Let's try to keep our conspiracy theories at least "sorta kinda" rational, eh?

[Tim Nickerson]

This is another one of your dogmatic uninformed and illogical claims. Take a guess who said this:

"We don't have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did. Nobody's yet been able to put him in the building with a gun in his hand."

The person who said this was none other than the Chief of Police of the Dallas Police Department in 1963, Jesse Curry (https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKcurryJ.htm).

Jesse Curry did not say that. That is, he did not say "We don't have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did."

A few other facts:

-- We now know that NAA testing of the paraffin cast of Oswald's right cheek found no traces of nitrates, and that in control testing NAA never failed to detect nitrates in paraffin casts of other men who had fired rifles. The results of the NAA testing on Oswald's paraffin cast were suppressed for many years, for obvious reasons.

The results of the NAA testing on Oswald's paraffin cast were not suppressed for many years. Why would they be? Oswald tested negative for nitrates on his face. The NAA tests on the cast wouldn't have altered that fact. Oswald's Carcano rifle didn't deposit nitrate residue on the cheek when fired. That a different Carcano rifle did is irrelevant.

-- Voice stress analysis (VSA) of Oswald's declarations of innocence while in police custody indicate he was telling the truth. VSA polygraphs are more effective than traditional polygraphs because they can be administered without the person's knowledge.

Voice stress analysis (VSA) of Oswald's declarations of innocence while in police custody indicate he was lying.

https://www.amazon.com/MALCONTENT-Harvey-Oswalds-Confession-Conduct-ebook/dp/B07V9WRRW1/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

Part II
Oswald's Confession: The Computer Voice Stress Analysis of Lee Harvey Oswald

-- TSBD eyewitness testimony clearly puts Oswald on the first and second floor during the shooting, a fact confirmed by the Martha Jo Stroud memo. No wonder the WC suppressed the memo. Barry Ernest found the memo in the National Archives in 1999.

That is FALSE. How could Oswald be on both the first and second floor during the shooting? No TSBD eyewitness testimony puts Oswald on the first or second floor during the shooting.

WC staffers deliberately changed Vicki Adams' timeline. In her original FBI interview, she said she left the fourth floor no more than 30 seconds after the shooting, but the WC changed "15 to 30 seconds" to 1 minute. Adams said she arrived on the first floor within 1 minute of the shooting. The WC changed that to several minutes.

That is FALSE. WC staffers did not change Vicki Adams' timeline. They didn't change her testimony. The WC considered it and weighed it against other evidence. It did not measure up against other evidence.

The Stroud memo--which, again, the WC suppressed--documents that Vicki Adams' supervisor, Dorothy Garner, reported that she saw Adams go down the stairs before she saw Officer Baker and Roy Truly come up the stairs, blowing to pieces the WC's version of Oswald's movements and proving that Oswald did not go down the stairs after the shooting.

That is FALSE. The Stroud document does not say that Dorothy Garner reported that she saw Adams go down the stairs.

BTW, when Barry Ernest located and interviewed Dorothy Garner, she confirmed the Stroud memo. She told Ernest that she was at the window with Vicki Adams, that Adams left the window immediately, that she followed Adams out of the office and to a point where she could see her going down the stairs, and during that whole time she never saw Oswald.

That is FALSE. From Barry Ernest's "The Girl On The Stairs":

Dororthy Ann Garner is important to this case for a couple of reasons:

1/ She confirms that Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles left almost right away. “I remember them being there and the next thing I knew , they were gone. They had left very quickly…within a matter of moments. There was this warehouse or storage area behind our offices, out by the freight elevators and the rear stairway, and I went out there”. Garner went to this area immediately after Adams and Styles had left and although she did not see them enter the stairwell she could hear them as the stairs were very noisy.

This explains why WC counsel David Belin, who was in charge of establishing Oswald's movements inside the building, refused to interview Adams' co-worker Sandra Styles, even after (or because) Adams told Belin that Styles would corroborate her account. Thus, it is not hard to understand why Belin buried the Stroud memo. Since he would not interview Styles for fear she would corroborate Adams' account, he wasn't about to let anyone know that Adams' supervisor had confirmed Adams' account.

Sandra Styles was interviewed by Sean Murphy. She did not corroborate Adams' account. She was adamant that they stayed at the window on the fourth floor for no less that a minute after the shooting. Adams' assertion that she and Styles arrived on the first floor within 1 minute of the shooting  has two major problems. 1) She failed to encounter, or even see, Baker and Truly. 2) She testified that she saw Billy Lovelady and Bill Shelley upon reaching the first floor. Lovelady and Shelley had been outside at the time of the shooting and had made a trek westward to the railway tracks after. They never entered the building until several minutes after the shooting.

