- Ruth found the Imperial Reflex in early December. But she did not give it to the police or the FBI.  She gave it to Robert Oswald.  Who kept it for two months.  In a February interview with the FBI Marina said she recognized the Cuera and the Stereo Realist as belonging to Oswald.

But then before the WC, she denied the Stereo Realist was Oswald's.

She then moved in with Robert Oswald, who had the Imperial Reflex.  When interviewed by the FBI again, she said the Cuera belonged to Lee but the Stereo Realist did not. She now added that the Walker photos were taken with an American camera. How she could know this is puzzling.

Now, after over two months, Robert surrenders the Imperial Reflex to, of all people, FBI agent Bardwell Odum.  The guy who helped the Paines disappear Oswald's Minox. WIthin 72 hours, through an FBI interpreter, she now said she took the BYP with the Imperial Reflex. The Stereo Realist was turned over to Ruth, who said it was hers all along. Man is  Ruth good at disposing of inconvenient cameras and finding necessary ones.

Odum and Ruth took awhile, but they solved that problem. As they did many others.

And Greg finds not one note of suspicion in all this. As James Agee once wrote, go back to sleep Lucky Pierre.

Edited January 16, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Steve Roe]

23 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Steve, you would defend CE 399. Which is why I don't find you credible.

Its not well stated at all.

Greg avoids what I think is the best point in the article.

In an FBI interview Ruth told them that neither Marina nor Lee said one word about Oswald being in Mexico City when Oswald arrived. In fact Lee said he had been elsewhere in Texas in the meantime.  Yet, after the 2 police searches, she miraculously began to produce a steady stream of dubious evidence which depicted him being in Mexico. First, nothing about being in Mexico, then artifacts about being there.  And this will continue 8 months later with Priscilla Johnson. 

Greg, not even Wesley Liebeler bought that one. 

The other point is the Imperial Reflex camera.  If you have ever seen one of these, its  hard to comprehend how the police could miss this.  In fact, there was an  internal police inquiry later about how they did. But they did find smaller cameras --including the MInox.  (But let us not go there, Greg will have a stroke.)

The other two cameras were a Stereo Realist  and a Russian camera, a Cuera.  Small evidentiary camera problem: None of these could produce the infamous BYP's. Which were  done on 620 roll film.

But, as with the Mexico City stuff--and unlike the hapless blind DPD-- Ruth found the Imperial Reflex in early December. But she did not give it to the police or the FBI.  She gave it to Robert Oswald.  Who kept it for two months.  In a February interview with the FBI Marina said she recognized the Cuera and the Stereo Realist as belonging to Oswald.

But then before the WC, she denied the Stereo Realist was Oswald's.

She then moved in with Robert Oswald, who had the Imperial Reflex.  When interviewed by the FBI again, she said the Cuera belonged to Lee but the Stereo Realist did not. She now added that the Walker photos were taken with an American camera. How she could know this is puzzling.

Now, after over two months, Robert surrenders the Imperial Reflex to, of all people, FBI agent Bardwell Odum.  The guy who helped the Paines disappear Oswald's Minox. WIthin 72 hours, through an FBI interpreter, she now said she took the BYP with the Imperial Reflex. The Stereo Realist was turned over to Ruth, who said it was hers all along. Man is  Ruth good at disposing of inconvenient cameras and finding necessary ones.

Odum and Ruth took awhile, but they solved that problem. As they did many others.

And Greg finds not one note of suspicion in all this. As James Agee once wrote, go back to sleep Lucky Pierre.

Mr. DiEugenio, I could care less if you find me "Not Credible". 

What's not credible is your diversion away from Mr. Doudna's points regarding Ruth Paine. He's asking for source material cited in your book, Destiny Betrayed, regarding the Probe article. Evidently you will not provide it, or you missed his point. 

I agree with Mr. Doudna's assertions that Ruth Paine has been unfairly victimized by reckless researchers and various book authors over the years. 

[James DiEugenio]

Oh please Steve.  

Do me a favor and put me on ignore.

If you want to be Greg's amplifier, fine, just avoid me.

[Greg Doudna]

On 1/16/2021 at 9:04 AM, James DiEugenio said:

Steve, you would defend CE 399. Which is why I don't find you credible.

