Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  *The three prior assassinations of American presidents are compatible with the political motivation factor. Abraham Lincoln’s assassin (assassination on April 14, 1865), John Wilkes Booth, was a Confederate sympathizer. So were all of his co-conspirators. James A. Garfield’s assassin (July 2, 1881), Charles J. Guiteau, was a would-be officeholder who earlier had unsuccessfully sought to be appointed U.S. ambassador to Austria. Guiteau became enraged when Garfield failed to appoint him as ambassador to Austria. William McKinley’s assassin (September 6, 1901), Leon F. Czolgosz, was an avowed anarchist. (HSCA Report, pp.21–23; WR, pp.506–510)

  It should be noted that there is no such crime known as assassination, though by definition an assassination necessarily includes murder, which, next to treason, is the ultimate crime. The word assassination has come to mean the murder of a public official (e.g., Julius Caesar, Lincoln) or a public figure (e.g., Pancho Villa, Leon Trotsky), and hence, unlike a murder, its occurrence affects the lives of hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of people, and often the course of public policy and events. Because of this reality, and because of the empirical evidence, we can safely say that most assassinations have, as their primary motive, the changing of history. A personal hatred of the victim by the killer, present in the majority of murders, is frequently absent or of secondary importance in assassinations. Oswald’s killing of Kennedy was, of course, a classic assassination. Though we don’t know his motive, the evidence is lacking that he “hated” Kennedy.

  † Oswald’s brother Robert believed that he had gotten this trait from his mother, Marguerite, who he said “had an extraordinary idea of her ability and importance” and felt “the world should recognize her as somebody special and important” (Oswald with Land and Land, Lee, pp.23, 48). Marguerite, he said, “had certain characteristics that were so much like Lee. The time and circumstances always seemed to be against her…She wanted to be somebody. I think this was passed on to Lee” (Transcript of “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” Frontline, PBS, November 16, 1993, p.4).

  *However, as indicated earlier in the book, it is not clear from the context whether Oswald himself used the “ten thousand years” phrase, or Thornley came up with the words to convey the impression Oswald left with him.

  *Although Oswald may have liked Kennedy (see later discussion on why he would murder someone he may have liked), he revered Castro, and in any clash of interests in his mind, Castro obviously would have prevailed. “Fidel Castro was his hero,” Marina Oswald said about her husband (2 HSCA 252). Oswald was so taken by Castro, he even kept a picture of him on the mantel in his apartment in New Orleans (8 H 187, WCT Charles Murret). An anti-Castro Cuban in New Orleans, Celso Macario, recalls seeing a small placard around Oswald’s waist on which was written, “Viva Fidel” (HSCA Record 180-10030-10062). Indeed, as indicated earlier, Marina says that the alias “Hidell” was just a variation he used of “Fidel” (1 H 64).

  † American Assassins author James W. Clarke feels Oswald had more than one motive for the assassination, one being that he “hoped to prove his value to the Cubans by killing a president who had effectively intimidated and threatened their small nation.” Clarke broke down American assassins and would-be assassins into four classifications, Oswald, he said, falling into type two, assassins “with overwhelming and aggressive egocentric needs for acceptance, recognition and status.” Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was put into type one, assassins who “view their acts as a probable sacrifice for a political ideal.” (Clarke, American Assassins, pp.126, 14)

  *Remarkably, many major books on the assassination by Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists don’t even mention Oswald’s attempt to murder Walker. Not one word. A few examples: James Fetzer, Murder in Dealey Plaza; Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins; David Lifton, Best Evidence; David Scheim, Contract on America; Jerome Kroth, Conspiracy in Camelot; and so on.

  Many books mention the Walker shooting but treat it dismissively in a few sentences. For example, in Mafia Kingfish, John Davis says that “someone took a shot” at Walker, and Marina Oswald “later claimed” that it was her husband, but this contention “has never been conclusively proved” (Davis, Mafia Kingfish, p.135). Period. Michael Kurtz, in his book Crime of the Century, says only that the Warren Report stated that Oswald had tried to kill Walker, then adds, “The story of the attempt on General Walker’s life is beyond the scope of this book.” Why? “Obviously,” he writes, “it has little bearing on the question of whether or not Oswald shot President Kennedy over seven months later.” (Kurtz, Crime of the Century, p.124) Yes, indeed.

