New Shocker in the JFK-Lee Harvey Oswald Story

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Someone here mentioned that a confusing, complicated theory usually points toward inaccuracy. We could (by WE, I mean ALL U.S. citizens) DEMAND that oswalds and JFK's bodies be exhumed and re-examined as to the identity of each and the direction of the bullets used. Who the heck IS the Warren commision. Thats not America. They lied entirely and the WC should be trashed and rewritten after exhumation.

Gerry Campbell of NJ 10:38AM March 27, 2013

Yes, one can speculate and do some add-ons. LBJ, saying "Russians", not "Russia" had been implicated, in those tapes. If he knew it was an insider-type Russian mob hit, it would have simply been too complex to unravel it. He would just have known, in this scenario, that there was an invisible enemy over in Russia, one he couldn't pinpoint, but one which could have "pinpointed" him! Likewise, Richard Nixon. No lout in politics and machination. Would he really have given himself away like that, in Watergate, setting up the tapes, incriminating himself on the tapes, then letting the tapes be played on tv, where the police could hear them. Or was he clear that he wanted to live much more than he wanted to be a target of that hidden Russian mob of assassins that LBJ had confided to him about? Again, much of this might just be a coincidence, and Nixon's uniquely stressed internal personality may simply have been over-strained in being a Commander in Chief, coming from a pacifist background. But, it's an interesting coincidence.

MaxS of AR 12:43AM December 12, 2012

Things just started to click as I read Whitmy's interview of Craffard, as there were details there that hadn't been revealed before. The fact he looked like Oswald and left town in the same time frame--and going in the same direction--as "Harry L. Power" who left the Mauser/Mannlicher Carcano rifle in a Terre Haute, IN motel room. Power seemed to associated with leftists, yet was clearly non-political. Other characters that don't fit well with a politically-oriented conspiracy include de Mohrenschidt. He can't be pegged easily as either a leftist or rightist. Yet one thing he clearly did, was associate with ...murky, conspiratorial types, and seemed an ominous individual, on balance. Well, again, that all fits in better with the Russian mob scenario than anything else. Well, mob scenario combined perhaps with some mixing it up with more political types, who provided cover. JFK achieved a cease-fire in Laos in 1962, an event that may have locked off part of the Laotian drug market from mobsters of all persuasions for a time. Combined with the disenchantment with Camelot of mobsters like Giancana and, most especially, Castro favorite Carlos Marcello, that may have tipped the pivot to get the Russian mob involved. That group may have gone as far up as upper level KGBers. Kruschev, not really in their number, was simply gone around initially before he was later ousted by the Russian Establishment in the anti-Detente climate that developed, also helped along by the Mobsters within that Establishment.
At the Craffard level, though, it was simply another hit. Using Oswald, who may have been aiming for Connally, as a cover and look-alike.He hitch-hiked to Chi-town, alright--with "Harry L. Power". In the words of Boz Scaggs: "Lido missed the boat that day he left the shack, but that was all he missed, and he ain't comin' back...Next stop Chi-town...".

MaxS of AR 11:55PM December 11, 2012

well, and I haven't had time to look much further into the whole thing of the KGB more or less going behind Kruschev's back and the whole possibillity that it was the Russian Mob. I man, in those regimes, their KGBs, (not really that differently than our CIA, in a way) could have had "rogue elements" who were hooked up with some of the insiders in their Mob. We already know of mob implications, maybe we've just been barking up a couple of the wrong mob trees.

MaxS of AR 8:49PM December 10, 2012

One final historical fact may begin to look slightly different in light of all this, too. The conventional wisdom at the time, was that LBJ did this due to polling showing lack of popularity. (And, I can't say he was my favorite person back then). He trailed in the primary poll in Wisconsin, and Bobby had challenged him, too. But LBJ could have pulled the party, dismembered between doves and southerner Wallace and Humphrey's "impossible" Vietnam position, together and kept a progressive position on Civil Rights. Why did he really say, on March 31, 1968:
"I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President."
He said it. I remember when he said it. Dad had been suspicious of LBJ since the assassination--and was surprised.
But, maybe the explanation is that he didn't want to deal with what he'd put together about revenge for our past "Murder Incorporated."
With this post, I'll cease trying your patience on this thread. I didn't do this research, I'm just, you know, putting it all out front, to see how it lays. It may be a patchwork of things, only a small part of which involved Castro or Brezhnev.

