Can Oswald's denials be reconciled with the Lone Nut position?

[Pat Speer]

Just now, Lance Payette said:

Oh, come on. Read Jim's post and then tell ME I should take a "chill pill." It contains SPECIFIC BLATANT FALSEHOODS based on supposed "research" that can't possibly exist. It completely mischaracterizes my legal career. Are blatant, demonstrable falsehoods a problem for you? Should they be a problem for me? There was nothing Jim's post that was intended to be the slightest bit respectful or complimentary of my legal skills, and you damn well know it.

Well, I would be delighted if someone thought I was an expert on the law and had advised police departments on how to properly handle and present evidence. Because I have written on the medical evidence, I have had some address me as "doctor". It's not true, but it's not an insult. 

[Charles Blackmon]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

And now he is all over the board.

Looks like a new LN tag team

[John Cotter]

1 hour ago, Lance Payette said:

Nice job of attempting to derail the thread, which is right out of the CT playbook. Perhaps you might have had the courtesy of responding to what I said before launching into the "Oh, yeah, what about THIS?" mode that is the staple of conspiracists.

One man's "irrefutable proof" is another man's "much ado about very little." In this instance, "irrefutable proof" is hyperbole to the nth degree.

As someone who practiced law for nearly 40 years myself, my opinion of Mark Lane's ethics, tactics and credibility could scarcely be lower. His manipulation of witnesses is legendary. He was a single-minded fanatic with little regard for truth. He was little more than a self-appointed defense attorney for Oswald.

What the video actually shows is that "statements obtained by Mark Lane in these three instances do not match the descriptions in previous FBI reports." Conspiracy theorists immediately jump to the conclusion that this is "proof" the FBI "lied."

We have no idea as to what coaching these witnesses may have received from Lane. Given what we actually do know about Lane, I am not prepared to assume no coaching or manipulation occurred.

We have no real idea why the reports differ from what the witnesses say they said. Could the witnesses have been embellishing to please Lane? Could the chaos of the situation explain some or all of the discrepancies? Perhaps confusion or honest mistake on the part of the FBI agents? Did Lane undertake any effort to interview the agents and ask them to explain the discrepancies?

Is it believable to you that, beginning on the day of the assassination and extending over a period of weeks or months, FBI field agents were somehow ordered to make sure their reports conformed to some prearranged Official Story and contained nothing at odds with it? It isn't to me. For that matter, I hear nothing so startling and definitive in the statements to Lane that an FBI agent would've felt compelled to omit it even if he were under such an order.

To take this to a worst-case scenario, even if some FBI agents actually did knowingly omit from their reports witness statements contrary to the Lone Assassin explanation that Hoover adopted almost immediately - i.e., they "lied" - the conclusion "ergo, there was an assassination conspiracy" doesn't necessarily follow at all.

 

I’m not attempting to derail anything. I’ve asked for your response to clearcut evidence which contradicts your basic Oswald-the-lone-assassin premise.

The nub of your response is essentially the same as that of David Von Pein, which is to “shoot the messenger”. You have accused Mark Lane of manipulating the witnesses in question without providing a shred of evidence to support the accusation.

In the absence of such evidence, the testimony of those witnesses stands unrefuted.* The rest of your post is diversionary verbiage.

 

*Needless to say, their testimony is corroborated by many other eyewitnesses who were in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. As Anthony Summers noted in his book The Kennedy Conspiracy (pp 21-22):

“Of 178 witnesses whose statements were available to the Warren Commission, 49 believed the shots came from the Texas Schoolbook Depository, 78 had no opinion, and 30 came up with answers that fit in with none of the other evidence; 21, though, believed the shots had come from the grassy knoll. Another sample of the statements suggests 61 witnesses believed that at least some of the gunfire originated in front of the motorcade. A number of others said as much in statements to newspapers and private researchers.”

[Benjamin Cole]

32 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

I disagree to the extent that I believe the most complete understanding of Oswald the man of which we are capable is the key to the assassination. I have studied literally everything available about Oswald, and I believe that who he actually was is completely consistent with him being the lone assassin and inconsistent with him being involved in any elaborate conspiracy. (Could he have been involved in conversations in Mexico City or elsewhere that would technically satisfy the definition of a conspiracy? Sure, a mini-conspiracy is at least possible.) My problem with virtually all conspiracy theories is that, because they are forced to account for Oswald somehow, they posit a cardboard Oswald who bears little or no relation to the actual man.

 "...and I believe that who he actually was is completely consistent with him being the lone assassin and inconsistent with him being involved in any elaborate conspiracy."--LP

Seriously, how well can anyone today know LHO, who was but 24 years old, and who is described in widely varying manners by people who knew him or were exposed to him? 

