JFK Assassination Forum

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not the facts. No different in JFKA.

Oh, I agree. The issue is that Lance Payette not only pretends to be an expert but goes to the extreme of questioning the mental capacity and integrity of anyone who disagrees with him, including genuine experts who've been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and who've been studying the JFK case for years.

Recently he accused Dr. David Mantik of being a "character" who sees things that no one else sees, when in fact many scholars have endorsed Dr. Mantik's research and when Dr. Mantik is one of the most highly qualified experts to ever examine the JFK case. Payette also recently made unsavory attacks against Greg Doudna, one of the most honest, respected, and careful JFKA researchers of all time, accusing him of having "loose screws," of being part of the "lunatic fringe," and of not caring if his argument "makes sense."

Such unseemly verbiage is considered inexcusable and juvenile even coming from a genuine expert; it is even more discrediting and inexcusable coming from an amateur who hasn't published a single book or article on the case and who doesn't even maintain a website on the subject.

Another thing that Blakey's pro-conspiracy critics overlook is that Blakey could only go as far as the committee would let him go. The committee members were the ones who had the final say on the conduct of the investigation, on the wording of the final report, and on which documents were sealed and which were not.

For example, the Final Draft Report, which Blakey approved, then underwent revision, including by the CIA. The final published version watered down many valid statements in the Final Draft Report. For instance, the Final Draft Report said the following about the evidence of Mafia involvement:

There is solid evidence that Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante — three of the most important targets for criminal prosecution by the Kennedy administration — had discussions with their subordinates about murdering President Kennedy. Associates of Hoffa, Trafficante, and Marcello were in direct contact with Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed the "lone assassin" of the president. (Final Draft Report, HSCA, p. 274)

This was a perfectly valid, factual statement, as many scholars have proved (e.g., Dr. Richard Mahoney, Dr. David Kaiser, Dr. David Scheim, and Lamar Waldron). But, this blunt statement did not make it into the published report.

Because the committee members could not stomach a fifth shot and a third gunman, Blakey insisted that the apparent gunshot impulse pattern at 140.3 on the dictabelt be ruled a false alarm, even though it passed the echo-delay matching test, and even though 8 of its 10 impulses matched the impulses of one of the Dealey Plaza test shots.

The problem was that this impulse pattern occurs 1.05 seconds after the 139.27 impulse pattern, and the alleged murder weapon simply could not have been fired that quickly. Thus, this shot would have had to be fired by another gunman shooting from behind (possibly from the nearby Dal-Tex Building or from another window on the sixth floor, keeping in mind that several witnesses reported seeing two men on the sixth floor shortly before the shooting).

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not the facts. No different in JFKA.

I don't come here for humor. What entails your research to dispute his? I've yet to see you do it or show it in this thread. I don't know why I'm responding because it appears you're just arrogant enough to feel like it's benneath you to counter. How about countering instead of the personal attacks? We should just assume everyone on this site is familiar with your research on this subject?

Definition of Research. Research is a systematic and intentional process of investigation designed to discover new knowledge, validate existing theories, or solve specific problems. It relies on structured methodologies to collect, analyze, and interpret data, ultimately contributing to a broader or generalizable understanding of a topic

Lance Payette has no published research to cite. He's published nothing on the JFK case--no books, no articles, online or otherwise. He maintains no website on the case. He merely bounces around from forum to forum on his crusade to uphold his minority view that JFK was killed by a lone gunman.

On previous occasions, he has actually said that anyone who believes JFK was killed by a conspiracy suffers from a form of mental illness because they must have a malfunctioning brain, defective neural pathways, a warped mind, etc., etc.

I still remember being surprised in the early days of my research into the JFK case to see Norman Mailer say in a TV interview that he could have gotten Oswald acquitted in a trial. In 2015, Jeremy Gunn, the former general counsel for the Assassination Records Review Board, said he believed Oswald would have been acquitted--found not guilty--if he had stood trial. Said Gunn,

If we actually ask the question was Oswald guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, I am convinced that Oswald would have been found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. To me there is just no question he is not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

What led Mailer and Gunn to say these things? Answer: There are gaping holes and numerous problems with the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald. Here are just a few of them:

-- The Dallas post office where the alleged murder rifle was supposedly picked up should have retained the signature of the person who picked up the rifle for four years. However, the FBI said the signature form was "missing" when they tried to obtain it from the post office.

Somebody misplaced a piece of paper. BFD. We have a paper trail proving Oswald ordered the rifle. We have pictures of him with the rifle. The rifle was found at his workplace. The rifle had his palm print on it. The rifle had fibers matching the shirt he was wearing when arrested. His fingerprints were on the top of boxes where a shooter was seen and shells were found that matched his rifle. His palm and fingerprint were on the bag found next to the sniper's nest. But we're supposed to disregard all of that because somebody misplaced a piece of paper. Some reasonable doubt.

