Towards A Simple, Plausible Yet Explanatory Conspiracy Theory

[Benjamin Cole]

OK, here goes. I have constructed a JFKA explanation that involves very few knowing participants before the event.  I think my explanation holds water, but beyond that, I wanted to hypothesize with the limiting condition that conspirators were less than a handful. 

I have also attached an identical word file. 

This runs about 7,000 words. 

Towards A Simple, Plausible Yet Explanatory Conspiracy Theory

That there was a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy is a near certainty, as the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979.

In the decades since the HSCA stumbled to its conclusion, the evidence supporting the conspiracy view of JFK’s death has only become stronger, including the certain debunking of CE 399, the infamous “magic bullet.” 

It has been shown beyond reasonable doubt that CE399 was inserted by the FBI into the evidentiary record, thanks to the superb research and detective work of John Hunt, Gary Aguilar, Josiah Thompson and others.

As it is beyond reasonable doubt—due to CE 399—that key evidence has been altered, even manufactured by investigative agencies, then other evidence that appears to connect Lee Harvey Oswald to the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination—or exclude others—is also suspect. Unfortunately, even witness affidavits appeared to have been altered to confirm with a storyline.

(As an aside, my humble opinion is that the famed Zapruder film shows at least three separate bullets striking JFK and Texas Governor John Connally (as insistently recounted by Connally, his wife and three Secret Service agents in the immediate follow car). The shots strike the victims in too-rapid succession to have been fired from a single-shot bolt-action rifle, such as the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found in the TSBD, and said to be the murder weapon. 

And there was still yet another unexplained but undisputed shot that day in Dallas, which struck a curb near the Triple Underpass on the edge of Dealey Plaza, a ricochet from which evidently struck bystander James Tague. 

So, the record indicates at least four shots that day in Dealey Plaza.  

Finally, the fact that so many people, including military veterans and police officers, smelled telltale gunsmoke in Dealey Plaza in the immediate aftermath of the shooting is also an indisputable clue. It is more than likely that a firearm was discharged in Dealey Plaza just as the motorcade passed.) 

So, let us posit a conspiracy in the JFK assassination.  

Then let us also posit that successful Presidential-level conspiracies need fewer, rather than more, knowing participants.

In this light, let us reevaluate the proposition that “Oswald had nothing to do with the JFK assassination.” 

A plausible scenario, to be outlined here, is that Oswald had something to do with the assassination, and that is what made him such a good patsy. 

But only if he was soon dead. 

Probably, Oswald Was Involved

No one disputes that Oswald was inside the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at the time of the assassination. Moreover, Oswald was almost certainly an erstwhile CIA asset, and the CIA of the 1960s operated frequently, perhaps even usually, through assets rather than staff CIA officers. 

The practice of using assets, among other attractions, provides plausible deniability, which came in handy when the CIA conveniently disavowed any connection to Oswald after the JFK assassination. A lie they have perpetuated to this day.

A Paradox

So we have this paradox, or jigsaw puzzle pieces that do not fit: Many believe, on solid foundations, that CIA or military intelligence elements or assets were responsible for JFK’s assassination, and that Oswald was a CIA asset. 

Then it is asserted that Oswald had nothing to do with the murder of JFK.

But really, does the scenario hold water that CIA asset Oswald was in the TSBD as JFK rode past, and then the president was shot in a CIA-hatched plot, but Oswald was unwitting and uninvolved in the whole matter? 

Not only that, as soon as Oswald heard gunfire at 12:30 pm, he left the TBSD, headed for home—even hired a taxi to speed his arrival—whereupon he armed himself, before seeking refuge in the Texas Theater? 

Moreover, does it make sense that the CIA or CIA assets chose to make the entirely uninvolved Oswald “the patsy” even though he had been a loyal asset for years? Finally, why would the CIA betray Oswald, who might then reveal his past with the agency and raise an epic hornet’s nest?  

Importantly, no one has ever claimed to have seen Oswald at the very moment the President was gunned down in Dallas. As gunshots rang out, Oswald was invisible. 

The JFK assassination scenario with Oswald as a totally clueless patsy has other logical flaws: For example, Oswald could hardly be made the trigger-man patsy if he had chosen to stand on the sidewalk staring at JFK—as he might easily have—shoulder-to-shoulder along with other TSBD employees and bystanders, very visible and photographed. 

At a minimum, for Oswald to reliably be made the trigger-man and patsy by the true assassins, then Oswald had to be sequestered at the time of the assassination, perhaps by a simple ruse. Even if minimally, in this scenario Oswald was involved as CIA asset who could be manipulated into patsy.

But it will posited here that Oswald played a much more active, but ultimately still a patsy role, in a CIA public relations stunt. 

Oswald

The story on Oswald is well known certainly in this community, and will only be abbreviated here. Oswald was a youth intrepid enough to get through US Marine boot camp at age 17, was subsequently promoted to skilled and classified work at the Marine Atsugi Airbase in Japan, and then received an honorable discharge (only rescinded when he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959). 

Upon returning unhindered to the US from Russia in 1962, the young adult Oswald visited local libraries to check out large numbers of often serious books, renewing an intellectual streak he had shown in high school, when he joined astronomy and chess clubs. Oswald had also been a chess player during his uniformed military career. 

Having served in the military, having lived abroad, having traveled through Europe, Russia and Japan, and fluent in Russian, the still-youthful Oswald upon return to the US could even be described as cosmopolitan, certainly in comparison to peers in his age group. 

The Warren Commission-media characterization of Oswald as a leftie-loner-loser could as easily, and probably more accurately, be re-fabricated as a “ex-Marine, moody, savvy, smart, and somewhat worldly, with exposure to US intelligence operations. Fluent in Russian, chess-player, in turbulent, international marriage.” 

Oswald II

The oft-told story is that Oswald traveled to New Orleans from Dallas in April 1963. In short order after arriving in the port city, Oswald was reliably seen in the office of anti-communist activist and former FBI agent Guy Bannister, and in the company of CIA asset David Ferrie, and CIA asset Clay (Bertram) Shaw. 

(BTW, researcher Jefferson Morley has revealed that George Joannides, CIA case officer who oversaw the CIA-funded Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), maintained a residence in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, despite the fact he worked in Miami, and had a house and family there.) 

