JFK 50TH Anniversary

[SydneyPSIder]

the Mac Wallace fingerprint evidence in the book depository is interesting, and comes as no surprise.

The big question is who were the others involved? 38 different people have been named by various investigators. Jim Fetzer has named Mac Wallace and 3 others, including an Air Force sharpshooter and an anti-Castro Cuban, whereas Jerry Kroth insists it was the Mafia and a few other career criminals. Still others name overseas assassins, which is increasingly unlikely. The Secret Service was definitely involved looking at the video evidence as already discussed, and the Texas oil connection seems pretty strong, further implicating GHWB as an interested party. Big Oil in the Big D indeed. It seems more like a Texas oil conspiracy, involving Mac Wallace and David Ferrie as two local home-grown hitmen on their own turf -- basically a bunch of right wing Texas oilmen doing the deed.

[ProfWag]

Wow, so many questions from Syd and Winston that I don’t know where to begin. I almost feel like I should write a book, but there are so many out there that it would be futile.
In any event, I’ll do my best to write a brief synopsis of why I believe the way I do.
First and foremost Winston, I have never, ever, ever said LHO was solely responsible for JFK’s death. I have said that he was the only shooter that day, but to say that he didn’t conspire with anyone else prior to would be irresponsible and impossible to determine.

A word of caution on my sources. Yes, I use sources that the Warren Commission and other committees used. Do I believe in the Warren Commission? Not necessarily. They were politicians, not investigators. They were told to rush their investigation. There were hard-feelings between certain members. For these reasons and more, the Warren Commission caused just as many questions as answers. However, the evidence presented in their findings is important and anything other than them not trying to do their best is pure speculation which, if not careful, could turn any story into fantasyland.

Syd, you asked me a question earlier about Jack Ruby and why he wanted to take Oswald out. So, I’ll start there. Ruby was an owner of a few strip clubs. He was a publicity seeker and he often infused himself in the police department and city hall as it made him feel important. Ruby had been seen to cry after hearing of JFKs death. He was a show-off and it has been said that he like to talk and embellish stories. If memory serves me, shortly before the shooting, he was across the street getting stamps. He left his favorite dog in the car. He stated immediately after the shooting that he was sure that he was doing what everyone in the country, including Jackie, wanted. Even if he had mob connections as has been purported, he certainly wasn’t high level. If the mob, CIA, or anyone else wanted LHO dead, Jack Ruby would have been the last person they would have asked if they wanted to keep it a secret. These tidbits, and more, all point to Ruby shooting LHO on a whim with little advance thought.

The evidence for Lee Harvey Oswald is overwhelming. Could there have been two shooters (or more) in Dealey Plaza that day? Yes, there could have. Is it likely? No. First, let’s look at LHO’s actions and please keep in mind that I am being as brief as possible and using information provided from a variety of sources to include the Warren Commission, the HSCA, the FBI, and the Dallas Police Department among others. He bought a gun that ballistics have shown match bullets found. He had a bag of curtain rods (?) that he took to work that day as reported by a co-worker. Have you ever taken curtain rods wrapped up in a bag to work? I haven’t.

To my knowledge, no one actually saw LHO in the window well enough to have been able to point him out in a lineup so we should look at other evidence. The weapon found hand his fingerprints on it. He worked in the TSBD. Shortly after the shooting, the building manager noticed that everyone that worked there was present except for him. No fewer than 12 witnesses pointed to LHO shooting Officer Tippit. 5 of them who actually saw the murder picked him out of a lineup with no trouble. The weapon found on him matched the bullets used to a point where it could not have been any other weapon.
Although LHOs description was relatively sketchy, the DPD were on high alert. The President had just been shot in their city. If a man matches the general description is walking down a street a short distance the assassination, then Tippit did the right thing in stopping him for questions. The shoe store owner saw a man acting suspiciously in a window and gave that description to the Police. Finally, and extremely important to remember, Oswald was initially arrested for murdering a police officer, not the president, and the evidence he shot Tippit is overwhelming, but they were not initially linked together. Would a "patsy" have shot Tippit? My opinion is that generally the answer would be "no."

Finally, and I’ve stated this before, there were no people on the grass. If there was a shooter from the front, he would have had to have been behind the fence beyond question. If there was a shooter behind the fence, the angle towards the president would have been looking down as if you have ever been there yourself, you’ll notice that the knoll is a hill. So if the shot went through the top right front, then the bullet, unless it was magic, would have had to have ended up in Jackie or at best, the vehicle itself. This fact alone is virtually undisputable.

