An Examination of Ruth and Michael Paine's level of Complicity

Admin note: this post was moved from another thread as a separate though related and larger subject on the Paines

Alex Wilson, your good comment is welcome to me. I appreciate your thoughts and will attempt to respond to some. I don't think I have gone Manichean here. I think of the case of Ruth Paine (also separately Clay Shaw, though that is a separate issue) more in terms of "wrongful conviction". The issue in wrongful conviction is not whether there are shades of gray about a person or whether they may have this or that fault. The issue is whether they did the crime, whether they were guilty of that of which they were convicted. Asking questions of Ruth Paine, or of any other person at the scene of a crime, any of the people close to Oswald or Ruby or Marina or other key figures, is necessarily going to happen, is legitimate, and unavoidably is going to be uncomfortable to innocent people questioned as "persons of interest" until the crime is solved, the guilty charged and the innocent cleared. It is like the dinner theatre murder mystery in which the murderer is someone in the room but until the murderer is identified everyone is suspect. So with the JFK assassination. My problem is not with questions being asked of Ruth Paine, but of the certainty with which so commonly conclusions are asserted as if they are closed facts, in which Ruth Paine is concluded to be sinister (witting to a framing of Oswald; witting to a plan to assassinate JFK; or whatever). When in every case I have looked at closely in specifics, it is always suspicion --> conclusion of guilt without evidence. I think I would hold the same view toward Ruth Paine if I did not know her (and if I were not a Friend). You may see it differently, but this is how I see it.

To get to some specifics, when you say this:

"The link with Dulles was probably not coincidental.
"For such a link , if cast in a suitably sinister light , could be used as leverage."

But there IS NO link with Dulles. Ruth Paine never met him (except at her WC testimony when Dulles was present as a member of the Warren Commission hearing testimony). Michael Paine never met him. You have no doubt read and heard so repeatedly talk of Allen Dulles in the same sentence with Ruth Paine--the way George Bush II used to put "911", "Saddam Hussein", and "terrorism" in the same sentences such that at the height of the runup to the war with Iraq, 2/3 of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had done 911, which was not the case at all. But that was the power of repeating words in association repetitively.

So ask yourself, how did it come to be that your question presupposes something to be a fact which has no existence as a fact?

Here is another:

"The weight of the evidence is overwhelming, rather the weight of the evidence Ruth helped produce is overwhelming.

"In the months following the assassination, her garage churned out incriminating artifacts- ticket stubs, cameras, letters- as obligingly as a printing press spewing out dollar bills ..an early assassination related precursor to quantitative easing perhaps..."

Well, Marina lived with Ruth and Lee had most of his worldly belongings in her garage, so on one level it is not too surprising that a high percentage of evidence re Oswald would come from Ruth Paine's house, since that is where it was. But the suggestion is that some of the evidence may be fabricated or planted, as part of a framing of Oswald. I think if any evidence was planted it is more likely to have been planted by police or professionals, not by the owner of the house. If police find planted drug evidence in a car, in most cases the planting is done by the police, not by the owner of the car, that principle. But the bottom line is there is no evidence or reason to conclude Ruth or Michael forged or planted anything.

The letter found in Marina's Russian child-care book. It is widely believed in certain circles that Ruth forged or fabricated or did something horribly wrong there maliciously incriminating Lee. But it was Marina--in no contact with Ruth and estranged from Ruth at the time--who told the FBI that SHE (Marina), not Ruth, had put that letter in her (Marina's) book in Ruth's kitchen to hide it, and it was Marina (not Ruth) who told the FBI that the note was linked to the shooting of Walker. (The note itself makes no mention of Walker.) That was not Ruth Paine's doing. That the letter was missed in the early police searches is not too difficult to understand since it was not where police were looking. In any case, once Ruth realized Marina did not have her book, which she might need, whether Ruth knew or did not know of the letter inside, what else should she have done? Keep it? Not turn it over to the Irving police for conveyance to Marina, whose property it rightfully was?  

But because MARINA told a narrative of how that letter was part of a shooting at Walker by Lee, a ton of JFK conspiracy researchers have gotten in their heads that RUTH personally forged that letter so as to incriminate the dead Oswald, as part of a larger plot to wrongfully pin the death of JFK on Oswald. As if Ruth had prior spy training in cryptography or forging handwriting! (No evidence of such at all.) There is no EVIDENCE Ruth did that. But people believe as if it is a fact that she did, just like the claim of the link to Allen Dulles.

On collaborating with authorities, it is clear Ruth cooperated after the assassination with police, Warren Commission, investigators, etc. to the best of her ability. Also, she thought and continues to think, no less than Robert Oswald, both of the major governmental investigations and ca. 70% of literate Americans, that Oswald shot and killed JFK. None of that means she fabricated or forged evidence or gave testimony suborned covertly by agencies scripting what she was to say. People SUSPECT all sorts of things but there is just no evidence or convincing circumstantial argument that anything like that happened.

A question is whether Ruth was a covert FBI informer (or with some other agency) on Marina and/or Lee prior to the assassination. (That she cooperated with FBI when they asked her questions Nov 1 and 5 and then after the assassination is clear and not at issue.) It is a reasonable question, but I don't think so prior to Nov. 1, because I found a statement of Ruth in writing to the Warren Commission stating that she never talked to an FBI agent before Hosty came to her house to see Marina on Nov. 1. However, it remains an open question to me whether Ruth might have entered "potential confidential informant" status (or something like that) with the FBI after Nov. 1, 1963. I am not aware of a specific denial of Ruth of that (referring to after Nov 1, 1963), and several things indirectly suggest to me the possibility--I would not put it stronger than that--that that could be the case. Please do not misunderstand me, I am not saying this is what was, only that the question is open to me. (a) so far as I can tell, FBI agents were under varying degrees of pressure from above to produce new informants in field offices; (b) the most common way FBI agents produced informants was by developing contacts they already had or knew as part of their work, into informants. An FBI agent told someone I knew that the way they got informants was when some good citizen reported something to the FBI--the FBI would ask them to keep in touch and, if they were in contact with some suspicious group or something, to keep reporting back. The citizen, who may have intended only to do their civic duty that one time, might do so, and out of that a new informant could be developed. (c) Michael Paine after the assassination referred to knowing FBI agent Odum prior to the assassination (though since Odum lived in Irving, it is not clear what that means). (d) Ruth Paine said she asked the FBI agent "assigned to her", soon after the assassination, if they had tapped her phone. Ruth says the FBI agent answered her back with a non-answer of "why would we want to do that? you've always been helpful to us".

On your question:

"Is there any record of the Paines ( Ruth or Michael) opening their home to virtual strangers?
"Or were the Oswalds somehow unique?
"I'm not being disrespectful or attempting to imply anything untoward ...if Ruth was, as her defenders maintain, of such a charitable disposition then surely her generosity wouldn't be an isolated , one off event."

I don't know of any myself, but for most years of Ruth's life I would not know. When I knew Ruth in the Friends Meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida, she was one of the inner circle of what Friends call "weighty Friends" (an informal term referring to reputation for wisdom and experience) and the Meeting did a number of things with helping immigrants and others in the community. I was never at Ruth's house and did not know her specific living arrangements.

Let's start with this, from Marina's NO Grand Jury testimony:


I can't rely solely on Marina as she was not a reliable, consistent witness.

But in this case, it does fit the inter-agency rivalry raging at the time, including the fight for almost exclusive rights to mine and massage the knowledge of key witnesses before any other agency got to them.

If this warning to Marina was indeed issued, it was made well before there was any public questioning of her (Ruth's) allegiances. 

I think what they really said to Marina was possibly lost a little in translation. Substitute "an asset to" for "sympathizing with" and you will have it about right.

I do note that Marina also testified during that session in NO that Ruth had given Lee's address to Hosty when he came to the house during late Oct or early November. Recall that officially, no one knew where he was living.

The only nitpick I have with my learned friend, Sir Axelrod of Ahmpytt Ayr, is that I doubt that they appealed to her instinct for charity. There is no evidence that she ever took in anyone down on their luck (apart from Marina). If you want numerous examples of that, look to Jack Ruby. If Ruth had any sort of history for anything along those lines, it would have been prominent in the records. We can add that no friends or acquaintances interviewed by the FBI for background on her ever accused her of such charity. 

What we do have is an FBI report on a man employed by the Paine family to operate the ferry to their holiday island. He was given accommodation next to Mike's place and reported basically that Mike and Ruth snubbed him. Never invited to any of their social events, and probably lucky to even get a curt "hello" from them.

What "charity" work she was involved in was never on the micro/personal level which is nearly always the best, most honest kind. It was on the macro/organizational level. And always concerning issues of great interest to the alphabet soup agencies.

Civil Rights was one such area (recall that the African-Americans she tried to "help" told her basically to fuck off. Not a lot of trust there, it seems ...)

Pro-Nica... here is an insider's (fellow Quaker's) account of Ruth in Nicaragua. A thoroughly fascinating read which poses more questions than it answers.  Including that it claims Ruth told the Pro-Nica group that she and Marina went to the garage to see if the rifle was still there immediately after hearing about the assassination. Really? 

Here is Marina during the Shaw trial:

A: Lee was -- I expecting baby, so Lee was packing all the clothes, you know, so I don't know what he packed, you know. So later on after we stayed in Ruth's house -- no, I don't know about the rifle -- anyhow, I think first time I saw rifle was police arrived.
Q: When the police arrived?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Was that before or after the assassination of President Kennedy?
A: After.
Q: After?
A: Yes.

And Ruth Paine from her Warren Commission testimony:

Representative BOGGS - Did you see the rifle that he had in the room in your home?
Mrs. PAINE - In the garage, no.
Representative BOGGS - In the garage, you never saw one?
Mrs. PAINE - I never saw that rifle at all until the police showed it to me in the station on the 22d of November.

And the Shaw Trial

Q: Now, did you ever see Lee Harvey Oswald in possession of a gun or rifle, Mrs. Paine?
A: No, I didn't, I didn't know he had a gun.
Q: Did you now of any gun or rifle that he had stored in the garage or carport of your home in Dallas, in Irving?
A: No, I did not, not until the afternoon after the assassination.
Q: Did you ever see any guns stored on your premises?
A: No, nor would I have wanted it there had I known. We had very young children, I wouldn't have wanted a gun on the premises at all.
------
Do you recall whether or not any of these belongings were wrapped in a blanket?
A: Yes, there was a blanket on the floor.
Q: On the floor?
A: When I recall seeing the blanket, it was on the floor.
Q: And when was that that you saw the blanket on the floor?
A: It was Friday afternoon, November 22.
Q: And what was your occasion for going to the garage at that time?
A: Well, officers had arrived and said they had Lee Oswald in custody for shooting an officer, and asked if they could come in, and --
Q: Let me caution you this is hearsay you are going into, what these officers said.
A: Shall I describe what they did?
Q: Yes.
A: O.K. They came in, and I indicated that most of the Oswald's possessions were either in the bedroom or in the garage, and we went into the garage, and a question arose as to whether Oswald had had a weapon of any sort. Foolishly I said no, but I then translated the question to Marina, and she said she knew him to have a rifle and indicated the blanket roll on the floor, and then I translated what she indicated to me, and the officer picked up the roll in the middle and hung it over his arm.
Q: Was there anything in the blanket roll?
A: It looked pretty empty. He did not open it.


http://jfkpage.com/Paine/Occurrence_in_Nicaragua.pdf

Of course, the CIA was all over everything in Nicaragua at the time.

Greg P, what exactly is your charge or belief or conclusion concerning Ruth Paine relevant to the JFK assassination which you would like to see addressed, and what relevance to that is a claim that an employee living in a house next door to the Paines on vacation claimed to have been socially snubbed by them?

Greg, this is an examination of the Paine's level of complicity. I'm just laying out some of the evidence that may be viewed as innocent coincidence,or as someone reading too much between lines, or as evidence of an undetermined level of complicity in the pre/post framing of Oswald. If the latter, it would still leave open the possibility that they had no idea what they helping to frame him for.

One of the main defenses of Ruth Paine from people such as yourself, has always fallen back on her being, as another apologist likes to put it, "a Quaker charity lady" - and that was the root of her character and one of the entirely innocent reasons she took Marina in.

In my experience however, taking people in who need help, is not something done just once out of the blue. It is more or less, a practice that shows a pattern over a period of time. The record clearly shows that Jack Ruby had such a pattern. Crafard was far from the first person he had provided a home and/or money to who needed one or the other or both. Yet no one calls Ruby "a Jewish Charity Man". Ruth does it once under dubious circumstances (the tax incentive for Mike) and is lauded for a lifetime as another Mother Terese. 

Truly charitable souls are not snobs. They invite neighbors over when having a dinner party. They treat people the way they think they themselves should be treated. They have a lifelong pattern of opening their hearts and their doors to those in need that they come across in their travels.

But not Ruth.

She meets the Oswalds through the CIA sponsored White Russian emigres. She and Mike plan to exploit Marina and her baby for tax minimization purposes. Ruth separates Marina from Lee when she could just as easily have opened her home to both and helped Lee get a job much sooner than he did.

Her "charity" efforts seem to be limited to paid employment with elderly Russian Jewish Emigres (some of whom would be of interest to the FBI and CIA)

East/West Contact programs ostensibly run by Friends, but really directed through the State Dept East/West Contact Program which was embedded with CIA officers.

Employing an African-American maid, after she lost Marina, on the pretext that the media was taking up all her time. Nearly broke her neck in her haste to render the poor woman incapable of child birth as a "charitable" action.

Tried to insert herself into the Civil Rights movement in Fort Worth and was unceremoniously rejected. The FBI and some private organizations were always trying to disrupt any movement that got too "uppity". 

Was involved in Pro-Nica in 1991 and even fellow Quakers questioned what she was really doing there. And Nicaragua was a CIA hot-spot at the time.

Where is the real charity that has no "intelligence" shadow behind it? It eludes me.

