JFK Assassination Forum

It gives credibility to the theory that it struck something hard on its base once.   I don't see how that supports the SBT which struck something hard at least twice.   

The only way it could be consistent with the SBT is if it struck something hard more than once but in the same place on its base.

Seein' as how Connally's fifth rib was soft, thin, and pliable, the only hard thing CE-399 struck was the radial bone in Connally's wrist.

Given the fact that that kind of bullet has a tendency to start tumbling / yawing when it exits something soft like a block of ballistics gel or a human neck, the unusual deformation of CE-399 lends credence to the so-called Single Bullet Theory.

It gives credibility to the theory that it struck something hard on its base once.   I don't see how that supports the SBT which struck something hard at least twice.   

The only way it could be consistent with the SBT is if it struck something hard more than once but in the same place on its base.

He appears to have carried a disassembled rifle in a backpack and his pants.  Walking toward the event he had pronounced limp like a section of the rifle was hidden down his pants leg.  He puts the rifle together in the building.  Afterward he is running like Jessie Owens and jumping off the building with no limp.  He is someone from the local area who was familiar with the campus.  Likely will be found a short distance away.  A liberal loon motivated by social media TDS hate and conspiracy theories for sure.

  Still early, but we are now hearing this guy had a car parked there at the college. Yet, he chose to run into the woods, ditch the rifle there, and then have to return to the college and drive the car out of there? I am also hearing about the rifle being wrapped in a towel when it was found. Who takes the time to wrap a rifle inna towel only to discard it in the woods? And law enforcement now says he was wearing 2 different sets of clothing while inside the college that day. Lotta different questions need to be answered.   

Is this how you explain in your own mind the fact that the WC's three Master-rated riflemen, using the alleged murder weapon itself, did not even come close to duplicating Oswald's alleged performance? This suggests to me that you are immune to fact and reason when it comes to the JFK case.

Do you understand what the NRA rating of Master means? Even the Army's Ronald Simmons told the WC that the Master rating was far above the Marine Corps rating of Sharpshooter. There's simply no comparison.

The only way you can expand the firing time to 10-11 seconds is to make the silly assumption that your supposedly highly skilled lone gunman was not only foolish enough to fire almost straight down with his first shot but was stupid enough to fire when a traffic-signal pole or a tree branch was smack-dab in the middle of his center of aim, or very close to it. The tale gets even worse and sillier when you try to explain the manhole-cover-grass bullet hole and the Tague curb bullet mark and wounding with a fragment from this mythical shot.

(Trying to attribute the Tague bullet mark and wound to a fragment from the head shot is just about as absurd, given that any fragments would have exited the top or right side of the head, would have been heading away from the Tague curb/Tague, and would have had to clear both the roll bar and the windshield before starting its amazing 260-foot journey.)

If there was a shot in the missing-frame range of Z110-117 (or pseudo Z110-117), how in the world do you explain the Z145-155 shot and the Z186-190 shot? Let's take the Z145-155 shot, since the Z186-190 shot is covered adequately in the HSCA PEP report, in PEP member William Hartmann's HSCA testimony, and by Olson and Turner in the Journal of Forensic Sciences:

-- There is a noticeable blur episode in the Zapruder film at around Z158.

-- Connally starts to turn his head rapidly to the right at Z162.

-- A 10-year-old girl named Rosemary Willis, running along the grass to the left of the limousine, begins to noticeably slow down between Z162 and Z174, and she is standing still by no later than Z187. When she was an adult, Ms. Willis explained that she stopped running because she heard a loud noise behind her.

Are you seriously going to argue that the Z158 blur episode and Connally's and Rosemary Willis's reactions were in response to a shot at pseudo Z110-117? Really?

The problem is that you can't objectively, credibly analyze Oswald's alleged shooting feat and all the shot reactions that refute it because you are chained down by the three-shots-only myth.

Dear Comrade Griffith,

I guess you don't want to answer the question.

Pity that.

Carry on.

"Former" KGB officer Vladimir Putin cherishes what you do.

-- Tom

Bumping this to get the thread back on track.

Benjamin Cole posted:

Oswald as a KGB Asset or Double Agent?


There is an interesting footnote in “The Man Who Knew Too Much” a book largely about Richard Case Nagell, by JFKA researcher Dick Russell:

 “A May 15, 1973, memo in the files of researcher Richard Popkin recounts a conversation with former CIA official Victor Marchetti in which Marchetti reportedly offered "a theory he claimed to have heard that fits with his own picture of the chaos in the CIA; namely that the KGB has infiltrated the CIA and the CIA has infiltrated the KGB so it is impossible at the present stage to tell who is who (he mentioned a case of having been sent to meet somebody and being shown all sorts of identification and then being totally unable to tell whether he was dealing with a U.S. or Russian agent). Marchetti thinks it is the KGB branch of the CIA that killed Kennedy and that the U.S. CIA is too embarrassed to investigate and reveal the real state of affairs."     

