Ron Capshaw, a writer in Midlothian, Virginia, argued here two years ago that Lee Oswald had fired a rifle shot at former U.S. Army General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963. Walker, cashiered for proselytizing troops with his right-wing, white supremacist politics, was a harsh critic of JFK.
I think Oswald probably did take a shot at Walker because both Marina Oswald and George De Mohrenschildt said he did. Walker, an avowed racist, was certainly a more likely target for Oswald, an unusually outspoken supporter of civil rights, than the liberal JFK. The shooting occurred shortly after Marina Oswald took the famous “backyard photo” of Oswald and his rifle.
Capshaw, a contributor to National Review, andThe Washington Times, argues this incident on April 10, 1963, points toward Oswald’s sole guilt as the assassin of President Kennedy seven months later.
Capshaw wrote:
“Fifty years ago this month, Lee Harvey Oswald the sniper debuted. His target was General Edwin Walker, a right wing extremist fired by JFK for distributing John Birch-style literature (accusing Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower of being spies for the Soviets) to his troops. Walker had settled in Dallas, and embarked on a speaking tour, chillingly entitled (knowing Walker’s hatred of integration) ‘Operation Midnight Ride.’
“This triggered Lee Harvey Oswald into ordering the infamous Manlicher Carcano from a post office box under the alias Alex Hiddell. He then posed bearing a rifle in one hand and communist pamphlets in the other for photos taken by his wife. On April 10, he left Marina detailed instructions of what to do if he was captured by the police, and then on a flat low trajectory from less than one hundred feet fired a shot into Walker’s window where the general was seated. Only a window frame across the middle of the double window deflected the bullet and saved Walker’s life.
“Surprisingly the conspiracy community, with a few exceptions, has not challenged the charge that Oswald tried to kill Walker. Oliver Stone, doesn’t even include this episode in the film JFK. Don Delillo, offering perhaps the most sober conspiracy theory (Oswald shot at Kennedy but the head shot was from an anti-Castro Cuban) accepted that Oswald did shoot at Walker.
“To omit this attempt is bizarre for the conspiracy group. For Oswald missing on a flat low trajectory — he shot from behind a fence with his arms braced on Walker’s station wagon — would bolster their theory that Oswald was a poor shot (Delillo accepts this, and thus Oswald is only to be trusted by the assassination team with shooting from the Book Depository). Accepting that Oswald would shoot a right-wing extremist like Walker would seem to make it unlikely he would try to assassinate the liberal JFK.
“But this group must have thought this out. For Oswald, that supposed ‘patsy,’ showed himself capable of planning an assassination. He scoped out Walker’s house, taking photographs and planning the hit on a church night when there would be no witnesses. According to Marina and George De Mohrenschildt, Oswald went after Walker because of his views on Cuba.
“But JFK was also certainly an enemy of Oswald’s beloved Castro — Kennedy and his brother Robert were the driving forces behind the CIA-Mafia attempts on Castro’s life — and in his mind killing Kennedy would save El Commandante. Cuban embassy officials asserted that during Oswald’s failed attempts to get a passport to Cuba, he informed them that he was going to shoot Kennedy (this information was left out of the Warren Commission report).
“The assassination community has always argued that Oswald could not have killed Kennedy because of reports that he personally liked him. But would-be assassins do not always dislike their targets, but view their deaths as part of a larger political scheme. George Orwell, reviewing ‘Mein Kampf’ while Luftwaffe bombs were exploding around him, stated that he would kill Hitler if given the chance but that he was never able to dislike him; indeed, he found him personally appealing. Thus Oswald could have shared similar sentiments against Kennedy; he found JFK charming while at the same time a threat to Castro.
“The Walker shooting and Oswald’s more than probable murder of Kennedy (I have come very reluctantly to the conclusion that Oswald acted alone) has relevance for our debates about gun control and government surveillance today. What may have stopped Oswald was not denying him weapons, but better surveillance. Like the administration today, the focus of the Kennedys was on the Right, not the Left, who they regarded as no longer a threat. They were considering not only auditing the Birchers, but the more reasonable group clustered around National Review. They ordered the FBI to raid and confiscate weapons from the anti-Castro Cuban camp.
“All the while Oswald was preparing for the Kennedy hit.”
The night of April 10,1963, Oswald shot and missed retired Major General Edwin Walker, but expected to be arrested. He had left a note for his wife, Marina, in Russian. He wrote that if he was arrested, she could visit him at the police department and wrote direction to get there. She kept that letter and police found and translated it on December 2, 1963. The answer was out—Oswald’s target had been Walker, an anti-communist whom he told his wife was “a fascist.” Here is the letter Oswald left for his wife on Apriil10, 1963:
1. This is the key to the mailbox which is located in the main post office in the city on Ervay Street. This is the same street where the drugstore, in which you always waited is located. You will find the mailbox in the post office which is located 4 blocks from the drugstore on that street. I paid for the box last month so don’t worry about it.
2. Send the information as to what happened to me to the Embassy and include newspaper clippings (should there be anything about me in the newspapers). I believe that the Embassy will come quickly to your assistance on learning everything.
3. I paid the house rent on the 2d so don’t worry about it.
4. Recently I also paid for water and gas.
5. The money from work will possibly be coming. The money will be sent to our post office box. Go to the bank and cash the check.
6. You can either throw out or give my clothing, etc. away. Do not keep these. However, I prefer that you hold on to my personal papers (military, civil, etc.)
7. Certain of my documents are in the small valise.
8. The address book can be found on my table in the study should need same.
9. We have friends here. The Red Cross also will help you [Red Cross in English]
10. I left you as much money as I could, $60 on the second of the month. You and the baby [apparently] can live for another 2 months using $10 per week.
11. If I am alive and taken prisoner, the city jail is located at the end of the bridge through which we always passed on going to the city (right in the beginning of the city after crossing the bridge).
Oswald had been attending typing classes and his wife presumed that was where he headed when he left. When he failed to return by 10 or 10:30 p.m., she went to his room and discovered the note. She testified: “When he came back I asked him what had happened. He was very pale. I don’t remember the exact time, but it was very late. And he told me not to ask him any questions. He only told me he had shot at General Walker.” Oswald told his wife that he did not know whether he had hit Walker. He mentioned that he had the gun, which he would return later to retrieve. Oswald learned through news the next morning that Walker was not hit. Oswald told Marina he had been planning the attempt for two months. He showed her a notebook containing photographs of General Walker’s home and a map of the area where the house was located. FBI examined these later and found two of these photographs were taken from the rear of Walker’s house. A third photograph depicted the entrance to General Walker’s driveway from a back alley. An examination of construction work in the background of this photograph revealed that the picture was taken between March 8 and 12, 1963. Oswald purchased the money order for the rifle on March 12, the rifle was shipped on March 20, and the shooting occurred April 10. A photography expert with the FBI determined that this picture was taken with the Imperial Reflex camera owned by Lee Harvey Oswald.
To me, Oswald wanted to become famous and have papers saved about him when he killed somebody famous. His wife was fed up with him but may he could earn some respect if he did something this important. In fact, if she hadn’t kicked him away from her the night before the assassination, and cuddled with her and agreed to get back together, President Kennedy (whom Marina spent the evening watching on TV) might not have been killed.
The culprit? Most likely the Devil. His henchmen? Maybe the KKK, who may have left their signature by the very date 22 November. K= 11, KKK = 33; 22 = 11 = 33. In that case , does it matter if the KKK, LBJ, CIA or LHO who done it?. What human power could have arranged the eerie coincidences that bridge the assassinations of Kennedy and Lincoln?
CIA documents show US never believed Gary Powers was shot down
~Giles Whittell, Washington Correspondent
U-2 pilot Gary Powers, a few weeks before his suspicious death in a helicopter crash in LA, revealed that he did not believe his plane was shot down by the Soviets and indicated sabotage on the part of the CIA instead, in order to undermine the possibility of detente between Eisenhower and Kruschev. It is not a “conspiracy theory” that Lee Harvey Oswald, one of nine Office of Naval Intelligence fake defectors who went to the USSR in the same month, told ONI’s Richard Snyder at the American Embassy in Moscow that he was going to reveal the U-2 secrets to the Soviets. Oswald had been stationed, as a Marine, at every base the U-2 operated from, including Atsugi, Japan and tracked it by radar. He had a Crypto clearance. Those things are in the historical record. It is not likely that he gave up any such information or would have been allowed to. Snyder kept Oswald’s proffered passport and did not act on his renunciation of US citizenship. Snyder returned the passport to Oswald on his way out of Russia with his new bride Marina, transportation paid by the State Department. Nice treatment for a defector who gave secrets to the Soviets. Marina even got Oswald’s story confused with another ONI defector, Robert Webster, when she testified to the Warren Commission about how her husband got to the Soviet Union and where he lived in Moscow. However if sabotage of the detente was in the planning, it would have been useful to use the Oswald deception to explain how the Soviets could track and shoot down the U-2. This article suggests that Powers himself might have been a false defector as well. What is clear is that Powers did not buy the official story. ~John Judge
The London Times – May 1, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article711351
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“Nice treatment for a defector who gave secrets to the Soviets.”
Agreed!!!
As to the “crypto” clearance the Douglass book claims Oswald had at Atsugi, a clearance higher than top secret….wouldn’t this be waving a red flag concerning Oswald? Seems to me any intelligence agency, like the CIA, FBI etc., would not want this fact to be so easy to access. It would immediately signal the fact that Oswald might be employed by them . It seems to me they would keep this high security clearance information for “their eyes only”, making it not available for anyone especially after the JFK assassination. I’m sure this information would have been kept closely guarded and eventually destroyed. Why point a finger so easily, linking themselves with Oswald?
It is said that this clearance was given to those working on the Atsugi base because it was the base for the closely guarded, secret U-2 reconnaissance planes and it was actually considered a low security clearance.
max July 19, 2015 at 11:42 pm
Good point Max but if this was true (if they sheep dipped Oswald) how did Douglass learn that Oswald had a “crypto” clearance? And we need to keep this straight: there is no such thing as a “crypto” clearance for DOD. There is (1) confidential, (2) secret, and (3) Top Secret. Oswald had a confidential as did his workmates. Only his boss, the lieutenant had a secret classification.
I have never been able to track down this crypto BS. I think someone simply claimed it years ago since it sounds good and it seems to have stuck on the wall.
Bill,
>>I have never been able to track down this crypto BS. I think someone simply claimed it years ago since it sounds good and it seems to have stuck on the wall.<<
You're right. The "crypto" claim comes from a 1966 radio talk show featuring Harold Weisberg. An unidentified person who called in claimed he'd served with Oswald and that Oswald had both "crypto" and "top secret" clearances.
I think this was first mentioned in Weisberg's "Oswald in New Orleans." Since then other conspiracy books including Douglass's have claimed flatly that Oswald had "crypto" clearance without mentioning that it's only a claim by an anonymous source.
Harold Weisberg served as an Office of Strategic Services officer during World War II, a U.S. Senate staff member and investigative reporter, an investigator for the Senate Committee on Civil Liberties.
Jean Davison claims; “The “crypto” claim comes from a 1966 radio talk show featuring Harold Weisberg. An unidentified person who called in claimed he’d served with Oswald and that Oswald had both “crypto” and “top secret” clearances.”
But Jean gives no source to check up on whether this assertion she just made is valid.
She goes on to say that she thinks, “..this was first mentioned in Weisberg’s “Oswald in New Orleans.”
Well, how about something solid we can go on here Jean? Where in Weisberg’s book does he say that this info of “Crypto” clearance as from this anonymous source on the radio show. Weisberg has a rather solid track record as having great integrity and has renown for his research skills.
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Willy,
I’m not criticizing Weisberg, who simply reported what happened: an anonymous caller claimed Oswald had a “crypto clearance.”
To his credit Weisberg reported this as what it was … somebody’s claim. My beef is with writers who state it as an established fact, when it’s not.
Google Books has Weisberg’s book. Here’s the anonymous caller incident:
https://books.google.com/books?id=8cUtAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT11&lpg=PT11&dq=weisberg+%22oswald+in+new+orleans%22&source=bl&ots=M9WeTltZ9j&sig=93GQWXsq0PXGfgKX415p4CMaTzI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBmoVChMI1JrZt4P5xgIVhjmICh3o7AFl#v=onepage&q=crypto&f=false
But Jean, that is not the only lead to Oswald as an agent, nor is the “crypto” designation unknown; even the info presented here by Bill Clarke mentions ‘Crypto’ as a special need to know security category. And this parsing whether it is a “clearance” or not is just rhetorical word play.
Just the work of John Newman establishes the likelihood that Oswald was ONI beyond reasonable doubt. It is certainly more reasonable and based in real intelligence research than your goofy, “Oswald the deranged nut” BS.
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Bill Clarke
Like you I have never been able to track down any convincing information about this “crypto” clearance. But because Douglass and other intelligent researchers seem to trust this clearance, treating it as a fact, I really think this issue needs to be addressed. Personally I’m not convinced. That Oswald, a young man with some unique views, would suddenly become so important and wave “red flags” doesn’t seem logical to me to begin with. Why would any thinking intelligence agency openly wave so many “red flags” around someone like Oswald? Surely they had more mature, better trained individuals on staff. Why was Douglass even able to uncover a
“crypto” clearance? And that Lee Oswald would come out of the blue with a clearance higher than top secret is hard to believe.
max July 23, 2015 at 12:17 am
I certainly agree about Oswald. He certainly wasn’t one that I would want on my team.
But again, none of these researchers, including Douglass, has ever found a “crypto” clearance because none exist in the DOD. And there is no security clearance higher than Top Secret in the DOD. I agree again, I don’t see it.
If you search “crypto clearance” on Google you get all sorts of sites and former DoD employees claiming it exists — and not in connection with Oswald or anything JFK related.
BTW, Douglas cites “Breach of Trust” on page 300. I’d have to view my copy tonight to see where McKnight got it.
Bogman July 23, 2015 at 8:09 pm
I did a quick Google search and you are right. I found a pilot that claimed a TS Crypto and another claiming the same. Problem is this one declared that there were 30 classifications above Top Secret. I think we can cross him off the list.
I used the military web site for my reference, not some whack job site. Wikipedia agrees, for what that is worth. I found several other sites that support the three classifications. I don’t think we are going to find a 4th classification (crypto)for DOD. Remember we are talking about a DOD clearance.
I did find this that might help clear up the confusion;
___________________________________
COSMIC, CRYPTO, NOFORN, ORCON, SAP, SCI, RD, SIOP-ESI, SPECAT, SIOP-ESI, etc., are not clearances. They are categories of classified information, some of which have
extra need-to-know restrictions.
https://www.clearancejobs.com/security_clearance_faq.pdf
___________________________________
I had a Secret clearance in the Army. I carried code books and encryption and decipher tool 24 hours a day. My Security Card said “Secret”. It said nothing about “crypto” although I was involved at times with “crypto”. I’m sure Oswald did much the same with his Confidential clearance. There is no way Oswald had a clearance “higher than Top Secret”.
With all due respect, there are higher clearances than top secret. I know a lot of men who had top secret clearance in the military. Are there ANY vets at all that can vouch for this? It seems that there are quite a few people on here that don’t seem to understand anything about the military. My God, you have be be top secret to even get stationed to some bases. I’m kind of wondering about this lack of knowledge about the military. My guess would be that a lot of the people on this site are Baby Boomers and didn’t serve, if they could help it, because of Vietnam. (Which is understandable). I guess the older guys, who served in WWII and Korea, are dying off?
DiDi July 25, 2015 at 9:57 pm
Again with all due respect there might be higher security clearance classifications but they are not in the DOD system and Oswald was in the DOD system. The DOD has 3 classifications; confidential,secret and to secret. References are posted here on my messages.
I’m a VET and I can vouch that a lot of men had a top secret classification.
I think most here were too young for Vietnam and too old for Iraq. But I’m certainly not the only Vet on the site.
Max,
Only the arrogant would assert with any measure of certainty that there are only certain levels of security clearances in the military services or intelligence. Such issues would obviously entail the context of such a clearance, specified by topic and need to know. That there may be clearances for those involved with cryptology is surely a reasonable prospect.
Only those woefully lacking in imagination would make these arguments against the “crypto clearance” as if they had the omniscience of a god.
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Of course there was a crypto clearance . As Norman Polmar states in his book “Spyplane” all CIA U2 pilots were assigned this clearance after being “sheep-dipped”
Oswald, being a part of the program received the same treatment.
According to the testimony of his Marine crew commander at El Toro, Lt. John Donovan:
“Oswald had access to the location of all bases in the west coast areas, all radio frequencies for all squadrons, all tactical call signs, and the relative strength of all squadrons, number and type of aircraft in a squadron, who was the commanding officer, the authentication code of entering and exiting the ADIZ, which stand for Air Defense Identification Zone. He knew the range of our radar. He knew the range of our radio. And he knew the range of surrounding units’ radio and radar… There are some things which he knew on which he received instructions that there is no way of changing, such as the MPS 16 height-finder radar gear… He had also been schooled on a piece of machinery call a TPX-1, which is used to transfer radio–radar and radio signals over a great distance. Radar is very susceptible to homing missiles, and this piece of equipment is used to put your radar antenna several miles away, and relay the information back to your site which you hope is relatively safe. He had been schooled on this.”~[WC Vol. 8 p.298]
http://www.russianbooks.org/oswald/kgb.htm
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So? Do you really think Oswald knew anything that the Soviets didn’t already know?
I still don’t see any support that Oswald had a “crypto” clearance.
Willy Whitten July 21, 2015 at 3:20 pm
Only the arrogant would assert with any measure of certainty that there are only certain levels of security clearances in the military services or intelligence.
BC. Not being one that tolerates arrogance well I relied on my military experience and a bit of research to check an old fading memory. Did you rely on your experience or research to determine that there are many many levels of security clearances for DOD?
_____________________________________________________
In the military, all classified information is divided into one of three categories:
CONFIDENTIAL: Applied to information or material the unauthorized disclosure of which could be reasonably expected to cause damage to the national security.
SECRET: Applied to information or material the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.
TOP SECRET: Applied to information or material the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.
http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/generalinfo/a/security.htm
______________________________________________________
Such issues would obviously entail the context of such a clearance, specified by topic and need to know.
BC. “Need to know” covers all aspects of security.
That there may be clearances for those involved with cryptology is surely a reasonable prospect.
BC. Of course there are clearances for cryptology. They are called (1) Confidential, (2) Secret and (3) Top Secret. I had a Secret clearance. I carried the code book and the encryption/decipher tool 24 hours a day. It didn’t say Secret/Crypto. It was simply “Secret”. I notice that you don’t supply any support that Oswald had a “Crypto” clearance. A problem?
Only those woefully lacking in imagination would make these arguments against the “crypto clearance” as if they had the omniscience of a god.
BC. I don’t have the omniscience of a god but I do understand the security classification used by DOD better than you it appears. But I now see why you take Prouty to your breast so strongly. You both are very big on imagination. Imagination is what has caused much of this mess, Willy.
“BC. I don’t have the omniscience of a god but I do understand the security classification used by DOD better than you it appears. But I now see why you take Prouty to your breast so strongly. You both are very big on imagination. Imagination is what has caused much of this mess, Willy.”~Bill Clarke
. . . . .
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”~Albert Einstein
I know why you are jealous of Fletcher Prouty, it is because his experience and knowledge of the DOD is far superior of yours, plus he grasps the importance of imagination, and that the trite interpretation of the term as “just making stuff up” or “being juvenile” is not at the core of it. All discovery and invention is dependent on human imagination. There would be no civilization, no science, no technology; no empathy for one another without the imagination to identify with the pain of others.
Your list of three major categories of security clearances may be correct as far as it goes, but it is silly and ridiculous to conclude that there are no subheadings for specialty clearances.
The core issue here is whether or not Oswald was a double agent for the US. And this is what you are arguing against, while all of the facts revealed thus far indicate that Oswald was an agent.
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Willy Whitten July 23, 2015 at 10:39 am
I know why you are jealous of Fletcher Prouty, it is because his experience and knowledge of the DOD is far superior of yours,
BC. Funny Willy. Fletcher and his supporters are objects of mirth in the Vietnam War college. I have no trouble with his experience but it is the fact that he is a liar that caused me to disregard him.
Your list of three major categories of security clearances may be correct as far as it goes, but it is silly and ridiculous to conclude that there are no subheadings for specialty clearances.
BC. Willy, instead of shooting silly and ridiculous blanks at me why don’t you do something and show us these subheadings?
You have the SCI and SAP at the Top Secret level but there is nothing higher than Top Secret.
The core issue here is whether or not Oswald was a double agent for the US.
BC. No it isn’t. The subject is Douglass claiming Oswald had a “crypto” clearance. Oswald didn’t and you haven’t shown that he did.
Willy Whitten July 23, 2015 at 10:39 am
Your list of three major categories of security clearances may be correct as far as it goes, but it is silly and ridiculous to conclude that there are no subheadings for specialty clearances.
Dear Willy, please note my list of the three security clearances is correct, no as far as it goes to it. I know you are a busy man so I’m going to show you this document now.
Acronyms such as ATOMAL, CNWDI, COMSEC, COSMIC, CRYPTO, NOFORN, ORCON, SAP, SCI, RD, SIOP-ESI, SPECAT, SIOP-ESI, etc., are not clearances. They are categories of classified information, some of which have
extra need-to-know restrictions.
https://www.clearancejobs.com/security_clearance_faq.pdf
“The core issue here is whether or not Oswald was a double agent for the US……..” – Willy Whitten
Why would such a young man as Oswald be thrown head first into the role of double agent? Oswald was young, still a boy, when he joined the Marines. He hadn’t finished high school. Would he be thrown so quickly into such a high security level? Could he be trusted with such a high security task? He did come from what many call a dysfunctional family and had personal problems. Could he be trusted right off by any intelligence agency? It seems obvious that he was someone who could not be relied on at this point in his life. Having some basic knowledge of Lee Oswald as a person would put to rest some of the far fetched ideas held by CT believers.