Give me Jack Ruby any day for placing on a charity pedestal.

greg_parker wrote:Greg, this is an examination of the Paine's level of complicity. I'm just laying out some of the evidence that may be viewed as innocent coincidence,or as someone reading too much between lines, or as evidence of an undetermined level of complicity in the pre/post framing of Oswald. If the latter, it would still leave open the possibility that they had no idea what they helping to frame him for.

One of the main defenses of Ruth Paine from people such as yourself, has always fallen back on her being, as another apologist likes to put it, "a Quaker charity lady" - and that was the root of her character and one of the entirely innocent reasons she took Marina in.

"examination of the Paine's level of complicity"--in what? in the assassination of JFK? 

What is Ruth Paine being accused of exactly? 

You are throwing everything under the sun at her such that it is clear you do not like her. OK, I don't care about that. What does your not liking about her make her guilty of relevant to the JFK assassination, is what I want to know. 

You mention possible "evidence of pre/post framing of Oswald". Well, what do you think? 

How does Ruth's alleged failures to be sufficiently charitable according to your standards in terms of inviting more women friends to live in her tiny house and share in childrearing and companionship, etc. than the one she did, make her guilty of ... pre or post framing of Oswald for murder?--if that is your chain of reasoning, which I don't know that it is, which is why I am asking: what IS it you think Ruth is guilty of, relevant to the JFK assassination? 

Say what you think Ruth is guilty of and reasons why. 

Otherwise, it is asking me to box air. It is like accusing a witch (I'll use that analogy again) and people are unwilling to say what it is exactly she has done, but they are sure she must have done bad things. Why? "Because". Because why? "Just because."

To turn to another point, your claim that Ruth and Michael had a motive of financially exploiting Marina by claiming a tax deduction ("she and Mike plan to exploit Marina and her baby for tax minimization purposes")--you explain no reasoning of how that makes Ruth guilty of involvement in the assassination, but never mind that--your allegation seems totally baseless and gratuitous. Here in the U.S. tax system, anyone who supports anyone financially is entitled to a tax deduction, i.e. there is what is informally known as the "deadbeat boyfriend deduction", when a woman is supporting a man living with her who is unemployed. These women are not doing this to financially exploit the boyfriend! The tax code allows her financial drain to be partially lessened. The benefit from the deduction is less than what is spent.

On your criticism that Ruth did not invite Lee to live fulltime in her tiny home with the pregnant Marina and the two toddlers and then one baby: again, no demonstrated relevance to making her guilty of the assassination. In addition a little presumptuous on your part to render moral judgment on who is obligated to invite who to move in fulltime into their personal living space, it seems to me as well.

Your polemic against Ruth for not being sufficiently charitable is a straw man and a bit unreasonable. It is clear to me that being charitable was not how Ruth wanted her relationship with Marina to be viewed or characterized. Even when personal charity is happening, such as romantic relationships where one is wealthy supporting another who is poor, human beings are complicated creatures and there are attempts for dignity and face-saving reasons to make such relationships not characterized as charity, but as some kind of mutual exchange. It is clear to me that Ruth sought to present her relationship with Marina, both to herself and to Marina as well as to outsiders, as a mutual exchange--Russian language and English language, child-care, companionship, etc. Ruth did not want her relationship with Marina characterized as "charity". I think the "Russian language improvement" benefit to Ruth while partly true was also partly so that Marina would not feel like she was an object of charity more than necessary.

"examination of the Paine's level of complicity"--in what? in the assassination of JFK? 

What is Ruth Paine being accused of exactly? 

What do you think "complicity" could possibly be a reference to in the context of a board dedicated to the assassination of JFK?

You are throwing everything under the sun at her such that it is clear you do not like her. OK, I don't care about that. What does your not liking about her make her guilty of relevant to the JFK assassination, is what I want to know. 

You're accusing me of bias? I agree that my personal feelings about her have no relevance to her guilt any more than being a Quaker and having met her is relevant to her innocence.

The difference between is that one us has trouble putting personal bias aside. I am quite capable of simultaneously showing my disdain for her - and concluding she did nothing wrong - if that is what the evidence indicates.

I can point you to any number of characters in this sorry episode in history, who I find totally loathsome, but innocent of any complicity, despite being accused by others. 

You mention possible "evidence of pre/post framing of Oswald". Well, what do you think? 

If she had any complicity in the assassination, it could only be in helping to frame Oswald before and/or after the deed.

If before, she need not have been cognizant of what she was setting him up for. After the deed, of course, she would know exactly what she was doing. 

And after 20 years of study, that is where I stand with her. She helped set him up before the assassination, without being cognizant of the plot. She willingly help put the noose around his neck afterwards from her Aladdin's Cave. She was, as I previously suggested, an intelligence asset. Maybe CIA. Maybe FBI. Maybe both. Maybe neither, but instead some private intelligence group affiliated with defense contracts or the like. 

I do think some of the charges and evidence used by some against her are false.

How does Ruth's alleged failures to be sufficiently charitable according to your standards in terms of inviting more women friends to live in her tiny house and share in childrearing and companionship, etc. than the one she did, make her guilty of ... pre or post framing of Oswald for murder?--if that is your chain of reasoning, which I don't know that it is, which is why I am asking: what IS it you think Ruth is guilty of, relevant to the JFK assassination? 

The argument I am countering is that she took Marina in because of her charitable nature (since such a charitable nature lacks any actual past examples). If that was not the reason she took her in, there must be another reason. You cite sharing in child-rearing, companionship, the Russian language practice as possible reasons, but then later suggest they were cover stories so that Marin did not feel like  charity case. Clearly, such tasks were necessary to qualify Michael for his tax deduction. 

Say what you think Ruth is guilty of and reasons why. 

Otherwise, it is asking me to box air. It is like accusing a witch (I'll use that analogy again) and people are unwilling to say what it is exactly she has done, but they are sure she must have done bad things. Why? "Because". Because why? "Just because."

I'm not asking you to box anything. 

This board is full of examples of what she is "accused" of.  It amounts to a long pattern of extremely bad timing (when looking in the rear vision mirror at her actions). It amounts to hiding very important facts from the authorities. It amounts to the distinct possibility that she was the author of certain letters, not Oswald. It amounts the possibility she and Mike were part of the intel community from at least the time they separated. It amounts to concerns over her roll in Oswald starting at the TSBD. 

Of course it is all circumstantial evidence (except the bits about her hiding important information from the investigators). But the case against Oswald was also circumstantial. Yet I get the sense you would convict him on it while acquitting the Paines, no matter how strong the circumstantial case was. They get a free pass because there is no smoking gun for them, and anyone expecting to find one is seriously deluded. 

On your criticism that Ruth did not invite Lee to live fulltime in her tiny home with the pregnant Marina and the two toddlers and then one baby: again, no demonstrated relevance to making her guilty of the assassination. In addition a little presumptuous on your part to render moral judgment on who is obligated to invite who to move in fulltime into their personal living space, it seems to me as well.

Again, no direct relevance to the assassination was suggested. It does once again to the "charity" mantra sing by her apologists as a means of exonerating her based on character. 

Her "tiny home" lol. Was that the only home she ever lived in? Did she invite anyone to come live with her in previous - larger homes? The small ranch home was perfect for playing the typical suburban (Quaker no less) housewife. Did you know that the Soviets built pretend American towns to train operatives they would be sending over to the US? The towns replicated all facets of American culture and life -- right down to the homes being... small ranch homes.

In any event, you are saying it was better for Marina to be separated from her husband while pregnant. It was indeed just a two bedroom home. But Oswald would occupy Marina's room, and would either be out all day job hunting -- or more likely - working after quickly finding something. It is not like an additional bedroom was needed or that he would take up an inordinate amount of space in the hours he was actually there. Living there, could then support his wife and quickly get the money together for their own apartment. THAT would have been the real charitable thing to do. Help them stay together as a family unit and put them both up for a short time until they had saved enough to move out.

To turn to another point, your claim that Ruth and Michael had a motive of financially exploiting Marina by claiming a tax deduction ("she and Mike plan to exploit Marina and her baby for tax minimization purposes")--you explain no reasoning of how that makes Ruth guilty of involvement in the assassination, but never mind that--your allegation seems totally baseless and gratuitous.

Again, this has nothing to do directly to do with the assassination and everything to do with taking down her Charity Queen persona that is so often used to disguise who and what she really was.

Your polemic against Ruth for not being sufficiently charitable is a straw man and a bit unreasonable. 

The straw argument all along has been her presentation as a "Quaker Charity Lady". 

Even when personal charity is happening, such as romantic relationships where one is wealthy supporting another who is poor, human beings are complicated creatures 

"Complicated creatures"... except in the world of Paine defenders - and admittedly, also in the world of some  of the more outre denizens of JFKLand. Black or white. Quaker housewife or CIA operative.  The only place you will find much nuance is here. 

and there are attempts for dignity and face-saving reasons to make such relationships not characterized as charity, but as some kind of mutual exchange. It is clear to me that Ruth sought to present her relationship with Marina, both to herself and to Marina as well as to outsiders, as a mutual exchange--Russian language and English language, child-care, companionship, etc. Ruth did not want her relationship with Marina characterized as "charity".

But here you are basically still saying it was "charity" dressed up not to be charity for face-saving reasons. 

Others WANT to characterize it a charity as a defense against claims of being CIA baby-sitters.

Seems I am one of the few actually interesting in understanding what it ACTUALLY was for the sake of history. 

I have ruled it out as charity on the grounds of lack of precedence, class consciousness, and damaging rather than helpful to Marina's circumstances insofar as it separated her from her husband, delayed him getting employment, brought the FBI on her trail (separation from your husband and breadwinner could cause residency issues and indeed, she was threatened in late October, early November with potential deportation) and lastly, on the grounds that she and June were being used for tax minimization, despite your objections to that, and which I will address next.

To turn to another point, your claim that Ruth and Michael had a motive of financially exploiting Marina by claiming a tax deduction ("she and Mike plan to exploit Marina and her baby for tax minimization purposes")--you explain no reasoning of how that makes Ruth guilty of involvement in the assassination, but never mind that--your allegation seems totally baseless and gratuitous. Here in the U.S. tax system, anyone who supports anyone financially is entitled to a tax deduction, i.e. there is what is informally known as the "deadbeat boyfriend deduction", when a woman is supporting a man living with her who is unemployed. These women are not doing this to financially exploit the boyfriend! The tax code allows her financial drain to be partially lessened. The benefit from the deduction is less than what is spent.

Loll, So you are comparing Marina to a deadbeat boyfriend? Wow.

This was not a husband/wife or disabled relative type scenario. The fact that they had stated an intent to pay Marina $10:00 per week places the relationship exactly as it was: Mistress/Servant.  A live-in housemaid. An Au Pair. And that is not to say it was not other things as well.

I looked up what such a position paid in the US around that time - on average, about $50.00 pw plus meals and other expenses. 

Btw, we have the same allowable deduction. But I personally do not know of anyone - ANYONE in this country who would invite someone they have befriended to come live with them till they get on their feet and then claim them as a tax deduction.  Just would not happen here, even though it is possible. 

Ruth herself tried quite a scam in 1982 - withholding 40% of her tax bill that she estimated went to fighting wars. 

That would make sense if you were anti-war and did not want to help fund it.

But her tax liability is not divided up that way. It goes into one big pool which is then allocated out. Meaning that any wars being fought would still get every cent the government wanted to put into it. If enough people followed her into doing this, the armed forces and national security would not lose a red cent of funding. But if all of the tax resisters did manage to put a dent in revenue, then funding would be cut to infrastructure spending and services.

It was nothing but an egotistical act of virtue signalling that could potentially hit the wrong target.

Same as did with Marina.

Alex Wilson, thank you again for your thoughtful comments (from the former thread).


"I respect your willingness to defend "a heroically unpopular point of view", and for having the courage to venture into the metaphorical lions den to do so.
"Armstrong knows there are few souls brave enough to risk their reputations by debating Greg, head to head, on his home turf"



(For any listening the reference is not to John Armstrong but instead Herbert Armstrong, no relation, and a book I wrote entitled "Showdown at Big Sandy".)