Given Oswald’s unusual history of “defecting” to the Soviet Union, yet evidently returning without consequence, and Oswald’s associations upon returning (including friendship with CIA asset George de Mohrenschildt ) it is more than likely that Oswald was indeed a CIA asset, and thus could be utilized in a “legitimate” or sanctioned CIA scheme or PR stunt. 

To put it mildly, Oswald’s leafletting around New Orleans, or appearing on New Orleans radio and TV stations to publicly debate ideology, certainly suggest a man trying to create communist and Castro-supporter credentials. Oswald’s famous trip to Mexico City and the Soviet and Cuban embassies there was another bit a biography-building. 

Oswald III

It is a matter of record that the late Antonio Veciana was a prominent anti-Castro Cuban, a leader of the violent paramilitary Alpha 66 organization, and a former US military-intelligence asset.

In 2015, Veciana was recorded as he told a JFK research conference that he had worked for David Atlee Phillips, aka Maurice Bishop, a man who would eventually become the CIA chief of operations for the Western Hemisphere. Veciana also said that in September 1963 he met Oswald in Dallas, and most importantly, had met Oswald while in the company of Phillips. (Veciana’s account has been challenged by veteran JFK researcher John Newman). 

Among his many talents, Phillips was known for skill in public relations, related PR stunts, and successful propaganda campaigns to topple governments in Guatemala and Nicaragua.

So, let us posit in 1963 Phillips hatched a PR stunt, planned as an intentionally unsuccessful “false-flag” assassination attempt on JFK, made by a pro-Castro leftie-loner-loser who was affiliated with communist groups, who had defected to Russia, and who had recently visited the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City. 

In other words, the image of Oswald as crafted by Phillips and the CIA, with a compliant US media.  

What Newman Said 

In the 2008 version of his book Oswald and CIA, researcher Newman wrote of the “WWIII virus.”

The WWIII virus was the idea that Oswald had to be immediately and rigidly defined as a loser-leftie and most importantly as a lone assassin after Nov. 22, lest the US and Soviet Union end up in a nuclear war. 

Wrote Newman---

"In my view, whoever Oswald's direct handler or handlers were, we must now seriously consider the possibility that Angleton was probably their general manager,” wrote Newman. “No one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot. No one else had the means necessary to plant the WWIII virus in Oswald's files and keep it dormant for six weeks until the president's assassination. Whoever those who were ultimately responsible for the decision to kill Kennedy were, their reach extended into the national intelligence apparatus to such a degree that they could call upon a person who knew its inner secrets and workings so well that he could design a failsafe mechanism into the fabric of the plot. The only person who could ensure that a national security cover-up of an apparent counterintelligence nightmare was the head of counterintelligence."

The placement of a witting and compliant CIA-asset Oswald in a false-flag failed assassination attempt would have been a brilliant PR coup, whether conceived by Angleton, Phillips or possibly even Joannides. 

A Castro supporter—that’s Oswald—loosely affiliated with Havana and Moscow and shooting at a US President would generate a firestorm of support for renewed efforts to topple Castro. 

Indeed, even JFK might have second thoughts about leaving Castro intact in Cuba.

General Walker 

In this scenario, Oswald’s miss at short range— with a rifle, at about 30 yards—at General Edwin Walker, in April 1963, was likely a practice run, and a biography-builder. 

The story would emerge that wooden cross bar on a window pane had deflected Oswald’s bullet, saving Walker’s life. 

But photos of the window frame reveal it had been struck on the underside. That is, the purported deflection would sent the bullet on a lower trajectory, and indeed, that was the conclusion of the Dallas Police Department.  

 Yet, the bullet struck above and wide of  Walker’s head by such a margin that the former general initially assumed the shot had been a firecracker tossed into the house, by neighborhood kids. 

At least two vehicles suddenly left the scene after the Walker shooting, one without license plates. 

The inevitable conclusion is that Oswald (if he was the shooter) either— 

1. Was a lousy shot, to put it mildly 

2. Or, intended to miss

3. Or, had very faulty firearms 

4. But also likely had accomplices 

One way or the other, the Walker assassination attempt ultimately become part of the Oswald legend.

If the Warren Commission recitation is accepted, Oswald just happened to keep incriminating photographs and records of his Walker assassination attempt in his personal belongings, unsecured and easily discovered. Including the ever-mysterious Walker backyard photo that features the infamous 1957 Chevrolet, with the censored license plate. 

False Flags

The idea of ‘false flag” operations stage-managed by US intelligence is hardly farfetched. JFK researchers are familiar with “Operations Northwoods,” as outlined in a Joint Chiefs of Staff memo in March 1962, and which envisioned a kaleidoscope of ersatz attacks on the US and citizens, designed to enrage the public and tilt domestic and international opinion in favor of military actions against Cuba. 

Phillips

The CIA public-relations guru Phillips died of cancer in 1988, and never recited or confessed any stories of involvement with Oswald. At least not directly. 

But Phillips did leave behind an unpublished manuscript, one of the strangest tales every penned. In part, the manuscript is about a protagonist who laments, “I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”

Well, maybe not “precisely the plan.” But possibly something oddly close. 

Late in his life, Phillips also told JFK researcher Keven Walsh, unfortunately in an unrecorded conversation, “My final take on the (JFK) assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers.” 

An explanation of why Phillips would believe there was a conspiracy follows. 

A Plausible Scenario

In the scenario posited below, there are very few witting participants in the JFK assassination plot, which seems like a reasonable prerequisite. Later, there was a tsunami of what author Josiah Thompson calls “complicity,” but that is another matter.

In this false-flag plot there is Phillips, and then Oswald. It is logical that Oswald would have been promised a getaway car from the scene of the crime, and diversionary gunfire from the Grassy Knoll. That would limit the number of co-conspirators in the false-flag operation to just four, those being Oswald, Phillips, the driver and the Grassy Knoll shooter. And only two of those four, and possibly just one, knew they planned to shoot for real. 

Perhaps Oswald had been promised a safe house, or to be spirited out of the country, and then a new life in more highly-paid spy work.

However, it seems likely Phillips would not execute such a PR stunt without at least tacit if undocumented approval from superiors. 

So Phillips revealed his false-flag JFK assassination PR stunt to higher-ups—but at this high level, the plan either inadvertently leaked to the wrong people, or was intentionally passed on to the wrong people. 

