JFK's assassination: your thoughts

[Soily]

Actually, the burden is 100% yours.

Oswald's guilt has, for nearly 50 years now, been quite sufficiently established; it is the null hypothesis. No one has to continue to establish the null, certainly not to anyone blithely challenging it.

That's entirely untrue. Very few people believed The WCs conclusions right from the beginning, including nearly half of the WC and the man who commissioned it.

The last government investigation of the crime declared it a was probably a conspiracy, which is still the current office verdict.

The WC verdict was, is and remains the minority opinion on the subject.

 

[BStrong]

You have my apologies. I was under the impression you endorsed the findings of the WC. What do you believe then?


Have you read the Warren Commission? Oswald never said the bag had curtain rods in. He said the reason he was visiting the Paine's on a Thursday was to get curtain rods for his room. This was a lie - but an innocent one. The Oswald's were having marital difficulties and that was the reason for his visit, as a taciturn and private man he simply did not wish to discuss this with Buell Frazier, so he made something up.


Since the Paines were entirely unaware of it, the only evidence it was ever there is fibres that were matched to the blanket in the garage. Unfortunately for the DPD, and as shown in Jesse Curry's 1969 book, the rifle and other evidence, including the blanket, were stored together at police hq. There's even a photo showing the rifle and the blanket spread out across the floor together. Thus the evidence linking the rifle to the garage is worthless.

And as I'm sure you know, the Warren Commission published Oswald's time cards for the day he allegedly posted the order form and all of his time was accounted for, including the individual jobs he did.

And even though he was supposedly sneaking off from work, he decided to take far longer than necessary to complete this transition by purchasing the postal order from the Dallas Post office, but then walking miles out of his way to post it somewhere else.

There are just too many holes in this transaction than one could reasonably expect by chance. For instance, but not limited to -

• The postal order was never cashed
• It was from a batch numerically massively out of sequence from when it was purchased
• The rifle found in the TSBD wasn't the same one ordered.
• 'Hidel' wasn't permitted to pick up mail at that PO Box
• The transaction broke numerous postal regulations
• Both the FBI and CIA were monitoring his post box during this period
• The forms required to receive firearms by mail were never filled out

I don't discount the possibility he ordered the rifle, but its status as a fact is highly dubious.

In dispute.

My experience with POB's is you go in with the key and take your mail, YMMV.

 

[BStrong]

That's entirely untrue. Very few people believed The WCs conclusions right from the beginning, including nearly half of the WC and the man who commissioned it.

The last government investigation of the crime declared it a was probably a conspiracy, which is still the current office verdict.

The WC verdict was, is and remains the minority opinion on the subject.

Maybe in your office, but the HSCA findings do not exonerate LHO in the shooting.

 

[kookbreaker]

Because Oswalds antimony result was half of the absolute lowest numbers they could achieve for someone who had fired a rifle and more than 6 times lower than the highest result.

Those numbers are all over the place. Left cheek beats right cheek, the sample size is a joke and we have no idea what exactly Oswald did before he was captured by police. Simply washing his damn face when he was at home could mess this up.

This doesn't even remotely come to any kind of exoneration.

 

[JayUtah]

That's entirely untrue. Very few people believed The WCs conclusions right from the beginning, including nearly half of the WC and the man who commissioned it.

Arguably true, but misleading. When the report was published, much of the conspiracy theories disappeared. There was a sense of disbelief in the report, especially in the few years that followed, but the majority of disbelief was simple incredulity. The public had a hard time grasping that a single gunman could have killed such an important man. In other words, they found the conclusion difficult to take, not poorly reasoned.

Nothwithstanding, the first few independent commentaries on the commission report set the tone for "We don't know who might have done it, but it wasn't Oswald," and "We can't answer the evidence any better, but here is a laundry list of things we would have done differently than the Warren Commission."

The last government investigation of the crime declared it a was probably a conspiracy, which is still the current office verdict.

The current "official" verdict is that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. The additional finding that it was "probably" a conspiracy stems from one bit of evidence the HSCA was not able to affirmatively account for, but which was accounted for after the committee disbanded.

The WC verdict was, is and remains the minority opinion on the subject.

No. You don't get to lump all the "Someone else did it" opinions into one homogeneous lump, because they are not homogeneous opinions. They are a cornucopia of varying and incompatible alternative conclusions.

 

[kookbreaker]

Assuming it was a false result.

If LHO's Carcano had tighter headspace than the rifle tested that you assert "leaked like a sieve." it wouldn't have deposited residue, or it could be that the rifle (non-LHO) tested had been stored wrapped in paper before it was acquired for testing purposes, which was very common w/ surplus firearms back in the day. Unfired examples of surplus military rifles generally came to the dealer covered in cosmoline and wrapped in paper - I know firsthand because I cleaned 100's of them as a kid that my father sold.

