Groden And His So Called Witness

I recently came across a copy of Groden's book "Absolute Proof". I looked up his chapter on his alleged witness  Mrs Reid. Here is what it says.


Setting Up the Patsy & The Two Mrs. Reids*

* Quite a few years ago, I was given a lead about a key witness who was employed in the Texas School Book Depository.

Her name was Geraldine Reid, and her interview conditions included no taping of her story and no revealing the story
while she was alive. I recently received word and confirmation of her passing. At the time I did the interview, the witness appeared to be in her late seventies to early eighties. The interview took place near Fort Worth. She is mentioned only once in the Warren Commission volumes, but was perhaps the single most important witness in the Kennedy case. Her story is included in this chapter..

In this chapter, I will present something completely new about a previously unknown (to the public) witness who was manipulated and coerced by the Warren Commission. In fact, even her very existence was hidden from the public and buried for nearly five decades.

My last book, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald (1995),was a photographic biography of Oswald. My original
title for that book was The Patsy, but my publisher felt that the title was too "judgmental." It contained more
than 600 photographs and pretty much covered everything about Lee Oswald's life and death. For those who have the book, I will not repeat the entirety of that information here.

There are, however a few things that must be mentioned for those who may not have The Search for Lee Harvey
Oswald. First and foremost, Lee Oswald did NOT shoot President Kennedy. Secondly, as I have shown in the previous chapter,there is undeniable proof that Oswald was involved with the intelligence agencies of our government which plotted the assassination. It is my belief that the true murderers set Oswald up to take the fall, intending to kill him before he could leave the book depository. With Oswald dead, there would be no trial, no adversary proceeding, and no eyewitness and earwitness testimony presented under oath for the record. The fairy-tale that Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy would go unchallenged, and that would be that.

When he made it out alive, the conspirators had a real problem on their hands. Oswald would be a live suspect
who could pass a lie detector test. He would be able to corroborate third-party witness testimony that he had been
on the second floor at the exact time the shots were being fired from the sixth floor.

To Be Continued

Ultimately, Oswald was silenced by Jack Ruby's fatal bullet. But the truth lived in the testimony of the many book depository witnesses who saw Oswald during those critical moments. Perhaps the most important witness has been lost to history until now.

Geraldine Reid

The Warren Commission spoke to a Depository employee witness who they simply refer to as "Mrs. Robert Reid,"failing to refer to her real first name, which was Delores. She was standing in front of the Book Depository as the motorcade drove by. However, there was a second Mrs. Reid who worked
on the second floor of the Book Depository. Her name was Geraldine Reid. The Warren Commission avoided mentioning this Mrs. Reid like the plague. She was flown to Washington and interrogated by the Commission. Her testimony was so devastating to their preconceived conclusion of Oswald's guilt that they buried all references to her. She said, "I was threatened to keep my mouth shut,or else."

Anyone reading the testimony of "Mrs. Robert Reid" would naturally assume that there had been only one 'Mrs. Reid'. In fact there were two: Mrs. Robert Reid (Delores) and Mrs. Geraldine Reid. Here, for the first time, is Geraldine Reid's story:About one minute before the fatal shots were fired at the motorcade, Lee Oswald walked into the office across the second floor hallway from the snack room where he had been eating his lunch. He wanted to buy a bottle of soda and did not have the required change for the machine. He walked up to Geraldine Reid at her desk and handed her a dollar bill and asked her for change.

"Mr. Oswald didn't like pennies. I remember that," she recalled. "As I was counting out the change, I heard what I later learned were gunshots. Mr. Oswald and I looked at each other quizzically for a moment, but neither of us said anything about the sounds. I did not know that they were shots at the time. I gave Mr. Oswald the change and he turned and walked back into the hallway toward the snack room. That's the last time I saw him until he passed by me a few minutes later as he was leaving the building."

To Be Continued

Approximately seventy-two seconds after the shots ended and Oswald had returned to the snack room to buy a soda from the machine, Officer Marrion Baker and Oswald's boss, Roy Truly, confronted him in the snack room. Truly told Officer Baker that it was alright and that Oswald,in fact, worked for him. At that time, Truly mentioned to Lee that President Kennedy had been shot. Oswald seemed genuinely surprised. Baker and Truly then left the lunch room and headed upstairs to investigate further.