I do agree that there probably are subheadings for security clearances but I find it silly and ridiculous that Oswald would be thrown in there so easily.
I meant to add this in my earlier comment.
Is there any proof or evidence that Lee Oswald had any qualifications, any special abilities or character traits that would lead intelligence agencies right to his doorstep at that point in his life? To have such a high security clearance at Atsugi as some say he had and to move him so quickly into high powered intelligence work……not so easy to believe. I could only find reasons why they might not want to rely on him.
“Acronyms such as ATOMAL, CNWDI, COMSEC, COSMIC, CRYPTO, NOFORN, ORCON, SAP, SCI, RD, SIOP-ESI, SPECAT, SIOP-ESI, etc., are not clearances. They are categories of classified information, some of which have extra need-to-know restrictions.”
~Bill Clarke
You are playing with words Bill, making a spurious rhetorical argument now after you yourself prove right there that, “CRYPTO” is a category of classified information, which has extra need-to-know restrictions.”
So again, you are wrong, but claim you were right. And you call Prouty a liar! You have called a lot of people liars Bill. I think that is very hypocritical under the obvious circumstances.
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Max, if you want a psychological analysis, I’m not qualified but consider…
He was nutty enough to complete his GED in the marines, complete radar school, have a radar clearance at Atsugi monitoring the CIA’s U2. He was devoted to service through his brothers lead and direction by David Ferrie in his early teens. His lack of a father, moving around (changing/no close friends growing up) mean he could have bonded with the service and been easily shaped.
Willy Whitten
You make some good sense here as you often do but I just can’t find good reason to believe in this “crypto” clearance. I don’t see myself as arrogant but rather someone who doesn’t accept every odd sounding idea that comes around. This “crypto” clearance needs to be questioned. I would like to see something convincing. So far the conventional explanation that Oswald, like all of those stationed with him, had the confidential clearance seems the most likely to me. Plain and simple.
Come on Max, Bill has just provided evidence of “Crypto” himself. Do you think that someone who is cleared for restrictions of categories of classified information, isn’t by this very definition a “clearance”?
I think your concerns about Oswald’s “youth” is very naive. He obviously had certain skill sets, was obviously talented in learning foreign languages. He held a sensitive post dealing with the secret U2 operations out of Japan. There are so many indicators that Oswald was ONI:
http://spot.acorn.net/JFKplace/09/fp.back_issues/07th_Issue/copa_lho.html
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15140
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/arrb/index75.htm
http://www.globalresearch.ca/jfk-and-the-unspeakable-why-he-died-and-why-it-matters/16273?print=1
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I’d read the critical book reviews of the Douglass book but bought it to see for myself. I should have saved my money. I realize Chris that Douglass says a lot of things that you want to hear. Trouble is a lot of things he says are not true, some are pure speculation. Here are just a few of his major flaps in the book. Not to mention Douglass calling the United States Marines a “right wing” group that should be abolished. Gee whiz, the Marines?
1. “From his (Oswald) radar control room at Atsugi, where he had a “crypto” clearance (higher than “top secret’),…..”. Page 37.
This is BS and not debatable. There was not and is not a DOD security classification “crypto”. Oswald couldn’t have had what doesn’t exist. Oswald had a confidential security clearance. It is, of course, NOT higher than Top Secret. This in itself might not mean much but it is part of Douglass beginning to make Oswald into something he was not.
2. Concerning the interview of Robert Kennedy by Daniel Ellsberg in 1967. “RFK said that if the president reached the point where the only alternative to defeat was sending ground troops or withdrawing, he intended to withdraw”. Page 108.
Okay but this isn’t what Bobby said in his oral history which is at the JFK Library.
Martin: It’s generally true all over the world, whether it’s in a shooting war or a different kind of a war. But the president was convinced that we had to keep, had to stay in there . . .
Kennedy: Yes.
Martin: . . . and couldn’t lose it.
Kennedy:Yes.
Martin: And if Vietnamese were about to lose it, would he propose to go in on land if he had to?
Kennedy: Well, we’d face that when we came to it.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/vietnam.htm
Surely Douglass was aware of this other conflicting interview of Bobby in April 1964. Why didn’t he mention it? I believe one seeking the truth would have also posted the conflicting interview and hopefully support one or the other with evidence. But Douglass didn’t do this.
3. Douglass takes to heart the BS story that Fletcher Prouty helped write The McNamara Taylor Report. Page 187.
This is really sad I think that Prouty would claim such and so many would believe it. Douglass uses only three footnotes to support this fairy tale. One is a Prouty interview and another is McNamara’s dishonest book. Neither fellow believable. Douglass goes on to comment that McNamara said that at the NSC meeting to discuss the report…”we battled over the recommendations”. More BS. You can listen to the tapes of that meeting. It was cordial, everyone quickly agreed and by god they were winning the war! But Douglass wants you to think Camelot did battle with all those terrible men. Well, Kennedy was one of those men.
I see Bill Clarke still clings to the delusions fed to him by the mainstream press. This is really sad.
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Willy Whitten July 19, 2015 at 1:34 pm
In my defense, Willy, do you blame your delusions about what NSAM 263 says on mainstream media or what?
It has to do, Willy, with facts. It has nothing to do with mainstream media. Sometimes they have the facts, sometimes they don’t. Judging from your posting history you have no monopoly on the facts yourself.
For a fact can you show me primary documents that shows Oswald with a “crypto” clearance? No, you cannot.
For a fact, can you explain why Douglass omitted any mention of the Martin interview of Bobby? Can you explain the 180 degree change in what Bobby has to say in the two interviews? Well, you can BS around some on this one but I doubt I’ll see anything substantial.
Again for a fact, do you have anything supporting Prouty’s claim about the McNamara Taylor Report. I mean besides a reference to another Prouty quote or some other whacko? I don’t believe you do.
I didn’t even bring up Douglass making the same claim as you about NSAM 263 being an order to withdraw “all” of the troops in SVN. I considered your sensitivity here.
So Willy, unless you have something (facts) here, I suggest you worry about your own delusions.
“In my defense, Willy, do you blame your delusions about what NSAM 263 says on mainstream media or what?”~Bill Clarke
No Bill, I blame YOUR delusions on what mainstream media says about NSAM 263.
Here you will find the real story:
THE SECRET TEAM
The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World
By L. FLETCHER PROUTY, Col., U.S. Air Force (Ret.)
https://humanbeingsfirst.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/cacheof-prouty-thesecretteam-via-ratical-com.pdf
\\][//
I think it’s important to remember that JFK and RFK, like all politicians, were not going to put all their cards on the table at once. RFK was still a member of the Johnson administration when he gave that April 1964 interview, so he certainly wasn’t going to say anything that might be construed as criticism of JFK’s successor. “Well, we’d face that when we came to it” is certainly a long way from saying JFK planned to withdraw, but it can’t really be read as an admission that JFK was going to “Americanize” the war if it wasn’t going well. (At the time, LBJ’s public position was that he opposed Americanizing the war.) RFK also says that “everybody” in the Kennedy administration felt that sending combat troops to Vietnam would “end in disaster.”
J.D. July 20, 2015 at 5:50 pm
J.D., as much as Bobby hated LBJ I believe he would have done anything to make LBJ look bad. And of course the reverse is also true. But at this date it was still JFK’s war and Bobby certainly wasn’t going to make that look bad. By 1967 Bobby was running as a antiwar candidate so his interview with Ellsberg fits that well. I think he had more reason to be truthful in 1964 than in 1967. Most all of these “Jack told me he was withdrawing” didn’t come out until around 1967 when the mood of the country was or had turned against the war.
I read the “we would cross that bridge” the same as you.
Still the question of whether Oswald was the one who shot at Walker or not continues on. Luck would have had to be with him if he was able to, without a car, carry that rifle on public transport, hide it and not be noticed. He also had to return for the rifle and again use public transport. Is it possible that he wasn’t alone and had a friend with a car? The story at first sight just doesn’t seem plausible and I feel certain it would never have held up in court. I want to believe Marina as she stuck to this story throughout the years and DeMohrenschield seemed to back her up, meaning he thought it something possible for Lee. And there is the friend Oswald had in earlier years who testified that he had told him, that if he could, he would kill Eisenhower. Marina also testified that she had to hold him back from trying to assassinate Nixon. I never found the story of her locking Lee in the bathroom plausible unless he just liked to play games to upset her as she also mentioned. There is really no positive proof for any of this, nothing to point to Lee either assassinating Kennedy or not. These stories simply add to the confusion. If someone deliberately set these stories up to make Oswald look guilty, they didn’t do their homework. Another sloppy attempt and not professional.
I am reading “Unspeakable” now and am finding it very informative in relation to all the high powered enemies JFK had arrayed against him. I am however disappointed that Jim Douglass doesn’t mention what he thinks about the LHO role in attempted assassination of Gen Walker. Because if he was the shooter how do you explain LHO supposedly firing at two politicians on opposite ends of the spectrum. It makes no sense – at least from “lone nut” perspective. Because of what we think we know about LHO’s political leanings it would make more sense for him to be involved with trying to kill Walker than JFK. I am just starting to learn about CIA involvement with LHO which might help explain his involvement in both shootings but I’m not informed enough in this area yet to understand how. That’s why I was hoping there would be some mention of it in “Unspeakable”.
I have to correct myself. Found in footnote 675 to Chapter 6 that Douglass believes evidence was manipulated into making it appear that Oswald was involved in Walker attempt to show that he was capable of assassination.
LHO did not shoot at Edwin Walker with a 6.5mm Carcano loaded with bullets made by the Western Cartridge Co., for the simple fact that investigating officers reported finding a steel jacketed bullet at the scene of the shooting, and all of the 6.5mm Carcano bullets made by the WCC were jacketed in a copper coloured alloy.
http://www.whokilledjfk.net/Dupe%20Images/Walker3.gif
Bob,
Very true that “LHO did not shoot at EW with a 6.5mm Carcano” with any kind of ammo. I believe LHO may have brought his newly-acquired MC to a meeting with his confederates in the “shooting”, but when they saw that junk, they had a good laugh. Lee may not even have fired his new gun by that point. Or where did he find the unusual 6.5 bullets?
For sure it was a rifle of one of his “buddies” in the escapade, in the 30-30 cal., 7.65mm range. Walker and every police officer said the slug was steel-jacketed, as you noted, and at least 30 caliber. It went through a window pane at a midden, through one side of a plaster wall, and nearly out the other side. That old plaster with wire mesh and laths is as hard as a rock.
I’m curious, Bob, do you think Oswald was involved in the Walker “shooting”? I think EAW and his boyfriend Robert Surrey concocted this publicity stunt. One of them had to recruit only one desperado (probably a military vet but not LHO) looking for easy money, and he would find his own “crew”. Whether LHO took the shot doesn’t make much difference. He was there, he was in on it. His behavior that night and the next couple days show a very frightened fellow. He didn’t have to bury his MC with a shovel, as some posters seem to think necessary. Just find a remote place, put it between bushes and cover it with leaves.
About any way of looking at the Walker “shooting” is anathema to the Warren conclusions. 4/10/63: accompliceS (plural), an easy shot and miss, against the most rabid big-name righ-winger. 11/22/63 according to the War Con: one gunman, incomparably harder shotS (plural) and hitS all over JFK, JBC, the limo, and all over Dealey; against the super-liberal.
Ted Walker was on a mission at Ole Miss, and he got his wish–a lot of pain, suffering, and a lot of attention for long-suffering Ted. This broke the left and right politicos further apart: no real legal action against the mastermind of the atrocity. A lot of hatred going around New Year’s 1963.
SO——-Ted’s live-in boyfriend, Nazi/fascist publisher Robert A. Surrey drugged/poisoned that pesky neighbor dog Toby (poor thing was sick for 3 days[Meagher’s Accessories, p 290]) so that he wouldn’t bother Lee and a couple of accomplices. Who, for a few hundred bucks, broke a window with a big slug, 30 caliber at least, and sent a few slivers into Walker’s arm. Though the papers said it “narrowly missed his head.”
I was first tipped off to this by a few conflicting details:
–pitch-dark outside and a guy’s in his ‘office’ with the lights on him full bore, lit up like a Christmas tree. Too lazy or stupid to pull the shades or close the curtains? Nah.
–and he’s had young men peeping in windows, sneaking around recently
–and a photo of ONE of the TWO getaway has a hole-punch through the license plate. What are the odds?
–and Oswald, who had lost his job at JCS two days before, is suddenly flush with money, leaves plenty with Marina, books to New Orleans in two weeks, and doesn’t have to work for a while
–and on and on
As Nat. Heidenheimer likes to invoke: NEGATIVE TEMPLATE.
Now, LHO may have meant to wing EAW; he truly hated the misery-causing s-o-b. And the shot didn’t hit the middle part of the window, the window frame. It hit a little old midden, the small piece of wood between the panes.
LHO was getting expert at gunshot wounds that were scratches. He’d done the same thing to himself to get out of leaving Atsugi.
All the knowledgable CRs and LNs on this site can’t see the forest for the trees regarding Gen EA “Ted” Walker. The 4/10/63 “shooting” (when no one was shot) was a publicity stunt phonier than a $3 bill. And Walker was the Head Phony.
The money and pity was drying up for EAW after he led the race riots end of Sept, beginning of Oct 1962 over James Meredith attending Ole Miss. Those riots were no joke. Two murdered gangland style, 6 US Marshals shot, over 200 injured badly enough to require hospital care. And that was after federal troops had confiscated several pickup truck loads of guns and ammo at state and county borders. The rocks, brickbats and broken glass were ankle-deep around the admin building. USA!USA!
Walker’s fortunes had taken a long fall since JFK accepted his resignation late 1961. He was the only general to have resigned in the 20th century, forfeiting his pension, which was reinstated in the mid-70s after a lot of begging.
But Walker came out of the Army with one big sugardaddy, HL Hunt, and many smaller sugardaddies, the Birchers, Minutemen, KKK (gentrified under new title, White Citizens Councils). Hunt bankrolled his wildly popular speeches and his early 1962 run for governor to pave the way for a Teddy Walker presidency!
Walker lost the primary pitifully and then things really started going downhill. April 1962 saw Senate hearings about “military preparedness,” really about the MIC begging for more of our blood, sweat and tears to fight the Commie Boogyman. And the star witness, Edwin Anderson Walker, came across as a scared little girl, a lunatic.
Truth be told, he was losing it. The strain of hiding his homosexuality was more than he could handle, had been for a while. That was a serious court-martial in the 1950s, always to be feared. (Big shots like JE Hoover and Roy Cohn went bonkers with only the possibility of social shame hanging over their heads. We probably can’t imagine the stress of dealing with a double whammy of shame as a general military officer.) He’d tendered his resignation to the slacker old fool, DDE, in 1959, and received the attention and cushier assignment he was angling for. Not so with JFK.
Summer of 62 found EAW and the far right-wing desperate. Kennedy was more popular than ever. That’s why they hated him the most. It was a Civil War waiting for a spark. The church fire-bombings didn’t start it, over 80 up to this point with no indictments. Way to go, FBI! Way to do your job!
[Far Right author:]
“The assassination community has always argued […]”
=======================
According to the last census, such community is composed of about 320 million people, and that is only in the US.
When I was a child, in Venezuela in the 70s, I recall seeing in a tabloid a long distance “photo” of Jackie, in the Skorpios island, pushing a wheelchair with her husband in it. His paralyzed legs were covered with a blanket.
I guess that among all the weirdos, there is always room for everybody, even the non-assassination crowd.
[Far Right author:]
“But JFK was also certainly an enemy of Oswald’s beloved Castro — Kennedy and his brother Robert were the driving forces behind the CIA-Mafia attempts on Castro’s life — and in his mind killing Kennedy would save El Commandante.”
======================
If Lee was actually cognizant of that highly secret operation, he was a very important agency asset, more so than generally assumed.
It was years after the WCR that we finally learned about the assassinations plans against Fidel.
Ha ha, absolutely Ramon!
How could one justify Oswald’s motive on that classified information, if he was just a lone nut? I think you exposed Ron Capshaw’s Achilles Heel in his argument.
The idea that Oswald tried to assassinate General Walker presents WC fanatics with an enormous problem. First, they must cleave to the WC assumption that Oswald did not know how to drive and/or did not have access to an automobile (we know for a fact that he did not have a driver’s license which is not unusual for someone who’d grown up poor in major urban areas and left home for the armed forces at the age of 17). Next, they must deal with the fact that without an automobile to get back and forth and transport his rifle in a way that no one could see it, it would have been exceptionally difficult for Oswald to have carried out this deed with no assistance. They must also deal with the fact that no bus drivers, bus passengers, or cab drivers were ever found who witnessed a man transporting a rifle that night. And they cannot, ever, ever, EVER admit to the possibility that someone might have assisted him because that opens up the possibility that people who helped him in an attempted murder in Dallas in April of 1963 might have helped him in the successful murder only 7 months later.
Oswald, as I recall, lived 7-10 miles from Walker’s home. The notion that he walked that distance carrying a rifle with no one seeing him coming or going (and how on earth could he have avoided the cops afterwards?) is too ridiculous to take seriously. The notion that he somehow buried the rifle and later retrieved it is even more LOL funny since he would now have to have been carrying a shovel, which would have made him even more conspicuous (and think of how cumbersome it would be to carry just one of those things while walking a 14-20 mile round-trip). He would also have to have had in his possession materials with which to protect the rifle from the dirt in which it was buried (at the very least a blanket or sheet along with tape or rope to bind it up), and the rifle would have to have been serviced afterwards no matter how tightly and carefully it had been packed up, and the Carcano allegedly used in both the Walker and Kennedy shootings showed no signs of the routine upkeep such firearms requires.
Need I add that the burial site would have very obviously appeared to have been a quickly dug hole that was covered by a mound of recently excavated dirt? And that such a thing would have attracted notice? Given the size of the rifle, such a hole would have to have been 3.5 to 4 feet in length, and to keep it from being exposed by the elements, you’d probably want to make it at least 10 inches deep. That’s a not inconsiderable amount of unwitnessed digging going on, all done by a scrawny man who’d be exhausted from a very long hike, probably in a panic at the thought of being discovered, facing yet another very long walk home.
As far as I’m concerned, all discussions about the bullet fragment, eyewitnesses, what Marina and/or George said is irrelevant. No one has ever given a reasonable, logical explanation of how Oswald could have committed the attack on Walker without the witting or unwitting aid of at least one other person (and if the claim is that it was unwitting assistance that is going to have to meet a very heavy burden of proof). Until such an explanation is given, all claims that he committed this act should be laughed off.
I think, Fearfaxer, that you made a few wrong assumptions here. One of the ideas that bothered Robert Oswald was that his brother was what you just described as a “scrawny man”. Robert clearly refuted this idea in his book. You might not care for Robert or anything he has to say but you have to admit that he was closer to Lee than you or your sources. Lee might have had a slender built but as Robert clearly said, he had well developed, strong arms and strong hands. If you look at his autopsy photos, you might see this.
The other assumption is that he needed a shovel. As someone said earlier on this topic, Oswald probably buried the rifle under some brush which to me makes a lot of sense. Who would dig a hole to bury a rifle??
And, have you tried life without a car? You learn to do things differently out of necessity. As Marina herself said, Lee laughed at people for assuming someone with a car had attempted the Walker assassination.
From “A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald”, by Robert Oswald.
“I have some idea of the speed of Lee’s reflexes, both from my general observation of him while we were growing up and specifically because of a game we used to play. Sometimes Lee and I would walk up to each other and fake an unexpected punch, to test each other’s reactions. I discovered from this game that Lee had very rapid reflexes. He was also much stronger than he looked. For a small man, he had unusual strength in his hands, and his forearms were well developed and powerful”.
It is very hard for some to believe that Lee Oswald could carry that rifle on a bus without being noticed. I have to admit that I found it a bit difficult too. He probably wouldn’t have gone to any elaborate means to conceal it and surely someone noticed but just didn’t think it important at the time and months later couldn’t make a positive ID. In his book Robert Oswald suggested that perhaps he wasn’t alone. He believed the witnesses who said they saw Lee practicing at the firing range and was disappointed with the WC for not taking this more seriously. He said there were six witnesses, four who saw his brother up close. And it was noted that someone saw a person handing Lee his rifle over the fence. Even though the commission relied on the fact that Oswald hadn’t signed in, Robert reminds us that usually people didn’t sign in. He also says that Hugh Aynesworth interviewed the six witnesses and was very impressed with them. The conclusion being that the WC really missed it and further confused the issue. As for the fact that no casings were found from Oswald’s rifle where he supposedly practiced, the witnesses claimed Oswald retained his shell casings. Robert then reasoned that of course they wouldn’t have found any casings belonging to his rifle. In conclusion the WC missed a chance to somewhat clear the confusion up by ignoring these witnesses.
Annie, I’m not certain what part of the country you live in where people are smuggling rifles on to public transportation, but the fact you notice it shows it’s not so easily done undetected.