I am reminded of this comic

 

[RoboTimbo]

You have my apologies. I was under the impression you endorsed the findings of the WC. What do you believe then?

The questions were, "How did Oswald's rifle get into the TSBD?" and "What happened to the long bag that witnesses saw Oswald carrying into the TSBD?" and, as you've admitted he lied about curtain rods "What was in the long bag he carried into the TSBD?"

Have you read the Warren Commission? Oswald never said the bag had curtain rods in. He said the reason he was visiting the Paine's on a Thursday was to get curtain rods for his room. This was a lie - but an innocent one. The Oswald's were having marital difficulties and that was the reason for his visit, as a taciturn and private man he simply did not wish to discuss this with Buell Frazier, so he made something up.

What was he carrying in the very long bag then? And what happened to that bag?

Since the Paines were entirely unaware of it, the only evidence it was ever there is fibres that were matched to the blanket in the garage. Unfortunately for the DPD, and as shown in Jesse Curry's 1969 book, the rifle and other evidence, including the blanket, were stored together at police hq. There's even a photo showing the rifle and the blanket spread out across the floor together. Thus the evidence linking the rifle to the garage is worthless.

No, Marina also told them it was there. It was definitely Oswald's rifle. He definitely stored it in the Paine's garage in the blanket. It definitely wasn't there when the police came calling. He was proud enough of his rifle and revolver to have Marina take pictues of him holding them. It definitely was the assassination weapon. The photographs of him holding the weapons are beyond reproach although some idiot named Joke White embarrassed himself over them and made himself a laughing stock.

And as I'm sure you know, the Warren Commission published Oswald's time cards for the day he allegedly posted the order form and all of his time was accounted for, including the individual jobs he did.

And even though he was supposedly sneaking off from work, he decided to take far longer than necessary to complete this transition by purchasing the postal order from the Dallas Post office, but then walking miles out of his way to post it somewhere else.

There are just too many holes in this transaction than one could reasonably expect by chance. For instance, but not limited to -

• The postal order was never cashed
• It was from a batch numerically massively out of sequence from when it was purchased
• The rifle found in the TSBD wasn't the same one ordered.
• 'Hidel' wasn't permitted to pick up mail at that PO Box
• The transaction broke numerous postal regulations
• Both the FBI and CIA were monitoring his post box during this period
• The forms required to receive firearms by mail were never filled out

I don't discount the possibility he ordered the rifle, but its status as a fact is highly dubious.

No, it's status as Oswald's rifle and being the assassination weapon are facts about which there can be absolutely no question. If a CT wants to question them, that simply indicates the ulterior motives of the CT.

Do you not have enough facts from the "research" to put together a coherent picture of what happened? If not, we'll still just go with the null hypothesis.

 

[BStrong]

I am reminded of this comic

My friend, that is *********** priceless!

Having spent many a day of my youth with a stack of cosmo covered rifles to clean, I'm in full agreement with the artist.

I wish my old man was around to see it.

I'm not a big fan of the 91/30, but I am a big fan of the Finn M39 rebuilds of it, and the ones the Finns built for target use are fantastic rifles.

 

[Soily]

They claimed it was about 27" to 28".

The main witness, Buell Frazier was adamant it was not only too small to have contained a rifle, but was just a standard grocery type bag from a store, not the ad hoc bag made of packing paper and full of tape. He reiterated this with great force in an interview recently with Gary Mack.

So what you actually have is a woman who probably didn't see it at all, a man who didn't see it at all and a man who saw it but has always been adamant it was too small to contain a rifle. Not looking so good for the bag theorists. The real question is, how come none of these people noticed Oswald had 2 bags? The huge one you say contained the gun, and the lunch bag he left the Paine's with that morning?

Not a significant discrepancy, not enough to ignore the fact that the bag was on the floor Oswald was working

Except its not there in *any* of the crime scene photos

where his rifle was found, and no curtain rods were found

Curtain rods are irrelevant, that was a lie to avoid talking to Frazier about his marital problems

A three foot long bag is not "absolutely huge". It is not even huge. It is not big. It is longish, and a few inches wide.

A bag more than half of the height of the man carrying it is huge. And it is more than a few inches wide, it looks at least 8 inches in the photo upthread

Frazier said it was over two feet long and a few inches wide. He was pretty close to being right. The paper resembled standard grocery bag paper.

The bag didn't resemble a standard grocery bag. It was an ad hoc thing made out of wrapping paper and tape. Frazier is quite clear about that.