-- The alleged murder rifle was ordered under the name "A. Hidell." Yet, Oswald stipulated on his PO Box form that "Lee H. Oswald" was the only person authorized to receive mail from his  box. Moreover, U.S. Postal regulations required that "Mail addressed to a person at a PO Box who is not authorized to receive mail shall be endorsed 'addressee unknown' and returned to sender."

A government employee didn't follow a rule to the letter. Gee, that never happens. [/quote]

It should also be pointed out that the FBI was unable to find anyone at the post office who recalled giving Oswald the large package that contained the mail-order rifle. Additionally, the money order that was allegedly used to buy the rifle was purchased at a time when Oswald was at work.[/quote]

How many packages do you suppose a USPS employee in a big city handle in the course of one day. Do you really think one of those employees would remember handing Oswald a package 8 months earlier? I thought these were suppose to be REASONABLE doubts.

-- Oswald supposedly carried his disassembled rifle into the TSBD in a long paper bag that he allegedly made from wrapping paper and tape from the TSBD. However, no such bag appears in any of the official crime scene photos of the sixth-floor sniper's nest, and the first police officers on the scene did not see it there. For example, Sergeant Gerald Hill told the WC that the only paper bag he saw was a "small lunch sack" and said, "... if it was found up there on the sixth floor, if it was there, I didn't see it" (7 H 65).

Silly. A picture was taken of a cop taking the bag out of the TSBD.

DPD Detective R.D. Lewis showed Buell Wesley Frazier the long paper bag supposedly found in the sniper's nest. Frazier told him "he did not think that it resembled ... the crinkly brown paper sack that Oswald had when he rode to work with him that morning..." (FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 17, p. 100) Frazier got the best look at the bag that Oswald carried that morning.

Frazier said he didn't pay much attention to how Oswald carried the bag. Why the hell would he? Why would that detail have seemed the least bit important AT THAT TIME.

WC defenders not that Oswald's partial right palmprint and partial left index fingerprint were found on the bag. Yet, this raises an obvious question: How could Oswald have left only two partial prints on the bag when he supposedly made it himself using paper and tape from the TSBD, carried it with him to the Paine home, used it to wrap his rifle, carried it into the TSBD, and unwrapped it off his rifle on the sixth floor?

Fingerprints don't last forever, especially on absorbent materials. Here is what AI has to say:

"The type of surface plays a significant role; non-porous materials like glass, metal, or plastic can preserve fingerprints for weeks, months, or even years if undisturbed. Porous surfaces such as paper or fabric absorb the residue, causing prints to fade more quickly, often within hours or days."

If you dispute this explanation, I'm sure I'd have no problem finding a specific source.

Oswald worked at the TSBD and handled boxes and wrapping paper as part of his job. It is likely that the DPD either found wrapping paper that Oswald had touched and used it to make the large paper bag or they made the large paper back and manipulated Oswald into handling it during one of his interrogations. Either scenario would explain why only two partial Oswald prints were found on the bag.

WTF???!!! You are getting desperate. That's about as asinine as anything I've ever seen your write and that is a high bar.

If Oswald had actually made the bag and carried it as claimed by the WC, his prints would have been all over it--he certainly would have left more than just two partial prints on it.

Your ignorance is showing. AGAIN!!!

Oswald told the police that the bag was a regular small brown grocery bag from a grocery store and that it merely contained his lunch and nothing else. There are compelling reasons to believe he was telling the truth.

You're getting comical. What reason would Oswald have to lie??? Oh, maybe because he was facing a capital offense.

-- WC defenders point out that Marina Oswald "identified the rifle in testimony to the Warren Commission during its 1964 hearings." When asked, "Is that the scope that it had on it, as far as you know?", Marine said "Yes" (1 H 119). However, when she was interviewed months earlier by the Secret Service, Marina said the only rifle her husband ever owned did not have a scope. In fact, she said that before she saw the sixth-floor rifle on TV, "she did not know that rifles with scopes existed" (CD 344, p. 24).

The scope was detachable. It could easily be put on and put back on the rifle as needed.

Needless to say, this also calls into question the backyard rifle photos, which Marina allegedly took (although in later years she insisted they were not the photos she took). Thus, it is no surprise that the backyard photos contain impossible variant shadows that no one has ever been able to duplicate, despite repeated attempts.

Asinine. The photos have been authenticated. Investigators even found negative. Marina even wrote "Hunter of facists" on he back of one of the photos. [/quote]

-- WC defenders note that the FBI said it found a "tuft of cotton fibers ... clinging to the butt of the rifle" and that the fibers "matched those in the shirt worn by Oswald the day of the assassination." However, the shirt to which the fibers were "matched" was the one Oswald was wearing when he was arrested, but this was not the shirt he wore to work that day. [/quote]

Wrong again. He was wearing that shirt when he got on McWatters bus. His former landlady Mary Bledsoe recognized him and noticed the shirt he was wearing had a hole in the elbow. The shirt Oswald was wearing when arrested had a hole in the elbow. It also had a transfer from McWatters bus in the pocket of that shirt. So how the hell do you explain that if he was wearing a different shirt at work that day?