Its not well stated at all.

Greg avoids what I think is the best point in the article.

In an FBI interview Ruth told them that neither Marina nor Lee said one word about Oswald being in Mexico City when Oswald arrived. In fact Lee said he had been elsewhere in Texas in the meantime.  Yet, after the 2 police searches, she miraculously began to produce a steady stream of dubious evidence which depicted him being in Mexico. First, nothing about being in Mexico, then artifacts about being there. 

I was commenting on three points with the most important one being the third, which in a normal universe would result in a simple note of thanks for bringing that to your attention and that you would get it corrected. What you did is go ad hominem on Steve Roe, then act like a street fighter with me, attacking me with what about this and what about that over there.

On the above, I do not wish to put words into your mouth, but it is frustrating addressing what I think you mean if it is not stated directly, for fear of misrepresenting you (I do not wish to do that in all seriousness). For example, your wording, so systemically nasty toward Ruth Paine through a wide corpus of writings, has here, "she miraculously began to produce a steady stream of dubious evidence which depicted him being in Mexico". 

All I can say is, making my best attempt at accurate reading of your intent or meaning, that (a) this sounds sarcastic, with the point being (b) you seem to be insinuating that Ruth Paine--with no known prior training or experience or expertise in spycraft in her entire life; no physical location in a cramped home for carrying out such projects requiring technical expertise and secrecy from Marina; with hands full dealing with the needs of small children; and no evidence for the serious charge you are making--was forging or fabricating manufactured evidence for the purpose of falsely proving Oswald had taken a trip to Mexico.

This is a very serious charge that you are accusing Ruth Paine of: of wilfully producing falsified evidence for malicious purpose, which if proven in court would result in serious criminal charges. What is your evidence for this? Your reason for supposing this serious charge of malice on the part of Ruth Paine is true? So far as I can tell (again doing my best to be accurate in the absence of explicit statement from you), the argument is: the Dallas police failed to find some things in their searches on Fri and Sat Nov 22-23; therefore it is suspicious that Ruth Paine would later turn over to investigators things she had found that she believed the police would want to see. 

A lot of the statements along this line I think overlook that the Dallas police had no warrant or mandate, and in fact were not interested, in searching through the belongings of Ruth Paine or Michael Paine. The interest was in Oswald's. The impression I get from reading the reports is that the police asked, with Ruth's cooperation, to identify where Lee's things were, and police scooped up everything that looked like Oswald's there (getting some of Ruth's and Michael's things mistakenly in the process), without doing a fine-combed search of every square inch of the house. 

But what are these Mexico items that you are insinuating Ruth Paine has fabricated or produced out of thin air, that were not Oswald's, but maliciously and evilly attributed to Oswald by (you insinuate) Ruth Paine?

In checking (documents on the Mary Ferrell foundation site) I see references to: a bracelet; an English-Spanish dictionary; picture post cars of Mexican scenes; a Mexican coin.

Now there is an interesting question here. If these items in fact were fabricated out of thin air, falsely said to have been found by Ruth Paine in her house when Oswald in fact had nothing to do with them, would Marina back up that story? We know Marina was separated from Ruth and said some Secret Service person, never identified, had told her Ruth might be CIA, with Marina citing that as her reason for cutting Ruth out of her life after the assassination without other explanation. With this context, what does Marina say about these items when asked? Does she say, "No, I never saw those with Lee!"? No. From an FBI telex from the Dallas office to hq, Jan 21, 1964--concerning the items that you sarcastically say Ruth "miraculously" found, insinuating Ruth was dishonest:

"Marina said she did not know the bracelet, or English-Spanish dictionary, English dictionary, picture postal cards or Mexican scenes or the coin with the hole in it had come from Mexico. She insists she did not know Oswald intended going to Mexico or that he went to Mexico. Stated the Mexican coin given her by Oswald after his arrival back in Dallas in October last but not immediately after his arrival. The bracelet was given her by Oswald immediately after his arrival but she did not ask him where he had purchased it. Marina said Oswald had a similar bracelet for himself and wanted Marina to have one for herself. She said she did not question Oswald about where he had obtained the dictionaries or the picture postal cards. She pointed out Oswald was a most secretive and close-mouthed individual and there were many things Oswald did or thought she knew nothing about. She stated at times she had asked Oswald questions to which he had replied in the equivalent quote none of your business end quote and for this reason she hesitated to ask him questions even though she might want to. Marina said she knows nothing of a phonograph record possibly purchased in Mexico by Oswald and brought by him to Dallas. She never heard him mention Jai-Lai games." (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57762&search=Mexican_coin#relPageId=4&tab=page)