The other important point is, how did the bag get from the depository to the Paines?

Mr. BALL. On Thursday afternoon when you went home, drove on home, did he carry any package with him?
Mr. FRAZIER. No, sir; he didn't.

-

First, the idea that the station was literally always manned has to be false. For a station that unimportant, there is no way the pressure on employees to keep it manned was so great as to keep them from ever leaving. Second, someone made that bag, and evidence suggests it was made with material from the TSBD.

Well the guy who ran the station testified literally that. He never left it, even to have his lunch, which he'd have by the machine. Plus he told the WC he'd never seen Oswald around the wrapping paper or tape at anytime.

So Oswald would have had to sneak in and do it whilst the operator was having a wee, a level of secrecy that was entirely unnecessary.

By the way, the bag had to have been assembled right there at the machine, because the tape used came out wet.

Would they be expected? I don't see why, though I am prepared to be proven wrong.

Well it was disassembled in a paper bag, rattling about on the back seat of a car for 45 minutes, yet there wasn't any signs of a rifle ever been in the bag, no oil or marks, even though the FBI testified that the rifle was well oiled at the time of the assassination.

Furthermore, British policeman Ian Briggs obtained the same model of Carcano and dismantled it:

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/15th_Issue/rifle.gif

Changed hotlinked image to a regular link. Please see Rule 5.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: LashL

He then put it in a paper bag and found that it exhibited tell tale signs of scratching and scoring because the metal parts rubbed up against the wooden stock.

Something very important results from this treatment - something which I have never seen mentioned in any published work on the Kennedy assassination. When the components of the rifle are removed from the bag, it is found that the first seven or eight inches of the stock show obvious signs of severe scoring and scratching. This is caused by the protruding parts of the barrel assembly - principally the trigger - rubbing against it as the bag is carried or moved. It does not require much imagination to work out the result if the bag has been carried a total of something like 400 metres and has undergone a car journey of 15 miles.

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/15th_Issue/pbag2.html

 

[Soily]

Those numbers are all over the place. Left cheek beats right cheek, the sample size is a joke and we have no idea what exactly Oswald did before he was captured by police. Simply washing his damn face when he was at home could mess this up.

This doesn't even remotely come to any kind of exoneration.

He didn't wash his face. The Warren Commission knows exactly what he does, in detail -

He gets a bus, then a taxi, goes to his rooming house changes his shirt (his room contains no sink to wash himself), rushes off, shoots Tippit, goes to the theatre then gets arrested. That's literally it.

 

[BStrong]

The main witness, Buell Frazier was adamant it was not only too small to have contained a rifle, but was just a standard grocery type bag from a store, not the ad hoc bag made of packing paper and full of tape. He reiterated this with great force in an interview recently with Gary Mack.

So what you actually have is a woman who probably didn't see it at all, a man who didn't see it at all and a man who saw it but has always been adamant it was too small to contain a rifle. Not looking so good for the bag theorists. The real question is, how come none of these people noticed Oswald had 2 bags? The huge one you say contained the gun, and the lunch bag he left the Paine's with that morning?


Except its not there in *any* of the crime scene photos


Curtain rods are irrelevant, that was a lie to avoid talking to Frazier about his marital problems

A bag more than half of the height of the man carrying it is huge. And it is more than a few inches wide, it looks at least 8 inches in the photo upthread

The bag didn't resemble a standard grocery bag. It was an ad hoc thing made out of wrapping paper and tape. Frazier is quite clear about that.

The other important point is, how did the bag get from the depository to the Paines?

Well the guy who ran the station testified literally that. He never left it, even to have his lunch, which he'd have by the machine. Plus he told the WC he'd never seen Oswald around the wrapping paper or tape at anytime.

So Oswald would have had to sneak in and do it whilst the operator was having a wee, a level of secrecy that was entirely unnecessary.

By the way, the bag had to have been assembled right there at the machine, because the tape used came out wet.


Well it was disassembled in a paper bag, rattling about on the back seat of a car for 45 minutes, yet there wasn't any signs of a rifle ever been in the bag, no oil or marks, even though the FBI testified that the rifle was well oiled at the time of the assassination.

Furthermore, British policeman Ian Briggs obtained the same model of Carcano and dismantled it:

[qimg]http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/15th_Issue/rifle.gif[/qimg]

He then put it in a paper bag and found that it exhibited tell tale signs of scratching and scoring because the metal parts rubbed up against the wooden stock.

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/15th_Issue/pbag2.html

An eye witness account from almost 50 years after the fact.

Assuming facts not in evidence.

