"And he said 'I shot Walker'"

[Bill Brown]

One, no, Sirhan has never "admitted" that he killed RFK.

In the Sirhan interview with Frost that I mentioned, in the video posted by Steve Galbraith, right at the one minute mark Sirhan said he sincerely regrets his actions.  What do you think he was talking about, i.e. what actions do you think Sirhan is saying that he regrets?

[Lance Payette]

Breaking news: Prepare yourself, people. The Walker incident has been solved. Greg Doudna has a new book coming out (yes, we NEED another book) CONCLUSIVELY proving that the Walker shooting was a publicity stunt in which Walker himself participated. Greg says "conclusively" twice in his post at the Ed Forum, https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/31685-frontlinepbs-jfka-witness-interviews-access-issue/page/2/#comments, so you know it's the real deal. Curiously, his bombshell post was ignored by the rest of the participants.

In any event, there were three participants in addition to Walker himself - two Walker aides and, yep, Oswald. One aide was in the parking lot in a car with the engine running and the headlights on in order to blind any observer. He gave a signal to Walker and two men in the alley (another aide and Oswald), whereupon Walker hit the floor and the shot was fired harmlessly by the other aide. The aide handed the rifle to Oswald, who ran like a rabbit. Walker waited until the aides were safely home before phoning the police. You'll want to read Greg's post for yourself, which seems to me to eliminate any need to buy the book.

Yes, you're right, Greg is nuttier than the proverbial fruitcake. He is one of those JFKA researchers who actually has academic credentials (he has expertise in the Dead Sea Scrolls, another of my interests) but is, alas, nuttier than a fruitcake insofar as the JFKA is concerned. He is absolutely hellbent to break new ground in the JFKA with massive 75-page off-the-wall "analyses" to which few pay serious attention. He must be very, very bored (as am I, admittedly, but I'll get over it when I have this damn Achilles surgery tomorrow and am back in action in a few months).

You will notice that Greg's latest, like so many CT narratives, suffers from two familiar fatal flaws:

1. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. In the unlikely event Walker wanted to drum up sympathy for himself, he scarcely would have needed a scenario as absurdly elaborate and risk filled as the one Greg posits. Regardless of his political views and sexual proclivities, Walker was a major military figure who presumably had more planning ability than Curly, Larry and Moe.

2. It simply inserts a cardboard Oswald, the Most Interesting Man in the World, into a scenario in which the actual Oswald simply doesn't fit. What does Oswald's participation add to the scenario Greg posits? How would Walker and his aides have known anything about Oswald or have recruited him? Wouldn't the inclusion of Oswald have increased the risks by a factor of, oh, 1000 or so? What would have been Oswald's interest in participating in this nonsense? Why was it necessary for Oswald to write the note to Marina, tell Marina anything at all, or leave the other incriminating evidence? What did Oswald do with the rifle used to fire the shot? Honestly, WHAT THE HELL?

It's all totally ad hoc and very typical of Greg: Can I craft a new and innovative scenario that includes Oswald - because he pretty clearly was involved - but that nevertheless exonerates him or at least makes him just a cog in someone else's elaborate conspiracy? Well, yes, you can - but at the expense of logic, rationality and believability.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

In the Sirhan interview with Frost that I mentioned, in the video posted by Steve Galbraith, right at the one minute mark Sirhan said he sincerely regrets his actions.  What do you think he was talking about, i.e. what actions do you think Sirhan is saying that he regrets?

Sirhan admitted in his trial that he shot JFK RFK. He claimed "diminished capacity." He also admitted to the police that he shot JFK RFK. And he admitted in a parole hearing that he shot JFK RFK. He said he remembered firing the first shot but not any other shots.

How much more do we have to have? Was he hypno programmed to make these confessions too? As we know, you cannot reason with unreasonable conspiracy believers (there are some reasonable ones remaining). Michael Griffith is a textbook example of it.