With the exception of the final item, a phonograph record, Marina confirms the existence of all of these items, and that they were Oswald's. Therefore if you are going to insinuate Ruth Paine dishonestly claimed to find these items in her house ("miraculously produced... dubious evidence"), it sounds like--hard for me to reason your thinking any other way--you are also insinuating Marina is in on the plot (of what you suppose is Ruth's production of fake items suggesting Oswald went to Mexico). And that Marina to the present day, even while publicly cooperating with researchers on other matters and publicly saying she now thinks Oswald was innocent of the assassination, has nevertheless kept faith with this lying on this point too (of confirming the existence of those Oswald items), in addition to the lying you insinuate for Ruth. 

I imagine many people on this forum, maybe even a majority, believe there is something to what you insinuate here, so malicious toward a living person, despite not one shred of evidence the charge is true, because it just has been repeated and repeated and repeated so often. 

Sometime after Nov 12, 1963, the FBI became aware of a letter from Oswald mailed to the Soviet embassy in D.C. telling of his Mexico City trip, via a covert mail-intercept program. Sometime prior to Nov 21 the FBI office in Dallas became aware of that letter. FBI agent Hosty of that office said he saw it Nov 21, the day before the assassination (he said the letter had been in the local FBI office earlier but not seen by him until then). The next day, Nov 22, the day of the assassination, Hosty, present at Fritz's interrogation of Oswald after his arrest, had either himself asked (per Fritz) or had instructed Fritz to ask (per Hosty) Oswald if he had gone to Mexico. This from multiple accounts of that interrogation question. The next day, Nov 23, Ruth Paine (who had spoken with Hosty earlier when Hosty had come to the house seeking Lee) gave her handwritten copy of Lee's letter to Hosty.  

So you err in making it sound as if there was no Mexico trip with respect to Oswald in either FBI's or Ruth's awareness, at the outset. ("First, nothing about being in Mexico, then artifacts about being there") On Nov 28--many days after both the FBI and Ruth read Oswald's letter about going to Mexico--Ruth, when asked, told the FBI Oswald had never told anything to her (in New Orleans) about going to Mexico, nor had Oswald told her anything about being in Mexico after he had returned from that trip. Instead, Ruth said, Oswald told her he had been in Houston those days. Ruth reported what Oswald told her because the FBI asked and wanted to know. You see something amiss in this. You present it as if Oswald's Mexico trip was somehow a late entry into Ruth's narrative, with insinuation that what Ruth told authorities is suspicious and dishonest.

Do I understand correctly from your response so far that you intend to just do nothing about the article you have published misrepresenting Ruth Paine, wrongly making her out to be saying and meaning what she clearly did not say or mean from the source document in a way that is damaging and just not true, that you would not like if it were done to you, brought out in my third point or conclusion of my original post?  

[James DiEugenio]

Greg:

If Ruth did not know Oswald was going to Mexico either before or after he allegedly returned then it is fair to say she had no idea he had been there.

As for the 'serious charge" of her producing evidence that Oswald was in Mexico:  this is a statement of fact.  She began to produce these articles of evidence, like a necklace and a betting guide, among other things. And this process went on with Priscilla Johnson into August.  And, as written, even Leibeler had a problem with that.

No one will ever know about the provenance of these items.  Maybe they were real, maybe they were not.  But to object to even bringing up such a possibility, and then describing the reasons for skepticism?  Its a very simple dichotomy. Some people think Oswald went to Mexico City, some people do not. Greg Parker is now saying he has something utterly convincing that he did not. I mean, this is simply a debate about the record.  Many people today, after going through the declassified files of the ARRB, think it is very possible that Oswald did not go to Mexico.  And now we see that Ruth Paine did not know either before or after.