In the meantime, someone had informed Geraldine Reid about the assassination.Geraldine Reid's final encounter with Lee Oswald occurred a few minutes later. "The last time I saw Mr. Oswald, he was leaving the building," Reid stated. "As he passed by me, I noticed that he had his jacket slung
over his arm. I told him that the President had just been shot and he simply said 'Oh?' or something like that, and kept on walking out of the office to go downstairs and, I assume, out of the building."

Several Texas School Book Depository employees have spoken about Geraldine Reid through the years, such as Pauline Sanders and Ruth Hendrix. They knew and liked her. On Sunday morning, November 24, Pauline Sanders spoke by telephone to Geraldine Reid and Geraldine told Pauline about the incident with Lee Oswald in the second floor office, which had occurred at the same time that Delores Reid was still on the front stairs to the Depository building on the first floor.

In January of 2009 I first met with David Thiess, a former investigator for The Office of Naval Intelligence (O.N.I.).He, like myself, was born in 1945. Dave admitted that he had been assigned to look into the assassination of President Kennedy. I was introduced to Dave by longtime friend and even longer time JFK assassination researcher Phil Singer. He told me that this had been a top-secret internal investigation. This was the first of three meetings the three of us had over a three year period. On February 16, 2009, while discussing many of the issues of the assassination, Dave independently brought up the subject of Geraldine Reid. He stated that he knew who Geraldine was. Dave confirmed that he knew that she had been
interviewed by the Warren Commission in Washington, DC, in 1964, and that the Commission had suppressed her entire story and buried the fact that she even existed.

The Commission never once mentioned her name in their report. He stated that he, "saw suppressed documents on her." I have the feeling that Dave had in fact also interviewed her as well, but he did not confirm it. He said that Geraldine had passed away some years earlier. He did, however, know her entire story and when Dave was told what Geraldine had told me, he confirmed everything from his own investigation. In November of 2012, Dave
called Phil Singer and seemed very agitated and distressed.

The last time we all met was in December of2012. As this book is going to press, I have just learned that Dave passed away of a heart attack on January 7, 2013, just a few weeks ago. Dave Thiess, R.I.P.

To Be Continued

In the time frame from five minutes before until five minutes after the assassination,Lee Oswald had witnesses to his innocence.Officially, Carolyn
Arnold left the office across the hall from the snack room on the second  Depository, stopped by the water fountain by the doorway of the snack room, had a drink, looked in to see Lee Oswald eating his lunch.

She then walked down the stairs to the first floor and out onto the steps of the building to watch the motorcade.Her statements since give a different account, "The FBI changed my story. Lee Harvey Oswald was with me at the water fountain in the break room at around 12:25,immediately before the time of the shooting. Whenever he had come to me in the past to make change, he would not accept anything with Lincoln's face on it, neither pennies nor five dollar bills." This supports Geraldine Reid's statement about Oswald not wanting any pennies in his change for his one dollar bill at the time of the shooting.

Geraldine Reid, along with Carolyn Arnold, Oswald's boss Roy Truly, and Dallas Police Officer Marrion Baker account for Oswald's whereabouts before, during and after the shooting. This would all have been revealed to the public had Oswald lived to stand trial. In addition, depository employee Bonnie Ray Williams was on the sixth floor right in the so-called "sniper's nest"up until just a few minutes before the shooting. According to Williams, Oswald was not there. He would have had to see Oswald if he had been there. Victoria Adams and At first Officer Baker was the only Dealey Plaza witness to consider the Book Depository as a point of interest. Here he alone races into the building seconds after the assassination. Just a minute later, he was face to face with Lee Oswald, calmly drinking a "Coke" in the second floor snack room.

Sandra Stiles were slowly walking down the stairs of the Depository building right after the shooting, and no one passed them. A photograph taken by witness and Army intelligence officer James Powell shows the sniper's nest window thirty seconds after the shooting. A person is still in the window. We cannot see his face, but we can see part of his body. This allows somewhere between 40 and 60 seconds for Oswald to cross the entire sixth floor both from south to north and then from east to west walking around hundreds or perhaps thousands of book cartons, wiping all fingerprints off the rifle, hiding it behind a row of book cartons, then descending four flights of stairs to the second floor, getting the change from Geraldine Reid during the firing of the shots, crossing the hallway and buying the "Coke" by the table where his sandwich was waiting, partially eaten, on the table. This could not have happened.

