Posted on 11/16/2008 6:56:53 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Oswald co-worker no longer silent about JFK assassination role
01:56 AM CST on Sunday, November 16, 2008
LEWISVILLE – Buell Frazier wants to tell it like it is – or was – on a very important day in U.S. history 45 years ago in Dallas. The quiet, thoughtful man of 64 is not as well-known as some of the others who skyrocketed to fame or infamy in November 1963. But Mr. Frazier played a defining, if unintentional, role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
He drove Lee Harvey Oswald to work that fateful Nov. 22.
And the Warren Commission, the investigative committee appointed to explain all aspects of Mr. Kennedy's death, claimed that Oswald carried his cheap mail-order rifle to work with him in Mr. Frazier's car.
That put Mr. Frazier in the spotlight immediately after Oswald was captured – and long afterward as a mourning nation sought to find an explanation to the tragedy.
With but a few exceptions, he has kept almost 4 ½ decades of angst, frustration, fear and occasionally even fury bottled up.
All Mr. Frazier did was offer a friendly gesture to a man he hardly knew.
In mid-September 1963, Mr. Frazier, 19, moved to Irving to live with his sister, Linnie Mae Randle, her husband and three children.
He slept on his sister's couch, drove a clunker Chevy and was pleased to be earning $1.25 an hour, then the minimum wage, at the Texas School Book Depository.
As a teenager in Huntsville, Mr. Frazier had deftly ...
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
In all the years since JFK was assassinated, I don't recall this character Buell Frazier at all.
In the video here, he states that he was arrested and interrogated by the FBI. And that they tried to get him to sign a confession that he helped in the assassination. He refused, saying that all he had done was offer Oswald a ride to work that morning, as he had done on occasion prior to the day Kennedy was assassinated.
Interesting video of Buell Frazier at the source link ...
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/111608dnentfrazierjfk.3d76e89.html
Interesting article here, fyi.
Pingin’ a few folks here!
Interesting article here.
Pingin’ a few Texans!
Lee Harvey Oswald
From wikipedia (with references at site) :
Around the age of fifteen, he became an ardent Marxist solely from his private reading on the topic. He wrote in his diary, "I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in the back dusty shelves of libraries."[13] At 16 he wrote to the Socialist Party of America, stating that he was a Marxist who had been studying socialist principles for "well over fifteen months," and asked for information about their youth league.[14]
While in the Marines, Oswald was trained in the use of the M1 Garand rifle. Following that training, he was tested in December of 1956, and obtained a score of 212, which was 2 points above the minimum for qualifications as a sharpshooter. In May 1959, on another range, Oswald scored 191, which was 1 point over the minimum for ranking as a marksman.[17]
Small and frail compared to the other Marines, he was nicknamed Ozzie Rabbit after the cartoon character. His shyness and Soviet sympathies alienated him from his fellow Marines. Ostracism only seemed to provoke him into being a stauncher, more outspoken communist. For his steadfast beliefs, his nickname ultimately became Oswaldskovich.
Life in the Soviet Union
In October 1959, Oswald immigrated to the Soviet Union. He was nineteen, and the trip was planned well in advance. Along with having taught himself rudimentary Russian, he had saved $1,500 of his Marine Corps salary,[19] got an early "hardship" discharge by (falsely) claiming he needed to care for his injured mother,[20] got a passport, and submitted several fictional applications to foreign universities in order to obtain a student visa (and possibly help avoid Marine Corps reserve duty).
After spending only three days with his mother in Fort Worth, he departed by ship from New Orleans on September 20, 1959, for the Soviet Union, first arriving in Le Havre in France, then to London,England and eventually Oswald to a Finnair flight to Helsinki, Finland as part of a package tour. Oswald landed to Helsinki airport in October 10 at 23.30 a.m. he registered at the Hotel Torni but two days later , he moved to the Kurki Hotel.Oswald applied for a visa at the embassy on October 12, his first business day in Helsinki. Oswalds visa was issued on October 14. It was valid until October 20 and permitted him to take one trip of not more than 6 days to the Soviet Union. He left from Helsinki Central Railway Station by train next day on October 15 to Moscow and when he crossed the Finnish-Russian border at Vainikkala, he arrived to Moscow on October 16." [21] When he arrived in the Soviet Union and showed up unexpectedly at the Embassy in Moscow, he said he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship.[22][23] When the Navy Department learned of this, it changed Oswald's Marine Corps discharge from "hardship/honorable" to "undesirable."[24]
Oswald told a reporter in Moscow, "For two years I've had it in my mind, don't form any attachments, because I knew I was going away. I was planning to divest myself of everything to do with the United States."[25] To another reporter he said, "I would not consider returning to the United States," and referred to the Soviet government as "my government."[26] His wish to remain in the Soviet Union was initially applauded by the Soviets, but although he had some technical knowledge acquired in the Marines they soon discovered he had little of real value to offer the Soviet Union and his application for Soviet residency was rejected.[27] In response, Oswald made a bloody but minor cut to his left wrist in his hotel room bathtub. After bandaging his superficial injury, the cautious Soviets kept him under psychiatric observation at the Botkin Hospital.[28][29] Although this attempt may have been no more than an attention-getting ruse, the Soviet government feared an international incident if he were to attempt something similar again.
