Reclaiming History (222 page)

R
eturning to one of the essential questions—whether Oswald was the type of person to have killed Kennedy—let’s briefly reflect on the rudimentary nature of his personality and the life he led. I like Relman Morin’s description of Oswald in his book
Assassination
: “Oswald was a loner, a perennial failure, an egotist with small reason for egotism, restless, dissatisfied, highly introverted, quarrelsome, given to fantasies…He developed no close relationships and had no close friends…He read voraciously, borrowing books from the public libraries. His wife said there were occasions when he read all night, sitting in the bathroom so the light would not disturb her…He earned little money…[and] lived like an ascetic. He ate little and rented cheap rooms. He spent almost nothing on himself. He was not interested in clothes, automobiles, playing cards, or chasing women.”
⁷⁵

I’ve always had the sense that there was something “test-tube,” something mechanical, about Oswald, that he simply was not someone who had the normal components of humankind, but rather was someone who was manufactured in a lab with normal cognition yet abnormal “affect,” as psychiatrists would say. I mean, as described on the pages of this book, which were gleaned from the official record, how many of you readers have ever met someone like Lee Harvey Oswald? Yes, you
may
have run across a fanatical leftist or rightist. But did they also, as Morin says, chase women? Or have a sense of humor, or like jazz, or have a profane tongue, or dress sloppily, or any of the myriad personal characteristics or eccentricities that are so very human? Oswald seemed to be bereft of these things. What he
did
look like was a presidential assassin.

If anyone ever had the psychological profile of a presidential assassin, it was Oswald. He not only had a propensity for violence, but was emotionally and psychologically unhinged. He was a bitter, frustrated, and beaten-down loser who felt alienated from society and couldn’t get along with anyone, including his wife; one who irrationally viewed himself in a historical light, having visions of grandeur and changing the world; one whose political ideology consumed his daily life, causing him to keep time to his own drummer in a lonely obsession with Marxism and Castro’s Cuba; and one who hated his country and its representatives to such an extent that he defected to one of the most undesirable places on earth. If someone with not just one but all of these characteristics is not the most likely candidate to be a presidential assassin, then I would ask, Who would be? Oswald cut the mold. If he didn’t, what else is missing from the equation that would add up to a likely presidential assassin?

Certainly, and unequivocally, Oswald’s background, character, and disposition show that he was the exact type of person who had it within himself, and who had a motive, to kill the president. In other words, his alleged act was completely consistent with his personality. But does all of this mean he did, in fact, do it? No. For the answer to that question we have to turn to the evidence, and, as we have seen, the evidence is more than overwhelming that he shot Kennedy. It is conclusive, leaving no room for any doubt.

For those who, despite all the evidence, still entertain some doubt that Oswald killed Kennedy, or believe there was a massive conspiracy behind his act, writer Jon Margolis says it very well: “
All
conspiracies that have been alleged are unsupported by credible data and
require far more suspension of disbelief than does acceptance of the prosaic likelihood that poor Oswald did it by himself, because he was mad
.”
⁷⁶

The fact that Kennedy was a powerful public figure was very relevant to Oswald’s motivation for killing him. On the other hand, murders of powerful public figures in America by the groups fancied by conspiracy theorists—the CIA, mob, FBI, and military-industrial complex—are absolutely unheard of. Show me a precedent. I’m sure if Will Rogers were alive, the very suggestion that, for instance, the Joint Chiefs of Staff conspired with the nation’s industrial leaders (as depicted in Oliver Stone’s movie
JFK
) to murder Kennedy would have prompted his expression, “That’s the most unheard of thing I ever heard of.” On the other hand, if there was any evidence that one or more of these groups actually had the president killed, that would be different. But there is none (see conspiracy section). None whatsoever.

Putting aside for the moment the separate issue of whether or not Oswald was part of a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, there can be no doubt that he shot and killed the president. Yet other than a very small cadre of responsible conspiracy theorists who acknowledge Oswald’s guilt but believe he was part of a conspiracy, the vast majority of the conspiracy community believe that Oswald is totally innocent, that he never fired one shot at Kennedy. Nearly all of them also believe that Oswald was framed by others who conspired to kill Kennedy. Here is a small sampling of both states of mind: “A false case against Oswald was constructed.”
¹
“The idea that Oswald was framed for the crime is supported by several things.”
²
“The evidence showed that Oswald had no motive, no means (marksmanship of the highest order) and no opportunity (his presence on the second floor of the Book Depository little more than a minute after the shooting…constitutes an alibi).”
³
“Evidence has piled up that Oswald…was set up as the patsy, and did not shoot anyone.”
⁴
“The other participants [in the conspiracy] were almost certainly law enforcement officers of one kind or another who were in a position to plant the evidence which would incriminate Oswald.”
⁵
“It is the federal government that maintains the guilt of an innocent Lee Oswald.”
⁶
“President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. The man who paid with his life for that crime in the basement of the Dallas City Hall was innocent.”
⁷
“Shots were fired [at Kennedy] by an assassin I consider unidentified.”
⁸
“There is not a shred of tangible or credible evidence to indicate that Oswald was the assassin. It can now be inferred that Oswald was framed.”
⁹
“Oswald was framed for two murders—then was himself murdered.”
¹⁰
“Oswald was who he said he was, a patsy.”
¹¹
“No credible evidence…connects [Oswald] to the assassination,” and “irrefutable evidence shows conspirators, none of them Oswald, killed JFK.”
¹²
“Lee Harvey Oswald had nothing whatsoever to do with the assassination of John Kennedy. Oswald was a very convenient scapegoat for the murder and was set up for it by the real killers.”
¹³

