Ruth Paine on "The Assassination & Mrs. Paine" film: "Well done, but powerfully awful"

[Jonathan Cohen]

26 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

So you believe that the paper trail i.e. evidence does indicate that Oswald had a working relationship with the CIA, but think that his actions are inconsistent with him being a false defector? What actions exactly do you think would be consistent with him being a false defector - and what evidence are you basing that on? 

I do not believe Oswald had a witting, working relationship with the CIA. I am willing to consider the possibility he was utilized without his knowledge, but I find the evidence for this to be weak. His actions in Russia are entirely consistent with a young, naive man trying to find his place in the world, and then becoming resigned and embittered by his decision once he realizes life in Russia is no more fulfilling than it was in the United States.

28 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

If Oswald was an asset, his behavior would have to appear completely genuine to hold up under the microscopic scrutiny of the KGB.

So, if you grant that I'm correct regarding Oswald's actions once inside Russia, what IS it that you think he was supposed to be doing on behalf of the U.S .government? Harmlessly whiling away his time working in a radio factory? Making friends with Argentinian expats? Writing imaginary diary entires to be someday read by... whom? What's the point?

31 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

And what’s your alternate explanation for the paper trail that indicates that Oswald had a working relationship with the CIA? Why should we take your word for it over Pete Bagley’s? Oswald’s files were handled differently than every other defector, and disseminated in a way that had to have been arranged in advance. Why do you think that happened? 

I don't have an alternate explanation, because numerous other pieces of evidence do not comport with the idea of Oswald as a CIA agent, witting or unwilling. It is simply one of many paradoxes in this case that cannot be easily deciphered.

 

33 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:

And that’s not even getting into the Snyder charade, Oswald’s alleged non-debrief, etc. 

What do you mean by "the Snyder charade" ?

[Jonathan Cohen]

2 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

There, realizing he was a CIA agent, they put a ring of human intelligence about him, and they put electronic  wiring in his nice apartment, later discovered by Oswald and TItovets. (ibid) But still Oswald tried, he  wrote up a very nice summary of how his radio factory worked.

Please show me one KGB file that alleges Oswald was a CIA agent.

[James DiEugenio]

What a question.

Show me the files the ARRB got? Or did you forget that the Russians did not give the Board very much at all.

JC:  His actions in Russia are entirely consistent with a young, naive man trying to find his place in the world, 

Oh, this is why  his case was assigned a KGB officer? This is why they arranged a spy apparatus around him? And this is why they planted electronic surveillance in his apartment?  And there was the matter of that very thorough report Oswald wrote about the radio factory he worked in, since it was the only thing he could do.

A young naive man who just happened to know that Helsinki was the place to go to for a quick visa into Russia.  I mean please. 😝

A young naive man who gets a hardship discharge from the service in world record time, with no investigation of its validity.

A hard ship discharge  due to his mother, who he stayed with less than three days before he journeyed to New Orleans to get his ticket from an office in Clay Shaw's ITM. 

Then add that to this: Oswald was not being paid by the Marines in his last quarter.  

When one adds in all the above with the work of Betsy Wolf, most objective people would find the sum total convincing, if not overwhelming.

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[David Von Pein]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Oswald was so poor at impersonating a genuine defector that he could not get past stage one. He screwed up the year when the Rosenberg case was being tried and also when they were executed. Impossible for a genuine communist. (Destiny Betrayed, p. 145).

What a ridiculous statement this is by James DiEugenio.

Lots of people are terrible when it comes to recalling specific dates of things that have happened in the past. And I'm sure that applies even to "genuine communists".

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by David Von Pein

[Cory Santos]

59 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

What a question.

Show me the files the ARRB got? Or did you forget that the Russians did not give the Board very much at all.

JC:  His actions in Russia are entirely consistent with a young, naive man trying to find his place in the world, 

Oh, this is why  his case was assigned a KGB officer? This is why they arranged a spy apparatus around him? And this is why they planted electronic surveillance in his apartment?  And there was the matter of that very thorough report Oswald wrote about the radio factory he worked in, since it was the only thing he could do.

A young naive man who just happened to know that Helsinki was the place to go to for a quick visa into Russia.  I mean please. 😝

A young naive man who gets a hardship discharge from the service in world record time, with no investigation of its validity.

A hard ship discharge  due to his mother, who he stayed with less than three days before he journeyed to New Orleans to get his ticket from an office in Clay Shaw's ITM. 

