the baggage handler job. was info withheld from Lee about this position?

Greg Doudna does not think so.
https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27841-did-ruth-paine-knowingly-refuse-to-inform-oswald-of-a-trans-texas-airways-better-job-no-another-baseless-smear/

I have worked in the employment/jobseeker sector, albeit in a different country and a different era.

But at the time I worked in the industry, it had just been restructured and based more along the US model. Early 2000s...

What I am confident about is that Robert Adams would have identified himself to Ruth, advised of the position he held and asked Ruth to tell Lee to contact ASAP.

I am less certain of the following, but here at any rate, if you fail to contact as requested or fail to attemd for a job interview without a good excuse, there would be santions - either an official warning letter or actuall suspension of your unemployment payment. I can only assume that it was similar in the US and that most people would be aware of the importance of contacting when asked. In that light, if Ruth failed to pass on the message and Lee had not got the job at the TSBD, she may have been putting his unemployment payments at risk. If I am right about possible sanctions, then  she had to know about it. Everyone knows it here, even those who have never needed that sort of help. It's just common knowledge. 

The question is, did Ruth have the opportunity to pass on the first message?

I agree that the second phone call from Adams (the one on the 16th) is irrelevant since Lee had commenced work and Ruth would have no way of knowing the Adams offer was by far the better deal.

But could she have passed on the first message?  The answer is it is impossible to say.

Oct 14. (according to Ruth) Lee moves into boarding house (not true but for the sake of argument...). Ruth finds out about potentional TSBD job. She phones the TSBD and talks to Roy truly sometine in the afternoon. Ruth then tells Lee about it that evening when he phones and advises he go in for a personal interview. 

Oct 15 (according to Roy Truly) Ruth Paine calls TSBD about a job for a young man. Truly tells Ruth to send the young man in. Lee attends that day and is interviewed by Truly and offered a temp job. 

Oct 15 (according to Ruth) Lee phones her mid-morning (instead of the usual early evening) and he advises her he has got the job at the TSBD

Oct 15 (according to Robert Adams), Adams was advised of the airport opening and phoned to refer Lee to the job. He does not state what time he phoned the Irving number. He does say that his follow-up call the next day was made at about 10:30 am to the best of his memory. It would be far more usual to make all these referals in the morning, both as a time managment measure and to give referals time to organize an appointment the same day. It seems likely then that his phone call to Irving on the 15th was at about 10:30 or prior. 

My thoughts. 

Taking Ruth's timeline into account - Lee was a creature of habit. If his habit was to phone of an evening, then he could be expected to keep that habit - yet on the day that Adams phones (probably mid-morning) we also have Oswald phoning at about the same time with news of employment. Maybe he was truly excited. Or maybe Ruth is trying to place Lee's call prior to Adams?  because since Ruth makes no mention to Adams that Lee is now employed in that first phone call, we have to assume Adams' call was first.

Taking Roy Truly's timeline into account. If Truly's account is correct then no way could Lee have phoned her midmorning and advised he had the job. It means Lee must have phoned Ruth twice - once after she phoned Truly and got Lee the interview - and once after the interview - but still only midmorning according to Ruth - to advise he got the job.  

Whose timeline is correct? There is no way to know with any certainty, just like there is no way to know with any certainty that she was hellbent on denying him a chance at the airport job. 

But did she deliberately withhold information from him? Absolutely. Even if you accept her timeline, and that the TEC request to contact was now redundant because he now had a job... I cannot imagine too many people not letting him know that the TEC had called. She was asked to pass on that message and failed to do so. Her reasoning that he didn't need TEC help now and the call was no longer of any importance, was just her assumption.  It was not her business to make that decision that he didn't need to know.

It seems to have been a pattern of behavior aimed at control where she was  selective about what she passed on and to whom. As nearly always with Ruth, there is reason to be suspicious here. Or else she just had a controlling personality and that is all there was to it.

Hope Doudna will read this.

Hi Vinny--oh I read ROKC! The most bang-for-the-buck site concerned with the JFK assassination. 

I have two criticisms of Greg P's assessment, offered here with intent of constructive discussion not meant negatively. Greg P is usually scrupulous with details but I see two assumptions not actually supported with evidence. But first to start with a point of agreement:

GP: "What I am confident about is that Robert Adams would have identified himself to Ruth, advised of the position he held and asked Ruth to tell Lee to contact ASAP."