[Lance Payette]

Jesse Curry did not say that. That is, he did not say "We don't have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did."

The results of the NAA testing on Oswald's paraffin cast were not suppressed for many years. Why would they be? Oswald tested negative for nitrates on his face. The NAA tests on the cast wouldn't have altered that fact. Oswald's Carcano rifle didn't deposit nitrate residue on the cheek when fired. That a different Carcano rifle did is irrelevant.

Voice stress analysis (VSA) of Oswald's declarations of innocence while in police custody indicate he was lying.

https://www.amazon.com/MALCONTENT-Harvey-Oswalds-Confession-Conduct-ebook/dp/B07V9WRRW1/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

Part II
Oswald's Confession: The Computer Voice Stress Analysis of Lee Harvey Oswald


That is FALSE. How could Oswald be on both the first and second floor during the shooting? No TSBD eyewitness testimony puts Oswald on the first or second floor during the shooting.

That is FALSE. WC staffers did not change Vicki Adams' timeline. They didn't change her testimony. The WC considered it and weighed it against other evidence. It did not measure up against other evidence.

That is FALSE. The Stroud document does not say that Dorothy Garner reported that she saw Adams go down the stairs.

That is FALSE. From Barry Ernest's "The Girl On The Stairs":

Dororthy Ann Garner is important to this case for a couple of reasons:

1/ She confirms that Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles left almost right away. “I remember them being there and the next thing I knew , they were gone. They had left very quickly…within a matter of moments. There was this warehouse or storage area behind our offices, out by the freight elevators and the rear stairway, and I went out there”. Garner went to this area immediately after Adams and Styles had left and although she did not see them enter the stairwell she could hear them as the stairs were very noisy.


Sandra Styles was interviewed by Sean Murphy. She did not corroborate Adams' account. She was adamant that they stayed at the window on the fourth floor for no less that a minute after the shooting. Adams' assertion that she and Styles arrived on the first floor within 1 minute of the shooting  has two major problems. 1) She failed to encounter, or even see, Baker and Truly. 2) She testified that she saw Billy Lovelady and Bill Shelley upon reaching the first floor. Lovelady and Shelley had been outside at the time of the shooting and had made a trek westward to the railway tracks after. They never entered the building until several minutes after the shooting.

Thanks, Tim. I am glad you have taken up the rubber hammer of Whack-a-Mole insofar as Michael is concerned. I simply do not have the patience. As others have pointed out, exposing the untruths in the work of a machine-gunning factoid spewer like Michael is absolutely exhausting and ultimately futile. The good news is, posts like his most recent on the Ruth Paine thread should make clear to even the most casual lurker that this is a genuine crackpot. As with many other prominent CTers, there was a time when silly me actually thought Michael's work was reasonably factual and worth reading; something seems to have happened over the last three or so years to cause these characters to show their true colors - desperation, perhaps?

[Lance Payette]

Dear Lance,

Do you mean the conspirators may have not only encouraged / provoked / duped Oswald into shooting at JFK, but tried to make it look as though at least one other pro-Castro sniper had shot at him, too?

Why not keep it simple and just encourage / provoke / dupe former Marine sharpshooter Oswald to do it all by him widdle pro-Castro self?

Were they afraid he would unintentionally miss and rat them out?

-- Tom

The intent of my original post was not to outline specific conspiracy theories but merely to try to keep CTers in the ballpark of rationality. (Oh, OK, my real purpose was just to post the YouTube video of the Dos Equis ads, which I always thought were a hoot.)

Putting on my CTer beanie - the one with the propellor on top - I suppose the conspirators would not entrust the JFKA to Oswald alone because they would fear he might fail at the task. If there was a conspiracy, I would think objective #1 would be to kill JFK. Oswald alone with his trusty Carcano would make the assassination rather iffy - he may well have been successful, as I believe he was, but no conspirators who really wanted JFK dead would have put their faith in him alone. Hence, one or more other shooters in other locations would make sense, and there would be no need for the flurry of bullets to appear to have come from Oswald.

As far as ratting them out, this seemingly would be a risk in any conspiracy in which Oswald was a knowing participant, even if he was the lone shooter. If he was a patsy, logically he would have been silenced right there on the sixth floor. If he wasn't a patsy, he presumably would have had to have been kept in the dark as to the identity of the planners and other shooters - a highly compartmentalized conspiracy, in other words.. Oh, dear, my propellor is starting to spin from all this conjecture and I'm getting a headache.