An Unlikely Chain of Events

About forty minutes after the assassination, Dallas Police Army intelligence officer, James Powell, took this photograph of the upper
floors of the Book Depository "thirty seconds" after the fatal head shot.

To Be Continued

One of the shooters is still in the sniper 's nest window on the sixth floor.However a mere forty-two seconds later, Oswald was to encounter police
officer M'arrion Baker on the second floor, after Oswald had bought a "Coke."

Officer J.D. Tippit was also shot and killed. The Dallas Police and the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had shot both the President and Tippit, although all of the evidence was to the contrary in each case. In fact, forty minutes after the assassination, Dallas's finest were still too busy destroying the crime scene in the Depository and planting evidence to know anything. The only real connection between both murders is that both President Kennedy and Officer Tippit were shot on the same day.

There are no other links between the two crimes. Let's review the connections, or lack thereof, for the two murders that day: the issues that might link the killings of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit.

Only four minutes prior to Officer Tippit's shooting,Oswald was confirmed to be at his rooming house located at 1026 North Beckley Street, leaving him only four minutes to travel more than a mile on foot to arrive at the kill site in time to shoot Officer Tippit. A feat that would require faster than world-class running. The possibility of someone driving Oswald to the Tippit killing site at Tenth and Patton Streets cannot be totally overlooked, but if that had happened, it does add fuel to the issue of conspiracy.

Even ignoring all of the eyewitnesses who stated that the assailant was not Oswald, we still have the very real issue of someone impersonating him to the point of looking enough like him to convince others that they were seeing Oswald in many other circumstances prior to the Tippit shooting. Most importantly, we have eyewitness testimony from theater manager, Butch Burroughs, placing Oswald at the Texas Theatre at the very moment that Officer Tippit was shot.

To Be Continued

The bullet shells from an automatic pistol found at the Tippit killing scene don't even fit Oswald's only known handgun, which was a revolver. Also, the bullets removed from Officer Tippit's body cannot be matched to Oswald's revolver!

What are the possibilities here?

1. The Tippit shooting had absolutely nothing to do with the assassination. (Quite likely.)
2. An unknown assailant was about to be questioned or arrested by Tippit, and he shot the policeman in order to escape. (Very possible.)
3. Tippit already knew Oswald (or the look-a-like impostor) and recognized him. The assailant panicked and shot Tippit. (Very believable.)
4. Oswald was driven to a point near Tenth and Patton by a co-conspirator and actually participated in the Tippit shooting. (This is the least likely scenario.)
5. Officer Tippit was part of the conspiracy and already knew the assailant. The killer then shot Tippit, fearing that the officer would either arrest or shoot him and acted first. The strongest bit of evidence here is that beyond any question, Tippit and Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby already knew each other. Two days later, Ruby would silence Oswald by murdering him in the basement of the Dallas police department building. (Very possible.)
6. Tippit was an sacrificial lamb used by the conspirators, who was murdered to link Lee Oswald to the crime by those who knew in advance that Oswald would be in the area. For those involved with the various Dallas law enforcement agencies who were not fans of the Northern,liberal President and would not care (or were even happy about the fact) that he had been murdered, the shooting of a brother police officer might be all that it would take to being arrested. (Very probable.)
7. Officer Tippit was shot by another police officer, possibly Roscoe White, for any number of reasons, although Officer White considered Tippit to be his "best friend." (The Roscoe White story is a long one and quite involved, but there is a very high probability that this is what happened.)
8. It all happened just the way the Dallas Police and the Warren Commission said it did with Oswald shooting Tippit using a weapon (a .38 automatic pistol) which hedid not own, after having run what amounts to a 3 :30 mile, making Lee Oswald the fastest runner of all time (the world record is 3:43), at the same time he was at the Texas Theatre a full mile away. (This is the one scenario that is absolutely impossible.)