As for Marina’s credibility as a witness, you do realize none of her statements would not have seen the light of day had Oswald lived to stand trial:
“There must first be deleted the testimony of his wife, Marina, for although she testified on three occasions and was questioned by the press and investigative agencies on scores of others, it is difficult to find any statement which would not be more hurtful than helpful to her husband. Under Texas law, “The husband
and wife may, in all criminal actions, be witnesses for each other; but they shall in no case testify against each other except in a criminal prosecution for an offense committed by one against the other.” — Alfredda Scobey, Warren Commission Counsel
The Warren Commission was aware that many of Marina Oswald’s statements were contradictory and unreliable. One of the Commission’s attorneys, Norman Redlich, wrote in a memo to J. Lee Rankin that “neither you nor I have any desire to smear the reputation of any individual. We cannot ignore, however, that Marina Oswald has repeatedly lied to the [Secret] Service, the FBI, and this Commission on matters which are of vital concern to the people of this country and the world” http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=39732
Redlich expanded on this when testifying before the HSCA: “She may not have told the truth in connection with the attempted killing of General Walker. … I gave to Mr Rankin a lengthy document. … I indicated the testimony that she had given, the instances where it was in conflict” http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=39733
David makes a good argument here, a well thought out one. But like, Annie, I also found a lot of contradictions, conflicting evidence. I actually changed my mind a few times. But the important principle is that a man is considered innocent until proven guilty. I can’t see Oswald ever being convicted on the attempt to shoot Walker. It is just on how one interprets matters here. Am I wrong? Does anyone here see any substantial evidence that would hold up in court? What about the note found, the photos and the fact that George DeMohrenschildt, in his own way, backed up Marina. Would really like to see a different opinion. I also knew of someone concealing a rifle on public transportation to a gun show of some sort in Austin Texas. There are a lot of different deep bags .
“There are a lot of different deep bags.”~april
Then why did Oswald supposedly fashion a paper bag to allegedly transport a rifle to the TBDB?
Where did this rifle really come from april? Are you unaware of the controversy involving the alleged ordering of this rifle by Oswald from a post office across town from where he was working, that was too far to walk to during his half hour lunch break? The conflicting evidence of how he might have picked the rifle up?
The doubt cast on his alleged ID using the name of Hidell?
Who and why ripped out the area of the licence plate on the photo of the 57 Chevy parked at Walker’s residence?
Can there be certainty that no one aside from Oswald had access to the camera alleged to be his?
What about Walker’s own insistence that the bullet in the record is not the one he saw and handled himself?
You have a penumbra of issues you have not sufficiently addressed here. You work with simple home spun antidotes in the main, and have an uncanny resemblance to the style of “annie” here. Are you the Bobbsey-Twins redux?
Annie, I suggest you Google ‘A Lawyer’s Notes on the Warren Commission Report’ and read the article. Alfredda Scobey was counsel on the commission and you will be amazed to know that not only the Walker evidence would have been inadmissible, but a lot of other circumstantial evidence against Oswald, including the Tippit slaying.
Not to mention the gross violation of Oswald’s civil liberties by Dallas authorities stating to the world press that he alone was guilty and the “case is cinched.”
april, that different opinion you are seeking is all over the net, so a google of the Walker shooting without filtering your own bias will bring you up to speed. Willy Whitten has introduced some of the key issues you will find elsewhere.
If I have in my possession a photograph of the back area of a State Senator’s home for instance, and that Senator is fired upon days, weeks, maybe months later, is that proof that I shot at the Senator? Might those photos have been taken out of pure curiosity, or might I have been hiking or wandering a city and come across the home and decided to take a photo. Or might they have been planted to implicate me in a crime? Of course the argument is that Oswald was later arrested for a politically motivated assassination, so putting two and two together – in spite of the Walker case having lain dormant for months – might be worth considering, but it hardly rises to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. What I appreciate in the Walker scenario is that it may well establish a time frame for the positioning of Oswald as the patsy in the Kennedy assassination. If memory serves, the serious discussion about Kennedy’s trip to Texas ensued around that time in 1963.
re. your position on Hosty and Walker does seem to dovetail with that of ‘annie,’ both in form and content so I’m wondering if you follow her comments closely? It is none of my business other than it would help to know whether I should follow both commenters on the topic of Hosty and Bardwell Odum. or would one suffice?.
I’m sorry but I can’t follow anyone’s reasoning here. Everyone seems to have a different story. Even General Walker had a different story every time someone interviewed him. The only one who has remained consistent throughout the years on this issue is Marina but Marina isn’t an acceptable witness here. Frankly I find some of the reasons for that stretching the limit. I feel like I’m experiencing my main study and interest in life, Quantum Physics, the science fiction writer’s dream of “alternate realities.” With all of the information, all of the conflicting evidence, all of the experts contradicting each other, all of the different interpretations of the evidence, it’s like opening Pandora’s box. Although I feel a good debate healthy, it seems like there is too much evidence to handle. It has mushroomed out of control throughout the years. There are a number of people who no longer recognize the main characters any longer. People I talk to who aren’t on the website.
And yes, I have seen people transport a rifle on public transportation, concealing it very well. More than once. Sorry. Why would I want to say why, where or who here? I’ve tried but without any luck.
Annie
If these people you saw concealed their rifles so well, while riding on public transportation, how were you able to see their rifles? You are contradicting your own logic here.
I knew the person. Perhaps he did the impossible? I didn’t even realize it was illegal at the time. I thought nothing of it. And, I did read a book by a KGB agent who wrote that Oswald, while in Minsk, did carry a rifle on a bus to have it pawned. Perhaps that’s what made him different. He took chances. Perhaps he also took that chance in April of 1963?
You must be from Texas, Annie. You tell some real stories.
The story about Oswald taking a rifle on a bus to pawn it while in Minsk came from, “Passport to Assassination”, by Col. Oleg Maximovich Nechiporenko. Not from me.
No, I’m not from Texas although my parents are living there now.
I realize that the shape of a rifle is difficult to disguise and some are wondering how Oswald could possibly transport a rifle on public transportation to the Walker location without being noticed. Like it’s somehow impossible. Yet, there are those who comment on this site who believe that it was Oswald who attempted to kill Walker. Obviously they think it possible that it can be done, that it was possible for him to carry that rifle on a bus. Marina, George DeMohrenschildt and some law enforcement officials didn’t question this either. And, as I mentioned earlier, I once saw it done. Obviously I made a big mistake mentioning it. Perhaps someone saw Oswald but didn’t want to or couldn’t make a positive ID months later. Months had passed. Sometimes people don’t want to get involved.
Walker wrote to the HSCA on 9/12/78 saying that the bullet “pictured on TV” during the HSCA hearings was a “ridiculous substitute for a bullet completely mutilated by such obstruction [e.g., passing through a masonry wall], baring no resemblance to any unfired bullet in shape or form.”
CE573 is a mangled fragment. No way does it resemble an “unfired bullet.” What is he talking about?
So far as I can find, the only HSCA hearings before September 12 that Walker could’ve been referring to are in Volume I:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=95
The Walker bullet pictured in the published HSCA September hearings is the same mangled CE573 we all know. Another exhibit shows CE399, which does look “unfired”:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=95&relPageId=478
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=45739
I suggest that Walker somehow confused one with the other. How else might his mentioning an “unfired bullet” be explained?
Later someone checked the exhibit in the National Archives and found that it had marks on it that were apparently those of Dallas police officers who had handled the Walker bullet in 1963:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10040&relPageId=10
This is a PDF that has Walker’s 9/12/76 Mailgram near the end:
http://www.rxproxy.com/index.php?rxproxyuri=aHR0cDovL2pmay5ob29kLmVkdS9Db2xsZWN0aW9uL1dlaXNiZXJnJTIwU3ViamVjdCUyMEluZGV4JTIwRmlsZXMvVyUyMERpc2svV2Fsa2VyJTIwU2hvb3RpbmcvSXRlbSUyMDA1LnBkZg%3D%3D
Jean,
Well look who appears in that report: “Special Agent Odum forwarded the Walker bullet to the FBI Laboratory where it arrived for examination on December 4, 1963?
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10040&relPageId=10
He was one busy agent was he not?
This is the same Agent Bardwell Odum who surfaces on an FBI report relating to the Magic Bullet, #399.
This is the same Agent Odum who took the MC CIA photo of the Mystery Man to determine if Marina could identify him. And BTW, why didn’t Agent Hosty make that trip to the Executive Inn with Odum?
I’m only saying here that it was possible that Oswald made the attempt to kill Walker. Marina’s word holds up with no conspiracy theory therefore it is totally unacceptable in any conspiracy theory. The reason isn’t so important here because someone here keeps saying that her testimony wouldn’t be allowed in court anyway so we have a “0” case here. Without Marina’s word being accepted, whether she just plain lies, whether a deadly handler was holding a threat over her head or whether she was framing her own husband at the time just doesn’t matter. The fact is there is no real substance here. I think as far as carrying a gun on a bus undetected, it has been successfully done by more people than Oswald. Someone sure brought a gun to the book depository undetected. Whether by car, on foot or by bus, a long bag is a long bag. No one would be dumb enough to carry any rifle in plain sight. I think normal human logic applies here. Why throw it out the window because it doesn’t fit your theory. People are busy with their own burdens, their own every day life. Who would stand or sit around checking everyone out, casing their packages? ‘Oh my, does he have a rifle in that package?” “That package is too big to be his lunch.” ” Let’s remember this so we can testify seven months later.” You didn’t accept Oswald’s long package/bag as having a rifle in it when he carried it to work with him despite witnesses so why would anyone accept him having a rifle in a package on the bus?
annie, your last point is at the core of the debate over the rifle. I’m sure you are aware that there are discrepancies in the story about the bag and the rifle alleged to have been carried into the TSBD.
Maybe you have not been around rifles, but I can attest that one cannot carry them indiscreetly whether in a paper bag or in a case, and certainly not on a bus. Did he lay the rifle across his lap? Did he prop it against the seat? did he lay it on the seat next to him? Was it loaded? If we are to apply human logic we should begin there. Which by the way begs the question why Randle and Frazier would have believed Oswald’s story about curtain rods if, as alleged, he was carrying a rifle. And why would someone wrap curtain rods?
Your observations appear to come from a resolute opinion that Lee Oswald was the assassin of Kennedy and most likely attempted to shoot Walker, therefore each aspect is filtered thru that paradigm. You do not seem to take into consideration the obfuscations and discrepancies in a myriad of facts.
Marina may have thought she could be deported at the very least, or considered a suspect herself; she immediately (after being spirited into hiding by the Time Life staff) was taken under the wing of the power elite in Dallas . . . why was that? Emotionally she was a child herself with two infants to consider. I posit she would have said anything under those circumstances. At least Marguerite stood her ground.
“Someone sure brought a gun to the book depository undetected.”
Warren Caster, on Wednesday the 20th, in fact brought TWO rifles into the depository building, one of which was a sporterized Mauser. Where is the proof other than his own testimony that he took those rifles from the building?
“I think as far as carrying a gun on a bus undetected, it has been successfully done by more people than Oswald.”~annie
WHAT?!?? Who, where, when and how?
\\][//
Would you mind listing the witnesses who saw Oswald carrying a bag to work long enough to carry a rifle in?
Bob, that’s impossible! No one can list them because the total number of such witnesses is a big fat zero.
Ronnie, I think – and correct me if I’m wrong here Bob – that Bob is speaking to annie who suggests there were witnesses who observed Oswald carrying a rifle into the depository building.
The only (emphasis only) witnesses on the record are Linnie Randle who claimed to have seen Oswald leave Irving with a package and her brother Buell Wesley or Wesley Buell (depending on the sources one selects). There are NO other witnesses of record who claimed to have seen Oswald with a package that resembled the shape of a rifle walking into the building, let alone carting said package to the 6th floor on the morning of the assassination.
THE BAG JOB – Evidence the paper “gunsack” was made by the Dallas Police http://www.giljesus.com/the-bag.html
Leslie, I was being a little sarcastic. If memory serves Linnie Mae and Wesley both stuck by their stories the package was carried cupped in his hand and tucked under his arm pit. I.E. too short to have been even a disassembled Carcano. Thus zero witnesses to carrying a rifle wrapped in paper.
Ronnie, I suspected you were being sacastic; I just didn’t want to miss an opportunity to highlight how absurd it is to suggest that no one else witnessed Oswald carrying a brown package the length and width as alleged into the building. I forget how many employees worked at 411 Elm, but it exceeded dozens. How did he hold the rifle while he punched the time clock? Was no one in front of him or behind him in line that time of morning, or did no one see him report to his post? This scenario defies logic.
Not even the WC believed Marina’s statements around the Walker shooting. Did Lee Harvey Oswald Shoot at General Edwin Walker?
http://22november1963.org.uk/did-lee-oswald-shoot-general-edwin-walker
David,
“Not even the WC believed Marina’s statements around the Walker shooting. Did Lee Harvey Oswald Shoot at General Edwin Walker?
http://22november1963.org.uk/did-lee-oswald-shoot-general-edwin-walker”
The article didn’t mention what may be the best evidence that Oswald shot at Walker — the photos of Walker’s house taken with his Imperial Reflex camera in March.
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=946&relPageId=209
The article is also misleading in others ways, for instance:
“…only one of the three experts who were consulted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations considered the note to be authentic (HSCA Report, appendix vol.8, pp.232–246).”
That suggests that two experts might have said the note was NOT authentic, but that’s not true. One of the others offered no opinion on the Russian note but said the writing was “similar” to other samples. See items 63-65:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=961&relPageId=242
The third expert didn’t examine the Russian note.
Also, “The Bureau’s fingerprint expert found seven sets of fingerprints on the note. None of them belonged to either Lee or Marina Oswald (FBI HQ JFK Assassination File, 62–109060–36).”
That’s true but it doesn’t prove that Marina and Lee didn’t handle the note. It’s a myth that handling something always leaves fingerprints, especially identifiable prints.
Jean,
Oswald certainly had a remarkable knack for doing so much undetected (including his photo reconnaissance at Walker’s residence in broad daylight) and never leaving fingerprints.
When exactly did Ruth Paine conveniently provide the ‘note’ to authorities? Her home had been searched thoroughly on the afternoon of the assassination, and again the following day, when Paine claimed to have seen officers specifically looking for loose papers within books. The inventory of items discovered in her home is 49 pages long, but does not mention the note. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=16295
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=694195
When originally asked by Secret Service Agent Leon Gopadze about the note turned over to the police by Ruth Paine, Marina Oswald disclaimed any knowledge of it. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=143630
After admitting to having found the note, Marina was inconsistent in her testimony about where Oswald left the note telling the FBI that the note was left on her bedroom dresser but telling the Warren Commission that the note was found in Oswald’s private room. She claimed she couldn’t remember where she found the note when she testified in front of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
If you’re relying on the photos as the best evidence LHO shot at Walker, that’s pretty weak Jean.
The Paine’s Participation in the Minox Camera Charade http://www.ctka.net/pr1196-minox.html
If the best evidence for Oswald attempting to kill Walker is the photos of Walker’s home then there’s not much evidence at all.
Certainly not enough to have brought charges against him for that crime…
I do understand that without any positive ID this would never hold up in court. In fact I saw no way that this attempt on Walker’s life would ever become a legal issue of any kind. Most of this is hearsay to begin with. Like someone here suggested, Walker might just as well have gone outside and shot through his own window. Before the assassination, Walker’s minutemen were the prime suspects and noone ever had any proof against them either.
Nothing but suspicions all the way around. Without Marina’s testimony this whole issue has no substance. IMO the only reason this is of interest here is that it might give some insight into Oswald’s capabilities, intentions, etc. Thankfully whoever did the shooting here missed.
On 4-16-15 Jim Marrs sent me an email regarding his interview of Gen. Edwin Walker in 1964. Note Army general Edwin Walker is adamant that he was almost shot by a 30.06 cal bullet.
QUOTE
Howdy Robert,
You are absolutely correct about the fact that the Lee Oswald’s 6.5 mm Mannlicher Carcano was not the weapon used to shoot at Gen. Edwin Walker. I personally interviewed Walker in the fall of 1964 when the event was still fresh on his mind. At that time, he was quite adamant that the bullet that struck his wall was from a 30.06 cal. rifle. He also stated that the Dallas police had told him the same thing at the time of the shooting incident. He also told me that the then newly-released Warren Commission Report was wrong in stating that Oswald and Ruby did not know each other. In fact, he told me the entire investigation would have to start over based on the fact that Ruby and Oswald were together prior to the assassination. Keep in mind that at that time, many people suspected Walker and his right-wing followers were involved in the assassination. The fact that Walker repudiated the lone-assassin findings of the Warren Commission convinced me that he was innocent of this charge. Otherwise, he would have accepted, even promoted, the lone-assassin theory.
Best regards,
Jim
UNQUOTE
Lee Harvey Oswald did not try to shoot Gen. Edwin Walker. That is just a fantasy concocted up by the government, post JFK assassination as the government, run nationally by Lyndon Johnson and in Texas by LBJ’s close friends, was trying to demonize Oswald.
Here is an excellent link on the April, 1963 Walker shooting: http://22november1963.org.uk/did-lee-oswald-shoot-general-edwin-walker
Here is the smoking gun. Gen. Edwin Walker, a former Army general, was adamant that the bullet in evidence for his shooting, was NOT the one that a shooter actually shot at him. [Why is that? Because the bullet in evidence was planted by those trying to frame Oswald for the shooting.] Walker even contacted the HSCA and said the bullet you have is most definitely not the one that was shot at me.
“Not only did the bullet and rifle have no association with Lee Harvey Oswald, but Edwin Walker was adamant that Commission Exhibit 573, the bullet offered in evidence, was not the one he had examined at the time of the shooting; see Justice Department Criminal Division File 62–117290–1473 for Walker’s correspondence with the Justice Department on this matter.”
I believe Marina story about Nixon was true, it has been misrepresented https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10830&relPageId=3
And how she tried to prevent him from leaving the washroom?
I’ve said this before in other threads, but it makes no sense that Oswald would want to kill a right-wing general and a liberal president. Any motive attributed to him doesn’t pass even a modicum of logic. But lacking evidence, accusers have to throw anything at the wall and hope it sticks, no matter how contradictory.
The alleged note that supposedly ties Oswald to the shooting would be funny if it wasn’t such a serious issue. Even if he wrote it, and I seriously debt I’ve did, the note doesn’t say when or where or who and without specifics would be worthless as evidence.
Oswald’s alleged note would never be seen or allowed to be considered by a jury, for very obvious reasons….like almost all the alleged evidence.
Further, the more I process the sum of what I am aware of, the more Ms. Paine appears to be involved.
Especially around her story of finding Oswald’s ‘draft’ letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington
Russians wary of ’63 Oswald letter; Soviet Embassy officials believed note was forgery | Deseret News http://desne.ws/GPmtnD
I think there are good reasons to doubt this:
1. Marina Oswald’s testimony is frequently unreliable (she also claimed that Oswald had tried to shoot Nixon, who was never in Dallas during the dates in question).
2. The note Oswald supposedly left behind (which is undated and does not mention General Walker) does not have his fingerprints on it: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=759909
3. We don’t know that Oswald even knew the CIA was trying to kill Castro, since those attempts had not been made public. (Castro had made the claim that the U.S. was trying to kill him, but there is no evidence that Oswald was aware of this.)
I propose that the “Walker shooting” was a tall tale to begin with. We only have Walker’s testimony that he was shot at, that he was even in the room when it happened. Walker may very well have gone out and fired that round through his window himself.
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Well-presented and well-argued to a point.
Where the writer goes off the rails is his speculation of Oswald’s motive which falls apart at first glance. Killing JFK would stop the US from messing with Castro? Don’t think so and Oswald didn’t think so either. He told his interrogators there would be no difference in the US Cuba policy with Johnson.
Agreed that surveillance of Oswald if he was the lone assassin might’ve prevented the assassination. However, the writer ignores all the evidence that the CIA deliberately avoided drawing any attention to Oswald as a threat even though they knew at the time he had spoken with Kostikov, the head of wet operations for the Soviets in the region.
And again, why the Joannides felony obstruction if Oswald is the sole killer? Doesn’t add up and an honest appraisal of the facts would include it.
Oswald is portrayed is either a left wing or right wing nut. His alleged Walker shooting feeds into the left wing theory but not into the right. There is another way at looking at Oswald and that is as an ultra loyalist to the Military/Intelligence construct of a Patriot (That is someone who construes patriotism as a higher virtue than democracy and that killing outside the rule of law is justified to maintain the construct, look at the statements of Allen Dulles, David Phillips and E Howard Hunt to get the idea) If this was his idealism then the killing of Walker could be justified as a threat to this construct in the same way killing Kennedy could.
I fail to see the point of playing ‘fact’ tennis with the Walker shooting. I don’t conclude anything from the Walker shooting.
Really agree with you, bogman, on one particular issue. “However, the writer ignores all the evidence that the CIA deliberately avoided drawing any attention to Oswald as a threat even though they knew at the time he had spoken with Kostikov, the head of wet operations for the Soviets in the region.” That was really peculiar and I realize that. I noted how they did avoid drawing attention to Oswald more than once. I thought perhaps they might have been so engrossed and involved in something else that they let Oswald go. Just too obvious to be part of a big cover-up IMO. Just too obvious. It was more like like they made a big mistake somewhere else. They would work extra hard covering it all up. There is something they don’t want anyone to know. Perhaps for security reasons. Who knows the real answer??
Well, IMO they didn’t take Oswald seriously until it was too late. The FBI agent, Hosty, admitted that he didn’t think Oswald so dangerous at the time. He always seemed to be “on their back burner” so to speak. They seemed to have other leads, something else had their immediate attention.
Lee clearly disliked Walker’s politics and thought he was a dangerous man because of his violent anti-Civil Rights activism. 1963 was a violent year in the South(Black churches bombed, Civil Rights activists murdered). For that reason, I think he had a clear motive for wanting to assassinate Walker.
On the otherhand, the evidence against Lee IMO isn’t convincing enough that he would likely have been convicted for attempting to murder Gen. Walker.
The most damning evidence was found after Oswald’s murder. He was not on anyone’s radar as a suspect while alive.
There’s no plausible explanation for how Oswald, acting alone transported a rifle to the Walker home, buried the rifle after the shooting without a shovel, and brought it back home days later without being seen by anyone.
