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

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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.

Greg P., that's a sign of honesty, being affected by evidence even when it means altering former views. 
 
I agree you show a third occasion of Ruth visiting Marina by car which means the possibility of Ruth driving Marina to pick up the rifle is not excluded or falsified on chronological grounds. (But the perceived positive argument from coincidence for invoking Ruth's involvement in the first place is gone.)
 
Let me suggest some conjectures pointing to a different and I think better line of solution: related to the Walker shooting. This is difficult to sort out but here is my thinking. First, from the missing part of the post office box order form naming others who had access, I am going to speculate that missing piece is intentional to cover up something, as opposed to accidental and routine. The question is what names if any would have been on the missing part of that form. If it was "Alex Hiddel" only, there would be no reason to conceal that since that supports an acknowledged narrative in which Lee used that alias. The coverup would be of some other name of a real person. Holmes of the post office testified that records showed only one key was issued for that box to Lee. I am going to conjecture that Lee had the key and did all of his pickups at that post office, and that he was driven some of the times especially when the rifle was involved.
 
Who was Lee hanging around with? The Warren Commission portrayed Lee as a loner. However a witness, Juanita Buchanan, who with her husband owned the Eldorado Bar on Haskell Avenue, said Oswald came in on two occasions with Bill Duff, a former employee in General Walker's house who was himself a suspect in the Walker shooting. Furthermore, one of the two occasions Juanita saw Oswald with Duff was the evening of the Walker shooting. These are identified as notes of Irving Heineman from conversations with Sue Fitch concerning an interview of Juanita Buchanan.
 
---(start quote)---
 
"Bill Duff, whom she calls Scotty, came in (...) He said that he was General Walker's house guest but he expressed hatred for General Walker.
 
"Duff came in the place twice with Oswald. He introduced him as Lee (last name not remembered--he never called him Oswald). She is positive that it was Oswald. Oswald did not have much to say. The night of the Walker shooting, they were in the place on Haskell together and left about 8 p.m. Duff came back about 11:30 p.m. and she had heard on the radio about the shooting at Walker's house. She asked Duff, ‘Why did you try to shoot at General Walker? He is a pretty good old boy,’ Duff turned white as a sheet, left, and never came back (...)
 
"The night of the Walker shooting the police arrived about 30 minutes after Duff left, looking for Duff. He was arrested. Oswald was also arrested. The car was traced to Duff. The boy in the back of Walker's house got the license number of Duff's rented car, a foreign make.
 
"Duff moved into the Hidden Hills with Chuck Holloway. He had two rifles and a couple of pistols. Two men moved into Hidden Hills and asked Duff to help them kill Walker; offered him $25,000 and gave him $5,000. Duff got suspicious and went to the FBI (to see Hosty). Duff left town and went to Oklahoma where he said he was going to join the army (...) The Eldorado bar was the regular meeting place of Ruby, Oswald, Duff and Tippit (…)
 
"Ruby came to her place three days before the assassination, trying to buy the place. She has had several telephone calls saying ‘if you know what's good for you you will keep your damn mouth shut’.”
 
(http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/4376-reasons-of-state/?ct=1602791939)
 
---(end quote)--- 
 
OK, analysis. Duff himself from FBI documents was a low-life, untruthful, a storyteller, diagnosed medically as a “pathological liar”—not the most reliable witness. But the part about Oswald with him the night of the Walker shooting is not from Duff but Juanita. The part about Duff’s arrest undoubtedly comes from Duff (Juanita was told that by Duff), but that part was also judged truthful by Walker investigators. However, Duff’s denial that he never knew Oswald, read that as untruthful.
 
This is in the time frame of the post office box of Lee and the rifle shipment, and Lee is in association with Duff who drives. Is the witness, Juanita, credible? I think yes, despite the initial aversion some might have to seeing Oswald linked with Ruby. Closer reading does not have Juanita linking Oswald to Ruby. Oswald is linked only to Duff. Oswald was remembered by Juanita as having been in the place two times, each time only with Duff. Duff is the one linked to Ruby and Tippit, by Juanita saying they patronized her bar.
 
This goes to the issue of the Walker shooting. I think, as the Dallas police themselves suspected who originally reported to the scene, that that was not an attempted murder but only staged to look like one. But Oswald is not on his own the night of the Walker shooting. He is with Duff. I think Duff and Oswald were paid to shoot into an empty room. There is only Walker's sayso that he was even sitting at his desk when the shot supposedly barely but fortuitously missed him completely as told in the news coverage that followed. 
 
Then there is a whole story about Walker men subsequently covertly recording and unsuccessfully trying to set up Duff to get him to admit on tape that he had shot at Walker (which, per the reconstruction here, was actually the case, with Oswald), and even more seriously, get Duff on tape and arrested for planning to murder Walker for real a second time for a huge sum of money, in a "sting" operation which failed because Duff informed the FBI. If that sting had been successful Duff would have been discredited even further if he did try to claim the earlier shooting was staged.
 
The Walker shooting, which was not an attempted murder per reconstruction here, becomes done by Oswald and Duff, not Duff alone or Oswald alone. Who was the orchestrator of it? Was it Robert Surrey, the assistant of Walker? Surrey was a Nazi (also an informant?), in touch with and host in Dallas for George Lincoln Rockwell. Two of Surrey's sons, David and Bill, each have Utube video interviews accessible online. David claims his father knew Oswald and took Oswald shooting in the woods recreationally with him and young David, though David’s story has its problems (not in sincerity but in accuracy). As a side note, unexplained in Oswald's address book is address information of George Lincoln Rockwell the Nazi leader; where did that come from?
 