  *Writer Dwight Macdonald says that “the one real success in Oswald’s whole life seems to have been the assassination of President Kennedy” (Macdonald, “Critique of the Warren Report,” p.137).

  *However, Rome may be overgeneralizing here since, although dyslexia is primarily a reading disability and it is very unusual for a dyslexic to be an avid reader, we know Oswald read voraciously throughout his abbreviated adult life, and there is nothing in the record to suggest he had a difficult time reading the many books he got from the library. The only manifestation of his dyslexia seems to have been in his spelling of words. Indeed, whatever reading disability he may have had in his early youth, it was clear that by the age of thirteen, as shown in the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Oswald had overcome it, showing no retardation in reading speed and comprehension. (WR, p.381)

  *But whatever the ambiguity, there is little question that Oswald liked many things about Kennedy. Paul Gregory, a member of the Russian-speaking community in Dallas, said that Oswald “expressed admiration of Kennedy. Both he and Marina would say, ‘Nice young man’” (9 H 148, WCT Dr. Paul Roderick Gregory). George de Mohrenschildt testified that Oswald said Kennedy was “an excellent President, young, full of energy, full of good ideas” (9 H 255, WCT George de Mohrenschildt), and Oswald’s aunt, Lillian Murret, told the Warren Commission, “I think he said he liked him [Kennedy]” (8 H 153).

  *That Walker was Kennedy’s opposite was made clear in many pronouncements by the right-wing zealot. For instance, in a speech before the Annual Leadership Conference of the White Citizens’ Council of America on October 25, 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi, Walker declared, “The Kennedys have liquidated the government of the United States. It no longer exists…The best definition I can find today for Communism is Kennedy liberalism…He is the greatest leader of the anti-Christ movement that we have had as a president of the United States.”

  † I am assuming here that Kennedy’s fierce opposition to Cuba was not enough, by itself, to cause Oswald to kill Kennedy, which it may very well have been. Author Jean Davison, in her fine book, Oswald’s Game, perceptively points out what nearly all assassination writers have failed to do: although General Walker was on the Far Right and Kennedy was a moderate, even a liberal in the area of civil rights, they both were identical in one very important way to Oswald—their outspokenly strident opposition to his beloved Castro and Cuba. And if we know Oswald tried to kill Walker, most likely because of Walker’s belligerence toward Cuba, as they say in the law, a fortiori (all the more so) he would be willing to try to murder Kennedy, who, unlike Walker, had the capability to physically remove Castro from power. Did Oswald try to kill Walker over Cuba? Oswald, of course, hated anti-Communists. But Walker is the only anti-Communist (other than Kennedy) whom Oswald tried to kill. What set Walker apart from other anti-Communists? It may very well have been the emphasis in Walker’s heated rhetoric of overthrowing Castro, which Oswald, a diligent reader of the daily newspapers, would have known. The January 22, 1963, issue of the Dallas Morning News (the day after a federal judge in Mississippi dismissed charges against Walker for helping to incite the desegregation riots at the University of Mississippi the previous fall) quoted Walker as saying, “I am glad to be vindicated…Today my hopes returned to the Cubans…who long to return to their homes.” The February 17, 1963, issue of the newspaper quotes Walker at length
remonstrating against Cuba, calling Cuba “very significant” and the Cuban situation “unacceptable” to America. The caption for a March 6, 1963, article from the same paper (just over one month prior to Oswald’s attempt to murder Walker on April 10, 1963) was “One U.S. Division Could Free Cuba, Walker Claims.” The article read in part, “Former Major General Edwin A. Walker has called upon President Kennedy to oust Fidel Castro from Cuba. ‘I challenge the commander in chief of the United States of America to take one U.S. Army division, the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, N.C., properly supported and joined by Cubans who want to be free, and liquidate the scourge that has descended upon the island of Cuba.’” Those would be frightening words to a devoted and fanatical follower of Castro like Oswald.