Operation Piggyback

Many JFK researchers know the name Howard Brennan, the discredited “witness” who likely did not see anyone clearly that day in Dallas in the TSBD, but was seized upon by the Warren Commission to place Oswald at the scene of the crime. 

But there was another witness, often overlooked, who on Nov. 22 contemporaneously told Dallas sheriffs, indeed within moments of the shooting, that he had seen a man with a rifle shooting at JFK from the TSBD. 

That witness was Amos Lee Euins, a then 15-year-old youth on hand to watch the motorcade. Euins described to the WC a bald man, of undetermined race, shooting at JFK from about the fifth-floor of the TSBD. Euins’ eyesight was fine.

In March of 1964, Warren Commission lawyer Arlen Specter appeared exasperated that Euins, summoned to Washington to be interviewed, declined to classify the shooter he saw as either a white or black man. Euins would only say that the shooter was “bald,” as revealed when the gunman leaned out of the window to get a look at his work.  

Specter badgered Euins, noting that Euins had previously signed an affidavit for the Dallas Sheriffs, attesting that the shooter had been a white male. But in questioning by Specter, Euins stuck to his guns, and told Specter that he, Euins, had told Dallas Sheriffs that he was uncertain of the shooter’s race, and that his affidavit must be in error. Euins also recounted he heard four shots at the time of the assassination. 

Euins further recounted that a construction worker outside the TBSD had witnessed a bald man leave the building hurriedly in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and the worker had informed a police officer accordingly.  

Perhaps Specter meant to discredit Euins by challenging him on the matter of the shooter’s race. And indeed, if one imagines a dark black man vs. a light white man, Euins’ uncertainty seems to be discrediting, especially alongside the purported earlier affidavit that the shooter had been white. 

But as we now know, affidavits can be monkeyed with. 

In addition, G. James Robert Underwood was assistant news director at Dallas station KRLD-TV and was in the JFK motorcade, and passing the TBSD when the shots rang out. 

Underwood hopped out the open news car and milled around the TBSD where he overheard Euins being interviewed, within minutes of the shooting. 

This is what Underwood told WC counsel Joe Ball, in a Dallas interview:

UNDERWOOD. He (Euins) was telling a motorcycle officer he had seen a colored man lean out of the window upstairs and he had a rifle .... I went over and asked the boy if he had seen someone with a rifle and he said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Were they white or black?" He said, “It was a colored man.” I said, "Are you sure it was a colored man?" He said, "Yes, sir," and I asked him his name and the only thing I could understand was what I thought his name was Eunice.”

Of course, there is matter of semantics here, whether the word “colored” in the time and place referred only to American blacks, or might also refer to other non-whites, in Euins’ lexicon. 

The printed record, the conflict between Euins’ affidavit for the Dallas Police Department, and his testimony before the WC makes the then-youthful Euins appear unreliable. But by the time Euins was being interviewed by the Dallas Police Department, what Thompson called “complicity” had already set in.

The case was being built against Lee Harvey Oswald, a white man. And so the DPD affidavit described the shooter as a white man. 

Cubans

Of course, there are other people in this world besides stereotypical whites and blacks, and they include Hispanics, who can be of any race and are often mestizo, and who can have straight or curly hair. 

Perhaps Euins had spotted firing from the TSBD one Eladio Del Valle, an anti-Castro Cuban exile, and in 1963 more than a little bald. 

Like so many figures in the JFK assassination, Del Valle met an untimely death, having been bludgeoned and shot to death in 1967 in Miami, nearly at the same time that CIA-asset and pilot David Ferrie rather dubiously died in New Orleans. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in 1967 had wanted to question both men to further his investigation of the JFK assassination. Both were dead before Garrison could. 

But Eladio Del Valle’s name would be heard again and again from the lips and pens of a JFK assassination experts, echoing over the decades.

Enter Blakey The Mob Hunter 

House Select Committee on Assassination Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey, before taking the HSCA job in 1977, had been a Mafia-hunter for the US Justice Department, and an earnest believer in civil service and good government. 

At the time he helmed the HSCA, Blakey believed what he was told by the CIA, but he has since had renounced his faith in the agency, in florid terms, having learned he had been duped (another story, and this article is already growing long). 

In general, during his tenure at the HSCA the organized-crime nemesis Blakey was suspicious of mobsters, such as New Orleans kingpin Carlo Marcello, in the JFK killing. So as a man with a hammer looks for nails, Blakey looked for mobsters.

And indeed there were tantalizing clues, such as Oswald being bailed out of a New Orleans jail in 1963 by a Marcello associate, and, of course, the mobbed-up Jack Ruby murdering Oswald in the Dallas Police Department basement on Nov. 24.

Nevertheless, Blakey, at a recorded seminar organized by the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas in October 2018, called out the names of Cuban exiles and hit-men Hermininio Diaz and Eladio Del Valle as individuals thought to have been in Dallas at the time of JFK assassination, and as suspects. 

Blakey thus reprised a story that has been circulating for more than a half-century, ever since Garrison had wanted to learn more about Del Valle. 

The Hermininio-Del Valle as JFK assassins story got a second wind in 1978, when an anti-Castro paramilitary soldier named Tony Cuesta told Cuban General Fabian Escalante, the head of Cuba's G-2 Spy Agency, that he, Diaz and Del Valle had been involved in the shooting of JFK. 

Cuesta had been imprisoned in Cuba, captured in an unsuccessful raid on the island in 1966, an ill-fated incursion that left Hermininio dead, and Cuesta horrifically injured by self-inflicted wounds as tried to avoid capture alive. 

Blakey, in print and in the conference, has posited it is possible Diaz and Del Valle convinced Oswald to shoot JFK, feigning to Oswald they were fellow left-winger Castro-ites. 

One of the pair was possibly sequestered behind the picket face on the Grassy Knoll, and fired a shot from that location during the JFK assassination, suggested Blakey.

A Better Explanation

The Blakey version of events, a Cuban-Mob hit on JFK that tricked Oswald into being shooter, loses traction on a few points. 

Most prominently, Oswald was almost certainly a CIA asset, not a communist or bona-fide Castro sympathizer or a Mob asset. Blakey, though wised-up to the CIA, appears unable to shake off the WC-CIA-mass media fairy tales regarding Oswald’s character and loyalties.

