by DALE K. MYERS
Lee Harvey Oswald never had his day in court, as we all know. But, it’s a historic fact that the crimes committed on November 22, 1963, lie at his feet alone.
Fifty-two years of argument about the evidence against him hasn’t moved the ball one inch, and more than five decades of digging by an army of investigators—both private and official (an unprecedented effort by any standard) —has failed to uncover one believable scrap of undeniable evidence that anyone else committed either crime that day or that others were involved.
Let that sink in for a moment. Fifty-two long years, and still nothing to exonerate Oswald or uncover the so-called “true conspirators.” Is there any other case in America (or the world for that matter) that comes remotely close to that level of scrutiny?
Yet, over the past year, and more importantly the past few months, we’ve been treated to headlines that would make anyone climbing out of their DeLorean time machine question whether Oswald was involved at all or whether anyone claiming to be a journalist has ever been to library, read a newspaper, or god-forbid, conducted a Google search.
Cover-up in Mexico City
Author Philip Shenon told Politico that David Slawson, a retired University of Southern California law professor who, 51 years ago, was the Warren Commission’s chief investigator searching for evidence that might have pointed to a foreign conspiracy in JFK’s murder, told him that he (Slawson) is now convinced the commission was the victim of a “massive cover-up” by the CIA and other agencies to hide evidence that might have identified people in Mexico City who knew and encouraged Oswald to carry out his threat when he returned to the United States.
While Shenon’s interview with Slawson was new, the allegation is as old as the Warren Report itself. Read it. Among others, Commission attorney Burt Griffin has said for decades that the Commission was stonewalled by the CIA.
The CIA Killed Kennedy
In September, The Washington Times gushed (and multiple news agencies regurgitated headlines stating) that the CIA told President Johnson three days after the assassination that Oswald had visited the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico City in late September, 1963. That information too was published in the Warren Report over fifty years ago.
In October, Philip Shenon was back with the ultimate Politico headline grabber: “Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-up.” According to Shenon,
a once-secret report
written in 2013 by the CIA’s top in-house historian and quietly declassified in 2014, acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that former CIA Director John McCone and other senior CIA officials were “complicit” in keeping “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission.
Shenon’s “once-secret report” turns out to be a chapter from CIA Chief Historian David Robarge’s book “John McCone as Director of Central Intelligence, 1961-1965,” published by the Center for Study of Intelligence in 2005, and reprinted in the September, 2013, issue of Studies in Intelligence (Vol.57, No.13) —available since 2014 from George Washington University.
Shenon reports that McCone was at the heart of a “benign cover-up” at the spy agency, withholding information from the Warren Commission that the CIA was in cahoots with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro. Without this information, Shenon tells us, the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.
Oooooo. None of this “secret” information is new of course. The CIA-Mafia plots were headlines back in 1975 (that’s forty-years ago for those of you keeping track). And McCone wasn’t the only one who knew about the CIA-Mafia plots back then.
U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy was made aware of previous CIA-Mafia efforts in May of 1961 and by all accounts led the 1961-63 U.S.-based anti-Castro efforts to overthrow Castro (including assassination) with the tacit approval of his brother, the president.
Instead of straight facts, the world press published outrageous tabloid-style headlines like: “Uncovered Report: CIA Admit That They Killed JFK,” “Declassified CIA report concluded director led ‘cover up’ of Kennedy assassination investigation,” and “CIA: Yes, We Covered Up the JFK Killing.”
The mastermind
It didn’t take long for the true mastermind of the “JFK plot” to be revealed in October of this year courtesy of author David Talbot and his new book, “The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government,” in which Talbot claimed that former CIA Director Allen Dulles orchestrated the Kennedy murder from a secret CIA facility in Virginia, where he remained for the weekend – during which time the “suspect,” Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed, and a vast machinery began to create the “lone gunman” myth that has dominated our history books to the present.
What was Kennedy’s crime for which a high profile, daylight murder was the only option? Answer: Kennedy allegedly forced Dulles to resign his CIA post in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster. (The reality though is that Kennedy didn’t want his resignation, and in fact initially resisted it, but after political pressure, Kennedy reluctantly accepted Dulles’ resignation, and even later defended their relationship.)
