The Killing Floor

[Pat Speer]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I don't need to know all the details to prove that the CIA plotters got Oswald the job.

For all I know, Linnie Mae may have been recruited to lie. But that is irrelevant to my point.

(Did you notice that this exchange is in the last two paragraphs of my analogy? )

 

It's called circular reasoning. You've decided that the plotters decided that the shooting had to occur in that building. And then you take from that decision that therefore CIA plotters got Oswald the job. And then you take from that decision that Truly, Paine and Randle etc are all suspects, or were somehow manipulated by the CIA.

It's a castle built on sand. If you take away your initial assumption the shooting had to occur in that building, it collapses. 

I think it's already been established that Oswald continued looking for jobs after being hired at the TSBD. Let's say that he sees a Help Wanted sign at the Dal-Tex while at lunch from the TSBD, and goes in and talks to Zapruder or whomever and gets a job. Would the plotters cancel their plans? Would it all fall apart once Oswald was no longer working in the TSBD? Of course not. Now let's say that he instead gets a job at the Adolphus Hotel, right near the parade route. Do they cancel their plans? Of course not. They figure out a way to get him to a place where he can be considered a suspect. 

My best friend growing up became a Lt. Col. in U.S. Special Forces. He had extensive experience planning for ops--mostly stuff like hostage rescue. We discussed tactics many times. And he always stressed that you don't make a plan, you P.A.C.E. You have four plans: Primary, Alternative, Contingency, and Emergency.

Well, assuming Oswald's working at the TSBD was part of a plan, we have no idea if this plan was Primary or Contingency. I mean, they may have hoped he'd get a job at Love Field and when that fell through they thought well the TSBD is on the parade route so let's run with that. 

 

[John Cotter]

26 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

It's called circular reasoning. You've decided that the plotters decided that the shooting had to occur in that building. And then you take from that decision that therefore CIA plotters got Oswald the job. And then you take from that decision that Truly, Paine and Randle etc are all suspects, or were somehow manipulated by the CIA.

It's a castle built on sand. If you take away your initial assumption the shooting had to occur in that building, it collapses. 

I think it's already been established that Oswald continued looking for jobs after being hired at the TSBD. Let's say that he sees a Help Wanted sign at the Dal-Tex while at lunch from the TSBD, and goes in and talks to Zapruder or whomever and gets a job. Would the plotters cancel their plans? Would it all fall apart once Oswald was no longer working in the TSBD? Of course not. Now let's say that he instead gets a job at the Adolphus Hotel, right near the parade route. Do they cancel their plans? Of course not. They figure out a way to get him to a place where he can be considered a suspect. 

My best friend growing up became a Lt. Col. in U.S. Special Forces. He had extensive experience planning for ops--mostly stuff like hostage rescue. We discussed tactics many times. And he always stressed that you don't make a plan, you P.A.C.E. You have four plans: Primary, Alternative, Contingency, and Emergency.

Well, assuming Oswald's working at the TSBD was part of a plan, we have no idea if this plan was Primary or Contingency. I mean, they may have hoped he'd get a job at Love Field and when that fell through they thought well the TSBD is on the parade route so let's run with that. 

 

Drawing logical inferences from established facts is not circular reason or building on sand.

[Matt Allison]

25 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Drawing logical inferences from established facts is not circular reason or building on sand.

There's no logic there and no drawing on established facts.

If you post established facts that show Linnie Mae Randle was controlled by the CIA you'll be the first.

[Matt Allison]

54 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

It's a castle built on sand. If you take away your initial assumption the shooting had to occur in that building, it collapses. 

100%

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Only problem: your suppositions are not supported by any EVIDENCE. You have zero evidence that Linnie Mae Randle was lying, and you have zero evidence that "CIA plotters" had "influence over the motorcade route."

 

Those are not my suppositions. Those are what my argument proved, based on my suppositions.

 

[Gene Kelly]

6 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

Thanks for this bit of info, Gene. On what day was that conversation?

The White House rejected a lunch at the Trade Mart all the way until November 14th. How could anyone possibly count on the TSBD so far in advance with that situation in effect?

Matt

A good reference for the timing and planning is the JFK Records Collection, Chap. 2, "Planning the Texas Trip" in the National Archives.  The conversation you ask about was on November 8th:

On November 8, when Lawson was briefed on the itinerary for the trip to Dallas, he was told that 45 minutes had been allotted for a motorcade procession from Love Field to the luncheon site.