Back to the Piggybacking  

So instead, let us posit that inside the CIA, only a very few people in November 1963 knew of an impending false-flag assassination plot on JFK, featuring Oswald, and hatched by Phillips. 

A PR effort had been ginned up by Phillips, even in advance of the event—and indeed, the earliest post-assassination press releases were from the CIA-funded Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE) (think Joannides) and they connected Oswald to Castro, and called for retaliation. 

But before the planned false-flag assassination attempt on Nov. 22, somehow the information about the pending Phillips-plot leaked, and somebody, either inside or outside the official CIA, put Diaz and Del Valle into action. 

One scenario might be the Diaz-Del Valle pair approached Oswald, and had bona fides as Cuban exiles, erstwhile CIA assets, and true Castro opponents.

The pair offered to help in the false-flag operation, provide transportation, perhaps provide diversionary gunfire from the Grassy Knoll. They might have name-dropped their CIA contacts. Perhaps they were even retained by Phillips, who was unaware of Del Valle’s true intentions. 

 So, Del Valle placed himself in or near the sniper’s nest, and when the time came on Nov. 22, fired in earnest, and tilted his bald head out of the window to check results, where and when he was seen by Euins, the 15-year-old youth. 

In this scenario, Oswald fired once, striking the curb near James Tague, who was in front of the Third Street overpass—a large miss, a shot measured as passing perhaps 20 feet over the President limo. Many JFK assassination witnesses described the first shot they heard as different in pitch and volume from succeeding shots, which were rapid. Perhaps after his lone shot, Oswald raced from the sniper’s nest, whereupon Del Valle quickly settled in and went to work. 

Of course, after the killing, Diaz and Del Valle vanished, hanging Oswald out to dry—making him “the patsy.”

Oswald, a crafty individual with the ability to plan and plenty of foresight—see his photographs and plans regarding the General Walker PR stunt—was left with no plan of escape.

Oswald Dodges A Ride

Why didn’t Oswald catch a ride from the TSBD? 

As Oswald left the TSBD on foot, he must have suspected he had been framed for murder, and not a garden-variety murder but an assassination of a US President, and not framed by simple-minded thugs but by expert US intelligence agencies. 

Of course, Phillips had arranged for an escape vehicle. So what happened? Why did not Oswald get a ride? 

Oswald, upon leaving the TSBD, deduced from the commotion that someone had shot JFK for real, and he was the patsy. Perhaps Oswald heard multiple gunshots, yet he knew he had only fired once. Oswald reasoned if he stepped into a CIA-provided escape vehicle, he would never see daylight again.

Somehow keeping composure upon leaving the TSBD, Oswald famously boarded a bus that bogged down in traffic, then hailed a cab, and upon arriving home armed himself and left on foot, perhaps to encounter Dallas Police Officer JD Tippet. Later, of course, Oswald was captured in the Texas Theater. 

Oswald’s departure from the TSBD, then the futile bus ride, and then the taxi, and his acquiring of his revolver from his rented room are all increasingly troublesome yet indicative aspects of his post-assassination behavior. 

If Oswald was truly unwitting bystander on Nov. 22, why would he arm himself in the aftermath of the JFKA? 

Why did Oswald not assume right-wing nuts, or even low-life thugs or mobsters, or just plain kooks took a pot shot at the President? 

Instead, Oswald immediately suspected, or deduced, that he was likely the suspect, or patsy. This only makes sense if he was involved in some way. 

Oswald was then in a hurry to get his gun. 

Accessories After the Fact

After the fact, the CIA realized it had a full-blown real and public-relations catastrophe on its hands. 

The CIA could not say, “Oh, we had staged a false-flag assassination attempt, but then Oswald shot for real.” Phillips may even have believed this is what happened, and hence his strange, unpublished confessional manuscript. 

Phillips also pondered if US intelligence agencies have played a role in the assassination. This makes sense too—Phillips knew he had revealed his false-flag plan to higher-ups in the CIA. Then somehow JFK gets shot for real, but Phillips reasoned it did not seem plausible Oswald could have done it alone, even if he had tried. Not with the single-shot rifle he had. That explains Phillips late-life statement to Walsh, that intelligence agents had been involved in the JFKA.  

But for the CIA, even admitting lesser sins was simply unacceptable. Even, “Oh, Oswald was our asset, but we had nothing to do with him in Dallas,” hardly works, especially in the wake of JFK having so recently having fired top CIA officials in the wake of the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. 

In the aftermath of the assassination the CIA was fast on its feet—after all, murder and propaganda in fluid environments are CIA fortes. 

As often storied, Oswald had visited in the Soviet Embassy in September of 1963, during his famous Mexico City visit, where he met Valery Kostikov. Whether true or not, the CIA on Nov. 23, in an internal memo, posited Kostikov was a case officer in the KGB’s 13th department, which handled “sabotage and assassinations” in the Western Hemisphere for the Russians.

But if the “Oswald worked for Russian wet-operators” story line got out and was seized upon by US hawks, then war with Russia could result. That was the story line the CIA handed to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in the immediate aftermath of JFK’s killing. 

This fear of nuclear war in part led to the famous “Katzenbach memo” of Nov. 25, which in part states, ”The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”

Katzenbach added, "Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off….”

Thus, while Oswald’s body was barely cold, he was posthumously framed—that is, framed for the JFK murder for the second time in three days. 

The third framing of Oswald would persist for years, in US mass-media circles. 

As recounted many times, LBJ would recruit a reluctant and willfully clueless Chief Justice Earl Warren to head the eponymous commission, but only after terrifying Warren with nightmarish visions of tens of millions of sizzled Americans and a radioactive homeland—unless the Chief Justice did his duty. Warren, in fact, hardly showed up for work at the WC, largely handing the reins over to former CIA Chief Allen Dulles, the very man JFK had fired from the CIA after the Bay of Pigs debacle. 

In light of the Oswald-Russia fears—the “WWIII virus” explained by researcher John Newman—the official story line for public consumption, and amplified by mass media, was that Oswald was a leftie-loner-loser, without co-conspirators.

The CIA then had to completely scrub its records of any association with Oswald. This has led to decades of deception by the agency, including the successful bamboozling of HSCA Chief Counsel Blakey.

The FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made sure his troops presented an air-tight case to the Warren Commission, for example, finding Oswald’s palm print on the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, but only after FBI agents obtained palm prints from Oswald’s corpse, as well as delivering the bogus CE 399, along with any number of squelched, dubious or altered witness affidavits.  

