If I were a CTer, I'd do a deep dive into this ...

[Lance Payette]

I have officially retired from the JFKA Wars in the interests of my sanity. However, I happen to be finishing Gus Russo's Live by the Sword, the Kindle edition of which I bought in connection with my work on the Sportsdrome Gun Range. Russo basically accepts the LN scenario but with a high likelihood that Oswald's willingness to kill JFK was made known in Mexico City and actively encouraged by Castro’s people (even though the plan was to dump Oswald’s body in the Gulf of Mexico rather than fly him to Havana after the JFKA).

My immediate problem with this conspiracy theory was, "Why didn't Oswald do a whole lot of things more suggestive of his intent to kill JFK in the nearly two months between his return from Mexico City and 11-22-63? Why does the JFKA seem like such an unplanned last-minute decision?"

Russo does have Oswald doing several assassination-type things, including scouting tall buildings in Dallas and practicing at the Sportsdrome Gun Range. Since I am the world's leading expert on the Sportsdrome - well, sort of, anyway - Russo's credulous acceptance of everything related to it was enough to make me call into question the rest of his authoritative-sounding research. (In fact, ALL of the most dubious aspects of his research seem to be precisely those relating to Oswald being part of a conspiracy!)

But forget all that. All we’re talking about here is Oswald's mysterious inquiry about employment at the Alright Parking System at 1208 Commerce in Dallas (0.7 mile from the TSBD) and his exceedingly odd questions about the view from the roof. Russo seems to accept this as an actual Oswald sighting. Because I am officially retired from the JFKA Wars in the interests of my sanity, I am not going to be exploring or attempting to bust this potential factoid.

BUT IT IS DAMN WEIRD, and I would definitely be looking into it if I were a CTer. It’s the sort of weird little incident that probably has far more CT potential than the Bombshell Lunacy that Bombshell Loons like Certain People I Could Mention love to post here.

If it’s all entirely innocent, it still falls squarely into the category of “YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP” – yet another twist and turn to the JFKA that you’d laugh at it if it were in a really bad Agatha Christie whodunnit.

I won’t beat this to death because you can do your own research. At Michael Capasse’s JFK Boards, the mysterious “Tom Sorensen,” who may or may not exist, has done a nice job of summarizing and linking the relevant documents about halfway down this page: https://jfk.boards.net/thread/621/dead-ringer-lee-oswald?page=2. Russo did some follow-up interviews in 1993, and his discussion begins at Kindle Location 6,006 of his book.

In a nutshell, here is what will have you slapping your forehead and saying, “WHAT?”

1. Detective Bob Carroll of the Special Services Bureau of the DPD received information from a confidential informant that Oswald had applied for a job at Alright about two weeks before the JFKA.

2. The Special Services Bureau took the Alright sighting seriously. The piece at JFK Boards summarizes and links their several visits and reports.

3. From those reports, the witnesses’ photo identifications, and Russo’s follow-up, it certainly sounds like someone who looked very much like Oswald and gave the name Oswald did inquire about a job at Alright and weirdly asked about the view from the roof. His first reported visit was the evening of November 16, the day the Dallas Morning News first reported that JFK’s motorcade would go down Main Street (but did not mention Elm). He asked night manager Hubert Morrow about JFK’s motorcade and whether Main Street could be seen from the roof. He then returned the next day and asked cashier Viola Sapp about a job and the view from the roof. It’s hard for me to see what any conspirators would have gained by having an Oswald imposter go through this exercise.

4. “Oswald” did not fill out a job application. However, Detective W. S. Biggio went through the job applications and discovered that in early December a guy named Fred Kaiser Jr. had applied. Fred listed his last place of employment as the TSBD and told the general manager of Alright, Garnett Hallmark, that he had quit his job at the TSBD the day before the JFKA!

5. Fred Kaiser listed his address as 5230 W. Ledbetter and his emergency contact as Frankey Kaiser at the same address. He also, somewhat weirdly, gave Geneva Hine as a reference.