We may never know the true story of the Tippit killing.Was Officer Tippit a true hero, a martyr or an accidental victim of the conspiracy? Was Tippit's killing completely unrelated to the President's assassination? Or was he an active participant who was given the last-minute job to silence the patsy? We may never know.

Oswald was never given a polygraph test while he was alive, but his statements, "I have committed no acts of violence" and "I've shot nobody, no sir" have been tested time again on Psychological Stress Evaluators and Voice Stress Analyzers, and every time the results show that he was telling the truth! In the decades since that dark day in November, 1963,much evidence has surfaced that Lee Oswald had, in fact, been an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, among other intelligence organizations (See Chapter One of this book). Just the fact that the Warren Commission used "national security" as an excuse to bury its files and working papers for 75 years, lends credence to that fact. If Oswald was a lone assassin, and if he had no connections to intelligence agencies, how can anything about him relate to any national security issues or concerns?

Will we ever know the entire story of Lee Oswald? I would say probably not. In fact, we may never have an answer to the question: who was Lee Harvey Oswald really? But given the totality of the evidence in this case, what we can say for sure is that Lee Oswald never shot anyone on
November 22, 1963. The actual assassins were officially protected and went free.

"I have committed no acts of violence .... I've shot nobody, no sir . .. I'm just a patsy." - Lee Oswald

I know there are good reasons to question whether Oswald took the bus after the assassination. However, there are a couple of reasons consider that that particular bus might have been part of the original plan for someone involved in the assassination to leave the area.

First, the strange coincidence of Stuart Reed photographing that particular bus minutes after the assassination. Why photograph this bus (twice) when all the action is taking place just two blocks away? Reed then appears in Oak Cliff with camera in hand just in time to photograph Oswald being taken out of the Texas Theater.

Second, had Oswald or whoever had continued on the Marsalis bus, it would have brought him just a few blocks east of where the Tippit murder took place.

lanceman wrote:I know there are good reasons to question whether Oswald took the bus after the assassination. However, there are a couple of reasons consider that that particular bus might have been part of the original plan for someone involved in the assassination to leave the area.

First, the strange coincidence of Stuart Reed photographing that particular bus minutes after the assassination. Why photograph this bus (twice) when all the action is taking place just two blocks away? Reed then appears in Oak Cliff with camera in hand just in time to photograph Oswald being taken out of the Texas Theater.

Second, had Oswald or whoever had continued on the Marsalis bus, it would have brought him just a few blocks east of where the Tippit murder took place.

Do you feel that Reed was a part of the conspiracy?

Reed as in Martha?
or Mrs Robert Reid?

It’s Reed, not Reid.

There are so many coincidences that it’s hard to believe he had no involvement.

1. Takes several photos of Marsalis bus on Elm St. a few blocks east of Dealey Plaza where all the activity is taken place. Why take pictures of a bus when the scene of the crime of the century is a few steps away?

2. Later shows up across town to photograph Oswald being taken from Texas Theater.

3. Oswald is found with Marsalis bus transfer, possibly planted.

4. Marsalis bus travels just a few blocks east of Tippit murder. There are several reasons to believe that the Tippit killer approached from the east (no one saw him walking east, some did see him walking west, killer escaped to west, presumably continuing on previous direction of travel)

5. Marsalis bus passes GLOCO gas station (significant if the accounts of Tippit’s presence there and subsequent departure down Marsalis are true).

6. The Marsalis bus could have brought Oswald to within practical walking distance of Texas Theater without the risk of being recognized by the driver of the bus Oswald presumably regularly used to commute to the rooming house on N. Beckley (again, assuming that he actually roomed there).

7. Reed leaves the country soon after.

If Oswald was intended to be framed as part of the assassination scenario, the above observations suggest a plan for Oswald’s escape that would have been monitored. Perhaps Reed was one of these monitors. If you look at the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, out of a team of at least 2 dozen, only two were the actual assassins. The rest were for lookout, logistics and communication.

By the way, anyone who says conspiracies are impossible to keep quiet because someone inevitably talks should look at the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh assassination. Two dozen participants, all caught on video, fake passports with photos and aliases recorded, left country without incident. Over a decade later, no further details.