Winston, you asked that I show you a real test of the head wounds with matter coming out the back. Please view the following video, especially focusing on the 8:30 - end. Also, keep in mind that the vehicle was moving forward which is going to cause brain matter to appear to move backwards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RX2phbWmgA

Oswald acted extremely suspiciously that day. He initially stated “this is it.” He was cocky towards the police department and the media. He told his wife that he shot at General Walker. He bought a rifle. He worked at the TSBD and was not immediately present for roll call.
There is simply no other conclusion that I can draw, without using speculation or theory, the concludes that anyone other than LHO fired 3 shots and was successful in hitting his target twice. I have tried to be brief while touching on the questions presented previously. If someone would like to debate a point I made, I will be happy to, but ONLY one point at a time. Yes I’m stereotyping, but conspiracy theorists like to throw out all sorts of points at one time, however, these types of rebuttals will go unanswered. One point at a time please.

[NinjaPuppy]

That is the best explanation of events that I have ever read. Thank you ProfWag.

[SydneyPSIder]

[SydneyPSIder]

[ProfWag]

[ProfWag]

I'm curious to hear thoughts on the following excerpt from an interview in the 1960's. Reference will be provided later.

"We've also found some new evidence that shows that Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano was not the only weapon discovered in the Depository Building after the assassination. I recently traveled to New York for a conference with Richard Sprague, a brilliant man who's been independently researching technical aspects of the assassination, and he showed me a hitherto unpublicized collection of film clips from a motion picture taken of the assassination and its aftermath. Part of the film, shot shortly after one P.M., shows the Dallas police carrying the assassination weapon out of the Book Depository. They stop for the photographers and an officer holds the rifle up above his head so that the inquisitive crowd can look at it. There's just one little flaw here: This rifle does not have a telescopic sight, and thus cannot be Oswald's rifle. {Note: here is the referenced photo. Is it me or is there a sight on it? |This weapon was taken from the building approximately 20 minutes before Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano was "discovered" --- or planted --- on the premises.

To sum up: Oswald was involved in the conspiracy; shots were fired at Kennedy from the Depository but also from the grassy knoll and apparently from the Dal-Tex Building as well --- but not one of them was fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, and not one of them from his Mannlicher-Carcano.

INTERVIEWER: If Oswald didn't shoot President Kennedy from the sixth-floor window of the Book Depository, who did?

INTERVIEWEE: Our office has developed evidence that the President was assassinated by a precision guerrilla team of at least seven men, including anti-Castro adventurers and members of the paramilitary right. Of course, the Ministry of Truth concluded --- by scrupulously ignoring the most compelling evidence and carefully selecting only those facts that conformed to its preconceived thesis of a lone assassin --- that "no credible evidence suggests that the shots were fired from ... any place other than the Texas School Book Depository Building." But anyone who takes the time to read the Warren Report will find that of the witnesses in Dealey Plaza who were able to assess the origin of the shots, almost two thirds said they came from the grassy-knoll area in front and to the right of the Presidential limousine and not from the Book Depository, which was to the rear of the President. A number of reliable witnesses testified that they heard shots ring out from behind the picket fence and saw a puff of smoke drift into the air.

Additional evidence supporting this can be found in the Zapruder film published in Life, which reveals that the President was slammed backward by the impact of a bullet; unless you abrogate Newton's third law of motion, this means the President was shot from the front. Also --- though they were contradicted later --- several of the doctors at Parkland Hospital who examined the President's neck wound contended it was an entrance wound, which would certainly tend to indicate that Kennedy was shot from the front.

In the course of our investigation, we've uncovered additional evidence establishing absolutely that there were at least four men on the grassy knoll, at least two behind the picket fence and two or more behind a small stone wall to the right of the fence. As I reconstruct it from the still-incomplete evidence in our possession, one man fired at the President from each location, while the role of his companion was to snatch up the cartridges as they were ejected. Parenthetically, a book on firearms characteristics was found in Ferrie's apartment. It was filled with underlining and marginal notations, and the most heavily annotated section was one describing the direction and distance a cartridge travels from a rifle after ejection. Scribbled on a bookmark in this section, in Ferrie's handwriting, were the figures, not mentioned in the text, "50° and 11 feet" --- which indicates the possibility that Ferrie had test-fired a rifle and plotted the distance from the gunman to where the ejected cartridges would fall.