6. Frankey (or “Frankie,” according to the Warren Commission) Kaiser was Franklin Kaiser, who was still employed at the TSBD in a role similar to Oswald’s. While Fred “just happened” to quit the TSBD the day before the JFKA, Frankie “just happened” to be absent both the day before and the day itself; he told the Warren Commission he was having a tooth abscess worked on at the Baylor Dental College when the JFKA occurred. He did not mention Fred but confirmed that he lived at 5230 W. Ledbetter, which an FBI interview describes as a trailer park.

7. Mysterious Frankie is the TSBD employee who gave Oswald his order-filling clipboard. Mysterious Frankie is also the TSBD employee who later found Oswald’s clipboard on the sixth floor. Mysterious Frankie is also the TSBD employee who later found Oswald’s blue jacket in the domino room.

8. On the list of TSBD employees assembled by Detectives Westphal and Parks for Lt. Revill, Frankie Kaiser does not appear (nor does Fred, although presumably he had quit). Frankie’s name does appear on Hoover’s 4/3/64 transmittal of witness statements to Rankin, but Hoover notes that no statement was obtained from Frankie because he was absent from work on the day of the JFKA.

9. Fred and Frankie were twins. Neither resembled Oswald. Fred died in 2004 at age 65, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195093977/fred-kaiser, and Frankie died in 2018 at age 78, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/187187721/frank-kaiser. Freddie and Frankie sound like distinctly unsuspicious characters to me – but, hey, that’s exactly why they ARE suspicious, right?

That’s all I know and is as far as I’m taking this, but it does all strike me as damn weird and potentially a more fruitful avenue of CT-oriented research than, say, the Huge Gates or the Missing Brain. 

That's all for now and for the foreseeable future from the Prison of Rational Thought.

(I suppose it should be noted that Oswald practicing at the Sportsdrome and scouting tall buildings after JFK's trip had been announced would be entirely consistent with the LN scenario. It's the Kaiser stuff that's bizarre.)

[Lance Payette]

The inmates of the Prison of Rational Thought have asked me to confront those pesky and inconvenient questions How would that have worked? and What sense would that have made? Alas, I don’t have really good answers.

JFK’s trip to Dallas had been announced by the Dallas Morning News on September 26, the day Oswald was on a bus to Mexico City. According to Russo, JFK and especially RFK were almost out of their minds in their zeal to assassinate Castro as repayment for the embarrassment they had suffered at the Bay of Pigs. Their vendetta against Castro was, Russo says, personal, almost maniacal and borderline irrational. It was also, Russo says, well-known – in great detail – to Castro himself and to the entire Cuban community in New Orleans, both the anti-Castro exiles who couldn’t keep their mouths shut and the Castro agents who had infiltrated the exile community. Hence, even if Oswald were not part of any conspiracy, it’s likely his anti-JFK sentiments would have been at a fever pitch. He thus might well have raised the issue of killing JFK in Mexico City or simply had it in mind long before 11-22-63.

The Trade Mart as JFK’s destination was decided on November 14. On Saturday, November 16, the Dallas Morning News announced in general terms that JFK would be in a motorcade traveling “west on Main Street” to the Trade Mart “at noon.”

November 16 is the afternoon that Homer Wood and his son reported seeing Oswald at the Sportsdrome and the evening that Hubert Morrow said Oswald had visited him at Albright Parking. (In his interview with Russo, Morrow mentioned Oswald being dressed in jeans and a dirty white t-shirt and carrying a package that might have been a rifle.) November 16 is also the Saturday of the weekend that Oswald did not visit Marina at Ruth Paine’s house, so it all fits rather nicely. Oswald reads that the motorcade will travel down Main Street and begins practicing with his Carcano and scouting locations.

I actually like the idea, and find it very plausible, that the JFKA was not a last-minute decision by Oswald and that he in fact might have practiced with the Carcano and scouted locations along Main Street before it was known a few days later that the motorcade would pass right in front of the TSBD. This would be consistent with the level of preplanning he put into the attempt on Walker. Russo’s work seems to give Oswald a strong ideological (i.e., pro-Castro and anti-JFK) motive far beyond any last-minute, what-the-hell decision.