"I truly meant no disrespect, indeed I can sympathize to some extent with the sense of frustration you must feel when you see someone who you admire, someone you believe to be beyond reproach, and guilty of nothing but kindness and generosity, being ruthlessly pillored by armchair conpiracists (who, ironically display exactly the sort of zealotry they disparage Ruth Paine for displaying)
"Reading some of the mindless trash that passes as " research" can be a truly nauseating experience.
"As well as mirroring the behaviour of those whom they claim to despise, the high priests( and priestesses) of conspiracism never judge themselves using the same standards they use to judge others.
"I try to avoid judging anyone, noting only that many who make a habit of judging others should perhaps have spent more time judging themselves..
"I find the carnival Barker hucksterism ,anti intellectualism and po faced self righteousness at least as repugnant as the antics of the pro government stooges they claim to oppose
"But I've said all this before.
"To answer your specific points.
"I think you misinterpreted the entire thrust of the argument I was trying to make.
"Perhaps I was less than artful in the way I put my point across, if that was the case I apologise.
"The " links" I am referring to are far deeper and more profound. They are the thin golden cords that link the tectonic plates together beneath the superficial democratic facade. The links of blood, family and tradition.
"From the archaic ramshackle days of Francis Walsingham , the semi official " exploring agents" and shadowy Foreign Office couriers through to days of Vernon Kell and Mansfield Cumming ( the original C) and the standardisation of British Intelligence in the first decade of the 20th century recruitment was based on class and kinship.
"The right sort of schools, families etc.
"In fact I'm being way too narrow in my definition- until relatively recently ( though in the bars and gentlemen's clubs of the West End ...a collection of bewhiskered Miss Havershams ( in many cases quite literally) the old ways still cling on, stubborn and resolute, in defiance of the new fangled world of egalitarianism they so detest. A photographic dark room in a digital age ..) the world of politics, diplomacy, intelligence, finance etc was a closed world.
"The innermost ring of many interlocking concentric rings.. 
"Recruitment was informal, a tap on the shoulder,
" "I say would you like to do something for your country?"
"Thats how the Burgesses, Philbys, Macleans and Blunts( they KNEW he was a Soviet agent but yet he was still made the Surveyor of Queens Pictures and given a comfortable sinecure at the Courtland Institute, where he could indulge his main passions - Poussin, vintage malt whisky and not so vintage young men .. they even gave him a knighthood!!) wormed their way into the heart of the British Establishment..
"What's all this got to do with Ruth Paine?
"Quite a lot.
"I wasn't attempting to insinuate that Ruth was some domestic FBI/CIA agent/ informant, I was trying to make another point entirely.
"I think the whole " pin the Agency tail on the JFK donkey " game ( the FBI CIA Mafia KGB MICC BBC( if according to Jim Harwood..Lord Reith dispatched Sir Bertrand Russell and a sniper rifle to Dallas stuffed inside Sir Robin Day's gut))is not only a futile distraction but a gross misreading of history.
"Such simple classifications are far too crude a rubric and too blunt a knife to dissect such a delicate organism
"Ruth Paine belonged to those exalted circles,. So what? Guilt by association is one of the favourite ploys of the conspiracists I excoriate so regularly and here I am mimicking them...
"Like I came top of the my hypocrisy class at doppelganging school..
"Apart from sweeping generalisations and cloudy rhetoric what do I really have?
"A working knowledge of the social and political history of the era 
"How the first generation OSS operatives were schooled and influenced by British methods.
"How the British methods had deep roots in the Eastern Establishment/ Social Register/ Boston Brahmin caste
"Greg, im not accusing Ruth of being anyone's agent. I think the JFK assassination conspiracy was conducted at a far deeper level. The interconnected supra national power structure (not the childlike caricatures of NWO illuminati cabals the troofers insist on defacing the internet with)
"Such bonds of family, blood, money and power are far deeper than countries, politics and even religion... these are merely superficial trappings, designed to divide and to stupify.
"The mind has been turned into the prison of the soul and the soul the prison of the body.
"Regarding Ruth Paine my feeling is that she was approached by someone who knew her, her background and her religious beliefs who asked her to babysit the Oswald's.
"Someone who knew and her family background intimately . Someone who knew she could be trusted."



I think the blueblood background was on Michael Paine's side. Ruth's background I think was solid well-connected professional father (with the international development work with CIA links) but not sure if that would actually be blueblood on Ruth's background side. As for Michael, he was born into blueblood as well as radical Trotskyist background but he himself never made much of either (did not become famous or prominent, had a comfortable job due to family connections but that was about it), like some children of elite families.

Both Michael and Ruth were Kennedy supporters and there is not any hint of a reason to suppose otherwise. I agree that some sector of the elite in America determined Kennedy, already deeply hated by right-wing John Bircher types, had to go. You suggest an old-boys' network in which things get done by doing favors for one another, involved a quiet tap to ask Ruth Paine to, so to speak, babysit Marina. Apart from no evidence this happened, and no real reason to suppose either Michael or Ruth themselves were involved personally or socially in blueblood activities and power networks (being on boards of powerful corporations and charities, working for think tanks, social prominence, public service and elected office, etc.), the suggestion would not be implausible. The question is raised because of a reasonable suspicion--not verified in documents directly to my knowledge but I don't doubt that it was likely--that US intelligence agencies would have wanted to keep an eye on Marina, watch what she was up to, with the suspicion that she with or without Lee's knowledge may have been a spy. So that sets up the question: which intelligence agency or agencies would be involved in keeping an eye on Marina, and what was the mechanism by which this was done?

There is no evidence Ruth was such a mechanism, and I don't think she was in any directed or covert way, based on her denials that she was CIA or FBI, and denial that she was some sort of intelligence-agency babysitter for Marina. I think Ruth is truthful based on her public record and reinforced by what I knew of her by reputation and personally when I knew her. Other people say well she is just lying. I say prove it. Also, it is important to know what the allegation actually is that is asserted without proof. Is it that Ruth was functioning as an informant, a watcher or minder so to speak? If Ruth was, how would that make her into an assassin or participant in a plot to assassinate a president who she supported and showed no signs of not supporting? How would that make her into an operative involved in sordid dirty-tricks such as forging letters and planting of evidence and giving malicious false testimony under oath in concert with unseen handlers as part of an extremely effective plot in which she was one cog, a plot so effective that there has never been a single leak of evidence that Ruth had such unseen marionette-string directors scripting her moves. 

In short, while you describe a possible spy-novel thriller plot, I don't think that was going on with Ruth. Was Ruth ever "asked" by someone--some "company man" or woman ("company man" being slang here in the US for spook, CIA)--to "keep an eye on Marina, will you? she needs help..."? Who knows. Ruth has never said so, nor has any other testimony or evidence of something like that to my knowledge--its all just unsupported suspicion converted into some minds as unimpeachable established FACT. 

I myself have puzzled over all of the major questions giants of researchers like Bill Simpich as well as some on this forum, Greg Parker and others, struggle with, concerning interpretation of what has to be major intelligence-agency connections and/or interest in Lee Harvey Oswald. On the one hand, Oswald was spooked up to his ears, but on the other hand he is poor and thrown under the bus with his military discharge issue, and (I believe) framed maliciously--by someones who knew what they were doing--for the assassination itself. Do US agencies normally frame and have executed (the Ruby hit) their own operatives? And never pay them so that they are not in grinding poverty? 

Here is what I think (this is conjecture and tentative, but my thinking): Lee went into the USSR as an agent for the US, with the idea being that he would be recruited and be a double agent. On the Soviet side, they watched every move he made, knowing full well he was likely a US operative. By the time Marina and Lee return to the US they are both, not just Marina, spies for the USSR or at least Marina is and Lee thinks he is. This has nothing to do with USSR having anything to do with the assassination which Lee did not do anyway. The idea from Lee and Marina's point of view was to allow himself (Lee) to be recruited on the US side and be a double agent. The US suspects this may be what was up with Lee and Marina, but rather than oppose or resist Lee's return, decided to expedite and help his return and watch him like a hawk, to see what he and Marina do. Lee meanwhile plans to allow himself to become recruited at some point as an agent on the US side, double agent. But the US agencies know he may be a Soviet dangle even as they may have him recruited in some way. Marina certainly knows English despite pretending not to. There is a real relationship between Lee and Marina with a shared covert loyalty to USSR, even if Marina might consider a post-divorce independent life of her own in the U.S. once the citizenship and residency issue was not in jeopardy. 

The point here is that there were many possible avenues for surveilling Marina (also Lee, with whom Ruth Paine was not involved except via Marina). There were the White Russians above all, a number of names in that circle in Dallas of whom it is practically certain there were informants to agencies among them. Ruth Paine was not a White Russian or in those circles so far as is known prior to knowing Marina. With Ruth, either it was Ruth as babysitter for Marina or else Ruth meets and takes a liking and sympathy to Marina on her own and is helpful to Marina without having any idea of the larger intrigue she is getting herself into--no idea of Marina's double life, Marina's secrets. In this latter case the actual surveillance of Marina would now involve surveillance of Ruth too. I think the latter is more likely than the former, which in any case Ruth has explicitly denied and no evidence contradicts Ruth's denial--only JFK assassination researchers' spider-sense suspicions. Suspicion of witchcraft. Impossible for an accused witch to prove one's innocence when so suspected... Jacobin French Revolution Terror logic, in which suspicion --> condemnation. Joseph McCarthy logic: circumstances and associations look suspicious, therefore that's all that's needed, condemn and ruin lives and reputations.

I think there surely were old-school taps on the shoulder as you describe bringing about the assassination of JFK, but of persons other than and having nothing to Ruth or Michael Paine. Oswald was framed for the assassination, but that had nothing to do with Ruth or Michael Paine. If Ruth was framing Oswald she had a funny way of going about it--said he never criticized Kennedy (no motive for Lee); never claimed to witness violence or association with a murder weapon from Lee; never testified to having heard a threat from Lee (premeditation); never testified to anything significant that condemned Lee. It was MARINA who gave all of the specifics which nailed Lee in terms of the police and investigators' framing and presentation of the case against Oswald. Not Ruth, MARINA. To what extent Marina's testimony was a mixture of truth and falsehood remains a longstanding matter of debate and discussion--what everyone agrees upon without any dispute is that Marina's testimony has some significant intentional deception, the only issue is how much and where exactly. Marina treated Ruth shamefully, from one way of looking at it, though from Marina's point of view she was struggling for survival and Lee was already dead and could not be brought back to life, and as Marina said years later to Jesse Ventura, "what would you have done, with children to look out for?" Marina had her own pressures and choices to make for survival and I am not condemning her, just attempting to be realistic in pointing out that it was not Ruth and Marina together who made the narrative that actually condemns Lee in the mainstream narrative for the assassination, but, Marina (not Ruth). 

The suspicions of CIA associations of Ruth in Nicaragua, or claimed by Marina told her by the Secret Service, are entirely unsubstantiated and in the Nicaragua case, themselves generated by the prior suspicion of Ruth as agency agent at the time of the assassination. In a sense, Ruth's perceived CIA-operative-guilt in the assassination caused the perception that she was CIA in Nicaragua, and those suspicions are then cited as supporting that she was CIA-operative-guilt in the assassination, a vicious circle. Witchhunt accusation logic. I am not denying there was CIA in Nicaragua among peace workers. There was and it was a major issue among the groups seeking to assist people in central America on the wrong side of murderous US policies. But I have seen innocent people accused, while the real informants or spooky types may go entirely undetected for years. The American Indian Movement (AIM), their officer tasked with investigating and detecting and protecting AIM from spooks turned out all along to have been a police infiltrator. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) in northern Ireland, same thing. In a climate of real infiltration and hysteria, innocent people get tagged wrongly and real professionals go undetected. I am strongly of the judgment or opinion that Ruth Paine is in the innocent person category and not the real-professional category. And Michael Paine too, same comment.


"If you've read Vincent Salandrias description of meeting the Paines you will hear them, both Ruth and Michael , speaking in their authentic voices.
"Sometimes the masks we wear allow us to be ourselves, sometimes the masks end up becoming ourselves but othertimes the masks are just masks.
"In that particular interview the masks are dropped."

Vincent Salandria's article on the Paines is as horrible as his sincerity is clear. Salandria was a good man passionate for the truth, and an illustration that good intentions are not enough in this world, that innocent people can be hurt by people who mean well, as well as being hurt by people who mean evil.

His article starts out, like a man on the verge of a mental illness, with tales of suspicious traffic stops by highway patrol cars on his long-distance driving trip to Texas to see the Paines. These suspicious traffic stops en route, Salandria logically concludes, were deep state (not his term, but is the sense) warnings to let him know they were watching him, following him, aware of what he was up to. He knows this is not routine highway patrol officers just doing what highway patrol officers do every day because he explains in each case something was SUSPICIOUS. Obviously connected to his destination: the Paines. They--the deep state--knew. They were not only watching, they were letting him know they knew and were watching.

OK, with this start Salandria arrives in Irving, Texas for his meeting with the Paines. You say you hear, in his description of that meeting, the Paines speaking in their "authentic" (presumably more sinister I think you mean) voices. Actually Ruth Paine is not said to have said anything specific in terms of any quoted words, it is only Michael. Salandria is astonished and taken aback that Michael asks him about his JFK-assassination conspiracy articles. How did Michael know about that? Deep state again! All part of the same hidden all-seeing apparatus who had had the highway patrol cars make the suspicious stops of his car en route for traffic violations! 

It happens that Salandria's visit and arrival was known to Michael and Ruth in advance, and Michael surprised Vince by showing knowledge of what Vince had written about the assassination, also that Salandria was a civil rights lawyer. Rather than conclude that Michael had simply checked him out, Salandria thinks that could not be so simple: Michael must have had deep state assistance in that. 

Salandria smears Ruth Paine with a factually untrue charge in that article--and this is a man who is a civil rights lawyer who intends in his heart to have truth come to light. Salandria charges, in this widely-circulated article which has been so influential upon the JFK assassination research community, that "another mound of evidence demonstrates that the Paines and their families were steeped in involvement in the United States intelligence services" and gives a footnote which establishes nothing of the kind with respect to Ruth or Michael. Among other references Salandria cites a 1998 COPA speech he gave as establishing this. In that speech, according to a transcript, Salandria claims, without footnote or documentation: "According to recent research in the 1980s Ruth Paine assisted illegal anti-socialist activity in Nicaragua". I have read all the known articles discussing Ruth Paine and Nicaragua that I am aware of, which I believe are Salandria's uncited sources here, and there is no evidence presented in any of those that Ruth Paine assisted the contras. The sole evidence that I can recall is someone telling of a guest speaker who was a retired contra leader in a wheelchair, speaking of the past in contra vs. Sandinista days, saying that they had trouble getting aid from international charity organizations, "but the Quakers always came through for us". One one level that is not impossible in that Friends traditionally have a history of neutrality in humanitarian aid to civilians of both sides peacefully in conflicts (sometimes facing US legal threats for aiding one of those two sides). But I read this as more of the speaker's deference in saying something complimentary concerning some present or among his hosts hearing him. I can say from all I know and remember that Friends of the 1980s did NOT support the US-supported (or non-US-supported) contra wars against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, and sympathy for the Sandinista side of the conflict orchestrated by the Reagan administration with intent to overthrow the Sandinistas, was practically universal among Friends. Salandria, to his discredit, reports some passing completely unsupported suspicion re alleged Ruth Paine contra support in an article on Ruth Paine and claims "recent research" has established it to be a fact. That is shameful. And shame on the JFK assassination researchers who read uncritically something like this and now it is in their heads and quoted and believed as if that is reality, so much so that it arouses reactions to question it.  

"Despite her public statements ( in some cases because of her public statements. Her letter to Garrison is as oligeanous as it unconvincing.) I firmly believe Ruth, like the rest of her caste, despised JFK as an interloper and a vulgar upstart."