I agree here that Lee definitely had a motive. Would he act on it? Actually I believe his wife, Marina, and comments made by George De Mohrenschlidt. They knew Lee, knew him while he was alive and were right there with him. Some siding with conspiracy theories won’t like this but they also testified Lee had the rifle. Lee only threatened concerning Eisenhower and perhaps Nixon also but with Walker he had the opportunity to act on his words. Lee felt proud of himself to do this on foot and said so. Why not? The police were looking for someone with a car and the FBI thought the culprit was one of Walker’s minutemen. Lee even picked a night when church services were being held next door so as not to attract attention. It doesn’t matter anyway because he missed. Conspiracy theorists should recognize Lee here because they would agree that he was a terrible shot. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to carry and hide a weapon if you really give it some deep thought. You really don’t need a car if you have some imagination. And with church services next door, people pulling out of the lot, any witness might get confused concerning what was what.
Yes, of course Annie the old adage that WC apologists fall back on that any conflicting testimony is simply mistaken. And yet witnesses claimed seeing two men acting suspiciously days before and immediately following the shot.
How would you account for the fact that despite his alleged 3-4 trips to Walker’s residence, not a single witness could ever place Oswald in the vicinity, including the 6.5 mile trip on a public bus, according to Marina’s claims.
Never mind the fact the Walker bullet could not be proven to have been fired by CE-141 to the exclusion of all other weapons.
No, David, conflicting evidence isn’t always mistaken evidence. I don’t depend on the WC for I can and do think for myself. That’s why I usually go to many different sources and then make my own decision on the matter. I happen to believe Marina in this case because I found evidence that did back her up. Even the bullet found had five matching identifying marks to match it to Oswald’s rifle, according to the NY State Police forensics lab. The FBI wanted more than five but according to the NY State police, five was their requirement and enough to match the bullet to Oswald’s
rifle. Hosty, in his book, commented that in these matters the FBI tended to set their sights higher than other law enforcement agencies. I’m sorry I don’t have websites to lead you to but you can find this information on page 107 of his book. In my reading I also found sources who were able to debunk the two men in the car. They did further research. I do think for myself and, although I believe Marina concerning Walker, I don’t buy into her claims about Nixon. I can see that as small as she was, she couldn’t lock her husband in the bathroom. Plus bathroom door locks are on the inside of the bathroom. George DeMohrenschlidt also backed up her testimony concerning Walker as did a note later found and some photos. Not much more I can say here.
Looking further into the matter of the bullet fragment, CE-573, taken from the Walker home, I found this…..”In 1977, Doctor Vincent Guinn, using neutron activation analysis, concluded that it was “extremely likely” that CE-573 was from a mannlicher-carcano bullet.”
Also found this about Walter Coleman, a so-called witness; “Contrary to press reports that he saw two men get into separate cars and race away, he told the FBI that he only saw one car leave, and it moved at a normal rate of speed. At least six other cars were in the parking lot at the same time. Other neighbors contradicted Coleman’s story, saying no cars left after the noise.” It was also mentioned that church services had just ended and it would have been normal for people to be getting into cars and leaving.
The Guinn stuff has been debunked by modern science.
The methods used by Guinn back in the 70s to connect Oswald’s rufle to the Walker shooting has been proven to be unreliable
Washington Post article from 2007 – http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051601967.html
I don’t write off the possibility that Oswald shoot at Walker. He very well mihht’ve done it. I just haven’t seen any convincing evidence that he did it. While he may have become a suspect if it had been known prior to 11/22 that Oswald was taking photos of Walker’s home, that alone would not be enough to even charge Oswald with the crime.
Annie, not a single eye witness has ever placed Oswald near the Walker residence. This speaks volumes given the fact he was alleged to have made at least three trips there, including his photo reconnaissance in broad daylight.
Do you buy Marina’s claim he took a public transit bus with his rifle in tow? Their Nealey St apartment was 6.5 miles from Walker’s house.
But Annie, how are we to know what can be believed coming from Marina when even WC staff did not find her to be credible? DeMohrenschildt also stated that he was asked to keep tabs on Oswald by J. Walton Moore of the CIA in Dallas, yet WC defenders avoid that statement like the plague.
As for the Walker incident, Coleman was not the only witness to cause problems for the WC version of events. Robert Surrey, an associate of General Walker, reported that he had seen two men acting suspiciously outside Walker’s house two days before the shooting. Neither man resembled Oswald. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=17256
There is proof right there. Robert Surrey saw two men acting suspiciously outside of Walker’s home two days before the shooting. One of those men could have been Oswald. Why not? Why would Surrey’s testimony eliminate LHO? IMO it adds to the proof. Perhaps Oswald wasn’t alone after all or the witness just thought there were two men. I don’t see how Surrey’s testimony proves in any way that it wasn’t Oswald. Oswald told Marina, according to Marina, that he had been watching Walker’s house for some time.
Apologies, I’m not following your reasoning. Surrey was unable to identify LHO as one of the two men he saw outside Walker’s house on April 8th. How exactly does that leave a possibility that he was there?
Sorry to add confusion here, David. Just thought it irrelevant that two men were seen by Surrey on the 8th when the actual attempt on Walker’s life was on the 10th. Walker was a prominent man and I’m sure he drew a lot of attention. Some people maybe just wanted to do a little sight seeing, see where he lived. Not everything or everybody is really suspicious when you think about human nature. I think some of these sightings have a simple explanation, like there being a church next door. People would be coming and going. The fact that no one actually identified Oswald in the area could be that he wasn’t well known then. Now just about everyone would recognize him. But then?? Who would be looking for him and his rifle concealed in any kind of package? And remember it months later? Oswald was an “unknown” at that time and could mingle with the crowd on any bus.
Annie, “Oswald was an “unknown” at that time and could mingle with the crowd on any bus.”
Someone could mingle with the crowd on any bus – – – carrying a rifle? Dallas may have been considered as the “wild west” but in fact it had already achieved a degree of sophistication because of the wealth it had attracted as a major hub of the Military Industrial Financial Complex. Even in 1963, boarding a bus with a rifle – or a package the length and width necessary to carry a rifle – would have caused a stir, and certainly would have drawn the attention of the bus driver. Where are the witnesses who saw Oswald carry the rifle or the package on a bus or buses? If the DPD thought someone brought the rifle to the Walker site by bus, why didn’t they interview the bus driver(s?) It had only been 6 months since the attempt on Walker; it was not too late, post 11.22.63, to interview witnesses beyond those who claimed to see two men driving away in a car.
It’s a bit like parking a crime – putting it in ‘idle’ gear until the appropriate time to roll it out – particularly one involving a high profile, recently fired military general. This would certainly be in line with creating a legend for a patsy in a political assassination.
I notice your other comment related to observing a woman boarding a bus with large packages: Do you know how long the alleged rifle was, and how one would need to carry it to avoid attention?
What exactly does Robert Surrey seeing two men around Walker’s house on April the 8th have to do with the actual attempt on Walker’s life on the night of the 10th? There was a church next door and Walker was a well known man, well known enough to draw a few curious people. Another puzzling point. Did Surrey know Oswald by sight, enough to say whether or not it was or wasn’t Oswald? Even identifying by a photo really isn’t always accurate unless you know who you are looking for. And unless you have a very accurate memory. These eye witness reports were done months after the actual event in April.
Sorry guys, but I don’t buy an assassin would travel back and forth with his rifle on a public transit bus, given Oswald had no gun case and there is no proof he made a paper “gunsack” in April ’63.
Regardless folks, the WC case against LHO in the Walker incident is based around a Marina’s statements, some photos and a lot of ‘what ifs’ or ‘maybes’ in terms of transportation to and from the scene, hiding the weapon, etc. Not to mention an obscure note to which had it’s evidentiary problems and a lack of conclusive ballistics evidence.
Alfredda Scobey, counsel on the Warren Commission, stated the Walker incident would never have been admitted at trial. If Oswald lived to see his day in court, we wouldn’t even be discussing this.
Thank you David Regan in particular for presenting the facts so well. I disregarded all this years ago when I read it was a 30-06 bullet, Oswald supposedly carried a rifle on a bus (in a case or not) and was not noticed, and he was not accused of it until after the JFK Assassination.
BTW, Walker didn’t think Oswald shot at him when questioned, after the assassination.
In regard to whether or not there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, the Walker shooting isn’t relevant. If Oswald shot at Walker, it doesn’t mean he, acting alone shot JFK.
Without a doubt, Oswald disliked Walker who was violent and anti-Civil Rights. In contrast, Oswald praised JFKs policies on Civil Rights.
Oswald might’ve rationalized that killing Walker would help advance Civil Rights in the politically violent South.
In contrast, I doubt Oswald would’ve rationalized that LBJ would have better policies on Civil Rights and Cuba than JFK.
The problems with the Walker shooting are that there’s no reasonable explanation for how Oswald did it alone and how the bullet used in the Walker shooting could not have come from a Mannlicher Carcano
Simply having a motive for shooting Walker isn’t convincing enough for me to conclude that Oswald definitely did it…
In the second to last paragraph I meant to say, “no explanation for how the bullet used in the Walker shooting could have come from a MC”
“Conspiracy theorists should recognize Lee here because they would agree that he was a terrible shot. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to carry and hide a weapon if you really give it some deep thought. You really don’t need a car if you have some imagination. And with church services next door, people pulling out of the lot, any witness might get confused concerning what was what.”~annie
It is oft stated that “conspiracy theorists” will not stick to the facts. But now we are advise here to “really give it some deep thought” and what are those deep thoughts?
A theory based on pure conjecture.
This theory dismisses the FACT that the photos taken by “Oswald’s camera” were taken by a camera that resided at the Paines house, where Oswald was rarely present.
The facts are that Mariana was sequestered and coerced and threatened with deportation, while under so-called “protective custody” by the authorities until she could be coached on a script that would incriminate her dead husband.
The fact are that there is no chain of custody for the Magic Bullet. The fact is that the rifle discovered at the TBDB on 11/22/1963 was a Mauser, not a Carcano.
Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and this was reported by the media.
Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository as a 7.65 Mauser. Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as a “7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it”. Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw “7.65 Mauser” stamped on the barrel of the weapon.
See an image of Weitzman’s signed affidavit here:
https://i2.wp.com/i1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff394/dhjosephs/Weitzmanaffidavit765Mauser.jpg
This affidavit of Weitzman is also in the Warren Commission evidence:
WCH24 CE 2003 pg. 288
Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XXIV. Page 202 of 929
There are some FACTS for you to mull over.
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We shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Marina was threatened with deportation while under protective custody. According to Robert Groden, Marina told him that she was never threatened with deportation. He just felt the threat was in the air, made an assumption. Groden is one who believes there was a conspiracy but honest enough to say Marina said no one ever mentioned deportation to her.
According to Robert Oswald, he overheard federal agents make threatening remarks to Marina about that.
Why didn’t LHO bury his handgun outside the TSBD on 11/22? He must have known he would need it.
Or maybe he figured out, at 12:31, that he was the designated fall guy.
I agree, Neil, that the evidence wouldn’t be convincing and the case wouldn’t go anywhere. I never even thought of this going to trial much less Lee being convicted. Hosty, who was investigating the Walker episode, found that Walker’s own Minutemen were the prime suspects. I also had trouble with the idea of him burying the rifle. I don’t think anyone really got this story straight. I did read, however, that Oswald was clever about going back and forth, to and from Walker’s house. He supposedly took out of the way buses, etc. You really brought up good points.
No, the evidence probably wouldn’t hold up in court. No positive identification was given by anyone but again that doesn’t eliminate LHO. As for hiding the weapon without a shovel, my guess is that there was underbrush around the railroad tracks or rubble.
This evening I was out in the car with a friend who knows I come on this website. He noticed a woman waiting at a bus stop with several large packages. He mentioned to me that Oswald might have been like her. Noone was really taking any notice of her. A lot of people use the bus here and they carry all kinds of packages. As months go by people might not even remember that woman with a few large packages on the bus. Would anyone be able to positively identify her? It seems
rather silly.
“No, the evidence probably wouldn’t hold up in court. No positive identification was given by anyone but again that doesn’t eliminate LHO.”~annie
Annie, you don’t seem to grasp that “Reason in Law” is based on reasoning in general, that is using critical thinking to separate the chaff from the wheat.
If you do not have a positive ID of Oswald, it is not only a matter of a “legal technicality” – it is simply a matter of sound reasoning. In “the court of public opinion” standing to reasonable standards such as “beyond reasonable doubt”, unfortunately leaves your argument as without real substance.
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Almost a year has passed since I expressed my opinion here that I thought it very possible that Oswald attempted to shoot Walker. Today, after doing much more research and thinking, I take the opposite view. I now believe that he never made the attempt. When I discovered the route he would have taken to get to Walker’s home and to the railroad to hide the rifle…..that was enough to change my thinking. Someone would have seen him with the rifle along the way. I don’t know what really happened but I realize Oswald wasn’t out that night trying to assassinate Walker. But even last year I realized by reasoning that the case could never be proven beyond reasonable doubt……that it was Oswald. I just thought it possible. Now I think it impossible.
The ballistic evidence in Oswald vs. Walker is unsustainable. The police concluded the sniper used a high-powered rifle, not a Mannlicher-Carcano. The recovered bullet was steel-, not copper-jacketed as in the JFK case. When Blakey showed CE 573 on TV, Walker said it wasn´t the bullet recovered by the police, which he had held and closely examined by himself.
According to Marina, Oswald left the unsigned and undated “Walker note” in a Russian book, but the DPD couldn´t find it in the 2-day search at Paines’ house. A week later, Ruth Paine sent the book to Marina. The Irving County police turned it over to the Secret Service, and the note appeared on December 2, 1963. FBI specialist Sebastian Latona couldn´t find Oswald´s or Marina’s fingerprints on it. WC Rankin complained to Hoover about Marina’s testimony “riddled with contradictions”. FBI Shanklin agreed “her statements just don’t jibe” and sent agents Lee and Barrett to investigate. They returned with Walter Kirk Coleman and a confirming witness about 2 suspects, neither resembled Oswald, and a Ford. Marina´s testimony was simply reinforced with a photo of the back of Walker’s home, found in Oswald´s possessions, in order to show his “disposition to take human life.” Gerald McKnight’s Breach of Trust goes deeply into the Walker case, and the author is damn right saying it “was just a microcosm of what was to follow in the government’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination.”
“Gerald McKnight’s Breach of Trust goes deeply into the Walker case, and the author is damn right saying it ‘was just a microcosm of what was to follow in the government’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination.””
As I recall, McKnight didn’t mention what may be the best evidence that Oswald shot at Walker — photos of the back of Walker’s house taken with Oswald’s camera a week or so before the shooting. If I missed it, let me know.
The photo, with different boundary at the edge and finer resolution, is suspected of being a plant. It was surfaced by Ruth Paine after the assassination. Be sure: the prosecutor would have been roasted by the defense if these photos would have presented as evidence in court.
Arnaldo,
“The photo, with different boundary at the edge and finer resolution, is suspected of being a plant. It was surfaced by Ruth Paine after the assassination. Be sure: the prosecutor would have been roasted by the defense if these photos would have presented as evidence in court.”
Is that from the McKnight book? If I remember correctly the Dallas police found three photos of Walker’s house and one of a nearby railroad track in a cardboard box in the Paine garage.
The photos of Walker’s house don’t prove that Oswald shot at Walker.
At most, it proves he was aware of and interested in Walker. But Oswald didn’t hide his interest in Walker or his dislike of the man.
At best, we can say he had a motive and interest in Walker but there’s no evidence that connects Oswald directly to the Walker shooting.
Jean,
The Paine’s had as much access to Oswald’s camera as anyone else in that house.
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Willy,
“The Paine’s had as much access to Oswald’s camera as anyone else in that house.”
No, because Marina wasn’t living at the Paine house then. The photos of Walker’s house were taken in the second week of March ’63 when the Oswalds were living on Neely Street, i.e., a few days before Oswald ordered his rifle and a month before he took a shot at Walker.
This photo could be dated because an FHA inspector named Ben Passmore had recorded the progress of construction of a high-rise building going up in the background:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1133&relPageId=28
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=171415
Another photo showed the window in Walker’s house that a bullet later went through. P1 here:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1133&relPageId=29
Still another showed railroad tracks and a wooded area nearby where Oswald may have hidden the rifle in a pile of brush (P5 here):
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1133&relPageId=30
WC changed the bullet from the Walker shooting in order to sustain that Oswald “did not lack the determination and other traits required to carry out a carefully planned killing” (WCR, p. 406). The bullet recovered from Walker´s home was a steel-jacketed 30.06, according to the DP report by officers Van Cleave and McElroy. There is no evidence LHO ever got such a rifle.
Sorry Jean, but if you’re relying on these photos and Marina’s testimony to convict Oswald for the Walker attempt, it’s not much to stand on.
It’s no surprise in their attempt to convict Oswald of this, the WC failed to take testimony from Walter Kirk Coleman or Det. Ira Van Cleave who took part in the original investigation of the Walker shooting and reported the slug as a 30.06, eliminating Oswald’s rifle as the source.
Arnaldo and David,
Please explain the Walker photos I linked to, gentlemen. What’s your explanation?
Arnaldo, the DPD called the mangled bullet fragment a 30.06, but this HSCA document says that the one in the Archives (CE 573) still has original markings on it that were apparently made by members of the DPD:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=290979
Marina told the HSCA that she concealed information in the beginning in order to protect her husband and to protect herself:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=40637
“The DPD called the mangled bullet fragment a 30.06, but this HSCA document says that the one in the Archives (CE 573) still has original markings on it that were apparently made by members of the DPD”
Yes, “apparently made by members of the DPD”…
“Apparently” is the operative word here isn’t it?
Walker himself said that the bullet in evidence is not the bullet he saw that night, and that went with the DPD, as the first link in the chain of custody.
How many broken chains of custody have we documented in this case against Oswald so far? Too many to claim to be “coincidence”.
\\][//
You didn’t miss it, Jean. IMO you got it just right concerning the photos found among Oswald’s belongings. After months and months of reading and researching on this very subject, the Walker attempt, found so much back up evidence. The CT believer just doesn’t want to accept the evidence. It doesn’t matter what expert or witness you pick. The evidence as far as they are concerned is either faked, a cover up of some sort, a lie for some reason or it isn’t admissible in court. The same denials over and over.
Anonymous, the Walker episode would never have been admissible at trial and you know it.
The truth is much more important than whether something is allowable in court or not. Many lies have been allowable in court. I’m not impressed with the “not allowable in court” argument.
Even if it was admissible, the evidence in question would not have been impressive to a partial jury.
The main witness of the Walker shooting, Kirk Coleman, said he saw two men escaping from the scene after and driving separate cars. Neither resembled LHO.
Arnaldo,
“The main witness of the Walker shooting, Kirk Coleman, said he saw two men escaping from the scene after and driving separate cars. Neither resembled LHO.”
Coleman saw two men in a church parking lot get in their cars and drive off. According to an FBI measurement, the two men were too far from the alley where the shot was fired to have been seen by Coleman seconds later.
You may not believe her, but Marina said that Oswald told her he had picked a night when there was a church meeting because he “wanted more people around” (to be a distraction). If that was his plan, it worked.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=699484
Something I find of importance here…..the note of detailed instructions Oswald left his wife, Marina, before he supposedly left to take a shot at General Walker. What else could this note have been intended for? His wife later testified that it was Lee who attempted to assassinate Walker and that she had kept that note as blackmail in case he attempted anything so crazy again. That note can be found in full in a number of books by researchers. If that note wasn’t meant for the Walker affair, what was it meant for? If there was an intelligence agent handling Marina who made her do this,why go through so much trouble writing a long list of instructions, some of which Oswald would only know about? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just forget the whole affair? It was Marina who drew attention to it
I meant to say that if Marina hadn’t said anything and the note had never been produced, this would never have been an issue. Why would the government and intelligence community want to deliberately pour more doubt on themselves? This subject would have drifted into oblivion, especially since Walker didn’t suspect Oswald. Actually I just read an article that said Walker did think it possible it was Oswald……in the book, Dallas 1963, by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis. It had good reviews and dealt mainly with General Walker, a detailed account of Walker and right wing issues in Dallas at the time of the assassination.
Sammy, there are many problems with this note allegedly left by Oswald for Marina.
When originally asked by Secret Service Agent Leon Gopadze about the note turned over to the police by Ruth Paine, Marina Oswald disclaimed any knowledge of it. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=143630
The note Oswald supposedly left was undated and unsigned and did not mention General Walker or any reason why Oswald might find himself under arrest.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=131669
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh23/html/WH_Vol23_0213a.htm
Ruth Paine’s home had been searched thoroughly on the afternoon of the assassination, and again the following day, when Paine claimed to have seen officers specifically looking for loose papers within books. The inventory of items discovered in her home is 49 pages long, but does not mention the note.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=16295
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=694195
Only one of the three experts who were consulted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations considered the note to be authentic. http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=79220
The FBI’s fingerprint expert found seven sets of fingerprints on the note. None of them belonged to either Lee or Marina Oswald.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=759909
After admitting to having found the note, Marina was inconsistent in her testimony about where Oswald left the note telling the FBI that the note was left on her bedroom dresser but telling the Warren Commission that the note was found in Oswald’s private room. She claimed she couldn’t remember where she found the note when she testified in front of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1139&relPageId=424
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=15028
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=38638
Not to mention not a single witness has ever placed Oswald near the Walker residence. Neither the night of the shooting or when he allegedly was stalking Walker’s house doing photo reconnaissance in broad daylight.
Yes, it was McBride, Oswald’s friend before his Marine days , who said Lee wanted to kill Eisenhower if given the opportunity because he was exploiting the working public. I guess there is evidence for both sides of the argument. If we accept Marina as being a credible witness then the Walker story is true. It does fit his character. He was on foot and relished the idea that they were looking for someone in a car. He said how they didn’t even know enough to look for someone on foot.
Knowing what Marxism is all about, a way of life, we can look deeper into the mind of Lee. He was very intelligent and politically minded. A friend Oswald had in his earlier years said that Lee wanted to kill Eisenhower. And that he meant it. Why wouldn’t he want to take a shot at Walker also. It was an opportunity. …all about politics.