Oh, just yesterday I was interested to see that the CT-oriented law professor linked by Michael goes through an exercise not unlike my original post. He concludes - wait for it - that the only scenario that really makes sense is Oswald as a wholly innocent patsy! Yikes, my propellor beanie just flew off my head and got caught in the ceiling fan. https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1184&context=fac_pm.

To answer your other post, I would have no problem with your mole-hunting scenario so long as Oswald was completely oblivious to this mission. The real Oswald was an idealistic young Marxist, dissatisfied and bitter with the U.S., who sincerely defected to the USSR because he wanted to shock all who had known him and show his contempt for the U.S., he sincerely (albeit naively) expected to find a Marxist utopia in the USSR, and he expected to at last be taken seriously as the deep thinker he thought he was. That's simply who the real Oswald was. There is no way on earth he would have knowingly cooperated with the CIA on anything. If TV programs to which we were devoted as kids are going to be used to analyze our actions as adults, I shudder to think what my own profile might look like. I was pretty devoted to "The Twilight Zone" and "Mr. Ed" ... yeah, that's why I went to law school.

Now that's funny, and Larry the Cable Guy agrees ...

[Tim Nickerson]

Thanks, Tim. I am glad you have taken up the rubber hammer of Whack-a-Mole insofar as Michael is concerned. I simply do not have the patience. As others have pointed out, exposing the untruths in the work of a machine-gunning factoid spewer like Michael is absolutely exhausting and ultimately futile. The good news is, posts like his most recent on the Ruth Paine thread should make clear to even the most casual lurker that this is a genuine crackpot. As with many other prominent CTers, there was a time when silly me actually thought Michael's work was reasonably factual and worth reading; something seems to have happened over the last three or so years to cause these characters to show their true colors - desperation, perhaps?

You're welcome. Griffith throws all lot of stuff into his posts. Pretty much all of the conspiracy claims in them have been debunked too many times to count. It makes no difference to him. He just keeps repeating them; the truth be damned. I've never seen his work as being reasonably factual, but I never realized how hard-nosed and unreasonable that he is until I started interacting with him in 2020. He has great difficulty grasping rather simple concepts and is easily confused.

[Tom Graves]

I would have no problem with your mole-hunting scenario so long as Oswald was completely oblivious to this mission. The real Oswald was an idealistic young Marxist, dissatisfied and bitter with the U.S., who sincerely defected to the USSR because he wanted to shock all who had known him and show his contempt for the U.S., he sincerely (albeit naively) expected to find a Marxist utopia in the USSR, and he expected to at last be taken seriously as the deep thinker he thought he was. That's simply who the real Oswald was. There is no way on earth he would have knowingly cooperated with the CIA on anything.

Dear Lance,

Although John Newman doesn't bring it up, his theory would explain why Consul Richard Snyder (rumored by some to be a CIA officer) didn't have the Marine guards arrest former U-2 radar operator Oswald when he threatened to tell the Soviets "something of special interest," and it also helps to explain why the State Department loaned him money to come back to the U.S. on.

Regardless, "idealistic" Oswald was a pretty clever guy. Maybe he thought he could penetrate the good old CIA for the Ruskies, not realizing that the KGB-controlled CIA was playing him.

-- Tom

[Lance Payette]

Dear Lance,

Although John Newman doesn't bring it up, his theory would explain why Consul Richard Snyder (rumored by some to be a CIA officer) didn't have the Marine guards arrest former U-2 radar operator Oswald when he threatened to tell the Soviets "something of special interest," and it also helps to explain why the State Department loaned him money to come back to the U.S. on.

Oswald was a pretty clever guy.

Maybe he thought he could penetrate the good old CIA for the Ruskies, not realizing that the KGB-controlled CIA was playing him.

-- Tom

Well, OK, but that doesn't require Oswald to be a knowing participant, does it? If he were a knowing participant, what would have been the point of his threat to reveal secrets to the Soviets in his encounter with Snyder? What would have been the point of that charade? It doesn't add up, does it?

Perhaps because my wife spent 1954-1991 in the USSR and knows what a fraud the whole thing was, one of my favorite quotes in the entire JFKA is Snyder telling Oswald, "If you're really a Marxist, you're going to be a very lonely guy in Moscow." I picture Snyder more as a savvy pro who recognized a mixed-up kid when he saw one and knew Oswald was about to get a large dose of Soviet reality and be crying for his mommy in short order.