The add that to this: Oswald was not being paid by the Marines in his last quarter.  

When one adds in all the above with the work of Betsy Wolf, most objective people would that the sum total convincing, if not overwhelming.

 

Reading your posts makes me ask then if Oswald was supposed to be a patsy for the Powers U2 incident.    Was he a professional patsy someone was using?

[Matt Allison]

3 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Further, his actions once in Russia are completely inconsistent with his being an agent of the U.S. government, witting or otherwise.

You should expound on that opinion because I don't think you're correct there.

I think when LHO joined the Marines, because of his above average intellect, there was hope he'd be promoted and likely hope he had potential as a future intelligence officer. During his military service, his increasing acumen with the Russian language alone made him valuable. And FWIW, any claim his Russian wasn't good is total nonsense; it's how he communicated with his wife and everyone else in Russia for his years there. The fact is he spoke Russian.

Real Russian, for real.

But we don't know what his personal interactions with intelligence agents were like after his Russian episode. Maybe after the defection, he didn't do as well in Russia as they hoped he would. Maybe there wasn't the growth from him they were looking for. They came to conclude he wasn't cut out to be an intelligence officer.

But their keen interest in him remained. The files prove it.

[Karl Kinaski]

@james Di Eugenio, wrote:

Quote

 

What a question.

Show me the files the ARRB got? Or did you forget that the Russians did not give the Board very much at all.

JC:  His actions in Russia are entirely consistent with a young, naive man trying to find his place in the world, 

Oh, this is why  his case was assigned a KGB officer? This is why they arranged a spy apparatus around him? And this is why they planted electronic surveillance in his apartment?  And there was the matter of that very thorough report Oswald wrote about the radio factory he worked in, since it was the only thing he could do.

A young naive man who just happened to know that Helsinki was the place to go to for a quick visa into Russia.  I mean please. 😝

A young naive man who gets a hardship discharge from the service in world record time, with no investigation of its validity.

A hard ship discharge  due to his mother, who he stayed with less than three days before he journeyed to New Orleans to get his ticket from an office in Clay Shaw's ITM. 

The add that to this: Oswald was not being paid by the Marines in his last quarter.  

When one adds in all the above with the work of Betsy Wolf, most objective people would that the sum total convincing, if not overwhelming.

 

PLUS, believe it or not, this was the "young naiv's"  Russian teacher in Minsk:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Shushkevich

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by Karl Kinaski

[James DiEugenio]

Cory, I would really like to answer that question. But I cannot because i do not know how they took down that plane.

I mean Prouty has an interesting idea that it was sabotaged.

That is one of the three I have seen.  But I have never been convinced of any one way.  Another one is that they hit part of the plane and the debris from that damage knocked it down.  But I will say this.  You could not have found a better way to sabotage Ike's appearance at the Paris peace summit. Some people think that the president actually thought he was booby trapped and that is why he gave the MIC speech.

Matt, I agree.  A Marine teaching himself Russian?  And by the time he leaves, he is talking better than a woman who learned it at Berlitz?

 

Karl, no I did not know that.  Nice find.

[Karl Kinaski]

Shushkevich was a CTer. 🙂

At the end of his 2013 interview he said:

 

Quote

 

Shuskhevichs conclusion, quote: 

Therefore, it is my absolute conviction that they found a passive, calm, compliant boy, and used him as the guilty one. As for the conclusions of the Warren Commission, I don't believe them one bit. I have studied them and I don't think [the assassination] was the work of my student. (LHO.)
Close quote

 

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

John Cotter writes:

Quote

If you believe the solution lies in simplicity, you should take your lead from David Von Pein and his fellow lone nut theorists, because their "solution" is the simplest of all.

The point I was making is that if we have more than one explanation that is consistent with the known facts, we should choose the simplest explanation. The lone-nut explanation may be simple, but it is not consistent with the known facts.

The question that was being discussed was whether Oswald was given a job in the TSBD by the conspirators as part of their plan to assassinate JFK, or whether the conspirators discovered that someone with some sort of intelligence connections already worked there, and that he could be utilised as a possible patsy.

As Matt Allison has pointed out, Oswald got his job at the book depository long before the motorcade route was decided, and at a time when there was no guarantee that JFK would ever be within shooting distance of the TSBD. That fact seems to undermine the notion that Oswald was placed there for that purpose.