Groden's witness was thoroughly debunked here.
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t559-geraldean-reid

But to cut to the chase, she never existed. He took a mispelling of her name in the volumes and basically invented a new witness from it. The "she made me promise not to publish about her until after her death" line is pure bullshit, saving him from ever having to produce her. 

The fact that this "community" still largely believes this bullshit, while the rest refuse to call him out for it, tells you the caliber of people we are expected to stand beside.

I could be wrong, but not entirely convinced the photo shows the Marselis bus. That is the claim made by everyone but I don't recall ever seeing anything to confirm it - let alone that the photo was taken post assassination and not pre. But yes, that aside, I understand the suspicion. From memory, there was another snap-happy photographer who was also Mr. Everywhere with his camera... a young guy named Johnny Martin?

One of the Reed photos from the corner of Elm and N. Market streets shows the east faces of both the TSBD and Dal-Tex building in shadow. I used a solar calculator from the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration to determine when that would happen on November 22, 1963. It would have to be sometime after 12:15 assuming the east faces of those buildings are close to a north-south alignment. According to Don Roberdeux’s Dealey Plaza map, the east faces of the TSBD and Dal-Tex buildings are oriented slightly northeast-southwest, so the earliest the photos were taken were later than 12:15.

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/solcalc/azel.html

https://i.imgur.com/8vSS1dp.gif

The photo shows a group of people apparently walking away from Dealey Plaza. If the photo was taken before the motorcade passed, they were either uninterested in watching it or were unable to watch it despite the fact that it would pass by in a a few minutes. If it was taken after the motorcade passed, they either left so soon afterwards that they might not have realized that there was an assassination or they left sometime afterwards after milling around.

I was able to find only one object in the photos taken by Reed in the same general area that can be seen together with its shadow to give some estimate of the time that photo was taken. That object was a car parked on Elm St. with its front bumper projecting a shadow on Elm St. The shadow is consistent with some time around noon but does not allow a more precise estimation of the time it was taken. Knowing the car make, model and year help narrow down the time.

The bus appears in two of the photos I’ve seen. It was able to advance a couple of blocks suggesting that the Elm St. traffic that had held back to allow the motorcade to pass through Dealey plaza had been recently released.

It’s certainly less than conclusive but it’s likely that the pictures were taken shortly after the assassination. Plus, we still have to allow for Reed’s travel time to the Texas Theater to photograph Oswald’s arrest.

Does anyone know if someone has done any kind of analysis or evaluation of these photos?

I misunderstood.... Stuart of course not Martha Reed. OOOOOps  

barto wrote:I misunderstood.... Stuart of course not Martha Reed. OOOOOps  

I think Ed did some work on Stuart Reed's stuff.

I looked at the Stuart Reed photos on the Prayer-Man site. It appears that Reed actually photographed the motorcade from somewhere on Main St. I used google maps to try to identify the location from some of the characteristic buildings but virtually every building in the Reed photos has been razed and replaced with modern buildings. I then looked at film of the motorcade and determined that it was apparently a block or two before the turn on to Houston St. That would put him at Market or Lamar. It would be reasonable to conclude he proceeded north on Market St. or Lamar shortly after the motorcade passed by, probably putting him at Market and Elm within a minute or two of the assassination.

I saw Hassan Yousef had a thread on ROKC on Stuart Reed expressing suspicions about Reed.

I hate to say this, but the best quality photos by Reed I have seen are on ... HarveyAndLee.net. I find Armstrong’s  theory about two Oswalds in existence since birth too far out to believe. I noticed the the bus in the Reed photos is identified the Marsalis bus on the H&L site. Is any research or documentation from Armstrong worth anything if one ignores the HarveyandLee theory?

If Harvey and Lee ever meet, do they annihilate each other like matter and antimatter?

While reviewing the floor plan for the TSBD, I noticed that I had misinterpreted the orientation of the east face of the building. The east face actually runs about 5 degrees from true north and is on a northwest-southeast alignment.This puts the earliest time the east face could be in shadow on November 22, 1963 at 11:55 AM.

Based on the DPD transcripts, the motorcade passed Main and Market streets where Reed was positioned to photograph the motorcade shortly after 12:28. 

