If there was a conspiracy, it probably included finishing off Oswald before he could be fully interrogated. And, of course, that is what happened, courtesy of -- no, I am not making this up -- a strip club owner with mob ties who is said to have been moved by Jackie Kennedy's grief. Officially, we are assured, one lone nut assassin was thus killed by another lone nut assassin.
I suggest that for conspirators, Oswald's oddball personality, his record as a defector, and open communist sympathies would have helped make him useful as a disposable gunman or as a patsy, whichever he was.
In the context of the Cold War, Oswald's background and his visits to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico raised ominous possibilities and a risk of nuclear war that precluded responsible officials in the US government from pursuing evidence of a conspiracy.
From time to time, to intimates, LBJ whispered that his view of the assassination was that Kennedy tried to get Castro, but that Castro got him first. Bobby Kennedy, who thought LBJ had been the prime mover of the assassination, would have recognized LBJ's remarks as a double barreled threat that going public with claims of a conspiracy would have raised both a risk of war and a threat to tarnish JFK's reputation by revealing his murder plots against Castro.
Within days of the assassination, Bobby Kennedy sent word to the Soviets that he knew the assassination to be the result of a domestic conspiracy. Bobby also explained to close allies that he could not address leads that indicated that there had been a conspiracy behind his brother's assassination unless he first became President and had the power to pursue those involved. Other things happened first though and it was not to be.
Just to make clear, I am not a Kennedy admirer. He was reckless and compromised by a squalid personal life, dependence on methamphetamine, and solicitation of cash bribes. His liaison with an East German spy and secret dealings with the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis raised serious questions about his trustworthiness.
Kennedy is our most over-rated President, but he deserves credit for his personal charm, genuine love for the country, and a surprisingly innovative and daring tax cut that helped spur a boom and set an example for Reagan and the GOP to follow.
“Why didn’t Oswald take his revolver with him to the Texas School Book Depository that day?”
Because he took the rifle. One gun was enough to worry about hiding.
“And what was his larger plan for escape? “
Maybe he didn’t have one. That is possible.
“...even nuts plan ahead.”
Do they? Did Chapman plan to escape when he shot Reagan?
“If there was a conspiracy...”
If, that largest of words that adds little to the debate. If there was a conspiracy, the fact that binoculars were left behind when the Titanic left port becomes ominous. If there was a conspiracy, the fact that the engineer’s warning not to launch in freezing weather was ignored before the Challenger exploded looks ominous. If there was a conspiracy, the fact that the FBI failed to follow up on leads that Middle Eastern students were not interested in landing or takeoff instructions at flight school before 9/11 look ominous.
There simply isn’t any evidence of any conspiracy. No letters, no notes, no records of phone calls, no forensics at the scene. There is, however, a ton of evidence that points squarely at Oswald.
He was at the scene of the crime. Witnesses on the fifth floor heard a bolt action rifle being worked, and the ping of shell casing hitting the floor above them. A young boy saw the gun pointing out the sixth floor window. He fled the scene after the killing, the only one working there who did.
His landlady saw him rush in shortly after the killing and go into his room before leaving shorty thereafter. A short time later a dozen witnesses saw him kill Officer Tippet.
The bullets in both killings matched his weapons. There was a record of him mail ordering the rifle. The rifle was missing from the garage where it had been stored. Oswald carried a paper bag capable of holding the disassembled rifle to work the day of the shooting. His prints were on the rifle and on boxes forming the “sniper’s nest on the sixth floor.
The forensics of the victims clearly point to shots fired from the School Book Depository. Connelly’s wounds alone supports the “magic bullet” theory because the entry wound, in the back, was oblong, showing the bullet was tumbling before it hit him, after passing through Kennedy. There is NO possibility of post-mortem manipulation of Connelly’s body. He lived many years after the crime and showed the mark off to others.
Prior to killing JFK, he confessed to his wife that he had tried to kill General Walker. Also before the assassination, his wife admitted to taking the photos of him holding the rifle.
A mountain points to Oswald. Not a crumb to anyone else.