If Oswald and Duff were the shooters at Walker, this would account for the sighting of two men leaving in a car as the ones who did the shooting, rather than an Oswald taking flight alone on foot. Often the two in the car is cited by researchers as exculpatory of Oswald having been involved at all; instead read Oswald as one of those two. Oswald and Duff as the shooters would be basically consistent with most of Marina's account of Oswald of that evening, although Marina either does not know or chose not to tell that Oswald was with someone and the two used a car. But Oswald was not attempting murder, nor was he acting alone on this occasion, per present reconstruction.
 
Walker later made a big issue of a claim that Oswald had been arrested the night of the shooting but treacherously (from Walker's point of view) Oswald had been released on orders of Robert F. Kennedy, head of the Justice Department. Everyone has blown off that story but, apart from the claim of an actual Oswald arrest (no DPD records support that) I don't think that story should be so quickly blown off. In the present reconstruction that story, like Marina’s account, also becomes basically correct, at least as a version of what happened. What may actually have happened was Duff picked up by police for questioning following which he was released, but no actual questioning or arrest of Oswald even though he could easily also have been named and picked up, depending on how much Duff talked. Both the release of Duff and the non-pickup of Oswald would be after some word of intervention asked for that—portrayed by Walker subsequently as “Robert Kennedy told the police to release the man who tried to assassinate me!” A version of this story was reported in the tabloid press and is usually dismissed for that reason, but I think it indeed is a version of what happened; and it is not just sourced from tabloids but was claimed by Walker repeatedly to be certain knowledge known to him. Of course Walker could have invented that out of whole cloth. But consider alternatively that what Walker was saying was basically true with some Walker spin (such as the naming of Robert Kennedy whom he loathed, as personally giving the order; also Walker leaving out the slight detail that the shot had been staged by his own people). 
 
There is a separate story of a Russian emigre acquaintance of De Mohrenschildt, Natasha Voshinin, being told by De Mohrenschildt a few days later that De Mohrenschildt feared Oswald could have done the shooting, and she called and told the FBI that (interview of Natasha Voshinin to Dick Russell 4/5/92, The Man Who Knew Too Much, pp. 317-18). But nothing happened; there is no record Oswald was questioned. This is consistent with a request from an agency to local law enforcement and/or FBI to not touch Oswald. Typically, police and agencies quietly accommodate each other in requests of this nature, rendering outwardly unusual law enforcement behavior explicable. The behavior described on the part of law enforcement in terms of the Walker shooting is explicable if Oswald was working for an agency. It also explains why there never was another resolution or closure to the Walker shooting case.
 
The Walker shooting therefore need not be interpreted in ways claiming that Oswald was not involved, but at the same time this explanation does not make Oswald an attempted murderer either.
 
Post-JFK assassination the story would become one in which Oswald alone had done the Walker shooting as a lone nut, which by the interpretation here is modification of what happened. (For some reason in the standard tellings of the WC and mainstream narrative regarding the JFK assassination, Oswald, and the Walker shooting, Duff just disappeared from consciousness and history as if he never existed.) If the rifle pickup from the post office was not done by Oswald walking or taking a bus there, and involved being driven, the driving would be by someone such as Surrey or Duff or whoever, but not Marina or the even less likely Ruth Paine. Since the date and time of Lee’s rifle pickup is not known, Lee could have picked it up anytime the post office was open and had personnel at the counter e.g. on a Saturday when Lee was not at work if the post office was open Saturdays. Marina’s explanations of Lee without a car doing the Walker shooting, whether Marina had been told that by Lee and believed it, or Marina conjectured it, or Marina purposely made it up—in any case are questionable. Both the witnesses at the scene telling of two fleeing in a car, and a simple likelihood of logistics, argues that a car was involved. 
 
Marina claimed she knew nothing of how Lee obtained the rifle:
 
“With regard to the rifle which Oswald had at the Neeley address and at the Paine garage, Marina advised she did not recall when Oswald had purchased the rifle, nor did she know where he purchased it until she found this out from the publicity resulting from the assassination of the President.” (FBI interview of Marina 12/16/63, Boguslav and Heitman)
 
I think Marina knew more than she said (a wife who never thinks to ask her husband where a newly-appearing rifle came from?). But it is also plausible to me that Lee, involved in something covert with that rifle order, would not ask Marina ever to traverse the long distance to the post office or be involved in picking up packages, nor would Lee ask Ruth Paine visiting from Irving as a favor to drive him or Marina to pick up the rifle package and drop it off to him either. The time and logistics of Lee’s picking up the rifle from the post office is not a problem requiring invocation of Ruth Paine or her car into the story to solve. To the extent there was a car involved with Lee and the rifle and the Walker shooting, the missing link would be not the entirely-uninvolved-in-this Ruth Paine but rather someone in the Walker circle of Dallas with whom Oswald was in witnessed association and with whom he was involved in the Walker shooting.
 
