Brian Baccus on Ruth Paine

[James DiEugenio]

A very good piece of work by Parker. How could both the WC and HSCA miss the significance of it all.? 

I especially like this:  Hootkins was with him on two of those visits and Hootkins was solo on or about Nov 20 - a Wednesday - so probably after school or he took a day off.

 

[Michael Griffith]

Mary Haverstick has an interesting segment on Ruth Paine in her new book A Woman I Know. Haverstick implies that Ruth Paine was a CIA asset assigned to manipulate and monitor the Oswalds. Among many other things, Haverstick, having grown up among Quakers, questions Ruth Paine's Quaker credentials. 

[Greg Doudna]

Also, nobody changes into a jumpsuit to go to a barbershop to protect from getting hairs on regular clothes. I’ve been in barbershops countless times, so has every other man reading this, everybody knows men show up in ordinary street or business clothes and the barber puts a tissue collar and washable sheet or gown all around the person getting the haircut.

At the end of the haircut the barber removes it, steps away and shakes the hair off it onto the floor which is later swept up. No hair gets on the customer’s clothes. No mess, no changes into jumpsuits needed for trips to a barbershop in America.

Instead of some idea that Oswald unlike any other barbershop customer anybody has ever heard of was changing into a jumpsuit before Ruth Paine would secretly let him take her car to drive openly a few blocks away to get his haircut every second week, with instruction to the barber to leave the back of his neck scruffy and untrimmed because jumpsuit-wearing Oswald just loved paying his hard earned money in order to purposely remain looking scruffy in the back of his neck … consider the unthinkable: that witness Shasteen was mistaken. The man was somebody else, and nobody came out of the Shasteen barbershop after a haircut looking scruffy in the back of the neck like Oswald’s coworkers and everybody else noticed of Oswald in Nov 1963.  

And the claim that Ruth was parsing her answers to intend to mislead while being technically truthful is without basis. First, the wordings are FBI wordings or paraphrase of the sense of what she said as they understood it in interview, in answer to their questions as they worded those questions. Those were not necessarily Ruth’s exact words. 

Second, there is no recognized track record or comparative parallels of Ruth doing that genre of stratagem in other places apart from a couple other unverified claims of the kind that anyone could read into anyone’s words.

Third, the claim is that Ruth did that because that kind of stratagem is what Quakers believed was right to do and did (and the claim is that Ruth was supposedly being scrupulous in practicing her religion here). As evidence, somebody once cited a blog poster who asserted that was a Quaker practice and gave an anecdote as the only evidence supporting that assertion. Then DiEugenio approvingly quotes the person who believed that assertion from the blogger, and a few dozens people on this forum uncritically think and believe it sounds true for years to come, because DiEugenio endorsed it. 

But there is no recognized or standard reference work or study on Quakers, no primary text of Quakers themselves, that I’ve ever seen set forth that doctrine or custom (that it’s OK to deceive by being literally true but intentionally misleading). I’ve known a lot of Friends’ peculiarities and ways from experience but never knew that to be one.

Ruth’s answer to the FBIs question of if she knew of any 14-year old in the neighborhood associated with Oswald was a straight answer to a question asked by the FBI. She knew of no such kid associated with Oswald, full stop. There is no basis for parsing some hidden subtext or deceit on Ruth’s part in that FBI agent’s writeup of her answer to the FBI’s question. Ruth was not concealing a 15 year old Hootkins of Dallas in Irving with Oswald because she only denied she knew of any 14 year old in the neighborhood with Oswald. That’s just nonsense that Ruth was engaging in that kind of semantic hairsplitting. But DiEugenio perpetuates it, as if he doesn’t care whether it is true. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Jonathan Cohen]

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Mary Haverstick has an interesting segment on Ruth Paine in her new book A Woman I Know. Haverstick implies that Ruth Paine was a CIA asset assigned to manipulate and monitor the Oswalds. Among many other things, Haverstick, having grown up among Quakers, questions Ruth Paine's Quaker credentials. 