Found this Life Magazine article written in 1964 to be very logical and easy to follow. It fits in with the character of Lee Oswald very well. Why deny the fact that Marxism was very important to Lee? When Lee was asked or questioned about his religious beliefs, he clearly said that Marxism was a religion. If you study up on Karl Marx and Marxism, you will find this to be true. Lee was not in love with the communism in Russia nor the politics in the U.S. but liked the ideas behind Marxism.
When asked by the Warren Commission about an interview given to a German journalist on the morning of November 23rd, Edwin Walker said “I had no way of knowing that Oswald attacked me. I still don’t. And I am not very prone to say in fact he did. In fact, I have always claimed he did not”
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=20436
Intersting how Oswald allegedly was able to get off 3 shots in 6-8 seconds and pick off a moving target in Dealey Plaza, yet misses a much easier stationary target in Walker? Marines Described Alleged JFK Assassin Oswald as ‘A rather poor shot’ – Salem-News.Com http://www.salem-news.com/articles/october202011/judyth-vary-baker-tk.php via
Note for the LN crowd:
If your side can claim that Mr. Ruby loved Jack and Jackie, I can claim that Lee admired and loved them even more.
Note: Why exactly would Ruby, a person with mafia connections since the Capone days, would hold the minimum amount of love for the Kennedys? The same Kennedys that were well on their way, poised to destroy his world?
Your logic is irrefutable. Bueno!
Dan, Through the fog, I believe one may be able to identify a connection although it requires keen interest and perseverance as well as critical thinking (some of it lateral) to recognize the possibility (emphasis on possible). Certainly some will allege this is the product of a wild imagination:
However, another lead to follow in this is de Mohrenschildt’s Maydell (some spell it Maydel) family background which I’m sure you’re familiar with.
I’ve been attempting to identify a relationship between this family and that of a banker for Hitler (no, not Schacht) named Maydell who lived in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee where Heydrich’s abominable conference was held. Maydell’s daughter encountered Adolph Hitler as a young girl when was visiting the neighborhood. Following the end of WWII she immigrated to the States and was living in the Southwest in retirement and until her recent death.
By chance she and her husband were trekking enthusiasts as was deMohrenschildt and his wife, as were Sam Ballen and his wife who had been friends with deM for years. In fact as stated previously, deM had scheduled a trip to Santa Fe before it was interrupted by his untimely death.
I haven’t determined how large the trekking community is, particularly in Santa Fe; the surname Maydell may be the equivalent of Smith or Jones in Germany; the Ballens and this Maydell daughter may have never met, and this may be a blind alley.
But it has been reported that Wannsee Institute (in Maydell;s neighborhood) efforts came under Reinhard Gehlen’s command after the war, and the transfer included several of the players that had been involved with Heydrich’s conference at Wannsee. Make of this what you will.
““Surprisingly the conspiracy community, with a few exceptions, has not challenged the charge that Oswald tried to kill Walker”
I don’t know of any credible JFK researcher who thinks that Oswald tried to shoot Walker. It is absurd.
Even Gen. Edwin Walker contacted the HSCA and told them that the bullet in evidence was not the one that was found in his house. And that is clear proof of a bullet swap most likely by Hoover’s FBI or someone else in the government.
The entire evidentiary record of the JFK assassination is corrupted because the murderers of JFK were running the non-investigation into his death.
Robert Morrow,
I welcome your comment.
As I examine the scene, there are no facts showing Oswald shot at Walker.
Apart from burden of proof, there just isn’t anything that would hold up in court showing Oswald shot at Walker.
I could have been tied to the assassination if I were in Dallas in 1963. I was a disturbed teenager. I made rockets and explosives. I knew how to use guns.
Oswald was far more. He knew the Russian language. Knew U2 bases. Was multi-cultulural.
“McAdams
April 10, 2014 at 11:33
“…..she has never backed off her testimony about how Oswald told her he shot at Walker.””
“McAdams
April 10, 2014 at 11:19
….Over time, she opened up.
Virtually everything she opened up about has hard evidence to support it, including … the Walker shooting.””
Maybe I’m dense, or are you toying with me, John McAdams? CIA document states Wubriny was the designation for the CIA “program” Thomas J Devine was participating in related to his four encounters with DeMohrenschildt between 25 April and 19 May, 1963. Another CIA document states George HW Bush was a former business associate of Devine and Devine was advising Rep. Bush on Foreign Affairs in late 1967. The same document also states per CIA’s Gale Allen, that Bush had “prior knowledge” of Wubriny/LPDICTUM project.:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=12758&relPageId=2
HSCA testimony:
“…Mrs. PORTER. Well, I heard George DeMohrenschildt making joking remark about how did you miss that, Lee? And so I look at Lee and I thought, gosh, did he tell him that, and he look at me because he thought that I told on him. So as I recall right now, I don’t know how George find out or he guess or he just make joke about it.
Mr. McDONALD.
There must have been some reason for DeMohrenschildt to guess at it, unless he was told…”
TESTIMONY OF MRS. LEE HARVEY OSWALD
February 3, 1964,
“…Mrs. OSWALD. …several days after that, the De Mohrenschildts came to us, and as soon as he opened the door he said, “Lee, how is it possible that you missed?”
I looked at Lee. I thought that he had told De Mohrenschildt about it. And Lee looked at me, and he apparently thought that I had told De Mohrenschildt about it. It was kind of dark. But I noticed—it was in the evening, but I noticed that his face changed, that he almost became speechless.
You see, other people knew my husband better than I did.…”
http://edwardjayepstein.com/diary/dem.htm
“So you knew Oswald had tried to assassinate Walker, what did you do about it?”
He said he immediately rushed over to Oswald’s house to find out what had happened and if Oswald had disposed of the rifle. He recalled being very frightened, as was his wife, Jean….”
Independently I discovered Devine and Joseph Dryer’s brother Peter were grades K-9 classmates. Joan Mellen confirmed Devine and Joseph Dryer were close friends and met with DeMohrenschildt and Charles on April 25. Charles was known to NYC pols and businessmen, Dryer’s partner Clarke Cassidy is reported meeting with Charles in 1961.: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00015023/00156/17j . Devine
was the frat brother of Priscilla Johnson’s CIA contact, Garry Coit.
If you’re not interested in hearing from Bush and Devine or believe they
aren’t accountable, why not say so, instead of replying as you did? But, as a political scientist, should you tell your students that Bush and Devine need not respond?
This is a very convoluted post, Tom, mostly about how somebody knew somebody who knew somebody and isn’t that suspicious.
The only think you posted suggesting that deM might have known was the Epstein interview.
But there he doesn’t say he knew. Rather, Epstein says “He thus had a “pretty good suspicion who had taken the potshot” at Walker.”
But all the sources from 1964 have him joking about it, apparently remembering talk about Walker being a fascist.
I’m sure you are aware that, by 1977, deM was telling all kinds of tales. This one is not particularly wild, but it lacks support in earlier testimony.
I have trouble thinking deM would say “How did you miss, Leee” (or some such) if he really though Oswald shot at Walker. If he mentioned it at all to Lee, he would have talked seriously.
“If we are discussing ballistics and forensics, why not exhaust that topic, spend as many days as necessary, or return to the specific thread so that those interested take the time to pull old files or pursue new facts to contribute at a later date. Structure and logic to the threads are critical to sorting through the chaff of this effort.” Leslie Sharp
Could different headings be set up so that specific thread(s) info (wounds, bullets, suspects, post assassination players, DPD, Dallas Hospital, Bethesda, Washington, etc) can easily be found. If this site is to be a repository for serious discussion and moving the murders (Kennedy, Tippit, Oswald and Ruby) further, organization (such as JFK Lancer and MFF) are mandatory. Anything less is chaos and a travesty to the efforts of SERIOUS STUDENTS AND TEACHERS of the 11/22/63 American coup d’etat. Lone nutters and conspiracy theory “adversaries” need not participate because such groups have no legal basis or standing from either side. The Warren Omission does not constitute legal evidence, not does “solicited testimony” for commercial and profitable purposes.
The author is incorrect that comspiracy researchers have ignored this incident. It has been covered in numerous books.
How did Oswald get to Walker’s house? Public transportation? No one has ever come forward or could be found saying they saw him on a bus much less carrying a gun.
Bullet could not be matched to the rifle b/c it was too mangled.
Walker said it wasnt the same bullet.
I believe Oswald came home w/o the rifle. The official story suggests that he buried it. Again, no one has come forward saying they saw oswald carrying gun back from with him.
Buried gun would tend to be dirty. No one mentions gun was dirty when it is next seen in his house.
ALL of Marina’s testimony would have been inadmissible in court in Texas in 1963 due to spousal immunity doctrine. Even if someone admissible, her entire body of testimony would have been eviscerated by a good defense lawyer because of inconsistencies and contradictions.
Bottom line- Oswald’s connection to the shooting is tenuous at best. Insufficient to indict much less convict.
Gerald McKnight dealt thoroughly with General Walker´s case in Breach of Trust. He concluded it “was just a microcosm of what was to follow in the government’s investigation into the Kennedy assassination.” (page 58).
Even though Marina said she placed the mysterious LHO´s note in a Russian book, the Dallas Police didn’t find it in its 2-day-long search in LHO’s room and the Paines’ house. On November 30, Ruth Paine sent the book to Marina through the Irving County Police. The latter turned it over to the Secret Service, and the note was discovered three days later. The FBI specialist Sebastian Latona found neither LHO nor Marina’s fingerprints on it.
On May 20, 1964, Counsel Rankin wrote to Hoover that Marina’s testimony on the case “was riddled with contradictions”. FBI officer Gordon Shanklin assigned then agents Ivan Lee and Robert Barrett to the case because “her statements just don’t jibe.” They found two witnesses who stated that there were two suspects, who neither resembled LHO, and a Ford involved in the shooting.
In 1979, Counsel Blakey held up for the TV cameras the alleged piece of bullet (CE 573) recovered from Walker´s home. The General simply said that it has nothing to do with the piece fired, which he had he had closely examined at the scene.
Huh? I’m not aware that de Mohrenschildt was aware of Oswald’s crime. In fact, I see no reason to think he was.
After the JFK assassination, he doubtless figured out that talk about how Walker was the new Hitler and such played into the shooting.
I had to go back and fact check myself just to make sure I hadn’t gone nuts. But, it’s there all over the internet. George de Mohrenschildt’s manuscript in which he writes definitively and extensively about his recollection of the Walker shooting visa vi Lee & Marina.
P.S. Just because X knew Y, and Y went to school with C, doesn’t mean X and C were in on the conspiracy together. I ‘m just saying I ceased to be impressed with this form of illogic along time ago. I believe Lisa Simpson once called it specious reasoning.
Shane McBryde: for an argument to be rendered spurious, shouldn’t it first be subjected to rigorous examination?
One may choose to toss out information that appears on the surface to be either superficial or meaningless for reasons assigned to coincidence, but that response that does not meet the standard for ‘rigorous’ inquiry. Detectives and investigators have long pursued leads with far less obvious potential than what has been described by Tom Scully in the Devine/Dreyer research.
It’s worrisome that new leads are immediately dismissed in this manner, particularly on this site, and rather arrogantly I might add. Where does that leave us … going in circles starting from point A) maryferrell and ending at point Z) mcadams and all points in between comprised almost exclusively of records of a corrupt intelligence apparatus or publications originating from what is now considered the (MJRC) Mainstream JFJ Research Community. The irony in that is dumbfounding.
This is not healthy for the investigation. Coincidence taken out of context means nothing, I admit, but when said connections are assigned a time, a space, an event, I think there is more than ample justification to pursue. Police, journalists and researchers follow that line of inquiry all the time, and the really good ones trust their intutition.
and the better researchers know how to spell ‘intuition’ and further, how to identify acronyms.
Lisa,
The term I used was “specious” as in, ‘having deceptive attraction or allure.’ This is what I think reading too much into associations amount. It’s a small world. However, I did not mean to suggest the argument was “spurious” (your word) as in, ‘not genuine, sincere, or authentic.’
It’s certainly plausible that because a given number of people used to work together, that one or more of them may have known each other on something other than a passing acquaintance. But, you simply can’t base a conclusion about that person or his/her activities because, ‘they worked together with so & so at Bell Helicopter back in the 50’s or some such.
That’s like trying to make a silk purse out of sows ear.
Cordially,
Shane.
Hi Shane, (and it’s Leslie)
and I woke this morning realizing my error. My apologies. But the gist of my argument stands – there are leads that need to be pursued. I don’t know how long if at all you have worked in the corporate world, but networking and family loyalties seldom end, particularly when you share intense training and or experience significant events together. I’ve studied this phenomenon for years. To use your example, I have traced the Bell board of directors through decades of interconnections – family, business, fraternal – and I can state unequivocally, at the higher levels, these people do not “move on” they merely move around within the same tight circle of the military industrial finance complex, breathing the same rarefied air. That does not mean they were directly complicit, it means they benefited at the very least, although in some instances, they had to have had a degree of knowledge, and in rare instances they participated on some level. I would add that those in the high ranks of the military failed in their duty by not pursuing the conspiracy against their Commander in Chief. You of course know the phrase … All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing. btw, Bell is now involved in the drone business. Respectfully, LS
Mr. McAdams particularly, as well as others who practice such vigorous political partisanship cannot have it both ways. They cannot assert as if it was proven fact Oswald shot at Edwin Walker and the DeMohrenschildts soon met with Oswald and left him and Dallas with awareness of his crime and not demand a frank public accounting today from living persons of their knowledge of what happened just days later. DeMohrenschiltd arrived in New York City and on April 25 met along with Clemard Charles, a CIA associate, Thomas J. Devine. CIA documents inform that after the firts meeting DeMohrenschildt was clearly the priority of interest of Devine and his CIA superior, C. Frank Stone III. Three subsequent meetings or encounters between DeMohrenschildt and Devine were described in CIA documents by May 19,1963. Last fall I discovered Devine had attended Rochester, NY area Allendale-Columbia school from grades K-12 and that his father Adrian was that school board’s chairman. There were 20 in Devine’s class and newspapers of the time reported that Peter Dryer was one of them. When I questioned Joan Mellen about this, she shared that Dryer’s brother Joseph told her that Devine had been his best friend in Rochester. I documented it here.:
http://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,10424.msg303387.html#msg303387
This same individual, Joseph F. Dryer, Jr. also met with DeMohrenschildt and Charles on April 25, the same days as the pair’s first meeting with the Thomas J.Devine. It would seem consistent for Mr. McAams to use his pulpit and any other influence he could exert to call for Mr. Bush to ask Devine and Joseph Dryer what the two friends discussed with DeMohrenschildt on April 25, 1963, so soon after DeMohrenschildt allegedly learned of Oswald’s alleged crime against Walker. Especially if I held McAdams’s convictions of Oswald’s guilt and DeMohrenschildt’s knowledge, I would thirst for an accounting from Devine and Dryer in order to be able to judge whether the timing of these two Rochester friends was simply an amazing coincidence or co-ordinated and for what reasons, and whether DeMohrenschildt spoke to either of Oswald or of Walker. Devine and Dryer need to explain what they communicated about those meetings, following the JFK assassination, and to whom they communicated it to.
Tom, You write:
“They cannot assert as if it was proven fact Oswald shot at Edwin Walker and the DeMohrenschildts soon met with Oswald and left him and Dallas with awareness of his crime and not demand a frank public accounting today from living persons of their knowledge of what happened just days later.
Tom, please tell me what you mean, in plain English. Thanks.
Tom Scully: John McAdams references Max Holland’s site “Washington Decoded” … note that Holland’s board includes Priscilla McMillan and Patricia Lambert (“False Witness.”)
Priscilla McMillan – Oswald’s shadow in Russia – brought Marina Oswald to Santa Fe NM in 1964 where they were hosted by McMillan’s relatives, the Davenports, who according to Sam Ballen were friends of he and his wife.
A decade or so later, the Ballens anticipated the visit of George deMohrenschildt, another person deeply involved in Lee and Marina’s lives, but deM’s alleged suicide in the midst of being questioned by the HSCA interrupted that trip to Santa Fe. Prior to the assassination, deM had introduced Lee to Sam Ballen in Dallas under the auspices of possible employment.
McMillan and deMohrenschildt must surely have crossed paths.
During the winter of 2006, I scheduled a visit with Sam Ballen to take place after his return from a long trek, explaining that I had worked with the former wife of his dear friend Bruce Calder, and that I was curious about their associations. Sam said, “sure, let’s get together and tell each other lies but I’m off on a long trek and it will have to wait until I get back.” I never got to talk to him as he died in February, 2007.
Just read on JFKCountercoup that on November 23, 1963, General Walker called a newspaper in Munich, Germany and informed the paper’s editor that it was Oswald who had shot at him the preceding April.
This was before the DPD and FBI had any idea of linking Oswald to the Walker shooting.
Walker, who had commanded troops in Germany and knew the country well, apparently wanted to establish that he was a victim not a perp. Makes sense given his right-wing connections.
Assuming this story is true, there’s every reason to believe the Warren Commission, with help from the U.S. government (FBI, CIA, whoever) framed Oswald for the Walker shooting. Certainly it was an unsolved crime up until the time of the assassination.
There are several Munich connections in the story in addition to Walker calling the newspaper. The signer of the newspaper ad in Dallas on 11/22/63 attacking Kennedy was part of a group of conservative activists trying to consolidate control of conservative politics nationally. This group had met each other and launched their campaign while stationed in Munich with US forces. The German intelligence organization BND that arose out of the Gehlen Organization was headquartered near Munich in Pullach, and the CIA established an office in Munich to serve as liason with Gehlen/BND.
Of course the BND was hopelessly penetrated by Markus Wolf’s agents. So the East Germans were obviously behind this.
BND was penetrated at high levels by East bloc agents, but that does not mean it did not conduct operations. CIA relied on BND to conduct intelligence operations against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. CIA and BND were very closely linked. BND lives on today as the intelligence service of the reunited Germany.
Dan, I think the newspaper phoned Walker and not vice versa unless they made follow up calls back and forth. I’ve written about this previously on this site.
The liaison between Allen Dulles, the CIA, Reinhard Gehlen and the Gehlen Org in Munich was James Hardesty Critchfield who claims to have played a role during the Cuban Missile Crisis, then took up the post as station chief for the Near East and became CIA liaison to the oil industry. He ‘ended’ his career with the CIA when he became consultant to the Sultan of Oman.
A fascinating aspect of Critchfield’s career relating to his expertise in the oil industry is that he led a unit of the army in WWII made up of Texas National Guardsmen, many from Houston and Dallas. Critchfield’s lifelong friend from those years was General Lucian Truscott who was related through marriage to E.O. Thompson, former mayor of Amarillo, TX who served as the expert for the oil industry on the highly influential Texas Railroad Commission which regulated the oil and gas industry for decades.
Gen. Truscott was sent into deep cover in the service of the CIA in the immediate aftermath of the war by DCI Beedle Smith who stationed Truscott in Germany. This might be the genesis of his friendship with Critchfield. He is also alleged to have been directly involved with Allen Dulles, Operation PBSuccess and the overthrow of Arbenz. (There is some disagreement over this history.)
Might the Kennedy administration challenges to the oil and gas industry as it was intertwined with the CIA have angered and concerned military/oil men, adding fuel to the fire? Miscellaneous dots, but part of a tapestry of the military industrial complex in the Lone Star State.
Relating to James Critchfield (Texas National Guard, CIA, Gehlen, Oil industry, Middle East) and General Truscott (CIA, PBSuccess, Texas RR Commission link):
The Boston Globe reports on April 5, 2014 the death of Thomas Polgar:
“After serving as an aide to Lucian K. Truscott Jr., an Army general who became a top CIA official, Polgar spent much of the 1950s and early 1960s in Berlin, where he cultivated a far-flung ring of spies . . .
Mr. Polgar was working in the Latin American division at CIA headquarters when Argentine-born revolutionary Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara, who helped foment the Cuban Revolution with Fidel Castro, was captured and killed in Bolivia in 1967. . .
Mr. Polgar wanted the CIA’s station chief in La Paz to verify that Guevara was dead.”
So Polgar served under Truscott who was a close friend of Critchfield who was liaising with Gehlen; he ran his own spy ring during the Cold War; he followed Ted Shackley (former JMWave chief) in Saigon, and before that was with the Latin American department of the CIA when Guevara was murdered in Bolivia. Might he have been interacting with John Tilton, Morales, Rodriguez et al all along the way? Might he have known them all prior to Guevarra’s assassination? Did he stay in contact with Truscott who had his ear to the ground in the oil industry through Critchfield who went on to affect matters in Iraq for years. A long-term, ongoing global operation functioning in the shadows served by these and similar alliances with assassination as its lifeblood. Cuba, Latin America, Vietnam, the Middle East.
Next: Birch Dilworth O’Neal.
Another interesting event in Munich in this period was the assassination of Stefan Bandera in 1959. Bandera was the Ukrainian nationalist leader, who is a hero of today’s Ukrainian revolution in Kiev. Bandera worked out of Munich after World War II and was assassinated in 1959 in Munich by some sort of poisoning. The East Germans accused Gehlen’s group and CIA/BND accused the KGB and its allies. Bandera had been imprisoned by the Poles for assassination the Polish Interior Minister in 1934, then freed by the Nazis when they invaded Poland in 1939. After working with the Germans for a period of time Bandera was put in a concentration camp by them, then freed near the end of the war to once again collaborate.
Another Munich reference related to the assassination is described in the 2012 Errol Morris short film for the New York Times titled “Umbrella Man”. In this documentary Tink Thompson relates that Umbrella Man in Dealey Plaza was protesting Joe Kennedy’s support of the 1938 Munich agreement between Hitler and Chamberlain. Umbrella Man raised his black umbrella at the spot in Dealey Plaza where the shooting began. In this context “Munich” is a term meaning appeasement.