There is also the strange story of the private security consultant, ex HL Hunt man, Brad Angers, told in Dick Russell's book in which Angers tells of Larrie Schmidt being beaten up by unknown assailants soon after the JFK assassination, who warned him, Larrie, to keep HL Hunt's name out of any statements. (Although I have never read anyone suggesting this, from my reading of Angers' account I suspect Angers himself had something to do with that assault on Schmidt.) Angers assists Schmidt after the assault and tape-records a story of Schmidt in which Schmidt tells of he and his brother driving around with Oswald the night of the shooting and then Oswald doing the shooting of Walker. Larrie Schmidt's brother worked for Walker. It is a variant story of Oswald in a car involved with Walker people knowledgeable of the shooting of Walker; note the similarities to the independent stories of Duff and the shooting, both involving Oswald. (In Gayle Nix Jackson's book, she located and interviewed Larrie Schmidt and Larrie denied having met Oswald, for what that is worth.)
 
The rifle which did the Walker shooting, according to Oswald according to Marina, was Lee’s rifle, the one shipped by Klein's to Oswald's post office box. I do not think it is coincidence that a mail-order firearm involved in an investigation related to the Dodd subcommittee, and someone involved in that (Oswald), was part of an inside staged shot at Walker, though the specifics of reasons and reconstruction are not clear. From Walker’s point of view the ideal public nationwide reporting would be an unsolved shooting widely suspected (even if never proven) to come from communists and/or Kennedys on the left, the dastardly Kennedys and/or their communist sympathizers trying to assassinate America’s foremost conservative public figure. One way of helping a crime remain unsolved (against local police and prosecutors normal tendency to attempt to solve crimes) would be to have it unsolved by request from an agency because arrests and/or prosecution would compromise “sensitive sources and methods”, to use that overused expression. (In Walker’s case, it would compromise the claim that it was an assassination attempt at all.) I don’t know that that was what was going on and this is not essential to the rest of the reconstruction. 
 
I admit there is a lot of speculation here. Whether or not all specifics are right I think this reconstruction is in the ballpark of better solutions to some of the problems involved with the Klein's rifle order, the Dodd subcommittee investigation, the Walker shooting, and Marina's description of Oswald's role in that shooting.

Greg, not ignoring this.

There are parts that I agree with, parts that I am ambivalent about, and one part in particular with which I disagree entirely.

I am snowed under at the moment, but will get to it ASAP.

No problem Greg P. Three corrections to my above: first, correct the point about the witness (Coleman) seeing two men leave in a car from Walker's. According to FBI interview reports on Mary Ferrell the witness saw two men each individually getting into two cars (not two into one car), and it is not clear in any case that the shooter or shooters would run to a car in such visibility with people who could see a license plate following the sound of the shot. (However, an Associated Press wire report dated April 12, 1963 had, "A youngster told police he saw several men jump into a car and speed away from the area in a swank part of Dallas" [https://jfkscoup.wordpress.com/2019/08/22/the-anomaly-of-the-general-walker-bullet/]).

Therefore the story of Oswald mediated through Marina and also Brad Angers' hearsay of a shooter on foot who runs away on foot could be correct (with maybe a car pickup elsewhere out of range of the immediate vicinity); uncertain on the specifics. What the witness saw could be men from Walker's house reacting to the shot, or unrelated and part of the church activity where those cars were parked.
 
Second, Duff was understood by Walker's investigators to have told someone that he had fired the shot, which could have been a slight exaggeration if he assisted, and the attempt to get him on tape bragging of what he had done would make sense if Duff had been involved. On the other hand Marina says Oswald told her he took the shot, and the following is why that may more likely the truth (Oswald's lack of prior history or expertise as an assassin being entirely irrelevant here as will become immediately clear). Often radical groups suspicious of newcomers, wondering if they are undercover police or informants, have them to prove their bonafides by asking them to participate in some risky or illegal activity. If Oswald was an informant or infiltrator (very plausible) this could be such a situation, in which the shot through Walker's picture window was essentially imposed on Lee to do as a request. If he wished to proceed with the infiltration he had to go along with it, do it, but it was not an idea he initiated. Also, the way it would have been presented to Lee would not be asking him or offering to hire him to murder, but rather a dare/request to him to fire a single shot through a plate glass window with no one on the other side, with the idea that it would, as Lee would be told, scare Walker, and the room in fact was empty when the shot was fired. Walker then telling the police he was in the room and almost killed would be Walker's embellishment and I suspect a surprise to Lee hearing that later on the radio. Firing into an empty room in which no one would be physically bodily harmed (one hoped) might be somewhat easier for someone in an infiltrator's position to go along with. Also, Oswald may not have been infiltrating Walker's people per se but rather the FBI-targeted Minutemen and/or Nazis, that is, Surrey's group (who happened to be working for Walker).  

The shot was risky; if Lee had been caught he would have been charged but (so Lee would have understood) with a charge less serious than attempted murder. Lee took precautions for Marina's sake in case he was caught with the list of instructions. I believe this scenario I have outlined makes better sense than the ideas of Lee acting as a lone maniac intent on murder in taking that shot as everyone has supposed.

And third, cancel my early paragraph on the missing bottom portion of the post office box application form as being intentional coverup of identity of name or names. I see no reason to suppose that. Having used many post office boxes I know how mail not addressed to me can end up in my p.o. box. All Lee had to do was, with a box taken out in his own name, test to see whether an innocuous package would come through to him addressed to "A. Hidell", and if that worked, then order the rifle. A possible explanation for why the bottom portion of the form might not have been saved would be if there were no other names listed there than Lee's, so no point, from the local post office's point of view, in keeping that part of the form on file. Also, an FBI document says FBI investigation found that "Oswald did not indicate on his application that others....would receive mail through the box in question" (https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=11432&search=who_killed+kennedy+claims+and+results+of+investigation#relPageId=5&tab=page). The document does not explain how the FBI came to that finding, but it is what FBI reported as distinguished from saying the point was unknown or indeterminate.