Yawn.

[Jean Ceulemans]

I don't know how the girls are doing these days, but I have found myself thinking, wouldn't it be nice if they had had a meeting between the two of them, just to clear things up perhaps, IF that was needed, I don't know.  They were very good friends IMO.  And I DO NOT need to know the details. 

Call me a sentimental fool, I don't care.  I know what really matters in my life.

[Kirk Gallaway]

Agreed Jean!   If Greg could somehow  get those 2 together. That could be fascinating or maybe even  enlightening!

Though I'm sure some here wouldn't like it much, just  like the Republicans in my country who after badgering Hunter Biden for years to testify, now refuse to  hear him because he  insists he'll only do it before TV cameras!

 

heh heh   a joke!

Greg, I know  you're not promising anything!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Kirk Gallaway

[Joe Bauer]

Curious what members here think about the fact that for 60 years, Marina Oswald has made so little effort ( if any at all ) to re-connect with or at least express something more in the publicly stated appreciation praise department upon Ruth Paine than she has?

According to what I have read, Marina's cut off from RP was very sudden and hard.

Does MP even send RP an occasional Christmas card?

A woman that took her and her baby into her own home for months right through Marina's delivery of her 2nd child and even through the nightmare of Lee Oswald's arrest and provided them with as much help through all that as even a mother would have provided? 

And apparently doing so without ever once expressing a resentful "you owe me" or gratitude expecting statement toward her?

Ruth could afford the added expenses. But still, nefarious intentions or not, one would assume Marina might have given Ruth Paine at least the minimum of appreciative respect with an occasional note or call instead of an immediate cutoff and then relatively nothing for 6 decades?

Yes, it is certainly normal for anyone who has experienced incredible psychological trauma and pain like Marina Porter did during her Ruth Paine days to want to get as far away from those memories as possible and for the rest of her life.

This includes not wanting to even see people who were around during the trauma and even helped you through it.

This probably explains Marina's stark avoidance of RP all these years to a certain logical degree.

Visiting and maybe even talking to RP in person could trigger a PTSD episode in Marina that would just be too difficult and painful for Marina to bear.

Still, I always had a sense that Marina never liked Ruth Paine on any level personally.

You can't choose who offers you serious help when you need it. You take it regardless whether you truly like the person offering such or not when you are desperate enough as Marina was.

Marina actually liked Jeanne De Mohrenschildt. Felt comfortable around her. Opened up to her. A true mother figure for Marina for sure.

If it was Jeanne De Mohrenschildt who had taken Marina and her babies in during that nightmare time, I think MP would have kept in touch with her forever.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[Greg Doudna]

On 11/29/2023 at 8:49 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

"Greg Parker is a little like that Jack Nicholson figure."

So Greg Parker isn't crazy after all??  heh heh

Thank you Greg Doudna for the well-written tribute to Greg Parker and the good fight he's put up over the decades.

Yeah Sandy, I thought of that after I posted it. As colorfully as Jack Nicholson (one of my favorite actors) acted in that film and in some of his other films, not everyone might take that as a complimentary comparison. 

Fortunately Greg Parker seems not to have taken offense. I had been meaning to write him one of these days, but before doing so unexpectedly got the nicest note from Greg P last night. He thanked me for what I said and wished me well, and this: 

I admit (and you can quote me if you want) that I was wrong in my initial assessment of you - an assessment that guided my early responses to you.

That said, I suspect we would continue to butt heads over Ruth Paine until the proverbial judgement day. 

So like in the movies where lawyers and prosecutors go at it tooth and nail against each other in court and then are buddies for drinks afterward (a little disconcerting to clients of defense counsel), or like my doctoral defense in Copenhagen (the Danish "disputats", lit "disputation" or defense) where before an open audience they have you alone on a stage and your veteran, senior "opponents" rake your work over the coals, beat you up rhetorically for two hours, then after you (sort of) hold your own and survive that, tell you you got your degree and take you out to dinner to celebrate for you ... 