You can read about the case here (this is from the state Supreme Court decision on Sirhan's appeal not the trial; but it cites details of the trial): https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1826802.html

Note this part in particular: "At the trial it was undisputed that defendant fired the shot that killed Senator Kennedy. The evidence also established conclusively that he shot the victims of the assault counts. The principal defense relied upon by defendant was that of diminished capacity."

[Tom Graves]

Sirhan admitted in his trial that he shot JFK. He claimed "diminished capacity." He also admitted to the police that he shot JFK. And he admitted in a parole hearing that he shot JFK. He said he remembered firing the first shot but after that he couldn't.

As we know, you cannot reason with unreasonable conspiracy believers. It simply won't work.

You can read about his case here: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1826802.html

Dear Steve M.,

*RFK, not JFK.

-- Tom

PS Angleton's "Byetkov(?)" (whom he talked about in his Church Committee testimony and whom you asked me about a few years ago at a JFKA Google Group) was Igor Obyedkov, a Kremlin-loyal triple agent at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City whom the CIA mistakenly believed it had successfully recruited and who "volunteered" the Department 13-radioactive name "Kostikov" (made radioactive by Kremlin-loyal FEDORA at the FBI's NYC field office a year earlier) to Oswald or "Oswald" over a sure-to-be-tapped-by-CIA phoneline on 10/1/63.

[Michael T. Griffith]

A few other facts that contradict the idea that Oswald was the one who fired at Walker:

-- Dallas police officers Van Cleave and McElroy described a steel-jacketed 7.62 mm (30.06) bullet in their General Offense Report filed the same day of the attack. Oswald allegedly fired copper-jacketed 6.5 mm bullets at JFK. I've already mentioned that Walker himself insisted that the bullet entered into evidence was not the bullet that he saw retrieved at his house.

-- The $21.45 money order that Oswald allegedly mailed from Dallas to buy the rifle amazingly arrived at Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago on March 13, less than 24 hours after it was sent from Dallas. The money order was then deposited in the First National Bank on the same day it arrived at Klein's, a remarkably rapid processing of a money order.

-- The 36-inch, 5.5 pound Mannlicher-Carcano carbine allegedly ordered by Oswald does not match the murder weapon entered into evidence by the Dallas police: a 40.2 inch, 7.5 pound Mannlicher-Carcano short rifle.

-- The WC was unable to find any evidence that Oswald picked up the alleged murder weapon at the post office in Dallas. Oswald was not listed on the p.o. box form as an authorized recipient. Postal regulations required that anyone picking up mail from the "Hidell" p.o. box be listed on the form as a recipient. Also, no postal worker at the post office recalled seeing Oswald pick up the weapon.

[Dr Alan Howard Davis]

But after shooting Kennedy, and Tippit he was cool as a cucumber. 

Oswald was not 'cool as a cucumber' after JFK was shot  -he 'looked like a maniac' according to an ex-landlady who saw him on the bus. He rushed home- changed his top, armed himself with a hand-gun and was heading towards the Greyhound bus-stop to take him to Mexico when meeting Tippit. He panicked, shot him and then rushed away before hiding. Still panicking, he knew he had to get off the streets, so he decided to hide in a darkened film theatre. The box-office did not really notice him step inside, but a shoe salesman did, who had noticed his strange behavior, and followed him. It was the salesman who got the box office clerk to call the police.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Oswald was not 'cool as a cucumber' after JFK was shot  -he 'looked like a maniac' according to an ex-landlady who saw him on the bus. He rushed home- changed his top, armed himself with a hand-gun and was heading towards the Greyhound bus-stop to take him to Mexico when meeting Tippit. He panicked, shot him and then rushed away before hiding. Still panicking, he knew he had to get off the streets, so he decided to hide in a darkened film theatre. The box-office did not really notice him step inside, but a shoe salesman did, who had noticed his strange behavior, and followed him. It was the salesman who got the box office clerk to call the police.