Despite the fact that Governor Connally, the governor’s wife, and three Secret Service agents in the car immediately following the presidential limousine all attested that three separate shots struck Connally and JFK—and despite a Zapruder film that shows Connally being hit by a separate bullet—Warren Commission found that only two bullets struck JFK and Connally, thus solving the problem of too many shots in too brief a time frame for Oswald’s single-shot rifle. 

As well-documented, the CIA turned US media into its megaphone on the JFK assassination, abject in all regards. In anyone doubts the craven complicity of trusted titans of US media at the time, let them consider this paragraph from Life magazine, which ran in Life's December 6, 1963 issue. 

At the time Life went to press it was thought JFK had been shot in the throat. But Oswald was behind JFK, in the TSBD. So, Life solves the problem and reports, 

"The 8mm [Zapruder] film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed to the sniper's nest [in the TSBD] just before he clutches it." 

This is truly creative lying, showing a scope and scale for deception and disinformation that must have impressed envious peers in Moscow and Peking. 

It is hard to conceive of a lower moment for US journalism. 

Conclusion

The scenario sketched above, that relatively low-level Cuban exiles CIA assets likely assassinated JFK, and were not authorized by higher-ups in CIA to do so, may not sit well with some, as this scenario in some regards “absolves” the CIA. 

But not so. 

For one, Phillips’ plan for an Oswald false-flag assassination PR stunt may have been intentionally or maliciously leaked to the “wrong people,” and possibly by high-ups inside the CIA. If not intentionally, then security was criminally loose inside the CIA. 

Even if the CIA’s role in the JFK assassination was the result of rogue elements, it does not change the nature of the CIA, which was to do the bidding and dirty work on behalf America’s international commercial class and to help entangle the nation in counterproductive, incredibly inhumane and fantastically expensive wars, including what James DiEugenio justifiably calls “the American holocaust” of six million dead in SE Asia.  

And, of course, the intent of the JFK false-flag assassination attempt was to surreptitiously entangle the US in a war on Cuba, an idea that was only shelved when LBJ committed to a much larger war in Vietnam.

To be sure, there are parts of the “JFK Assassination as PR-stunt gone bad story” presented here that are speculative.

But if we accept that Oswald was a CIA asset, and was made into a patsy, then we are then painted into a corner—how could the CIA, or military intelligence make Oswald a triggerman-patsy on that fateful day, if Oswald had decided to take lunch outside and view the president’s motorcade from the sidewalk? Or even take the day off to look for another job? 

To make Oswald a patsy with certainty, he had to be involved in some type of plot, but one he would willingly participate in, and certainly one that would have excluded a bonafide assassination. 

Even a simple ruse might have aroused Oswald’s suspicions, along the lines of, “Why am I being asked to an obscure location inside the TSBD just as JFK’s motorcade passes?” After all, Oswald was a creature of intelligence operations, had been in the military, lived in the police-state Russia, and was an avid reader of books on spycraft.

Thus, a reasonable deduction is Phillips set Oswald up as a willing participant in a false-flag assassination attempt—and then the CIA had to frame Oswald into the real thing after the fact. The skids were conveniently greased, as Phillips and the CIA had already prepared the PR and groundwork to place Oswald in a failed assassination plot. 

As Dan Hardway, an ace researcher of the HSCA, put it in 2017, “All the indications…(are that)…much of the propaganda trying to tie Oswald to Cuba was laid on in advance of the assassination so that it was ready for publication immediately after the assassination.”

Hardway is a tough and smart investigator, and it is fascinating how his observations jell with those of researcher Newman. 

But the Hardway scenario perhaps assumes some number of people, perhaps even many, in the CIA were participating in real JFK assassination plot, and for many months before the event. 

It may be Hardway is correct but with a wrinkle: people in the CIA were readying PR for the immediate aftermath of a false flag and failed assassination plot involving Oswald.  

Epilogue

Of course, in the hours after the JFK assassination there was a terrible vulnerability for the CIA, even as they quickly maneuvered into place the PR edifice of leftie-loner-loser Oswald as the one and lone assassin.

Oswald was alive on Nov. 22, having been captured without real incident by remarkably restrained Dallas Police Department officers, in the Texas Theater. 

The story that follows hardly needs re-telling: The mobbed-up nightclub operator Jack Ruby, an affiliate of New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello, gunned Oswald down Nov. 24, in the basement of the Dallas Police HQ, as Oswald was being transferred to the “more secure” county jail. 

Most likely, Ruby knew nothing specific about the false-flag assassination plans, or that Cuban exiles had piggybacked on the operation. He only knew he had been given the task of gunning down Oswald.

After the fact, some observers have asserted no serious organization would rely on such unstable people as Oswald and Ruby to fulfill such critical missions.

But we know the image of an unstable Oswald is PR-creation, and beyond that, was Oswald any more or less stable than known CIA operatives of the 1960s such as David Ferrie, or Gary Hemming? What of CIA officer Bill Harvey, an alcoholic given to waving guns at dinner table arguments and who teamed up with mobsters?

As for Ruby, while the resources of the CIA are vast, they are not infinite. After Nov. 22 CIA leadership was desperate and wanted Oswald dead quickly, and not by a hand that could be traced back to the CIA, but also by someone who could penetrate the Dallas Police Department. 

Really, how many operatives are floating around Dallas who were willing and could accomplish all that? 

The CIA was already in bed with the Mob, in efforts to rid Cuba of Castro. Lines of communication and trust already existed, and phone calls were made. 

If any part of the JFK assassination saga involved the overt collusion of higher-up officials of the CIA, the murder of Oswald was likely it. 

Even senior CIA officials uninvolved in the JFK assassination knew that if Oswald should reveal he had been a CIA asset, the agency’s image would be indelibly besmirched, the very existence of the CIA placed in serious peril. 

Moreover, it is likely only those with real authority to offer something in exchange could entice mob boss Marcello to put Ruby into action.

A deal was made, and Marcello held up his end of the bargain by providing Oswald’s murderer, thus concluding the vital and successful first chapter of the JFK assassination and cover-up. 

Blakey has stated, on the record, that efforts to curtail the Mob were sharply delimited in the LBJ Administration. 