In the spirit of feeling generous toward "adversaries", since I didn't get the chance before, thanks Jim D. for that time you stuck up for me in another discussion (the Coup in Dallas discussion). I appreciated your words there.  

Edited November 30, 2023 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

21 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

Curious what members here think about the fact that for 60 years, Marina Oswald has made so little effort ( if any at all ) to re-connect with or at least express something more in the publicly stated appreciation praise department upon Ruth Paine than she has?

According to what I have read, Marina's cut off from RP was very sudden and hard.

Does MP even send RP an occasional Christmas card?

A woman that took her and her baby into her own home for months right through Marina's delivery of her 2nd child and even through the nightmare of Lee Oswald's arrest and provided them with as much help through all that as even a mother would have provided? 

And apparently doing so without ever once expressing a resentful "you owe me" or gratitude expecting statement toward her?

Ruth could afford the added expenses. But still, nefarious intentions or not, one would assume Marina might have given Ruth Paine at least the minimum of appreciative respect with an occasional note or call instead of an immediate cutoff and then relatively nothing for 6 decades?

Yes, it is certainly normal for anyone who has experienced incredible psychological trauma and pain like Marina Porter did during her Ruth Paine days to want to get as far away from those memories as possible and for the rest of her life.

This includes not wanting to even see people who were around during the trauma and even helped you through it.

This probably explains Marina's stark avoidance of RP all these years to a certain logical degree.

Visiting and maybe even talking to RP in person could trigger a PTSD episode in Marina that would just be too difficult and painful for Marina to bear.

Still, I always had a sense that Marina never liked Ruth Paine on any level personally.

You can't choose who offers you serious help when you need it. You take it regardless whether you truly like the person offering such or not when you are desperate enough as Marina was.

Marina actually liked Jeanne De Mohrenschildt. Felt comfortable around her. Opened up to her. A true mother figure for Marina for sure.

If it was Jeanne De Mohrenschildt who had taken Marina and her babies in during that nightmare time, I think MP would have kept in touch with her forever.

Seems like insightful comments Joe.

Marina also cut herself and her children off from Lee's mother Marguerite, and I believe at least at times from brother-in-law Robert too as well. I recall reading (cannot find the link this moment) that one of the grown Oswald daughters--was it Rachel?--while not wanting to criticize her mother, said while growing up she regretted she never got to see or know her grandmother, Marguerite. She had been told Marguerite did not want contact. Then, I think only after Marguerite's death, she learned that Marguerite actually had made attempts to see her grandchildren but had been refused and turned away, and the granddaughter had remorse that she had not sought out Marguerite herself when she had the chance, just to know her grandmother.

And, although Marina has had a life of pressures that we cannot know, and I think nearly everyone respects her survival ability, it has struck me that Marina received great wealth for a time from public sympathy while Marguerite apparently lived out her years with real poverty issues, and none of that wealth was shared by Marina to make Marguerite's last years a little more comfortable. 

[Max Good]

People might want to take a close look at the wording of Ruth's answers to some of my questions.  Here are some excerpts from my transcripts:

 

Q: And your sister? (regarding CIA connections)

A: I think she worked briefly with an outfit. All I really know, that she's told me about it, is that she was helping develop questionnaires for non-English speakers to try to figure out who would be bright and capable and they were looking for employers, employees for oil rigs. That's about all I knew and that was maybe for a year or two. It came out of a job that she had at college and then she was a stay at home mom from mid-50s on.

Q: So, yeah, it seems these conspiracy people claim that your sister was in the CIA but I've never seen a document.

A: Well, it’s possible, but I think unlikely that some of the contracts she may have been working on could have been something that CIA wanted, but I don't know.

---

(A later interview, after I found the document)

Interviewer:    This is some sort of CIA declassified document about your sister.