  Notwithstanding the above, though Oswald would have detested everything about the right-wing extremist Walker, he did not appear to dislike Kennedy, and in fact admired him in some ways. And this is why I felt “I needed something more.”

  *Even if we were to reduce, for the sake of argument, the proof of Oswald’s guilt from absolute and conclusive (which it actually is) to only probable, as British author John Sparrow points out about Oswald’s guilt, “In order not to believe in the probable, there is so much of the improbable that [one] has to believe in” (Sparrow, After the Assassination, p.43).

  † Prosecutors like to argue in their final summation to the jury that “looking at the evidence as a whole” (or “the totality of the evidence,” or “all the evidence”) makes it clear the defendant is guilty. But in the case against Oswald, one doesn’t have to look at all or even most of the evidence to reach the conclusion he is guilty. Indeed, there are many individual things he did, like immediately fleeing the Book Depository Building after the shooting, killing Officer Tippit, et cetera, which by themselves point clearly to his guilt.

  *For instance, since we know that Oswald shot and killed Kennedy, we also know that questions such as, What is the small object resembling a bullet fragment that Dr. David Mantik has become obsessed with, believing it was planted in an autopsy X-ray to frame Oswald by indicating a shot from the rear? Whatever happened to the missing autopsy photos? Was Oswald a good shot or not? Why wasn’t Commission Exhibit No. 399 damaged more than it was? Whom did Roger Craig see running out of the Book Depository Building fifteen minutes after the assassination and getting into a Nash Rambler? Did Oswald have time to get to Tenth and Patton from his rooming house in time to kill Officer Tippit? Why, Drs. Gary Aguilar, Cyril Wecht, and Rex Bradford want to know, did a test bullet fired through a test skull cause more damage to the right side of the skull than Commission Exhibit No. 399 caused to the right side of Kennedy’s skull? What is the reason for the sharp dent on the lip of one of the three cartridge cases found on the floor of the sniper’s nest, which Josiah Thompson believes would have prevented it from being loaded into Oswald’s rifle?—and hundreds upon hundreds of other questions and problems the critics have with the case against Oswald—are all irrelevant. Why? Because we know that Oswald killed Kennedy. So by definition, there has to be a satisfactory answer for all of these questions and perceived discrepancies and problems with the case. This is not an opinion I am giving. This is an incontrovertible fact of life and logic. They would have relevance only if the guilt of Oswald hadn’t already been established beyond all doubt. But it has.

  *In a related matter, conspiracy theorists are fond of saying that there are just “too many problems and discrepancies” with the Kennedy case for Oswald to be guilty or for there to be no conspiracy. But actually, most of the “problems and discrepancies” in the case are not real but invented by the theorists. In any event, there are, as is normal and can be expected in all complex murder cases, some problems and apparent discrepancies—for example, some Dealey Plaza witnesses thinking the shots came from the grassy knoll. But you know what these same conspiracy theorists would argue if there wasn’t one problem or discrepancy in the case? That this was abnormal, that there are problems with all cases, that the case was “too perfect,” and for this to happen the case against Oswald must have been contrived by the authorities.

  *For years, conspiracy theorists have attempted to explain away Oswald’s fleeing the Book Depository Building by saying he probably “sensed” that he was being set up as a patsy. But when you ask them what evidence they have to support their speculation, or even what evidence they are aware of that may have caused Oswald to believe this, the silence is deafening. A typical example of this defense of Oswald comes from conspiracy theorist Susan Sloate, who writes that “anyone, realizing the President had been shot and that he himself might be blamed for it, would be frightened and insecure,” justifying, per Sloate, Oswald “leaving the scene of the crime at the first opportunity [and] going home to get a revolver, his only means of protecting himself” ( Fourth Decade, January 1995, p.22). But Ms. Sloate doesn’t bother to say why she believes Oswald had this realization. She is apparently opposed to even trying to support her fantasy with some evidence.