Never mind that Dulles was a longtime friend of the Kennedy family (and remained so even after his resignation), or that JFK surprised Dulles with a National Security Medal—the highest honor—after Dulles’ resignation, or that JFK wrote a heartfelt letter to Dulles the day after the presentation in which he penned, “I am sure you know you carry with you the admiration and affection of all of us who have served with you. I am glad to be counted among the seven Presidents in whose administrations you have worked, and I am glad that we shall continue to have your help and counsel…”
Even Robert Kennedy acknowledged that his brother liked Dulles, telling historian Arthur Schlesinger, “He [JFK] liked him [Dulles]—thought he was a real gentlemen, handled himself well. There were obviously so many mistakes made at the time of the Bay of Pigs that it wasn’t appropriate that he should stay on. And he always took the blame. He was a real gentleman. JFK thought very highly of him.”
Letters between the Kennedys and Dulles, available in the Dulles collection at Princeton University and at the JFK Library, give overwhelming evidence of their close friendship—a friendship that endured until the end of their lives. And has anyone bothered to query Dulles’s children about this alleged hatred between their father and the man he used to join on vacations in Palm Beach?
As I pointed out in Drums of Conspiracy, critics are always quick to pounce on JFK’s reported comment that he threatened to “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” (The exact person this was reportedly said to has never been determined. The New York Times, which reported the alleged quote in 1966, only said that Kennedy made the statement “to one of the highest officials of his administration.”) as a motive for his murder, but can they show one – just one – quote from either JFK or Allen Dulles in which they expressed any animosity toward one another? No, they can’t.
Former CIA Director William Colby later wrote, “The fact of the matter is that the CIA could not have had a better friend in a President than John F. Kennedy. He understood the Agency and used it effectively, exploiting its intellectual abilities to help him analyze a complex world, and its paramilitary and covert political talents to react to it in a low key way.” [Colby, William, and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978, p.221]
How good a friend was JFK to the CIA? A 1996 CIA study that was never intended for public consumption, unearthed by author Gus Russo, revealed that the CIA’s relationship with Kennedy was not only a distinct improvement over former President Eisenhower’s relationship with the agency, “but would rarely be matched in future administrations.” [John L. Helgerson, Getting to Know the President, CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952–1992, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, May 22, 1996, p.26, http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/briefing/cia-6.htm]
So much for Kennedy’s hatred of the CIA – and hence their supposed motive for murdering him. Other documents obtained by the National Security Archive point out that, far from splintering the CIA, JFK actually doubled its budget.
Dulles held many Kennedy secrets, including the brothers’ involvement in the plots to kill Castro, a fact that no doubt led to Robert Kennedy’s recommendation to Lyndon Johnson that Dulles be assigned to the Warren Commission. It guaranteed that the Kennedy interests were looked after. Robert Kennedy later told William Attwood that a heavy lid must be kept on the investigation “for reasons of national security.”
All of this is laid bare in two excellent treatises by Gus Russo on the Kennedy’s, Castro, and events surrounding the JFK assassination: “Live By the Sword” (1998) and “Brothers in Arms” (2008) with Stephen Molton.
But, oh no. Instead of facts, we get still more globe-circling headlines like: “Did CIA Director Allen Dulles Order the Hit on JFK?”, and my personal favorite, “CIA Boss Planned JFK Assassination!”
Science proves what we already knew
Amid all the rhetoric about the CIA’s guilt in the JFK plot, we get news that there is a new scientific breakthrough proving the authenticity of the so-called “backyard photographs” —the images showing Oswald brandishing the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination and what appears to be the revolver used to kill J.D. Tippit.
Never mind that Oswald’s wife, Marina testified in 1964 (over fifty years ago) that she took the photos at Oswald’s request, or that the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations Photographic Panel determined with absolute certainty that the images were authentic and taken with Oswald’s reflex camera just as Marina testified.
Apparently in today’s world of journalism there is no time for basic research.
Can it get any crazier? I’m afraid so.
Happy birthday
In New Orleans in October, conspiracy advocates gathered around a cake with candles and sang “Happy Birthday” to their hero, 76-year-old Lee Oswald – the man who admitted his attempt to murder General Edwin A. Walker and who history has deemed was responsible for the murders of John F. Kennedy and J.D. Tippit.