---30---

Addendum:

In excellent conversations on the JFK Assassination Forum, the question of Oswald’s negative results from the paraffin test have been raised. 

To recount, a paraffin cast was placed on Oswald’s check on Nov. 22, about eight hours after the assassination, but showed no signs of nitrates that should have been there, or other elements—even when subjected to neutron activation analysis. 

So, Oswald never fired a rifle on Nov. 22?

Maybe. But ponder---

1) A false negative due to time delay. Oswald was not tested until eight hours after the event. And in the false-flag JFKA  version of events, LOH may have only fired once, not three times. The unreliability of the old-fashioned nitrate test makes a conclusion impossible. 

2) The story does not end there, however. Evidently, a  paraffin cast of Oswald’s check was sent Vincent Guinn (yes, that Vincent Guinn), Technical Director of the Activation Analysis Program of General Atomic Division of General Dynamics Corporation, to perform something called neutron activation tests. Long story short, Guinn was unable to detect much in the Oswald cheek cast, and he was looking for barium and antimony. 

However, as noted by researcher Pat Speer, “Another memo…notes further that paraffin casts were normally thrown out by the Dallas Police Department after testing, and that Louie Anderson, who'd analyzed the casts for the DPD, had washed them and taken them home, apparently as a souvenir.”

"Washed them"? That is, the cast of Oswald’s check had been “washed” before it was subjected to Guinn’s neutron activation tests. 

Speer notes that the Oswald cheek cast was outside the chain of custody, and could have been intentionally, if unsuccessfully uncontaminated. Of course, in the JFKA, all evidence is suspect. 

3) Perhaps Oswald did wash his face, maybe with a garden hose en route to the Texas Theater, maybe in the Texas Theater, or maybe even when taking a bathroom break at the DPD. He did not take a shower in DPD custody—but really, he never used the john either? Is anyone sure?

4) In addition, Oswald may have visited the bathroom when he retrieved his revolver. While the testimony of Oswald’s landlady Earlene Roberts is clear, she was never asked directly if LOH had ducked into the bathroom quietly. 

Would she have noticed—she was absorbed with “fixing” her TV to tune into the JFKA. It is not impossible that Oswald could have spent a minute in the bathroom at the rooming house. 

5) Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be much in the literature about perspiration, that is a sweating face. There is a report from the National Bureau of Investigations, an agency in the muggy Philippines, that “excessive perspiration” may “remove gunpowder nitrates on the skin.” Oswald was running around, at least during his jaunt to the Texas Theater. 

6) It sounds whimsical, but LOH could have put saran wrap, or possibly a sheet of paper, on his cheek when firing. 

7) The circular sniper's nest may have created a swirl of air outwards, which blew out when LOH fired his one shot. Evidently, wind direction can radically effect the amount of nitrates, antimony or barium, deposited on a shooter’s face. Also, if the interior of a building is hotter than the exterior, then the building will tend to exhale. 

Any mix of the above explanations might result in a false negative, even for Guinn’s neutron activation tests. 

So why did Oswald's hands test positive, but not his face? Many answers for this one. Perhaps his hands came into contact with (common) items that test positive, after the assassination. False positives, in other words.  Perhaps LOH really did shoot Tippit, many times, and with a revolver, and that left a strong "dose" of nitrates on his hands.

I am open to the idea that LOH, realizing he had been framed, and thinking he had been done in by powerful figures, was in a desperate frame of mind when he met Tippit. The timelines do not add up, but maybe. 

Addendum II

Serious JFK researcher Larry Hancock has an excellent book fresh out, Tipping Point: The Conspiracy That Murdered President Kennedy.

In my “false flag piggybacked” version of the JFKA, the triggerman is Eladio Del Valle, while Hancock names others who could have set up the JFKA, and those individuals did not need PR guru Phillips to do it. 

What is unclear is how the individuals named by Hancock managed to frame Oswald. How to convince Oswald to be out of sight when the shooting started? There could, of course, be a plan to frame Oswald anyway, even if stood on the street and waved at JFK. The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle would be found, and the trail would lead to Oswald.

However, there is more. The pre-assassination Oswald biography building, the unsuccessful Walker shooting, and the Kostikof episode all appear in advance of the JFKA, and reveal organizational planning and depth. 

Dan Hardway and Newman contend the CIA’s pre-assassination Oswald biography building is part and parcel of the JFKA—but the biography building seems beyond the reach of the fighters and Cuban exiles named by Hancock. Such pre-assassination ground-laying is also well beyond the ken of Mafia goons. 

That said, there is no reason that individuals named by Hancock could not have piggybacked on the false-flag and phony assassination plot posited here, run by Phillips (or Angleton or Joannides). I have posited Eladio Del Valle as he was bald and possibly seen by witness Euins. But perhaps there were other bald Cuban exiles. 

It is also possible that Hancock is right, that CIA higher-ups did in fact explicitly work with Cuban exiles and others to have JFK assassinated, and planned for a long time to so, and also planned to make Oswald the patsy. From my perspective, that scenario involves too many people. 

The point of my exercise was to develop and simple explanation to how the JFKA happened, with a very small number of pre-event conspirators. 

---30---

 

JFK latest-word.docx

[Joe Bauer]

Just read your entire conspiracy theory summary BC.

Whew!  

I never sleep and reading your JFK speculation/explanation post beat two hours of idle thought insominia tossing and turning.

So much to comment on. Agree with many of your plausible explanations.

Will chime in later with shared takes and thoughts.

 

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Robert Burrows]

Somewhere in the video record of Oswald's interactions with the press during his three days of captivity he says something that I've always construed as a limited admission of involvement: "I have committed no acts of violence."

Edited April 4, 2021 by Robert Burrows

[Larry Hancock]

A great post Benjamin, I hope it gets the serious discussion it deserves.  I happened to pick the phrase "tipping point" in terms of motive and timing but operationally I think you are right on the money with "piggybacking".  I have no doubt that the conspirators piggybacked on a number of things the CIA was doing with Oswald's identity by the summer of 1963, some or all of which he knew little to nothing about.  The CIA, as with all the really professional intelligence agencies, are really good at "using" people in that fashion.  Personally I think that after his return most of Oswald's direct cooperation was with the FBI but that's another story. 