Which, by the way, coincides with what Marina originally said to the Secret Service.  She had no inkling that Oswald was in Mexico City at all. That was in the first Secret Service report by Charles Kunkel.  Now, normally, one would think that if Oswald was going to tell anyone he would tell Marina, and Marina would have told Ruth when she picked her up in New Orleans, or at least on the drive home, or when they arrived in Irving. 

Ruth:  Where is Lee?

Marina: He went to Mexico CIty.

Pretty simple and logical right? According to both, that did not happen. And according to Ruth, Lee said it did not happen, because he was not there.

For the life of me I do not know why this is so hard to comprehend.  Ruth had no idea that Lee was in Mexico City, and neither did Marina. And this is them saying it, not someone imputing it to them.  After this, Ruth and then Priscllla Johnson began to produce evidence that he was. And that process went on until August. Those are just facts. If you think LHO was not in Mexico CIty, then they become rather intriguing.  If you think he was there and did the things the WC and CIA said he did--which is an increasingly unlikely tenet--then its not. So I assume you think LHO did go to Mexico CIty and did the things the CIA and WC said he did.  Alright, then that becomes a difference that allows for the disagreement about Ruth.  But that debate does not belong here.  It has been debated for about 20 years, ever since the Lopez Report was declassified en toto about 2003.  And if you talk to the authors, they don't think he was there.  So this is not out of the ionosphere.  Its a natural question from the newly adduced declassified record.  It other words, it is based on facts.

Saying the Kostin letter was discovered by Ruth is different than saying the FBI did. The FBI intercepted it.  As a matter of course.  I mean you might as well say the Russians discovered it. And its this letter which again imputes Oswald was in Mexico. I do not have to tell you the problems with this letter.  Here are some of them:

https://peternewburysblog.wordpress.com/2013/07/29/oswalds-kostikov-letter/

That informative article has been out there for years.  Its not by me, or VV, or Carol Hewett.  Its someone completely divorced from us.  Which proves that the questions come from the evidence, not from the weird characteristics of certain people.  Again, to you there is nothing puzzling about this letter.  To others, there are several things puzzling about it.  And we have not even gotten to Chris Newton's utterly fascinating work on it.

People can disagree about facts, or the authenticity of evidence.  Happens all the time in this case. But to say that somehow what VV is doing is out from leftfield, I mean, Greg Parker is doing the same thing.  I think his work on the actor, Hootkins,  that Ruth knew from school and shows up at the Shasteen barber shop with LHO, is very interesting.  You say its Wesley Frazier. So you argue with Greg about it.  I think Greg won that argument and I don't agree with Greg about everything. But on that one he won it on the merits of the evidence. So again, its not just VV and Jim D and Carol.  Its a wide variety of people who read the record differently than you do.

We also disagree about Clay Shaw. You align yourself with the whole Phelan/James crowd that somehow he was a put upon victim of Jim Garrison who was out to somehow exploit the Kennedy case. I could not disagree more.  And again, this is based upon declassified records which you wish to dismiss or ignore. And this includes repeated and provable perjury. Again, I think the record bears out very powerfully and with much evidence what Bill Davy, Joan Mellen, and myself have written.  You do not. Even though Shaw later admitted that he did know Oswald, knew he was a double agent, and knew he was a patsy.  Which, of course, makes his whole trial a farce.

Fine, let us disagree on those evidentiary points. But they are points of fact, they are in the record. You interpret them one way.  VV, Carol, Greg Parker, me and the guy form Melbourne above, see them another way.  Its up to the reader to make up his own mind when he is confronted with all the evidence.

 

 

Edited January 18, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Steve Roe]

Mr. DiEugenio, respectfully I'm not here to simply "amplify" Mr. Doudna's comments. I happen to agree with him, as he thoughtfully researched this topic, and I am of the same opinion regarding the misinterpretation and character assassination of Ruth Paine. 

Now regarding your link to the "Melbourne" article which raises the question about the Oswald letter to the Soviet Embassy about how Oswald had foreknowledge that Cuban Consulate Azcue was going to be replaced soon by a successor. 

Alfredo Mirabal Diaz (who succeeded Azcue) was in the Mexico City Cuban Consulate at the time of Oswald's visit. Diaz witnessed the verbal confrontations between Azcue and Oswald. I suggest you read the HSCA Diaz testimony. 

showDoc.html (maryferrell.org)

[James DiEugenio]

And four other people deny it was Oswald.