He was also the man who pulled a trigger two inches from the head of Officer Nick McDonald (while “not resisting arrest”), wanted to murder Richard Nixon, and beat his wife, according to numerous sources in Russia, New Orleans, and Ft. Worth.
Oh, and what about Governor John Connally, who died thirty years later from “a progressive scarring of the lungs,” likely initiated by the horrific gunshot wounds caused by guess who? The birthday boy was nothing less than a wannabe serial killer.
The Holy Grail
And then, there is the Holy Grail among conspiracy devotees: the pending October 2017 release of documents withheld from public scrutiny by the National Archives, mandated by the 1992 JFK Records Act (although the government agencies that created the documents can still appeal directly to the president to keep them hidden).
Despite the fact that sources at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) who have seen the documents say there is no smoking gun, and that the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) who also reviewed the documents in the 1990s and reiterated that there is no smoking gun, conspiracy advocates cling to the belief that proof of Oswald’s innocence lies within.
Ergo, acclaimed career U.S. archivists and esteemed Federal Judge John Tunheim must be liars, and very likely part of the conspiracy. Or they just aren’t as smart as the conspiracy theorists—an arrogance that has permeated that movement since its inception.
It should be obvious that those who blew out Lee’s birthday candles have more brainpower than the man [Tunheim] who restructured the Kosovo judiciary and re-wrote that country’s constitution. Additionally, according to a bio of Tunheim:
What do you think will happen when the conspirati discover that the documents were withheld because they contained information that was considered “security classified” or to protect personal privacy, tax and grand jury information, or “because information in the document reveals the identity of an unclassified confidential source,” as NARA officials who have seen the documents have told us?
More importantly, what do you think will happen when some documents are petitioned to be withheld indefinitely because they reveal living sources or ongoing intelligence methods?
Let me guess: Conspiracy fans will cry foul and continue to claim what they’ve always claimed in spite of evidence to the contrary—that the cover-up continues.
Year after year, we’re treated to a litany of unsubstantiated and in many cases irrational “reasons” why we’re supposed to ignore the fact that fifty-two years ago a disgruntled sociopath left his rifle behind on the sixth floor of his workplace along with three spent cartridges, fled the scene, armed himself with his own 38-caliber revolver, then used it to murder a police officer who stopped to question him, and finally pulled the same pistol minutes later in a darkened theater and attempted to shoot arresting officers as they closed in.
I guess I’ll never understand why it’s so hard for some people to accept reality.
The passing parade
Brushing all the nonsense aside, the real news this year—and every year—is the continuing parade of individuals who have left this world taking with them their knowledge of and passion for the assassination story:
I was proud to know them, to be considered a member of their family, and grateful that they trusted me to include their story in the 2013 edition of “With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit.”
Sweet dreams, Jack and Linda—and to all who have fought hard to understand the past so that we may secure our future. [END]
Shenon’s “once-secret report” turns out to be a chapter from CIA Chief Historian David Robarge’s book “John McCone as Director of Central Intelligence, 1961-1965,” published by the Center for Study of Intelligence in 2005, and reprinted in the September, 2013, issue of Studies in Intelligence (Vol.57, No.13) —available since 2014 from George Washington University.
Shenon reports that McCone was at the heart of a “benign cover-up” at the spy agency, withholding information from the Warren Commission that the CIA was in cahoots with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro. Without this information, Shenon tells us, the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.
Oooooo. None of this “secret” information is new of course. The CIA-Mafia plots were headlines back in 1975 (that’s forty-years ago for those of you keeping track). And McCone wasn’t the only one who knew about the CIA-Mafia plots back then.
U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy was made aware of previous CIA-Mafia efforts in May of 1961 and by all accounts led the 1961-63 U.S.-based anti-Castro efforts to overthrow Castro (including assassination) with the tacit approval of his brother, the president.
Instead of straight facts, the world press published outrageous tabloid-style headlines like: “Uncovered Report: CIA Admit That They Killed JFK,” “Declassified CIA report concluded director led ‘cover up’ of Kennedy assassination investigation,” and “CIA: Yes, We Covered Up the JFK Killing.”