Holmes of the post office testified that records showed only one key was issued for that box to Lee. I am going to conjecture that Lee had the key and did all of his pickups at that post office, and that he was driven some of the times especially when the rifle was involved.

Holmes' testimony about a key was only in regard to the box taken out on Nov 1. And yes, Oswald would have held that since he could easily walk to the post office from the TSBD at lunch time. In fact, there was some testimony that he did leave the building during some lunch periods. 

It is suspicious that the names of people able to use the first box (the weapons box) were not discussed in testimony, nor was the number of keys. As you show, we only know the name Hidell was not listed because the FBI was rebuttng claims made in one of the early books. If the FBI knew "Hidell" was not listed, they must have seen that part of the form. So why is it not in the archives - and again, why was it not discussed by the WC with Holmes? 

Marina was listed in New Orleans and would have had her own key.

It makes sense that the same applied for this first box since it was not close enough to where Oswald worked for him to collect the mail.

If Marina had a key and had access, that alone was reason enough for that part of the paper work to go missing and not be discussed during testimony. And you cannot bring Marina in as the only viable alternative to Lee, without also bringing in Ruth.

(In Gayle Nix Jackson's book, she located and interviewed Larrie Schmidt and Larrie denied having met Oswald, for what that is worth.)

Larrie was played like a fiddle by Robert Morris.

The member of Larrie's gang worth noticing is the one no one mentions. Bill Burley. Burley hit the road running straight after the assassination.

The Walker story as it pertains to eventually pointing at Oswald is a long one. Maybe some other time.

The rifle which did the Walker shooting, according to Oswald according to Marina, was Lee’s rifle, the one shipped by Klein's to Oswald's post office box. 

Marina could not tell the difference betwen a rifle and a shot gun. By Dec 2, 1963, Marina had caved in and said whatever they wanted her to say. Her husband was dead. She had two babies. But she had been given immunity from deportation and tens of thousands of dollars was hers for the taking if she cooporated. 

She did what she had to do for herself and the kids and since then, she obviously lost all respect for the authorities and society generally and started sating whatever came into her head, or whatever may bring in more money. 

People in her situation either become martyrs to their moral code, capitulate and then withdraw from society forever, hating themselves, or decide to join them in their cynical exploitation of the events. 

She did the latter.

greg_parker wrote:
If Marina had a key and had access, that alone was reason enough for that part of the paper work to go missing and not be discussed during testimony. And you cannot bring Marina in as the only viable alternative to Lee, without also bringing in Ruth.

Again there is no need to suppose Marina went to that post office box or that any driver need be involved, since there is no logistical problem with Saturday pickups of packages by Lee on Lee's day off. Also, whether the post office box form did or did not list the alias "Alex Hiddel", would a post office employee hand over a large package addressed to "Alex Hidell" to a woman who is clearly not him. It is not clear what problem you are seeing that Marina being assisted by Ruth Paine is proposed to solve.

On the earlier discussion concerning your reconstruction that Ruth testified deceitfully in major ways with respect to the Shasteen barbershop, I have since found a document that renders that discussion obsolete. As you recall the debate essentially came down to whether Shasteen's customer said by Shasteen to have been Oswald was or was not a mistaken identification. Ruth Paine in her testimony said there were no barbershop trips of Oswald in Irving. You say Shasteen's identification was not mistaken and therefore Ruth Paine was deceptive in major ways.

I found the barber who actually did cut Oswald's hair in the Oct 4-Nov 22 period, one Herman Harrison of Harrison's Barber Shop, 2005 North Beckley. That is about 1.2 miles from Oswald's North Beckley address. "He recalls having cut Lee Harvey Oswald's hair on two occasions".  

Two haircuts in a seven-week period, spaced ca. 4-6 weeks apart, is about right for an average man not overly concerned with fashion. Those two haircuts near his North Beckley address satisfactorily account for all haircuts Oswald would reasonably be expected to have obtained in this time period, and corroborate Ruth Paine as not being deceptive on this matter.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10672&relPageId=240&search=harrison%27s_barber%20shop

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95673&relPageId=31&search=harrison%27s_barber%20shop

Again there is no need to suppose Marina went to that post office box or that any driver need be involved, since there is no logistical problem with Saturday pickups of packages by Lee on Lee's day off. Also, whether the post office box form did or did not list the alias "Alex Hiddel", would a post office employee hand over a large package addressed to "Alex Hidell" to a woman who is clearly not him. It is not clear what problem you are seeing that Marina being assisted by Ruth Paine is proposed to solve.

If Saturday is the solution, I wonder why the WC and no lone nutter's since have given it as the likely date - expecially when Monday poses the same problem for Oswald as any other work day?

As for the parcel being given to a female, as I have explained before, the order was made by "A Hidell", no gender asked on the form and no indication given such as "Mr" etc. In short, "A Hidell" could be male or female.

What problem does Marina and Ruth solve? The problem of Oswald being at work all day on the day of the order and again on the day of the alleged collection.

What we do know is that Ruth picked Marina up on the day of the order and was very vague about what they did and where they went. We also know Ruth picked her up again on some unpecified date after March 20 (the date the weeapons were dispached) and took her back to Irving. 