Including the two CIA plants Eddie Lopes interviewed.

[Ron Bulman]

Greg and Steve, before you waste so much of our time and we get into Ruth and Michael's deeep WC testimony, can you riddle me this?

Why were The Paine's Files deep sixed?

The Paine Files - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum (ipbhost.com) 

[Greg Doudna]

Run Bulman--you mean why were the Paines' personal property returned to them because it was not part of the search warrant for Oswald's things? I don't know, why don't you do the research and check that out. Why do police return people's property to them that was taken by mistake? Good question.

[Greg Doudna]

James DiEugenio--I follow and appreciate your description of the issues to some extent. But what you refer to as evidence miraculously appearing from the Ruth Paine house indicating that Oswald had taken a trip to Mexico City is a little misleading if the intention is to single out Ruth Paine. I think the more accurate wording would be evidence "appearing". For example, Oswald's address book has in it addresses of the Mexico City Cuban consulate, also the name and office phone number of Silvia Duran at that consulate. That address book was found at Oswald's room on Beckley on Nov 22. How in your reconstruction would Ruth Paine have gotten access to that address book to forge those entries there? Those entries were in that address book late Friday afternoon Nov 22, because Hosty copied by hand all the entries he saw in that address book, right there in the Dallas police station that night.

If you think Ruth Paine forged Oswald's embassy letter draft in Oswald's handwriting, and forged the other Mexico City items of Oswald found in Marina's dresser drawer in the house, how did Ruth Paine assure that Marina would back up the existence of those fabrications when asked? 

Most of all, if Ruth Paine was intent on an elaborate covert scheme to fabricate all this evidence in order to make investigators and authorities think Oswald had gone to Mexico City, when she was asked if Oswald had said anything about going there, why did she not simply say "yes he did"? You believe she was truthful (that Oswald never volunteered that he had been in Mexico City to her). Why do you suppose she was truthful, against interests of supporting Oswald's trip to Mexico City? 

There is Oswald's visa application in New Orleans, and there are all of what David Josephs calls "bread crumbs" of material items and suborned witnesses purposely planted along the route of Oswald's Mexico City trip and at his Mexico City hotel, in order to deceive generations of investigators, in this extensive and multi-layered plot to fabricate an illusory trip of Oswald that never existed. Does it give you no pause that no document, no confession, no evidence, has come forth for the large-scale disinformation/impersonation operation you suppose? It is all "Harvey and Lee" genre of argument, of argument from pointing to incongruities and imagining elaborate scenarios as the only possible explanations. The logic of the argument for an entirely fake trip of Oswald to Mexico City seems to be:

(a) there is no evidence Oswald went there.

(b) the numerous reports of evidence that Oswald went there are therefore fabricated. See "a". 

On the impersonations in Mexico City: there is only one that for sure happened, and that is the voice one (not in-person) to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City, the one where the voice that was not Oswald's but represented himself as Oswald, phoning the Soviet embassy. I do not know that this point has been brought out, but that voice impersonation weighs extremely strongly in CONFIRMING that Oswald was there in Mexico City. Here is why: the phone call, if you examine the transcript exactly, is a phishing phone call. Someone (US spooks) is trying to find out information--anything--on what Oswald was DOING in that Soviet embassy. The name Kostikov was NOT planted by that voice-impersonation. The caller (the voice impersonator who was not Oswald in that phone call) said he had just been to the embassy, and it was the RUSSIAN who answered the phone that disclosed the name "Kostikov" as the identity of the person inside that embassy that Oswald had talked to. The way this phone call makes sense is US officials are tracking Oswald's movements, and impersonated that phone call to try to get information, in that case with some success in being told a name. The very existence of that voice-impersonation is because Oswald was there and had been in that Soviet embassy and US trackers wanted to know why. If Oswald was never there, or if an impersonator working for the US had fooled the Soviet embassy all of whose officials that day had no doubt it was Oswald, they would have known everything that happened (via the impersonator's intelligence) and would have had no need to do a phishing phone call.