The mastermind
It didn’t take long for the true mastermind of the “JFK plot” to be revealed in October of this year courtesy of author David Talbot and his new book, “The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government,” in which Talbot claimed that former CIA Director Allen Dulles orchestrated the Kennedy murder from a secret CIA facility in Virginia, where he remained for the weekend – during which time the “suspect,” Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed, and a vast machinery began to create the “lone gunman” myth that has dominated our history books to the present.
What was Kennedy’s crime for which a high profile, daylight murder was the only option? Answer: Kennedy allegedly forced Dulles to resign his CIA post in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster. (The reality though is that Kennedy didn’t want his resignation, and in fact initially resisted it, but after political pressure, Kennedy reluctantly accepted Dulles’ resignation, and even later defended their relationship.)
Never mind that Dulles was a longtime friend of the Kennedy family (and remained so even after his resignation), or that JFK surprised Dulles with a National Security Medal—the highest honor—after Dulles’ resignation, or that JFK wrote a heartfelt letter to Dulles the day after the presentation in which he penned, “I am sure you know you carry with you the admiration and affection of all of us who have served with you. I am glad to be counted among the seven Presidents in whose administrations you have worked, and I am glad that we shall continue to have your help and counsel…”
Even Robert Kennedy acknowledged that his brother liked Dulles, telling historian Arthur Schlesinger, “He [JFK] liked him [Dulles]—thought he was a real gentlemen, handled himself well. There were obviously so many mistakes made at the time of the Bay of Pigs that it wasn’t appropriate that he should stay on. And he always took the blame. He was a real gentleman. JFK thought very highly of him.”
Letters between the Kennedys and Dulles, available in the Dulles collection at Princeton University and at the JFK Library, give overwhelming evidence of their close friendship—a friendship that endured until the end of their lives. And has anyone bothered to query Dulles’s children about this alleged hatred between their father and the man he used to join on vacations in Palm Beach?
As I pointed out in Drums of Conspiracy, critics are always quick to pounce on JFK’s reported comment that he threatened to “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” (The exact person this was reportedly said to has never been determined. The New York Times, which reported the alleged quote in 1966, only said that Kennedy made the statement “to one of the highest officials of his administration.”) as a motive for his murder, but can they show one – just one – quote from either JFK or Allen Dulles in which they expressed any animosity toward one another? No, they can’t.
Former CIA Director William Colby later wrote, “The fact of the matter is that the CIA could not have had a better friend in a President than John F. Kennedy. He understood the Agency and used it effectively, exploiting its intellectual abilities to help him analyze a complex world, and its paramilitary and covert political talents to react to it in a low key way.” [Colby, William, and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978, p.221]
How good a friend was JFK to the CIA? A 1996 CIA study that was never intended for public consumption, unearthed by author Gus Russo, revealed that the CIA’s relationship with Kennedy was not only a distinct improvement over former President Eisenhower’s relationship with the agency, “but would rarely be matched in future administrations.” [John L. Helgerson, Getting to Know the President, CIA Briefings of Presidential Candidates, 1952–1992, CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, May 22, 1996, p.26, http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/briefing/cia-6.htm]
So much for Kennedy’s hatred of the CIA – and hence their supposed motive for murdering him. Other documents obtained by the National Security Archive point out that, far from splintering the CIA, JFK actually doubled its budget.
Dulles held many Kennedy secrets, including the brothers’ involvement in the plots to kill Castro, a fact that no doubt led to Robert Kennedy’s recommendation to Lyndon Johnson that Dulles be assigned to the Warren Commission. It guaranteed that the Kennedy interests were looked after. Robert Kennedy later told William Attwood that a heavy lid must be kept on the investigation “for reasons of national security.”
All of this is laid bare in two excellent treatises by Gus Russo on the Kennedy’s, Castro, and events surrounding the JFK assassination: “Live By the Sword” (1998) and “Brothers in Arms” (2008) with Stephen Molton.
But, oh no. Instead of facts, we get still more globe-circling headlines like: “Did CIA Director Allen Dulles Order the Hit on JFK?”, and my personal favorite, “CIA Boss Planned JFK Assassination!”