But to return to the scene of the crime, it seems virtually certain that the cartridges, along with the rifles, were then thrown into the trunk of a car --- parked directly behind the picket fence --- which was driven from the scene some hours after the assassination. If there had been a thorough search of all vehicles in the vicinity of the grassy knoll immediately after the assassination, this incriminating evidence might have been uncovered --- along with the real authors of the President's murder. In addition to the assassins on the grassy knoll, at least two other men fired from behind the President, one from the Book Depository Building --- not Oswald --- and one, in all probability, from the Dal-Tex Building. As it happens, a man was arrested right after the assassination as he left the Dal-Tex Building and was taken away in a patrol car, but like the three other men detained after the assassination --- one in the railroad yard behind the grassy knoll, one on the railroad overpass farther down the parade route, and one in front of the Book Depository Building --- he then dropped out of sight completely. All of these suspects taken into custody after the assassination remain as anonymous as if they'd been detained for throwing a candy wrapper on the sidewalk.

We have also located another man --- in green combat fatigues --- who was not involved in the shooting but created a diversionary action in order to distract people's attention from the snipers. This individual screamed, fell to the ground and simulated an epileptic fit, drawing people away from the vicinity of the knoll just before the President's motorcade reached the ambush point. So you have at least seven people involved, with four firing at the President and catching him in a crossfire --- just as the assassins had planned at the meeting in David Ferrie's apartment in September. It was a precision operation and was carried out coolly and with excellent coordination; the assassins even kept in contact by radio. The President, of course, had no chance. It was an overkill operation."

[SydneyPSIder]

[SydneyPSIder]

[ProfWag]

[ProfWag]

[SydneyPSIder]

So forget the umbrella, that has been put forward by various people. Not a major part of the investigation, and I see you are still playing your usual game of nit-picking at a few unimportant side issues to make the case that the main points of concern are therefore invalid. Interesting debating tactic, it's not scientific or legitimate though, of course, just the sort of thing that a pseudosceptic would do though. The potential role of the 'umbrella man' is easily the most speculative and weakest surmisation of the entire case. Removing the umbrella man from the picture does not weaken the assassination scenario one iota, it is simply an attempted explanation for why one person was standing around on a warm sunny day with an umbrella. He then claimed in 1977 to be referencing Neville Chamberlain, and to be unaware of any scrutiny or interest from investigators. (And that may or may not be true from a forensic scientific objective position of course.)

There's still the problem of the magic bullet, of the secret service standing down, of the extremely unsafe irregular police bike escort, of the reports of shots from the grassy knoll, the unlikelihood of LHO getting 3 (or was it 2?) accurate shots off from his supposed position, the fact that he was elsewhere in the building at the time of the shots being fired, that he appeared to be an irregular intelligence asset of the CIA whose final best use for them was as a patsy, etc etc.

the other points to comment on are scattered through the responses to your points, but I suppose I'll have to dredge up countless alternative eyewitness reports and findings around the cartridges etc.

[SydneyPSIder]

something random before I get down to serious work:

Edgewood Arsenal reports indicate that the rifle presented to them for testing was entirely too defective to be safely fired until it had been reworked by a gunsmith. They specifically cited a rusted out action and a faulty firing-pin as well as a misaligned scope, yet the FBI's forensic laboratory reported the rifle they received was well oiled and in good working condition. However, as researcher Walt Cakebread observed, the brown paper bag that the FBI alleged LHO used to transport the disassembled rifle in possessed not a trace of oil, even though brown paper sucks up oil like a lamp-wick.

Lt. Colonel William "Craig" Roberts, Infantry USAR and 26 year veteran of the Tulsa, Oklahoma PD, and former Marine sniper, Vietnam who is the author of the internationally published books: "The Walking Dead: A Marine's Story of Vietnam," "One Shot--One Kill: America's Combat Snipers," "Combat Medic--Vietnam," "Police Sniper" and "Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza" has written extensively on the impossibility of the SBT and has declared in no uncertain terms, no way, not LHO, not with that rifle and not from that position.

Gunnery Sargent, Carlos(Gunny) Hathcock, the USMC's premier sniper and chief instructor of the Marine Corps Sniper's School at Quantico, Virginia conducted extensive firing tests while approximating the conditions of Dealey Plaza as closely as possible and proved to his satisfaction the impossibilty of both the SBT as well as the LN scenario.

John Ritchson(SSGT. 499th TC USATC HG US Army Class of 69)
(GunSmith/Ballistician, Black Eagle Gun Works)
(Survivor, SE Asian Games, 11BRAVO7,Tet 1970)

http://jfkmurdersolved.com/index1.htm

[ProfWag]

[ProfWag]