Was the Rifle that Lt. Day carried out of the TSBD the same as in evidence?

[Benjamin Cole]

Indeed.

OK---if, as some CT'ers say, the paperwork framing LHO was ginned up after the fact...why not gin up paperwork connecting LHO to the purported 7.65 Mauser? Why all the mumbo-jumbo about M-C's?

Why gin up paperwork connecting LHO to the M-C, then use another M-C as a fake in the TSBD?

After Lt. Day left the TSBD with the fake M-C...then what happened to the "real" Mauser? That means someone else knowingly participated in framing LHO, in addition to Lt. Day. They hid the Mauser and carried it out later. And that someone never talked about it either.

How many witting participants are there in the JFKAC and the immediate cover-up...before credulity is snapped?

[Michael T. Griffith]

Indeed. OK---if, as some CT'ers say, the paperwork framing LHO was ginned up after the fact...why not gin up paperwork connecting LHO to the purported 7.65 Mauser? Why all the mumbo-jumbo about M-C's? Why gin up paperwork connecting LHO to the M-C, then use another M-C as a fake in the TSBD?

We could ask the exact same kinds of "why didn't they do X instead?" questions about most other conspiracies that have been exposed.

Why didn't the Iran-Contra conspirators destroy the mountain of incriminating paperwork that they created as they went along, before the conspiracy first began to be exposed in a Lebanese newspaper? How could they have been so stupid as to create all that damning paperwork in the first place?

I mean, these were educated, experienced intel, diplomatic, and military people. If one didn't know the facts about the Iran-Contra plot, one could say, "Surely they wouldn't have been so dumb as to leave behind such a damning paper trail." But they did. They inexplicably waited too long to try to destroy the damning documents, and the material that they failed to destroy ended up being used against them and to more fully expose the conspiracy.

Whether one likes it or not, the photographic evidence is compelling that CE 139 is not the rifle that Lt. Day carried out of the TSBD. Theories must be made to conform to facts, not the other way around. I mean, CE 139's "CAL" and "Made Italy" stamps are just not there on the Lt. Day rifle. The scope is clearly different. The noticeable ridge on the flange behind CE 139's "Made Italy" stamp is nowhere to be seen on the flange on the Lt. Day rifle. And the flange-to-sight distance is visibly different on the two rifles.

I can think of two plausible scenarios where the plotters would have needed to swap out the rifles due to the fact that their Plan A patsy, Oswald, unexpectedly escaped from the TSBD. The plotters would have initially assumed that Oswald was gone forever and that they needed to switch to Plan B, but then reverted to Plan A after Oswald was found 80 minutes later.

But, in any case, the photographic evidence shows what it shows, and no theory can be possible if it fails to explain that evidence, no matter how disturbing that evidence might be to some people.

After Lt. Day left the TSBD with the fake M-C...then what happened to the "real" Mauser? That means someone else knowingly participated in framing LHO, in addition to Lt. Day. They hid the Mauser and carried it out later. And that someone never talked about it either.

Someone did talk about it. Roger Craig talked about it. Before they were pressured to change their stories, Weitzman and Boone talked about it. Nearly 24 hours later, police sources were still not identifying the rifle as a Carcano.

Remember, too, that we're talking about the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas DA's office, who were later caught fabricating evidence and suppressing exculpatory evidence in the Thin Blue Line case. The list of obvious cases of misconduct by the DPD and the Dallas DA in the JFK case is a long one, e.g., the latent palmprint (which we know the WC strongly doubted), the grossly fixed lineups, the "failure" to record a single minute of Oswald's hours of interrogations, the refusal to provide a defense attorney for Oswald, arraigning Oswald without legal representation, the disappearance of the 133-A negative of the backyard rifle photos, the suspiciously belated "discovery" of the backyard rifle photos, the false denial of Roger Craig's interaction with Oswald during one of his interrogations, etc., etc.

And it is undeniable that CE 139 is not the rifle that was ordered from the Klein's catalog. CE 139 is 4 inches longer and has different strap attachments than the rifle shown in the catalog. These are major differences. The catalog rifle's strap attachments were built onto the bottom of the rifle, but CE 139's strap attachments are embedded on the side of the rifle. That alone is a major difference.