Science proves what we already knew
Amid all the rhetoric about the CIA’s guilt in the JFK plot, we get news that there is a new scientific breakthrough proving the authenticity of the so-called “backyard photographs” —the images showing Oswald brandishing the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination and what appears to be the revolver used to kill J.D. Tippit.
Never mind that Oswald’s wife, Marina testified in 1964 (over fifty years ago) that she took the photos at Oswald’s request, or that the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations Photographic Panel determined with absolute certainty that the images were authentic and taken with Oswald’s reflex camera just as Marina testified.
Apparently in today’s world of journalism there is no time for basic research.
Can it get any crazier? I’m afraid so.
Happy birthday
In New Orleans in October, conspiracy advocates gathered around a cake with candles and sang “Happy Birthday” to their hero, 76-year-old Lee Oswald – the man who admitted his attempt to murder General Edwin A. Walker and who history has deemed was responsible for the murders of John F. Kennedy and J.D. Tippit.
He was also the man who pulled a trigger two inches from the head of Officer Nick McDonald (while “not resisting arrest”), wanted to murder Richard Nixon, and beat his wife, according to numerous sources in Russia, New Orleans, and Ft. Worth.
Oh, and what about Governor John Connally, who died thirty years later from “a progressive scarring of the lungs,” likely initiated by the horrific gunshot wounds caused by guess who? The birthday boy was nothing less than a wannabe serial killer.
The Holy Grail
And then, there is the Holy Grail among conspiracy devotees: the pending October 2017 release of documents withheld from public scrutiny by the National Archives, mandated by the 1992 JFK Records Act (although the government agencies that created the documents can still appeal directly to the president to keep them hidden).
Despite the fact that sources at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) who have seen the documents say there is no smoking gun, and that the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) who also reviewed the documents in the 1990s and reiterated that there is no smoking gun, conspiracy advocates cling to the belief that proof of Oswald’s innocence lies within.
Ergo, acclaimed career U.S. archivists and esteemed Federal Judge John Tunheim must be liars, and very likely part of the conspiracy. Or they just aren’t as smart as the conspiracy theorists—an arrogance that has permeated that movement since its inception.
It should be obvious that those who blew out Lee’s birthday candles have more brainpower than the man [Tunheim] who restructured the Kosovo judiciary and re-wrote that country’s constitution. Additionally, according to a bio of Tunheim:
“His international work also includes extensive efforts in Uzbekistan in recent years and the development of a good relationship with leaders. His five trips to Uzbekistan have helped the country implement important changes in pretrial criminal procedures intended to significantly improve the human rights record in Uzbekistan. He is currently involved in a major effort to train all criminal court judges in the Republic of Georgia to implement an adversary system and jury trials for criminal cases. He lectures frequently on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and has supervised elections in Kosovo and Macedonia. Judge Tunheim has worked on rule of law development projects, not only in Kosovo, Uzbekistan and Georgia, but also in Russia, Montenegro, Jordan, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Lithuania. He has frequently hosted foreign judges in the United States, and has twice taught intellectual property law to judges from the Balkan countries. He also helped develop an extensive course on judicial ethics to be taught at the ABA/CEELI Institute in Prague.”But he’s just not smart enough to catch that document that says the CIA murdered JFK. Only the internet trolls possess that ability.
What do you think will happen when the conspirati discover that the documents were withheld because they contained information that was considered “security classified” or to protect personal privacy, tax and grand jury information, or “because information in the document reveals the identity of an unclassified confidential source,” as NARA officials who have seen the documents have told us?
More importantly, what do you think will happen when some documents are petitioned to be withheld indefinitely because they reveal living sources or ongoing intelligence methods?
Let me guess: Conspiracy fans will cry foul and continue to claim what they’ve always claimed in spite of evidence to the contrary—that the cover-up continues.
Year after year, we’re treated to a litany of unsubstantiated and in many cases irrational “reasons” why we’re supposed to ignore the fact that fifty-two years ago a disgruntled sociopath left his rifle behind on the sixth floor of his workplace along with three spent cartridges, fled the scene, armed himself with his own 38-caliber revolver, then used it to murder a police officer who stopped to question him, and finally pulled the same pistol minutes later in a darkened theater and attempted to shoot arresting officers as they closed in.