LHO was evidently well-liked and social in the Soviet Union, by many accounts.  Evidently de Mohrenschildt regarded LHO as a good conversationalist and friend. 

For every morsel that defines LHO as a loner, we see a counter-morsel of LHO in groups constantly, whether informal, or formal such as the Civil Air Patrol or the Marines, or his high school astronomy and chess clubs.  LHO seemed to have formed multiple associations in New Orleans, including that of Kerry Thornley. 

How can anyone rule out that LHO might have been approached by anti-Castro Cubans, angered at JFK, who duped LHO into collaborating in some sort of anti-JFK action?

Or, perhaps LHO was approached by disaffected CIA assets and told he could participate in a false flag op to be blamed on Castro. 

If you believe LHO acted alone based on the physical evidence, then fine, that is your conclusion. 

But divining that LHO acted alone due to LHO's personality...really? Seems like a wild guess. If you had lived and worked with LHO for years, maybe you would have a good guess. But that still would be a guess. Human nature is very hard to divine (except for Paul Gregory). 

 

[Denny Zartman]

11 minutes ago, Charles Blackmon said:

Looks like a new LN tag team

They're far from new. They're experts at cluttering up the forum with their nonsense. But it will be amusing watching their "arguments" get taken apart again.

[James DiEugenio]

Are there two Lance Payettes who are lawyers in Arizona?

 

https://www.wmicentral.com/news/navajo_county/lance-payette-named-drug-attorney-of-the-year/article_e5dffa72-d247-5c80-80f3-a6175bdb44ca.html

Edited December 13, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Pat Speer]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

 "...and I believe that who he actually was is completely consistent with him being the lone assassin and inconsistent with him being involved in any elaborate conspiracy."--LP

Seriously, how well can anyone today know LHO, who was but 24 years old, and who is described in widely varying manners by people who knew him or were exposed to him? 

LHO was evidently well-liked and social in the Soviet Union, by many accounts.  Evidently de Mohrenschildt regarded LHO as a good conversationalist and friend. 

For every morsel that defines LHO as a loner, we see a counter-morsel of LHO in groups constantly, whether informal, or formal such as the Civil Air Patrol or the Marines, or his high school astronomy and chess clubs.  LHO seemed to have formed multiple associations in New Orleans, including that of Kerry Thornley. 

How can anyone rule out that LHO might have been approached by anti-Castro Cubans, angered at JFK, who duped LHO into collaborating in some sort of anti-JFK action?

Or, perhaps LHO was approached by disaffected CIA assets and told he could participate in a false flag op to be blamed on Castro. 

If you believe LHO acted alone based on the physical evidence, then fine, that is your conclusion. 

But divining that LHO acted alone due to LHO's personality...really? Seems like a wild guess. If you had lived and worked with LHO for years, maybe you would have a good guess. But that still would be a guess. Human nature is very hard to divine (except for Paul Gregory). 

 

We are 100% in agreement on this one. I discuss this on my website. A large percentage of the Oswald-did-it crowd claim Oswald was a nut or a commie, or...that he smirked in self-satisfaction when told he was being charged with the assassination.

It says a lot more about them than it does Oswald, IMO. 

[Benjamin Cole]

57 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

We are 100% in agreement on this one. I discuss this on my website. A large percentage of the Oswald-did-it crowd claim Oswald was a nut or a commie, or...that he smirked in self-satisfaction when told he was being charged with the assassination.

It says a lot more about them than it does Oswald, IMO. 

I could just as well say, "What kind of kid joins his high school astronomy and chess clubs?" 

We all know what kind of kid does...the nerds, the harmless. 

What kind of kid gets through Marine boot camp at age 17 and then is assigned skilled work at top-secret Atsugi air base? Likely, a strong and successful kid becoming a man. 

So...I could posit these character traits and accomplishments prove LHO was totally innocent in the JFKA. 

But, these character traits prove nothing, except perhaps to strongly indicate LHO was a smart and capable person when he wanted to be. 

[John Cotter]

5 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

I could just as well say, "What kind of kid joins his high school astronomy and chess clubs?" 

We all know what kind of kid does...the nerds, the harmless. 

What kind of kid gets through Marine boot camp at age 17 and then is assigned skilled work at top-secret Atsugi air base? Likely, a strong and successful kid becoming a man. 

So...I could posit these character traits and accomplishments prove LHO was totally innocent in the JFKA. 

But, these character traits prove nothing, except perhaps to strongly indicate LHO was a smart and capable person when he wanted to be. 

Well said, Ben.

[Benjamin Cole]

19 minutes ago, John Cotter said:

Well said, Ben.

