JFK Assassination Forum

In his internal critique of the draft of the Warren Report, WC attorney Wesley Liebeler spent considerable time addressing the questionable claims regarding the rifle and Oswald's marksmanship, including Marina's coached tale about his allegedly sighting the scope on his porch in New Orleans:

7. The statements concerning Oswald's practice with the assassination weapon are misleading. They tend to give the impression that he did more practicing than the record suggests that he did. My recollection is that there is only one specific time when he might
have practiced. We should be more precise in this area, because the Commission is going
to have its work in this area examined very closely.

8. On the top of galley page 51 we have that statement about Oswald sighting the telescopic sight at night on the porch in New Orleans. I think the support for that proposition is thin indeed. Marina Oswald first testified that she did not know what he was doing out there and then she was clearly led into the only answer that gives any support to this proposition.

9. I think the level of reaching that is going on in this whole discussion of rifle capability is merely shown by the fact that under the heading of rifle practice outside the Marine Corps appears the damning statement that "Oswald showed an interest in rifles by discussing that subject with others (in fact only one person as I remember it) and reading gun magazines". . . .

You can't leave a rifle and scope laying around in a garage underfoot for almost 3 months, just having brought it back from New Orleans in the back of a station wagon, and expect to hit anything with it, unless you take the trouble to fire it and sight the scope in. This would have been a problem that should have been dealt with in any event, and now that it turns out that there actually was a defect in the scope, it is perfectly clear that the question must be considered. The present draft leaves the Commission open to severe criticism. Furthermore, to the extent that it leaves testimony suggesting that the shots might not have been so easy out of the discussion, thereby giving only a part of the story, it is simply dishonest. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NwjxgWlJ77Y6wFFj0Vr7hbi8C9muDZOc/view?pli=1)

Indeed, it is, but that has never stopped WC apologists from repeating the myth of an easy shooting or stopped them from ignoring the critical need to sight-in the scope before the assassination, not to mention their refusal to face the fact that the ammo that hit JFK's head behaved nothing like FMJ ammo (the kind of ammo Oswald allegedly used).

When Could Oswald Have "Zeroed" (Sighted-In) the Alleged Murder Weapon?
https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,4543.0.html

The 1967 CBS Rifle Test: More Evidence Against the Lone-Gunman Theory
https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,4580.0.html

What Would a Valid Lone-Gunman Rifle Test Look Like?
https://www.jfkassassinationforum.com/index.php/topic,4589.msg170647.html#msg170647

Why do so many people have a psychological need to believe the Earth is round? Why do so many people have a psychological need to reject the idea that 9/11 was an inside job masterminded by Bush and Cheney to provide an excuse for war? Why do so many people have a psychological need to believe the Moon landings actually happened?

It is just so humorous to see lone-gunman theorists get on here and pretend that their minority view on the JFK case is the rational, enlightened view when 2/3 to 3/4 of the Western world rejects it, when we've had hard physical evidence of conspiracy for decades now, and when the last official government investigation into JFK's death concluded that he was killed by a conspiracy, that there were two shooters, and that one of the shooters fired from the grassy knoll.

FYI, most people who recognize that JFK was killed by a conspiracy originally believed the Warren Commission's Oswald-acted-alone tale.

Interesting. Revealing. Silly. So you claim there has been a massive Russian conspiracy that has carried out disinformation operations for decades to convince the American people and Western Europeans that JFK was killed by a conspiracy.

Oh, the irony.

Dear Comrade Griffith,

As Tennent H. Bagley points out in his book, Spy Wars, we humans are very good at deluding ourselves and at being deluded by others.

You seem to be a prime example.

How many times have you read psycho Garrison's On the Trail of the Assassins and watched Comrade Stone's JFK, anyway?

-- Tom

Why do so many people have a psychological need to believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy?

Why do so many people have a psychological need to believe the Earth is round? Why do so many people have a psychological need to reject the idea that 9/11 was an inside job masterminded by Bush and Cheney to provide an excuse for war? Why do so many people have a psychological need to believe the Moon landings actually happened?

It is just so humorous to see lone-gunman theorists get on here and pretend that their minority view on the JFK case is the rational, enlightened view when 2/3 to 3/4 of the Western world rejects it, when we've had hard physical evidence of conspiracy for decades now, and when the last official government investigation into JFK's death concluded that he was killed by a conspiracy, that there were two shooters, and that one of the shooters fired from the grassy knoll.

FYI, most people who recognize that JFK was killed by a conspiracy originally believed the Warren Commission's Oswald-acted-alone tale.

Have sixty-six years (it started in 1959) of KGB* disinformation, "active measures," and mole-based strategic deception counterintelligence operations had anything to do with it?

Interesting. Revealing. Silly. So you claim there has been a massive Russian conspiracy that has carried out disinformation operations for decades to convince the American people and Western Europeans that JFK was killed by a conspiracy.

Oh, the irony.

False defector-in-place in 1962 / false (or perhaps rogue) physical defector to the U.S. in 1964, Yuri “The KGB Had Nothing to Do with Oswald in the USSR” Nosenko, was polygraphed three times: April 1964, October 1966, and August 1968.