I guess I’ll never understand why it’s so hard for some people to accept reality.
The passing parade
Brushing all the nonsense aside, the real news this year—and every year—is the continuing parade of individuals who have left this world taking with them their knowledge of and passion for the assassination story:
- C. Ray Hall (Dallas FBI agent, who died at 96 in February)
- Clyde A. Haygood (Dallas police motorcade cyclist, died at 83 in March)
- William F. “Bill” Alexander (Dallas County assistant DA in 1963, died at 95 in April)
- Bill Slater (who interviewed Oswald in New Orleans in August, 1963, for WDSU, died at 87 in April)
- Bert Shipp (legendary Dallas broadcaster, died at 85 in April)
- Bobby Joe Dale (Dallas police motorcade cyclist, died at 82 in April)
- James C. Wright, Jr. (Texas Congressman who rode in motorcade, died at 92 in May)
- H.B. McLain (Dallas police motorcade cyclist, died at 87 in June)
- Vincent T. Bugliosi (prosecutor and author, died at 80 in June)
- Gary Mack (Sixth Floor Museum curator and longtime researcher, who died at 68 in July)
- Richard S. Schweiker (U.S. Senator, who died at 89 in July)
- Louis Stokes (HSCA chairman, who died at 90 in August)
- Dr. James “Red” Duke (physician who treated Governor Connally’s wounds, died at 86 in August)
- Kent Biffle (Dallas Morning News reporter, who died at 82 in August)
I was proud to know them, to be considered a member of their family, and grateful that they trusted me to include their story in the 2013 edition of “With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit.”
Sweet dreams, Jack and Linda—and to all who have fought hard to understand the past so that we may secure our future. [END]
Excellent article. Thanks, Dale
ReplyDeleteMark Wellhausen
Harrison Township, Michigan
much of the case against Oswald involves inadmissible or flawed evidence. Indeed, the majority of mock trials that have been held have resulted in acquittals or hung juries. A new organization, CAPA, has announced we will be staging mock trials over the next year leading to a formal petition for expungement of his arrest.
ReplyDeleteExcellent article Dale.
ReplyDeleteAnother well written piece, many thanks for taking the time, Dale.
ReplyDeleteAs always, lots of good points made but the one which I found the most depressing was that about the 'Birthday party for Oswald'. This is profoundly worrying. It would seem that there are a disturbing number of people in the world who regard the "wannabe serial killer" [nice description, by the way] as a genuine hero.
The number of 'usernames' that I encounter on the Amazon pages alone which feature Oswald's name, alias or photograph is staggering. I've lost count of how man 'A. J. Hidels' I've seen.
I once engaged in 'comments' with a writer who insisted that his name really was A. J. Hidel. He claimed to have been born in the UK and tried to dissuade me from checking the fact. I did check it. No Hidels of any kind had ever been born in the UK. The lunatic then changed his story and declared that he hadn't been born in the UK after all. His book review and subsequent comments disappeared very soon after.
Why do these loons do it?
What next? A spate of Ted Bundys?
I suppose with 'literature' such as 'Prayer Man' feeding the paranoid appetite, we may be in for another fifty years of contrarian gibberish. I'm reading the nonsense right now. If you plan to get a copy, Dale, I strongly suggest that you brush-up on your deep-breathing and relaxation techniques before turning any pages. A bottle of wine may help, too. I'm only a little way into the book and I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
Keep up the good work, Dale. There are folks who enjoy what you write and benefit from it. I'm one of them.
Finally. A previous comment spoke of 'expungement of his [Oswald's] arrest. I'd be very grateful if you or he could explain what that is, please. Such a thing doesn't exist in UK law and I'm not convinced that it exists in US law. Any info that you can give will be gratefully received.
Best as always
Barry Ryder
London
The "Passing Parade" conclusion is particular poignant and indeed is the true story. Condolences on the passing of your personal friends.