Hey, a compliment, a rare moment in my life at the EF. 

Thanks. I have enjoyed your independent, non-partisan assessments also, even when I disagree. 

I like to see other viewpoints. I already know mine. 

[Ken Davies]

 Here is a second compliment from  me, a lawyer who is still practising after 43 years!

[Guest]

On 12/12/2022 at 8:50 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Are there two Lance Payettes who are lawyers in Arizona?

 

https://www.wmicentral.com/news/navajo_county/lance-payette-named-drug-attorney-of-the-year/article_e5dffa72-d247-5c80-80f3-a6175bdb44ca.html

Hi

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette

[Guest]

On 12/12/2022 at 7:28 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

 But divining that LHO acted alone due to LHO's personality...really? Seems like a wild guess. If you had lived and worked with LHO for years, maybe you would have a good guess. But that still would be a guess. Human nature is very hard to divine (except for Paul Gregory). 

 

Bye

Edited February 15, 2023 by Lance Payette

[Tom Gram]

33 minutes ago, Lance Payette said:

Of course, this is precisely what Marina said before she started attending conspiracy conferences. Oh, those damn inconvenient facts ...

I happen to believe psychology is largely a voodoo non-science. That being said, the known facts of Oswald's life do fit the Type I and Type II profiles identified by Clarke. Make of that what you will.

The point of my thread, which the conspiracy folks have ignored as they do all inconvenient truths, is that Oswald's denials aren't necessarily the least bit inconsistent with who he was and don't inevitably support the speculation that he should have confessed and bragged about the assassination.

I did not ignore your theory. I just think it’s absurd. I’ll paraphrase what I wrote in another thread:

You want us to believe that 1) a completely delusional, psychotic, suicidal Oswald murders a President to win some sort of twisted approval his wife and the Cubans; and 2) Oswald has a epiphany upon his arrest, hatches a master plan to become famous, and becomes a completely rational Oscar worthy actor in the span of about 20 minutes. 

This “motive” isn’t only inconsistent with the lone assassin theory, it’s just inconsistent, period. You have pure emotionally fueled delusion and desperation to the point of murdering a cop in an attempt to escape transforming into pure rationality and opportunism so quickly it’s ridiculous. 

Edited December 13, 2022 by Tom Gram

[Sandy Larsen]

21 hours ago, Lance Payette said:

If Oswald single-handedly assassinated JFK, as I believe he did, why did he deny having done so after he was arrested? If he’d always believed he was destined for an important place in history, as I believe he did, why didn’t he bask in the limelight of being a Presidential assassin when he had the opportunity? Why didn’t he spew anti-American, pro-Cuba and pro-Marxist rhetoric when he had the chance?

According to the 22 November 1963 website, http://22november1963.org.uk/why-did-oswald-deny-shooting-jfk, for example, “If Oswald genuinely had been motivated by a desire to get his name in the history books, he could be expected to boast about his crime rather than repeatedly deny that he was responsible.”

Is this true? Is it a massive problem for the Lone Nut position?

I admit it’s at least “a” problem that cries out for a plausible Lone Nut explanation.

One such explanation, of course, is that Oswald was himself assassinated by Ruby less than 48 hours after being arrested. He’d had no legal representation and was still hoping to make contact with John Abt. Can we really be so sure he “could be expected to boast about his crime” during this short period if recognition were his motivation? I won’t belabor the point, but his denials scarcely seem to me to weigh heavily in favor of his innocence.

In American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics, published by Princeton University Press in 1982, political scientist James W. Clarke identifies four psychological types of political assassins. You can find them summarized at https://www.unl.edu/eskridge/cj394assassins.html, which I’ve also copied below. I haven’t read Clarke’s book but would see Oswald as an amalgam of Type I and Type II.

Oswald may or may not have expected to survive. He may have hoped to survive, escape and somehow use the assassination as his ticket to Cuba after his previous failure in Mexico City. Or he may have believed the assassination would vindicate him to the Cubans and Marina even if he died in the process (to the Cubans by showing the sincerity of his Marxist convictions and to skeptical Marina by showing he really was the historically important figure he’d always claimed to be destined to be).

Having survived the assassination, but not escaped, I believe he was shrewd enough to realize he’d been handed a golden opportunity to cement his place in history. If he’d confessed, this would’ve been the end of the matter. He’d just be a modern Leon Czolgosz. (Who? Czolgosz was the anarchist who assassinated President McKinley.)

I believe the key to what Oswald was up to is found in his hope that John Abt would represent him. Abt was the chief legal counsel for the Communist Party USA. Oswald said he didn’t know Abt personally “but I know about a case that he handled some years ago, where he represented the people who had violated the Smith Act.” (The Smith Act criminalized advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.)