Reed had also photographed the TSBD from Main and Houston streets sometime after 11:55 AM based on the shadows. In Reed’s photo, I noticed that traffic was still being allowed into Dealey Plaza from Elm St. and that cars were parked on the west side of Houston St. There were people that looked like they were waiting for the parade but nothing like the large crowds seen just before and following the assassination. The cars parked on Houston St. were not evident in the Hughes film. From this, I conclude that the TSBD photograph was taken before the assassination between 11:55 AM and perhaps as late as 12:15 to allow removal of parked cars, hold traffic from entering Dealey plaza and to allow Reed to be positioned at Main and Market.

I don’t think it’s likely that Reed would wander over to Elm and Market streets and take random photos of busses when the motorcade was due to arrive in a few minutes and he would have to walk a block through crowds and traffic to get to Main and Market, especially if he thought the motorcade was on schedule. I don’t think the bus photos were taken just to use up the remaining film because he later took other photos and as far as I can tell, he only used one roll of film.

I suspect that Reed photographed the TSBD, then the motorcade and the took the bus photos.

If my interpretation is correct, it is curious that Reed photographed the TSBD perhaps 15-30 minutes before the assassination, the bus supposedly used for the assassin’s escape and then the capture of the assassin several miles away.

lanceman wrote:While reviewing the floor plan for the TSBD, I noticed that I had misinterpreted the orientation of the east face of the building. The east face actually runs about 5 degrees from true north and is on a northwest-southeast alignment.This puts the earliest time the east face could be in shadow on November 22, 1963 at 11:55 AM.

Based on the DPD transcripts, the motorcade passed Main and Market streets where Reed was positioned to photograph the motorcade shortly after 12:28. 

Reed had also photographed the TSBD from Main and Houston streets sometime after 11:55 AM based on the shadows. In Reed’s photo, I noticed that traffic was still being allowed into Dealey Plaza from Elm St. and that cars were parked on the west side of Houston St. There were people that looked like they were waiting for the parade but nothing like the large crowds seen just before and following the assassination. The cars parked on Houston St. were not evident in the Hughes film. From this, I conclude that the TSBD photograph was taken before the assassination between 11:55 AM and perhaps as late as 12:15 to allow removal of parked cars, hold traffic from entering Dealey plaza and to allow Reed to be positioned at Main and Market.

I don’t think it’s likely that Reed would wander over to Elm and Market streets and take random photos of busses when the motorcade was due to arrive in a few minutes and he would have to walk a block through crowds and traffic to get to Main and Market, especially if he thought the motorcade was on schedule. I don’t think the bus photos were taken just to use up the remaining film because he later took other photos and as far as I can tell, he only used one roll of film.

I suspect that Reed photographed the TSBD, then the motorcade and the took the bus photos.

If my interpretation is correct, it is curious that Reed photographed the TSBD perhaps 15-30 minutes before the assassination, the bus supposedly used for the assassin’s escape and then the capture of the assassin several miles away.

I think we are making assumptions that the photos are "bus" photos and not just random street/traffic photos. People who fancy themselves as photographers will take photos of anything.

And that comes on top of the bus not definitively proven as being McWatters bus - though you did make a good case for it.

Having slept on it, the main nagging doubt came to the surface -- that is that the only reason McWatters bus became involved was Mary Bledsoe seeing young Master Milton Jones laugh "maniacally" at news of the assassination, causing her to assume he was the killer and going home and phoning the police with the tip. When the cops realized Oswald was not the laughing boy, Mary became his ex-landlady, and sole witness o his being on that bus. I don't think it would have taken much to persuade her.  She sold a bunch of crap  to a "museum", claiming it was stuff Oswald left in the room. It included an ashtray, from memory. Part of her payment was getting her roof fixed.


For this to be preplanned, Mary and Milton now have to be part of the plot. 

Playing Devil's Advocate on Reed, the film he handed over contained a lot of seemingly random shots. What we see in the records are only those that happen to be shots around the time of the assassination. Even the one of the TSBD could be just a random photo which happens to include that building.

The flip side of that is, on the surface, it passing strange as to his arrival from Panama where he either worked for the Panama Canal Company or the US Army (forgotten which), snapping all those pics, handing off the film for the authorities and slipping quietly back to Panama. So there is reason for suspicion - but it is a long way to come just to take some photos that may or may not identify a future alleged getaway bus and  a building which everyone would soon know about regardless of his photo. I think if there were any nefarious reasons for his appearance in the area at that time, the photos may well be red herrings.

