The rifle Oswald should have used

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Great post!

I believe that Castro and Cuba were his main motives. LHO and Marina reportedly fought like cats and dogs quite regularly. So I doubt that her refusal to immediately move back in with him had much bearing on his decision. (Other than perhaps that he wanted to make her feel guilty about it.)

Charles: Like you, I don't believe Oswald suddenly became "apolitical" on the day of the assassination. He was a political person throughout his adult life and he was deeply estranged from America. He repeatedly denounced the US economic and political systems (sometimes correctly such as segregation) and whether he was a "real" Marxist (as he understood the term) he certainly didn't like America.

However, we have the odd lack of planning for the assassination of JFK. In contrast to his planning for Walker. He retrieves his rifle the day before the assassination - he doesn't get it earlier to practice with it. He had four bullets. He gets a rid from Frazier. He keeps $15.

All of this is so sudden, so last second, so spur of the moment. If he had deeper reasons for killing JFK - such as Cuba and Castro (as I think he did) - then why act so last moment? There's little planning involved.

And to be fair to the Oswald defenders and their argument: He got damned lucky. He was able to be alone at just the right time, to have JFK pass right before him.  It does "look" like JFK was brought to him. Of course, this also makes any framing of Oswald difficult to believe. How would the framers know where Oswald was at the time of the shooting? How could they know he didn't have an alibi? In order to frame him he can't have an alibi.

The evidence for me is strong that he shot JFK. And the evidence for an alternate explanation is so weak and the explanation so complicated and convoluted as to belie logic. This was faked and that was faked and this was planted and that was planted. Good lord, it's absurd; layer upon layer upon layer of fakery.

[Charles Collins]

Charles: Like you, I don't believe Oswald suddenly became "apolitical" on the day of the assassination. He was a political person throughout his adult life and he was deeply estranged from America. He repeatedly denounced the US economic and political systems (sometimes correctly such as segregation) and whether he was a "real" Marxist (as he understood the term) he certainly didn't like America.

However, we have the odd lack of planning for the assassination of JFK. In contrast to his planning for Walker. He retrieves his rifle the day before the assassination - he doesn't get it earlier to practice with it. He had four bullets. He gets a rid from Frazier. He keeps $15.

All of this is so sudden, so last second, so spur of the moment. If he had deeper reasons for killing JFK - such as Cuba and Castro (as I think he did) - then why act so last moment? There's little planning involved.

And to be fair to the Oswald defenders and their argument: He got damned lucky. He was able to be alone at just the right time, to have JFK pass right before him.  It does "look" like JFK was brought to him. Of course, this also makes any framing of Oswald difficult to believe. How would the framers know where Oswald was at the time of the shooting? How could they know he didn't have an alibi? In order to frame him he can't have an alibi.

The evidence for me is strong that he shot JFK. And the evidence for an alternate explanation is so weak and the explanation so complicated and convoluted as to belie logic. This was faked and that was faked and this was planted and that was planted. Good lord, it's absurd; layer upon layer upon layer of fakery.

In my opinion, the lack of planning was due to a limited time frame. Odds are that he only learned that the motorcade would be passing by the TSBD from the newspaper reports a few days before it did. And I imagine that he planned it all out in the limited hours that he had. It fell into his lap and was just too tempting to resist. He planned well, I think that if someone had remained on the sixth floor, unless they came into the nest behind the boxes he could have remained quiet until the shooting began and probably not been detected.

[Jerry Freeman]

In my opinion, the lack of planning.... He planned well

"..the lack of planning.... He planned well" 
 
Seriously?

However, we have the odd lack of planning for the assassination of JFK. In contrast to his planning for Walker. He retrieves his rifle the day before the assassination

If everything was so poorly planned for JFK...Why was it so allegedly successful?
We grew some new theories overnight didn't we  
Oh I forgot to add...If Oswald planned so well for Walker...Why didn't he get him?