This long-ago revelation of Marchetti’s, now more than five decades old, has been re-vivified in recent years by John Newman’s book, “Uncovering Popov’s Mole,” which posits that senior CIA’er Bruce Solie was a KGB asset, and was running LHO.

(For background on Marchetti, see https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmarchetti.htm. Some of you may have memories jogged: Richard Popkin authored “The Second Oswald” book in 1966.)

It is difficult to challenge Marchetti’s observations as the mere fluff of an armchair historian or conspiracy buff.

Marchetti first worked for Army Intelligence in 1951, attended college, and then joined the CIA in 1955, rising to senior positions before retiring in 1969, and thereafter, perhaps most famously, writing about the JFKA for the Liberty Lobby’s “The Spotlight” publication.

Marchetti’s also wrote the book “The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence,” and appears to have bona fides as an earnest JFKA researcher, and one who had actual “street cred.”

Marchetti’s and Newman’s observations also resonate with the narrative of still-enigmatic Richard Case Nagell, who claimed to be a double-agent (US-Soviet) who was assigned to interdict LHO’s mission, on assignment from Moscow, to assassinate JFK.

In 1992, Carl Oglesby, the nearly iconic leftist and author of many books, including several on the JFKA, authored a forward to Russell’s book, in which he wrote, “We do not yet know for example, whether Oswald was being run by the CIA or KGB, by the ONI or GRU or some as of yet unknown bureau of the Cold War, one side of the other. Nor do we know for a fact who Oswald himself believed was running him. All we may guess at, according to Russell, is that what Oswald believed to be true and the actual truth might in fact have been two very different things.”

There are other murky details linking Lee Harvey Oswald to the KGB, especially the Russian intel agency in Minsk, where LHO lived for two years while in the Soviet Union.

A KGB officer there said that he “ran” LHO, and that Marina Oswald has been a KGB asset, but that she snapped her ties to the spy agency after marrying LHO and going to the US.

From CIA files:

“IJDECANTER [Sergei Papushin] (a CIA asset) knew Yurshak as Belorussian KGB in Minsk in the early 1980s. Yurshak was in his late 50s then. When asked if Yurshak was bragging, he said, "no...I think that 100 percent he was involved in this Oswald case...He was stuck to his one point of view. First, never had any kind of task for Oswald to kill Kennedy. Second, that he was actually recruited and he ran him. And third, Marina was our swallow and then she rejected cooperation.”

Of course, just as one might suspect the CIA would scrub its files of connections to LHO, so one would expect the KGB or Belarus agencies to do the same.

Gimlet-eyed fans and critics of the “limited hangout” defense-tactic might believe this KGB admission that it was running LHO, but not involved in the JFKA, was in that category of dissembling.   

Add to the bubbling stew the more-recent book “Operation Dragon” written by former CIA Director James Woolsey in 2021, along former Romanian intel officer Ion Mihai Pacepa. The pair posit that LHO was KGB asset, had been brainwashed in Russia to perp the JFKA. Curiously, Woolsey and Pacepa echo Nagell’s narrative, that officials in Moscow wanted to recall LHO, but could not.

Of course, one could dismiss Woolsey’s book as written with a Cold War agenda in mind; indeed, it is the reverse mirror image of the Old Guard Left Wing and present-day MAGA-Moscow narratives of the JFKA, that blame the CIA and globalist cabals for the president’s murder.

In JFKA-land, too often the ideology writes the agenda, and the agenda writes the narrative.

But there is more on LHO as a KGB asset: During his visit to Mexico City in late September 1963, LHO met Valerie Kostikov, senior KGB’er said to be in charge of “wet work’ in the Western Hemisphere. Yes, that includes assassinations. (There were two other KGB’ers who met with LHO at the same time, all were filmed and recorded for a 1993 PBS special, in which they confirmed they met the real LHO).

Not only that, it is now known that Kostikov had assets in the US, assets that Kostikov also met down in Mexico.

“Kostikov himself was a known Soviet intelligence agent, suspected of contact with covert Soviet assets, including Americans, operating inside the United States. He had been under CIA observation and surveillance in Mexico City, as well as during his travels in Mexico, and was known to have met with a Soviet asset (designated as “Tumbleweed”/a European then living in the United States) that the FBI was monitoring inside the United States. As recently as September 1963, Kostikov had even been placed under surveillance while traveling in northern Mexico,” report Larry Hancock and David Boylan in their recent superb book, “The Oswald Puzzle.”

(It should be noted that Alan Dale recently related, within the Education Foundation-JFK assassination forum, that Newman does not suspect LHO of a role in the JFKA. Additionally Hancock and Boylan do not regard LHO as a suspect in the JFKA, although he may have been manipulated in surrounding events.)

A circumspect JFKA assassination buff does not blithely challenge Newman, nor Hancock and Boylan, the latter two who contend LHO was not a CIA asset, but only a misfit and a Marxist who wanted transit to Cuba. All three are serious researchers, intelligent, earnest and non-partisan, and appear lacking in agendas—the best investigators we have, IMHO.