If we're going to speculate, how about LHO brought the rifle in disassembled, and lubed it during re-assembly?

Proving what? I've handled more surplus military rifles of the era than most people, and there were very few that didn't exhibit handling/damage marks on the stocks and metal.

Is there any evidence that the rifle in question had a pristine stock?

 

[abaddon]

The main witness, Buell Frazier was adamant it was not only too small to have contained a rifle, but was just a standard grocery type bag from a store, not the ad hoc bag made of packing paper and full of tape.

The bag didn't resemble a standard grocery bag. It was an ad hoc thing made out of wrapping paper and tape. Frazier is quite clear about that.

 

[RoboTimbo]

He didn't wash his face. The Warren Commission knows exactly what he does, in detail -

He gets a bus, then a taxi, goes to his rooming house changes his shirt (his room contains no sink to wash himself), rushes off, shoots Tippit, goes to the theatre then gets arrested. That's literally it.

They also found that he had shot JFK from the sixth floor of the TSBD. I agree with you, they got it right.

 

[kookbreaker]

He didn't wash his face. The Warren Commission knows exactly what he does, in detail -

We have a certain level of detail. A surprising amount, but by no means to we know his every single footstep.

He gets a bus, then a taxi, goes to his rooming house changes his shirt (his room contains no sink to wash himself),

But the house does have a bathroom. There is no proof he did not use it.

I'm not seeing anything that makes the numbers convincing of Oswald's innocence.

rushes off, shoots Tippit, goes to the theatre then gets arrested. That's literally it.

You're missing a bunch of things that the commission did know about (such as ditching the jacket. But more to the point we do not have the equivelant of a camera on the man every step of the way.

 

[LSSBB]

They also found that he had shot JFK from the sixth floor of the TSBD. I agree with you, they got it right.

RoboTimbo, that was awesome. I bet you play chess.

 

[BStrong]

RoboTimbo, that was awesome. I bet you play chess.

Checkmate?

 

[Soily]

Arguably true, but misleading. When the report was published, much of the conspiracy theories disappeared.

This isnt true.

The first opinion poll conducted after the release of the WC report still showed only 56% support for the Lone Nut theory, and that was absolutely the high watermark of public opinion.

The first Kennedy conspiracy book appeared at the same time as the WC, and in the next year or so the first wave of well known anti WC critics appear.

2 years after the WC lone nut belief is down to 36% and then it plummets below 25%, from which it has never risen.

This is especially troublesome for the Lone Nut side, since consistently since the 60s the whole of the mainstream media has aggressively promoted the Lone Nut side, with inversely proportionate impact on public opinion

The current "official" verdict is that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. The additional finding that it was "probably" a conspiracy stems from one bit of evidence the HSCA was not able to affirmatively account for, but which was accounted for after the committee disbanded.

The HSCA is the last investigation into the murder conducted by the US government. I'd be the first to admit it made many baffling mistakes, but its at least as legitimate as the WC and chronologically superseded it.

Therefore at the very least, there are 2 official verdicts of the US government, and one of them is probable conspiracy.

 

[Soily]

But the house does have a bathroom. There is no proof he did not use it.

Oswald did some pretty amazing things that day, now you're saying he washed his face without using his hands? The *palms* of his hands had more nitrates on than the backs. If he'd washed his face, he'd have washed the nitrates off his palms too.

Besides, his landlady said he rushed into his room, then rushed straight out. She never said he used the bathroom.

 

[kookbreaker]

Oswald did some pretty amazing things that day, now you're saying he washed his face without using his hands? The *palms* of his hands had more nitrates on than the backs. If he'd washed his face, he'd have washed the nitrates off his palms too.

Besides, his landlady said he rushed into his room, then rushed straight out. She never said he used the bathroom.

This is getting ridiculous. Even if Oswald never washed ever this whole thing fails to impress. What happens if you sweat a bunch? It wasn't a hot day but Oswald took several actions that certainly would get the heart rate up.

As for the hands: that is what makes you tests so wonky. Hands show more contaminants than the cheeks,. The opposite cheek even has a higher rate than the 'expected' cheek.

You are arguing what design the deck chairs were on the Titanic, while ignoring the fact that it sank.

 

[BStrong]

I've got a question.

If all the various anti-WC SODDI stories are valid, why is it that they don't all indicate the same set of conspirators and the same set of circumstances of their partictular plot - you have Castro/anti Castro/Military Industrial/organized crime/Johnson/Hoover/Texas Oil men/gay mafia in NOLA/two shooters/three or more shooters and probably used car salesman and Indian Chiefs too, but if the SODDI defense has any validity and the "researchers" have the same evidence in front of them, why so many different conclusions?