Max S of AR 1:01AM April 25, 2012

Another important witness was Carolyn Arnold who told the FBI on November 26 that she left the building around 12:15 to go out to lunch with some of the other secretaries. Arriving on the sidewalk in front of the building they found a crowd gathering to await the President. The secretaries decided to join the crowd. While awaiting the President’s passage, Arnold recounted that she looked back through the glass door of the building and saw Oswald. This would have been around five or ten minutes before the assassination. When asked if she was absolutely certain that it was Oswald, she could only respond that she felt it was (CD 5, p. 41) [2]. Subsequently however, Arnold would claim that the FBI had misquoted her and that she had actually seen Oswald on the second floor, not the first (Summers, p.60)."
Sorry about misspelling a couple of names. Other witnesses were somewhat confused as to when they had seen Oswald on the second or first floor, as well. Intriguingly, right at the time of the shooting itself, the work crew that normally would have been in the lunchroom floors, was outside, like Mrs. Arnold. This confusion might be accounted for by the presence of Oswald look-alike crafard's presence in the building.
as far as the exact trajectories of stray shots versus good shots, and their richochets into windshields, curbs, etc., many details are impossible to determine. And, even very recently, has come new data indicating Oswald started shooting slightly earlier than previously thought. His first shot, in this scenario, hit a traffic light, and bounced...somewhere. There was also some confusion about where a spent cartridge was found, as well as a possible additional bullet fragment found by a police officer. Please note that there was no crossfire, and the "magic" bullet really happened. No one was shooting from any knolls, etc. All the shots were fired from the TSBD. Tippit probably "barely" knew Crafard--barely. And Oswald had also behaved oddly on seeing Tippit, changing direction. Just odds and ends suggest Tippit was slightly lax in his approach to Oswald, best explained by a very casual acquaintance with Crafard, a (somewhat) look-alike.
There are a lot of gray areas and some can't be cleared up. Did the Castro/Brezhnev/Marcello clique manipulate Oswald to plan to kill Connally as he had tried to Walker, and also in revenge? Using the same rifle would have been a good way to get it all blamed on O', when he was only part of the "team".
This isn't popular or pleasant for those looking for a Far Right connection, and wishing to think JFK was more popular in Latin America. But it fits some facts.
Marcello hated the Kennedys at that point. Marcello was with, not against, Castro. Brezhnev wanted power from Kruschev and got it shortly after. LBJ ended the "murder inc" policy--not continue it. Castro was practically shell-shocked, we'd tried to kill him so many times. The USSR couldn't operate many governments, for our killing gov't leaders.

Max S of AR 12:22AM April 25, 2012

the preceding is a quote. I was unable to get quote marks into the screen before it closed. It's from
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/faq
page. In this scenario, Crafard would be the other shooter, from either the second or first floor. "Oswald" was seen by secretary Carol Arnold on either the second or first floor (she seemed unsure which) from the outside through a window as she awaited the motorcade. If four shots were fired, one was fired virtually simultaneously to Oswald's second or third (the third, the head shot, would have been fired by crafard in this scenario). Oswald fired on stray shot that hit the side of the JFK limousine, the hit the windshield and was found on the limo floor and placed on a stretcher. His other stray shot hit a curb, then the triple overpass, then nicked James Taque. Crafard's one MC rifle shell casing was thus not found because he took it with him. His rifle was also not found in the TSBD because it was dropped off in Terre Haute, IN. Stories of other rifles being found on on floors stem from rifles brought into the building for display a few days before by a TSBD employee. Also, a Mannlicher Carcano is sometimes mistaken for a Mauser when seen from a distance. Much depends on the details coming out of Havana later.

Max S of AR 2:17PM April 22, 2012

For t
5.1 The number of shots
Of the approximately 200 witnesses whose statements were taken by
the WC, 88% said they heard three shots, 5% said they heard more than
three. Only 2% reported hearing shots coming from more than one lo-
cation, but the issue is complicated somewhat by the echoes created by
the buildings surrounding the Plaza. Three shells were discovered on
the sixth floor "sniper's lair" to bolster the theory that three shots were
fired.
5.2 The source of the shots
Of the earwitnesses who stated an opinion as to the source of the shots,
most thought the shots came from their end of the plaza; people on the
uphill end of Dealey Plaza tended to think the shots came from the di-
rection of the TSBD; people at the other end, tended to think the shots
came from the GK area. However, the consensus was the shots all orig-
inated from a single source.
5.3 The first shot
The current consensus is that the first shot was a miss, perhaps because
Oswald shot through the canopy of the tree in front of the TSBD. He
may have done this out of anxiety, or because he was aiming through an
opening in the canopy, or because the tree suddenly loomed before his
scope as he tracked the limousine. The bullet may have been deflected
by a branch.
5.4 The second shot -- Single Bullet Theory (SBT)
The second shot hit JFK in the back of the neck and emerged from the
bottom of the throat (a lower point), having been slowed. It also tum-
bles, its travel having been disrupted by the neck. It hits Connally's
back mid-tumble, causing an elongated wound, and "slap fractures"
Connally's rib. It emerges below Connally's right nipple, considerably
slowed now. It passes through the right wrist at about half its muzzle
velocity, too slow for the bullet to be damaged by contact with the wrist
bone. The wrist deflects the bullet which ends its path shallowly em-
bedded in Connally's right thigh.
This determination of the bullet's path was not obvious to the WC in-
vestigators. They had a minimum of information and were limited by
time and the analytical technology of the day. Certain aspects of the
shot, as revealed by the amateur Z-film, were ambiguous, especially the
question of whether JFK and Connally were hit at the same time. Ulti-
mately, the confidence of the investigators in the SBT arose from pro-
cess of elimination or, as Sherlock Holmes said, "When one has
eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improba-
ble, is the truth." Today, though, the SBT has been more thoroughly
studied and tested, using modern technology, and has been affirmed as
not only plausible, but the only likely solution to the puzzle.
Conversely, the critics of the SBT have failed to quantify their criticism
by showing how far from possible they consider the SBT to be. Nor
have they supplied a counter-explanation that accounts for all the phys-
ical and medical evidence.
5.5 The third shot
Oswald's third shot hit JFK in the cowlick5.5 The third shot
Oswald's third shot hit JFK in the cowlick area of the back of the head.
JFK's head moved forward for a brief fraction of a second and then his
body fell back and slumped to the left side. The explanation for the
non-intuitive backwards reaction relies on many possible factors which
would be almost impossible to duplicate in a single experiment. Some
of the factors are: 1) JFK's nervous system had already been damaged
by his first wound, whereby tissue displaced by the bullet pushed into
his spinal cord, 2) the head shot created instant, massive damage to the
nervous system, including stimulation of the nerves in the spinal cord,
leading to a neuromuscular spasm, 3) the bullet made a small hole on
entry, then created outward pressure in the soft tissue it displaced, caus-
ing a large exit wound and the escape of pressure to the front (referred
to as the "jet effect"), 4) JFK was wearing a back brace which stiffened
his upper body, 5) the vehicle was moving.
5.6 Miscellaneous
A bystander on the other side of Dealey Plaza, James Tague, was hit on
the cheek by shrapnel. There's no consensus on whether it came from
the first shot hitting the pavement or from the head shot.