Dan, perhaps you are testing the waters, or perhaps you are sincere. The assertion that Umbrella Man was protesting Kennedy in relation to Chamberlain’s appeasement have been dissected. In fact, most recent research suggests that Witt who is associated with the Chamberlain claim was not UM but chose to testify that he was for reasons not yet revealed. Gordon Novel was a more recent “person of interest” in the quest for identifying the man with the umbrella … the spotter.
Witt was employed by RW Baxter’s Rio Grande National Life Insurance. A fact: Rio Grande was quickly brought under the umbrella of Kentucky Central Life (after the assassination) on whose board sat the father of Cape Girardeau, MO born, Dallas-trained radio broadcaster, Rush Limbaugh. Check it out.
Baxter shared a bank board with Clint Murchison, PB Garrett of Bell Helicopter and WW Overton with direct ties to Joe Zeppa, Lone Star Steel, Tyler, George HW Bush, and Al Ulmer. We can find Munich and Pullach connections in the personal history of most of these men.
My purpose is to recite the Munich references related to the assassination to see if they have meaning. Another Munich appeasement reference is attributed to Gen. Curtis LeMay during the Cuban Missile Crisis when he reportedly told JFK that the resolution of the crisis was as bad as Munich.
And your evidence for this is?
Dan, I’m with you 100% on this topic, with the addition that the characters involved with Gehlen should be studied more closely as some rose to the highest levels of finance and industry in our country. My point was that appeasement may have ‘riled’ many on an ideological plane, particularly in the military, but how that played out in terms of industry is another matter.
George DeMohrenschildt’s White Russian and Eastern European background certainly overlaps with the operational area of the Gehlen Organization. What I am wondering is whether DeMohrenschildt might have had a relationship with the Gehlen Org?
Walker was interviewed by reporter from Deutsche National Zeitung on November 24. Walker denied to the Warren Commission that he linked Oswald to the April shooting during this conversation. It appears that the story – *The Strange Case Of Oswald* published Nov 29 – falsely attributed this information to Walker. As Walker pointed out to the Commission, to his best knowledge it was not until early December that anyone in an official capacity began to suggest a link between Oswald and the Walker shooting. What led the German paper to make this claim, and to falsely attribute it to Walker, so far ahead of any investigators in Dallas remains unknown.
Great information.
The scenario you suggest calls for further investigation. It would appear that the Munich newspaper had more information earlier about the Walker shooting than did US law enforcement. Given that the Munich area was the center for West German intelligence activities, this is a possible explanation. West German intelligence (BND/Gehlen) focused on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and maintained some of the German spy networks as far back as World War II. Anyone who studies the JFK case notices the presence of White Russian and Eastern European connections of some key figures. Both groups were the prime target of BND/Gehlen (on behalf of CIA).
Jonathan, some of this territory has been covered previously, but I note that there is a narrow timeline being introduced into this argument relating to the far-right German newspaper “Deutsche Nationale Zeitung” and Chief Jesse Curry’s statement in Dallas on the 23rd.
According to Dick Russell’s account in “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” Walker received a phone call from Germany “sometime in the morning” {of the 23rd}. That would be any time between 6+am and 9+am on Saturday morning, Dallas time on the 23rd; according to Russell, Walker states “they woke me up. I didn’t know anything about Oswald shooting at me.” …”
And yet we now have Jean Davison’s allegations that:
“The idea that Oswald shot at Walker apparently originated not with a German newspaper but with reporters in Dallas. Curry was asked about the possibility at a news conference on Saturday, and a short article in the Dallas Morning News the same day was headlined “Officials Recall Sniper Shooting At Walker Home” and began: “Police Friday were not overlooking a possibility that President Kennedy’s assassin may have been the mystery sniper who shot at Maj. A. Walker last April…” (DMN, 11/23, p. 15)
How could “Nationale Zeitung” have known about the possibility of Walker being the alleged target of Oswald based solely on a statement by Chief Curry when they had phoned Walker early morning of the 23rd? unless Jean is alleging that Curry appeared prior to 9am in Dallas, Nationale Zeitung read the newswire, and NZ immediately located General Walker, waking him up. Otherwise, there was a degree of communication between Dallas and Munich that we are not addressing.
Leslie,
I find the big picture clear, the micro picture foggy.
The big picture consists of four parts: (1) JFK had some powerful adversaries. (2) LBJ had big criminal legal problems. (3) RFK had pissed off the Mob. (4) The person we’re told is Lee Harvey Oswald was the perfect patsy.
The micro picture is foggy. Who the hell was Lee Harvey Oswald. Who was Jack Ruby, and what were his connections?
And so on.
When one sees fog at the micro level, the conclusion is clear: the fog was created by the players and by the investigative bodies (FBI). Truth is, there wasn’t any fog.
Oswald did X, Y, and Z. Clearly and Cleanly.
JFK’s wounds were A, B, C, and whatever. Clearly and cleanly.
Jonathan … couldn’t agree more.
Very well said!
Even the aspects of the micro picture that are clear are the ones that point to Oswald being the patsy. It is only the fuzzy and disputable or convoluted aspects of the micro picture that ever point to a single gunman perpetrator.
Examples of the micro picture that are very clear, include (a) JFK’s refusal to sign off on the Northwood Operations project (he was the only person not to “play ball”), and (b) his attempts to get America on its own currency system, and remove us from dependency on the Federal Reserve’s “debt-based” currency… These two events are well documented, leading right up to his assassination.
Also tying in interestingly to this, is the fact that the last President to strongly oppose the Central Banks (Andrew Jackson) was also on the receiving end of an assassination attempt… albeit unsuccessful in Jackson’s case.
Point being, in both instances, the group of people who stood the most to gain by their deaths (and the most to lose by their continued Presidency), were one and the same.
Bottom line: the theory that JFK was killed by LHO alone is full of holes, and incongruent with evidence, history, and forensics… the other theory has none of these problems!
All references to Oswald as a shooter, whether it’s Walker, Tippit, or JFK should be prefaced by “alleged” as in “allegedly took a shot at Walker.” He was never tried for any of these acts and there is a reasonable doubt in each case. I am not arguing that Oswald is an innocent man who has never done wrong, but history should not be recorded with certainty when these events are far from clear.
JFK Fact: The first public accusation of LHO involvement in the Walker shooting attempt was a newspaper story 11/23/63 quoting Michael R. Paine.
Interesting. More detail? What paper and what was the name of the story?
I don’t have the name of the story off-hand, but it was in the Houston Post, according to DiEugenio in Destiny Betrayed (2nd ed.) – Chapter 10.
There were two linchpins to the Warren Commission’s case against Oswald: the backyard photos and the Walker shooting. (The Commission basically ignored the medical record.)
The backyard photos were powerful images. They’ve lost their power of persuasion, however, as they’ve been critically examined over the years.
The Walker shooting always has been important as showing, if it could be tied to Oswald, a pre-disposition to kill. Apart from all the other problems I have tying the Walker shooting to Oswald (bullet, rifle burying, witness account of two perps), there’s this big problem for me: If Oswald was such a great shot at a moving target, a really difficult target to hit, how could he miss Walker?
The stories I’ve read are that Walker moved at the last moment. Or the pane of glass the bullet struck deflected the bullet. These strike me as excuses, not explanations. They too lack the power of persuasion.
The idea Oswald bought his rifle so he could shoot Walker is the composition of two unproven assertions: (a) he bought the rifle in question, and (b) he wanted to shoot Walker.
The Warren Commission did a lousy but good job of convincing the American people Oswald did it alone. Lousy because the Warren Report and its conclusions have never stood up to skeptical, unbiased scrutiny. Good because the Report is a rallying point for all who have ever wanted to avoid the full facts surrounding and pertaining to the JFK assassination.
Bill Kelly has done very interesting work related to the Walker shooting. Bill interviewed Volkmar Schmidt who met and talked with Oswald at a party organized by the DeMohrenschildts in early 1963. Schmidt expressed remorse to Bill that he had engaged Oswald in a discussion about Walker perhaps being as bad as the Nazis. Schmidt apparently believed that he may have triggered Oswald’s alleged attack on Walker. Bill writes that Schmidt had connections to people in Germany involved in the July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler.
Link to article: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html
Let’s not forget that when the HSCA showed the bullet allegedly dug out of Walker’s wall, the General himself wrote a letter to the HSCA insisting that it was not the bullet he held in his hand that night.
Speaking of Don DeLillo’s Libra, he does imagine a scenario where LHO and another man with a car conspired together. Personally, I don’t think Oswald had anything to do with the Walker shooting.
The note to Marina can be better explained by Oswald’s fake pro-Castro activities, which apparently included a leaflet incident in Dallas in the spring of 1963.
If Oswald had nothing to do with the Walker shooting, why did he have photos of Walker’s house in his possession taken prior to the shooting? Why did he tell his wife he shot at Walker?
I also view the attempt on Walker as the possible key to Kennedy’s assassination but come at it from a slightly different angle, mainly that Hoover became aware of Oswald’s involvement (and potential) and made a conscious decision to allow Oswald to remain on the loose instead of providing his name to the Dallas police investigating the Walker incident. Hoover was facing mandatory retirement during a second Kennedy term but an LBJ presidency would ensure his position as director for life. Walker was a nationally known right wing and anti-communist figure. The shooting would certainly have come to Hoover’s attention and he would likely have wanted to know who might have been involved. The FBI’s own file on Oswald would have made him an obvious suspect but this information was never passed on to the Dallas police investigating the case. This was either a colossal and tragic oversight or an intentional withholding of information which might have prevented Kennedy’s killing (consider police Lt. Jack Revill’s memo written hours after the assassination).
Though the Warren Commission chose to accept the agency’s failure to share information as a contributing factor they portrayed it simply as a bureaucratic matter. Note that LBJ and Hoover essentially hand picked the Warren Commission and the FBI was largely responsible for the investigation. Not only did the FBI have a file on Oswald but four days after the Walker shooting, George De Morhemschildt (and his wife) while visiting the Oswald’s apartment, learned of Lee’s scoped rifle and jokingly asked Lee if he had been the person taking a shot at Walker. De Morhenschildt had previously discussed Walker with Lee and was aware of Lee’s negative views of Walker and the thought definitely crossed Georges mind (since he immediately joked about it) that Lee might have been involved. George was very intelligent and a staunch anti-communist whose wealthy family was forced to flee Russia to escape the revolution. He had applied for the OSS but was rejected due to a British report that he had been a spy for the Germans during WWII. He had some CIA connections and would have been a likely candidate to be an informer within the Dallas Russian community of which he was a member. He sought out and befriended Lee when the Oswald’s moved to Dallas after returning from Russia, and could have passed on any suspicion that Oswald was possibly involved in the Walker shooting. If this information came to the attention of the FBI it is almost a certainty that Hoover would have had knowledge of Oswald’s potential as an assassin. Hoover was in a position to quietly influence events and was a long time friend of LBJ. Within two weeks after the Walker shooting, LBJ publicly announced an upcoming Kennedy visit to Dallas although time and details had not been finalized. Hoover was arguably the most powerful person in the government. He routinely used the FBI to gather information on powerful officials and was not afraid to use it to his advantage. I expect he would have been only too willing to withhold releasing information about Oswald to the Dallas police and help arrange a presidential visit to Dallas then let events transpire.
It is also possible to imagine Oswald, while in Mexico, making some oddball offer to the Cubans and maybe the Russians to kill Kennedy. Oswald saw Cuba as a truer expression of the Marxist ideal and may have imagined himself welcomed there. He had discussed with Marina the possibility of hijacking a plane to Cuba but had gone to Mexico hoping to find another way. If the CIA learned through secret surveillance, of Oswald suggesting an assassination to the communists, the CIA may have believed Oswald was incapable of such an act and sought to contain the information for fear of compromising their surveillance operation. I would expect this type of information would have gone to Washington and perhaps Hoover had a role in seeing that such information was not passed on to the Dallas police and Secret Service. When Oswald was later successful they would have certainly sought to cover up their failure to warn of a potential threat to the President. If the FBI and CIA did have some information which could have protected Kennedy but failed to act on it, coming at the height of the cold war, public revelation could have a potentially crippling effect on our entire intelligence community and national security. If the public learned that the Cubans and Russians had some prior knowledge of Oswald’s danger, the American public might have demanded retribution leading to a confrontation with the Soviets. Our leaders would have had a strong national security interest in suppressing some of these explosive details. If it were believed that Hoover had intentionally withheld information (impossible to prove) it could also have severe consequences to public confidence in our government.
I’ve had experience with those who treat a historical event religously–namely the Hiss case, which has more or less be proven that Hiss was a spy by de-classified Russian documents. Unless of course the Russians faked and then sold them for much-needed hard currency….
I think that some—not all—of the conspiracy crowd have succumbed to such chanting. If a piece of evidence comes to light that challenges their theory they dismiss it as part of a CIA disinformation campaign. I have come very, very reluctantly to the not unshakeable conclusion that Oswald acted alone. I base this on computer analysis of the bullet trajectories and snipers re-creating the shooting. The riposte to this is that somehow these computer geeks and snipers are in the pay of the CIA and God knows who else. That being said, I think my side has its blemishes. When a witness or participant in the plot offers contradictory evidence then the m.o of the Pro-Warren group is to attack the mental stability of them.
There are confusing, even haunting aspects of the case that I honestly cannot shelve into my theory. Delphine Roberts, whose right-wing views certainly would seem to make her want a grubby Marxist to have killed a President, is a problem in point. I don’t, as sometimes on my side of the fence, question her sanity or portray her in other contexts as unstable. George De Moreschendt (I hope I spelled that right) is another problem. Pro-Warren Commission writers portray his relationship with Oswald as merely one screwball to another. I agree with Norman Mailer and the reasonable pro-conspiracy crowd that De Morenschendt was involved with the CIA and was tasked with monitoring Oswald.
I disagree also with my group when they unconvincingly try to demolish the fact that Oswald was working out of the building that housed the nerve center of anti-Castro Cuban activity in New Orleans—the infamous “544 Camp street.” I also think that Oswald knew Ferrie.
As for Oswald knowing or not knowing about the Kennedy-backed assassination plots, there was a news item in October 1963 that quoted Castro as saying that if the American government continued to try to kill him they would not be safe—or words to that effect. Oswald could have potentially read that.
There is also the matter of the undercover FBI agent in the Cuban embassy present when Oswald was trying to get a visa. He overheard Oswald state to the officials that he should try to kill Kennedy to stop the plots on Castro. This information was not included in the final Warren Commission.
All of this can of course be dismissed by the unreasonable conspiracy group as part of an FBI/CIA disinformation campaign and I as an employee of it.
But fifty years have passed and I would hope the passions have cooled and the event can be investigated objectively.
I don’t see a lot of that though on this site.
“I base this on computer analysis of the bullet trajectories and snipers re-creating the shooting”
I watch the Zapruder film, hear from the Parkland doctors about the neck wounds (from the front) to JFK, and the wounds on his body which indicate multiple shooters; not to mention a slew of other eye, ear and nose witnesses (smelled gunpowder) to indicate multiple shooters. About 7 people smelled gunpowder on Elm Street. How does that get there from 6th floor TSBD? Ralph Yarborough did, so did the wife of Mayor Cabell.
“Delphine Roberts” Ultrarightist Guy Bannister told his girlfriend/secretary don’t worry about Oswald, he is with the office. There is much other evidence to indicate Oswald was US intelligence, which is a critical thing to understand.
“George De Moreschendt (I hope I spelled that right)” I suggest familiarizing yourself with the work of the legendary JFK researcher Bruce Campbell Adamson. DeMohrenschildt had relationships with GHW Bush and the Texas political business class that murdered JFK.
“As for Oswald knowing or not knowing about the Kennedy-backed assassination plots, there was a news item in October 1963 that quoted Castro ” Again, Oswald is US intelligence – read my book/article selections on that. Oswald was a fake, pro-Castro Marxist. Oswald probably wanted Casto dead; Machiavellian US intelligence operatives burned Oswald knowing that his public persona would be quite useful. (Learn what Operation Northwoods was.)
There was a political assassination going on in the fall of 1963: the Kennedys were politically executing Lyndon Johnson and his friends in CIA/military intelligence/Texas oil/Hoover were acutely aware of that.
I don’t see you as a CIA operative. There is a tremendous amount of very high quality JFK research that you might want to make yourself familiar with. Understanding Oswald was US intelligence is the first step. Then understanding the JFK/LBJ sub rosa war going on. Then understanding how warhawks in CIA/military viewed JFK is another key.
Read the books “LBJ Mastermind” by Nelson and “JFK & the Unspeakable” by Douglass.
Was Oswald US intelligence and a fake pro-Castro Marxist? Read this:
http://lyndonjohnsonmurderedjfk.blogspot.com/2013/04/bibliography-of-books-and-articles-that.html
Where do you get the “working out of” business?
He put that address on his leaflets. Nobody at 544 Camp had seen him there, and the landlord said he never rented an office.
Banister’s office was on Lafayette Street. Same building, but an entirely different entrance.
What’s your explanation for “544 Camp Street” on Oswald’s FPCC leaflets then? And it being part of the same building as Banister’s office? Just another coincidental factoid? With all the other possible choices of fake addresses in New Orleans, Oswald just happens to come up with THAT address?
The Newman Building was just a couple of blocks from where he worked. Check Google Maps.
Reilly Coffee Company is still in business at the same location.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/images/544camp.gif
If Oswald had chosen any other run-down building the address of which to put on his flyers, several generations of conspiracists would have found some hapless guys associated with that address, and those hapless guys would have had Ed Asner and Joe Pesci playing them in some movie 30 years later.
That is just lazy. Dave asked you a question. Why did Oswald stamp 544 Camp Street on those leaflets?
You mocked him and the incident. But you did not answer the question — and you never have answered it.
Both entrances accessed the entire building. This is covered in Destiny Betrayed or Reclaiming Parkland. A researcher of investigator for Garrison actually went there, went in both entrances and proved this. No, Oswald did not rent an office, Banister let him use one.
He also told secretary Delphine Roberts “he’s ok, he’s one of our guys”.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKrobertsD.htm?menu=JFKindex
P.S., that batch of leaflets came from a batch previously obtained by the CIA – Destiny Betrayed or Reclaiming Parkland again, I.E. documented.
No, they did not.
Check Sam Newman’s testimony to the HSCA. He actually drew a map of all three floors of the property.
Then you have this from Frontline:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/etc/script.html
The leaflets prove nothing besides the FPCC having has some old pamphlets lying around, and sending them to Oswald when he asked for them.
Why would the CIA give him pamphlets, and then forge a paper trail with him asking for them, when it would be much simpler to merely have Lee ask for them?
Reclaiming Parkland, pg. 153: “Newman, owner of the building, had always been evasive about who he rented to…HSCA staffers did not believe him…drew a diagram of the building which said the two entryways did not actually lead to the same place. Gus Russo then got a guest on his 1993 PBS Frontline program, “Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?” to say the same.
But then how did Bill Turner do just that back in 1967 while on assignment for Ramparts magazine? Years ago, Turner told me firsthand about his experience of entering both addresses and walking up the stairs to the same small coven of offices. … Jim Garrison made the same discovery, which he describes in his book “On the Trail of the Assassins”. He writes the following: “So both entrances-544 Camp and 531 Lafayette-led to the same place.”
If you don’t believe Mr. DiEugenio take it up with him. It’s a little too late to do so with Mr. Garrison.
It goes further on page 154. “Yet there are a number of witnesses who can attest to a relationship between Oswald and Banister. And many of them saw Oswald at 544 Camp Street. In the second edition of Destiny Betrayed I list these witnesses and also people who corroborate talking to them about seeing Oswald there. It comes to a total of thirteen. And it is topped off ny two INS angents named Wendell Roache and Ron Smith. They testified to the Church Committee that they tracked illegal Cuban exiles into the United States. They noticed Ferrie since he was with them so often. They tracked Ferrie to 544 Camp Street. But they also saw Oswald there in the summer of 1963. Corroborating Banister’s secretary Delphine Roberts, they said he had his own office there, which further undermines Newman.”
So we have two INS agents connecting Oswald to Ferrie and former FBI Agent in charge of the Chicago office Banister and in turn Cuban exiles.
And you accept this from DiEugenio?
Post the part where Newman was “evasive.”
And Newbrough was lying?
And what “staffers” didn’t believe him?
Not Fonzi, perhaps?
Post their testimony, or a link to it.
I’ve never heard about this before, even from conspiracy authors like Anthony Summers.
So it sounds like a factoid.
A-N-D, Joannides had a house there in the summer of 63′ (paid for with CIA funds?). A residence? While he lived in/reportedly worked at JM/Wave in Florida? Or a safe house?
As John Judge said, they are our files.
FREETHEFILES!!!
“So we have two INS agents connecting Oswald to Ferrie and former FBI Agent in charge of the Chicago office Banister and in turn Cuban exiles.”
A number of facts to add to the ledger of coincidence:
Before James Hosty joined the FBI, he worked security for the First National Bank of Chicago. (ref. that mysterious money order from Dallas that is alleged to have passed through Klein’s Sporting Goods, somehow gets lost/unendorsed in the exchange between FNB Chicago and the Fed? and ref. Banister’s history with the FBI in Chicago)
INS; the Dallas office of the federal agency was located in the building owned by the Rio Grande National Life Insurance for whom the man who came forward a decade or so later to allege that he was the Umbrella Man had been employed in 1963. LS Witt alleges that he left his place of work, the Rio Grande National Life Insurance Company, walked North, then West only to end up at 411 Elm – a building owned by DH Byrd – precisely in a position to witness what for most should have been a highly unsettling view of the assassination … and yet he never came forward … until years later. Not only is this patently absurd behavior of an innocent bystander – umbrella and Chamberlain aside – on 11.22.63, but the fact that the authorities/the Warren Commission investigators did not track “Witt” or the man beside him in the months following is untenable. (I equate this failure to follow witnesses to the fact that the WC did not interview Sandra Styles, a TSBD employee). Could the Umbrella Man discrepancy have been the threat posed by the Zapruder film? The spotters had been caught on film? I assume that there are other films that show the umbrella man and the guy next to him?