I read Ruth's letter to Garrison as naive, but real. Garrison to his appalling shame--and I first learned this only a day or so ago when reading Greg Parker's earlier post above this one giving a screenshot of an excerpt of a Garrison deposition of Marina--Garrison said in that transcript that his (Garrison's) team of investigators had concluded Ruth was "connected with the Central Intelligence Agency, because that's our conclusion". Where was the evidence for that? Garrison never produced any. I am quite certain the reason he never produced any evidence for that McCarthyite conclusion was because he never had any.

I entirely disagree with the idea that "Ruth, like the rest of her caste, despised JFK as an interloper and a vulgar upstart". Where to begin? Ruth is probably accurately described as part of upper-middle-class professional class in terms of her family background, not blueblood elite caste. (I think you're thinking of some of her in-laws via Michael.) Second, JFK was blueblood and hardly an upstart, except possibly to some very most elite families in New England, but that would be way, way over Ruth's head (and Michael's too). And third, there is just not a shred of evidence that I know of nor do I think you know of either that supports any idea that Ruth despised JFK. Ruth and Michael supported Kennedy, voted for him, did not hold right-wing views hostile to Kennedy, etc.

Thanks Greg for your reply.

If your reference to Herbert Armstrong was meant to be a joke apologies for being too dull witted , humourless and poorly read to pick up on it 
I have no idea who Herbert Armstrong was ( or is)
Most definitely I was referring to John Armstrong . 
Invoking his name as a whimsical oath, a cod blasphemy to parody the  pseudo religious nature of the tiny rag tag cult of earnest doppelgangers he leads, with the ever faithful Jimbo Baggins, his right hand hobbit

Also I would strongly dispute the appellation of " giant"..in Simpich's case I 'd argue that it's most definitely unwarranted.
It's not only about the research, it's having the analytical ability, the vision and the historical knowledge to put the pieces together correctly.
Of course you may argue that's purely subjective.

In his case I think his hypothesis regarding Morales and Harvey is mistaken ( putting it mildly) and some of the conclusions he reached about Webster and Marina are questionable to say the least.

Also his relationship with an organisation ( CAPA) that plays nice with proven con artists and fake witnesses is , IMHO, the virtual anthesis of serious honest research

Compared to Greg, Simpich's is more of a dwarf than a giant.

To answer your specific points Greg trying to move forward into the unknown we can only rely upon what we know to a certain extent. All discoveries rely upon informed speculation to some degree. Recognising patterns, drawing conclusions etc.

Of course the system is open to abuse, but what's the alternative?
Throwing up our hands in frustration? Or resorting instead to blind belief.
A system that's open to far more abuse 

Save a confession or the miraclously late appearance of a smoking gun document it's likely no concrete proof of the Paines complicity will ever emerge 
Certainly not the sort of proof that will satisfy her defenders.

Sans bullet proof evidence all we can do is move forward, carefully and methodically. Evaluating the evidence we already have and drawing appropriate conclusions( temporary conclusions I hasten to add...all honest researchers are in a permanent state of becoming. You never stop learning and should always be willing to reshape your beliefs/ conclusions accordingly
)

We are trying to decipher and delineate a system that was built for obfuscation, designed to keep any outsiders lost in an ever changing maze of circularity.
We can only attempt to make sense of the insensible by relying on our past experiences and the knowledge that's been accumulated.

Your method of defence is to attack. Attack your opponents motivation
Yes, Greg they ARE certain types of researchers who act like proverbial witchhunters, looking for spooks under ever bushel.
But their behaviour doesn't make Ruth Paine's behaviour any less suspicious.

You have to attack because you have so little to defend.
You have the King and Queen of Quaker Charity who enquired about the potential tax breaks and have no known record of any such bountiful acts of charity...
Throwing their home open to an ex defector , his Russian wife and their growing family.
Greg, set aside your bias for a moment, and I'm not criticising you for having bias, we all have our biases , just look at the evidence.
The incredible co incidences.
The FBI phone tap.. the " we both know who's responsible" comment.
RuthsR involvement in making sure Lee took the job at the TSBD
Then there's the evidence she produced... it's not just the volume but the timing- the specific pieces of evidence she produced at specific times.
The list is endless. And Greg already covered most of the salient points.

Marina was unquestionably involved with the Soviet intel services.
Full stop
Her behaviour is inexplicable otherwise.
Whatever her faults, whatever compromises she had to make regarding the assassination she was just another hapless victim
A pawn.
Ruth was a little bit higher up. A knight or bishop.
But she was still on the board.

I meant nothing " sinister" by the use of the word authentic. They were who they were. 
And the Kennedys most certainly were not bluebloods.
Second or third generation Irish immigrants.
" Honey Fitz" and Joe snr..Boston pols.
They were utterly reviled by the Brahmins and their brethren on the Social Register.
Old money like old blood takes centuries to mature ...

Anyway it's not really about money it's about something far more valuable and far less easy to define.

Look at the evidence Greg, the series of almost ridiculous coincidence.
In many ways Ruth Paine was one of the plotters key assets.
Her charitable persona provided the perfect deniability

I'm sure both Paines claimed to be avid Kennedy supporters, just as Ruth claimed to be a staunch supporter of the ACLU.
Words can be cheap, they can be specifically designed to camouflage action
The Paines actions tell a whole other story than the heart warming fable Ruth likes to weave..

A harmless old woman..
So is Judyth Vary Baker..( and no Greg im not comparing them as individuals)

The way I see it is that Greg and others are trying to work out what the hieroglyphics really mean.
While you insist on assuring us that they're just pretty pictures..

Nice pros Alex. Couldn't agree more.

I think the blueblood background was on Michael Paine's side. Ruth's background I think was solid well-connected professional father (with the international development work with CIA links) but not sure if that would actually be blueblood on Ruth's background side.

Ruth traces back to Samuel Hyde - a Boston Brahmin.

Mega wealth and "royal bloodlines" don't always go hand-in-hand.

Both Michael and Ruth were Kennedy supporters and there is not any hint of a reason to suppose otherwise.

So what? Not a hint that they were supporters either. But I have already made it clear that I don't think she knew what she was helping to do. 

Greg Parker and others, struggle with, concerning interpretation of what has to be major intelligence-agency connections and/or interest in Lee Harvey Oswald. 

Do I look like I am struggling? You have set yourself the far harder task... I have struggled a little in other areas of the case. But the Paines? No. 

On the one hand, Oswald was spooked up to his ears, but on the other hand he is poor and thrown under the bus with his military discharge issue, and (I believe) framed maliciously--by someones who knew what they were doing--for the assassination itself. Do US agencies normally frame and have executed (the Ruby hit) their own operatives? And never pay them so that they are not in grinding poverty? 

Just how naive are you?

Let me introduce you to a homegrown (Australian) Lee Oswald named Phil Geri. Phil, like Lee, was recruited into the spy game via what was then, basically our Reserve Army (as opposed to the CAP in Oswald's case) - on the recommendation of his superior officer.

This incident, perhaps more than any other during Phil Geri’s service with ASIO, illustrates the rampant paranoia and often farcical incompetence of the organisation.For Phil Geri, recruited as a naive 19-year-old, this paranoia, combined with a callous disregard for his welfare, had dreadful consequences. ASIO and its duplicitous field agents sucked at his patriotic soul for close to a quarter of a century before spitting him back out into the cold rejection of a town that no longer trusted him. ASIO promised Phil Geri the world and delivered instead a bitter legacy of shattered friendships, a broken marriage and the terrible evolving realisation that his sacrifice had been for nothing.Nobody ever pretended the spying game was a warm and fuzzy affair, but few have been damaged by it the way Phil Geri has.
https://www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/story/690691/bendigo-spy-tells-all/

If our agencies had been planning on assassinating any politicians... I believe it would have been while on a visit to Bendigo... perhaps outside the local hospital where Geri worked... 

There is no evidence Ruth was such a mechanism, and I don't think she was in any directed or covert way, based on her denials that she was CIA or FBI, 

LOL. None that you want to know about or admit to.

Clay Shaw truthfully denied he was ever employed by the CIA. 

But he still had a relationship with them that he never acknowledged. He was a source of intelligence because of his wide travels and contacts in trade. 

Ruth's denial means diddly squat. I for one, would never accuse her of being a paid employee of the CIA or FBI. She no doubt, would consider such questionable questions to be gauche.  No. She and Mike were assets.  How else was this son of a leading Trotskyist, someone who was a very reluctant recruit for duty in Korea, and who was married to the daughter of a Socialist Party supporter able to get a security clearance to work at Bell where he worked on experimental copters for the army to use in Nam?

That (Salandria's accusation against Ruth) is shameful. And shame on the JFK assassination researchers who read uncritically something like this and now it is in their heads and quoted and believed as if that is reality, so much so that it arouses reactions to question it.  

Too broad a brush. I stopped reading almost all books and articles on the case years ago. The only things I read these days are posts and recommended articles posted here, and those of a few people whose work I admire. Apart from that, I review stuff when asked and do some proof-reading and editing when asked. 

I have read all the known articles discussing Ruth Paine and Nicaragua that I am aware of, which I believe are Salandria's uncited sources here, and there is no evidence presented in any of those that Ruth Paine assisted the contras. The sole evidence that I can recall is someone telling of a guest speaker who was a retired contra leader in a wheelchair, speaking of the past in contra vs. Sandinista days, saying that they had trouble getting aid from international charity organizations, "but the Quakers always came through for us". One one level that is not impossible in that Friends traditionally have a history of neutrality in humanitarian aid to civilians of both sides peacefully in conflicts (sometimes facing US legal threats for aiding one of those two sides). But I read this as more of the speaker's deference in saying something complimentary concerning some present or among his hosts hearing him.

Maybe you simply missed this:

The Nicaragua Network in Washington, D.C. told a friend of ours that they had not commissioned anyone to take pictures in Nicaragua. Thus, the explanation given by Ruth Paine and Sean Miller as to why Sean was taking pictures of members of the U.S. community in Nicaragua was not valid. 
http://www.jfkpage.com/Paine/Occurrence_in_Nicaragua.pdf

Where was the evidence for that? Garrison never produced any (of Ruth being CIA).

A circumstantial case which should not have led Garrison to conclude she was an employee of the agency, but a human asset of it. You also do not know everything he had. No one does - because a lot of his files were destroyed by his successor to the job.

I entirely disagree with the idea that "Ruth, like the rest of her caste, despised JFK as an interloper and a vulgar upstart". Where to begin? Ruth is probably accurately described as part of upper-middle-class professional class in terms of her family background, not blueblood elite caste. (I think you're thinking of some of her in-laws via Michael.)

Oh course you disagree. You have read some utter shit on the case, some of it about Ruth Paine and therefore you continue to speak from a position of ignorance.

She was of Brahmin stock. And the Kennedy's certainly were upstarts in that milieu.

Deliverance (1667–1741), married Samuel Hyde.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_family

https://familypedia.wikia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hyde_(1636-1677)/descendants

Instead the first settler of Newton was John Jackson of London in 1639. He was joined by Samuel Hyde in 1640 and his own brother, Edward Jackson, three years later. 
https://newspapers.bc.edu/?a=d&d=bcheights19740916.2.24&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------


Sixty-one years before John Kennedy was murdered, Ruth Hyde’s father was born in Palo Alto, California, and given the name of William Avery Hyde. The ancestry of his grandfather, William Penn Hyde, a Methodist minister who had been born in Mystic, Connecticut, has been traced back to his first American ancestor, William Hyde, born in 1583, who, with wife Anne Bushnell, had a son named Samuel, born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1637. Samuel married Jane Lee, and from their union sprang several distinct branches of the family, two of which eventually spawned Ruth Hyde. 

Samuel Hyde's son Jabez, born 1677, descended through Phineas I, Phineas II, and John, down to William Penn Hyde. Jabez’s brother John descended through Captain James Hyde (wife Martha Nevins), Rev. Charles Hyde (wife Mary Ludlow), and Peter Ludlow Hyde (wife Harriet Clapp), down to Charles Ludlow Hyde, the father of Carol Elizabeth Hyde, who married William Avery Hyde. Small world, as they say!
http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-hyde-famiy-from-connecticut-to.html

greg_parker wrote:If she had any complicity in the assassination, it could only be in helping to frame Oswald before and/or after the deed.

If before, she need not have been cognizant of what she was setting him up for. After the deed, of course, she would know exactly what she was doing. 

And after 20 years of study, that is where I stand with her. She helped set him up before the assassination, without being cognizant of the plot. She willingly help put the noose around his neck afterwards from her Aladdin's Cave. She was, as I previously suggested, an intelligence asset. Maybe CIA. Maybe FBI. Maybe both. Maybe neither, but instead some private intelligence group affiliated with defense contracts or the like. 

<...>

This board is full of examples of what she is "accused" of.  It amounts to a long pattern of extremely bad timing (when looking in the rear vision mirror at her actions). It amounts to hiding very important facts from the authorities. It amounts to the distinct possibility that she was the author of certain letters, not Oswald. It amounts the possibility she and Mike were part of the intel community from at least the time they separated. It amounts to concerns over her roll in Oswald starting at the TSBD. 

Well this is a little more clear now. 

Could you clarify which letters of Oswald you think Ruth may have authored in his name (if that is what you are saying)? Do you mean Ruth forging Oswald's handwriting, or do you mean Oswald copying out what Ruth wrote for him? Or do you think a third-party professional forger did the handwriting based on what Ruth authored, in your reconstruction? Specifics of documents you are talking about please? Your reasons for supposing specific Oswald documents may have been authored by Ruth?

Did Ruth believe Oswald shot Kennedy, in your reconstruction? (The question is not whether Oswald shot Kennedy, but whether Ruth believed he did.)

You have Ruth fabricating evidence to incriminate Oswald after the assassination. Which evidence specifically?

Did Ruth know, after the assassination, that she had been used to frame Oswald before the assassination? When did she first realize this? How were the plotters certain of her reaction once she realized? 

If I understand you correctly, you believe Ruth lied her head off in her testimony. Can you show evidence that she lied on any specific point? Specify?