We know that some time after that, Marina allegedly took photos of Oswald holding the rifles and with a pistol in a hoslter, while he held two opposing leftist papers and dressed in revolutionary black.

Yet Marina thought the camera was held to the eyes (it was held at the waist - not a detail you are likely to forget), she was initially certain she took just one photo, and she could not tell a shotgun from a rifle. Nor was the black clothing ever found. 

Oswald himself denied owning a rifle and claimed the photos were not of him, but had his head plastered on. They do have him claiming he owned a pistol, but they had to put those words in his mouth since they attempted to plant it on him.

I believe Oswald's denials. The police should have as well since the denials in the manner made, fit the pop psychology signs police are taught to look for in determining lies from truth. 

Apart from that, the photos really are fake - and when real science gets a chance, that will be proven.

Well done on finding Herman Harrison. 

We do know the FBI would have been desparate to disprove Shasteen. To do that, they had to find another barber.

Did Harrison come forward? We are not told.

Did Harrison provide a description of the person he believed was Oswald? Was he even asked for one? We are not told in either event.

Did Harrison provide approximate dates this customer came in? We are not told.

The lack of detail points to this being a misidentifaction that the FBI does not want to expose as a misidentifaction.

Shasteen's description of Oswald's hairy arms was accurate.

Shasteen's description of Oswald's hair always looking like it was a week overdue for a cut was accurate.

Shasteen's description of military coverall's that were way too big for Oswald matches what could be a pair of army coveralls belonging to Mike Paine left in the garage for Mike to wear while tinkering.

Shasteen's description of the car matches Ruth's car.

Shasteen saw the same man with Ruth and Marina over at the grocery store. He also saw him once at the drug store. 

Lee got his hair cut at Shasteen's - a very short walk from Ruth's and far more convenient than a two and a half mile round trip walk to and from Harrison's starting out from 1026 N Beckley - a place Oswald did not even live at.

to sum it up (since I have a firm grasp of the obvious) it is pretty clear, I think, that the Paines, like DeMohrenschildt, were not in on the plot so much as they were just more people placed around Oswald as handlers, to guide him in what they assumed were intelligence-necessary directions. Things like assassination were "need to know," and Ruth Paine clearly didn't need to know. She did what she was told, and for all we know she was paid for it.

AllenLowe wrote:to sum it up (since I have a firm grasp of the obvious) it is pretty clear, I think, that the Paines, like DeMohrenschildt, were not in on the plot so much as they were just more people placed around Oswald as handlers, to guide him in what they assumed were intelligence-necessary directions. Things like assassination were "need to know," and Ruth Paine clearly didn't need to know. She did what she was told, and for all we know she was paid for it.

Allen, there is just zero shred of evidence for this claim that Ruth and Michael Paine were co-handlers of Oswald, who went out to Irving on weekends to receive his next week's instructions as to what to do, or give debriefings to Ruth, and so on. This is just hallucinating. What is going on here is people, traumatized by the JFK assassination, on good grounds know an official story does not add up; do not know exactly what went down; so accuse and damage innocent people who happen to be in the vicinity and for whatever reason "look suspicious". It is as logical as medieval village people who cannot understand why a freak storm wiped out their precious crop and start rounding up whatever social misfits happen to be nearby and accusing them of witchcraft, as the cause of their calamities. It is so deeply human to viscerally resist agnosticism, lack of closure, of simply recognizing and holding on to "I don't know" on fundamental questions pending acquisition of REAL evidence capable of REAL solutions to crimes, Colombo (the TV show) type of crime solutions. Where humans do not know, it is overwhelmingly tempting to invent overarching narratives to explain. Hence elaborate and fictitious conspiracy theories, so tenacious to believers and so impervious to falsification to believers.  

The only reasonable (as distinguished from unreasonable) suspicion that I can see with reference to the Paines, a suspicion which I am sure Marina had, was that Ruth was somehow informing on or surveilling her, since Marina knew that in the Soviet Union that was exactly the role of most of Lee's friends, and Marina herself, with respect to Lee in Minsk. Yet while that is a legitimate question, no evidence has come forward in all these years--no document, no testimony, no confession or disclosure--in all this time that Ruth was doing that. Neither Ruth nor Michael have any evidence of having had spy training. Ruth's sister and father were CIA employee and asset, respectively, at a time when Cold War liberals working for CIA was like having a relative in the armed forces, like my wife's sister being career Air Force (a nurse)--neither Ruth's father nor sister were involved in the dirty ops or horrible things in CIA's "many mansions", the wider disclosure of which permanently and deservedly damaged CIA's "brand" in the 1970s--and it is completely credible that Ruth did not know of her sister's CIA employment or her father's CIA asset status in his international work until belatedly, as CIA covert status was not to be told even to family members or spouses, according to what I have read. For her part Ruth has steadfastly denied that she was operating in any such capacity with respect to Lee and Marina herself, with no evidence to the contrary. The way innocent people have been damaged on the basis of suspicion alone in the JFK assassination saga is shameful. 