And yet—how it is possible to understand the JFKA without explaining LHO’s involvement in the JFKA? And after 60 years of researchers hunting for a CIA operational connection to LHO or the JFKA, why has nobody found one?

One might also ponder why does the pub crawler, returning to home at night, look for his lost keys under the street lamps? That’s where the light is. But perhaps not where the keys are.

JFKA researchers pursue leads under the CIA street lamp—because  there is no light under the KGB street lamp, or that of G-2, the Cuban intel service said to have infiltrated the Cuban exile community with agents (or double agents). But the keys could be there, in the dark.

Even Marchetti, embedded with the CIA during the very years that, some contend, elements with the agency had plotted JFK’s demise, was unsure if the CIA had been involved in the JFKA, or CIA assets working for the KGB.

The HSCA

Many dismiss the WC, and justifiably so. It strikes me as more of a prosecution than an investigation.

That said the HSCA, full of smart and skeptical staffers, concluded it was LHO who fired the lethal shots on 11/22, and that there was likely a second gunman, on the GK, who either missed or fired a diversionary shot.

I happen to disagree with the HSCA. Nased upon my layman's review of the Z film, I think Gov. Connally was shot a Z-295 and JFK at Z-313...less than one second apart. Both from behind. Draw your own conclusions.

Angleton

As noted by many, James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s counterintelligence chief and putative mole-hunter, was the WC’s main contact or source of information at the agency. This has raised suspicions, but also makes sense in light of the observations of Newman and Marchetti.

If LHO was being run by KGB moles inside the CIA, then it would be Angleton who could best find that out, and massage information flowing to the WC to hide that reality—as suggested by Marchetti.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, there are many captivating versions of the JFKA, both LN and CT, but none compelling.

The problem started on 11/22, when LHO’s confederates were not apprehended, and the problem was compounded on 11/24, when LHO was shot dead.

The WC was a posthumous prosecution, although the HSCA tended to confirm many of the WC findings.

As a result, the only JFKA suspect known beyond reasonable doubt to be in Dealey Plaza on 11/22 was LHO, so this leaves open speculation as to the ID of his co-conspirators or manipulators.

Serious researchers have ventured LHO’s confederates or handlers on 11/22 were Mafia, CIA, KGB, G-2, working for LBJ, anti-Castro exiles, splinter groups such as Alpha 66, or former spook Ed Lansdale on a revenge mission for the Diem assassinations.

After 60 years of reading about the JFKA, and maybe a dozen years reading primary documents, I have never reached a conclusion.

But the fact that CIA files are open, but not those of the KGB or G-2, should merit caution.

. . . . . . . . .

Tom Graves replied:

A few rando comments:

1) Sergei Papushin (IJDECANTER) was probably a false defector. Even "useful idiots" Milton Beardon and Sanda Grimes suggest as much in their respective books, The Main Enemy and Circle of Treason.

2) In addition to his "clearing" a false (or rogue) physical defector to the U.S., putative KGB staff officer Yuri Nosenko, via a bogus polygraph exam and a specious report, his hiding Office of Security files on Oswald from the Church Committee, and his helping probable "mole" Leonard V. McCoy "lose" Nicholas Shadrin to KGB kidnappers in Vienna in 1975, a reason for believing Bruce Solie was a KGB "mole" is the fact that he told the FBI's liaison to the CIA, Sam Papich, on 4 November 1959 that the CIA knew nothing about Oswald's defection when in fact it had already received at least one cable about it (from the Navy Department), and it was probably Solie who arranged in-advance with the Records Integration Division and the Office of Mail Logistics for all of the anticipated incoming non-CIA cables on Oswald's future defection to be sent to the Office of Security's Security Research Staff (where he was Deputy Chief) rather that to where they would normally go --- the Soviet Russia Division.

3) TUMBLEWEED / AEBURBLE was Guenter Heinz Schulz, a German national crop duster from Snyder, Oklahoma, who had been a recon pilot for Hitler, captured and interred by the British, recruited by the NKVD, released by the Brits, ostensibly "flipped" by the CIA, and shared with the FBI. He was sent to Mexico City by the FBI/CIA to gain information on the operations of his ostensible (or actual???) boss, KGB Colonel Valeriy Kostikov, who was suspected by the CIA and FBI of being the Western Hemisphere head of Department 13* for only one reason -- because Kremlin-loyal triple agent KGB Major Aleksei Kulak (J. Edgar Hoover's shielded-from-CIA FEDORA) at the FBI's NYC field office had told the FBI in 1962 that Kostikov's charge (pardon the pun) at the U.N., Igor Brykin, was Department 13.

4) MFF's statement, "AEBURBLE (TUMBLEWEED)'s information was what made the connection between Valeriy Kostikov and the KGB's 'Department 13'" is incorrect. See above. All Schulz did was identify Kostikov from a photo.

5) In 2013, the CIA's official historian, David Robarge, wrote that the Agency never did determine whether or not Kostikov was Department 13.


*Assassinations and Sabotage department of the KGB's First Chief Directorate (today's SVR)


To be continued . . .