I would also endorse the fact that the Dallas attack was in a since a "small" conspiracy, involving only a handful of individuals with full knowledge, how it might have been incited or otherwise enabled is another story as well, but I really see it as a ninety day sort of thing from an operational standpoint.

Don't mean to tread on you post but I did want to jump in and support it, especially in terms of "piggybacking". 

[Andrej Stancak]

This is a very detailed interpretation of the events surrounding the assassination and Lee Oswald. But the devil is in the detail: your theory assumes three people to be on the sixth floor, including Lee Oswald. How could all these people escape given that neither Vicki Adams with Sandra Styles, nor Mrs. Garner heard or saw anyone. Mrs. Garner positioned herself to the stairway on the fourth floor and she witnessed Baker and Truly going up the stairs. Thus, there was no time for anyone to descend with rifles in their arms during about 2 minutes after the shooting, let alone three people. It was more difficult later on because the employees started to return to the building (e.g., Otis Williams).

[Guest]

Firstly; a tremendous post Benjamin. Well thought out, detailed, articulate, coherent and logical. I am sure it took ages to put this together, so thank you. 

The opinions I have are as follows: 

- Regarding the TSBD bald shooter, if trained you'd be as far back in a room as humanly possible when taking a shot. You'd do that because you would want to go undetected and unseen. When firing a shot the public could look up and at most they'd see is an open window, not a rifle or a human being. The idea that someone who was trained as a sniper or assassin would be poking their head out for a look, just doesn't seem professional or plausible to me. You'd want to be unseen and you wouldn't be hanging around to observe how well your shot had gone or for some confirmation. 

- The whole timing of Oswald grabbing a coke in the lunchroom doesn't quite fit with his scenario IMHO, and I have seen other researchers explain the time taken to get down the flights of stairs. I think I am right in saying the motorcade was around 5 mins late too. I am not against Oswald being involved, I just don't think he was a shooter. I think reality struck him when he knew the president was shot. 

- I like the idea that Oswald was informing on a plot to the FBI, and that potentially he was the "Lee" who aborted the Chicago plot on November 2nd, the same day that DIem was assassinated in Vietnam. Which may explain why the CIA were prepared to make him the sacrificial lamb and give up one of their own, as they discovered he was a traitor. 

- You have to wonder what kind of blackmail or leveraging happened to Ruby. Any logical human would know it was serious jail-time or death for doing that in a police station. 

- I realise even a global conspiracy can happen with just a few people involved, with lower layers of any such operation being naive to the bigger picture and goal. I happen to believe in this case that perhaps more people were involved than we think. Anybody working for the CIA or FBI would be conscious of the ruthless nature of the organisations they work for and, the mortal dangers of not getting with the program. After all, the CIA was carrying out coup d'etat's and assassinations all over the globe. Looking at Belzers book, that had to be a fair few carrying out hits just in that equation. The term "CIA rogues" is used often but, if a lot of the hierarchy of an organisation are involved, it is the organisation that carried it out. I think it diminishes responsibility by using other terms. 

- I am a believer in Grassy Knoll and South Knoll shots, I personally think that is where the fatal shots and throat shot originated. 

Just my thoughts anyway. Thanks for a very thought provoking post and a good read. 

Cheers

Chris



 

[Benjamin Cole]

11 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Just read your entire conspiracy theory summary BC.

Whew!  

I never sleep and reading your JFK speculation/explanation post beat two hours of idle thought insominia tossing and turning.

So much to comment on. Agree with many of your plausible explanations.

Will chime in later with shared takes and thoughts.

 

 

Thanks!

[Benjamin Cole]

5 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

This is a very detailed interpretation of the events surrounding the assassination and Lee Oswald. But the devil is in the detail: your theory assumes three people to be on the sixth floor, including Lee Oswald. How could all these people escape given that neither Vicki Adams with Sandra Styles, nor Mrs. Garner heard or saw anyone. Mrs. Garner positioned herself to the stairway on the fourth floor and she witnessed Baker and Truly going up the stairs. Thus, there was no time for anyone to descend with rifles in their arms during about 2 minutes after the shooting, let alone three people. It was more difficult later on because the employees started to return to the building (e.g., Otis Williams).

Andrej--

Thanks for your comment. 

Actually, I assume only LOH and Eladio Del Valle on the Sixth Floor. The possible getaway driver and Grassy Knoll shooter are elsewhere. 

To be sure, the window of opportunity for leaving the TSBD unobserved was small, yet people have walked off the distance, and concluded LOH had enough time to get to the point where he met Truly/Baker.

OK, we know where LOH left his rifle.

You raise a challenging question regarding the second rifle on the Sixth Floor, that I posit. 

I am not an expert of all firearms, but it seems breakdown of a rifle would take too much time. Perhaps some readers know of a rifle that breaks down very quickly. 

On the other hand, we do not know the clothing of Eladio Del Valle on that day. Perhaps he was wearing an overcoat, and simply concealed the rifle underneath as we walked out of back of the TSBD.  There are reports of men leaving the TSBD quickly in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, from the rear, including a bald man. 

There are also other offices in the TSBD, that were used by other companies, and evidently were never searched. The search of the TSBD was not thorough, as it was decided rather quickly the perp had been apprehended. 

I certainly understand anyone who has doubts regarding my scenario, and for that matter, perhaps the lethal shots came from the roof of the Dal-Tex building, and Euins was just mistaken that he saw a bald man. 

But Euins, unlike others, gave his account immediately and contemporaneously, to a police officer on the scene. 

 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

10 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

Somewhere in the video record of Oswald's interactions with the press during his three days of captivity he says something that I've always construed as a limited admission of involvement: "I have committed no acts of violence."

Thanks for reading!

[Benjamin Cole]

10 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

A great post Benjamin, I hope it gets the serious discussion it deserves.  I happened to pick the phrase "tipping point" in terms of motive and timing but operationally I think you are right on the money with "piggybacking".  I have no doubt that the conspirators piggybacked on a number of things the CIA was doing with Oswald's identity by the summer of 1963, some or all of which he knew little to nothing about.  The CIA, as with all the really professional intelligence agencies, are really good at "using" people in that fashion.  Personally I think that after his return most of Oswald's direct cooperation was with the FBI but that's another story. 

I would also endorse the fact that the Dallas attack was in a since a "small" conspiracy, involving only a handful of individuals with full knowledge, how it might have been incited or otherwise enabled is another story as well, but I really see it as a ninety day sort of thing from an operational standpoint.