  In the book High Treason, the authors nakedly speculate that Oswald “knew he had been set up as the patsy, and so went home,” not being nice enough to their readers to say what basis they had for their speculation (Groden and Livingstone, High Treason, p.153).

  * Even without all the independent evidence proving that Oswald killed Kennedy, it was obvious that Oswald’s murder of Tippit alone proved it was he who murdered Kennedy. So obvious, indeed, that one of the arresting officers at the Texas Theater who had pursued Oswald to the theater because of Tippit’s murder, yelled at Oswald, “Kill the president, will you,” and another officer called in to police headquarters from the theater that “I think we have got our man on both accounts.”

  The HSCA “concluded that Oswald shot and killed Officer Tippit. The committee further concluded that this crime, committed while fleeing the scene of the assassination, was consistent with a finding that Oswald assassinated the President” (HSCA Report, p.59).

  * This palm print could have been placed on this portion of the rifle only when disassembled, since the wooden foregrip of the rifle covers the barrel at this point (WR, p.124; 4 H 260, WCT J. C. Day; Telephone interview of C. Day by author on August 29, 2002). And, of course, we know that Oswald’s Carcano had been disassembled when he took it to work in the paper bag on the morning of the assassination.

  †Recall that other than Oswald’s Carcano and the three expended shells from the Carcano being found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building, no other weapon, or even shells from another weapon, were found or seen anywhere else in Dealey Plaza.

  * Just one further observation about the .38 caliber revolver that was used to kill Tippit: As we know, many conspiracy theorists allege, without any evidence to support their allegation, that Oswald’s Carcano rifle was planted on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building by those who, they claim, framed Oswald for Kennedy’s murder. But what about the .38 caliber revolver? Oswald himself admitted during his interrogation that after the shooting in Dealey Plaza he went back to his rooming house and got the revolver, the same one he had on his person at the time of his arrest at the Texas Theater. Do conspiracy theorists want us to believe that the framers of Oswald stole Oswald’s revolver from him after he left his rooming house with it, murdered Tippit with the revolver, and then between the time of Tippit’s murder and Oswald’s arrest at the theater somehow got that revolver back into the hands of Oswald, where it was at the time of his arrest? But look, anything is possible.

  * Since you can’t frame a guilty person, what I’m about to say is unnecessary, but one of the very first thoughts I had when I started preparing for the London trial, I ended up articulating for the jury in my final summation. The backdrop is that my opposing counsel, Gerry Spence, was suggesting to the jury that Oswald was framed by sophisticated people; and there were the two facts that although Oswald was a good shot, he was not an expert rifleman, and though the Carcano was a decent rifle, it was not a great rifle. I
argued in my final summation to the jury in London, “I ask Mr. Spence, if the conspirators who [supposedly] framed Oswald were so sophisticated and intelligent, wouldn’t they make sure that the person they framed was someone whose skill with a rifle was absolutely beyond question, and wouldn’t they also make sure that the person they were seeking to frame possessed a modern, expensive rifle that unquestionably had the capacity to get the job done? Wouldn’t they have to know, in advance, that failing to do either one of these things would automatically raise a question about whether the person they were seeking to frame was guilty, and therefore be self-defeating? You don’t have to have a PhD in logic to know this. Even someone with not too much furniture upstairs would know this. Mr. Spence can’t have it both ways. If the people who set Oswald up were so sophisticated as to come up with this incredibly elaborate conspiracy—I mean, to the point where they had people, according to Mr. Spence, who could superimpose Oswald’s head on someone else’s body, they had imposters down in Mexico City, and so forth—if they were that bright, why weren’t they intelligent enough to know the most obvious thing of all? That you don’t attempt to frame a man of questionable marksmanship ability who possesses a nineteen-dollar mail-order rifle?” (Transcript of On Trial, July 25, 1986, pp.1056–1057)