I see three possibilities:

1. Reed’s presence and photograph subjects (outside of the motorcade) were happenstance.
2. Reed was directed to specifically photograph Oswald’s movements.
3. Reed was directed to photograph subjects that had a chance of capturing something useful.

Possibility #1 is certainly possible. One way where a very small absolute probability leads us astray is when that probability is one of among a large number of outcomes each with it’s own very small probability.

Possibility #2 is hard to accept because it would require critical and damning information about a conspiracy to be too widely disseminated and runs the risk of someone accidentally or intentionally revealing information.

Possibility #3 appears reasonable. Reed could have been told told something like “Given the protests that have happened to recent visitors to Dallas, photograph subjects that might provide information useful to identifying individuals that might be involved in such protests.” This would require divulging no specific information about an assassination plot. Perhaps this was also what happened with James Powell and who knows how many others in Dealey plaza and elsewhere that day. They could have been directed to photograph crowds, buildings, public transportation, suspicious people and other subjects at their discretion. Most of their efforts produced nothing. Perhaps some caught something that had to remain hidden (Like Oswald in front of the TSBD).This could be standard procedure for presidential visits independent of any assassination conspiracy.

I still have the suspicion that the planned escape route used the Marsalis bus and that the “Oswald” seen escaping into the Rambler was a last minute change in plans. Why take such a risk helping the lone nut in such a conspicuous location where there could be witnesses and even photographers?

No doubt interpreting events is complicated by plans that go wrong, a DPD inclination to nail a cop killer, communist who is helped to escape by a negro and a larger effort to channel the investigation i to non threatening areas.

I’m rambling here but there is one other observation regarding the Reed photographs. It seems like he was making his way up West Jefferson photographing the crowds before he came upon the Texas Theater. This is the same path that Oswald was supposed to have taken. It’s also strange that he seemed to take no interest in his photos and never appeared in a “Strange, but True” article, interview etc.

Hi Lanceman,

I still have the suspicion that the planned escape route used the Marsalis bus and that the “Oswald” seen escaping into the Rambler was a last minute change in plans. Why take such a risk helping the lone nut in such a conspicuous location where there could be witnesses and even photographers?


I'm easily confused these days - could you clarify what you mean regarding these couple of sentences for me.

I’m referring to what Roger Craig (and I believe others as well) claiming to see Oswald get into the Nash Rambler that was slowly moving along Elm St. about 10-15 minutes after the assassination. If this was the original plan for getting Oswald out of the area, it seems pretty risky, particularly when he was supposed to be framed as the single assassin. Doing so potentially exposes a car, license plate and another person. Especially in such an open area now filled with police. And obviously, this event was witnessed. Curry mentioned it to the news media. And Curry said they would be interested in talking to the driver of this car (if the story is true). You would think that a police force supposedly made up KKK, Birchers, Minutemen and what have you would be keenly interested in the chance to nail a communist AND a negro.

I would think that Oswald would either be removed from the TSBD by public transportation to reinforce the downtrodden loner or if he was taken away by associates, they would at least be more discrete about it.

That’s why I wonder if the plan was for Oswald to take public transportation but something happened to prevent that. Reed’s photographs didn’t show Oswald walking to the bus because 1) Reed just wasn’t in the right place/time or 2) Oswald never took the bus.

It’s easier to see the bus transfer planted on Oswald if the original plan was for him to have taken the Marsalis bus rather than an ad hoc plan required by changing circumstances.

Again, we often don’t see the results of plans as they unfold, we see them as they unravel.

Thanks Lanceman,

I'll be more specific. This line: I still have the suspicion that the planned escape route used the Marsalis bus


Whose planned escape route? The Cops in framing him?

Mick_Purdy wrote:Thanks Lanceman,

I'll be more specific. This line: I still have the suspicion that the planned escape route used the Marsalis bus


Whose planned escape route? The Cops in framing him?