ReplyDeleteA previous comment spoke of 'expungement of his [Oswald's] arrest. I'd be very grateful if you or he could explain what that is, please. Such a thing doesn't exist in UK law and I'm not convinced that it exists in US law.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what the poster meant but US state boards of paroles and pardons CAN issue pardons for deceased individuals charged with crimes. For example, the horrible case of Leo Frank, who was falsely charged with murdering a young woman and later lynched by a mob in 1915, was given a pardon in 1986. There are other examples, e.g. Scottsboro Boys et cetera.
I'll guess that the Oswald supporters want some sort of official posthumous pardon for Oswald issued by Texas or local officials.
Just the type of guy the CIA would recruit: a sociopathic communist. Phillip Sheenan was on Coast to Coast the other night. The people calling in with bizarre theories were driving him crazy. I really thought he was going to just leave the show.
ReplyDeleteAfter battling elements of the CT community for a few years, I finally left them to their breathless fantasies. For me the "non-smoking conspiratorial gun" is not simply the dearth of supporting evidence for any one conspiracy theory individually. It is that after 52-years, virtually none of them have merged into consensus. As Dale Myers has correctly observed, the assassination only happened one way. The sad legacy of CTs is NOT their tireless flailing at the proponents of Oswald's obvious guilt. It is their inability to factually reconcile the wildly divergent theories that continue to flourish among themselves.
ReplyDeleteJust the type of guy the CIA would recruit: a sociopathic communist.
ReplyDeleteTrue but the conspiracy crowd argues that it - i.e., his political beliefs, was his "legend" or cover. He was pretending to hold radical left beliefs. A Herbert Philbrick type case. But for who?
The evidence for me, e.g., the accounts by Palmer McBride and William Wulf who knew Oswald as a teenager, is that at the early age of 15 and 16 he was attracted to Marxism however crudely understood it at that time. So, why was he pretending to be a Marxist at 16? For whom? The CIA recruited him at 16?
For me, it makes not a lick of sense that the CIA would use one of their alleged agents or operatives to frame. Why use a man that, it's claimed, worked for them? With a paper trail? Why not frame someone with NO connections to you and not someone that had a relationship with you? Using someone with a connection to you runs the risk of discovery. Frame an private citizen/civilian not a former or current operative.
Sure, the government does stupid things? But this stupid?
Watch using all that dangerous logic and reason Scott Galbraith! LOL!
ReplyDeletewhat a pompous ass tone this article takes. IF you are so sure Oswald is guilty then please explain how he pulled it off with no power traces on his face, no fingerprints on the weapon, the damaged scope; the time frame with which he had to have pulled it off not to mention the witnesses on the stairs at the time of the assassination. Shall I continue ? IN this land of innocent until proven guilty we MUST deem OSWALD INNOCENT based on that fact alone. If you are talking CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence then please BE CLEAR and say so and remember that hearsay "evidence" is in admissible in a court of law. To indict Oswald is to IGNORE the contrary facts of the case and the eyewitnesses who blow holes in the "official story." Furthermore assuming that someone entertained theories of socialism or communism does NOT automatically brand them a murderer or assassin. How convenient Meyers quotes Marina Oswald back then when she was under scrutiny by the FBI and others but her retractions now go unheard. She also said Lee Oswald admired and loved Kennedy, so that is somehow lost in the labels and attacks against conspiracy theorists. Any THINKING person that objectively examines the FACTS about Lee Oswald's life, connections, proclivities, and movements especially leading up to and on Nov 22, 1963 will come to the same conclusion as to the IMPOSSIBILITY of such a dastardly deed being done in the alleged time frame with a dubious weapon (a Mauser or Mannlicher-both reported to be found in TSBD-which is it?) CANNOT sanely come to the conclusion that Oswald is guilty. There must be some cryptic reason to continue to embrace and to hold onto such government pablum. I would love to know why.
ReplyDelete"Fifty-two years of argument about the evidence against him hasn’t moved the ball one inch, and more than five decades of digging by an army of investigators—both private and official (an unprecedented effort by any standard) —has failed to uncover one believable scrap of undeniable evidence that anyone else committed either crime that day or that others were involved."
ReplyDeleteNothing could be further from the truth, and only a paid hack would write such a thing in my opinion. From the mauser to Judyth Vary Baker, there is a mountain of evidence to exonerate Lee Harvey Oswald over the last 52 years. Lee was a hero, a loyal marine until the very end. Semper fi.