Yes. That is likely what happened.


But from this starting point two assumptions are made neither of which I believe are well-founded. The first is the assumption that Ruth Paine knew the question she was asked concerning the Trans Texas Airways job opportunity meant the Robert Adams phone call of Oct 15, as opposed to any other phone call from any Texas Employment Commission person at any time. Look at the questioning she was asked in her WC testimony--how would she know the question concerned Oct 15 or Robert Adams? That is read back anachronistically into Ruth Paine's knowledge at the time she was being questioned, on the basis of knowledge possessed by us, but not known to her at the time she was questioned. 


Everyone has thought she must have known or made that connection mentally, on the assumption that Adams would have told her the words "Trans Texas Airways" in the message left for Lee to call. But there is no basis for knowledge that that happened, and in agreement with Greg P's statement above (and on the basis of Ruth's reaction to the questioning) I see no likelihood that that was the case. I think she could well have remembered--given her fairly sharp memory for details and it only being a few months later--the phone calls of Adams of Oct 15 and 16, if she had been specifically asked about or told the name "Robert Adams" or told the dates--but I do not think she connected those Robert Adams phone calls to the questions she was being asked about a Trans Texas Airways job. There is just nothing in the questions she was asked that would reasonably call for that connection in her memory. I think she drew a total blank in memory concerning any Trans Texas Airways job opportunity as her first reaction, which was accurate on the assumption that Robert Adams did not tell the specifics of the job interview opportunity to Ruth when leaving his message for Lee to call back. That was followed by Ruth mistakenly connecting this great job prospect, being told to her for the first time that TEC had had for Lee, with some actual interview Lee had gone for, a job which Lee did not get, prior to Oct 15-16. In fact Lee never went to any interview with Trans Texas Airways, contrary to Ruth's mistaken confusion with some interview which Lee did go to.


But the real unsupported assumption is the assumption that Ruth did not pass on Adams' phone message to Lee. 


GP: "But did she deliberately withhold information from him? Absolutely. Even if you accept her timeline, and that the TEC request to contact was now redundant because he now had a job... I cannot imagine too many people not letting him know that the TEC had called. She was asked to pass on that message and failed to do so."


What is the evidence for that? None at all!


Think about it. What is the evidence for the assumption that Ruth failed to pass on Robert Adams' message for Lee to call? 


I think she passed on the message to call Adams--no reason for her not to do so; expected that she would pass on a phone message--and however Lee followed up with Adams Lee did not go to would have been the Trans Texas Airways interview.


Ruth Paine is condemned for not passing on a phone call message without evidence or reason to conclude she failed to pass on that message (as opposed to Lee receiving the message and following through in some way other than going to that interview). 


Granted it is possible, if one is predisposed to suspect or see the worst in Ruth Paine, to imagine that she failed to pass on a phone message. Lots of things are possible in the sense that reality of events of a half century ago has gaps in what is known and excluded. But interpreting a black hole of actual information and what can be imagined in that black hole as if that justifies a conclusion of a person's malfeasance is not right, and is the logic I see afflicting many CT's regarding the Trans Texas Airways job interview which never came to pass for Oswald.


Incidentally, and this updates and slightly corrects what I wrote on the Education Forum concerning the Laura Kittrell phone call, I restudied the Laura Kittrell manuscript and believe now that although Laura Kittrell did send a postcard to LHO and receive a phone call back from Ruth with Marina present and at Lee's request explaining he had a job and should be taken off her records ... that that was separate from Robert Adams' closure of his TEC records on Lee. In her manuscript Laura Kittrell refers to some issue of her misunderstanding and mistakenly starting a second or duplicate file or case on Lee (Kittrell was physically located in a different office than the one Robert Adams was located in), and Kittrell writes of being scolded by the other office (the one Adams was in) for making that mistake. So it seems Kittrell's interaction with Ruth Paine (calling at request of Lee) occurred later in October and was unrelated to the closeout of Oswald's case with Robert Adams of Oct 15-16.


