They Killed Our President
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This all relates to one particular thing that Oswald said while in custody that I always thought was more important than it first looked. After he was arrested Oswald made that eerie statement: “Now everyone will know who I am.”186
Worldwide attention centered on Harvey Oswald after his arrest. Former FBI Agent Gayton Carver said Oswald was being paid by the FBI as a ‘potential security informant.’ When he [Oswald] said ‘now everyone will know who I am,’ he knew his work as an undercover informant was finished. Harvey Oswald, sitting in the Dallas jail, now had both the CIA and the FBI desperately trying to distance themselves from him, link him with Castro and/or Cuba, frame him for the assassination, hide his true identity, and create a legend that portrayed him as a ‘lone nut.’187
Robert K. Tanenbaum was a heroic Deputy Counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations who resigned because he realized that Congress was preventing him from conducting a real investigation.188 He has stated for the historical record that his staff located a film showing Oswald and David Ferrie at an anti-Castro training camp near New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
Tanenbaum’s book describes this film as containing Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Antonio Veciana, and David Atlee Phillips—all in the presence of one another—and an Oswald look-alike just barely discernible from the real thing.
Author and long-time assassination researcher James DiEugenio asked Tanenbaum:
“Was it really as you described in the book, with all the people in that film?”
Robert Tanenbaum replied: “Oh yeah. Absolutely! They’re all in the film. They’re all there.”189
Tanenbaum also affirmed the aforementioned fact in his testimony before the Assassination Records Review Board.190
Charles E. O’Hara is the author of an important textbook in the practice of criminology entitled Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation. A preface was added to the second edition of the book which reads as a procedural indictment on the framing of Lee Harvey Oswald; a classic book points out their classic mistake.
On review, however, it would appear that insufficient attention had been given to the role of the investigator in establishing the innocence of persons falsely accused. It was thought that this aspect of investigation was too obvious to stress; that the continued insistence on objectivity and professionalism in the investigator’s conduct should meet this requirement. After all, the process of establishing innocence is hardly separable from the task of detecting the guilty. One does not, that is to say, prove guilt by the method of exhaustion.191
One would think that especially true in a purported democracy. Yet that “method of exhaustion” is clearly the process in which Lee Harvey Oswald has been wrongly convicted in a public relations trial that was void of the sufficient actual evidence.
The evidence for “Two Oswalds” is overwhelming and now merits serious attention.
As a number of researchers have observed, the most logical scenario is that Oswald went to the Texas Theater after the assassination for a prearranged rendezvous with his intelligence handler; otherwise he certainly chose one of the oddest moments in history for the sudden urge to take in a film. The fact that Oswald moved from seat to seat, as though he was in search of something, is further indication of such an attempted liaison. Movie theaters are a typical locale for intelligence liaison.
I’d also like to point out a little thing here called common sense. Look at Oswald’s arrest in the movie theater. The only thing they knew at that exact point in time was that someone hadn’t bought a ticket. So just imagine the real context of the thing for a minute: It’s an hour after the murder of the President of the United States, plus in close proximity to the murder of Officer Tippit, and you’re a police dispatcher and you get a phone call at least a mile away from one of the crimes and multiple miles away from the other crime—and the only thing you hear is somebody didn’t a buy a 60-cent ticket before they went in to see the Audie Murphy movie that was playing that afternoon over at the theater in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Why would you send ten squad cars, two dozen cops, and the news media to arrest a guy who didn’t buy a ticket going into the theater? Wouldn’t you kind of say we have more important fish to fry here? We have a dead cop and a dead President, and you’re telling me to send police out to a theater because someone didn’t buy a ticket, went in behind the booth, and you happened to notice it? Common sense—why would there be that type of reaction?
They had no description of Oswald, except that one that went out on him, because that one witness was looking from the street at a window—how the heck would they know his height?! Looking from the street up to the 6th floor window, you’d have no clue how tall anyone was, especially if he’s in a shooter’s position. The point is, they would have no description of Oswald and if they do that’s fraudulent—and this guy who doesn’t have a ticket fits him perfect so that they send ten squad cars, the news media, and twenty-four cops down there to make the arrest?
Well, when I was a kid, we used to sneak into the theater every now and then. If they caught you, it wasn’t done like that at all. The trick we used to do was that somebody would buy a ticket, go down, and sit in the dark theater, then when it was right you’d go over to the exit door, prop it open, and your friends would sneak in and sit in the seats. But start at the front of the theater and work their way back in unison, turn the lights on in the theater? No, they’d come in, find the guy, quietly escort him out of the theater, and give him a kick in the pants. They wouldn’t even charge him with a crime, you know?