Do you have any thoughts on why, in your view, with Ruth engaged in large-scale perjury and forgery and fabrication of evidence--all serious crimes with many years of prison time if brought to the attention of investigators and proven in court--why there was no untimely death of Ruth or record of attempts on her life or fear on her part, unlike others in the case who had knowledge of sensitive information? Do you have thoughts or comments on why the "three can keep a secret if two are dead" policy did not apply to Ruth? Does Ruth's behavior in the decades since the assassination strike you as that of a witness with inside knowledge of the framing of Oswald and inside knowledge of the plot of the assassination? 

In your reconstruction, does Michael Paine know Ruth is engaged in massive perjury, forgery, fabrication of evidence, and lying, with knowledge that both he and she, even if unaware pre-assassination, had been personally used as participants in a plot to kill JFK? Does it give you any pause that neither Michael nor Ruth showed noticeable signs of breakdown or distress at learning this information, according to your reconstruction (if I understand you correctly)? Like Ruth, Michael Paine also showed no signs of fear for his life and he lived to a ripe old age, unlike witnesses with material knowledge who died untimely. Does Michael Paine's behavior in the decades following the assassination strike you as what would be expected if your scenario was correct?

Did Michael Paine believe Oswald shot Kennedy, in your reconstruction?

Do you believe Ruth received secret professional training in the arts of fabrication of evidence and forgery and other black arts? How do you suppose fabrication of evidence on Ruth's part was done? Did handlers tell her what to do, and then she did it? Do you think she got an indemnification agreement signed, such that she would be compensated if she ended up serving ten or fifteen years time for all of the lawbreaking she was asked to do, and willing to do? Does it give you any pause that of all the documents that have come forth, no documents confirm any of this with respect to Ruth?  

Have you considered the possibility that Oswald could have been framed but not by the Paines? Do you exclude that possibility?

Ruth has said that she was discussing with neighbor ladies, Marina being present too, Lee's difficulties finding a job, and a neighbor lady mentioned her brother had just gotten a job at the TSBD, and there was some discussion that maybe that might be a possibility for Lee. According to Ruth, Marina was interested and asked Ruth to call the TSBD to see if that could be possible. Ruth did and was told to have Lee come in and apply, which Lee did and the rest is history. Do you exclude the possibility that this happened without a hidden agency hand--an agency hand not among those neighbor women--instructing Ruth to attempt to orchestrate Lee having a job at TSBD? What if Lee had said no, or found work somewhere else unrelated? Would the plot have been aborted because Lee had been uncooperative at that point? Were the plotters also in control of the reaction at the other end of Ruth's phone call to TSBD, Truly?

How about this for an alternative: Ruth made the phone call helping Lee get the job at TSBD and that was unrelated to actions of the assassination plotters, but opportunistically taken advantage of by the plotters (someone made sure the motorcade would go by the TSBD after that, although the Dallas trip itself was already in the works). Oswald was framed. However if Oswald had not been working at TSBD he would also have been framed, just in some different location, whether another work location or perhaps by luring him to the scene away from his workplace. In this theory of the case there is no necessity to suppose a hidden hand covertly instructed Ruth to get Lee employed at TSBD. What do you think of this theory of the case?

Some more for Greg D to chew on.

Here we find Ruth and Lee hunting for an apartment on the weekend prior to the assassination and ringing about hiring a washing machine for Marina.
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1682-ruth-paine-s-helping-hand

Note that the argument about moving and washing machine officially happened on the night prior to the assassination and is used as a kind of motive for Oswald. Rebuked by Marina, he lahes out at the president.

This is why Ruth gave one of her sneaky non-replies when asked about the washing machine phone call. Why oh why could she not just say "no, I never made that call" instead of saying "that would be a toll call and I would remember it if I made it"? Why? Because a direct answer of "no I never made it" would be a lie. But saying she would remember it if she made it, was not a lie. She could not admit it because that blows a hole in the developing narrative of Oswald being angry, disgruntled etc.


_________________
Australians don't mind criminals: It's successful bullshit artists we despise. 
              Lachie Hulme            
-----------------------------
The Cold War ran on bullshit.
              Me


"So what’s an independent-minded populist like me to do? I’ve had to grovel in promoting myself on social media, even begging for Amazon reviews and Goodreads ratings, to no avail." Don Jeffries

[size=14]"I've been aware of Greg Parker's work for years, and strongly recommend it." Peter Dale Scott

https://gregrparker.com[/size]

A timeline


September/October, 1962
The Oswald's meet the De Mohrenschildts. Marina moves in with Elana Hall. Lee has an aptitude test at the TEC and rents PO Box 2915, requesting all mail be forwarded to that box. Lee is referred by TEC to Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall (JCS), is employed at their base rate, and moves into the YMCA. They had been living on Mercedes from August. June is baptized by the White Russian Church without Lee's knowledge. 

November, 1962
The Oswald's reunite at 604 Elsbeth but Marina moves out the following day to live with the Mellers before moving again to the Ford's, but reunites with Lee at the Elsbeth address on the 17th. Lee and Marina attend a family reunion at Robert's which does not include Marguerite. Marina has a written discussion with John in his notebook talking about various medical terms and drugs. John works in a military hospital and Marina had been trained as a pharmacist. The same notebook contains the travel distance from the military base to Robert's house - details usually kept for tax purposes, indicating he may be falsely claiming to the trip as a tax deduction, or it was in fact, work-related.

December, 1962
Lee pays $190 off his State Department debt. The couple attend a New Year's Eve party at the Ford's.

January, 1963
On Jan 9, Lee pays another $100 off his dept. On Jan 14, he enrolls in a typing course. On January 27, he allegedly orders a pistol from Seaport Traders and pays a $10 deposit; the balance to be paid COD. Hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency into interstate traffic of mail-order firearms are held January 29 and 30. Seaport Traders is one of the mail-order companies of interest. Oswald is told to play around with the equipment to learn how to use it. The specialized equipment at JCS can enlarge and reduce images and curve text etc for advertisements or other purposes. Lee makes a copy of one of his military cards and includes an attempt to make a date stamp using curved numbers and letters.  On January 29, Lee pays the balance owing on his debt of $106. 

February, 1963
The Oswald's attend 2 dinner parties, the first at the DeM's and the second at Everett Glover's on the 22nd. They meet Ruth Paine for the first time at the latter.

March, 1963
March 2, Marina and Lee allegedly move into 214 W. Neely (I believe it was really only Marina and June). March 7, another hearing on mail-order weapons is held by the aforementioned senate subcommittee. On March 12, Lee allegedly orders a rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods by mail, purchasing the money order during the "early morning". Also on that day, Ruth Paine visits Marina at the W. Neely address and they leave together - Ruth is noncommittal, but thinks they went to a park. Klein's is another company under the scrutiny of the subcommittee. Both pistol and rifle are shipped into Dallas on March 20 - despite being ordered around two months apart from different companies in different states. Also on March 20, Ruth again picks up Marina on W. Neely. Sometime after this, Marina allegedly takes a number of photos of Lee holding the weapons, together with the publications of opposing extreme left wing parties. The camera used is an Imperial reflex. This camera is also used to take some - but not all - of the photos allegedly taken by Lee of Edwin Walker's house in preparation for his alleged assassination attempt on the former general.

April, 1963
Lee is fired by JCS and has his last day on the 6th. He and Marina attend another dinner party. This time, both Ruth and Michael Paine are in attendance. On the 10th, a single shot is fired at Walker through his window. It misses. On the 12th, Lee files for unemployment. On April 24, he moves to New Orleans to find work and a now pregnant Marina moves to Irving to stay with Ruth.
----------------------------
Supplementary information

The weapons
The pistol was shipped by the Railway Express Agency (REA) - an agency which had a very close association with the FBI. There would have been an advice placed in the PO Box to say that the parcel had to be picked up at the REA office and that ID would be needed. REA records show that "Hidell" picked up the parcel and paid the balance owing. How would this be possible? Well, Dale Myers claimed Oswald would have used his fake Hidell ID. The same ID that was obviously a fake. Texas law also required (and Myers concedes) that the purchaser of a pistol or handgun must obtain a letter of good character from a JP, or a County or District judge. This time, the excuse is that REA regs do not specifically state that they would withhold the consignment if such a letter was not produced. This line of thinking, if true, means REA was breaking Texas law. But in addition to that excuse, the head of REA stated that it "has approximately 32,000 of its own employees, with individuals retiring or leaving the service each day, being replaced by new employees...It would be practically impossible to exercise such close control over and communication with all of our delivery employees to keep within the requirements of the law..." - an admission it probably routinely broke the law and had virtually no real checks and balances in place, despite any state or federal law.

The rifle was shipped by US Mail direct to the PO Box. As it would not fit in the box, an advice would also be left for it to be picked up at the parcel pick-up window. Harry Holmes testified that all that would be required to pick it up would be the card left in the box as it would be assumed that the holder of the card had authorized access to the box. To put it another way, if the weapon had fit in the box, all that would be needed to get it was the key - obtaining it with the card from the box was seen as being no different.

Postal Inspector Holmes testified that Lee told him during questioning that he seldom went to the box and that part 3 of the box application was destroyed. Part 3 stated those who had access.

This box was a long walk from where Oswald worked. Given that, and given Holmes' testimony, I believe that Marina had access (and obviously a key), and that she, with the assistance of Ruth Paine, would collect the mail. 

The name game
Lee's father (and therefore Lee himself) was a distant cousin to Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Lee listed as a reference in NO, one Bob Hidell. Thanks to Tom Scully (credit where due - his most lucid and profound post), we know there was a H. Robert Hidell, aged 70 in 2011, who was a descendant of William Hidell, the Secretary to Confederate Army leader, Andrew Stephens. the "H" stood for Henry, but apparently he preferred his middle name.

The names allotted to AJ Hidell - "Alek James" also hold their own intrigue. Alek means "defender or helper of mankind" and James means "supplanter" which itself means someone who seizes power. The meaning of those names, given the civil war name they are attached to - and importantly, also given the ambush of a Northerner on Nov 22,1963 do give pause for thought. 

But there is one more name to consider: "DF DRITTAL" was listed on the pistol coupon as someone who vouched that Hidell was a US citizen and had not been convicted of any felonies.

Google does not throw out a single person in the world with the surname "Drittal". That in itself is strong evidence that Oswald did not simply pluck the name at of thin air. What it does do is point to it having some other meaning.

And it does. I believe that DF stands for "Dienst Fur" so that the full meaning is  "Dienst Fur Drittal" - which is German for "service for a third party"

From Google Translate




Just throwing this out for consideration:
I think it is possible that Oswald did order the pistol and used the fake Hidell id (without any photo attached) to test whether laws were being followed. He was paid for this work and this helped pay his State Dept debt. The pistol was then dropped off at a pre-arranged point and ended up in the hands of a Dallas police officer for use as a throw-down (after being disabled).

The use of a throw-down is well-documented in this famous Houston case.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1978/04/29/5-houston-policemen-are-fired-1-resigns-in-death-of-suspect/64bb9a5d-0753-4ec2-95ed-2ae102c629b7/

It came out in senate hearings on mail order weapons that police use confiscated mail order guns for throwdowns because they cannot be traced back to themselves - and often have no clear provenance at all following mailing to the original buyer, making it easier to manufacture one if need be.

Whatever the case with the pistol, the evidence clearly shows it was Ruth who ordered the rifle, with or without Lee's knowledge. Lee had taught himself a little bit of German, while Ruth had studied it in college.

From Ruth's testimony: "I studied French in high school, German in college, and got a tutor to study Yiddish when I was working with a group that spoke that language."

If Ruth was involved in the purchase of the pistol, then she had to have met the Oswald's prior to February 22 that Ruth claimed.

In fact, though it is hard to rely on Marina... she did testify that she met Ruth "soon after New Years" at a party in January. 

Mr. RANKIN. Can you tell us approximately when you first met Ruth Paine?
Mrs. OSWALD. Soon after New Years I think it was in January.
Mr. RANKIN. Would that be 1963?
Mrs. OSWALD. Yes.
Mr. RANKIN. Can you describe the circumstances when you met her?
Mrs. OSWALD. We were invited, together with George De Mohrenschildt and his wife, to the home of his friend, an American. And Ruth was acquainted with that American. She was also visiting there. And there were a number of other people there, Americans.

The party that Marina seems to be talking about was thrown by Declan Ford, since it was at the start of the year. The one that Ruth claimed they met at was supposedly thrown by Everett Glover about 7 weeks alter. The De Morhenschildts were at both. 

But note that the name Glover was fed to Marina by Rankin and she agreed that he was the host. Also note also that George De Mohrenschildt recalled Glover's party as being January or February leaving open the possibility that Marina was not confusing the timing of the Ford and Glover parties - but that both had occurred in January.  If it was January that Ruth met the Oswalds, she may well have also been the purchaser of the pistol as well as the rifle.

alex_wilson wrote:
Greg, set aside your bias for a moment, and I'm not criticising you for having bias, we all have our biases , just look at the evidence.
The incredible co incidences.
The FBI phone tap.. the " we both know who's responsible" comment.

<...>

The way I see it is that Greg and others are trying to work out what the hieroglyphics really mean.
While you insist on assuring us that they're just pretty pictures..

Rorschach Inkblots. 

On "we both know who is responsible", rather than suppose Michael and Ruth talking over an open phone line were referring to actionable knowledge of the plot to commit that horrific crime to which which they were privy and participants, as you seem to be thinking--do you really think that?--the meaning that makes the best sense and in agreement with what nearly every person in Dallas thought at first, is that the allusion was to violent right-wingers in Dallas. I don't see Greg P. mentioning this point and doubt he buys into the malevolent interpretation that you are attaching to these words probably spoken in thousands of homes in Dallas at that moment.
 
Rorchach Inkblots.

greg_parker wrote:
Note that the argument about moving and washing machine officially happened on the night prior to the assassination and is used as a kind of motive for Oswald. Rebuked by Marina, he lahes out at the president.