Yes Jmc I accept this. His books are well documented. He’s been to New Orleans and interviewed people there, reviewed files etc. He posts on here from time to time, if You don’t believe him take it up with him Paul.
You need to know that Delphine Roberts was found not to be credible by the HSCA:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/544camp.txt
John McAdams wrote: “You need to know that Delphine Roberts was found not to be credible by the HSCA.”
In his book McAdams claimed: “The (HSCA) committee thus decided that Roberts and Martin were unreliable.”
Neither statement is accurate.
What Gaeton Fonzi actually wrote(from the HSCA report submitted by Fonzi and Patricia Orr):
(498) “During another interview, Roberts told the committee that Oswald came into the office seeking employment and sometime later brought Marina in with him. Contrary to her statements in the initial interview, that she had never seen Oswald, she stated that she saw Oswald come into Banister’s office on several occasions. Because of such contradictions in Roberts’ statements to the committee and lack of independent corroboration of many of her statements, the reliability of her statements could not be determined.”
Interestingly, Fonzi wrote that Roberts
“initially refused to speak with the committee staff.” He does not say what caused her to change her mind.
So she told them a lot of things, and they didn’t accept her testimony as reliable.
How would you characterize that assessment?
Ronnie,
The pamphlets Oswald supposedly got from the CIA were actually ordered by him in a letter to the FPCC. The last paragraph here says “I now ask for 40 or 50 more of the fine, basic pamplets–14.” The 50 is circled and a handwritten note says “sent 4/19/63”:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=142073
The “Basic pamphlet-14” was Corliss Lamont’s “Crimes against Cuba.” The copy on record was stamped with the Camp St. address:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=146881
It isn’t known why Oswald used that address (other handouts had other addresses or were unstamped), but Oswald wrote the FPCC that offices in N.O. rented for $30 a month, that he’d actually rented one but was thrown out after three days with a flimsy excuse. The owner denied ever renting to Oswald and I think that’s probably true. However, the rent at the Camp St. building did happen to be $30 and it was near his workplace.
Ronnie, Corliss Lamont, the socialist philosopher, was the brother of T. Stilwell LaMont, an executive with Morgan bank and board of Lehman Brothers under former General Lucius Clay as well as the Phelps Dodge mining concern – the family through marriage of Nicholas Katzenbach author of:
“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”
According to Dick Russell, Richard Case Nagell – in whose possession was found a Corliss Lamont pamphlet – named his son “Lamont.” (caveat, Russell does not propose the connection I am proposing. If he or anyone has further knowledge of Nagell’s name choice, I would be interested in hearing.) The reason this may be important is that Nagell argued that all of his ‘pay outs’ came through American Express Traveler’s Cheques, but that the judge in El Paso inexplicably refused to allow that information into the record of his trial. Among the directors of American Express (A Chase bank/Rockefeller concern) were Lucius Clay and TS Lamont.
Anyone that refuses to consider a pattern in this is either being obstinate or is complicit in obfuscation of the truth at the very least.
Oswald and Ferrie definitely did know one another – there are at least two photos taken of them together at different times/places, plus the Clinton, La. trip they took with Clay Shaw in August 1963.
Mr. McAdams needs to answer the question. Why did LHO put the address 544 Camp Street on those leaflets?
LHO had no office there.
It had at one time been the address of the CRC, an anti-Castro group.
Guy Banister had an office in the same building.
Why on earth would a pro-Castro agitator stamp that address on leaflets he handed out to potential recruits? What would they find when they arrived at that address?
Mr.McAdams can wiggle, spin and mock as much as he wants. But he can’t give us an answer that makes sense to that question. And he never has been able to.
I answered the question, but you chose to blow it off.
Oswald apparently walked down to Lafayette Square at some point, and noticed 544 Camp. Which, by the way, was not the address of Banister.
There was, at one point, a sign in the window that said “office for rent” (or some such).
He apparently just appropriated that address for his fictional “Fair Play For Cuba” chapter.
An anti-Castro group had been at that address, but have moved out before Oswald moved to New Orleans.
Your answer – if you characterize it as that – makes no sense. I blew it off because it deserves it. What was Oswald’s PURPOSE for stamping that address on those leaflets and then passing them out in public? He did have a purpose didn’t he? What was it?
Are you saying 544 Camp Street stamp was just a practical joke? (We all know what a great sense of humor that crazy kid Oswald had. He was a laugh-a-minute.)
If it was a practical joke, why would he stamp an address, where nobody would be there to answer when potential recruits showed up at the door? Who was the object of the joke? The recruits? Why would LHO play a practical joke on recruits if he were seriously proselytizing for the FPCC?
Was it a political dirty trick? On whom? Banister? The CRC? Why would Oswald do that to the FPCC organization?
Or are you saying it a goof-up, just a big mistake? I’ve read your non-explanation on your web page. So don’t bother poster your link. It’s intellectually lazy and non-responsive to the question.
If LHO made a mistake, how and why did that mistake happen? What address should he have been stamping on those leaflets?
This is what we know.
1. LHO stamped 544 Camp Street on leaflets or FPCC. He handed them out in public. Everyody agrees about that – even you.
2. The NOPD confiscated at least one. Everybody agrees about that – even you. Now give us your plausible explanation of why that happened. You haven’t done that yet.
I don’t discount everything you write Mr. McAdams. But you have not yet come up with an answer that makes sense to the 544 Camp Street question. And derision or mockery doesn’t work on me. It’s just a signal of weakness in your argument.
On this issue, you’re faking it. You don’t know why he stamped that address on those leaflets. And your conjectures make no sense.
“Oswald apparently walked down….” Factoid!
“There was, at one point,….” Factoid!
“He apparently just appropriated that address….” Factoid!
“An anti-Castro group had been at that address…” Factoid!
Show some documentation or cite witnesses for proof these things are what happened.
I’m aware of only one photo of them “together,” and they are not actually “together,” merely in the same group at a CAP bivouac.
The Clinton stuff is nonsense:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/clinton1.htm
When researchers finally got their hands on the first interviews, it became obvious that the Clinton testimony had changed radically between the early interviews and the Shaw trial.
Here is one example:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/collins1.txt
Mr. Capshaw,
I disagree with your characterization of Marina as a credible witness. She was under extreme duress in my opinion, probably thinking she would be deported back to the Soviet Union. This goes against the Warren Commission “evidence” that she and LHO were trying to move back to the USSR. Perhaps LHO wanted to return, but it is obvious that after the assassination, she clearly wanted to remain in the US.
As for DeMorenschildt, his credibility is questionable through his documented ties to the CIA. Thus, both of the people you submit as witnesses to LHO’s involvement the Walker shooting are compromised.
Seems like there are a lot of mistakes- or lies
Jonathan,
Since you mentioned it, aside from a purely subjective level of frustration I was having here, I was making mistakes. Bill Kelley identified one in particular regarding William Casey. Another I believe that you might have recognized relating to Chapman killing Lennon and Hinckley shooting Reagan. The incident related to the common sense exchange, and my not having my supporting facts at my finger tips which was sloppy at best and because of the tone of that exchange, I decided to leave. (I have since located the source material supporting my statement, and posted it on the relative thread for the record.)
As you know, you walk around with a lot of information stored in your brain, but when, as a lay person, you commit to disseminating the information in print, you have to be extremely cautious. Like everyone else, all of my work could be reduced to rubble if my credibility comes into question. I’ve been comfortable with an overriding understanding of the assassination for a few years based on all of my independent research, but now, presenting the supporting facts is time consuming and demands accountability. In my case, that requires digging around in some very dusty files.
read: The “other” incident …
Leslie,
I believe you are sincere and credible and knowledgable.
How would any of us respond to the challenge that there may be a deeper level of evidence and implication that exists apart from the perpetual accusations and innuendos connecting LHO to his supposed criminally violent acts?
I’m certain that there’s room for disagreement among intelligent people about the interpretation of “the evidence.” How would we respond to the suggestion that the evidence being debated is an inherited construct which has served as the frame upon which all the discussion and argumentation has rested? In other words, what if the basic elements introduced to us concerning our cognition of what we think we know about LHO — the building blocks of our conjectures and opinions — aren’t true?
Most of us rely upon the work of others to accumulate information and gain insight. We tend to accept what we’re told. The most basic process is that the more we’re told, the more we know. It’s also rather basic, and understandable, that we are most accepting of ideas that complement our predispositions. What if the information to which we’ve been exposed was deliberately introduced to us for a sinister purpose? And that accumulating greater and greater amounts of information can never lead to certainty unless we know the information upon which our knowledge is based can be trusted?
This is a religion. We accept or reject what we’re told. More often than not, we cherry-pick the parts we like, cafeteria style, and reject the rest. The division between the atheists, agnostics, faithful will not easily be bridged. Not easily.
Here’s an example:
There is reason to doubt that LHO attempted to murder General Edwin Walker. A former employee of General Walker’s named William McEwan Duff may be a much more deserving suspect in that shooting than LHO. I’m sure that an investigation into all of what is now available on the subject of the Walker shooting would produce materials worth considering if we want to confirm or reject the charge that Oswald, acting alone, was guilty.
Maybe we can’t be sure of what we know because we’ve been the victims of deception and misdirection.
Ulterior motives are a drag.
“Maybe we can’t be sure of what we know because we’ve been the victims of deception and misdirection.”
Yep. But some of us can reveal the specious quality of LN-er arguments. Case in point: EconWatcher’s excellent comment in this thread, in which EconWatcher, with no more than logic and indisputable facts, utterly demolishes the core of Capshaw’s tripe.
Allen, I signed off of this site a week or so ago; however, I simply cannot resist responding to you in light of this comment. I hope there can be found a vehicle for wide distribution of your insight.
I would like to add an example of being blinded by alleged facts which, when taken out of context, appear as proof while in fact they may well feed into the maize of misconception you have described.
On a previous thread, someone opines that Oswald indeed had legal representation from the outset (I am paraphrasing here but I believe I capture the essence) in the form of the head of the Dallas Bar Association at the time, a Mr. Nichols. What she fails to identify is that his immediate predecessor in the position with the bar association was Morris Harrell. Mr. Harrell was a named partner in the firm Locke Purnell Rain & Harrell (later Neely). Partner Eugene Locke was involved with defining the parade route selection for November 22. The Locke Purnell firm also had legal connections with Jack Crichton of Dorchester Gas on whose board sat DH Byrd among others. Whether or not Mr. Nichols was in any way influenced by Mr. Harrell cannot be proven. However, to overlook that possibility would be absurd given the nature of Dallas civic, political, corporate and professional affairs. This was the “good ol’ boy” network writ large. Ms. Davison’s facts are correct but they lack context. Anyone living in Dallas at the time will understand my characterization.
I believe that “sleight of hand” must be kept in mind when studying the immediate aftermath of the assassination in order to recognize that a combination of truths and untruths was the foundation for all theories. It’s as if a magician was involved from the outset.
Welcome back, leslie! I missed you.
Your detailed facts are invaluable, IMO.
I would love to support your comments with law, science, logic, and history.
Thank you Jonathan. I’m doing a rethink as I trust many of us are about the gift of this site vs. certain reservations. Perhaps it is the nature of such efforts, and I felt privileged to be involved relatively early.
leslie,
Use your mind. That’s my recommendation.
The head of the Dallas Bar at that time would be a man under the HEAVY influence of the Texas oil executives behind the JFK assassination. And that person would also under severe influence by a man named Lyndon Baines Johnson & also Ed Clark, LBJ’s legal consigliere & political boss.
It would be like John Gotti picking a mob lawyer to “represent” your interests while the lawyer is really representing Gotti’s.
Reminds me of the time Lyndon Johnson got his lawyer John Cofer to represent Billie Sol Estes so he would make sure Estes shut up and took the full rap. Estes serves times, goes broke, LBJ skates.
Or the time in the fall of 1963, as the Kennedys were hoping to use the Bobby Baker scandal as a noose around LBJ’s neck – LBJ got his ace lawyer Abe Fortas to represent Baker. That would be Fortas representing Johnson’s interest as he controlled Bobby Baker.
They did the same thing with Jack Ruby as per his legal representation Joe Tonahill.
Gerry,
For a long time, all I read about the case were secondary (e.g., “Crossfire”) and tertiary (e.g., someone’s review or interpretation of “Crossfire) sources. I became deeply dissatisfied; the truth was always behind some sort of curtain; I had to rely on others to tell me, to interpret for me, what there was behind the curtain.
Then I started digging into primary sources. The 26 Warren Commission volumes; the various investigations (mainly focusing on the ARRB releases); the Warren Commission executive sessions transcripts. That work is ongoing.
There ARE breakthroughs to be had. Nothing the media will trumpet. Just pieces of the puzzle comprising the truth of events in Dallas, New Orleans, and elsewhere.
Be well and let us know of any new information or insights or thoughts.
Gerry,
“. . . they’ll wear you down?” my email is lesliemsharp47@gmail if you want to stay in touch.
Maybe if Jeff Morley would outline his goals and objectives for this site, there would be less frustration on the part of the well-meaning.
I understand the mission statement, but in any business plan, one identifies the goals and objectives which are designed to ensure that the endeavor achieves its mission. Currently, I don’t see that in place and the vacuum that is created leads to anxiety and ultimately distrust. Where is the information posted here headed, who will benefit, what is the true purpose of this site? Are copyright laws in place, are legal protections in place ie. can anyone be sued? These are obvious concerns for any thinking person.
Beyond that, specific guidelines should be established, in print, so that all who choose to contribute here understand what is expected and how best to proceed to achieve the goals and objectives of the site.
And lastly, would continuity contribute to a stronger effort? The threads jump from one area of research to another, willy nilly with no cohesiveness. If we are discussing ballistics and forensics, why not exhaust that topic, spend as many days as necessary, or return to the specific thread so that those interested take the time to pull old files or pursue new facts to contribute at a later date. Structure and logic to the threads are critical to sorting through the chaff of this effort.
fwiw.
I agree with Leslie Sharp the tone of this site often gets off track and uncivil.
I hope the personal attacks & lack of civility will be edited out in the future.
We also all need to try harder to stay with the discussion in any thread.
I for instance dont understand why we are not discussing more vigorously the Shenon and Morley book.
A brilliant and dazzling Presidency ended in a cruel & shocking ambush on 22/11/63. President John F. Kennedy was cut down in his prime and did not live to accomplish all he would have. Kennedy was taken from his wife, his two children, colleagues and all of us.
Most of us want to discuss who really murdered JFK. There has been so much come out about it in 50 years. It is vitally important that
we know who murdered JFk and how the pieces of the puzzle fit exactly together.
It is not important who I am, or who Photon is.
That’s interesting. There is also a Harrell family living around Midland, TX–GB’s former stomping grounds.
That’s the way Dallas used to be–it was like a big little town. Everyone knew everybody else. And those good ole boys sure do know how to keep their mouths shut, don’t they? I don’t mean the planners and such, but the men who were policemen or something, at the time, and just won’t talk about what they know even after all these years.
I asked one of my great uncles if he knew of someone who was supposed to be tangentially involved with the assassination. I found out he used to work for him! Then he mentioned working for Billie Sol Estes, and I nearly fainted! I could tell that he really didn’t think that I even knew who Estes was and he clammed up after that.
Ron Capshaw: “But JFK was also certainly an enemy of Oswald’s beloved Castro — Kennedy and his brother Robert were the driving forces behind the CIA-Mafia attempts on Castro’s life — and in his mind killing Kennedy would save El Commandante”
Again, any presentation of Oswald as a pro-Castro Marxist is just rubbish. I have a bibliography to read on that, and I am tempted to post it every single time I see that Big Lie perpetrated.
Here is the web link: http://lyndonjohnsonmurderedjfk.blogspot.com/2013/04/bibliography-of-books-and-articles-that.html
As Guy Bannister told his secretary/girlfried Delphine Roberts about Oswald: “He’s with us. He’s associated with the office.”
Then there is Oswald being spotted with David Atlee Phillips who was undermining Fair Play for Cuba.
And the story of Richard Nagell about Oswald being involved with the JFK assassination on behalf of US intelligence.
And Oswald’s “right wing” reading list in New Orleans summer, 1963.
And Judy Baker’s relationship with Oswald (I generally believe her).
And the Minox spy camera of Oswald’s which was found and which the FBI magically turned into a less incriminating Minox light meter.
And the mention by Oswald of “microdots” (a spy term)…
And the fact that the Marines tested him on Russian proficiency.
And the fact Oswald was obsessed with the TV show/book ” I Led Three Lives” – basically about counter intelligence
And the fact Oswald was a Marine who was once in the patriotic Civil Air Patrol; and he knew David Ferrie, an ultrarightist.
And the fact the CIA had a sharp interest in Oswald … and later lied about that … becaue they were probably running him.
And on and on and on and on ….
Left out his awesome friend George DeMohrenshildt who had relationships with CIA GHW Bush & presumably LBJ.
And the fact Ruth Paine is likely US intelligence.
“Oswald’s beloved Castro”
Problem here is, Oswald said although he was a Marxist, he wasn’t a communist. The record made available to us establishes that Oswald felt Russian communism fell far short of its promises.
Castro was a Russian communist. At least for purposes of Russian support.
Oswald’s anti-communism posture served well the Cold Warriors. His Marxist stance COULD be written off easily as mere intellectualism. Instead, some rogue intelligence officers used his statements of alleged Marxism to paint him as a pro-Castro nut. And he fell into their set-up hook, line, and sinker in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
What a set up. The FBI (or CIA) wants him to infiltrate pro-Castro groups; maybe even go to Cuba. So the FBI (or CIA) sets him up as the Secretary of the N.O. FPCC. His membership card is signed by Alek Hidell. Perfect low-level cover. Except the cover story becomes the TRUE story post-assassination.
Yeah, Oswald adored Castro. So did Guy Bannister. And Kerry Thornley. And David Ferrie, Alan Ochsner, Claw Shaw, and Dutch Murrett.
“Yeah, Oswald adored Castro. So did Guy Bannister. And Kerry Thornley. And David Ferrie, Alan Ochsner, Claw Shaw, and Dutch Murrett.”
Major sarcasm noted. You forgot to add David Atlee Phillips (“Maurice Bishop” seen with Oswald), George DeMohrenschildt, the guy that met Oswald when he came back from Russian Spas Raikin: http://www.hoover.org/library-and-archives/acquisitions/105816
Raikin who had escaped from a communist military labor camp…
Not only did some rogue intelligence officers label Lee a pro Castro nut but so did Marina Oswald. I know there are those who like to discredit any testimony she gave or continues to give, but this pro Castro topic was a sore subject in the household. Lee wanted to hang a portrait of Castro in their home. Marina wouldn’t’ allow it.
This is a huge parade of factoids.
Unfortunately, she never said this in the 60s or 70s. Only in the 1990s to Gus Russo.
Supposedly in Dallas, when Oswald was not in Dallas, but in New Orleans. Further, Veciana has changed his story a few times.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bishop.txt
Nagell was a class A crackpot:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/nagell1.htm
It wasn’t right wing.
Oh, my!
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/judyth.htm
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/minox.htm
Simply shows that Oswald, in his own mind, liked to play spy games.
They would test any Marine who asked.
I’ll let lurkers figure out how reliable all your other talking points are.
John McA – your link on Veciana is outdated and misleading. You know about Veciana’s Nov. 22, 2013 written confirmation to Marie Fonzi that Bishop was in fact Phillips, and that he saw Bishop/Phillips with Oswald in Dallas?
Waiting for you to say “why didn’t Veciana say that to the HSCA?” … well that had something to do with the fact that Veciana was nearly killed in a botched driveby shooting and his life was in danger if he had spilled the beans back then.
Aren’t you aware of the fact that when somebody changes their testimony after decades, that’s not a good reason to embrace the version you find convenient?
It’s a reason to doubt the reliability of the witness.
Of course, Veciana served time in prison for drug dealing in the early 70s. But that couldn’t have anything to do with any attacks on him, could it?
John,
You make my point about “evidence” and the Rules of Evidence.
If there is to be an argument about some aspect of the JFK case, there ought to be ground rules for presenting asserted facts.
One ground rule should be, don’t call anything evidence unless it has been admitted into evidence by a trial court. Evidence is a highly loaded word.
If we don’t have this ground rule, everyone just gets to throw mud balls.
FWIW, I have doubts about the veracity of what Veciana has said. Not because he was convicted on drug charges. That’s all too common among CIA soldiers of fortune and doesn’t go to veracity. But because he says he saw Oswald meet in public with David Atlee Phillips in Dallas. IMO, that never would have happened.
Actually, there were others over the years who said that Phillips used Maurice Bishop as an alias. Ross (or Ron) Crozier, aka Cross, was a CIA officer who said so. He was an early case officer for the DRE, I believe it was. I Think that Joannides replaced him as DRE’s case officer. FRank Terpil is another who made the connection. If you follow Vecian’s demeanor when he was talking to Fonzi over the years, it becomes fairly obvious that Veciana is knows who Phillips is but won’t say. To simply write off Veciana as unreliable because he changed his story is to distort the whole episode.
Fonzi’s and Veciana’s accounts have the ring of truth, the latter’s late confirmation of Bishop = Phillips is merely the icing on the cake.
If anybody in the “research community” is credible, Gaeton Fonzi is. Maybe one can disagree on what all the facts he gathered suggests, but you can’t argue with the man’s research. GRHS!
Aren’t you aware that he may have been in fear of his life!
Actually, no.
Check this out:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/bogus.htm#fonzi
And then there is the fact that he claimed that the Garrison investigation was infiltrated by eight (IIRC) CIA agents. But not only is there no evidence of that, we know from internal CIA documents that the CIA had no such assets.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/cia_garrison.htm
Was your hometown really Kennedy, Alabama?
