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 ...
Dismounting the barrel/action from the stock could have easily shortened the package by 12" or more.
Oswald’s rifle still exists, and I bet the paper wrapper does to, since it was recovered from the TSBD. Very easy to take the rifle apart and see if it matches the fold lines in the paper. I bet it’s been done several times.
Just very odd, that on that day of days, Oswald decided to bring “curtain rods” to work (Oswald’s own story).
Yeah, I'm another one who thinks Oswald alone did it. I always liked the theory proposed in one of those old ca 1960s "Men's" magazines. Can't beat it for sheer irony.
The writer claimed that Oswald wasn't after Kennedy, but Connolly. Apparently Oswald had an other than Honorable discharge that prevented him from getting any GI-Bill goodies like college or housing. Oswald repeatedly asked Connolly for an upgrade (can Governors do that?) and was refused. The theory goes that Oswald shot at Connolly and Kennedy had the bad luck to be in the way of some lousy shooting. (The Carcano was a POS - I had earlier bought one from the same outfit Oswald did and got rid of the clunker soon after.)
Accordingly, the real cover up was that Kennedy was killed by accident. It would have made him less a martyr and more of a Hard Luck Harry, and that wouldn't have fit the Camelot image or the agenda of the Kennedy worshippers.
In William Taubman’s biography of Khrushchev, he suggests that Nikita had been weeping when he signed JFK’s condolence book.
When you strip away all the nonsense—like bullets making alleged left turns in mid air—it all comes down to this for me: A communist sympathizing loner, Oswald, just happens to be in the Texas School Depository Building on a floor with a commanding view of the kill zone, in Dallas, with a rifle, on the exact same day the Kennedy motorcade went by.
Oh, and another thing, Presidential motorcade routes are never announced in advance. Moreover, the motorcade route was changed by someone who has never been named, on that very same day. The original route would have allowed the motorcade to keep a minimum 50 mph speed all the way to the venue where Kennedy was headed. The new route required the motorcade to negotiate a right hand turn around the Depository building. The vehicles had to slow down to 20-30 mph. Voila—kill shot.
I’m not prepared to say there was more than one shooter. But too many things had to come together very precisely for Oswald to be where he was on that day, at the right time, with a rifle.
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."
One fascinating paragraph in Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza by Craig Roberts http://www.riflewarrior.com/ occurs on page 89:
According to my friend, Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, the former senior instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School at Quantico, Virginia, it could not be done as described by the FBI investigators. Gunny Hathcock, now retired, [since died] is the most famous American military sniper in history. In Vietnam he was credited with 93 confirmed killsand a total of over 300 actual kills counting those unconfirmed. He now conducts police SWAT team sniper schools across the country. When I called him to ask if he had seen the Zapruder film, he chuckled and cut me off. Let me tell you what we did at Quantico, he began. We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I dont know how many times we tried it, but we couldnt duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did. Now if I cant do it, how in the world could a guy who was a non-qual on the rifle range and later only qualified marksman do it?
I've always been puzzled by how easily Oswald got back into the USA after supposedly "defecting" to the USSR and renouncing his US Citizenship. That was during the hottest years of the cold war, i.e., post Cuban missile crisis, etc. I can't see the State Department just letting him waltz back into the country without being seriously questioned. Something about that just doesn't smell right.
there is much collateral stuff around the Kennedy assasination tht will always raise eyebrows....it’s amazing really
but it is plausible that uberkook Oswald did simply take his Carcano 6.5 bolt action rifle and make the three shots, two of which hit and killed the president and wounded Big John and scraped a bystander down the road.
it’s very plausible, I’m pretty sure I could make those shots....certain of it when I was younger and quicker and steadier
the intrigue is amongst the unusual circles Oswald ran in
I see nothing more than that here. I see more conspiracy in Obama's birth certificate than this.
Looking at the picture, it appears that disassembling the rifle would only shorten a package by 4-5".
I still have some troubles about the some things, but most are caused by the FBI. Given what we know about the FBI's handling of high profile cases lately, that is no surprise.
Interesting read. Thanks for the article link.
Yeah, well, there are exceptions.
Very interesting book, BTW.
bump
Should have read further — you beat me to it with the Roberts reference.
.
Good post potlatch -
My father taped the radio news broadcast as they were happening. Grassy knoll and all.... (origianlly were look for two or three riflemen....)
Thanks devolve.
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.