This is why Ruth gave one of her sneaky non-replies when asked about the washing machine phone call. Why oh why could she not just say "no, I never made that call" instead of saying "that would be a toll call and I would remember it if I made it"? Why? Because a direct answer of "no I never made it" would be a lie. But saying she would remember it if she made it, was not a lie. She could not admit it because that blows a hole in the developing narrative of Oswald being angry, disgruntled etc.

You have good analyses on some things but your fixation that Ruth had a practice of giving technically truthful but deceptive replies is hallucinating. In your logic, Ruth was so scrupulous about being a Quaker that she would not utter a word that was actually lying (that would violate her scruples as a Quaker), but she was party to plotters murdering a president who stood for civil rights and the framing of an innocent man for that horrific crime (no problem there!). Makes no sense. Again I tell you, I have a lot of experience with Quakers and I have never heard of Quakers intentionally deceiving by telling the truth, in court or anything criminal justice related, or in daily life as an accepted or customary Friends' practice, the way you are projecting as a Quaker practice onto Ruth. I don't expect you to change your mind but will only quote the FBI report--the only information available on Ruth's reply to the phone call question--and people can read and compare your interpretation above and judge for themselves.
 
(FBI, Feb. 5, 1964)
 
"Mrs. Ruth Hyde Paine, 2515 West 5th Street, Irving, Texas, advised that she at no time made a telephone call to a Ridgewood Furniture Company in Garland, Texas, for Marina Oswald relative to the rental of a washing machine. 
 
"Mrs. Paine noted a telephone call from Irving, Texas, to Garland, Texas, would be a toll call and she would have definitely remembered this call had she made it."
 
The second sentence is not a paraphrase or earlier version of the first sentence, but is an additional statement explaining why Ruth believes her memory is correct, like reports of witnesses saying, "I saw person X on date Y. I know it was date Y because (some external event linkage)." 

The phone call report and your suggestion that "Ruby" for the prospective credit reference was a mishearing of "Ruth" is interesting and I agree it sounds like Marina's washing machine issue, provided the "for Mrs. Oswald" detail of the witness who took the call is not a memory produced under the influence of post-assassination news reporting. I see four possibilities: it was Ruth and Ruth did not remember, despite Ruth thinking she would have remembered; it was Marina calling and referring to herself in the third person using Ruth's phone when Ruth was gone from the house; some other woman neighbor or acquaintance who knew of Marina's and Lee's situation making the inquiry; or the "for Mrs. Oswald" was a post-assassination created memory in the mind of the witness under the influence of news reporting and unrelated to Marina. Like you I exclude a fifth possibility, that Ruth was lying. 
 
Ruth did not materially contribute to a narrative that Oswald was angry, disgruntled, etc. prior to the assassination. She said he was calm, played with his kids, did not seem upset, never said a word against Kennedy. Ruth seemed as baffled as anyone else that Lee would kill the president. I do not know why, but you interpret Ruth in the worst possible light beyond reason. 

greg_parker wrote:
Postal Inspector Holmes testified that Lee told him during questioning that he seldom went to the box and that part 3 of the box application was destroyed. Part 3 stated those who had access.

This box was a long walk from where Oswald worked. Given that, and given Holmes' testimony, I believe that Marina had access (and obviously a key), and that she, with the assistance of Ruth Paine, would collect the mail. 

(...)

Whatever the case with the pistol, the evidence clearly shows it was Ruth who ordered the rifle, with or without Lee's knowledge. Lee had taught himself a little bit of German, while Ruth had studied it in college.

From Ruth's testimony: "I studied French in high school, German in college, and got a tutor to study Yiddish when I was working with a group that spoke that language."

Greg P., I agree it looks like the mail-order firearms were connected to the Dodd subcommittee investigation.

You raise the point about the post office box being a long walk for Oswald, also the missing information from Oswald's p.o. box form concerning who had access. 

But I think you draw a wrong conclusion in conjecturing that therefore the pickup of the rifle was done by Ruth Paine driving Marina to the post office to do the pickup. Marina denied she had picked up Lee's rifle from the post office or that she knew who did. 

You conjecture the Ruth Paine/Marina solution (based on Ruth is in the vicinity and has a car and therefore could have done it), then refer to that conjecture which has no confirmation or corroboration apart from the conjecture itself, as "the evidence clearly shows Ruth ordered the rifle". 

But you gave no evidence. You conjectured it. That is not evidence, it is unverified conjecture.

It is not as if Ruth and Marina are the only alternative here.

On the pistol, you note the name "DF Drittal" on the pistol coupon as someone who vouched that Hidell was a US citizen, which is German "Dienst Fur Drittal" = "service for third party". That is convincing. 

You cite Ruth Paine took took German courses in college, and suggest German-knowledgeable Ruth may therefore have ordered the pistol as well. 

But Ruth wanted nothing to do with firearms whenever the subject came up. Rather than propose an unlikely scenario involving the pacifist gun-loathing Quaker Ruth in explanation to the mystery of the Oswald mail-order firearms pickups, there may be a better explanation.

What if Oswald was paid to be an operative of some sort for, say, BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) or whatever agency was working for the Dodd subcommittee. It is clear (at least to me) that Oswald got regular payments from some source wire-ordered to the Western Union office which were covered up in the post-assassination investigations. The coverup (of Oswald's Western Union money wires) would be because it was from an agency and the payments were covert. What was Oswald paid to do exactly? Perhaps lend his name to setting up the post office box and send in the orders in such a way that would allow another to receive the firearm with Oswald's assistance. The firearms would be ordered and received, to "test" the mail-order system, with the firearms turned in after receipt to police available for potential use later as police "throwdowns" as you explain (all very sensible on that).

The suggestion is that Oswald had a (male) confederate involved with that post office box, related to Oswald being a paid operative for an agency related to the firearm mail-orders. The confederate's identity may or may not have been known to Marina.

Because both rifle and pistol involved mail orders, the simplest explanation is that both orders were part of the same investigation operation done by the same agency. Therefore the German expression confused as a proper name with the pistol order would mean the confederate was someone who spoke and wrote German.

Perhaps the fellow-operative was someone among the White Russians in Lee and Marina's lives? There were fluent German speakers in that circle. 

Didn't Marguerite say at one point that Marina (with June) was living in the Neely Ave. apartment "with some German guy"? (I don't have a reference on that.) Maybe Marguerite's "German guy" wasn't living there, but was that a reference to Gary Taylor, de Mohrenschilt's son-in-law? Didn't Lee use Gary Taylor's address?--and there are the issues over where Lee was living, perhaps not with Marina and June. Is it possible Gary Taylor was the other person involved with Oswald in the mail-order firearms purchases? 

So there is no evidence that firearms-loathing Ruth Paine knowingly ordered or picked up any firearms associated with Lee, nor is that likely to have been the case. The true story likely involved another man with Lee's cooperation and for which Lee was compensated, in a covert investigative operation along lines of the reasons you bring out. The timeline of the visits of Ruth Paine to Marina were coincidental with respect to the firearms with which Ruth was not involved. I have not studied this to the extent you have but this is how it looks to me.

You have good analyses on some things but your fixation that Ruth had a practice of giving technically truthful but deceptive replies is hallucinating. In your logic, Ruth was so scrupulous about being a Quaker that she would not utter a word that was actually lying (that would violate her scruples as a Quaker), but she was party to plotters murdering a president who stood for civil rights and the framing of an innocent man for that horrific crime (no problem there!). 

All that straw and no barnyard animals.

I'm hallucinating when I quote her non-replies? I don't think so, but I am willing to give it a try.

I've already quoted one Quaker 'fessing up to the avoidance technique.

Here is a bit more from  Quaker website:

"Integrity is an important Quaker value. It is not necessarily about telling the truth all the time: for example in World War 2 many Friends in the Netherlands told lies in order to protect the safety of Jews. We trust to God's enabling us to maintain our integrity and to discern the right ethical choices in difficult situations."

Or put another, Quaker ethics are situational. 

Also, I remind you my take on it is she was an UNWITTING asset prior to the assassination - a witting asset after (really, what choice did she have after? She was compromised). 

Again I tell you, I have a lot of experience with Quakers and I have never heard of Quakers intentionally deceiving by telling the truth, in court or anything criminal justice related, or in daily life as an accepted or customary Friends' practice, the way you are projecting as a Quaker practice onto Ruth.

I can empathize. I never see my own typos either.

I don't expect you to change your mind but will only quote the FBI report--the only information available on Ruth's reply to the phone call question--and people can read and compare your interpretation above and judge for themselves.

Okie dokie.

(FBI, Feb. 5, 1964)
"Mrs. Ruth Hyde Paine, 2515 West 5th Street, Irving, Texas, advised that she at no time made a telephone call to a Ridgewood Furniture Company in Garland, Texas, for Marina Oswald relative to the rental of a washing machine." 

"a call to Garland would be a toll call and she therefore would have definitely remembered this call had she made it."

What is missing between the two paragraphs is this:

Linking words and phrases in English (also called 'connective' or 'transition' words) are used to combine two clauses or sentences presenting contrast, comparison, condition, supposition, purpose, etc. They enable us to establish clear connections between ideas, thoughts, claims.

The absence of such connection indicates to me that all she said was the second claim. The first paragraph was the FBI interpretation of that claim. In your scenario, the second claim is a guilt-riddled redundancy.  

This allows that she did not lie.

Your take on it makes her look like a liar. One sign of lying is giving unnecessary/unasked for additional information and the second claim is no more than a guilt-riddled redundancy.  

Police: Did you rob the Downtown Bank at noon yesterday?


Suspect One: No I definitely did not and also, I don't live in Downtown so I would remember being there if I was there.


Police: Did you rob the Downtown Bank at noon yesterday?



Suspect Two: Absolutely not.

Who is telling the truth, Suspect One or Suspect Two?

The phone call report and your suggestion that "Ruby" for the prospective credit reference was a mishearing of "Ruth" is interesting 

That isn't really what I think. I may not have been clear enough. Not misheard. Misremembered because Ruth and Ruby are similar and Ruby's name was all over the media at the time.

and I agree it sounds like Marina's washing machine issue, provided the "for Mrs. Oswald" detail of the witness who took the call is not a memory produced under the influence of post-assassination news reporting. 

We already have Ruth helping Lee search for an apartment that same day. A washing machine was party of the deal for reuniting.  The timing and circumstances point to Ruth phoning for Marina. 

I see four possibilities:

it was Ruth and Ruth did not remember, despite Ruth thinking she would have remembered;

lol

it was Marina calling and referring to herself in the third person using Ruth's phone when Ruth was gone from the house;

Holy cow!

some other woman neighbor or acquaintance who knew of Marina's and Lee's situation making the inquiry;

The Random Neighbor Theory! 'm sure we can find a buyer for that one!

or the "for Mrs. Oswald" was a post-assassination created memory in the mind of the witness under the influence of news reporting and unrelated to Marina. 

Barely possible, except there is also this:




Ruth was actively looking for one to buy. Marina was probably not told about the phone call because Ruth had decided not to proceed with that shop.

Like you I exclude a fifth possibility, that Ruth was lying.

Actually, no you do not. You accuse of her of lying by insisting she directly denied making the call. 

Ruth did not materially contribute to a narrative that Oswald was angry, disgruntled, etc. prior to the assassination. She said he was calm, played with his kids, did not seem upset, never said a word against Kennedy. Ruth seemed as baffled as anyone else that Lee would kill the president. I do not know why, but you interpret Ruth in the worst possible light beyond reason. 

A: to say otherwise about him would be a lie and B: it would also look like she was overtly helping put the noose around him. Sounding positive about him while handing over all the conveniently timed and found evidence was more her style. 

Occasionally she did let her guard down, like the time she said she was glad he was murdered.

Ruth matched the the physical and clothing description of the woman with Lee looking at an apartment in Oak Cliff (I wonder if it needed curtains?).

Marina wouldn't move without a washing machine. Ruth was checking newspapers for Marina for washing machines. Someone phoned a furniture store on behalf of a Mrs Oswald about washing machines. The caller was a female with a name similar to Ruby. 

Maybe Ruth saw an ad in the paper like this. which was in a 1962 Garland paper?

RENTALS automatic WASHERS and REFRIGERATORS rent, apply on (unintelligible) Ridgewood Furniture & Appliance BR 8-0521 USED TELEVISION PORTABLES* consoles and table model* Ridgewood Furniture & Appliance BR 8-0521

Ad text courtesy Ed Ledoux.

You said "people can read and compare your interpretation above and judge for themselves." and on that, we agree.

greg_parker wrote:
Your take on it makes her look like a liar. One sign of lying is giving unnecessary/unasked for additional information and the second claim is no more than a guilt-riddled redundancy.  

Police: Did you rob the Downtown Bank at noon yesterday?

Suspect One: No I definitely did not and also, I don't live in Downtown so I would remember being there if I was there.

Police: Did you rob the Downtown Bank at noon yesterday?

Suspect Two: Absolutely not.

Who is telling the truth, Suspect One or Suspect Two?

(...)

Ruth was actively looking for one to buy. Marina was probably not told about the phone case because Ruth had decided not to proceed with that shop.

Like you I exclude a fifth possibility, that Ruth was lying.

Actually, no you do not. You accuse of her of lying by insisting she directly denied making the call. 

First, the additional screenshot of Marina's telling of Ruth and her looking at ads, and the reference from Ledoux to an ad from Garland, pretty much point toward Ruth making that phone call and not the other three hypotheticals I listed. 

The "unnecessary/unasked for additional information" I agree on your point however whereas it does apply in your example of the bank robber, it would not apply in the case of Ruth and the phone call, for this reason. The question is asked of Ruth out of the blue in February 1964. I believe the question was not limited to a specific date (the witness when interviewed did not confirm to the FBI certainty that it was Nov 15) but likely the question was just did you make a phone call there anytime ca. November.

Here is the point: everybody remembers whether they robbed a bank or not. But it is not obvious that everyone remembers every phone call they made three months earlier. I do not remember all phone calls I made three months ago. 