If Ruth and Michael had been covertly micromanaged and were themselves doing covert micromanagement of Lee and Marina's actions on behalf of their own hypothesized unseen forces and handlers behind the scenes, without their realization that it was a longterm plan for the assassination months in the making (just hope it didn't rain that day!), then AFTER the assassination if it were you or I we would be hopping mad realizing we had been used in great evil. Assuming the entire government was not in on the covert plot to secretly keep the assassination details from the American public, any honest person, if that were the case, would find a means to get this information to sectors of the government which could do something about it. The notion that both Michael and Ruth would simply accept "oh!--they were knocking off the President of the United States!--so THAT was what it was all about that they were having me do! Well, I'll be!"--and then go happily about life for the next six decades each sticking to their cover story, never blowing the whistle on their unseen, unidentified handlers ... there is no EVIDENCE for that, and it is not very likely. What is the title of that book: "Someone would have talked?" Why do you suppose that was, or in Ruth's case is? I know it is a shocking idea to consider, but perhaps consider it is because there is no there there, that Ruth and Michael have told what there was to tell.

I think the assassination in the end was probably less complicated than it seems: a simple contract Mob hit, with high-level nod and wink and an FBI on principle not looking in Mob directions in the investigation that followed, with practically everyone including the nodders and winkers not knowing specifics of how it happened, is more realistic and economical and fruitful as an explanation.

Ruth and Michael Paine had nothing to do with the Mob, nor has the Mob showed the least interest in Ruth or Michael. That was because they really, in the end, had nothing to do with anything that mattered in this story, apart from an accident of proximity.

Marina lived a double life from the getgo, and might well be regarded as more of Lee's covert handler than any other single person, as surprising as that may sound (with Marina of course being a Soviet plant rather than working for the US). I am now thinking that Lee may well have confided in Marina virtually everything including his double-agent activities, and that any US-agency informant activities on Lee's part at the end would have occurred during worktimes at the TSBD, not evenings or weekends at Irving or at the Oak Cliff rooming house, in which, according to 100% of witness testimony, Lee's activities were entirely mundane. I think Lee loved Marina and Marina used Lee, though of course any human relationship is probably more complicated than that. I think the reason Marina disconnected from Ruth is because that was easier than trying to explain the double life to Ruth, which she could not, and therefore it was easiest to simply disconnect altogether, which must have hurt Ruth. The negative and damaging things regarding Lee come from Marina's testimony, and the negative things Ruth said about Lee in her testimony were hearsay based on what Ruth was told by Marina. (Preventing Marina from learning English; abusive behavior; forcing Marina to apply to return to Russia against her will--none of this witnessed by Ruth directly, only hearsay from what she was told by Marina.) (Did Lee really want to forbid Marina from learning English--Marina who actually did know english all along? That makes absolutely no sense for any spouse of any immigrant to a new country. Or was it Lee going along with and backing up Marina's story, "he doesn't want me to", by mutual agreement, Lee carrying out what Marina wished on that matter? That is what I think.)

A question for Greg Parker here: in your reconstruction of the Shasteen/Hootkins saga at the barbershop, with a motive of having ca. 5 people in a local barbershop spread a reputation of LHO being associated with leftist ideas from that scene ... why, in your scenario, does Ruth Paine subvert and contradict and deny this elaborate covert plot that you have her party to bringing about? Isn't that contradictory? What is the point of doing it in the first place if one of the plotters is going to simply destroy its credibility before anyone has a chance to believe it?  

I had a document--it was from one of the great document dumps here--that unfortunately despite my best efforts I cannot identify the link for you or find it on the Mary Ferrell site, all I have is the printout. But it is a typed report of a Warren Commission investigator of his interview of Shasteen. It is just devastating--hilariously so--in expressing his assessment of dripping scorn and disbelief in Shasteen's credibility, of how Shasteen exaggerates and contradicts, and how he concludes Shasteen is unreliable in the details of his stories. The point is that the entire elaborate reconstruction of Hootkins making repeated trips on school nights and weekend nights away from his parents' home in Dallas in order to set up the Shasteen barbershop incident, is all dependent upon this single witness, Shasteen, and his identification of his haircut customer with the real Oswald whom he saw once from a distance from the back from across the street getting out of Ruth Paine's car across the street. There is nothing in Shasteen's testimony that verifies Ruth's car ever being driven to Shasteen's shop on any concrete occasion. The only two specific occasions Shasteen cites in seeing a car related to his customer drive up was one time after dark seeing front headlights as the customer parked his car, a momentary view before Shasteen sneaked out the back door to escape (with the darkness making car make and type identification not credible); and then a different, decidedly non-Ruth-Paine car driving up with the 14-year old (the identity of this vehicle or its driver unexplained in your reconstruction). The connection by Shasteen of his customer with Ruth Paine's car is entirely from his claim that the real Oswald seen across the street, seen from the back, was the customer he knew with the yellow shoes and who nearly always wore an oversize jump suit coming in for his haircut after work. (When Lee came in on Friday nights after work when Frazier dropped him off, Lee would join Marina and his children in Ruth's living room, eat dinner and watch TV.) 

Incidentally, I have seen I believe two references now to "Old Mexico" as clearly meaning Mexico--likely a colloquialism originated in order to distinguish in meaning from the U.S. state of New Mexico which adjoins Texas to the west. Shasteen's customer referred to taking multiple and future trips to some border town across the Mexican border where he could shop, in "Old Mexico". This also does not fit Oswald, any more than does the detail of the exact length of Shasteen's customer's hair or the frequency of his haircuts. The reason I doubted "Old Mexico" as meaning Mexico is because I lived in east Texas for three years in the 1970s and did not recall hearing that idiom used, but I see now there is no doubt that that idiom for Mexico did exist and was in use in at least some parts of Texas in the 1960s.

the evidence was in the fact that they handled him - without apparent motivation, without any reason other than that obviously Oswald had to be moved and placed - and that she didn't tell him about a job that would have taken LHO OUT of the Texas Book Depository; the odd way Ruth latched onto Marina and clearly tried to separate the two; the mysterious note Ruth found in a book weeks after the assassination that mysteriously further implicated LHO in the assassination; the fact that at one time Michael Paine actually said that Oswald was keeping an eye on right wing groups; the fact that Michael and Ruth had a phone conversation in which they said "we know who did it;" the fact that when Ruth went to Nicaragua she was outed as CIA. At every juncture she just happened to be in place to help implicate him, without evidence, and even said he had some nerve to ask her to find a lawyer. Please, it is so obvious that she was handling him that it is laughable to deny it.