Perhaps my problem is that I spent at least 40 years of my working life in federal, state, county and municipal bureaucracies and thus have a very jaded perspective on the incompetence and inertia that permeates them. Every theory that involves devilishly efficient governmental plots operating like clockwork strikes me as fundamentally laughable.

[Tom Graves]

Well, OK, but that doesn't require Oswald to be a knowing participant, does it? If he were a knowing participant, what would have been the point of his threat to reveal secrets to the Soviets in his encounter with Snyder? What would have been the point of that charade? It doesn't add up, does it?

Dear Lance,

I'm afraid you don't understand.

A witting participant in what?

Former CIA officer Tennent H. Bagley (A Lonenutter with a PhD in Political Science) -- who was on the fast track to become Director of CIA until a false or rogue physical defector to the U.S. by the name of Major I mean Lt. Col. I mean Captain Yuri Nosenko reappeared in Geneva in late January 1964 and told him he'd been Oswald's case officer in Moscow (how lucky for J. Edgar Hoover!), and that he therefore knew for a fact that the KGB had absolutely nothing to do with "abnormal-looking" Oswald -- read some CIA documents he hadn't been privy to in 1959-60, and told JFKA CT Malcolm Blunt that Oswald had to be a "witting defector," which got the JFKA CT Community all excited because they didn't realize that the CIA officer who recruited him (Oswald) was a KGB "mole," himself. Bummer dude.

Point being, if "Pete" Bagley realized that Oswald was a "witting" CIA agent, perhaps you should take his word for it, but carry it a step further by reading my Wikipedia-like article (Wikipedia proper wouldn't publish it "because not enough recognized authors have written about him") on the aforementioned probable "mole," Bruce Leonard Solie.

Or have you already done that?

If you have, well, bless your little pea-pickin' heart, now go and read my real-deal Wikipedia article on Tennent H. Bagley.

-- Tom

[Lance Payette]

Dear Lance,

I'm afraid you don't understand.

A witting participant in what?

Former CIA officer Tennent H. Bagley (A Lonenutter with a PhD in Political Science) -- who was on the fast track to become Director of CIA until a false or rogue physical defector to the U.S. by the name of Major I mean Lt. Col. I mean Captain Yuri Nosenko reappeared in Geneva in late January 1964 and told him he'd been Oswald's case officer in Moscow (how lucky for J. Edgar Hoover!), and that he therefore knew for a fact that the KGB had absolutely nothing to do with "abnormal-looking" Oswald -- read some CIA documents he hadn't been privy to in 1959-60, and told JFKA CT Malcolm Blunt that Oswald had to be a "witting defector," which got the JFKA CT Community all excited because they didn't realize that the CIA officer who recruited him (Oswald) was a KGB "mole," himself. Bummer dude.

Point being, if "Pete" Bagley realized that Oswald was a "witting" CIA agent, perhaps you should take his word for it, but carry it a step further by reading my Wikipedia-like article (Wikipedia proper wouldn't publish it "because not enough recognized authors have written about him") on the aforementioned probable "mole," Bruce Leonard Solie.

Or have you already done that?

If you have, well, bless your little pea-pickin' heart, now go and read my real-deal Wikipedia article on Tennent H. Bagley.

-- Tom

Oh, I think I do understand.

I reject Oswald as a witting participant in anything CIA-related. False defectors do not do stupid things likely to get them sent to Siberia, as Oswald did. More to the point, this would have been utterly inconsistent with Oswald's entire life up to the time of the defection. Even more to the point, the CIA folks would have had to have been the Three Stooges to rely on Oswald. (Curly, Larry and Moe do pop a lot in these discussions where Oswald is reinvented as The Most Interesting Man in the World, don't they?)

I am well aware of what 83-year-old Bagley speculatively told Malcolm Blunt in 2008. I reject it because IMO it's just silly. I likewise reject what older-than-dirt Paul Landis and Buell Frazier had to say in their dotage because IMO it's just silly. Blunt and Newman specialize in overwhelming people with documents, acronyms and minutiae, and I can just imagine how the conversation with poor old Bagley went. Apparently, he exclaimed "He was witting!" as though the thought had never occurred to him before.

All I know about moles is that you don’t want them digging in your lawn, but I suppose I can imagine some mole-hunting expedition where information related to Oswald was used for this purpose, WITHOUT HIS KNOWLEDGE, but that’s about it. I understand, Bagley's speculation resonates with your KGB Bogeyman perspective, but I don't happen to share that perspective. I don't have a psychological need to connect the election of Trump, and everything in between, to the JFKA.