Brian Mumford contends that, "Lee was a hero, a loyal marine until the very end". Oswald would have been incensed at such a suggestion.
ReplyDeleteWriting to his brother, Robert, on 26th November, 1959, the 'loyal' Oswald declared, "..I and my fellow workers and communists's [sic] would like to see the present capitalist government of the U. S. overthrown [...] Ask me and I will tell you I fight form communism [...]America is a dieing [sic] country, I do not wish to be part of it, nor do I ever again wish to be used as a tool in its military aggressions [...] In the event of war I would kill any American [the word 'any' is underlined in the original] who put a uniform on in defense of the American government - any American [...] That in my own mind I have no attachment's [sic] of any kind to the U. S."
Mumford isn't arguing with the WC, Church, Rockefeller or HSCA investigations; he's arguing with Oswald!
Speaking of arguing with Oswald, Dale, I have now finished reading 'Prayer Man' by Stan Dane. I've reviewed it on the amazon, UK website. He's somebody else who has difficulty understanding what Oswald did and didn't actually say.
Barry Ryder
London
Oswald's singularly bizarre background and cartoonish radical political activity argues to me he would have been the WORST possible type of person to set up as a patsy by astute conspirators. As history has shown, the attention and suspicion began the moment of his arrest and has not abated for 52 years. The most logical patsy for a Dallas setup would have been what everyone expected immediately after the murder - either a local anti-Kennedy far-right winger (such as James Earl Ray), or a truly mentally ill person (such as John Hinckley Jr.), and there were plenty of these to choose from in Texas in 1963.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me that providing an emotionally satisfying perpetrator would be job one for the conspirators, to deflect suspicion. To channel the late Vincent Bugliosi, basing a successful conspiracy around Oswald would be like trying to build a permanent house on an active volcano.
Barry, Oswald was playing a part. He was deep undercover. His mother maintained that he was working in intelligence, and Judyth Vary Baker also gives testimony to this. Read her book, Me & Lee.
ReplyDeleteWhat hath Oliver wrought ?
ReplyDeleteBrian,
ReplyDeleteOswald's politics were no sham. He had been espousing communism since his teen years. Neither you - nor anybody else - has proven that he was 'deep undercover'. And if he were, then his appearance at the midnight press conference might have been a good time to 'come-out'. He didn't, did he? He was facing the Tippit murder charge by then and he would have known that the Kennedy one was coming soon.
Oswald's mother 'maintained' many things about her son. She told writer, Jean Stafford, "Now it could be that my son and the Secret Service were all involved in a mercy killing. I have thought about this seriously [...] So why wouldn't it be just a normal thing to have a mercy killing of the President?" (A Mother In History, pp 14-15). Do you still think that this lady should be believed?
As for Baker; she has never given 'testimony' to anybody. She just makes stuff up on the internet. Lots of people do, don't they?
barry
To channel the late Vincent Bugliosi, basing a successful conspiracy around Oswald would be like trying to build a permanent house on an active volcano.
ReplyDeleteExcellent observation.
Of course the conspiracists counter that his volatility made him the perfect patsy since he could be more easily manipulated (this was Jesse Ventura's response to Bugliosi when VB made it).
In any case, it's illogical to me to frame a pro-Castro figure - whether those pro-Havana views and acts were a cover or whether they were sincere - and then say that the assassination was done by a lone murderer with NO connection to Cuba. If you're going to frame a radical leftist Castroite then why not use that to blame Castro or the domestic left?
Shorter: "They" frame a Castro supporter and then say he acted alone? Why?
I heard the son of E. Howard Hunt, the Watergare burgler, on the radio the other night. Apparently E. Howard claimed he had insider knowledge about THE TRUTH OF THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION -for a price. Apparently he wanted actor Kevin Costner and well known conspiracy enthusiast to pay him $3 million. For some reason Costner didn't go for it.
ReplyDeleteWell Hunt finally did spill the beans on his deathbed he claimed there were assassination teams on the grassy knoll, etc -basically a rehash of the run-of-the -mill conspiracy theories that have been circulating for years.
Hard to believe he wanted somebody to pay him $3 million for this.