I’m focusing the discussion this week on Oswald in New Orleans. I want to answer the question posed in yesterday’s post. Was Oswald a “Psychotic in the marking or target of psychological warfare,”
What is the most relevant or compelling piece of evidence?
Provide links below. Comments without links will not be published.
It is interesting that all of the witness testimonies in Dallas (of people who claimed to see Jack Ruby with L. Oswald) were refuted by the DPD. But, the witness testimonies claiming Ruby and Oswald were seen together in New Orleans were not.
The preponderance of the evidence surrounding the CIA’s subterfuge, and the agency’s refusal to explain any of it, leaves me with only one logical conclusion: the assassination was a CIA plot at the highest levels.
From the historical record, it’s become obvious the CIA was as ruthless but more cunning than the Mafia – only camouflaged in patriotic, “rational” intelligence garb.
They were:
o Experts at political assassination
o Experts at propaganda that managed public opinion
o Experts at keeping secrets
I can easily see the “JFK Five” – Dulles, Angleton, Helms, Harvey and Phillips – deciding they couldn’t have five more years of JFK’s foreign policy and possibly 8 more years of Bobby’s.
What did they really have to worry about in accomplishing this goal?
Hoover would be in their hip pocket – he wouldn’t rock the boat for the Kennedys.
LBJ would want the “dust settled” for his re-election bid ASAP.
The Joint Chiefs wouldn’t care.
Bobby would be too numb, and the plot too politically difficult to investigate, to be a threat.
They had local politicians and a police department from the most right-wing city in America to cut corners as needed.
There’s a lot of evidence, but again, if I was on a jury, these would sway me:
o the CIA appointed an anti-Kennedy “gun nut” as the head of their assassinations program (and the tape of his wife’s hatred against the Kennedys showed the demonizing endemic to the agency’s top officials)
o That CIA ‘friendly’ Ed Butler was in DC playing tapes of Oswald to top govt officials that painted him as pro-Castro (in situations involving other CIA assets) before JFK’s body even reached the capital
o That the JFK Five withheld information on the CIA’s relationship with the DRE = and, incredibly, the agency continues to as an institution to this very day!
The only real challenge I see next is coming up with the right evidence that would convince the majority of the American people, the media and historians. That could very well be the Joannides files.
To Mr. Whitten:
I take umbrage with your above statement questioning whether this site is a limited hangout (for whom?) and that it is a “honey trap” for endless, mindless debate regarding the assassination of JFK. Were this so, your continued comments here would be a waste of your valued time taken to respond most vociferously. Could you post a reason why you think this way, in regards to today’s topical post? I find it an invaluable aid in both informing us and allowing us to post feedback to other’s posting. What I’ve noticed from you is constant badgering and invective toward people you have some imagined grievance. It is your own posts that seem to become a “honey trap” for those unsuspecting, but well intended posters, regardless of their positions or perspectives. We all can not be of one mindset – look what happened as a result of the single minded position taken by the Warren Omission.
JFKfacts is a limited hangout. Isn’t it Mr Morley? A “honey trap” for researchers to be hung up in spinning their wheels and riding carousels of nonsense.
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That’s a curious assessment coming from someone who spends a lot of time on the site. Are you spinning your wheels?
I am wondering where the Warren Omission became divergent regarding Oswald’s personality. Not one person who spoke to Oswald reported that he was anything but normal and respectful, before or after the JFK assassination. The “escaping assassin” had the presence of mind to offer his cab to a woman; then, he takes the next cab. True, Oswald was evasive and deceitful during his questioning by police and other agents; however, we only have their side of the drama and we know the winners get to write the narrative. Just like blaming JFK for lax security on Nov. 22, 1963. Vince Palamara put the lie to that false propaganda; and, Homicide/Robbery Chief Will Fritz was impressed with Oswald’s calm demeanor given the enormity of the charges against him (Capital murder charges in Texas ’63 = death penalty). In the end, the winner’s present Oswald exactly as they want him to appear – a crazed communist menace who killed the POTUS because he was an asocial loner and misfit failure in life. This is the intrinsic problem with “reading paper records” without talking with the observed subject. The Oswald we are presented is a created fictional character of the writer(s) of the Warren Omission. Report
I remember reading in one of Prof Michael Kurtz’s books his account of how he saw Oswald in the company of Guy Bannister on two occasions in New Orleans in 1963 or 62. I don’t have the book to hand at the moment.
