Did G-2 Encourage LHO to Perp the JFKA?

[John Corbett]

JC--

I am no fan of the Soviet Union then, or Russia now.

But the word "rational" covers a lot of ground.

Trying to start a life in Russia might speak to an ideological bent, in an otherwise rational person.

That is, no one has ever said LHO was schizo, or fabricated memories, or misunderstood basic instructions, etc. Indeed LHO, as Marine, was advanced into relatively high-end radar work at the Atsugi airbase in Japan.

I doubt some whacko would be able to do that.

I do regard someone shooting at major public figures, or any innocent person, as likely mentally ill, even if lucid. I am a layman in these matters.

Tough call on LHO. The DPD'ers who interviewed him post-JFKA thought him lucid, perfidious and abrasive.

As for low-level DGI, G2 or Apha-66'ers, they might regard LHO as very useful.

I don't believe Oswald was insane in a legal sense, but he clearly wasn't playing with a full deck.

[Lance Payette]

LP--

You are making the irrational assumption that state and private actors always make rational decisions.

Why did Puerto Rican nationals try to assassinate then-President Truman in 1950? Surely, if successful, such an assassination would have only backfired.

Remember, when ideology and nationalism, or ethnocentrism, or ethnic bias get involved, rational thought and behavior often goes out the window. 

The Alpha-66 crowd said that they had been betrayed by JFK, at BoP, and their friends and comrades died for nothing.

The G2-DGI'ers knew that JFK had been trying to assassinate Castro for years.

A couple-three hotheads....a couple guns...all you need.

As for LHO being "nutty"...that might be viewed as a plus. A nutty LHO's testimony might be taken with a grain of salt, and more-easily dismissed, providing plausible deniability.

Anyway, I am not sure LHO was regarded as all that nutty pre-JFKA.

I think a more careful distinction needs to be made between (1) "Castro and/or G2" being behind the JFKA, (2) "Castro and/or G2" encouraging the JFKA, and (3) "a couple of angry pro-Castro wackos who might've thought they were doing something helpful" encouraging Oswald to kill JFK. They all seem to get blended together in the "Castro/Cuba" narrative. Only #3 has any plausibility and would account for the irrationality I'm talking about.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Why would the Cubans even suggest to Oswald that he assassinate JFK when they couldn't have known about the opportunity fate would deal him. Maybe they said to him,, "Hey, Lee. On the off chance that somebody JFK happens to ride past your workplace in a slow moving open top car, why don't you whack him for us."

Huh???

Because Oswald lived in Dallas, a likely campaign stop for JFK in the upcoming election. Because JFK's trip to Dallas was announced on September 13, nine weeks in advance of the trip.

And why in the world would the Cubans have assumed that Oswald could only do the shooting if JFK rode by his workplace?

Of course, you are assuming a priori that Oswald was the gunman and that the Cubans would have recruited him to be the gunman, whereas the Odio evidence shows that anti-Castro Cubans were trying to frame Oswald for the assassination weeks in advance of the shooting.

Also, the released HSCA Lopez-Hardway report shows that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City to try to further paint him as a pro-Soviet, pro-Castro Marxist.

MTG: Thanks for your comments.

As I understand Russo, he thinks the Cubans encouraged LHO to assassinate JFK. Russo stops short of saying, "I have evidence of Cuban intel on-the-ground cooperation with LHO on 11.22."

I think you're forgetting some of Russo's arguments. For example, he presents evidence that suggests Oswald was supposed to get a ride to Cuba from Red Bird Airport in Dallas after the assassination, and that pro-Castro Cuban Quinton Machado cut a deal with Oswald to bring him to Cuba after the shooting (Live By the Sword, pp. 308-309).   

In any case, even if Oswald had done the shooting after "only" being encouraged to do so by pro-Castro Cubans, this would still constitute a conspiracy; this would still mean he was not a "loner"; and this would make the Cubans who urged him to do the shooting "accessories before the fact"--and they would have risked being arrested, charged, and prosecuted for murder in the second degree.