JFK Assassination Forum

Again: Where's the evidence that Mann and/or Thomas were punished for asking questions about what Oswald did in Mexico City? I don't see any. And Mann being appointed Assistant Secretary of State and, at the same time, head of USAID is not for me any transfer. It's two promotions. He left the posts in 1967 because a new Administration was coming in.

I see no evidence of him being punished for his inquiries.

Here is Mann's interview (summary) with the HSCA. Nowhere does he mention anything about being punished. He says that Dean Rusk ordered the State Department officials to cease inquiring about this question of what Oswald did in MC. Nothing about the CIA or FBI or others inquiring.

Here is the interview: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=109665#relPageId=2&search=Mann

Here, for me, is a key point:



Right, so Rusk and others (unnamed) were worried that any investigation would have revealed US covert operations in Mexico City. Nothing about worries about WWIII.

Just an update on the war in Ukraine as of May 2026.

Ukraine is mostly targeting Russian troops, or military or oil resources in the rear. Russia is mostly targeting Ukrainian civilians, in the hopes of getting Ukraine to eventually throwing in the towel.

How likely are the Russians to succeed? How inevitable is the "inevitable Russian Triumph"?


Well, the U.N. estimates that the total Ukrainian civilian deaths since February 2022 to the present to be under 16,000. And about a third of these deaths occurred in the first month, mostly in face-to-face encounters with Russian troops. Think "Babi Yar" more than Coventry or Dresden, where the crews might think they are taking out military targets, to some extent.

If this enough? Well, Ukraine has more than half the population of Great Britain or Germany during World War II and during that time there were something like 65,000 and 500,000 civilian deaths, respectively.

Russians would need to increase their killing abilities by a factor of ten to approach the levels Germany had in World War II, which was not near enough to get Great Britain to throw in the towel.

It certainly appears that Russia is not going to win this war.

And given Russia's, or the Soviet Union history, this is not surprising. What is their success against a country the size of Ukraine without powerful allies?

* Poland, 1920, failure
* Finland, 1939 failure

Their successes, always with the help of powerful allies:

* Poland in the 1700's, with the help of Prussia and Austria.
* Ukraine in the 1700's, with the help of Austria.
* Poland in 1939, with the heavy lifting being done by Nazi Germany.
* The Baltic States in 1940. These were three separate countries, not one country. And the threat of getting split up with Nazi Germany even if they make a great stand may have been a factor in
   deciding not to fight. Again, having a powerful ally on their side.
* Eastern Europe in 1944-1945, with a huge amount of help from the U. S. and
   Great Britain.

On their own, not so good. Inefficiencies usually increased a lot by corruption. Corruption, a consistent theme, except during the Soviet era, which is long gone. Consistently, Russian lack of 'Quality' seems to outweigh Russian 'Quantity', time and time again.

Why do people believe that 'Quantity' will always overcome 'Quality' when that notion is so poorly supported by history?

Why should we expect the 2020's to be any different?



As far as making peace is concerned, for the "benefit" of the Ukrainian people, remember, a third of the Ukrainian civilian deaths occurred in the first month. Death rates did not go down after Nazi Germany achieved "peace" in Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine but shot up greatly once the front lines moved on and the Germans had solid control of those regions during 1939-1944. Something similar can be expected if Ukraine loses.

In any case, the decision to accept a Russian "Peace" should be made by the Ukrainians, not by us, even if we "claim" we are on the side of the Ukrainian

Still derailing the thread - and proud of it! - but I omitted from my list of Oswald puzzlements taxi driver Whaley's WC testimony that after Oswald was already seated in the cab an older woman approached and asked if she could have it, whereupon Oswald cracked open the door as if to exit and (Whaley vaguely recalled) offered the cab to the woman.

An escaping Presidential assassin politely offers his escape cab to a stranger? Well, he may have done so - but it's certainly curious.

Which reminds me: This is Whaley's actual cab. Such a cab is my candidate for the "police car" that pulled up in front of Beckley and toot-tooted, as described by Earlene Roberts. The Beckley property had 22 bedrooms, with 18 rentable rooms, and most of the rentable rooms were behind the main house. Pulling up to the curb and toot-tooting is common taxi behavior. Case closed, you're welcome.

deleted.

Oh, good, we're back on track!

Why does that matter?

Well, because if Oswald actually could drive, then this part of LN dogma is incorrect and new possibilities are opened up. If Tippit was actually doing some of the odd things he has been reported as doing, then this opens up the possibility that the encounter with Oswald was less routine than LN dogma would have us believe.

Even if one wants to confine all JFKA discussion strictly to the events of November 21-24, there are mysterious aspects that are hard to explain and that at least suggest the LN dogma may not be the full story. You apparently are satisfied it is the full story and that anyone who disagrees with you is credulous if not stupid. Even though I pretty much accept the LN narrative, there are aspects that leave me scratching my head and wondering if the LN narrative is the full story. At this point, thanks to Jack Ruby and an agenda-driven WC, all we likely ever will have is speculation - but there is the possibility some new kernel of actual evidence will come to light.

Oswald's preternatural calm in the encounter with Baker ... his calm and cockiness in the legendary Fritz's attempts to break him ... his insistence he didn't kill anybody ... his telling Robert "don't believe the so-called evidence." Just this is enough in itself to give me pause as to what was actually going on. Unlike so many, I don't have any psychological or emotional need for the LN narrative to be correct or for the case to be closed.

It reminds me of a photo that appeared in the now defunct Columbus Citizen-Journal back in the 1970s during another wave of UFO sightings. The photographer had tossed the cap of a roll of film into the air and photographed it against the Columbus skyline to show how easy it was to fake these photos, even before the days of AI. Does anybody ever stop to wonder why all these UFOs seem to be a different make and model. Have the space aliens sent an entire armada of spaceships to the Third Rock from the Sun?

Every area of weirdness, including religion, is plagued with hoaxers and fraudsters. Typically, however, they are eventually exposed. I am guessing the photo in the Columbus Citizen-Journal didn't fool any serious ufologist for very long, The level of photographic analysis to which the most credible UFO photos have been subjected might astonish you. The late Bruce Maccabee was an optical physicist employed by the Navy, and he was not easily fooled - nor was he alone. A serious analysis of a UFO incident or photo makes for tedious reading, even for me.

UFOs do not all seem to "a different make and model." For starters, we don't know that they are a make and model of ANY nuts-and-bolts craft; we don't know what they are at all. Perhaps they are holograms or simulations. The fact is, dating back to ancient history the disk shape has predominated, to the extent that Carl Jung speculated that this was an archetype originating in the collective human unconscious (Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky).

FWIW, this photo - from British Columbia in 1981 - and the circumstances in which it was caught on film make it one of the most credible of unexplained UFO photos (and there are many such photos). It and the photographer have withstood all analysis. See http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case241.htm (summary), https://www.nicap.org/reports/811008vancouver-isle_jse_01_2_haines.pdf (analysis in the Journal of Scientific Exploration).

The photographer, Hannah McRoberts, was on a family outing; the UFO photo negative was surrounded by family outing-type photos; and Hannah was "the niece of one of Canada's leading nuclear engineers, a man in charge of a multi-billion dollar electrical generating complex."