Ruth:   Yeah. Okay, it's possible.  What I know of what she did in a brief job she had in Washington, that she told me about ... She had studied psychology, I guess, and she was helping to develop tests of intelligence that didn't involve language, because they wanted to get bright people working on the oil fields. That's all I know about what she did.

Interviewer:    This document does basically say that she had been employed by the CIA at one point.

Ruth:   Mmmm. She wasn't employed for very long, in her whole life.

Interviewer:    I don't know if that's anything people talk about when they work with the CIA.

Ruth:   What?

Interviewer:    I don't know if people talk about that when they work for the CIA, but is that something that your sister ever discussed with you, what kind of work she was doing?

Ruth:   No, just that one time.

Interviewer:    Oh.

Ruth:   That didn't identify the agency.

Interviewer:    Do you see why people take these connections as being suspicious?

Ruth:   Sure, yeah.

---

 

Q: And another one they bring up is the fact that Michael worked for Bell helicopter and you guys were pacifist or at least you were.

A: Yeah.

Q: I don't know about Michael.

A: I was. Yeah. He went to, he was a draftee for the Korean War. He went to Korea.

Q: Was it a conflict with your values?

A: We were pretty close on values. We really didn't talk much about that, about his service. He's a very. . . he thinks about what's the right thing to do. One of the things he told me was when he was being inducted into the Army they have. . . they read off something and then they say, "If you swear to this, take a step forward."  He said it included saying I will follow the officer's orders whatever they are and he was still thinking about that when everybody else stepped forward. So, he had to go up later and say, "I'm not sure I'm inducted because I can't agree to following the orders of my superior no matter what they might be." Which, of course, actually you're not supposed to follow the orders if you seriously consider them wrong. So, in terms of outlook on the world, we're pretty close.

Q: Was it. . . did you feel bad that he was working for a, I don't know, is that a defense contractor or did they just make helicopters?

A: Well, he had been working for his father, my father-in-law, his step-father on inventing, building, a model for a vertical take-off and landing machine. His step-father had been a major person in developing the first licensed helicopter license to fly, you know, an inventor and recommended Michael to Bell Helicopter, who developed the helicopter. That's where my father-in-law went with his model, was to Larry Bell, and they built a full-size model of the helicopter. That's how it got started. The Bell Helicopter was Michael's step-father's vehicle and. . . where was I going with that? Anyway.

Q: I guess they were used widely in Vietnam. . .

A: That was it. Yeah. Okay. It was his first major paid job, for Michael, and he was glad to get it, I think. It was a steady paycheck, working with machine tools that he loved to do, and building parts, and talking with the engineers. So he really enjoyed that, but he told me, not too long ago, that they wanted him to become more of a desk person. A manager? And he really didn't want to do that. And I never heard him talk about how he felt whether this was contributing to killing or war, but he did only work there about ten years.

[Joe Bauer]

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Seems like insightful comments Joe.

Marina also cut herself and her children off from Lee's mother Marguerite, and I believe at least at times from brother-in-law Robert too as well. I recall reading (cannot find the link this moment) that one of the grown Oswald daughters--was it Rachel?--while not wanting to criticize her mother, said while growing up she regretted she never got to see or know her grandmother, Marguerite. She had been told Marguerite did not want contact. Then, I think only after Marguerite's death, she learned that Marguerite actually had made attempts to see her grandchildren but had been refused and turned away, and the granddaughter had remorse that she had not sought out Marguerite herself when she had the chance, just to know her grandmother.

And, although Marina has had a life of pressures that we cannot know, and I think nearly everyone respects her survival ability, it has struck me that Marina received great wealth for a time from public sympathy while Marguerite apparently lived out her years with real poverty issues, and none of that wealth was shared by Marina to make Marguerite's last years a little more comfortable. 

I can understand Marina distancing herself from Lee's mother Margeurite.

What an awful, overbearing and controlling person.