The other cases of possible impersonation are more ambiguous. The photo of the heavyset man looking nothing like Oswald almost certainly was no impersonation since he did not represent himself as Oswald, even though the FBI was told that photo was of Oswald which it was not. On the other arguments for impersonation, with the Silvia Duran visit at the Cuban consulate, and with the students Oswald is alleged to have hung out with for a couple of days, that is murky. Of the two US assets inside the Cuban consulate who said they knew nothing of Oswald visiting there, I am not sure if you recognize that that means they knew nothing of an impersonator there either. In fact I looked up their reports a while back and recall that the information they actually gave was they had no information to give--evidently were not in the office in a position to see Oswald, when Oswald was there. It is not as if they saw an impersonator who was saying he was Oswald and said, "No, I saw him, but he was NOT Oswald". So those two are not evidence weighing in favor of impersonation; they are simply two inside sources inside that consulate who were unable to give any information at all on the question.

I think all of the evidence is likely to be explicable in terms of the voice impersonation being a real impersonation, but the other sightings being a mixture of real Oswald and wrong identifications. On the Cuban side, there was some pressure from wrongful but potentially extremely damaging intentional misinformation attempts to link Castro to Oswald. Whether that entered into some of the Cuban denials that it was Oswald I do not know, but it is a possibility, very understandable if so. 

Which is more likely: that Oswald concealed a trip to Mexico City (to Ruth Paine)? Or that Ruth Paine, with no evidence or prior history of such sophisticated spycraft, was forging and fabricating multiple items of evidence, all elaborately done to overcome the force of her own truthful testimony that Oswald never spoke of that trip to her?  

I also do not think it is accurate that any of the HSCA researchers concluded that Oswald never went to Mexico City. I think they saw many unanswered questions regarding what US intelligence was up to, and questions of itinerary and fact-checks, and raised questions of impersonations, but I don't think they came to the conclusions you think they did, as conclusions that a full-on complete impersonated trip happened. I think you are adding that conclusion to what the Lopez report actually found.

There are different views concerning the Oswald Mexico City impersonated trip issue, true, but I regard that as analogous to there are different views concerning whether there was a decades-long Harvey and Lee doppelganger plot. The only difference is one is shorter in duration than the other, but the dynamics and structure of the arguments appear roughly the same.

There are basically three possibilities concerning the Ruth and Marina testimony that Oswald did not tell of going to Mexico City. (a) Oswald was not forthcoming about it to Ruth and Marina. (b) Oswald was not forthcoming to Ruth only; Marina knew and Marina was untruthful in saying she did not know. (c) Oswald was truthful and there was an elaborate evidence-production project spanning two states and two countries, in order to fabricate an entire Mexico City trip for Oswald that never happened. 

Which is the most likely of those three? If you are going with "c", then maybe Oswald was truthful that he was in Houston those five days (as Ruth said Oswald had told her)? Oswald had been in Houston--he called someone in Houston whose wife told of being called by Oswald that night, and the man's name and address and phone information that he called was in Oswald's address book. So Oswald, on the assumption that he did make that Mexico City trip, was not actually lying if that is what he told Ruth, that he had been in Houston. And I think if both Ruth's and Marina's statements are looked at closely, neither actually said Oswald denied going to Mexico City.

Holmes, the post office official, testified to the Warren Commission that on Nov 24 Oswald talked freely to Fritz about his Mexico City trip. Fritz never disclosed that however. Everyone thinks Holmes must therefore have invented that out of whole cloth, since no one else reported or confirmed that, and Holmes' own written report at the time does not have that. I do not know what the actual truth is there, but it has occurred to me that if there was a rapidly-developing incentive to NOT have Oswald linked to Castro (the LBJ/WC rationale of not wanting a war with Cuba or the Soviet Union which could go nuclear), then there would be incentive or reason to suppress anything to do with Oswald having gone to Mexico City and the communist-nation consulates there. Whether that entered into some of the confusion and disinformation surrounding the Oswald Mexico City trip, Hoover's complaint that CIA had lied, etc., I do not know.   

Also, to clear up something quickly, on the Shasteen barbershop claim of giving Oswald haircuts and the 14-year-old, I do not think that was either Oswald or Wesley Frazier in Shasteen's barber shop, but rather a mistaken identification of Oswald on the part of Shasteen. I did say Westley Frazier at the beginning but realized I erred on that and abandoned that early on, in my discussion with Greg Parker on that subject. 