How many witting participants are there in the JFKAC and the immediate cover-up...before credulity is snapped?

Well, again, we're talking about several different kinds/levels of witting participants, most of whom knew nothing of the plot, were only following orders, were led to believe it was a moral imperative that they produce evidence against Oswald, and had no idea they were furthering or covering up a plot to kill JFK.

Again, look at the hundreds of people who were involved in the Iran-Contra conspiracy. Many of them had no idea they were aiding a plot to sell arms to terrorists. Many others thought they were merely helping to get aid to anti-communist forces in Nicaragua, and had no idea that the two efforts were connected or that part of the money was coming from arms sales to terrorists. Those participants who did have some idea about the plot only knew a limited amount about it. The number of Iran-Contra plotters who actually knew the big picture was limited to a few dozen people.

[Mark Ulrik]

A scrape here. A scratch there. Not two of them clear and exactly alike. Yet, you folks continue to ignore obvious differences between Lt. Day's rifle and CE 139. Let's review them:

One, CE 139 has the markings "CAL" and "Made Italy" on it, but we can see from enlargements of the high-resolution picture of Lt. Day carrying the rifle outside the TSBD that the rifle he's holding does not have these markings. They're just not there. 

It seems to me that you're expecting a lot from a photo taken of a moving object in a sunlit street. You may consider it hi-res, but when you zoom in, it's actually quite blurry, and since the markings are etched into the metal, light and angles would also need to be right for them to stand out.

Two, the scope on Lt. Day's rifle is clearly different from the scope on CE 139. Is anyone seriously going to argue that the scopes are the same?

Three, the flange behind the "Made Italy" stamp under the scope is not the same as the one on CE139. CE 139's flange has a noticeable ridge, but the flange on Lt. Day's rifle does not. Is anyone going to say they do not see the ridge on CE 139's flange, and the fact that the flange on the Day rifle has no such ridge?

Four, the distance from the flange to the sight is different on the rifles. Isn't this readily apparent to anyone with decent eyesight?

We can all see these things. They are plainly visible. The problem is that you folks won't allow yourselves to process these undeniable visible facts because you are ideologically and emotionally committed to the belief that there was no evidence tampering and hence no cover-up.

I strongly suspect that you're wrong about all this, but it might become clearer if you would simply show us (with images) the differences that you think you're seeing. Preferably without piggybacking too much on poor David Josephs. Thanks in advance.

[Mark Ulrik]

Or maybe this could serve as a conversation starter (click to enlarge).

[Richard Smith]

Indeed.

OK---if, as some CT'ers say, the paperwork framing LHO was ginned up after the fact...why not gin up paperwork connecting LHO to the purported 7.65 Mauser? Why all the mumbo-jumbo about M-C's?

Why gin up paperwork connecting LHO to the M-C, then use another M-C as a fake in the TSBD?

After Lt. Day left the TSBD with the fake M-C...then what happened to the "real" Mauser? That means someone else knowingly participated in framing LHO, in addition to Lt. Day. They hid the Mauser and carried it out later. And that someone never talked about it either.

How many witting participants are there in the JFKAC and the immediate cover-up...before credulity is snapped?

Exactly.  Any conspiracy planned to assassinate JFK and frame Oswald would go like this.  They would use the same rifle that is linked to Oswald to assassinate JFK.  That eliminates the risk and complexity involved in switching the rifles and recovering any bullets from the bodies fired from a different rifle.  They also fire the shots from the same location used to frame Oswald (i.e. the 6th floor window).  They would also need to control Oswald's movements during the assassination.  That means ensuring that:  1) he shows up to work that day after taking an unexpected trip to the Paine residence; and 2) he was not in the presence of anyone who could give him an alibi such as doing the most likely thing by standing outside to watch the motorcade.

[Michael T. Griffith]

It seems to me that you're expecting a lot from a photo taken of a moving object in a sunlit street. You may consider it hi-res, but when you zoom in, it's actually quite blurry, and since the markings are etched into the metal, light and angles would also need to be right for them to stand out.

But the "CAL" and "Made Italy" markings are in dark black letters. I can understand a small amount of doubt about the "Made Italy" marking, but CE 139's "CAL" marking is dark and obvious enough that it should show up on the enlargement of Lt. Day's rifle, but there's not the slightest trace of it in the enlargement.

