Well, in his defense (sort of) there has been the theory suggested (most notably by James Reston, Jr.) that Oswald was aiming at Connally because he, as Secretary of the Navy, had turned down Oswald's request to change his discharge status.
Of course, just because someone offered it and someone was willing to publish it doesn't mean it's implausible plausible. Impossible? I guess not.
But I think it's absurd to think that if the sniper was shooting at JFK that he would try to hit him in the back and not kill him.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/11/was-lee-harvey-oswald-just-bad-shot/Kevin Drum - November 22, 2016
Is there anything more troubling the Hooverized FBI and hyper defensive SS, CIA, & private PTB could have done that would persuade you to move generally near my position,
Gosh, they've (FBI, CIA, & PTB "plants" of the WC, Ford, Dulles, McCloy, Sen. Cooper) made it awfully difficult to conclude what actually happened!
From Robert Oswald's 1967 book:"I spent about half an hour talking to Mike Howard of the Secret Service.
Mike Howard cut in. "We'll see what we can do for you," he told me.
They went up to see Lee, and I continued my talk with Mike Howard..."
2. Reclaiming History, pg 220
Found in: JFK Books
"Juvenile Bureau comes in and takes the two women to another room so that Marina can nurse the infant Rachel in privacy.115
Meanwhile, Secret Ser- vice agent Mike Howard approaches Robert.Agent Howard wanted to know whether Robert thought that Lee had shot at Gover- nor Connally because of the dishonorable discharge` the Marine Corps had..."
Golly! Doesn't the sabotage, alteration, and or concealment of key evidence and the conflicts of interest of some inserted into... assigned to participate in the investigation, from FBI and CIA agents right on up to Warren Commissioners tend to make conclusions mere biased guesses?
The "Hosty Note" and Oswald's, "little green book" are certainly "textbook" examples of what I am talking about,
along with how all of the "tinkering" meshed so nicely with Oswald's sudden death....https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKshanklin.htm
Gordon Shanklin
...The Federal Bureau of Investigation discovered that Hosty's name and phone number appeared in Oswald's address book. J. Edgar Hoover was worried that this indicated that Oswald had been working closely with the FBI. That he might have been an FBI informant on the activities of left-wing groups such as the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Instead of passing Oswald's address book to the Warren Commission, the FBI provided a typewritten transcription of the document in which the Hosty entry was omitted...
https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/25166-has-this-been-discussed/?tab=comments#comment-384853
David Von Pein - posted August 22, 2018
....It's probably a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald's address book, which is Commission Exhibit No. 18....
https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/html/WH_Vol16_0031a.htm
There are several pages not photographed in CE18, and page 17 is one of the missing pages (which is the page that Reston says had LHO's "I Will Kill" list on it). But you'll notice that pages 8, 9, 10, and 11 are not there in CE18 either. My guess would be that those various pages are missing from CE18 because they probably had nothing written on them at all. Therefore, the Warren Commission didn't bother putting those blank pages in the official Commission Exhibit.
But I cannot see how anyone could claim that the omission of those address book pages was part of any kind of cover-up by the Commission (or by anyone trying to frame Oswald), because if such an "I Will Kill" list really had been in Oswald's own address book (with the names of both John Connally and General Edwin Walker on such a list), such a thing would certainly be pretty good circumstantial evidence of Oswald's guilt, and it would also go a long way toward debunking the CTers who claim Oswald never took a shot at either of those men in the year 1963.
I have to agree with Jim DiEugenio on this one --- James Reston is "off the wall" here. But I do have to give Mr. Reston credit for recognizing one solid and evidence-based fact (regardless of motive): Lee Harvey Oswald did shoot JFK and Governor Connally.
If anybody's interested, I've got a 1988 ABC-TV interview with James Reston (and John Connally) archived in my video collection. Here's the link....
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0KFei3W7bGOQW9VVVhLY0l4enM/view
And, sorry David, it isn't simply about Oswald's culpability, it is about the investigators being divorced from ethics and accountability to the degree they obstructed justice and the result is, to this day, we do not know to a high degree of confidence WTF actually happened, even as far as whether Priscilla was "just a journalist" who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, repeatedly, or whether or not Oswald was actually in Mexico City, or whether Ruth Paine's contact with Frederick Merrill of the Department of State had anything to do with Merrill and his father's association with H. James Rand and his father, considering Rand was responsible for Robert E. Webster attending the Moscow Science Fair.
At some point, doesn't the stench overwhelm the "spin"?
https://www.pressargus.com/news/20180220/secret-service-agent-remembers-jfk-assassination---part-i
Secret Service agent remembers JFK assassination – Part I
Feb. 20, 2018
....He and the others arrived at Parkland where he saw Dallas P.D. officers with pistols in their hands. He and other agents entered the hospital and spread out. He asked one of the agents (perhaps Jack Ready) how Kennedy was doing. “It’s bad, he’s really hit,” said the agent to Howard.
A few minutes later it was announced Kennedy was dead. Aide Kenneth O’Donnell told now-President Lyndon B. Johnson he was now the President. Howard said LBJ came out of the room holding his shoulder, likely because his Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood pounced on him in the car during the shooting.
Next the casket was loaded and started to be removed, which created a scuffle. Dallas County Medical Examiner Dr. Earl Rose insisted that the body stay there for autopsy. The Kennedy entourage would have none of it. After a confrontation the body was taken to Air Force One at Love Field. Howard watched as the casket, LBJ and others boarded the plane. “I was at the base of the stairs,” he said.