p.s. Greg P., soon I will make a case on the Education Forum for an alternative solution to the identity of the Shasteen barber shop customer and the "14 year old" kid. I will be making the case that the customer was David Leon Miller; that the car he was driving was his wife Mildred's two-tone green-and-white Chevy station wagon which looked like Ruth Paine's station wagon; that the "14 year old" was David Leon Miller's 11-year old stepson John Meharg, oldest of two sons of Mildred Miller; that the Irving location was because the two boys, sons of Marion Meharg and Mildred, were secretly (unknown to Marion Meharg) living with Mildred's sister and brother-in-law in Irving. David Leon Miller, age 25, and new wife Mildred, age 39, were actually living in Atlanta, Georgia by Oct-Nov 1963 but would commute back by driving to Irving, TX to visit Mildred's two boys. If Mildred Miller's green-and-white Chevy wagon was the green-and-white station wagon seen by Roger Craig and the running man from the TSBD was David Leon Miller--as Marion Meharg insisted to DPD and the FBI that he saw and recognized--then Craig's (mistaken) identification of the running man as Oswald supports a physical resemblance of David Leon Miller to Oswald which would enter into Shasteen's identification of his customer as Oswald in addition to the similarity of the vehicle to Ruth Paine's station wagon. Anyway that is where I am going with this. I want to offer this argument as a different option on the table for comparison in making sense of the Shasteen story. Ironically I came to this solution thanks to the discussion of Meharg on ROKC.

There is evidence that Ruth didn’t tell Lee about the job. I went into it pretty deep in the Ed Forum thread. It’s not conclusive, but it is a legitimately ambiguous issue.

I’m a little disappointed that you are trying to use the Meharg stuff strictly in an attempt to exonerate Ruth Paine. It’s not that hard to tell the difference between an 11 and 14 year old, and unless you have a whole lot of evidence to support this, which it doesn’t look like you do, Greg P.’s identification of Hootkins is going to remain the best explanation by a light year, and that’s putting it mildly. How many husky 11 year olds travel alone to loudly extoll the virtues of communism and one world government in public? This is about just as credible as me saying that Clay Shaw, who owned a green-white Rambler, had one of his boyfriends borrow his car and take a trip to Irving for a haircut. The boy was Hootkins, and there is really no legitimate reason for anyone to suspect otherwise. You’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with this one.

But the real unsupported assumption is the assumption that Ruth did not pass on Adams' phone message to Lee. 


GP: "But did she deliberately withhold information from him? Absolutely. Even if you accept her timeline, and that the TEC request to contact was now redundant because he now had a job... I cannot imagine too many people not letting him know that the TEC had called. She was asked to pass on that message and failed to do so."

If Ruth had passed any such message on, she would have inserted that into her testimony at some stage, as she did regularly with other things.

The WC certainly did not seem to think the message was passed on.

Incidentally, and this updates and slightly corrects what I wrote on the Education Forum concerning the Laura Kittrell phone call, I restudied the Laura Kittrell manuscript and believe now that although Laura Kittrell did send a postcard to LHO and receive a phone call back from Ruth with Marina present and at Lee's request explaining he had a job and should be taken off her records ..

Laura Kittrell had some massive daddy issues, leading her to insert herself into this and other political events. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60400#relPageId=196

There is zero evidence she had any personal contact with Oswald or any phone contact with anyone associated with Oswald.

She is not a credible witness, except for those with a barrow to push.

JFK_FNG wrote:There is evidence that Ruth didn’t tell Lee about the job. I went into it pretty deep in the Ed Forum thread. It’s not conclusive, but it is a legitimately ambiguous issue.

I’m a little disappointed that you are trying to use the Meharg stuff strictly in an attempt to exonerate Ruth Paine. It’s not that hard to tell the difference between an 11 and 14 year old, and unless you have a whole lot of evidence to support this, which it doesn’t look like you do, Greg P.’s identification of Hootkins is going to remain the best explanation by a light year, and that’s putting it mildly. How many husky 11 year olds travel alone to loudly extoll the virtues of communism and one world government in public? This is about just as credible as me saying that Clay Shaw, who owned a green-white Rambler, had one of his boyfriends borrow his car and take a trip to Irving for a haircut. The boy was Hootkins, and there is really no legitimate reason for anyone to suspect otherwise. You’re trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with this one.

It's slightly worse than that. Hootkins was 15. Shasteen had told one of his barbers, Bert Glover, that he (Shasteen) couldn't recall if the boy had said he was 14 or 15. The FBI and Shasteen himself. seem to have settled on 14 prior to the hearings. This allowed Ruth Paine to disavow any knowledge of who it could be.

One more thing pointing to Oswald. The clothing description.