One, Oswald looked calm and collected when Baker encountered him no more than 90 seconds after the shooting. Two, the ex-landlady disliked Oswald. Three, the case against Oswald in the Tippit shooting is loaded with holes. Four, the shoe salesman made up that story at the behest of the police, because Oswald bought a movie ticket and was in the theater by around 1:07, as Julia Postal tacitly admitted when interviewed by Jones Harris and as theater worker Butch Burroughs confirmed to Jim Marrs.

[Tim Nickerson]

A few other facts that contradict the idea that Oswald was the one who fired at Walker:

-- Dallas police officers Van Cleave and McElroy described a steel-jacketed 7.62 mm (30.06) bullet in their General Offense Report filed the same day of the attack. Oswald allegedly fired copper-jacketed 6.5 mm bullets at JFK. I've already mentioned that Walker himself insisted that the bullet entered into evidence was not the bullet that he saw retrieved at his house.

The bullet entered into evidence was CE-573. Walker did not say that CE-573 was not the bullet that he saw retrieved at his house. What he was saying is that CE-399 was not the bullet that he saw retrieved at his house. That is the bullet that he saw being held up on TV during the HSCA hearings.

Mr. EISENBERG - Can you think of any reason why someone might have called this a steel-jacketed bullet?
Mr. FRAZIER - No, sir; except that some individuals commonly refer to rifle bullets as steel-jacketed bullets, when they actually in fact just have a copper-alloy jacket.

-- The $21.45 money order that Oswald allegedly mailed from Dallas to buy the rifle amazingly arrived at Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago on March 13, less than 24 hours after it was sent from Dallas. The money order was then deposited in the First National Bank on the same day it arrived at Klein's, a remarkably rapid processing of a money order.

-- The 36-inch, 5.5 pound Mannlicher-Carcano carbine allegedly ordered by Oswald does not match the murder weapon entered into evidence by the Dallas police: a 40.2 inch, 7.5 pound Mannlicher-Carcano short rifle.

-- The WC was unable to find any evidence that Oswald picked up the alleged murder weapon at the post office in Dallas. Oswald was not listed on the p.o. box form as an authorized recipient. Postal regulations required that anyone picking up mail from the "Hidell" p.o. box be listed on the form as a recipient. Also, no postal worker at the post office recalled seeing Oswald pick up the weapon.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now supposing that Oswald had not in fact authorized A. J. Hidell to receive mail here in the Dallas box and that a package came addressed to the name of Hidell, which, in fact, one did at Post Office Box 2915, what procedure would be followed when that package came in?
Mr. HOLMES. They would put the notice in the box.
Mr. LIEBELER. Regardless of whose name was associated with the box?
Mr. HOLMES. That is the general practice. The theory being, I have a box. I have a brother come to visit me. My brother would have my same name---well, a cousin. You can get mail in there. They are not too strict. You don't have to file that third portion to get service for other people there. I imagine they might have questioned him a little bit when they handed it out to him, but I don't know. It depends on how good he is at answering questions, and everything would be all right.
Mr. LIEBELER. So that the package would have come in addressed to Hidell at Post Office Box 2915, and a notice would have been put in the post office box without regard to who was authorized to receive mail from it?
Mr. HOLMES. Actually, the window where you get the box is all the way around the corner and a different place from the box, and the people that box the mail, and in theory---I am surmising now, because nobody knows. I have questioned everybody, and they have no recollection. The man would take this card out. There is nothing on this card. There is no name on it, not even a box number on it. He comes around and says, "I got this out of my box." And he says, "What box?" "Box number so and so." They look in a bin where they have this by box numbers, and whatever the name on it, whatever they gave him, he just hands him the package, and that is all there is to it.
Mr. LIEBELER. Ordinarily, they won't even request any identification because they would assume if he got the notice out of the box, he was entitled to it?
Mr. HOLMES. Yes, sir.