Dave, mball, and Shane, excellent comments, IMHO.
@John McAdams
I’ll check out the link you provided later. At the moment I’m listening to some old Mae Brussell’s recordings. But, for the moment lets just concede your point. All I’m saying is I have read these people, followed their works and their exploits. Fonzi, Salandria and even DeMorenschildt wrote and spoke extensively about their experiences and I believe them. I’m more than willing to concede that you possess information which contradicts or otherwise impugns something one or more of these men may said or written, however for my part I believe them.
Most of the aforementioned did not know what they were onto, but they knew they were onto something; and they knew when they were getting the runaround and/or the brush off.
In September 1978 General Walker wrote to the HSCA denying that the bullet being reviewed by the committee was the same bullet that had been fired into his home, saying that the bullet “is not the bullet that was fired at me.” Walker’s attorney later noted that Walker had an opportunity to personally examine the bullet and, as a person experienced with firearms, would have been capable of observing the difference between the HSCA bullet and the bullet he examined. Walker considered the bullet used by the HSCA a substitute, based upon his attorney’s reference to “the possibility of substituted evidence.”
http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/W%20Disk/Walker%20Shooting/Item%2005.pdf
As for whether Oswald was “all the while … preparing for the Kennedy hit,” Oswald showed an odd way of preparing, inasmuch as the FBI later (reluctantly) admitted that Oswald delivered a threatening note to the Dallas FBI office, which was destroyed by the FBI after Oswald was murdered. Although the exact content of the destroyed note is unknown, such conduct by Oswald would appear to be be inconsistent with a stealthy plan to ambush JFK. At the very least, the FBI’s failure to investigate the note before 11/22/63 would certainly have been an “embarrassment” to the bureau, but the circumstances involving the note and its destruction raise other questions as well.
Oswald showed many odd ways of preparing for the assassination.
— He didn’t practice with his rifle.
— He didn’t clean his rifle.
— He didn’t align the rifle’s scope.
— He didn’t have a pistol (revolver) in working condition.
— He didn’t know about the motorcade route until about Nov. 19.
— He didn’t give anyone a hint as to his plans.
— His shot at Walker (cough) was really poor and showed bad execution.
— He forgot to say good bye to his kids, whom he really loved.
Umm…
Independent witnesses testified about Oswald practicing with the rifle at a target range and Marina also stated he had been practicing
Marina has stated that he did clean the guns and used a system of pipe cleaners. He certainly new how to clean guns.
The rifle was capable of the shots. A drop could knock a scope out of alignment. Scopes are typically zeroed for certain distances and cross hairs used to adjust while shooting.If you are aware of the scopes setting you can still adjust your aim to compensate.
The revolver was capable of shooting and tests have shown nothing to show it was not the gun Oswald had in his possession.
Motorcade:Oswald did not require much planning since he worked at the TSBD and owned a rifle.
It would make little sense to consciously reveal any plan to assassinate a president. (or any other crime).
The bullet struck a window muton holding the glass pane and was deflected. The muton was not clearly visible in the scope.
I don’t know if he said goodbye to his children or not but it seems irrelevant. He had attempted to reconcile with Marina and was rejected. No one can claim to know his state of mind.
Just visiting this thread now.
About Oswald being seen at the rifle range, doesn’t the story go that he fired at someone else’s target? How’s that for world class shooting?
The scope was damaged. It wasn’t a matter of adjusting the cross hairs. Even the experts found that in test shots, after shims were added (because it couldn’t be sighted as found), that it hit targets 2.5 to 5 inches high and to the right.
In defense of Jeff: Jeff says he does not agree with Capshaw and says further the Walker incident is important.
The Walker incident, imo, did not involve LHO and is important only as way for Capshaw and his fellow travelers to frame Oswald for the murder of JFK.
What garbage!!!! Oswald shooting at Edwin Walker? Prove it!!
And use someone besides Marina Oswald, who know thinks Oswald was innocent today and who in 1963 was a terrified 22 year old with a baby, a toddler, no money and who was a marionette doll for US intelligence in the wake of the JFK assassination. Marina spouted a tremendous amount of lies in the wake of JFK & Oswald’s murders – and note they were murdered – and anything that came out of her mouth simply cannot be trusted in that time period.
As I often say, the murderers of JFK were running the non-investigation into his death and framing Oswald for both the Tippit shooting and the Edwin Walker shooting were a big part of that.
Some lone nutter fantasists have said that either a) the Tippit killing is the Rosetta stone of the JFK assassination or b) the Walker shooting in April, 1963 is the Rosetta Stone of the JFK assassination.
Here are some more likely “Rosetta stones” of the JFK assassination – the prison murder of Sam Smithwick in 1952 after he had written a letter to Coke Stevenson saying he was willing to talk about the voter fraud that got LBJ the 1948 Demo Senate nomination in Texas … and the 1961 murder of Henry Marshall, ordered by Lyndon Johnson and executed by his personal hit man Malcolm Wallace so that Marshall would not bust open the LBJ/Billie Sol Estes kickback racket.
Those are your “Rosetta stones” of the JFK assassination, with RFK’s war on LBJ as the trigger mechanism.
Talk about garbage. The circumstantial evidence proves to reasonable people Oswald shot at Walker. Deal with that rather than your typical speculation and conjecture.
The “pin the Walker murder attempt on Oswald” was completely drummed up *after* the JFK assassination to make Oswald the fall guy for the JFK murder.
It is about as credible as saying Oswald was going to shoot Richard Nixon (who was not in town) but petit Marina somehow kept Oswald trapped in the bathroom, thus preventing another assassination attempt.
And, no, I don’t consider lone nutters reasonable people. Sorry.
EXACTLY! From everything I’ve researched ALL of the Oswald shooting Walker accusations come AFTER 22 November 1963.
What circumstantial evidence? The testimony of Marina? That would never be enough to prove he made the attempt in court. The physical evidence is exculpatory of Oswald if anything.
He may well have made this attempt, but it’s basically speculation because the evidence is exremely weak.
Yes, Oswald, the world-class shooter who assassinated JFK but who couldn’t hit Walker even from less of a distance (than allegedly in Dealey Plaza) with a 4X scope?
Then there’s the discrepancy of a steel-jacketed bullet reported for the Walker crime scene vs. the WC’s copper-jacketed bullet.
Then there’s the eye-witness report of two men leaving nearby right after the shooting.
All of the above covered in this site, albeit a little redundant and disjointed:
http://www.whokilledjfk.net/Walker.htm
If indeed Oswald was involved in any manner, it certainly would bolster his role as a fake defector/communist-sympathizer.
Marina has offered no evidence to support her current “belief” that Oswald is innocent of killing Kennedy other that a “feeling”. She does however still maintain her statements with regards to Lee’s attempt on Walker and his coming home late saying he had shot Walker.
The “Life” magazine featured in this diary has a number of pictures of the person we’re told is Lee Harvey Oswald. I’ve got the magazine and have studied the pictures. One of the pictures is a school room photo of 9th grade LHO seated and turning around to smile at the camera.
Lee has just been in a fight outside (he gets in a lot of fight), and a front upper tooth has been knocked out. He gives a big gap-toothed smile, obviously quite pleased.
That’s a permanent tooth missing.
The LHO buried in Dallas, shot by Jack Ruby, had all of his permanent teeth. You can even see photos of his teeth taken following his exhumation in 1981.
As common sense would write, quod erat demonstratum (Q.E.D.) What’s demonstrated? That the guy Jack Ruby shot is not the 9th grader presented as LHO in “Life” but is instead the “Harvey Oswald” John Armstrong writes about in “Harvey and Lee.” An extraordinarily well-documneted book.
There’s a flaw in Capshaw’s reasoning: He implies that Oswald would have had a motive to kill Kennedy because of CIA/mafia efforts to kill Castro. But of course, the public did not learn of these efforts until many years after the assassination. So Oswald could not have known of them–at least not if he was a lone wolf, unconnected to the CIA and the mafia.
The Orwell comparison is also not apt. Orwell was saying that Hitler was personally charming, even though he stood for an evil ideology (indeed, a similar ideology to the one Orwell almost died fighting in Spain).
But here, Oswald seemed to have no personal or (especially intense) ideological beef with Kennedy. Oswald certainly understood the difference between the likes of Kennedy and the likes of Walker, even though he was (at least as portrayed) far to the left of Kennedy.
Oswald’s motive is a problem for the lone-wolf side. If he was just a glory-seeker, why did he call himself a patsy? That’s not very glorious.
And this: Marina, a professed admirer of JFK, testified to the W.C. she had Lee translate articles about JFK for her (she did not read English).
She’s questioned whether Oswald in translating the articles has anything bad to say about Kennedy. She answers, no, he just translated the articles.
IOW, no disparaging remarks.
This is interesting, that Marina couldn’t read English. Read recently that a neighbour once testified that Marina knocked on her door one night, wanting to use her phone. She said her husbsnd, Lee, had not come home. Marina couldn’t speak English very well so the neighbour asked her if she could read English, and if she could, she would write her words on paper so they could communicate better. Marina said that she could read English. Was surprised to read here that she didn’t read English. Will try to find the article again.
Econ, you accept the “patsy” comment yet ignore his claim that he “…didn’t kill anyone”? There is no doubt that he killed officer Tippit in cold blood in front of several witnesses! He also claimed he was not resisting arrest though he pulled a gun on the police and provoked a scuffle. It is typical for criminals to claim innocence and attempt to shift blame. Oswald was a drifting ideological loser who found himself in a position to kill a president whom he considered an enemy of Castro due to the well known Bay of Pigs fiasco. Perhaps he viewed Kennedy as the leader of a system he believed was imperialist and unjust. He may have naively hoped his actions might help secure his passage to Cuba or the Soviet Union. His three attempts the evening before the assassination to reconcile with Marina were rebuffed which may have further inspired him to act.
I believe there is circumstantial evidence to strongly suggest that the FBI and the maybe some in the CIA could have become aware of his dangerous potential and failed to inform the Secret Service. Hoover was in possession of Oswald’s files which would have suggested Oswald as a potential suspect in the Walker shooting and was in a powerful position to quietly influence events (like a presidential visit to Dallas). He also directly benefited from Kennedy’s death and remained as director of the FBI after LBJ provided him a waiver from mandatory retirement which Kennedy had been unwilling to do.
The facts upon which the Warren Commission principally based its conclusion the Oswald shot at Walker are: (a) testimony of Marina, (b) an undated note for Marina written in Russian allegedly by LHO that does not mention shooting Walker and that was found in some Russian language books by Ruth Paine, and (c) a back yard photo of Walker’s house found among Oswald’s effects.
The only eyewitness to the Walker shooting, a teenaged boy, testified under oath that he saw two men flee the scene of the shooting.
Marina’s W.C. testimony here is highly unpersuasive. She says Oswald told her he buried the rifle in the ground at a remote location and subsequently dug it up. That strains credulity. Oswald owned no cleaning kit for the rifle. It would have been filled with dirt and other debris after being dug up and inoperable.
Capshaw deals in assertions and unsupported conclusions. The name of this site is JFK Facts. Capshaw deserves nothing but ridicule here.
Oswald was the capable and willing killer of Officer Tippet. The text from the note to Marina is in Lee’s hand and extremely incriminating. Walker had come to Oswald’s attention in the and shortly thereafter he obtained the firearms. Mrs. Paine stated Oswald said he had attended a speech by Walker. Perhaps the rifle may have been covered or protected when buried. He is known to have used a brown bag as well as a blanket in other instances when transporting the rifle and he knew how to handle and care for the weapon. Marina has stated Lee spent time cleaning the rifle with a homemade system using pipe cleaners. The photos have been proven to have been taken with Oswald’s camera. Your assumption that the rifle would be unusable is speculation.
It is not certain that LHO killed Officer Tippet.
…and your assumption that anything as woefully inadequate as a “brown paper bag” or even a blanket would be useful when serving as the only form of protection underground for a weapon is laughably ignorant.
It’s clear you have no experience in the handling and/or cleaning of weapons.
A very bad distortion of the testimony of Walter Coleman.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/coleman.txt
The two men were in a church parking lot. They got into a car and drove off “at a normal rate of speed.”
Where in the world did you get “flee?”
There is no evidence at all that they had anything to do with the shooting.
Not exactly, professor. CE 2958, a report of FBI agent Robert Barrett and another agent, summarizing their 6/4/64 and 6/5/64 interviews of then 15 year old Walter Kirk Coleman (a little more than one year after the Walker incident), states that immediately after hearing a loud noise that sounded like a car backfire Coleman saw a bushy-haired white man age 19-20, 5’10”, 130 lbs. “hurrying” to a light colored 1950 Ford, which was running with the headlights on (implying a quick exit from the parking lot). This man got into the Ford, glancing at Coleman as he did so, and then left the parking lot “at a normal rate of speed,” which, if true, could be interpreted as the driver not wishing to raise any more suspicion on the part of his young observer. Coleman told the FBI agents that he then saw a second man, 6’1″, 200 lbs., opening the door of a second vehicle,a black and white 1958 Chevrolet, and placing something onto the rear floorboard. The FBI agents noted in their report that a previous Dallas Police Report, prepared by Officers Tucker and Norvell shortly after the Walker incident, which summarized Coleman’s 1963 statement to them regarding the Walker shooting, contained some inconsistent statements. Coleman had told the Dallas officers shortly after the Walker incident that after the first man got into the 1950 Ford he saw this car “speed down the driveway towards Turtle Creek.” Coleman told the Dallas P.D. in 1963, more than one year before his interview with the FBI, that the second man placed something onto the rear floorboard of the 1958 Chevrolet, got into the car, and then “sped away from the lot.” So, there is an indication that both cars sped away from the lot, and this evidence was elicited from Coleman much closer in time to the Walker incident than Coleman’s later statements in June 1964, as attributed to him by the FBI agents. Coleman’s earlier statement to the Dallas police indicated that both cars sped away. You have frequently argued on this site that an earlier statement of a witness should be given greater weight than a later contradictory statement. Applying that argument here would negate your implication that there was no evidence of these men fleeing the scene. Further, even if Coleman’s later statement were the more accurate recitation of the incident he observed, a reasonable inference of fleeing could also be arrived at from Coleman’s June 1964 statement to the FBI that the first man was “hurrying” to his car, which was already running with the headlights on and no one else in the vehicle. Perhaps that’s where Jonathon got “fleeing” — from a WC exhibit.
The amazing thing that everyone overlooks about the Walker shooting is that whoever pulled the trigger missed a stationary target from 100 feet away with all the time in the world to aim.
Walker (in his deposition to Warren Commission) admits to transatlantic phone call @7:00 a.m. on Sat., 23 November ’63 with a reporter for a German newspaper, while Walker is staying in a motel in Shreveport, La., (how likely is it the reporter located him? my guess is Walker placed the call); from this conversation the reporter deduces the two shootings, walker/kennedy are the work of LHO. Walker also admits he initiated contact with Warren Reynolds, while he was still hospitalized after being shot in the head within two days of testifying he couldn’t be sure it was Oswald he’d seen fleeing the Tippet murder scene; subsequently testified he was certain it was Oswald.
Didn’t Loran Hall mention a meeting with Gen. Walker & Warren Reynolds in April ’63?
Yes, we have to rely on Marina and an undated note that doesn’t mention Walker and ignore/ discount the testimony of the teenaged boy who was there. That is the standard LN program.
The CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Castro were organized during the Eisenhower administration by Allen Dulles’ CIA. The CIA’s working relationship with the Mafia predated the Kennedy administration.
So Allen Dulles shot at Walker?
Allen Dulles served on the Warren Commission without informing his fellow commissioners of the CIA plots to assassinate Castro, which was highly relevant information to investigation of the assassination.
@J. McAdams: “So what? Are you actually of the opinion that anybody who touches anything leaves fingerprints?”
—-
If the prints did not belong to Marina, Lee or Ms. Paine, who did they belong to?
And how did LHO flee the scene Mr. McAdams? Was he on foot with a rifle? Public trans? Or did someone drive him away?
If you have any evidence for you assertion, please present it.
Why start now?
How about the same demand from Capshaw!!!!
I agree with Jeff that the statement that the whole case was faked goes too far based on the evidence.
But, as I understand it, pretty much the only evidence that Oswald fired at Walker are the statements by Marina Oswald. Both sides (conspiracy/anti-conspiracy) try to have things both ways and find her credible on some things and not credible on others. But the fact is, her inconsistent statements over the years make her a not very credible witness (if you are talking evidence for court at least). There is also evidence from Walker himself that the bullet he found at his home the night of the shooting did not actually match the one later trotted out as the bullet that was found(by the HSCA if I recall correctly).
Marina Oswald’s statements also are the main thing that back up the supposed authenticity of the back yard photo that is posted. There is actually some evidence that the pictures were faked.
Uh . . . no.
Oswald left a note to Marina that clearly implied he was doing something that would get him killed or locked up.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=131669
As for Marina’s testimony: it’s important to note that she has never backed off her testimony about how Oswald told her he shot at Walker.
Be serious. The note was undated, unsigned, and never mentioned Walker. It appeared in a book provided by Ruth Paine after the assassination. Paine said Marina used the book “every day”, but somehow the note never came to light until she stopped using it. Neither Oswald or Marina’s fingerprints were on the note. Other fingerprints are on the note but not officially identified.
Nothing Marina Oswald has ever said can be taken at face value. The HSCA staff created a long memo examining the extraordinary litany of ever-changing and self-contradictory testimony from her.
No witnesses ever saw Oswald near Walker’s home. Oswald did not drive, and no witnesses saw anyone on a bus with a rifle shaped package near Walker’s home.
The notion that Oswald shot at Walker was first presented in a right-wing German newspaper days after the Kennedy assassination, based in part on statements attributed to Walker which he denied ever making.
The bullet recovered from Walker’s home was steel-jacketed. It became “copper-jacketed” only as it came to the possession of the FBI months later. Walker himself expressed the firm opinion that the bullet later in evidence was not the one taken from his wall.
The idea that Oswald shot at Walker apparently originated not with a German newspaper but with reporters in Dallas. Curry was asked about the possibility at a news conference on Saturday, and a short article in the Dallas Morning News the same day was headlined “Officials Recall Sniper Shooting At Walker Home” and began: “Police Friday were not overlooking a possibility that President Kennedy’s assassin may have been the mystery sniper who shot at Maj. A. Walker last April…” (DMN, 11/23, p. 15)
One of the photos showing Walker’s house and linked to Oswald’s camera could be dated to a few days before the Walker shooting through construction work going on in the background.
Chief Curry was in a press scrum Saturday morning before Oswald’s first interrogation of that day, which began at 10:30 AM.
Q – Is there any connection yet between this and the firing at Major General Walker?
C – I do not know.
The notion that there might be a connection seems to have been broached by a source close to the DPD, but not part of the official investigation team. Curry has nothing to say about it (WFAA coverage from Saturday features this moment).
The subsequent appearance of the story mirrors in a way the stories publicized by the DRE,
Re the note:
— There were fingerprints on it. None of the fingerprints were Lee’s or Marina’s.
— The note shows up in a Russian language book Ruth Paine delivers to Marina while she is being held at a motel by the Secret Service. Funny that no search of the Paine house turned up the note.
— The note is written in Russian, is un-dated, and does not mention Walker. Only one of three HSCA handwriting experts identify the handwriting on the note as Oswald’s.
— In her Warren Commission testimony, Marina is vague about the note and cannot recall its contents.
— Norman Redlich told the HSCA Marina very well may have lied in her W.C. testimony about finding the note. Redlich in 1964 had sent a lengthy memo to Rankin pointing out the unreliability and many lies of Marina.
The note looks like a plant to me.
So what? Are you actually of the opinion that anybody who touches anything leaves fingerprints?
That’s a misleading statement. One of them didn’t examine the note, and another said he was unfamiliar with Cyrillic and did not want to render an opinion.
None said it wasn’t Oswald’s writing.
Cadigan of the FBI said it was Oswald’s writing.
If it isn’t about Walker, just what was Lee doing that was likely to get him arrested or killed?
You are taking this out of context.
Early on, she refused to give information that would implicate her husband. Over time, she opened up.
Virtually everything she opened up about has hard evidence to support it, including the Backyard photos, the Mexico City trip, and the Walker shooting.
In the 1990s, she was still insisting that Lee show at Walker (to Oprah).
https://web.archive.org/web/20010226191757/http://www.jfkresearch.com/marina/marina.htm
Then there are the photos of Walker’s house, matched to Oswald’s camera to the exclusion of all other cameras.
So Oswald’s note that implied that “he was doing something” is now strong evidence? I guess you’ll now have to revisit a lot of pro-conspiracy evidence you dismiss on your site that is just as strong or stronger if this is the new standard.
Nice example of omitting context.
It was “doing something that would get him killed or locked up.”
Why did you omit that part?
George de Mohrenschildt wrote extensively about the incident in his manuscript “I Am Patsy.” DeM also ties the Walker incident into one of the “backyard photographs.” He recounts Marina sharing the picture with him and on the back Marina wrote, in Russian, ‘Killer of Fascists.”
It reads credible to me, although DeM is steeped in a life time of clandestine activity. But, really you have to believe someone is telling the truth at some point.
Perhaps “faked” is the wrong concept. Walker himself suspected a different culprit. The Dallas police originally identified the slug as a 30.06. If I remember correctly, the slug wasn’t copper jacketed. There was a witness to two people leaving the scene of the crime. McAdams assails the witness testimony, but he’s as selective as any conspiracy theorist.
I’m confused. Was the above article written by Morley, using quotes by Capshaw? Morley, do you also feel that Oswald fired at Walker? I agree with the others here who mention Coleman saying that there were two men seen fleeing the scene, neither of whom matched Oswald’s description. Also, didn’t Walker disagree with the description of the slug that he pulled from his door frame, as opposed to what investigators later said?