The questions for the first two tests were drawn up by the Soviet Russia Division (which “incarcerated” Nosenko from April 1964 to September 1967), and those for the third test were drawn up by probable KGB “mole” Bruce Solie of the mole-hunting Office of Security.

Polygraph expert Richard O. Arther was retained by the HSCA to analyze all three tests and Nosenko’s answers (and attendant “reactions," if any).

He determined that the 1966 test was the most reliable of the three, and that the 1968 test was "atrocious."


The following is an excerpt from Arther’s 1978 report:


During the October 18, 1966, examination, Nosenko was asked 32 questions in which the name Oswald appeared. On my blind analysis, I selected the following questions as containing valid indicators of emotional disturbances, which are usually indicative of lying:


1. Did you receive special instructions about what to tell the Americans about the Oswald case? (NO)

2. Was Oswald recruited by the KGB as an agent? (NO)

3. Did the KGB consider Oswald abnormal? (YES)

4. To your knowledge, did Oswald talk to a KGB officer in Mexico? (NO)

5. Is your contact with the Oswald case part of your legend? (NO)

6. Did you hear of Oswald prior to President Kennedy’s assassination? (YES)

7. Did you hear of Oswald only after President Kennedy's assassination? (NO)

8. Did you personally order [Rastrusin], in 1959, to collect material on Oswald? (YES)

9. Did the KGB instruct you to tell us Oswald was a bad shot? (NO) 

10. Did the KGB give the Oswalds any kind of help in their departure from the Soviet Union? (NO)

According to Marina, Oswald used dry-fire his rifle on their front porch in New Orleans. Normally one uses no bullets when dry-firing or uses special blanks. A small number of people however might use live rounds, at least in the bottom of the clip (with empty shells in the top of the clip), in the belief this would mimic the correct weight of a rifle in a live-fire situation to include the weight of the bullets.

Using live rounds like this in the bottom of the clip with dummy rounds at the top of the clip is dangerous however as one might miscount how many times they have dry-fired the rifle and then accidentally fire off one of the live rounds in the bottom of the clip.

There is suggestive evidence Oswald might have been using live rounds in this reckless manner in New Orleans while dry-firing. The below video highlights a rarely mentioned characteristic that was observed on the spent shells (and also on the one live round found in Oswalds rifle) found on the 6th floor of the TSBD. Apparently the mechanism inside the Mannlicher Carcano rifle which holds the live rounds has a bent piece of metal under the live rounds that acts like a spring forcing the bullets upwards after each previous shell has been ejected following the working of the bolt action. Because the bottom bullet in the clip is in contact with this lifter spring piece of metal when it is forcing the bullets upwards, the spring leaves a slight scrape on the bottom bullet.

If one were to load the Mannicher Carcano clip with say 6 rounds fresh out of a box of bullets (the clip holds a maximum of 6 rounds) or in the case on 11/22/63 when it was only loaded with 4 rounds, only the bottom bullet in the clip would be in contact with the lifter spring. Therefore only the bottom bullet of the 4 would end up with the scrape from the lifter spring. The last bullet in Oswald rifle (the one that was never fired) did indeed have this scrape mark as one would expect. However, also two of the spent shells found on the floor of the snipers nest also had this scrape mark.

This would apparently suggest that at some point in the past, two of the bullets that were fired at JFK had at some point in the past been loaded into the rifles clip and been the bullet at the bottom of the clip directly in contact with the lifter spring, then been scraped by the metal spring as a result, and then taken back out of the rifle only to be later used in the assassination on Nov 22nd 1963. It paints a picture of live rounds being repeatedly put into the rifle and then being taken back out.

Is it possible Oswald had repeatedly loaded live rounds into his rifle in New Orleans while dry-firing the rifle, and then taken them back out after the dry-firing exercise, and this is how the bullets got the scrape marks?

Most people familiar with firearms would find dry-firing using live ammo in the bottom of the clip completely reckless, though a small number of people might do it. This reddit thread has people giving their opinion: https://www.reddit.com/r/CCW/comments/1h57ja3/dry_firing_with_weight/

Here is the video outlining the scrape marks on the bullets:

P.S. Is anyone familar with the practice of dry-firing a rifle. Is it possible to eject a full round (ie casing with bullet still attched) from a rifle by working the bolt?

The fact that 3 of the casings recovered (one of which was the casing which still had the bullet in it) had scrape marks, this would appear to suggest that when Oswald was dry-firing the rifle in New Orleans, he only had a limited number of bullets available and so had to keep using the same bullets, hence why 3 of the 4 casings discovered in the snipers nest had scrape marks.

Therefore, we should not be surprised that no bullets were ever found among Oswalds possessions other than the ones found in the snipers nest. The scrape mark being present on so many of the casings in the snipers nest arguably suggests that whoever owned this rifle did not have many bullets.

All we can do is guess what actually happened. My guess is that if those are marks from the spring loaded follower in the clip, then the more likely scenario would be that he had loaded those cartridges when he was actually going to fire the rifle. That could have been for target practice or for zeroing in the scope. If for one reason or another he didn’t need to fire all of the cartridges, then unloading them (still unfired) could have left the marks in my opinion. I think that you probably agree that dry firing on the screen porch with live ammunition potentially getting inadvertently fired is way too risky. I would seriously doubt that LHO would have been that reckless under those circumstances.