I believe Oswald pictured an elaborate trial that would cement his place in history as he explained, under the sympathetic questioning of Abt, his own brilliant political philosophy, the glories of Marxism and Castro’s Cuba, and the failings of capitalism in the U.S. and Leninism in the USSR. He wouldn’t be just another forgotten Czolgosz but a deep political thinker who had sacrificed himself to expose the corruption of both capitalism and communism. My belief is that he knew he was likely to be convicted, but he was going to go down in a historical blaze of glory that a confession would’ve made impossible.

Bear in mind as well that he could’ve expounded on his politics at trial while still maintaining his innocence as a “patsy” of the Dallas Police Department who’d been arrested only because he’d been a defector to the USSR. Indeed, the “patsy defense” would have afforded a perfect opportunity to expound on his politics.

Here are the types from Clarke's book and the above site:

AN ASSASSIN TYPOLOGY

Type I - Assassins view their acts as a probable sacrifice of self for a political ideal. They are fully cognizant and accepting of the meaning, implications and personal consequences of their acts. Inherently personal motives, such as a neurotic need for recognition, are secondary to their primary political purpose. Type I's may or may not attempt to escape, but the sacrificial theme that characterizes their zeal and commitment suggests that capture, like death, is an acceptable, if not
preferred, risk. Emotional distortion is present only to the extent that political ideals supersede survival instincts. If captured, the Type I does not recant on his or her motivating principles or seek clemency or personal publicity. Unlike Types II, III, and IV, their extremism is rational, selfless, principled and without perversity.

Type II - Assassins are persons with overwhelming and aggressive egocentric needs for acceptance, recognition and status.  There is none of the cognitive distortion associated with psychoses. Emotionally they are characterized by moderately high levels of reality-based anxiety that exerts a strong influence on their behavior. Without delusion, they fully appreciate and accept the personal consequences of their acts. The primary characteristic they share is called a "political" personality.  That is, a personality which is inclined to project personal motives on public objects and rationalize them in terms of some larger public interest.  Such persons seek power in order to compensate for low estimates of self are most frequently a result of a deprivation of love and affection in their personal lives.  Thus there are always significant others in the personal lives of Type II subjects.  Under these circumstances, in every instance, the exercise of power in a public manner generates the attention that had been denied in the past. In some cases, the act may serve to place the burden of guilt on those persons in their disturbed
personal lives who have denied or rejected them. Assassins of this type anticipate capture or death and prepare for it. The neurotic Type II assassin is an anxious, emotional and ultimately depressed person who is primarily concerned with her/his personal problems and frustrations and only secondarily with causes or
ideals.

Type III - Assassins are either psychopaths or sociopaths who believe that the condition of their lives is so intolerably meaningless and without purpose that destruction of society and themselves is desirable for its own sake. Unlike ordinary psychopaths whose rage is usually directed at specific segments of society, this type of killer strikes at persons who personify the majority, or those who represent a cross-section rather than any particular segment. Type III subjects possess no positive political values and are belligerently contemptuous of morality and social convention. The amorphous rage and perversity that characterizes the lives of these persons may finally take form in some extreme act like suicide, mass murder, or assassination; but in the case of assassination, there is no political motive. Except for their perverse anger, they are emotionally dormant; the pendulum swings of emotion associated with some psychoses are absent. They also differ from Type I assassins in that they are rational in a negative and perverse Dostoyevskian sense and thoughtfully aware of their motives and the consequences of their acts. Feeling neither joy nor sadness and indifferent to death, they are unable to relate to others.  Thus, unlike Type II's, there are no significant others in their empty lives.  The Type III subject accurately perceives reality but is limited in his capacity to respond to it emotionally. He is not someone who has
lost his reason, rather someone who has lost everything but his reason.

Type IV - Assassins are characterized by severe emotional and cognitive distortion that is expressed in hallucinations and delusions of persecution and/or grandeur. Their contact with reality is so tenuous that they are usually unable to grasp the significance of their actions or understand the response of
others to them. Their acts are mystically or divinely inspired. They are simply irrational or insane.
 

 

Lance,

Your argument is irrelevant because the the part of your premise I highlighted is false. The evidence clearly shows -- many times over -- that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill John F. Kennedy.

For example, a gunshot residue test on Oswald's cheek showed that he did not fire a rifle earlier that day.

Another example is that the gaping wound on the back of JFK's head -- as witnessed and corroborated by ~20 Parkland Hospital doctors and nurses -- was located where it could not have  come from the Texas School Book Depository.