I don't think the enlargement is "quite blurry." It looks fairly clear to me, certainly clear enough to see the dark and obvious "CAL" marking if it were there. The enlarged area where the "CAL" marking should appear has a lighter part and a darker part, yet there's no trace of the marking. If it had been there, at least part of it would be visible in that enlargement.

I don't think this is even a close call.

I strongly suspect that you're wrong about all this, but it might become clearer if you would simply show us (with images) the differences that you think you're seeing. Preferably without piggybacking too much on poor David Josephs. Thanks in advance.

Just look at the images in David Josephs' article. They speak for themselves. I find his article convincing. If you think he's wrong, you should provide some photos that contradict the ones in his article.

Are you saying you don't see the noticeable ridge on the flange behind CE 139's "Made Italy" stamp? Where is that ridge on the flange on the Lt. Day rifle? And what about the differences in the flange-to-sight distances between the two rifles? You don't see that? This can't be dismissed with an appeal to sunlight and angles.

Exactly.  Any conspiracy planned to assassinate JFK and frame Oswald would go like this.  They would use the same rifle that is linked to Oswald to assassinate JFK.

 

Here we go again with the conspiracy-would-have-been-perfect strawman argument. We could play this game all day with just about every conspiracy that has been exposed. History is full of examples of carefully planned criminal plots and military operations that overlooked important items, that did not go according to plan, and that failed to anticipate serious problems that arose.

That eliminates the risk and complexity involved in switching the rifles and recovering any bullets from the bodies fired from a different rifle.

This perfect-conspiracy strawman argument ignores a huge body of evidence regarding extra misses in Dealey Plaza, the finding of two extra bullets that were never entered into evidence, the fact that the ammo that hit JFK's head behaved nothing like FMJ ammo (i.e., the kind of ammo that Oswald allegedly used), Weitzman's caliber-specific identification of a Mauser on the sixth floor, the documented finding of a 7.65 mm shell casing in Dealey Plaza (the ARRB found the FBI evidence envelope that contained the shell casing), substantial bullet fragments that were seen and described but never entered into evidence, etc., etc.

You seem to forget that for at least 75 crucial minutes, the plotters did not know where Oswald was. As soon as they realized that Oswald had escaped from the TSBD, they would logically and rationally have decided that the evidence they were going to use against Oswald, the Plan A evidence, would have to be ditched and that the evidence lined up for the back-up patsy, Plan B, would need to be used instead. Then, when they learned of Oswald's arrest, they would have decided that now they could use the Plan A evidence after all, which would have simply meant swapping out the rifles and the shells at the police station.

They also fire the shots from the same location used to frame Oswald (i.e. the 6th floor window).

No, they could always claim that the dozens of witnesses who heard shots from the grassy knoll were just hearing echoes, never mind that they also saw gunsmoke on the knoll, that gunsmoke on the knoll can be seen in frames of the Wiegman film, that a number of witnesses near/on the knoll smelled the pungent odor of gunpowder, and that several witnesses saw a man running from the picket fence on the knoll into the railyard behind the knoll.   

One or two of the shots were fired from the sixth-floor window, but other shots came from elsewhere.

They would also need to control Oswald's movements during the assassination.  That means ensuring that:  1) he shows up to work that day after taking an unexpected trip to the Paine residence; and 2) he was not in the presence of anyone who could give him an alibi such as doing the most likely thing by standing outside to watch the motorcade.

Not necessarily at all. They could have assumed that with Oswald shot dead right after the assassination, and with all the planted evidence made public, any witnesses who put him on a lower floor during the shooting could be waved away as "mistaken," which is exactly what they did anyway, even though Oswald wasn't shot until the day after the assassination. There is indeed strong eyewitness evidence that Oswald was not on the sixth floor during the shooting.

Carolyn Arnold said she saw Oswald on the second floor at 12:15 or later (and, like so many other witnesses, she said the FBI summary of her interview misrepresented what she said). Bonnie Ray Williams told the WC that he didn't leave the sixth floor until around 12:20, and he denied that he told the FBI he left at 12:05. The motorcade was scheduled to drive through Dealey Plaza at 12:25 but was running five minutes late. Under the lone-gunman theory, Oswald would have had no way of knowing this.