The agent in charge of the White House detail (Gerald Behn) asked Sorrels to examine three potential sites for the luncheon. One building, Market Hall, was unavailable for November 22; the second, the Women's Building at the State Fair Grounds, was a one-story building with few entrances and easy to make secure, but it lacked necessary food-handling facilities. The third possibility, the Trade Mart, a handsome new building with all the necessary facilities, presented security problems, but on November 4th, Sorrels believed these could be overcome by special precautions. Kenneth O'Donnell made the final decision on November 14th to hold the luncheon at the Trade Mart. 

Gene 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

It's called circular reasoning. You've decided that the plotters decided that the shooting had to occur in that building. And then you take from that decision that therefore CIA plotters got Oswald the job. And then you take from that decision that Truly, Paine and Randle etc are all suspects, or were somehow manipulated by the CIA.

 

That's not circular reasoning. I would have made that very same argument even if I had no idea that Ruth or Linnie Mae had any say on Oswald's employment. In that case my conclusion would still have been that the CIA got Oswald to work at the TSBD.

So how could that be a case of circular reasoning?

 

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

I think it's already been established that Oswald continued looking for jobs after being hired at the TSBD.

 

There are reports of Oswald checking for employment opportunities in high rise buildings in downtown Dallas during his time at the TSBD.

It wasn't Oswald himself looking for those jobs... it was an imposter run by the CIA. This was a necessary part of the CIA's plot of setting up Oswald in a fake conspiracy with Cuba and Russia.

The goal of the CIA's plan was to make it look like Oswald had conspired in Mexico City with the Cubans and Russians to kill Kennedy. This is what the FBI was supposed to discover in their investigation after the assassination. The FBI was also supposed to discover that Oswald had checked out multiple locations so that he could be prepared for wherever the motorcade route was set. (That's part of my theory.)

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, John Cotter said:

Drawing logical inferences from established facts is not circular reason or building on sand.

 

John

Thank you for backing me up. It's good to know that at least one person understands my reasoning. Which I know is solid, but sometimes I fear I am not communicating it well.

 

[Gene Kelly]

Pat

I agree with you that there were likely several contingencies being set up.  Given the gravity of what was to go down, it's difficult to imagine having only one plan.  I have often thought that Chicago, Miami and LA might have been just dry runs ... to test the tactics and timing.  Dallas was likely the ideal/primary spot, where local police and military could be counted upon to assist. How else does one explain the sheep-dipping of Oswald that was previously going on in the summer of 1963, including the leafletting, the Clay Shaw Clinton story, the Odio visit in late September, the ersatz Mexico City visits to the Cuban Consulate and Soviet Embassy. Nonetheless, Oswald returned to Dallas ... and all of these machinations occurred before Oswald got his job at the Depository, and well before the motorcade route was established. Are we to believe that he randomly ended up in the Depository, where he was then conveniently used? 

Gene   

[Pat Speer]

31 minutes ago, Gene Kelly said:

Pat

I agree with you that there were likely several contingencies being set up.  Given the gravity of what was to go down, it's difficult to imagine having only one plan.  I have often thought that Chicago, Miami and LA might have been just dry runs ... to test the tactics and timing.  Dallas was likely the ideal/primary spot, where local police and military could be counted upon to assist. How else does one explain the sheep-dipping of Oswald that was previously going on in the summer of 1963, including the leafletting, the Clay Shaw Clinton story, the Odio visit in late September, the ersatz Mexico City visits to the Cuban Consulate and Soviet Embassy. Nonetheless, Oswald returned to Dallas ... and all of these machinations occurred before Oswald got his job at the Depository, and well before the motorcade route was established. Are we to believe that he randomly ended up in the Depository, where he was then conveniently used? 

Gene   

The depository was not a necessary part of the plot. Never was. If the motorcade went somewhere else, they would have found a way to put Oswald on the parade route. Or, at the airport... Or, at the Trade Mart... There's just too many intangibles.

Anyone who thinks these kinds of ops are planned down to a tee well beforehand and that everything has to go precisely as planned to succeed has watched too many movies, or TV. In reality, the planners have a master plan. In this case: kill Kennedy. And that's it until a few weeks before the killing. 

They then plan how this can be done. Well, we have this perfect patsy--Oswald--and he works on the parade route. So let's make sure he's NOT outside during the shooting, and let's make sure we use a weapon that can be tied to him. And if that fails--like he goes outside or something--we have a back-up plan. Gerry Hemming used to blather on about a car bomb placed on the parade route as a back-up. While he was just making that up, a detailed plan would probably have such a contingency in place. If not, well, there's always the next motorcade. 