Therefore it is very much to the point of the FBI agents' interest not only to get the answer to the memory question, but to ask as followup, or for Ruth to explain, any supporting information that lends confidence to that memory statement. This is not a "did you rob a bank" question. Therefore the second statement is appropriate and relevant in the Garland phone call memory answer, not gratuitous and red-flag as in the bank robber example. 

Then, you err in saying that if Ruth denied making a phone call because she did not remember it, that that would be lying.

No, lying involves and requires the component of wilfulness, not simply of saying something that is incorrect (we all do that to varying degrees despite best of intentions; its called making mistakes), but of knowingly saying something that is untruthful, wilfulness, intent. 

In light of all the information here, I think the call was made by Ruth and Ruth was mistaken in her answer, not intentionally untruthful but mistaken.

There is a further factor that there is no obvious reason why Ruth would lie here. This is not a "did you rob that bank" question. That has motive for lying. Ruth was trying to help Marina and Lee get a washing machine. So what. What would be the point of lying to cover up that. You say it is to cover up that Lee had plans for the future inconsistent with planning to knock off the president when he came to Dallas (exculpation). Well maybe you can read that into it, but I doubt it, I think that is overreading. 

Yes, Ruth seems to have had very good recall and memory and accuracy as a general statement, in her testimony. Yet in the quantity of testimony from Ruth an occasional mistake would be expected. The present instance falls reasonably into the category of possible occasional mistake without further significance in itself. It is not as if Ruth has been called out here on something where clearly (a) she must have known better--no one could have forgotten such a thing, or (b) there is clear motive in this case for an overt act of perjury or overt lying to FBI against Ruth's otherwise pattern of behavior of wanting to supply accurate information to authorities and investigators.

Again, I don't expect you to change your mind. Rorschach Inkblots. You see one thing, I see another. To the one seeing a pattern in a Rorschach Inkblot, there is no good way for an outsider to convince such a person they are imagining anything, because they SEE it. Yet outside observers do not see that pattern as intentional signal in the static. On the other hand, there are real patterns that are signal, not static. Which is which? How to tell the difference? That is the question.

First, the additional screenshot of Marina's telling of Ruth and her looking at ads, and the reference from Ledoux to an ad from Garland, pretty much point toward Ruth making that phone call and not the other three hypotheticals I listed. 

Greg, it is good that you are able, under weight of the evidence, capable of changing your mind. This is one of a number of times you have done it beginning with admitting you were wrong that Shasteen's kid was Frazier.

So that's a positive you have. The negative is that every time you do have a change of heart, you continue to have a knee-jerk response to other claims about Ruth as they are presented to you - and you continue looking for excuses for her on every single item.

Here is the point: everybody remembers whether they robbed a bank or not. But it is not obvious that everyone remembers every phone call they made three months earlier. I do not remember all phone calls I made three months ago. 

Therefore it is very much to the point of the FBI agents' interest not only to get the answer to the memory question, but to ask as followup, or for Ruth to explain, any supporting information that lends confidence to that memory statement. This is not a "did you rob a bank" question. Therefore the second statement is appropriate and relevant in the Garland phone call memory answer, not gratuitous and red-flag as in the bank robber example. 

Here is the new problem for you: you now admit Ruth made the call, but she simply forgot she had made it.

But Ruth's own words foil you here. Remember she told the FBI that a call to Garland was a toll call and therefore she would remember it had she made it? Remember that? 

You are also totally avoiding Ruth helping Lee look for an apartment on the same day of the call.

You can keep lying to yourself, but it is not pretty to watch.

Or you can start admitting the weight of the evidence shows she hid vital information from authorities

Such as

1. Hootkins having his lessons at her place
2. Lee going to the local barber - sometimes with Hootkins
3. Helping lee look for an apartment a week prior to the assassination
4. Helping look for a washing machine for Marina to use in the new apartment

All, as you have suggested at times, pretty innocuous stuff on the surface. So the question then has to be, why did she not provide the information? 

The answers are re Hootkins - it was part of a little vignette concocted to paint Lee as a Communist 
Re the apartment hunting and was washing machine - it happened the week before the assassination and therefore ruins the narrative of an argument with Marina the night of Nov 21 about these very things being the trigger for the assassination. 

Do you understand yet why I would like to question Ruth and what questions I would ask? Ones she has has never previously been asked? We would soon see how her Quaker truth-telling and situational ethics hold up.

Greg P., I agree it looks like the mail-order firearms were connected to the Dodd subcommittee investigation.

You raise the point about the post office box being a long walk for Oswald, also the missing information from Oswald's p.o. box form concerning who had access. 

But I think you draw a wrong conclusion in conjecturing that therefore the pickup of the rifle was done by Ruth Paine driving Marina to the post office to do the pickup. Marina denied she had picked up Lee's rifle from the post office or that she knew who did. 

You conjecture the Ruth Paine/Marina solution (based on Ruth is in the vicinity and has a car and therefore could have done it), then refer to that conjecture which has no confirmation or corroboration apart from the conjecture itself, as "the evidence clearly shows Ruth ordered the rifle". 

But you gave no evidence. You conjectured it. That is not evidence, it is unverified conjecture.

It is not as if Ruth and Marina are the only alternative here.

On the pistol, you note the name "DF Drittal" on the pistol coupon as someone who vouched that Hidell was a US citizen, which is German "Dienst Fur Drittal" = "service for third party". That is convincing. 

You cite Ruth Paine took took German courses in college, and suggest German-knowledgeable Ruth may therefore have ordered the pistol as well. 

But Ruth wanted nothing to do with firearms whenever the subject came up. Rather than propose an unlikely scenario involving the pacifist gun-loathing Quaker Ruth in explanation to the mystery of the Oswald mail-order firearms pickups, there may be a better explanation.

What if Oswald was paid to be an operative of some sort for, say, BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) or whatever agency was working for the Dodd subcommittee. It is clear (at least to me) that Oswald got regular payments from some source wire-ordered to the Western Union office which were covered up in the post-assassination investigations. The coverup (of Oswald's Western Union money wires) would be because it was from an agency and the payments were covert. What was Oswald paid to do exactly? Perhaps lend his name to setting up the post office box and send in the orders in such a way that would allow another to receive the firearm with Oswald's assistance. The firearms would be ordered and received, to "test" the mail-order system, with the firearms turned in after receipt to police available for potential use later as police "throwdowns" as you explain (all very sensible on that).

The suggestion is that Oswald had a (male) confederate involved with that post office box, related to Oswald being a paid operative for an agency related to the firearm mail-orders. The confederate's identity may or may not have been known to Marina.

Because both rifle and pistol involved mail orders, the simplest explanation is that both orders were part of the same investigation operation done by the same agency. Therefore the German expression confused as a proper name with the pistol order would mean the confederate was someone who spoke and wrote German.

Perhaps the fellow-operative was someone among the White Russians in Lee and Marina's lives? There were fluent German speakers in that circle. 

Didn't Marguerite say at one point that Marina (with June) was living in the Neely Ave. apartment "with some German guy"? (I don't have a reference on that.) Maybe Marguerite's "German guy" wasn't living there, but was that a reference to Gary Taylor, de Mohrenschilt's son-in-law? Didn't Lee use Gary Taylor's address?--and there are the issues over where Lee was living, perhaps not with Marina and June. Is it possible Gary Taylor was the other person involved with Oswald in the mail-order firearms purchases? 

So there is no evidence that firearms-loathing Ruth Paine knowingly ordered or picked up any firearms associated with Lee, nor is that likely to have been the case. The true story likely involved another man with Lee's cooperation and for which Lee was compensated, in a covert investigative operation along lines of the reasons you bring out. The timeline of the visits of Ruth Paine to Marina were coincidental with respect to the firearms with which Ruth was not involved. I have not studied this to the extent you have but this is how it looks to me.

Dodd Committee it is conjecture based on a reasonably strong circumstantial case. 

The case for Ruth Paine being the orderer and collector if the weapons


Means: Ruth had a car

Opportunity: Ruth picked Marina up twice and twice only in March - the 12th and the 20th - the key dates for the ordering of the rifle and the collection of the rifle and the pistol. I'm no mathematician, but I picked 2 random dates in March, I think the odds of you correctly picking those dates would be pretty high.


Motive: If we are correct about the Dodd Committee, there is the motive.

The case for Lee Oswald being the orderer and collector if the weapons

Means: Walking or bus.

Opportunity: None. His work records show he was at work all day on both days.

Motive: If we are correct about the Dodd Committee, there is the motive.

No sex was noted on either order form or any other paperwork, and only initials used with surname. A Hidell could be anyone of either sex as far as the mail order companies and the Post Office was concerned. 

You say Marina denied picking the weapons up but i do not recall ever seeing that, I am not doubting you but would appreciate a cite if you have it available.

You say Ruth testified that she wanted nothing to do with fire-arms and therefore she would not e involved in this. Once again, you are putting her Quakerism front and center as the key defense mechanism. I believe what she said in testimony was more along the lines of not having weapons stored in the home where with young children - though she does indicate in places that she does not like weapons of violence in general - down to barring her kids having toy guns.

But here's the thing. The Dodd Committee was about cutting the flow of weapons around the country - particularly WWII surplus weapons from Europe - and small concealable weapons such as say a pistol. In short, it wanted to bring in some gun control laws. So in fact, this work would e right up her alley. If it was for the Dodd Committee, it seems to me that they would not necessarily need the weapon - just a report on what happened - if procedures and current laws were followed. I think it is at least possible that the weapons were stored for a short period at Neely St (I don't believe Oswald was living there because his electricity account at Elsbeth was not cut until the day before he left for New Orleans) and that the rifle was used to fake a photo of Oswald dressed as a revolutionary - strictly as an in-joke between them and George DeM. On the back of the DeM photo "Hunter of Fascists hahaha".  

I say the rifle that was ordered (a 36 inch model) was the one that was delivered because the BYP almost certainly show the 36 inch model. As to what happened to it, I do not know. More conjecture. Both weapons were given to FBI who passed them on to police. The rifle was probably used y one of the cops for hunting and then thrown away when it was quickly learned it was a piece of crap. The pistol would have been kept as a throwdown because testimony was taken in Washington that police kept mail-order pistols for that purpose. 

All of that said, when you start to produce conjecture that is based on other conjecture, the chances of ending up with a house of cards is multiplied. Put another way, the conjecture that Ruth ordered and picked up the weapons is itself pretty sound, but each layer of conjecture on top of that, I would not defend quite so vigorously.

The Dodd Committee hired "investigators" from a variety of areas and backgrounds. They had a cop as an investigator in Los Angeles, but slightly less shady types elsewhere who were not involved in law enforcement. Not sure if they used anyone from the ATF. It sounds reasonable, but I don't know and  have not come across any evidence for it.

greg_parker wrote:
The case for Ruth Paine being the orderer and collector if the weapons

Means: Ruth had a car

Opportunity: Ruth picked Marina up twice and twice only in March - the 12th and the 20th - the key dates for the ordering of the rifle and the collection of the rifle and the pistol. I'm no mathematician, but I picked 2 random dates in March, I think the odds of you correctly picking those dates would be pretty high.

I think there may be a misunderstanding here. March 20 is when Klein's in Chicago shipped the rifle, not its pickup in Dallas. The rifle was picked up at the Dallas post office March 25. Ruth visited Marina on the day that Klein's in Chicago shipped it, March 20, but the two events have no causal connection.

Earlier on March 12 Ruth visited Marina, and separately on that day Lee dated and wrote his mail order for the rifle. Ruth never saw Lee during that March 12 visit. Therefore there is no causal connection between those two either.

So you have two unrelated events on March 12. Then on March 20 an event in Chicago is the same date as Ruth visits Marina in Dallas. There is no coincidence because they have nothing to do with each other and occur far apart in different parts of the country.

There is a puzzle with Lee and the rifle business but, to paraphrase Lee to Fritz, "leave Ruth out of this". She had nothing to do with it.

greg_parker wrote:
But here's the thing. The Dodd Committee was about cutting the flow of weapons around the country - particularly WWII surplus weapons from Europe - and small concealable weapons such as say a pistol. In short, it wanted to bring in some gun control laws. So in fact, this work would e right up her alley. If it was for the Dodd Committee, it seems to me that they would not necessarily need the weapon - just a report on what happened - if procedures and current laws were followed. I think it is at least possible that the weapons were stored for a short period at Neely St (I don't believe Oswald was living there because his electricity account at Elsbeth was not cut until the day before he left for New Orleans) and that the rifle was used to fake a photo of Oswald dressed as a revolutionary - strictly as an in-joke between them and George DeM. On the back of the DeM photo "Hunter of Fascists hahaha".  

I say the rifle that was ordered (a 36 inch model) was the one that was delivered because the BYP almost certainly show the 36 inch model. As to what happened to it, I do not know. More conjecture. Both weapons were given to FBI who passed them on to police. The rifle was probably used y one of the cops for hunting and then thrown away when it was quickly learned it was a piece of crap. The pistol would have been kept as a throwdown because testimony was taken in Washington that police kept mail-order pistols for that purpose. 

All of that said, when you start to produce conjecture that is based on other conjecture, the chances of ending up with a house of cards is multiplied. Put another way, the conjecture that Ruth ordered and picked up the weapons is itself pretty sound, but each layer of conjecture on top of that, I would not defend quite so vigorously.

The Dodd Committee hired "investigators" from a variety of areas and backgrounds. They had a cop as an investigator in Los Angeles, but slightly less shady types elsewhere who were not involved in law enforcement. Not sure if they used anyone from the ATF. It sounds reasonable, but I don't know and  have not come across any evidence for it.

Apart from the Ruth detail this is pretty good stuff Greg. Especially of interest is your suggestion that the backyard photos was some sort of inside joke or clowning around, like "period costume photos" at carnivals. Could be! It makes as much sense as any of the other theories. I don't think there has ever been any evidence that Oswald ever used those photos for anything. Wouldn't it be something if those photos were Marina's playful idea, not even Lee's idea. (Marina might prefer not to volunteer that detail to the Warren Commission in her telling, if so.) Anyway, interesting.