[Jerry Freeman]

I managed to find an online archive of Robert Oswald’s book Lee - A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald:
https://ia800904.us.archive.org/31/items/LeeAPortraitOfLeeHarveyOswald/Lee%3B%20A%20Portrait%20of%20Lee%20Harvey%20Oswald.pdf

See page 169 [where the Feds bullied Marina around]

[Jerry Freeman]

https://ia800904.us.archive.org/31/items/LeeAPortraitOfLeeHarveyOswald/Lee%3B%20A%20Portrait%20of%20Lee%20Harvey%20Oswald.pdf

She [Marina] would sometimes buy forty or fifty dollars' worth of flowers for Lee's grave at a time, and offer to buy more for me to take out to the cemetery. I would try to convince her that it was unnecessary and even foolish to spend the money that way, but this made little impression. She realized that the flowers would die in a few hours, but she was impulsive about such things, and she wanted to demonstrate her feelings about Lee in this way.

p.178

[Charles Collins]

See page 169 [where the Feds bullied Marina around]

It is interesting to me to read the accounts of the people who were directly involved with the situation. Robert Oswald appears to be genuine and down to earth. I do believe his account of the "bullying tactics" by the two FBI agents:

From the instant they arrived at the inn, the FBI agents were extremely hostile in their treatment of Marina. Because of their arrogance, Marina refused to cooperate with the FBI agents and after a few minutes she stopped talking to them at all. The agents then decided to use threats. They implied that Marina might not be allowed to remain in the United States -- that she might be forced to return to Russia.

This made me angry. I told one of the agents--one of the pair of agents named Brown--that I didn't think Marina was in any danger of being deported and that I did not like their attempts to intimidate her. He said nothing at that moment, but later he and the other agent called me outside--out of Marina's hearing--and apologized for the effort to use this tactic on her. I wondered at the time what would have happened if Marina had been alone with those agents, who seemed to consider any approach acceptable as long as it offered some promise of success.

I told the two agents that Marina had been very cooperative with the Secret Service men, who had treated her with consideration and had not tried to bully her.

This obviously surprised them. "Have the Secret Service men been questioning Marina?" one of them asked.

This surprised me. I had not realized before just how wide the gulf was between the Secret Service and the FBI. After all, about forty hours had passed since Marina was questioned by the Secret Service, and I would have expected the FBI to have complete reports on that tape-recorded interview and the long tape-recorded interviews with Mother and me. And even if the FBI hadn't received transcripts, did these two agents believe that we had been out there since Sunday night without being questioned at all about Lee?

"Yes," I said. "She's been cooperating completely with the Secret Service, and they have taped interviews with Marina, Mother and me."

They then changed their tactics, and Marina agreed to talk with them...[/i]

On page 179 Robert Oswald writes:

After Lee's arrest, Marina was deeply concerned about her own safety and about the future of Junie and Rachel. Even before the assassination, she had often expressed her fear that the time might come when she would be sent back to Russia. Now she felt that this was far more likely, as her punishment because she was Lee's wife.

Twice I heard her speculate about the way those closest to Lee would have been treated if Lee has assassinated the head of the Russian government rather than the President of the United States. "Robert," she said, "if you and I and the children were in Russia, and something like this happened, we'd all be dead."

LHO reportedly used the same tactic on Marina. This appears to be true and to have had a effect on Marina. Otherwise, why would Robert Oswald say she expressed this fear before the assassination. Robert's opinion of the FBI and their methods is evident throughout the parts of the book that I have read so far. Robert implies that he thought the FBI was suspected by the Secret Service of possible involvement in the assassination. The next section of his book (that I have yet to read) is entitled "Part Four: The investigation--and the Unanswered Questions" so I am looking forward reading to what he wrote.

However, if your are trying to imply that Robert Oswald's account of the bullying tactics is supposed to be evidence of some sinister attempt to make Marina say what they wanted her to say, I point out the parts that I underlined. They apologized and changed their tactics according to Robert Oswald.

[Jerry Freeman]

Consider the rifle that was "selected".
It was far removed from any makes or models that were of popular American manufacture.
Were it a Winchester, Remington, or Marlin etc.. it would have placed a stigma on that gun maker---
"Their gun killed the president!"
The Carcano on the other hand, was never a popular hunting or sporting rifle.
I believe it was a deliberate decision by the military complex to utilize a weapon that was of trivial or some otherwise un-celebrated manufacture.