Mr. SHASTEEN. Well, they were either--I don't know what color you call them old dungarees. You know, them old combat coveralls that the Army wears.
============
Mr. JENNER. And these coveralls were so loose fitting that it made the pockets hang down?
Mr. SHASTEEN. Yes; they were just real loose. Even if you had a belt on them that pulled them around or something--I just couldn't stand to wear something shuffling through it like that.

Army dungarees that were way too big for him.

Who was taller than him and had been in the arny? Mike Paine.

Who would leave the old dungarees in the garage to slip on to proect his clothing while working in the garage? Mike Paine.

Who would borrow the dungarees to protect his clothes from clipped hair at the barber's? Lee Oswald.

There was also Shasteen's description of Oswald's hairy arms.

Mr. SHASTEEN. Now, one pair--one time I remember--he had pretty hairy arms. I remember that about him, you know, he had black hair on his arms, and one time he had on short sleeves.



You can see the black hair on the arms in the aytopsy photos

Greg, you are not acting as a researcher here. You are acting as an advocate. 

It was Lee Oswald and he was accompanied by Bill Hootkins.

Tom G.--two things. On Meharg and the Shasteen customer, my thinking on the Shasteen customer/Hootkins I do not think is influenced at all by Ruth Paine, even though that is a collateral consequence of however one views the Hootkins idea. I just don't think Shasteen's customer was Oswald, whether or not Ruth Paine existed. And on the Meharg story, the question of the Meharg story and David L. Smith et al possible association with the running man in front of the TSBD and question of involvement in the assassination (could be some innocent car picking up an innocent passenger, but it does look suspicious)--those are the more interesting questions, unfortunately less easy to arrive at firm conclusions. Whether Meharg's David L. Smith was the Shasteen barbershop customer Shasteen thought (mistakenly I am certain) was Oswald does not really matter much to anything apart from an interest of a trivia point if true.

On the matter of Ruth Paine's testimony concerning the questions about the Trans Texas Airways TEC job possibility, I restudied what you wrote and you (and Greg P.) may have more point, more basis for an ambiguity there, than I have credited. I think it is just unknown or not possible to know what actually happened there, whether Ruth stumbled a bit as a witness not recognizing what was being asked, or whether Ruth had, for whatever reason, indeed failed to pass on a phone message from TEC after Lee had gotten the TSBD job. I don't think enough can be known to read a certain conclusion on that, but I do see an ambiguity on the matter. However, if--and this is only "if" (since I don't think it can be known on existing information)--Ruth took the message and it did not get passed on to LHO, first I agree that would be improper, but second (again "if"), if so, I would not consider reasonable or plausible the explanation for that failure to pass on the message to be (a) Ruth was instructed by a handler not to do so, or (b) Ruth was party to an assassination plot manipulating an unwitting Oswald into the TSBD for nefarious covert purposes, and that is the reason Ruth would intentionally fail to pass on that message. Both of those, like in the genre of many other claims, just go beyond the pale of plausibility to me. Some more mundane explanation of a failure to pass on that message--"if" so--would be the explanation. Again, Ruth is stumbling at one or two points without question in her answers to the questions, but whether that is static or signal is not clear (but I follow your argument that one can read "signal"). While I come across as a defender of Ruth, which is true, my view is seeing someone of no proven wrongdoing just mercilessly lynched by the worst stitching-up or hanging-judge or witchhunt logic worthy of lynch mob justice (speaking of the Education Forum and wider CT field more than here specifically). There is also a phenomenon of intelligent-left (Douglass, Max Good, and now Talbot) falling into this where I sympathize with their politics and passion on the politics but think they are simply and grievously wrong on interpretation of facts. 