Soon Howard recognized Federal Judge Sarah Hughes who had come to officially swear-in Johnson. “I had cases in her court before, so I knew who she was,” Howard said. After the planes left for Washington, D.C., Howard was told to return to Fort Worth to interview a suspect.
The suspect had been seen at a filling station with a rifle and scope in the backseat of his vehicle. Police found him and took him in for questioning. They were getting little information from him until Howard arrived. He entered the interrogation room and sat down in front of him. The man said the rifle was his father’s and he had gotten it from a repair shop. While at the store he decided to purchase a shotgun, thus the guns in the car. Howard asked him what he was doing in Dallas. “He said none of your business,” Howard said. At that point an exhausted Howard had enough of the cocky suspect, pulled his revolver, cocked the hammer back and convinced the man it would be in his best interest to talk, which he did. Turns out the suspect had picked up a girl in Dallas and spent the night in a hotel. Thereafter the man was released.
Part II of the story comes next week when Howard goes back to Dallas, gets in on the interrogation of Oswald and protects the Oswald family on orders from President Johnson.
https://www.pressargus.com/news/20180227/secret-service-agent-remembers-jfk-assassination---part-ii
Secret Service agent remembers JFK assassination – Part II
Tuesday Feb 27, 2018
...Soon Howard got another assignment. President Johnson had called to say he had decided the Oswald family needed protection from potential harm. “I was the only person available at that time. I was just standing there and Mr. Sorrels said to go find them and put them in protective custody,” Howard said.
Charles Kunkel, a D.C. agent, came to town and joined him on the assignment. So together they protected Oswald’s wife Marina, their two very young children, Oswald’s mother Marguerite (who Howard didn’t have much good to say about) and Oswald’s brother Robert.
The agents found out Life magazine reporters had the Oswald’s holed up in a hotel room. They waited outside for the reporters to leave, then rushed in, scooped them up and took them to a secret location.
A mutual friend of the Oswald’s and the Secret Service, Peter Gregory, was brought in as an interpreter because Marina spoke little English. Over the next several days they spoke with the family, put a report together and sent it to Washington.
Part of what they reviewed was Oswald’s notebook. Howard said it contained statements that Oswald would kill FBI agent James Hosty, John Connelly, Gen. Edwin Walker and vice president Nixon. I asked Howard of his impression of Marina. “She was a scared little girl, but more intelligent than Oswald ever dreamed of,” he replied.
Howard understood her to be a registered pharmacist in Russia and wanted to come to the U.S. “That’s why she married Lee Oswald. She knew she made a mistake after she’d been married to him for a week,” Howard said.
Marina told him that Oswald would have blackouts, come out of it and slap her. He added that Oswald had mental problems, tantrums, according to the impressions Marina gave him. Asked why she stayed with him, Marina told the agents she felt she didn’t have a choice; didn’t have anywhere else to go (eventually she moved in with Irving, Texas, resident Ruth Paine where she lived at the time of the assassination, while Oswald lived in a rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley St. in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas).
Howard said Marguerite didn’t’ have much to say except that she had important papers at her house, which the agents obtained. They turned out to be newspaper clippings and other papers about her son in Russia, Howard said.
Of that week-long experience Howard said, “That was a hundred years of my life.” Marina and Howard eventually became friends; he was a person whom she would turn to for advice from time to time. Like when the English attorney/author Michael Eddowes sought her permission to exhume Oswald’s body.
Eddowes theorized that the Oswald that came back to the U.S. in 1962 was not the Oswald that arrived in Russia in 1959. Instead, a Russian agent came to America. Howard advised her to allow the exhumation to end the matter. This took place on Oct. 5, 1981, and proved the body was the real Oswald.
I asked him where he was when he heard nightclub owner Jack Ruby killed Oswald in the D.P.D. basement. “I was with Marina at that time. We were in a car going to Ruth Paine’s to pick up some things for Marina. We heard it over the radio,” said Howard.
Marina wanted to go to the hospital to see the body, which they did.
Howard helped with getting a casket, vault and preacher for the Oswald funeral. Media personnel served as pallbearers.
I asked Howard about Warren Commission documents that stated a few minutes after the assassination, two local law enforcement officers encountered Secret Service agents behind the picket fence atop the grassy knoll; that they said they were Secret Service agents and showed credentials.
The problem with that is that Secret Service agent Sorrels, according to his statement to the Commission, said he was the first agent back at Dealey Plaza, about 20 to 25 minutes after the shooting.
So, how could agents have been encountered in just a few minutes? Were they impostors? Howard said, “We didn’t have anybody up there behind that fence.
“That’s my opinion. There wouldn’t have been Secret Service agents there behind that fence. There should have been.” He then added that some people like to have attention.
“Everybody wants to get into a book,” he said.
Do you have any reservations about the Commission’s findings, I asked? “Oh no. They tried their best with what information they had. They failed to put one thing in there that was a dead ringer and that was what was in his notebook, where someone had torn out the page where he said he was going to kill these people. Someone tore that page out between the time it left our hands and when it got to the Warren Commission. It (the notebook) went through the FBI, which is who we turned it over to.”
There was much more I wanted to ask Howard, but we had to conclude the interview because he had another appointment. We didn’t even get to his time of protection for the Johnson family. He invited me back for another visit which will hopefully happen soon.