How would they have the police wherewithal and the conviction to say, hey, this guy who snuck in the theater fits the description of the killer of the President? Why would the killer of the president go to a movie? Oswald probably went there to meet a contact, but let’s not go that far. You’ve just killed the President. You go to the movies? I think you’d be on the first thing out of town, you’d want to get as far from the scene, quietly, as you possibly could. Or go somewhere and get in the basement for a week, and not show your face.
So you shoot the President and you decide to take in the afternoon movie? You decide that, right? You say “Hey, I just shot the President of the United States and a cop, but hey, I think I’ll go to the matinee.” I mean, come on!
168 Ken Biggs, “Famous Texans: Lee Harvey Oswald,” 2006: famoustexans.com/leeharveyoswald.htm
169 John Armstrong, “November In Dallas 1997” Presentation on Harvey & Lee, Transcribed by Jerry Robertson: acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JAj/JR-JA.html
170 Ibid.
171 DiEugenio, James & Pease, Lisa, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK & Malcolm X (Feral House: 2003), 131.
172 Armstrong, “November In Dallas 1997”
173 John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: “Magic Tonsillectomy, Vanishing Scars”: mindserpent. com/American_History/books/Armstrong/Tonsillectomy/Tonsils.htm
174 Ibid.
175 Biggs, “Famous Texans: Lee Harvey Oswald”
176 Ibid.
177 Groden, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald
178 Armstrong, “November In Dallas 1997” Presentation on Harvey & Lee
179 Armstrong, “November In Dallas 1997” Presentation on Harvey & Lee
180 Ibid.
181 Armstrong, Harvey and Lee
182 Philip H. Melanson, Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence (Prager Publishers: 1990): democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view all&address=104x756522
183 Armstrong, “November In Dallas 1997” Presentation on Harvey & Lee
184 Ibid.
185 Ibid.
186 “The Last Words of Lee Harvey Oswald: Compiled by Mae Brussell”
187 DiEugenio & Pease, The Assassinations, 133.
188 Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (The Mary Ferrell Foundation: 2008)
189 James DiEugenio, “The Probe Interview: Bob Tanenbaum,” Probe Magazine, July-August 1996, Vol. 3 No.5: ctka.net/pr796-bti.html
190 Assassination Records Review Board, Testimony of Robert Tanenbaum, September 17, 1996, Los Angeles, California.
191 Charles E. O’Hara, Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation (Thomas Books: 1970)
20
Oswald Had No Motive for Murder
Now I’m going to tell you a fact that’s often overlooked, but is very important. In addition to not having the means to commit the crime, Oswald did not possess a sufficient motive. Neither the Warren Commission nor the House Select Committee on Assassinations was ever able to establish any motive for Oswald to have committed the crime. That’s a big red flag to any real investigator. Why did he do it? It’s your Basic Crime Scene 101. They couldn’t even come up with a good reason so that’s why they always just described him as some kind of a “lone nut.”
Since when does such a high-profile crime not need a motive?
Why did Oswald do it? To this most important and most mysterious question the commission had no certain answer. It suggested that Oswald had no rational purpose, no motive adequate if “judged by the standards of reasonable men.”192
But in addition to not having any motive, just the opposite appears to be the real story here. Oswald—and not many people know this—is on record as having admired President Kennedy.
After his arrest, he told the police that “My wife and I like the President’s family. They are interesting people.”
He said, “I am not a malcontent; nothing irritated me about the President.”193
Well, it sounds to me like they should have thrown their whole “lone nut” theory right out the frigging window. He didn’t sound like a nut at all! In fact, he sounded like just what he said he was—a “patsy.”
Any way you look at it, Oswald’s actions were not consistent with those of a murderer. His actions and comments at the time of his arrest and afterwards are not indicative of his being one of the first political assassins in history to emphatically deny involvement in the murder. In fact, quite to the contrary, Oswald’s comments are indicative of a man concerned with much smaller issues.
The following compilation appeared in the 1978 edition of The People’s Almanac. They undertook that project for a very good reason, and they state that reason very clearly:
Almost everyone, it seems, has been heard from on the Kennedy assassination and on Lee Harvey Oswald’s guilt or innocence, except one person—Lee Harvey Oswald himself. From the time of Oswald’s arrest to his own assassination at the hands of Jack Ruby, no formal transcript or record was kept of statements made by the alleged killer. It was said that no tape recordings were made of Oswald’s remarks, and many notes taken of his statements were destroyed.