On one of the two occasions Bannister was talking to college student and attacking the civil rights movement. This seems to me to be important first hand testimony from a respectable source.
Kurtz’s announces that he knew Bannister and Bannister waved to Kurtz when Bannister was with Oswald as well as known local Oswald-Ferrie sightings in New Orleans in his introduction to his 2nd edition pg. 38-40. Kurtz, as a historian, left his personal knowledge of Oswald-Bannister out of the first edition.
For me, there’s so much circumstantial evidence, it’s difficult to choose just one.
But if I was on a jury for this case, this WC testimony by William Stuckey regarding his beer with Oswald after the radio debate might’ve convinced me that Oswald was no psychopath and he wasn’t devastated by the night’s events – he was “relieved.” He also said he was a “loyal American.” Supposedly, at this point his life was ruined, according to the Posners of the world.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/stuckey.htm
Mr. STUCKEY. He was relaxed, he was friendly. He seemed to be relieved it was all over. My impression was he was relieved that he did not have to hide the bit about the Russian residence any more, and that it had been a strain doing so, because his manner was completely different. There wasn’t the stiffness or the guarded words and guarded replies. He seemed fairly open, and I have no reason to believe that everything he told me that night was not true. I think it was true.
Mr. JENNER. Was there any difference in his attitude or demeanor with respect to personal self-confidence, for example, in that Saturday interview at his home and your interview with him prior to the Monday night broadcast, taking that as a base, and comparing it with his attitude in Comeaux’s Bar after you had revealed the fact that he had been in Russia and had attempted to defect?
Mr. STUCKEY. Well, there wasn’t any change. He was pretty consistent in his behavior from the very first time I met him until Comeaux’s Bar, so this was the only notable change I observed. The manner was always guarded, even from the very first when he came out on his porch on August 17 in his dungarees, his manner was guarded.
Mr. JENNER. Was it guarded in Comeaux’s?
Mr. STUCKEY. No; it was not.
Mr. JENNER. This was much more relaxed?
Mr. STUCKEY. Considerably.
Sounds to me like a spook who was under duress to complete his mission, and did, successfully.
Most everyone here has no experience in the mental health field. Most answers to that question would be pure speculation. We have enough of that at this point. Within a few comments, this thread will deteriorate to the typical, my link is better than your link.
No speculative comments will be published. Do you have a non-speculative comment? If so, it will be published.
I am a board-certified licensed psychiatrist with 20+ years of experience including forensic evaluations and some expert testimony and numerous peer reviewed publications in the field of schizophrenia. First it’s unethical to diagnose without performing an evaluation. Second, most murders are not committed by psychotic people, and most people with psychosis are not killers. You do see many high profile murders by psychotic people, that is very true. There are other diagnoses such as personality disorders that may be violent but not psychotic. A psychological autopsy can be performed but you need a lot of information to do that. The word “psychosis” means something very different from sociopath, and it would be difficult to arrive at any diagnostic impression without first-hand or documented information.
Thank you, Jim, for posting your informed comment. Over the years we have been ‘presented’ with contrived reasons both pro and con, as to Oswald’s alleged motive for allegedly shooting JFK and Officer Tippit. Alas, we can ascribe any motive we need to make our “theories, ” as all the players from that Dallas drama have since died. We gain nothing by playing armchair pop-psychologist. I appreciate your post because I hold a Masters in [Addiction] Counseling and a Masters in Psychology/Applied Behavior Analysis. Even the Warren Omission “motive” is bizarre, given the public film and voice records of Oswald, both before and after the JFK assassination. Oswald knew he was set-up as the fall guy for the JFK assassination and told the world of this fact. Sadly, he never lived to prove what he said. Conversely, the winners in the tragedy wrote his narrative and branded him a “lone nut assassin” although “they” never proved their case against him in court. This one fact makes Oswald legally innocent, despite claims to the contrary.
I think there a compelling body of evidence has been given by Melanson thirty years ago in “Leftist” Lee At Work: The Great Debate and the Paper Chase,” The Third Decade, Vol. 2, No. 5, July 1986, pp. 1-6.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=48731&relPageId=1&search=Melanson