There are, however, obvious flies in the ointment:

If Oswald had his Carcano in his possession on or before November 16, why didn’t he just take it back to his rooming house – disassembled and wrapped in a jacket, for example – and how did he get it back into the Paine garage by November 21? Wouldn’t the trip to the Paine home with Frazier and the trip back to the TSBD have been far riskier than simply taking the pieces of the Carcano from the rooming house into the TSBD over a period of days from November 18th to the 22nd?

Or perhaps he did do this – but then what was the trip to the Paine home all about and what was in the “curtain rods” package? Was the trip the Paine home really just a last-ditch attempt to save his marriage and perhaps dissuade himself from carrying out the JFKA? But then we’re still left with what was in the package (that both Frazier and Randle were adamant was too small to be the rifle). Just the scope, perhaps? But the sightings at the Sportsdrome were definitely with a scoped rifle, so that doesn’t quite work.

It seems to me that the standard LN narrative still makes the most sense, but there are definitely some loose ends and it’s difficult to avoid the nagging suspicion that the standard LN narrative isn’t the full story. My guess is that something like Russo's work may be closer to the full story. On the other hand, CTers, Freddie and Frankie the TSBD Twins just might hold the key to the whole thing ....

Or maybe not.

[Benjamin Cole]

LP--

Great stuff. I think there was a report of someone handing the M-C to LHO "over the fence" at the Sportsdrome. I wonder what that means.

I suspect LHO knew someone with a car (same someone who perhaps gave LHO a ride the night he took a potshot at Walker?).

LHO planning the JFKA in advance neither refutes or confirms the LN narrative. Most people concede LHO had high IQ, and was familiar with weapons. He may have noted the trees on Elm St and sought a better vantage point.

It may be a couple G-2 guys assisted LHO on 11/22, or possibly manipulated him into being a lookout, on the TSBD6.

Did Bruce Solie have a way to communicate with G-2? I don't know.

[Tom Graves]

Did Bruce Solie have a way to communicate with G-2?

Do issues with "Maggie's Drawers," "The Single Bullet Theory," and/or "Back and to the Left," etc., prevent you from being able to visualize the following scenario?

Mole Solie sends unwitting LHO to Moscow to as an ostensible "dangle" to prevent "Popov's U-2 Mole" (Solie) from being uncovered, to tear the Soviet Russia Division apart, and to drive his confidant, protégé, and mole-hunting subordinate (Angleton) nuts. Marxist LHO comes home, tired of being jacked around by both the CIA and the FBI. Decides to kill General Walker to advance The Dialectic. Misses. Kills JFK to advance The Dialectic

[Benjamin Cole]

TG--

I can visualize the scenario you limned, except there is no evidence LHO ever interacted with the CIA, and he had only fleeting run-ins with the FBI.

It may be LHO was being run by Solie. John Newman suspects as much. AFAIK, there is not a shred of documented evidence, or even murmured whispers by CIA'ers, that Solie sent LHO to Minsk.

As stated, I suspect the shots that struck JFK and JBC were too closely spaced to have been fired by a single-shot-per-bolt-action rifle.

The dorsal entry wrist wound to JBC is peculiar. His right wrist no less.

Caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

[Tom Graves]

TG--

I can visualize the scenario you limned, except there is no evidence LHO ever interacted with the CIA, and he had only fleeting run-ins with the FBI.

It may be LHO was being run by Solie. John Newman suspects as much. AFAIK, there is not a shred of documented evidence, or even murmured whispers by CIA'ers, that Solie sent LHO to Minsk.

As stated, I suspect the shots that struck JFK and JBC were too closely spaced to have been fired by a single-shot-per-bolt-action rifle.

The dorsal entry wrist wound to JBC is peculiar. His right wrist no less.

Caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

Minsk, or Moscow?

[Benjamin Cole]

TG--

Verily, LHO lived in Minsk, Belarus. Near Belarus KGB HQ.