 

Edited January 19, 2021 by Greg Doudna

[James DiEugenio]

This is exactly what I did not want to get into.  I just said above that the provenance of those materials may be genuine or they may not be.

If depends on if Mexico City was a real trip by Oswald or if it was not.

But this is not the place to debate this issue because its not a specific point in VV's part 6.  Plus its been debated for ages.  Each side brings up what it thinks proves their case.  And the other side counters.  I have been doing this myself for years and I wrote two chapters in my last two books about it.  But to just bring up one point, evidently you did not click through to the link in the article to my discussion of Nagell.  Is it just a coincidence that he had the the info on Duran with him also? And he also had  a Mexico tourist card for himself and Aleksei Hidell? 

I don't think so.  

As David Jospehs points out, try and find any evidence in the CIA summaries of activity in Mexico CIty about Oswald prior to November 22nd. As per the material trail down and back, David has proven the two girls on the bus lied. And my God, the trail on the way back is utterly ludicrous. Its obvious what happened.  Echeverria and Ochoa put together a BS trail of evidence for the CIA.  When the FBI checked it out, too late by the way, they understood what happened. Which is why Hoover wrote to the effect that the CIA had given the Bureau a snowjob about Oswald in Mexico City. This is J Edgar Hoover, who is investigating the case for the Commission. If he says it in private, with no one listening, I take it seriously.

No pictures, wrong voice on the tapes. No photo shop within five miles took his picture for the visa card. When such would have had to be the case. 

So to me, and to many others, the weight of the evidence says no he was not there. And I do not say that lightly.  I say it only after doing years of research and reading the best work by others. Fully informed about the Sagan adage: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. IMO, the Lopez Report is extraordinary evidence. Harry Holmes is not.

Now I understand there can be disagreements among well versed people.  But, for many reasons, some of them stated above, i do not think LHO was there.  And I am not at all alone.

Edited January 19, 2021 by James DiEugenio

[Steve Roe]

AFFIDAVIT OF MRS. ESTELLE TWIFORD

 

            The following affidavit was executed by Mrs. Estelle Twiford on July 2, 1964.

 PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION

ON THE ASSASSINATION OF                                            AFFIDAVIT

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

 

STATE OF TEXAS ,

County of Harris , ss:

 

            I, Mrs. Estelle Twiford, 7018 Schley Street , Houston , Texas , being duly sworn say:

            1. I am the wife of Horace Elroy Twiford.

            2. In late September of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald telephoned my house and asked to speak to my husband. I told him that my husband was at sea. Oswald inquired as to how my husband had his address. He also said that he had hoped to discuss ideas with my husband for a few hours before he flew down to *******Mexico********** . He said he only had a few hours. I assume he was calling from

 

                                                            179

 

Page 180

the Houston area since he did not, to my knowledge, place a long distance call. However, he did not specifically say that he was in Houston . I have no information concerning his whereabouts when this call was placed. I told him if he desired to correspond with my husband, he could direct a letter to 7018 Schley Street , Houston , Texas , and I would see that my husband received it.

            3. I cannot recall the date of the call, but I think it occurred during the week prior to the weekend my husband flew home to visit me from New Orleans where his ship was docked. I recall, my husband had shipped out the weekend prior to the call.

            4. I cannot recall the exact time he called, but I think that it was in the evening, sometime between 7:00 and 10:00 o'clock. I was not working during this period.

            5. I wrote down on a slip of paper that Oswald had called and that he mentioned he was a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. I did this in order to remember to tell my husband about the call. I told my husband about the call on the weekend he visited me. I have initialed and released note made of telephone call. (To Secret Service.)

            6. Oswald did not state what he was going to *********Mexico******** for, nor did he state how long he would be there.

            7. Other than the above mentioned telephone call, I have never had any contact with Lee Harvey Oswald.

            8. I am not a member of the Socialist Labor Party.

            Signed this 2d day of July 1964.

                                                          (S)     Mrs. Estelle Twiford,

                                                                    Mrs. ESTELLE TWIFORD.