Yes, your analysis on the Dodd investigation, and what happened to the firearms if ordered as part of such an investigation, sounds like it makes sense. And the 36" ordered and 36" shipped, different from the 40" in the TSBD in November, would clear that up: they were different weapons.

Greg_Doudna wrote:

greg_parker wrote:
The case for Ruth Paine being the orderer and collector if the weapons

Means: Ruth had a car

Opportunity: Ruth picked Marina up twice and twice only in March - the 12th and the 20th - the key dates for the ordering of the rifle and the collection of the rifle and the pistol. I'm no mathematician, but I picked 2 random dates in March, I think the odds of you correctly picking those dates would be pretty high.

I think there may be a misunderstanding here. March 20 is when Klein's in Chicago shipped the rifle, not its pickup in Dallas. The rifle was picked up at the Dallas post office March 25. Ruth visited Marina on the day that Klein's in Chicago shipped it, March 20, but the two events have no causal connection.

Earlier on March 12 Ruth visited Marina, and separately on that day Lee dated and wrote his mail order for the rifle. Ruth never saw Lee during that March 12 visit. Therefore there is no causal connection between those two either.

So you have two unrelated events on March 12. Then on March 20 an event in Chicago is the same date as Ruth visits Marina in Dallas. There is no coincidence because they have nothing to do with each other and occur far apart in different parts of the country.

There is a puzzle with Lee and the rifle business but, to paraphrase Lee to Fritz, "leave Ruth out of this". She had nothing to do with it.

Greg,

it is true that Waldman testified that it was shipped on Mar 20 and there is a shipping document with that date on it.  

Waldman was a company VP. If you want to understand the details on a form, you don't ask the company VP - you ask the guys who actually handle the forms. The FBI made the same mistake asking a headmaster to explain the codes and other details on school records. He completely botched it.  Then there is the fact that the Mar 20 date is in a side box. In my experience, those boxes are set aside for the postal service to record whatever they need to record.

Additionally, the shipping document does in fact have on it a date stamp of March 13. That was also the date the postal order was deposited.
https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1138#relPageId=727&tab=page

Which means the March 20 date almost has to be the date received in Dallas. 

Posted on the 13th and arriving on the 20th sounds about right for that era using ordinary parcel post.

You say the weapons were picked up on March 25. It appears you got that from Tracy Parnell's timeline. I'm not criticizing the timeline here - I find it very useful - but the March 25 date is a guess based on the incorrect testimony that the weapon was not shipped until March 20. There is no actual evidence it was picked up on any date at all.

Let's raise the ante now based on Ruth's very odd calendar notes.



Ruth orders the rifle in March and received the model ordered - the 36 inch model.

It is used to make joke faked photos basically poking fun at Lee. It is not him in the photos and Marina did not take them (she was clueless about the operation of the camera) 

By September, Oswald wanted to buy a rifle. He had nothing to do with the Klein's order. 

His wish for a rifle is based on an email advice I received from Ruann Peters (nee Kloepfer) who had visited Oswald as a 16 year old with her mother and sister in September 1963.

Here is part of what she told me: "...both my sister Karol and I remember our shock when Karol innocently asked him ‘Why did you leave the Soviet Union?’ and he answered, 'Because they won’t let you own a gun there.’ One of us persisted with something like ‘But why would you need a gun?” And he had said simply, shaking his head nervously, ‘you gotta have a gun!’ He then went on to tell us that one thing he was going to do in Washington was ‘pick up a gun.’"

I think Oswald was fooled into thinking he was recruited as a Dodd investigator near the end of his time in NO - thus his comments to Ruann and his sudden interest in gun magazines in Alba's garage prior to that.

I say "fooled into thinking" because I believe the Dodd investigation had wound up by then based on the fact that he introduced legislation in August 1963. No point in introducing legislation based on an incomplete investigation.

I also think that the original 36 inch rifle was long gone by October 1963 and that provides the reason to convince Oswald to join the Dodd investigation and play the part of a gun enthusiast. He probably used an old order form for a 36 inch model, but on Oct 23, received a 40 inch model instead as Klein's they had run out of the shorter model.

This is why we have a 36 inch rifle in the Backyard photos taken in March, and a 36 inch bag for a 40 inch rifle in November.  The bag was made on the belief that another 36 inch model would be received. 

I think post-assassination, Ruth tried to sell the story that on November 23 she heard Oswald had purchased a rifle on March 20 and in noting this information on her calendar, she inadvertently noted the date she got this information as October 23. 

So unRuth like to not know what month it was.

But I digress - bottom line - two dates on that form - the 13th and the 20th. On send date, one receive date.

Ruth picked it up.

greg_parker wrote:
it is true that Waldman testified that it was shipped on Mar 20 and there is a shipping document with that date on it.  

Waldman was a company VP. If you want to understand the details on a form, you don't ask the company VP - you ask the guys who actually handle the forms. The FBI made the same mistake asking a headmaster to explain the codes and other details on school records. He completely botched it.  Then there is the fact that the Mar 20 date is in a side box. In my experience, those boxes are set aside for the postal service to record whatever they need to record.

Additionally, the shipping document does in fact have on it a date stamp of March 13. That was also the date the postal order was deposited.
https://maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1138#relPageId=727&tab=page

Which means the March 20 date almost has to be the date received in Dallas. 

Posted on the 13th and arriving on the 20th sounds about right for that era using ordinary parcel post.

"the Mar 20 date is in a side box. In my experience, those boxes are set aside for the postal service to record whatever they need to record."

Disagree. Those boxes are set aside for the company--Klein's--use to fill out after an order form is received sent in by a buyer. In my experience with such forms, the buyer fills out the order form but not inside those boxes which are for internal use by the company receiving the order. The Klein's order form has instructions to the buyer such as "enclose full remittance for your merchandise with postage, if any"; "please do not write in shaded areas"; "postage and handling charges"; "important notice to purchasers of firearms and ammunition", etc. Those are instructions not to Klein's employees but to the buyer sending in their order to Klein's. Then, once the order form is received, with the accompanying payment, the "boxes" are filled in as appropriate by employees at Klein's in the process of order fulfillment, ending at the point the package goes out the door. 

The shipping company, or the postal service, whoever is doing the shipping, has their own forms and paperwork and do not fill in anything on the Klein's order form. 

The rifle in a wrapped and sealed package, if it had a copy of the Klein's order form inside at all, would not be accessible to anyone to mark at the receiving end of the shipment. 

In the present case the Klein's order form, though designed for use to be filled in by the person making the order, in this case was prepared at Klein's based on the information mailed in by "A. Hidell". The internal systems and processes at Klein's would involve every order being on one of those order forms. If a customer mailed in an order with payment not on one of those forms, a Klein's employee would transfer the information from the customer's order onto the customer-order area of a Klein's form, so that the order is now in Klein's standard operating procedure. 

Then, just as if the order form had been mailed in that way, the order form goes through normal in-house processing for order fulfillment at Klein's, which is documented in those boxes/shaded area.

In the present case the order form itself is dated March 13, and the postal money order was deposited March 13. So March 13 would be the date (a) an order arrived to Klein's in Chicago from "A. Hidell"; (b) an employee at Klein's prepared a Klein's order form with the correct order information, and began normal order fulfillment procedure at Klein's; (c) the money order payment was logged and the money order included in a bank deposit for that day. The rifle itself is in Chicago and has not yet left Chicago.

When did the rifle go out the door from Chicago? A Klein's employee filled in one of the little boxes with that information: March 20. It is a little difficult for me to read the fine print in that box where the handwritten "3/23/63" appears, but it looks to be either "D. Sh" or "Da Sh", in either case standing for "Date Shipped". 

Not date delivered to destination in Texas. But date shipped from Chicago, date the package goes out the door from Chicago. 

This makes complete sense in terms of routine procedure, familiar today in thousands of cases with merchandise order forms, medical intake forms, etc., in which (customer) fills out the greater part of a form which typically has written instructions addressed to (customer), and then smaller areas which are shaded, or boxes, often with instructions (to me the customer) saying "Do Not Write In This Area" or something like that. Those boxes are for in-house use, or medical staff if it is a medical intake, etc. Once the order fulfillment, or the patient intake and processing is completed, whatever it is, that form, which has never left the location, is then filed at that office.  

It is not as if the form was sent either attached to the outside of the rifle package, shipped to Texas, someone from the parcel delivery company marked the "Da Sh" box with the date of arrival in Texas, then mailed that Klein's form back to Klein's at Chicago, in addition to also filling out the delivery company's own paperwork. No, the form never left Klein's at Chicago.

Everything above is a normal interpretation of such forms based simply on the order form itself, but it also is exactly what the vice president of Klein's, Waldman, explained. You suggestion that because the vice-president was not a line employee actually doing the paperwork that he had little understanding of what was going on with his company's order forms, but you have no evidence for that. The interpretation of the order form does not depend on Waldman's testimony. Waldman's testimony simply redundantly confirms in every detail the natural interpretation of that form itself if he had not explained it. 

You are right that "March 25" as the date of arrival and pickup from the post office in Dallas, of that rifle shipment, is not known and derives from someone's guess as to plausibility. What is known is that the rifle shipment LEFT CHICAGO on March 20, date of shipment. Then X number of days to arrive to the Dallas post office, and then unknown Y number of days after that "A. Hidell", or someone a postal clerk thought was A. Hidell, took possession of the package from the Dallas post office.

Therefore though the date of the pickup from the Dallas post office is not known, it was minimally several days later than March 20 and could have been longer, depending on how frequently "A. Hidell" checked the post office box to see if packages had arrived.

Therefore Ruth Paine visiting Marina on March 20, could not have gone to the Dallas post office and picked up the rifle package on March 20.

The only conceivable way I could see for interpreting March 20 on that form as an arrival date would be to suppose the Klein's form remains in Chicago at Klein's, with the "Da Sh" box left blank and the date shipped not written separately, identified as such, on that form anywhere--on odd and inexplicable omission if so--and then the form left in an "active-pending" stack until word was received a few days later from the shipper that the package had been delivered to destination X on Date Y, and then that information written on the form at Klein's in Chicago, writing the shipping arrival date in the "Da Sh" box.

However that is very far-fetched, based on: the form and nearly-universal procedure; the absence of another explicitly-documented "shipped"/"out the door" date elsewhere on the form; the abbreviation "Da Sh" standing for "date shipped" in the box where 3/20/63 was written; and the explanation of the vice president of the company that that is how Klein's did it.

(On your earlier asking for the reference to Marina saying she never picked up the rifle from the post office, I thought I saw that somewhere but I cannot find it in Marina's Warren Commission testimony therefore retract that for now.)

If Ruth had been part of an investigation to help the Dodd Subcommittee gather evidence for increased gun control legislation, I think she would have said so. There is no evidence she was, or that she knew of any rifle coming to Lee's post office box.

Greg,

I accept your explanation of the form may be correct. I had not been able to make out what you now identify as "da sh".

The form is not the original order form (which was a clipping from a magazine), so this one had to have been completed by an employee. I do note that the writing inside the side box is different to the writing elsewhere, which was another reason for thinking it was completed by the PO - but yes - it could just as easily have been completed by a different Klein's employee.

Another issue I had with March 20 being the shipping date was that this means it took a full 7 days after banking the money to actually ship the order out. That seems an inordinate amount of time in terms of best practice and good customer service. I would probably not deal with Klein's again myself. 

Anyhow, based on your interpretation of the form, I have returned to Ruth's testimony about her visits to Marina during March. Both she and Jenner keep referring to just two visits - those being on March 12 and March 20. Yet I now realize that Ruth testified to a third, that inexplicably is not added to that count to make three - nor is a date given or asked for. All that can be discerned from the testimony is that it occurred after the March 20 visit and she took Ruth back to Irving with her, then returned her on the same day.

Mr. JENNER - Now you think the second occasion occurring in your calendar entry there was possibly March 20?
Mr. JENNER - And what is the entry?
Mrs. PAINE - It says, "Marina".
Mr. JENNER - And that is the only word?
Mrs. PAINE - That is all it says.
Mr. JENNER - In that square?
Mrs. PAINE - Probably I went again to her home.
Mr. JENNER - Excuse me. Does that refresh your recollection as to anything on that occasion?
Mrs. PAINE - No.
Mr. JENNER - It does not?
Mrs. PAINE - 1 am guessing, again, that this was the second meeting. I think I went to her home twice before I carried her from her place to my home, which was considerably more of an event, since it was 35 or 40 minutes each way, going twice in one day.
Mr. JENNER - You say carry?
Mrs. PAINE - Carry, that is a good Texas term for driving a person in a car.
Senator COOPER - I must say there, that is an old term even in Kentucky. You take some person some place you carry them.
Mrs. PAINE - You carry them; yes.
Mr. JENNER - It is an odd expression to me.
Mrs. PAINE - I have been in Texas longer than I think.
Mr. JENNER - I take it then there were two occasions when you visited her.
Mrs. PAINE - I believe there were two down there, and then I asked her, went to pick her up and brought her to my home and we spent a portion of the day at my home, and I then took her back.
Mr. JENNER - This was at your invitation?
Mrs. PAINE - Yes; surely.

All the way through, there are only two visits and two dates discussed... before that third visit is mentioned on an unstated date after March 20...

In short, while it is less certain now Ruth picked the weapons up, the possibility still remains that she did. 

Lee had no opportunity to do it.

Marina, almost certainly had a key to the box.

Ruth and Jenner avoid the date and the circumstances of that third visit. Curiously, Ruth noted "Marina" on her calendar for the 20th, but the entry for the 12th is blank and no mention on the calendar for that third visit, either. 

And her explanation for writing Oct 23 as the date she learned that Oswald "purchased a weapon" on March 20 is literally unbelievable from someone so fastidious about note-taking. 

This reminds me of why I debate people such as yourself. Not only have you pushed me to find more than I previously had (especially re Hootkins), you actually did manage to poke a hole in one of my arguments, leaving me with a less certain, but (now) more accurately underpinned conclusion.