P.S. When I described Sandy's reasoning as circular I meant that it started with a faulty premise--that the building was a necessary part of the plot--and that this led him to suspect a lot of people of mischief. It was my assumption that his suspicions about these people in turn fueled his belief the building was a necessary part of the plot. If I'm wrong, however, he should come out and admit that since his belief the building was a necessary part of the plot is not supported by anything real, then there is in fact no reason to be suspicious of these people. 

[Jonathan Cohen]

3 hours ago, John Cotter said:

There you go again, pestering someone about evidence. Sandy has submitted cogent arguments about the topic in question based on established evidence.

Please show me where Sandy has made a cogent argument based on ACTUAL evidence, not a listicle of weak CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence subject to his own interpretation, that Linnie Mae Randle and Ruth Paine lied about manipulating Oswald into the TSBD or that "CIA plotters" had influence over the motorcade route. Now Sandy appears to be claiming, again without any evidence whatsoever, that there was "CIA impostor" helping set Oswald up in the days prior to the assassination.

3 hours ago, John Cotter said:

What is your position on the JFKA? Are you a lone nut theorist?

No. But I will always call out shoddy research and wild speculation from conspiracy theorists, a la the absurd "Harvey and Lee" theory and claims of massive alteration of the film and photo record, especially when perfectly reasonable alternative explanations are available.

Edited November 1, 2022 by Jonathan Cohen

[John Cotter]

4 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

There's no logic there and no drawing on established facts.

If you post established facts that show Linnie Mae Randle was controlled by the CIA you'll be the first.

Matt,

I’ve already posted facts which clearly indicate that getting Oswald the job in the TSBD was part of the plot.

In this regard, Gene Kelly has cited the sheep-dipping of Oswald before he got the job in the TSBD. There are also a number of such incidents after he got the job, such as the car showroom incident on November 9th, the shooting range incidents on November 9th and 16th (Anthony Summers, pp 289-291), and the Red Bird Air Field incident on November 20th (James Douglass, pp 242-243).

Your argument is that of all the buildings in Dallas, it was pure chance that the building in which the conspirators chose to place the sniper’s nest from which JFK was purportedly shot just happened to be the same building where the Oswald – the man they sheep-dipped and patsified – got the job.

Do you not see the blatant flaw in that argument?

[John Cotter]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Anyone who thinks these kinds of ops are planned down to a tee well beforehand and that everything has to go precisely as planned to succeed has watched too many movies, or TV. In reality, the planners have a master plan. In this case: kill Kennedy. And that's it until a few weeks before the killing. 

They then plan how this can be done. Well, we have this perfect patsy--Oswald--and he works on the parade route. So let's make sure he's NOT outside during the shooting, and let's make sure we use a weapon that can be tied to him. And if that fails--like he goes outside or something--we have a back-up plan.

Pat,

Your argument, like a doughnut, has a big hole in the middle – “circular reasoning” so to speak.

You left out the bit about the sheep-dipping, whereby Oswald was being set up beforehand – the bit that gives the game away.

John.

[Matt Allison]

44 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Gene Kelly has cited the sheep-dipping of Oswald before he got the job in the TSBD.

Not related to TSBD employment.

45 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

There are also a number of such incidents after he got the job, such as the car showroom incident on November 9th

Not related to TSBD employment.

46 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

the shooting range incidents on November 9th and 16th

Not related to TSBD employment.

46 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

the Red Bird Air Field incident on November 20th

Not related to TSBD employment.

And all of the above occurred after he was already hired at TSBD.

47 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Your argument is that of all the buildings in Dallas, it was pure chance that the building in which the conspirators chose to place the sniper’s nest from which JFK was purportedly shot just happened to be the same building where the Oswald – the man they sheep-dipped and patsified – got the job.

Do you not see the blatant flaw in that argument?

No, but I see the blatant flaw in yours: You've got things reversed.

You're saying the sniper's nest was chosen first and then Oswald was placed there.

Backwards, illogical, and completely inconsistent with the facts.

[Paul Brancato]

59 minutes ago, Matt Allison said:

Not related to TSBD employment.

Not related to TSBD employment.

Not related to TSBD employment.

Not related to TSBD employment.

And all of the above occurred after he was already hired at TSBD.

No, but I see the blatant flaw in yours: You've got things reversed.

You're saying the sniper's nest was chosen first and then Oswald was placed there.

Backwards, illogical, and completely inconsistent with the facts.

That’s interesting. Matt - is it your view that Oswald randomly got that job and then the plotters decided to make him the patsy? 
Are there posters on this thread that think Oswald was lone assassin? Or part of a shooting team? 
Pat thinks (?) the kill shot came from the rear. Did Oswald fire that shot?