During his interrogations, when he knew nothing about any fibers found on the rifle, Oswald told police that between the time of the shooting and the time of his arrest, he returned to his rooming house and changed his shirt and pants. Oswald's statement was corroborated by Dallas Policeman Marrion Baker. Baker saw Oswald on the second floor of the TSBD less than two minutes after the shooting and saw him again at the police station a few hours later. Baker told the WC that when he saw Oswald the second time, "He looked as though he did not have the same thing on" (3 H 262).

Gee, we can believe Oswald or we can believe all that forensic evidence of his guilt. I guess that's how we should look at every murder case. Ask the suspect if he did it and if he says no, then set him free. Why would someone lie about something like that.

In other words, an FBI man, not realizing that Oswald had changed shirts after he left the TSBD, took the shirt he was wearing when he was arrested and rubbed the butt of the alleged murder rifle into the shirt to plant fiber evidence against Oswald.

We have a choice here. We can believe the real evidence or we can believe crap like this that you just pulled out of your ass.

-- WC defenders claim that Oswald's palmprint was found on the barrel of the alleged murder weapon and that this proves he was the assassin. Leaving aside the highly doubtful, extremely suspicious circumstances of the alleged discovery of the latent palmprint, it should be pointed out that the man who supposedly (and belatedly) found the palmprint, Lt. J. C. Day, told the WC the print was an "old dry print" (26 H 831) and said in a 1994 interview that the print "had been on the gun several weeks or months" Anthony Summers, Not In Your Lifetime, p. 84).

Anthony Summers is full of crap too. Do you have any credible sources for his amazing assertion?

Suffice it to say that when the FBI's fingerprint expert, Sebastian Latona, examined the rifle a few days later, he found no indication that the rifle had even been processed for prints and saw no prints on the rifle barrel, even though Lt. Day claimed the palmprint was still visible on the barrel after he allegedly lifted it.

When a print is lifted, it doesn't remain on the surface it was lifted from.

-- We still here some WC apologists cite Vincent Scalice's 1993 claim that he positively identified the fragmentary fingerprints on the alleged murder rifle's trigger guard as Oswald's prints. Scalice claimed he found 18 "points of identity" by using a composite of four enhanced Dallas police photos.

Just who are these WC apologists who have cited that. It has been known for 62 years that the partial prints on the trigger guard did not conain enough matching points for the FBI to say positively that the prints were Oswald's. That doesn't mean they were not, only that it could not be firmly established by strict FBI standards.

Yet, when Scalice examined the trigger-guard prints for the HSCA, he said they were "of no value for identification purposes" (8 HSCA 248). Moreover, when FBI latent print expert George Bonebrake reviewed the prints for the PBS documentary Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?, he concluded the prints were "simply not clear enough to make an identification." In addition, in 2003, an FBI laboratory computer software analysis of the prints failed to match the prints with Oswald's prints (Donald Thomas, [i[Hear No Evil[/i], p. 85).

You are trying to insinuate that because the partial prints didn't contain enough matching points for a positive identification, that they did not belong to Oswald. The truth is if the prints had not matched, the FBI could have said they were not Oswald's. They didn't do that.

-- Voice stress analysis (VSA) of Oswald's declarations of innocence while in police custody indicate he was telling the truth when he said he didn't shoot anybody. VSA polygraphs are more effective than traditional polygraphs because they can be administered without the person's knowledge and/or can be administered after the fact from recordings of the person's statements. George O'Toole, an ex-CIA agent, discussed the VSA results of Oswald's statements in his book The Assassination Tapes.

Neither voice stress analysis or traditional polygraphs are a reliable means of determining if a person is lying. Both produce false positives and false negatives.

A forensic psychologist who is also an expert in body language has likewise concluded from video footage of Oswald in police custody that Oswald was telling the truth when he said he didn't shoot anybody:

You are arguing that Oswald would have been acquitted at trial yet you are trying to make that argument by citing evidence that never would have been admitted at trial. How silly is that?

All you have demonstrated with this long list of nonsensical arguments is that you are really, really bad at weighing evidence. Most CTs have that same shortcoming. You have given us one more example of what I have said about CTs for decades. CTs don't want to explain the evidence. They want to make excuses to explain away the evidence. You don't even make good excuses. Yours are half-assed. You think these silly excuses are a valid reason for dismissing all the rock-solid evidence of Oswald's guilt. Evidence that would have been admitted at trial.