Whoever originally planned the assassination. If it was Oswald getting into the Nash Rambler, presumably it was desired he get away from the TSBD rather than be killed or taken into custody at the spot. Unless 1) It wasn’t Oswald or 2) it was just a random passing motorist.

But I see your point. Oswald could have been the subject of two independent frame ups. One, the long term frame up to make him into the violent Marxist and the assassin. The other, by the Dallas cops to nail a cop killer after the assassination.

Do you think Oswald was mostly framed by the DPD and then the FBI and Warren Commission just ran with it?

FWIW,

it took me a long time to stop trying to fit every inconsistency, every coincidence, every witness claim into a unified all-encompassing conspiracy.

After twenty years of shedding that baggage from my thinking, what I am left with is:

Most of what we think of as pre-planning was actually a mix of after-the-fact maneuvering for a plethora of personal agendas including but far from limited to, framing the patsy, and secondly, witnesses seeing Oswald (and to a lesser extent) Ruby all over the place - an all-too common phenomenon in any big case - exacerbated here by Oswald being so damned non-descript to begin with. 

As a minimum you need someone with a motive, someone well connected to politics and intelligence - and to others who can provide settings, a patsy and etc.

Fred Korth ticks all boxes. Part of the LBJ inner-circle, connected to all branches of the military and their intel branches, was possibly heading to jail or other major sanctions over TFX contracts, related by marriage to Roy Truly, friends with Harold Byrd, very familiar with the Oswalds.

Oswald's uncle by marriage was well-connected to a major intel chief who was in turn closely connected to General Dynamics.

I think Kennedy was talked into the Texas trip for valid political reasons, but i also think they were making parallel plans for his assassination from that point in June when he agreed to go. It was not decided to hit the "go" button on the assassination until September/October when it was becoming clearer that LBJ would be kicked off the team, that too many of the gang were under investigation - and Kennedys chances of re-election were not as bad as hoped - and in fact, looking fairly good. 

It is possible that others were brought in, but identifying who that may have been is difficult. As is determining LBJ's level of knowledge since he was a master at keeping at arms-length and shifting ideas and actions to look like they came from someone else. As he did with the need for swearing in. 

Others who may have been involved: The Paines (wittingly or unwittingly), various White Russians (ditto), various regional agents of various agencies including FBI (and FBI informants), Secret Service, MI, members of private security units including that of General Dynamics,  members of regional units of the CAP. A little less likely but still possible: right wing militia; Cuban exiles, other Eastern European emigre groups, rogue agents of CIA, a small number of Dallas police. 

Another thing that muddies the waters: intel operations stumbled into during the investigative phase and therefore under-investigated and then later, being rolled into various assassination conspiracy theories.

MC is a prime example on so many levels.

The weapons orders, probably another example - ditto all the shenanigans in NO. Not sheep-dipping, but a part of other ops that came in handy for painting the patsy in a certain light and ensuring the cover-up.

Another thing I am certain of: among the planners, there was someone with a detailed knowledge of the Rosenberg case and used little-known aspects of it in the frame-up. That included getting Oswald into a movie theater where I think he was supposed to be killed, with evidence planted to make it look like he was meeting a Soviet contact (the box-top - the method alleged in the Rosenberg case for meeting contacts in movie theaters). He spoilt the party by punching Lardarse MacDonald and then loudly proclaiming he was not resisting. 

Oswald was, I think, what is known as a floater in intelligence circles. Low level grunt used by various agencies; govt and private - always through cutouts so, as Ferrie said, he never really knew who he was working for - and at least some of the time, he was being used unwittingly, at other times used for one purpose but being told it was another. That last was how they got him into the TSBD.

For sure, someone or some group did not like the treatment they were getting from JFK and thought they would get much better treatment under LBJ. And it must have been seen as an existential threat to take such a risk. A threat that they had limited time to deal with and could not take a chance on the outcome of the 1964 election.

If it was LBJ, and he sure fits all the criteria above, it is ironic that he gave the MIC the Vietnam War which ultimately caused him not to seek re-election.

If the plot in Chicago (and perhaps Miami) was real, do you think the same people were behind it? It seems like Dallas was their home court.

It was brilliant to pick Oswald. The intelligence agencies he worked for would cover it up even if they had nothing to do with the assassination just to cover their own asses.