It is remarkable that conspiracy theorists can believe that groups like the CIA, military-industrial complex, and FBI would murder the president, but cannot accept the likelihood, even the possibility, that a nut like Oswald would flip out and commit the act, despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence showing that Oswald killed Kennedy, and not an ounce showing that any of these groups had anything to do with the assassination.

It is further remarkable that these conspiracy theorists aren’t troubled in the least by their inability to present any evidence that Oswald was set up and framed. For them, the mere belief or speculation that he was is a more-than-adequate substitute for evidence. More importantly, there is a simple fact of life that Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists either don’t realize or fail to take into consideration, something I learned from my experience as a prosecutor; namely, that in the real world—you know, the world in which when I talk you can hear me, there will be a dawn tomorrow, et cetera—you
cannot
be innocent and yet still have a prodigious amount of highly incriminating evidence against you. That’s just not what happens in life. I articulated this fact in my opening argument to the jury in London: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when a man is innocent of a crime, chances are there isn’t going to be anything at all pointing towards his guilt. Nothing at all pointing towards his guilt. But now and then, because of the very nature of life, and the unaccountability of certain things, there may be one thing that points towards his guilt, even though he is innocent. In an unusual situation, maybe even two things point to his guilt, even though he is innocent. And in a very rare and strange situation, maybe even three things point to his guilt, even though he is completely innocent. But with Lee Harvey Oswald, everything, everything points towards his guilt. In fact, the evidence against Oswald is so great that you could throw 80 percent of it out the window and there would still be more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.”
¹⁴

Indeed, the evidence against Oswald proves his guilt not just beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond
all
doubt, or, as they say in the movies, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
*
In other words, not just one or two or three pieces of evidence point toward Oswald’s guilt, but more than fifty pieces point irresistibly to his guilt. And not only does all of the physical, scientific evidence point solely and exclusively to Oswald’s guilt, but virtually everything he said and did points unerringly to his guilt.
†
Under these circumstances, it is not humanly possible for him to be innocent, at least, as I said, not in the real world in which we live. Only in a fantasy world could Oswald be innocent and still have all this evidence against him. I think we can put it this way: If Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, then Kennedy wasn’t killed on November 22, 1963. You simply cannot have the mountain of evidence that Oswald had against him and still be innocent.

The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists display an astonishing inability to see the vast forest of evidence proving Oswald’s guilt because of their penchant for obsessing over the branches, even the leaves of individual trees. And, because virtually all of them have no background in criminal investigation, they look at each leaf (piece of evidence) by itself, hardly ever in relation to, and in the context of, all the other evidence.

As I pointed out earlier in this book, within a few hours of the assassination, virtually all of Dallas law enforcement already
knew
Oswald had murdered Kennedy. Indeed, it was obvious to nearly everyone, not just law enforcement. At 4:45 p.m. on the day of the assassination, NBC network news anchorman Bill Ryan reported that “
all
circumstantial evidence points to the guilt of the suspect Lee Oswald.”
¹⁵
Exactly what happened was
that
obvious within hours of the shooting.

If there was one, and only one, contribution to the assassination debate I would want to make, over and beyond the substance of this book, it’s the obvious notion that once you prove the positive or negative of a matter in dispute, all other questions about the correctness of the conclusion become irrelevant. They only have a legitimate life if the matter has not yet been proved. Put another way, the answers to all other questions dealing with the correctness of a conclusion are rendered moot and academic by the answer to the seminal question. Hence, once you truly prove the earth is round, all questions about whether it is flat become irrelevant.

With respect to the Kennedy assassination, once you establish and know that Oswald is guilty, as has been done, then you also
necessarily
know that there is an answer (whether the answer is known or not) compatible with this conclusion for the endless alleged discrepancies, inconsistencies, and questions the conspiracy theorists have raised through the years about Oswald’s guilt.
*
This, they simply do not understand. If they did, in all probability their voice would finally, after more than forty years, be silenced. Their inability or unwillingness to grasp this fundamental reality is the precise reason why questions about Oswald’s guilt will be broached by conspiracy theorists as long as chickens lay eggs. If they don’t have a satisfactory answer to any of their never-ending questions (one among thousands: something as obscure as whether it was Oswald or an imposter who allegedly signed Oswald’s name to a guest register at a restaurant in North Dakota in 1963), without thinking they automatically feel the question of Oswald’s guilt is still unresolved. In other words, every event, incident, piece of information, inconsistency, and so on, is segregated and becomes the whole story in itself. Nothing is part of the whole. Each incident is its own whole.

