JFK Assassination Forum

I picked this up from one of my old posts at City Data Forum. I had forgotten about it.

Stanislau Shushkevich, who became the first President of Belarus after the collapse of the USSR, had been assigned to teach Russian to Oswald at the radio factory in Minsk (where my wife's sister and brother-in-law worked at the same time).

This is a long and pretty interesting interview from 2013 by Radio Free Europe. Shushkevich and the other instructor were, for some reason, under unbelievably strict orders as to what they could discuss with Oswald. Nevertheless, it sounds like they had a fairly informal and pleasant relationship. It sounds like he found Oswald a pretty dull and uninteresting/uninterested character.

When Norman Mailer visited Belarus and asked to see the KGB files, he (as President) asked the chairman of the KGB if he needed to be careful. The answer: "Absolutely not. Show him everything."

After the JFKA, he visited the Dallas area for other reasons. He's a CTer! "It is my absolute conviction that they found a passive, calm, compliant boy, and used him as the guilty one. As for the conclusions of the Warren Commission, I don't believe them one bit. I have studied them and I don't think [the assassination] was the work of my student."

https://www.rferl.org/a/interview-transcript-oswald-shushkevich-belarus-soviet/25172632.html

With all this in mind, if we are doubtful about the times given by Markham and Bowley, shouldn't we also question the accuracy of the DPD radio time stamps?

Well, sure. The whole "time thing" seems to me like a quest for certainty that just isn't possible.

Westbrook testified that he returned directly to the police station after Oswald was arrested in the theater (he didn’t arrive in his own car). So Barret’s account of Westbrook flipping through the wallet and asking him if he knew Hidell or Oswald couldn’t have happened at 10th and Patton.

Mr. BALL. Now, what did you do after that [arrest at theater]?
Mr. WESTBROOK. I went back to the city hall and resumed my desk.

This doesn't make any sense. Westbrook was at the Tippit scene before he went to the Texas Theater. So, if Barrett was indeed asked, by Westbrook, if he knew Hidell or Oswald it would have been before the arrest and it would have to involve another wallet than the one that was taken from Oswald in the car by Bentley.

But there is more to this story!

After Bentley took Oswald's wallet, he did not mention Hidell at all, which is strange because Gerald Hill testified that he told Bentley to grab the suspect's wallet for the purpose of identification. During a television interview Bentley was asked about the content of the wallet and he basically said there were only items in it that one would expect. I believe he mentioned a driver's license and a credit car, which by itself is strange. Also, there isn't any contemporary report by any of the officers in the car with Oswald that mentions finding a Hidell ID. Only during his WC testimony did Gerald Hill, who was sitting with Bentley (who was never asked to testify) on either side of Oswald on the rear seat of the car - say something like that he vaguely remembered hearing the name Hidell.

When Bentley arrived at the police station with Oswald, he was instantly taken to the hospital because of an injury to his leg. There isn't a single person in the police station that we know of, who confirmed or could confirm what happened to the wallet that Bentley took from Oswald. And this is where it gets complicated, because soon after Oswald was brought into the station, Gus Rose arrived after having been called in. He was the first DPD officer to speak to Oswald and just before that conversation took place an unidentified officer gave Rose a wallet and said it belonged to the suspect. And guess what, in that wallet there were two ID's, one for Oswald and one for Hidell.

So what's a possible explanation for this confusion? Could it be that Westbrook, after being present at Oswald's arrest, returned to the police station and told this unidentified officer to give the wallet that was found at the Tippit scene to Detective Rose? Obviously, in this scenario, the wallet Bentley took from Oswald would have to disappear and Bentley could never testify.

I believe it is possible that this is way the wallet with the Hidell ID was introduced as evidence, but if somebody can give be a better explanation or - even better - a solid chain of custody for the Bentley wallet, I'll gladly reconsider my opinion.

I doubt that. They would be taking out sites holy to Islam and would kill many fellow muslims. When the US accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner during the tanker escort operation in the 1980s, Iran dod not retaliate via terrorism. They agreed to international mediation and agreed to compensation.

Iranian nukes would likely be used as a deterrent to Israeli aggression as well as aggression from Sunni Arab states. At least they enrich their own uranium, rather than stealing it from the US and leaving a toxic mess that US taxpayers are still paying to clean up.