Determined to learn Oswald’s last words, his only testimony, The People’s Almanac assigned one of the leading authorities on the Kennedy assassination, Mae Brussell, to compile every known statement or remark made by Oswald between his arrest and death.194
And Ms. Brussell’s conclusion bears noting:
After fourteen years of research on the JFK assassination, I am of the opinion that Lee Harvey Oswald was telling the truth about his role in the assassination during these interrogations.195
Consider this. During questioning on the afternoon of his arrest, Oswald recognized FBI agent James Hosty, whom he had previously met, and Oswald told Agent Hosty the following:
You have been at my home two or three times talking to my wife. I don’t appreciate your coming out there when I was not there . . . Mr. Hosty, you have been accosting my wife. You mistreated her on two different occasions when you talked with her . . . I know you. Well, he threatened her. He practically told her she would have to go back to Russia.196
Now ask yourself the following question: If you had just been involved in the assassination of the President of the United States and had just murdered a police officer in cold blood only a few hours before, would the matter of an FBI agent questioning your spouse without your permission be the focus of your attention and a priority about which you would be visibly concerned? The facts of the matter are that Oswald was concerned with points like that, nothing larger. His statements revealed that he was merely worried he was in trouble for having been caught with a revolver.
At the time of his arrest, Oswald’s comments in fact showed a man who was completely uncertain about the actual circumstances of his situation:
• I don’t know why you are treating me like this. The only thing I have done is carry a pistol into a movie.
• I don’t see why you handcuffed me.
• Why should I hide my face? I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of.
• I want a lawyer.
• I am not resisting arrest.
• I didn’t kill anybody . . . I haven’t shot anybody.
• I protest this police brutality.
• I fought back there, but I know I wasn’t supposed to be carrying a gun.
• What is this all about?197
The same was true of his comments in the police car on the way to the police station and then at the station after his arrest:
• What is this all about?
• I know my rights.
• All I did was carry a gun.
• Nothing irritated me about the President.
• John Kennedy had a nice family.
• I had nothing personal against John Kennedy.
• I really don’t know what the situation is about. Nobody has told me anything except that I am accused of murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that, and I do request someone to come forward to give me legal assistance.
• When asked, “Did you kill the President?” Oswald replied:
ₒ No. I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question . . . I did not do it. I did not do it . . . I did not shoot anyone.
• I didn’t even know Governor John Connally had been shot.
• Well, I really don’t know what this is all about, that I have been kept incarcerated and kept incommunicado.198
It’s quite an oddity that the man suspected of killing the President was actually very fond of the man, as investigative authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan noted:
It is clear from a dozen witnesses that Oswald repeatedly spoke about John F. Kennedy in terms of admiration. He “showed in his manner of speaking that he liked the president,” said a policeman who talked with him in August of 1963. In a conversation about civil rights a month before the assassination, Oswald said he thought Kennedy was doing “a real fine job, a real good job.”199
Oswald displayed confidence—even bragged—that his innocence would be revealed by the evidence, rather than fearing it for the sake of incrimination:
• What are you trying to prove with this paraffin test, that I fired a gun?
• You are wasting your time. I don’t know anything about what you are accusing me.
• The FBI has thoroughly interrogated me at various other times . . . They have used their hard and soft approach to me, and they use the buddy system . . . I am familiar with all types of questioning and have no intention of making any statements.
• When arrested, Oswald had FBI Agent James Hosty’s home phone and office phone numbers and car license number in his possession.200
Oswald’s actions were interpreted by experienced police officers as being somehow above and beyond his actual situation. Here’s how Dallas Police Officer B. J. Dale described him:
When Oswald would come out of the office and down the hall, what I observed was that he seemed to be toying with everybody. He was way ahead of everybody else. He knew what he was doing and seemed very confident. He acted like he was in charge and, as it turned out, he probably was.201
Oswald’s confidence—or, more accurately, outright cockiness—may have been the result of his conviction that he was protected by his relationship to U.S. intelligence. He made numerous references which co
uld be construed as such in the brief period between his arrest on Friday afternoon and his murder on the following Sunday morning:
• Call the FBI. Tell them you have Lee Oswald in custody. (Spoken to Lieutenant Frank Martello, the interviewing officer at the time of his arrest in New Orleans.)202
• Everyone will know who I am now. (This statement was made in a somber manner, as though now his cover was blown; not as though seeking fame, but in fact, quite the opposite.)203
• I refuse to take a polygraph. It has always been my practice not to agree to take a polygraph.204
• I am waiting for someone to come forward to give me legal assistance.205
• (To Marina, his wife): It’s a mistake. I’m not guilty. There are people who will help me.
• Everything is going to be all right. If they ask you anything, you have a right not to answer. You have a right to refuse. Do you understand? You are not to worry. You have friends. They’ll help you.206
• (To his brother, Robert:) Don’t believe all the so-called evidence.207
• (When Robert stared into Lee’s eyes for a clue, Lee told him:) Brother, you won’t find anything there.208
• My friends will take care of Marina and the two children.209
Even in the minutes before his own murder, Oswald displayed a self-evident confidence. The following testimony is from the Dallas police officer who was handcuffed to him when Oswald was gunned down and killed in the Dallas jail:
OFFICER LEAVELLE: I was a homicide detective.
QUESTION: He was handcuffed to your left wrist?
OFFICER LEAVELLE: Right.