A claim by Summers is not the equivalent of a proof. Oswald neither punched in or out, attendance was on the honor system at the Texas School Book Depository. Summers cannot establish Oswald was at work, at best he can assume it, or claim Oswald was supposedly at work.
This is typical Conspiracy Theory Inflation, where one CT makes a claim based on unproven and/or hidden assumptions, and another CT cites the claim as a given, ignoring the unproven/hidden assumptions.
Moreover, there is no doubt about Oswald's use of the Alek Hidell alias, that has been established beyond doubt. There is nothing 'alleged' about it. He put the name on one of his PO Boxes (#30061), as a person entitled to receive mail there:
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0362a.htm
For another example, he used it on handbills he distributed in New Orleans with a return address of his PO Box #30061, like this one (on right):
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh26/html/WH_Vol26_0242b.htm
The use of the word 'alleged' by you is specious. It is established beyond any reasonable doubt he used that alias elsewhere (other than the purchase of the rifle).
Based on the evidence and not the hidden assumption by Summers, Oswald bought the money order.
This doesn't seem all that difficult to figure out, once we understand the hidden assumption in your citation of Summers claim. The handwriting on the money order appears to be Oswald's
because Oswald did buy it and it is therefore Oswald's handwriting.
You're now reduced to assuming what you must prove -- that the money order and the paper trail are forgeries. The money order is the original. There was nothing nefarious in the destruction of the original order form and envelope. Kleins Sporting Goods routinely had their paper documents reduced to microfilm and the originals discarded, as a space-saving gesture. Today, mail orders or phoned-in orders would be retained as electronic information in a computer database. Nothing nefarious about that either. And of course, if someone orders something via the internet, the business record would be entirely electronic. Nothing nefarious there either.
You're also ignoring the other evidence that indicates Oswald received the weapon. It includes, but is not limited to, the business records of Kleins Sporting Goods showing the rifle with the serial number C2766 was shipped to Oswald's PO box, Oswald's fingerprints on the C2766 rifle shipped by Kleins to Oswald's PO Box as a result of the order, photographs of Oswald taken with Oswald's own camera by Oswald's own wife holding that C2766 rifle shipped by Kleins to Oswald's PO Box as a result of the order, and Oswald's wife's own admission on the afternoon of the assassination that Oswald owned a rifle and kept it stored within in the Paine garage. But it was missing from the blanket in the Paine garage, and that rifle with the serial number of C2766 was recovered from the Depository shortly after the assassination.
You need to do more than just attempt to poke holes in the existing case against Oswald, you need to do a better job than the existing case does to explain the evidence with fewer holes in your theory than the historical explanation. This you have yet to attempt. I'd love to hear your theory about how all that evidence came to be in the state it is in. More than likely, it will amount to nothing more than assumptions that everything pointing to Oswald is faked, faked, faked, with no evidence to prove any of it.
Oswald was shipped the rifle March 20, 1963. The assassination happened in November 22, 1963. Your argument here presumes clerks at a busy metropolitan post office would have some reason to remember a nondescript transaction from eight months prior. You have yet to establish this failure to recall one transaction is anything exceptional. When do you intend to start?
While the tracking of individual packages is the norm today by every shipping service, such was not the case in 1963. There was no individualized tracking of packages in 1963 that is routine today. There was
no way to establish what you're faulting the FBI for failing to establish, as there was no individualized tracking of packages.
We know Oswald picked up the package because Oswald's prints were on the rifle! Photographs were discovered taken by Oswald's own camera (to the exclusion of all other cameras in the world) showing him holding the rifle! His own wife admitted he owned a rifle! The rifle was discovered at his place of work shortly after the assassination after he was seen with a long package on the morning of the assassination!
Given the above evidence, your asking for additional evidence that Oswald received the package containing the rifle appears to be disingenuous. What more would one need than photographs of him holding the rifle and his prints on the rifle and the rifle being recovered from his place of work to determine he received it and his wife admitting he owned a rifle that was determined to be missing from its normal hiding place?
The portion of the form where Oswald would indicate who would be allowed to receive mail at the PO Box was discarded in accordance with PO regulations once the PO box was closed. And the PO Box was closed by Oswald once he moved to New Orleans after his April 10th assassination attempt on General Edwin Walker.
As noted, the photographs and fingerprints of Oswald connecting him with the rifle do an excellent job of closing that link you're pretending to be rigorously searching for.
This argument from Meagher assumes the portion of the form indicating whom Oswald listed to receive mail at his PO box was intact on the closed box, but PO regulations indicate that portion should be discarded when the box is closed. The evidence is that the FBI saw the form in its present state, and nowhere does it note that Hidell is allowed to receive mail at that PO Box (because the portion of the form where that should be noted was discarded upon the box being closed).