And as soon as two days after her son's death, Marguerite was pressuring news organizations for money for interviews etc. Marina never did anything of the sort.

Marina didn't owe Lee's mother anything imo.

I could totally understand why Marina wanted to keep her two daughters away from Margeurite Oswald their entire childhood.

Robert and Marina?

I understood he expressed some interest in receiving some portion of the large help funds coming in for Marina. Maybe not a lot?

Not sure what Marina's true feelings toward Robert Oswald were.

I sense she never had much engagement with him and his wife enough to develop any kind of close bond at all.

Marina was always a "lone wolf" type person it sounds to me. Even in her youth. Not getting too close to anyone with a possible exception of one of her mother type guardians in Russia.

Although she did take to Jeanne de Mohrenschildt. Who was a super independent and strong ( and Russian ) woman herself.

I also read where Marina developed a close friendship bond to her memoirs book ghost writer Pricilla Johnson McMillan.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[Jean Ceulemans]

2 hours ago, Max Good said:

(A later interview, after I found the document)

Interviewer:    This is some sort of CIA declassified document about your sister.

Ruth:   Yeah. Okay, it's possible.  What I know of what she did in a brief job she had in Washington, that she told me about ... She had studied psychology, I guess, and she was helping to develop tests of intelligence that didn't involve language, because they wanted to get bright people working on the oil fields. That's all I know about what she did.

Interviewer:    This document does basically say that she had been employed by the CIA at one point.

Ruth:   Mmmm. She wasn't employed for very long, in her whole life.

Interviewer:    I don't know if that's anything people talk about when they work with the CIA.

Ruth:   What?

Interviewer:    I don't know if people talk about that when they work for the CIA, but is that something that your sister ever discussed with you, what kind of work she was doing?

Ruth:   No, just that one time.

Interviewer:    Oh.

Ruth:   That didn't identify the agency.

Interviewer:    Do you see why people take these connections as being suspicious?

Ruth:   Sure, yeah.

 

 

Let's say I worked for the government (well... that's actually true) and I told my sister.

What does this tell you about my sister if SHE was later being accused of having also worked for the government (let it be in some secret dealings) ? IMO if you are reasonable, nothing at all.

People looking for conspiracies will use that kind of stuff, as Ruth said herself. 

Where is the connection between what I did v/s what my sister did.

There is no connection, the ONLY thing is she doesn't have to tell on her sister, and her sister doesn't have to tell on her !  That's family... or not ?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jean Ceulemans]

Another matter, Marina told a lot about Lee, Walker, the rifle, etcccccccccccccc large part in accusing Lee.

So why would she keep silent on Lee driving ?

The connection with Ruth was no longer there,  no longer a reason to feel ashame about having abused the hospitality.

If anything, Marina followed Lee, so why would Marina lie about Lee driving ?

[Joe Bauer]

6 hours ago, Max Good said:

A: That was it. Yeah. Okay. It was his first major paid job, for Michael, and he was glad to get it, I think

Michael Paine's first real job? 

At what age?

With all his private school and later college education?

Sounds like M. Paine was not used to being in the real world of hard jobs and low pay. Like he was pampered and protected by his family's wealth.

Yet he condescendingly, arrogantly and dismissively described hard scrapple childhood and rough later life until the still young age of 24 Oswald as just a wanna-be intellectual who didn't realize how uneducated he really was and how stupid his political theories and beliefs really sounded.

Michael Paine couldn't have survived Oswald's poor and neglected childhood and later young life struggle to just make it in this world.

Michael Paine probably couldn't have hacked the Marines either...as Oswald did.

 

[Tony Krome]

On 11/29/2023 at 4:35 PM, Greg Doudna said:

This was not Ruth Paine's car. Ruth Paine had a 1955 Chevy Belair station wagon that was two-tone green, no white top. It was dark green over light green.

I notice here you use the colour of the station wagon as evidence to debunk. You have just trapped yourself.