Your theories about Marina knowing everything are bizarre; to this day she remains largely clueless. The only thing missing from your theory is evidence. One of the reasons she was so easily manipulable is that her husband's activities were clearly shielded from her. If she knew, give us a shred of evidence to support this.

As for a mob hit, this has been so discredited, it is like saying the earth is flat. The mob was on the periphery, but did not have the power to get the body out of Dallas, to control the autopsy, or lead the government coverup. Or to manipulate congress, or the Warren Commission. It's just absurd to contemplate, and a piece of unfortunate disinformation.

And your insistence that the Paines would have confessed in the succeeding years if they had played a role is devoid of evidence once more. Do you know how many figures, who were probably complicit, kept quiet forever after? Probably hundreds; the proof is in the general silence. There were a few who talked, but nobody believed them anyway. If you had unwittingly helped an assassin of a US president (well, unwittingly in the sense of not knowing the endgame) would you go public and risk universal condemnation if not indictment? Sorry, your arguments are really weak and collapse from the weight of their own ill logic.

(and btw nobody has ever suggested the Paines were connected to the mob)

AllenLowe wrote:the evidence was in the fact that they handled him - without apparent motivation, without any reason other than that obviously Oswald had to be moved and placed - and that she didn't tell him about a job that would have taken LHO OUT of the Texas Book Depository; the odd way Ruth latched onto Marina and clearly tried to separate the two; the mysterious note Ruth found in a book weeks after the assassination that mysteriously further implicated LHO in the assassination; the fact that at one time Michael Paine actually said that Oswald was keeping an eye on right wing groups; the fact that Michael and Ruth had a phone conversation in which they said "we know who did it;" the fact that when Ruth went to Nicaragua she was outed as CIA. At every juncture she just happened to be in place to help implicate him, without evidence, and even said he had some nerve to ask her to find a lawyer. Please, it is so obvious that she was handling him that it is laughable to deny it.

Your theories about Marina knowing everything are bizarre; to this day she remains largely clueless. The only thing missing from your theory is evidence. One of the reasons she was so easily manipulable is that her husband's activities were clearly shielded from her. If she knew, give us a shred of evidence to support this.

As for a mob hit, this has been so discredited, it is like saying the earth is flat. The mob was on the periphery, but did not have the power to get the body out of Dallas, to control the autopsy, or lead the government coverup. Or to manipulate congress, or the Warren Commission. It's just absurd to contemplate, and a piece of unfortunate disinformation.

On your first paragraph, most of the items you mention are ambiguous in interpretation. Ruth never found the Walker note which was not a Walker note; she simply returned Marina's book and it was Marina who said she had hidden the note in it and that it had to do with Walker and that the note was genuinely written by Lee. You are blaming Ruth for returning Marina's property to Marina, as if there was something objectionable in that or something different Ruth should have done with Marina's property. On the tapped phone call in which Michael says to Ruth "we both know who did it", I commented on that earlier (did you see my earlier comment?). This was an early conspiracy theory, the one held by most people in Dallas in the first moments after the assassination, that the obvious risk to JFK was the radical right. By your logic anyone who expresses a conspiracy theory over the phone ("we know who did it") is evidence they are part of that conspiracy themselves.

When Ruth went to Nicaragua she was not outed as CIA; she was suspected of being CIA without evidence. I have looked into that and if there was actual evidence it would be a different matter, but there is just nothing substantial to those allegations at least in any published or known form that I have ever found. You are confusing suspicion and baseless allegation with evidence. The suspicion of Ruth being CIA in Nicaragua, it turns out, stemmed from people reading JFK assassination books accusing Ruth of being CIA in Nicaragua because she was so in the JFK assassination. Then the Nicaragua suspicions are cited as evidence that Ruth as CIA in the JFK assassination is true, circular logic, in neither case supported by underlying evidence. This is just McCarthyism. Do you hold to the principle that serious allegations which smear people should have evidence, as opposed to quoting suspicions as if that is evidence?  

On the Mob hit, you say this is like flat earth and name a list of things the Mob did not and would not have been in a position to do, all of which is true, none of those however are part of what I was talking about which was the HIT. The things you name all relate to official response and coverup after the deed. It is a certainty that the killing of Oswald immediately following the assassination--LHO being innocent and framed in my opinion--was a Mob killing. Since the perpetrators of the killing of JFK itself remain unsolved--yes, still unsolved after over five decades of JFK assassination research, in terms of named responsible--I would not be so cavalier as you in assuming that the known perpetrators of the killing of Oswald (Mob) could in no way have also been the ones who carried out the killing of JFK a few hours earlier; I do not consider that as outlandish as a flat earth theory as you characterize it. In all this time there are only two confessions to my knowledge that rise to a threshold of possible consideration of validity, and of those two the weaker one is the one of EH Hunt (which I highly doubt, but difficult to exclude completely), and that of Marcello, for which there are three independent semi-credible or credible reports of confession, in addition to means, motive, and opportunity. That's it--there are no other credible confessions. 