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0353a.htm
Moreover, you (and all fellow critics, including Meagher) ignore that Oswald opened another PO Box upon his move to New Orleans, and that PO Box listed Hidell as entitled to receive mail at Oswald's new PO box. That PO Box is here:
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0362a.htm
Compare the PO Box 30061 documentation to the PO Box 2915 documentation.
Your claims about what could have been done is not tantamount to evidence it was done. You have presented no evidence of forgery, only an allegation based upon the faulty and unproven assumption that Oswald was at work, ergo (you erroneously conclude) the form must be a forgery.
Gee, it's curious you don't name these three renowned handwriting experts nor cite a source for your claim.
For a couple of reasons: Although we know Oswald as "Lee Harvey Oswald" and that's the way he's known in the history books, that person didn't sign his name that way, it was mostly just "Lee Oswald" or "L. H. Oswald" on documents asking for a signature. Moreover, "Harvey" is misspelled. It's hard to believe Oswald didn't know how to spell his own middle name.
Who is 'they' and where did they say this? Give me a actual citation, not just an untraceable assertion.
But you're comparing apples to oranges. It's your claim that some forgeries can be so good that they can't be discovered, but to support this you are apparently citing the HSCA experts who concluded the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter (which only surfaced a decade later during the Watergate hearings when E.Howard Hunt was named and was sent anonymously to a conspiracy theorist) was a forgery!
They would have to, to theorize a conspiracy, wouldn't they?
Contrast your claim above about the 'debatable ID by some gun shop worker' with your disingenuous insistence that postal clerks couldn't remember giving the package to Oswald. If the over-the-counter sale identification would be "debatable", wouldn't any ID of Oswald by a postal clerk be debatable as well? So why the double standard when you wish to argue for another purchase method. Moreover, the postal clerk wouldn't have any knowledge of what was shipped to Oswald from Kleins Sporting Goods (it could be a fishing rod or camping equipment, for example). The sales clerk could not only ID Oswald (if he remembered him) but attest Oswald was sold a rifle.
Moreover, you don't know if the store would have a policy of obtaining the customer's name and address and ask for ID (if for no other reason than to keep in touch with their customers). The store purchase would therefore leave business records that would establish where Oswald purchased the rifle, which conspiracy theorists would then conjecture could be forgeries.
You are conflating two different actions here, leading your readers astray. Perhaps that's deliberate.
Oswald purchased the rifle in March of 1963 to assassinate General Walker a month later (April 10th, 1963), not President Kennedy in November 1963. At the time of the rifle purchase the Presidential trip hadn't been decided upon, the route was unknown, and Oswald wasn't working at the Depository.
He couldn't purchase the rifle over the counter and expect the sales clerk would forget about him in a month's time (if the clerk even had a reason to connect that particular sale to the Walker attempt, which is doubtful).
An argument can be made it's better to purchase the weapon via mail order. His goal in the Walker shooting was to remain undiscovered after the assassination of Walker (and indeed, he wasn't connected to that shooting until he killed JFK).
He had no such expectation of remaining undiscovered after the assassination of the President. For one thing, having smuggled the rifle into the Depository that morning, he couldn't expect to leave the building carrying the rifle - he had to leave it in the building. He knew the rifle could be - and of course was - eventually traced to him.
Until that point, the Hidell ID serves an entirely different short-term purpose that CTs everywhere fail to mention -- if the police are looking for Oswald as "a person of interest", given only his absence from the Depository -- the Hidell ID serves to establish he's not Oswald and perhaps leads to him remaining free.
Doubts are not evidence.
At which point Oswald was dead and there could be no trial. It was commonplace back then (and still is) to withhold evidence from the media to ensure that if someone comes forward to make a confession, not everything about the case that the person is confessing to has already appeared in the media.
Before the era of discovery, where the prosecution must release all their evidence to the defense, it was also commonplace to keep some evidence secret to use during the trial to destroy an alibi that the accused might have concocted that explains the evidence known to his defense, but fails to explain the evidence gathered that is not known to them.
Did you ever notice that when you misplace something, it's
always in the last place you look?
Always!
That's because once you find what you were looking for, you stop looking!
Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Bentley stopped looking for ID when he discovered that first piece of ID? And that the other piece wasn't discovered until a more detailed inspection of his wallet once Oswald was brought back to police headquarters?
Maybe because the Hidell ID card wasn't discovered until after a more detailed inspection of his wallet once he was booked, so of course the arresting officers wouldn't know about it.
The first detailed inspection of his wallet by the FBI was on 11/23/63, as far as I know. This memo mentions the contents, mentions the fake Hidell ID, and notes Oswald was confronted with the fake ID, and notes Oswald declined to explain it. This was on 11/23/1963, one day after his arrest. The fake ID was recovered from Oswald's wallet. Live with it:
https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0319b.htm
Hank