Greg P.--just to clarify, of three options on the table re the Shasteen barber shop customer: (a) he was Oswald and the kid was Hootkins; (b) he was not Oswald and he and the kid were some unknown family; or (c) [to be developed newly by me] he was not Oswald and he and the kid may possibly be identifiable as David L. Miller and stepson John Meharg, in my view "a" is a non-starter, that is a non-starter that the Oswald identification is correct. Hootkins stands or falls on the prior question of whether the customer was Oswald. For me the only question is whether it is "b" or "c" and if "c" is wrong then it is "b" (not then it is "a"). Nothing to do with defending Ruth Paine here (seriously). It is a special case of a more general interest I have had in examining case by case all the claimed "Oswald sightings" and trying to case by case come up with up or down resolutions to each one if possible, as to whether they were or were not truly Oswald or mistaken identifications (or as some think, impersonations). There are so many claims to Oswald sightings that the phenomenon of mistaken identifications is not in the slightest dispute, the only issue is over the specifics case by case. So, I doubt very much I would ever be convinced Shasteen's customer was really Oswald, whether or not that customer's actual identity is ever known. Are you aware that Shasteen's barbershop was only 0.6 miles from Ruth Paine's house? (I checked this.) A lot of coverup involved in notions of Oswald secretly/openly regularly driving Ruth Paine's car all the way to go 0.6 miles, about a 10-minute walk? Does that make sense? But no matter, I'll make my argument in fuller form and then people can judge what they will. Meanwhile, on something that really matters (the identification of a non-Oswald Shasteen barbershop customer does not much), the Prayer Man issue, the passion for reopening the case for Oswald's innocence, that is what matters to me about your and others work here at ROKC.

Greg_Doudna wrote:There is also a phenomenon of intelligent-left (Douglass, Max Good, and now Talbot) falling into this where I sympathize with their politics and passion on the politics but think they are simply and grievously wrong on interpretation of facts. 

I bought Douglass's book, having fallen for the incessant claims that it was the best book ever written on the case. I still haven't read it. All I needed to know about the mindset behind it was what he wrote about the Oswald arrest and his twisting of evidence in that one small area along with support of Haire witnessing a "2nd Oswald"... and then his support of the aimless and dillusional figure of Ralph Yates. These things place Douglass in the "all conspiracy evidence is good" school.

The above over-rides any value the book may have as a guilde to the "bigger picture" on foreign policy issues that may have been behind the assassination. 

Max Good squandered an opportunity to clear some of these matters up and is currently selling his soul by appearing on uber-conspiracy podcasts by the likes of Don Jeffries who hangs out with, and has an audience consisting of, Holocaust Deniers.

I have no particular opinion on Talbot. But just thank your lucky stars you didn't mention Morley.

Greg P.--just to clarify, of three options on the table re the Shasteen barber shop customer: (a) he was Oswald and the kid was Hootkins; (b) he was not Oswald and he and the kid were some unknown family; or (c) [to be developed newly by me] he was not Oswald and he and the kid may possibly be identifiable as David L. Miller and stepson John Meharg, in my view "a" is a non-starter, that is a non-starter that the Oswald identification is correct. Hootkins stands or falls on the prior question of whether the customer was Oswald. For me the only question is whether it is "b" or "c" and if "c" is wrong then it is "b" (not then it is "a"). Nothing to do with defending Ruth Paine here (seriously). It is a special case of a more general interest I have had in examining case by case all the claimed "Oswald sightings" and trying to case by case come up with up or down resolutions to each one if possible, as to whether they were or were not truly Oswald or mistaken identifications (or as some think, impersonations). There are so many claims to Oswald sightings that the phenomenon of mistaken identifications is not in the slightest dispute, the only issue is over the specifics case by case. So, I doubt very much I would ever be convinced Shasteen's customer was really Oswald, whether or not that customer's actual identity is ever known. Are you aware that Shasteen's barbershop was only 0.6 miles from Ruth Paine's house? (I checked this.) A lot of coverup involved in notions of Oswald secretly/openly regularly driving Ruth Paine's car all the way to go 0.6 miles, about a 10-minute walk? Does that make sense? But no matter, I'll make my argument in fuller form and then people can judge what they will. Meanwhile, on something that really matters (the identification of a non-Oswald Shasteen barbershop customer does not much), the Prayer Man issue, the passion for reopening the case for Oswald's innocence, that is what matters to me about your and others work here at ROKC.

Waving your arms around and saying it wasn't Oswald, is hardly credible. So I look forward to seeing something of far more substance than your displeasure at the idea. 

Ideally, you will have photos of Miller and and young Master Meharg that match the descriptuions given, along with some evidence of young Master Megarg's superior intellect. 

That the distance was only .6 of a mile from the Paine home is beside the point. (a) Oswald needed the practice and (b) sometimes he had shopping to get. 

Not sure that the distance, as a means of disallowing it being Oswald, is anywhere near on the same level as you wanting to pass off an 11 year old as a 15 year old - a complete backflip on your past effort to claim that the 15 year old wide-faced boy was a skinned-faced 19 year old. 

So year.... I hope you've found some photos. And Meharg's school record showing what a genius he was.