Don't mean to tread on you post but I did want to jump in and support it, especially in terms of "piggybacking". 

Larry-

Thank you for your gracious response. Your excellent book, "Tipping Point" needs no praise from me for its circumspect depth on a very challenging topic. 

Certainly, in your book and elsewhere you have outlined groups of people capable and willing, on both practical and operational levels, of the JFKA. My guess is you are closer than anyone else to explaining the JFKA.

In some ways, I am venturing forward a hypothesis with a limiting condition, such as might be required on a history test.

For example, "Explain the JFKA with no more than five willing conspirators." 

If there is only 5% chance any one of conspirators breaks ranks and exposes the conspiracy, you have problems, as a plotter. (That is, 0.95 to the fifth---or nearly a one-quarter chance, with just five conspirators). 

Anyways, thanks for your forbearance, and I look forward to re-reading your superb book.

My small hope is that some researchers re-consider plots that include large numbers of knowing pre-event conspirators and conspiratorial interventions. 

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

17 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

It is also possible that Hancock is right, that CIA higher-ups did in fact explicitly work with Cuban exiles and others to have JFK assassinated, and planned for a long time to so, and also planned to make Oswald the patsy. From my perspective, that scenario involves too many people. 

The point of my exercise was to develop and simple explanation to how the JFKA happened, with a very small number of pre-event conspirators.

Benjamin, the quest for simplicity is always to be applauded.  I'm soooo glad you brought this subject up.

My thang is having the simplest, strongest case for conspiracy as the subtext of my study.  The bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound.  This establishes the following root facts: JFK had a shallow wound in his back, no exit, no round found during the autopsy; the wound in his throat had no exit and no round found.

The night of the autopsy the doctors speculated JFK was hit with high tech weaponry, like the blood soluble darts developed for the CIA program MKNAOMI.

As a student in the Vincent Salandria School of Research into the Obvious --I can make a case for CIA conspiracy in under a hundred words.

 

[Ron Bulman]

Regarding no more than a handful of conspirators.  I agree, I.E. that information was on a need to know basis.  But less than a handful is four fingers.  I guess it's in how you define a conspirator.  Personally I believe Allen Dulles conspired with James Angleton, with the approval of David Rockefeller, a minimum of three at/near the top.  They needed at least one or two operations specialists with knowledge of the objective to facilitate it at both a organizational and operational level.  Bill Harvey and David Morales come to mind.

That's five and your hand is full.  But they still need shooter(s) and I think a spotter/rear guard/cover person for each.  At least one from the front and back adds two or four more.  A distraction shooter on the 6th floor?  Someone shot from there.  Small caliber throat shot from the front.  Head shot from the front (back! and to the left!).  Back shot at the Third Thoracic Vertebrate.  All of these knew what was going down.  Connally not hit by any of these.  Tague.

I think Johnson was briefed in advance to smooth his transition, does that make complicit in the conspiring?

A dozen, likely more involved with knowledge of what was happening as it did.  Several more aware that something was coming down.  John Martino, Joseph Milteer, more.       

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Benjamin, the quest for simplicity is always to be applauded.  I'm soooo glad you brought this subject up.

My thang is having the simplest, strongest case for conspiracy as the subtext of my study.  The bullet holes in JFK's clothes are too low to associate with the throat wound.  This establishes the following root facts: JFK had a shallow wound in his back, no exit, no round found during the autopsy; the wound in his throat had no exit and no round found.

The night of the autopsy the doctors speculated JFK was hit with high tech weaponry, like the blood soluble darts developed for the CIA program MKNAOMI.

As a student in the Vincent Salandria School of Research into the Obvious --I can make a case for CIA conspiracy in under a hundred words.

 

The wounds, as reported, to JFK are baffling, as are many other aspects of the case. Like you, I assume more than the Mannlicher-Carcano was involved. 

Certainly, it is possible that CIA higher-ups organized the JFKA, and made their own asset, LOH, a completely unwitting patsy. 

But why would LOH go home and get his gun? This suggests he had some sort of participant role in the JFKA, even if unwitting of the final result. 

In the immediate wake of the shooting, why did not the totally uninvolved and unwitting LOH assume that nut cases took a pot shot at the President, or mobsters, or right-wingers, or Cuban exiles to whom he was not connected?  

Almost immediately, LOH deduced he was the likely patsy. 

Interesting case. 

 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

13 hours ago, Robert Burrows said:

Somewhere in the video record of Oswald's interactions with the press during his three days of captivity he says something that I've always construed as a limited admission of involvement: "I have committed no acts of violence."

Thanks for reading. Interesting interpretation. 

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Regarding no more than a handful of conspirators.  I agree, I.E. that information was on a need to know basis.  But less than a handful is four fingers.  I guess it's in how you define a conspirator.  Personally I believe Allen Dulles conspired with James Angleton, with the approval of David Rockefeller, a minimum of three at/near the top.  They needed at least one or two operations specialists with knowledge of the objective to facilitate it at both a organizational and operational level.  Bill Harvey and David Morales come to mind.

That's five and your hand is full.  But they still need shooter(s) and I think a spotter/rear guard/cover person for each.  At least one from the front and back adds two or four more.  A distraction shooter on the 6th floor?  Someone shot from there.  Small caliber throat shot from the front.  Head shot from the front (back! and to the left!).  Back shot at the Third Thoracic Vertebrate.  All of these knew what was going down.  Connally not hit by any of these.  Tague.

I think Johnson was briefed in advance to smooth his transition, does that make complicit in the conspiring?

A dozen, likely more involved with knowledge of what was happening as it did.  Several more aware that something was coming down.  John Martino, Joseph Milteer, more.       

Ron Bulman:

Thanks for reading. 

Certainly, elements of the international business class and the global security state had it in for JFK. No tears were shed. 

My explanation, of a small number of relatively low-level Cuban exiles, erstwhile CIA operatives, pulling off an unauthorized murder of JFK, lacks drama in some regards.

I still lean to towards "the fewer, the merrier" when it comes to a believable JFKA scenario. 

I have not led a criminal lifestyle. At times, when in a Walter Mittyish-way I ponder a criminal act, I plan to do it alone. I would not want even a single co-conspirator. 

Edited April 5, 2021 by Benjamin Cole
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