Oswald told the police that he ate lunch in the domino room on the first floor (which was often used as a lunchroom by employees), and that he went upstairs to the second-floor lunchroom to buy a Coke and had just finished getting the Coke from the soda machine when Officer Marrion Baker approached him and asked him to identify himself. Three witnesses, Eddie Piper, Bill Shelley, and Charles Givens, reported seeing Oswald on the first floor between 11:50 and 12:00 (19 H 499; 6 H 383; 7 H 390; CD 5). There is other evidence that supports Oswald's story, as Anthony Summers explains:

Under interrogation, Oswald insisted he had followed his workmates down to eat. He said he ate a snack in the first-floor lunchroom alone, but thought he remembered two black employees walking through the room while he was there. Oswald believed one of them was a colleague known as Junior, and said he would recognize the other man but could not recall his name. He said the second man was short.

There were two rooms in the Book Depository where workers had lunch, the “domino room” on the first floor and the lunchroom proper on the second floor. There was indeed a worker called Junior Jarman, and he spent his lunch break largely in the company of another black man called Harold Norman.

Norman, who was indeed short, said later he ate in the domino room between 12:00 and 12:15 p.m., and indeed thought “there was someone else in there” at the time, though he couldn’t remember who. At about 12:15, Jarman walked over to the domino room, and together the two black men left the building for a few minutes. Between 12:20 and 12:25—just before the assassination—they strolled through the first floor once more, on the way upstairs to watch the motorcade from a window.

If Oswald was not in fact on the first floor at some stage, it is noteworthy that he described two men—out of a staff of seventy-five—who actually were there. (Not in Your Lifetime,, pp. 90-91)

Wow, how about that, huh? Just a wildly lucky guess?

Bill Lovelady, Danny Arce, and Bonnie Ray Williams, like Oswald, had been working upstairs that morning. All three told the WC that Oswald was anxious for them to send the elevator back up to him when it was time for lunch, and one of them specified that Oswald said he would be coming downstairs. A few minutes later, Bill Shelley and Charles Givens saw Oswald on the first floor, at around 11:50. Then, 10 minutes later, Eddie Piper also saw Oswald on the first floor. Williams began eating his lunch on the sixth floor at right around noon and didn't leave the floor until around 12:15 or 12:20. Since Oswald was seen by Piper on the first floor at noon, and since Williams was on the sixth floor at noon to eat his lunch, the only time Oswald could have gone up to the sniper's nest was after Williams came back downstairs at 12:20.

And then we have the fact that Victoria Adams and the two women who were with her were heading down the stairs about 20-30 seconds after the shooting and they neither saw nor heard Oswald on the stairs, as confirmed by the Martha Jo Stroud memo.

[Mark Ulrik]

But the "CAL" and "Made Italy" markings are in dark black letters. I can understand a small amount of doubt about the "Made Italy" marking, but CE 139's "CAL" marking is dark and obvious enough that it should show up on the enlargement of Lt. Day's rifle, but there's not the slightest trace of it in the enlargement.

I don't think the enlargement is "quite blurry." It looks fairly clear to me, certainly clear enough to see the dark and obvious "CAL" marking if it were there. The enlarged area where the "CAL" marking should appear has a lighter part and a darker part, yet there's no trace of the marking. If it had been there, at least part of it would be visible in that enlargement.

I don't think this is even a close call.

Just look at the images in David Josephs' article. They speak for themselves. I find his article convincing. If you think he's wrong, you should provide some photos that contradict the ones in his article.

Are you saying you don't see the noticeable ridge on the flange behind CE 139's "Made Italy" stamp? Where is that ridge on the flange on the Lt. Day rifle? And what about the differences in the flange-to-sight distances between the two rifles? You don't see that? This can't be dismissed with an appeal to sunlight and angles.

You need to look at the (unenhanced) images yourself and not rely blindly on David Josephs. There may be some amount of residue of what appears to be white paint, but those letters were almost certainly never painted black. The same goes for the "CAL.6,5" inscription.



I'd like to see you explain what you meant by the scope being "different". You haven't commented on the composite graphic that I posted earlier. I wonder why.

As for the ridge, I guess I found it, but why should we necessarily be able to see it in the blurry Allen photo? Ditto with the "CAL.6,5" inscription.