What the Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists seem incapable of seeing is that the answers to their countless questions are irrelevant since Oswald’s guilt has
already
been conclusively established by
other
evidence. Now, if it hadn’t been, then, indeed, their many unresolved questions would have to be addressed.

I gave an illustration of this reality in my book,
Outrage
, on the O. J. Simpson murder trial. To remind the reader, among much other incriminating evidence, not only was Simpson’s fresh blood found at the murder scene, but the victims’ blood was found in his car, driveway, and home. With this type of evidence, that’s the end of the ball game. There’s nothing more to say. To deny guilt under these circumstances, which Simpson did, is the equivalent of a man being caught by his wife in bed with another woman and, quoting comedian Richard Pryor, saying to her, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” Simpson’s guilt couldn’t have been more obvious. In any event,
Outrage
was an in-depth discussion of all the
major
issues in the Simpson case, and I gave the following example to explain why it was unnecessary for me to discuss every single ancillary issue raised by the defense:

Say that we know X committed a bank robbery in Detroit, Michigan, on October 25, 1993, at 10:00 a.m. We know this because there are ten eyewitnesses who have positively identified him; his fingerprints are found at the teller’s window even though he lives in El Paso, Texas, and there is no evidence he had ever been in Detroit (much less at this bank) to have left the fingerprints on some prior occasion; and at the time of his arrest, all of the bank’s marked money is found in his possession.

Now, let’s say that a witness comes forward and says X was actually in his presence in El Paso at 10:00 a.m. on October 25, 1993. Since we know X is guilty, we also thereby know that the witness is either honestly mistaken or is lying. Say the bank robbery was a very famous one because of a record amount stolen, and Y steps forward and actually proclaims it was he who committed the robbery (in sensational murder cases, it’s not uncommon, for instance, for innocent people called “chronic confessors” to confess to a murder just to be in the limelight). Again, we know Y is either a kook trying to get into the news, or he’s clinically psychotic. Why? Because we already know who committed the Detroit robbery.

Likewise, with Simpson in this case. Since we know that in view of the evidence it’s not even possible for him to be innocent, we know that whatever evidence the defense offered on his behalf, there’s an explanation for it,
even in those cases where we might not know what that explanation is
. Whatever argument the defense makes, we know it is invalid. On the other hand, if we didn’t
know
Simpson was guilty, then in the absence of an examination of every single defense argument, we could not feel sanguine about any conclusion of guilt.
*

Has the evidence in this case proved Oswald’s guilt to the point where we know that there must be an innocent explanation, one that in no way disturbs the conclusion of Oswald’s guilt, to whatever question a Warren Commission critic or conspiracy theorist has about the case? Yes, unquestionably so. In very abbreviated and summary form, let’s look at most of that evidence. (Some of the following is presented without documentation of sources, since this has already been done earlier in the book.)

1. Whenever Oswald had Wesley Frazier drive him out to visit his wife and daughters at the Paine residence in Irving, he’d go on a Friday evening and return to Dallas on Monday morning. The assassination was on Friday, November 22, 1963. For the very first time, Oswald went to Irving with Frazier on Thursday evening, November 21, obviously to pick up his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle for the following day.

2. Oswald told Wesley Frazier he was going to Irving to pick up some curtain rods for his apartment in Dallas. But Oswald’s landlady testified that the windows in Oswald’s room on North Beckley already had curtain rods and that Oswald never discussed getting curtain rods with her.
¹⁶
Indeed, Allen Grant, a photographer for
Life
magazine, took a photo of Oswald’s room on the afternoon of the assassination, and it clearly shows the curtain rods that were alreaady in his room.

Additionally, Ruth Paine had two flat, lightweight curtain rods in her garage, and they were still there after Oswald’s arrest.
¹⁷
Oswald never asked Ruth Paine about curtain rods at any time.
¹⁸
When Marina was asked in her Warren Commission testimony, “On the evening of the 21st, was anything said about curtain rods or his taking curtain rods to town the following day?” she answered, “No, I didn’t have any.” Question: “He didn’t say anything like that?” “No.”
¹⁹
And no curtain rods were found in the Book Depository Building after the assassination.
²⁰

If Oswald, as he claimed, brought curtain rods to work, whatever happened to them? We know from witnesses (on the bus, the cabdriver, and Earlene Roberts) that he wasn’t carrying any long package after he left the Book Depository Building. And, as indicated, no curtain rods were found in the building after the assassination. As with the supposed killer behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll whom no one saw run away, and the bullet that exited Kennedy’s throat without going on to hit Connally or anything else in the presidential limousine, did the curtain rods simply vanish into thin air? One would think that things like this would at least give the Oswald defenders and conspiracy theorists pause, but instead, their eyes blazing with certainty, they tell you that you just don’t understand.

In addition to the evidence showing that Oswald’s curtain rod story was a fabrication, the story, all by itself, is inherently implausible. If Oswald did want to pick up curtain rods at Ruth Paine’s home for his apartment, why would that require him to go there on a Thursday evening? Could he only pick them up if he went there on a Thursday evening, not a Friday evening?