New Orleans
Oswald returned to New Orleans, arriving on the morning of April 25, 1963 looking for work. After Oswald got a job as a machinery greaser with the Reily Coffee Company in May, Marina was driven there by family friend Ruth Paine. Oswald was fired for inefficiency and dereliction of duty on July 19.
During this period, Oswald began to consider returning to the Soviet Union or going to Cuba.[57] He had Marina write to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. about the possibility of their returning to the Soviet Union.[58] His Marxist ideals became focused on Fidel Castro and Cuba and he soon became a vocal pro-Castro advocate.
Discovery Channel has a special on tonight at 9PM Eastern time called, “JFK: Inside the Target Car”
Tech Puts JFK Conspiracy Theories to Rest[Discovery Channel]
Oswald’s Ghost tomorrow night on American Experience PBS.
You can dig a little deeper than wiki, ya know. Anyone who has done any reading at all about the subject know about Oswald’s supposed Commie persona.
Besides, that’s not what the story is about.
There is so much these popular documentaries leave out when it involves communists and/or the communist movement. Don’t expect to find any mention at all of Oswald’s strong pro-Soviet, pro-Castro sympathies.
All righty, then.
“In his testimony before the Warren Commission, Mr. Frazier said the brown paper package Oswald carried that morning was too short to contain a rifle. Oswald cupped the package in his hand, he said, and it fit under his armpit.
In Washington, Mr. Frazier said, he was “pressured” to change his recollection. In the days afterward, he was badgered by the media, harassed by people who didn’t understand his relationship to Oswald and even became fearful for his life.
His testimony was important because investigators had proved that Oswald bought the rifle used in the JFK slaying and had found a matching palm print on the stock, but they had no proof that he had it with him that day.
Ms. Randle, who was also a leading witness, said recently that when she and Mr. Frazier testified before the Warren Commission, “they tried to get us to say that package was much longer than we recalled, but that wasn’t true.”
The commission kept pushing, Mr. Frazier said. Could it be that he was traumatized by the horror of what happened or embarrassed that he hadn't been more observant?
"I know what I saw," he said, "and I've never changed one bit."
Gives you a real warm feeling about the quality of the "investigation." (And I'm one of those folks who thinks that maybe Oswald did it.)
ML/NJ
I don’t know that carbine, but wasn’t it possible for Oswald to have disassembled the stock from the barrel?
I have no intention of watching this, just giving those who might be interested a heads up.
Supposed? How's this then?
From the Wall Street Journal
NOVEMBER 24, 2007
Oswald was a dedicated communist who had defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 out of disgust with American capitalism. After becoming disillusioned with Soviet life, he returned to the U.S. in 1962. In early 1963, he bought a scoped rifle through the mail and soon used it to fire a shot (which missed) at retired general Edwin Walker, the head of the John Birch Society in Dallas. In the summer of 1963, Oswald was active in street demonstrations in support of Castro. In September 1963, he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City seeking a travel visa that would allow him to travel to Cuba.
Oswald was among the radicals of the time who saw Third World revolutionaries like Castro as the wave of the communist future. He was well aware of Kennedy's efforts to overthrow Castro's regime. As a Senate investigative committee suggested in 1975, Oswald shot Kennedy to interrupt his administration's plans to assassinate Castro or to overthrow his regime in Cuba.
Ignoring Oswald's communist links, journalists and political leaders quickly claimed the president was a martyr to civil rights. Earl Warren said that Kennedy had "suffered martyrdom as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots." Martin Luther King said the assassination had to be viewed against the backdrop of violence against civil rights marchers in the South. James Reston wrote in the New York Times that "something in the nation itself, some strain of madness and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order."
The consensus opinion was that Kennedy was a victim of hate and bigotry, a casualty of his support for civil rights. The Cold War and Kennedy's ongoing feud with Castro were rarely mentioned as factors behind the assassination. The reasons? Mrs. Kennedy wanted her husband remembered as a modern-day Abraham Lincoln. Lyndon Johnson feared complicating relations with the Soviet Union. Liberals feared a replay of the McCarthy period, when the Wisconsin senator inflamed public opinion about fears of domestic communism.
for later
“Anyone who has done any reading at all about the subject know about Oswald’s supposed Commie persona”.
Back then, it was reported in the major newspapers, magazines and on the daily news. Dan Rather may have even reported it?
For years after, if not stated, it was implied if Oswald’s name came up.
Times change.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.