If Iran was the big boogyman, why did Israel sell them F-14 parts when Iran held our embassy hostage. Why did Israel agree to provide weapons to Iran during Iran-Contra?

Iran just murdered approximately 40K of its own citizens.  I'm pretty sure most of those were Muslims.  They have no regard for human life.   A throwback to ancient barbarians.  Allowing them to obtain a nuclear weapon and hoping for the best is not an acceptable plan.

Humm, well, the previous supposedly definitive analysis of the timing of the Tippit shooting, i.e., Dale Myers' "stop-watch" analysis in his book With Malice, says that Oswald did not have time to walk to 10th and Patton in time to shoot Tippit and theorizes that Oswald got a ride from an unknown person. Myers says Tippit was shot at 1:14:30, but you say he was shot between 1:15 and 1:16.

Is there a reason you failed to mention that T. F. Bowley said he arrived at the Tippit scene at 1:10 and that he knew this because he checked his watch when he got there? That's an important fact to omit, wouldn't you say?

Is there a reason you failed to mention that Helen Markham said she got to the Tippit scene no later than 1:08 and that Tippit had already been shot when she arrived? This is why she was certain Tippit was shot at 1:06 or 1:07. Markham said she always left her apartment at 1:00 to catch her regular 1:12-1:15 bus. She said she glanced at the laundry room clock after she left her apartment and that it read 1:04. She said it took her about two minutes to reach 10th and Patton.

Is there a reason you failed to mention that Domingo Benavides said that he did not try to use the police car's radio until "a few minutes" after Tippit had been shot because he was (quite understandably) afraid for his life?

You guys claim that Benavides waited in his truck for only a matter of seconds and not for a few minutes. But this flies in the face of common sense and ignores what Benavides himself initially said. If you were only 25-50 feet away from a shooting and feared you could be the next target, how long would you wait until coming out into the open? Nobody in their right mind would have come out of hiding so quickly in that situation.

Benavides told the WC he waited in his truck for "a few minutes" after he heard the shots and before he tried to use the police car's radio. Moreover, according to fellow witness Ted Calloway, Benavides told him the day after the shooting that

When I heard that shooting, I fell down into the floorboard of my truck and I stayed there. It scared me to death.

Years later, Benavides changed his story and told CBS he only waited a few seconds, not a few minutes. Predictably, you guys choose to accept Benavides' belated change of story and reject his original statements.

Two witnesses at the Texas Theatre, Butch Borroughs and Jack Davis, independently said that Oswald entered the theater before 1:10, and that he remained in the theater until he was arrested.

You place great emphasis on the police dispatch transcripts, but even Dr. Paul Hoch, one of the most careful scholars in the JFKA research community, acknowledged there is evidence the police dispatch tapes were edited, which renders the transcripts useless for determining when Tippit was shot. BTW, Dr. Hoch doubted the authenticity of the transmissions that supposedly explain why Tippit was in Oak Cliff in the first place, far out of his area.

I discuss Dr. Hoch's research at length in my article "Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?," available at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_j_022lJYli3B5Xyw8wLs-0nl6mDLo2t/view.

Is there a reason you failed to mention that Helen Markham said she got to the Tippit scene no later than 1:08 and that Tippit had already been shot when she arrived? This is why she was certain Tippit was shot at 1:06 or 1:07.

I don't think this is correct. When Markham arrived at the corner of 10th street and Patton she stopped to let a police car pass by. She then saw the officer call over his killer to the car window and had a conversation with him.
So, Tippit was not killed before Markham's arrival at the scene.

Is there a reason you failed to mention that Domingo Benavides said that he did not try to use the police car's radio until "a few minutes" after Tippit had been shot because he was (quite understandably) afraid for his life?

You guys claim that Benavides waited in his truck for only a matter of seconds and not for a few minutes. But this flies in the face of common sense and ignores what Benavides himself initially said. If you were only 25-50 feet away from a shooting and feared you could be the next target, how long would you wait until coming out into the open? Nobody in their right mind would have come out of hiding so quickly in that situation.

Benavides did indeed say he waited "a few minutes" but that can't be right, for one simple reason. Callaway, who wasn't far from the scene of the shooting, testified that he heard the shots and after watching the suspect come down the street ran to 10th street. The distance he needed to cover would have taken him approx a minute. So, if Benavides did indeed stay in his car for a few minutes, Callaway would have arrived at the scene before Benavides was able to get to the police car to use the radio.