I wouldn't rule out the notion that Oswald was placed in the TSBD for some other reason related to his intelligence connections. I've heard it suggested that Oswald's role might have been to keep an eye on Joe Molina, who was of interest to the authorities because of his active membership of a group of Hispanic military veterans. I'm not sure how strong the evidence is for that particular suggestion; it may well be that Oswald ended up working at the TSBD for purely innocent reasons.

[Joe Bauer]

Gerry Patrick Hemming.

This known shameless self-promoting disinformation spreader raconteur said he met Oswald in Japan.

Said he had some covert contact with Oswald there although minimal and described Oswald as kind of a moron who acted as if he knew more than very little.

Always curious whether Hemming was in Japan at the same time as Oswald, at the same base, and was actually involved in some type of covert duty there.

 

 

Edited November 8, 2022 by Joe Bauer

[Ron Ege]

10 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

To all:

The KGB had Oswald smoked out from the moment he stopped into the Metropole Hotel with its infra red cameras and sound devices. Which is why they put him there.

Oswald was so poor at impersonating a genuine defector that he could not get past stage one. He screwed up  the year when the Rosenberg case was being tried and also when they were executed. Impossible for a genuine communist. (Destiny Betrayed, p. 145). Because of this, they decided he was a fake--which he was-- and shipped him out to Minsk.

There, realizing he was a CIA agent, they put a ring of human intelligence about him, and they put electronic  wiring in his nice apartment, later discovered by Oswald and TItovets. (ibid) But still Oswald tried, he  wrote up a very nice summary of how his radio factory worked.

So if Jonathan does not think Oswald was a fake defector, the KGB sure as heck did.

PS One might ask how did Oswald know to go to Helsinki for the fastest processed visa into Russia?  

Jim, thanks.

And we have this.  Did Ozzie just go, out of the blue, to some compendium of overseas' colleges, becoming enthralled with attending ASC?

https://www.theotheroswald.com/post/the-mystery-of-albert-schweitze

[Jonathan Cohen]

11 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Oh, this is why  his case was assigned a KGB officer? This is why they arranged a spy apparatus around him? And this is why they planted electronic surveillance in his apartment?  And there was the matter of that very thorough report Oswald wrote about the radio factory he worked in, since it was the only thing he could do.

There's really nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, especially since the Russians had every right to be suspicious of Oswald's true motivations and intent, based on his erratic behavior. Once they realized there was nothing special about him, they promptly sent him to toil away in Minsk, hundreds of miles from Moscow. I find it perfectly reasonable that they continued surveillance of him afterwards -- this was standard KGB operating procedure during the Cold War.

 

12 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Then add that to this: Oswald was not being paid by the Marines in his last quarter.  

You're well aware that this statement has been disputed, with a plausible alternate explanation given by an old friend of yours here.

[Steve Roe]

1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

There's really nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, especially since the Russians had every right to be suspicious of Oswald's true motivations and intent, based on his erratic behavior. Once they realized there was nothing special about him, they promptly sent him to toil away in Minsk, hundreds of miles from Moscow. I find it perfectly reasonable that they continued surveillance of him afterwards -- this was standard KGB operating procedure during the Cold War.

 

You're well aware that this statement has been disputed, with a plausible alternate explanation given by an old friend of yours here.

Jonathan, the USMC 3rd Quarter earnings false mystery has been solved. As Fred Litwin wrote about it, it's expanded on here in this article.

https://steveroeconsulting.wixsite.com/website/post/oswald-s-marine-corps-3rd-quarter-pay-false-mystery

Mr. DiEugenio never bothered to check the record to confirm or deny Doug Horne's observations about the missing Social Security deposits for Oswald from the USMC. In fairness to Mr. Horne, that's what he observed, however Stone/DiEugenio ran with it and blew it up on film to cast suspicions that the CIA or whatever Intel group paid him before he took off to Russia.

It's 100% baloney.

Oswald was paid in cash and Mr. DiEugenio needs to contact his publisher again about yet another "Errata".

[James DiEugenio]

The Metropole Hotel was reserved for incoming diplomats and military officers.  They sent him there to observe him, and they found problems with his story as I noted above and which you want to ignore.

Is there anything out of the ordinary about faking a suicide attempt?

As per Fred Litwin, you may want to ask him why he did not show the other Marine records of Oswald.  He did not because he knew they would negate his thesis. Which I have already explained, and again you ignore.

If you want to trust him Jonathan, Fred will have you buying into the Single Bullet Fantasy.

Good luck with your new pal.  You might want to ask him why he libeled me.

Edited November 8, 2022 by James DiEugenio