MaxS of AR 1:24PM April 22, 2012

just want to add that this latest, or possibly last--possibly posited, in fact, quite early on, before the "crossfire" --scenario, that this was a Castro/Brezhnev/Marcello assassination, with two shooters, both firing from the TSBD--allows a lot of maneuvering room for many of the conventional "explanations" that have been presented.
For example, the "magic bullet" theory, so often ridiculed by conspiracy theorist who, however, are not of the quality, often, of those who worked to describe the real world physics of the "magic" bullet, still could stand with this scenario.
Also, the fact the police dictaphone "fourth shot" sound turned out to be a motorcycle backfire, can also stand.
These phenomena are simply natural phenomena, misunderstood at the time.
On the other hand, the fact the plot was a mix of the Marxists (Oswald, Castro agents, Castro, and Brezhnev) and mobsters (Marcello, Ruby and Craford) who were sypathetic to Castro due to their special casino and other underworld connections to Castro's Cuba, and involved two shooters, both firing the xame type of rifle from the same building (TSBD), provides the best explanation for the accuracy of the head shot, when compared to the relative "wildness" of the remainder of the supposed "earlier" shots.
If Oswald was, indeed, a relatively poor marksman compared to Crafard, this would best account for the wildness and relative ineffectiveness of the shots fired by him (apparently the three for which spent cartridges were found). The accuracy of the head shot, would best be explained, then, by its being the only shot fired by Crafard, from the slightly lower second floor.
It's taken a long time to weed through all of this. There have been many twists, turns, dead ends and red herrings. The fact it wasn't the Far Right is a relief in a way, a disappointment in a way.

Max S of AR 12:27PM April 20, 2012

Since I'm finally putting something into writing on this myself, I might add that I'd always been intrigued by the idea of a Far Right conspiracy against the Kennedys, due to their liberalism on Defense and Civil Rights issues. And, even as a kid back in those days here in the mid-South, I can tell you there definitely was hostility to them. I don't attack the character or quality of people who have posited other scenarios. I cite Angleton's comments from Joe Trento's _Secret History of the CIA_ (NY: 2005), and detailed info about Crafard from Whitmey's Site article, cited by him in this thread. Other places include actual human-packed video footage of the police arrest of James Brading 11/22/63 at the DalTex Building. Conspiracy literature is often helpful, too, when the research is sound, even when the conclusions drawn are faulty, or parts of the other research lack solidity. LBJ is often a favorite target--and understandably so. His recently-released private tapes have revealed he told sworn-to-silence listeners in '64 and '65 he had "overwhelming evidence" of a Castro/USSR connection. He also was advised by FBI/CIA to discontinue America's assassination policy, first
implemented under Eisenhower. It had been applied, in both the IKE and JFK admins., almost exclusively to Leftist regimes. Though it isn't pleasant for Liberals to admit, JFK, as the first Catholic Pres., was often timid to conservative in his approach. It's quite likely he'd expressed his discomfort with "Murder, Inc." policy to LBJ, but had felt impelled not to end it himself. Policy wonks at CIA and elsewhere set up their missions, then got permission from the political capital-expended JFK to go through with them. He had little liberal political impetus left while and after exerting pressure in the then-Democratic south in behalf of the Civil Rights movement. LBJ, by contrast, starting from scratch and already having a southern state under his belt, could re-examine and shut down the policy.

Max S of AR 1:35PM April 18, 2012