So I am not certain that Marcello was involved, but I do know that Marcello--the Mob boss over Dallas whose name does not so much as even appear in the index of the Warren Commission Report--was shielded from investigation in a principled way by Hoover and FBI, the Warren Commission, and Garrison, and HSCA's was cut short and hamstrung in its investigative attempts. What I am sure of is that until a true solution to the crime can and does become clear, Marcello has not been exculpated as you assert so confidently, calling it "flat earth". Marcello, Trafficante, and Hoffa are persons of interest, to put it mildly. Yet I do not for one moment suppose that Mob figures, whether alone or in concert, would on their own decide to knock off a President and bring down the wrath of God of the combined might of the US Government on them in response. Whoever did the JFK assassination had a green light to do so above their level, some form of deal. So I am not supposing a Mob-alone idea, if that is what you are objecting to (but I did not mean that). 

On Marina, she either knew nothing of the JFK assassination (most likely), and would have had nothing to do with it (certainly), or if Lee was involved in what Lee thought was some informant/sting operation to interrupt a plot he may or may not have confided in Marina about it. As to how much Lee confided in Marina, you are right in that I don't really know, that is my probing into the unknown on that. But Lee does not seem to have had known close male friends, yet he was heterosexual and with the exception of a couple cases of flirting (apparently not more than that) does not seem to have been unfaithful to his wife. I have known this phenomenon, of men with no close friends other than their wife, and that is the background to my consideration of that in understanding Lee. I think nobody here at this point will dispute that Marina knew English and concealed it. She was intelligent and everything about Marina is consistent with her having been trained professionally by a spy agency in the USSR prior to coming to the US. When I was 18 I was trained in a sales school in Tennessee for a week to go into small towns and sell educational books door to door to families who had children in school. They trained us in what to do with the inevitable encounters with angry sheriffs enforcing no-soliciting ordinances. We role-played it: act like the most stupid young man that sheriff ever met, scratch our head, say "Duh, I don't know ANYTHING, the man just said I was SPOZED to sell these books here!" Then we were to call Mac our sales manager in Nashville and they would get things straightened out. It happened to me in a small town in southern Ohio. The angry sheriff, the works, threatening to throw "your ass in jail real fast if you don't show some ID right now and do some explaining". I did exactly what they said in sales school in Nashville, acted like the dumbest kid that came into town off the haywagon. Pretty soon, just as they told me would happen in Nashville, the sheriff softened up and said, "See that's the thing about these sales companies, they send innocent kids like you into town and never tell you the trouble you can get into like this" and he took a liking to me as he told me to just be gone by sundown. I thought of that when thinking of the horrifying experience Marina faced with the assassination and being questioned in the aftermath. I wondered if not only Lee but Marina as well had had professional training in what to do if interrogated, in the USSR prior to coming to America. Marina's training persona: does not know English, disinterested in politics, knows little of Lee's activities, no spy background in the USSR, make obvious blunders, refuge in incompetence... 

You say I am saying something without evidence. I do not know whether you will consider this evidence but here is where I am getting that: testimony of Oleg Kalugin, who in 1963 was based in New York City and was chief of KGB operations in the US, found in the book Where Were You?, p. 74f. Kalugin writes, and though I realize this is a judgment call, Kalugin's account reads as credible to me:

"Oswald [when in the USSR] was viewed as a potential recruit for the Russian Security and Intelligence, and they planted a lady who would work with him, trying eventually to make him a resource for Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence. At some point the Russians understood that he was a misfit. He was not a guy who would be useful. Our view was, in fact, better get rid of him. When Oswald left Russia with his Russian wife, the Russians were happy to get rid of him. That's how it happened.

"Marina was planted just to find information. The Russians always suspect that every foreigner, particularly Americans coming on diplomatic missions or otherwise, does some work for the CIA or whatever. Everyone was a suspect. Later the KGB made a deal with her that if she came here to the United States--she was recruited; let's put it that way. But she didn't perform her mission. She was actually thrown out of the Russian network of sources--totally useless."

So that is where I got that. I imagine Lee went over to the USSR working for the US and I believe was expected to be recruited, to be a double agent (that was the idea). However when Lee returned with a wife--and the fact that he does not seem to have been debriefed--and that he was punished with an unfavorable retroactive military discharge--this says to me that Lee may have been regarded as having gone rogue; they (US intelligence) didn't know what he was up to, so just watched him and his movements, and sought to recruit him back to US spy operations again. Most husband-and-wife teams from foreign countries talk to each other and Marina was definitely not working for the US on her arrival, though Hosty at the end appears to have begun overtures of what could have led to an offer in that direction. Lee was soon working for some US agency or agencies though which side was "real" and the other duplicitous for Lee is hard to say. Certainly the USSR had nothing to do with and would not have had anything to do with the JFK assassination and I do not believe Oswald was wittingly involved in the assassination either. The actual assassination made opportunistic use of Oswald as a patsy but that was opportunistic; if Oswald had not worked out as a patsy the assassination attempt would have gone forward with or without some other patsy. After the assassination Marina was on her own--she could have returned to the USSR but she chose to remain in the US and was taken care of financially, and for a long time backed up the Warren Commission report version. This is the background I see.