"ON TRIAL: LEE HARVEY OSWALD" -- A Personal Review - Page 10

"Executive Action".   A silly movie based on the silly work of Mark Lane, a thoroughly discredited author on things beyond the JFK assassination in addition to his JFK work.

 

As for the actuary thing, I hate to be the bearer of bad news to you Neil, but the House Committee looked into that and the London Sunday Times, who commissioned the study had to sheepishly admit there finding was off the mark because they approached it from the wrong perspective and asked the actuary the wrong question.

 

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/deaths.htm

 

"The Editor has passed me your letter of 25th April.

"Our piece about the odds against the deaths of the Kennedy witnesses was, I regret to say, based on a careless journalistic mistake and should not have been published. This was realized by The Sunday Times' editorial staff after the first edition — the one which goes to the United States and which I believe you have — had gone out, and later editions were amended.

 

"There was no question of our actuary having got his answer wrong. It was simply that we asked him the wrong question. He was asked what were the odds against 15 named people out of the population of the United States dying within a short period of time to which he replied — correctly — that they were very high. However, if one asks what are the odds against 15 of those included in the Warren Commission index dying within a given period, the answer is, of course, that they are much lower. Our mistake was to treat the reply to the former question as if it dealt with the latter — hence the fundamental error in our first edition report, for which we apologize.

 

"None of the editorial staff involved in this story can remember the name of the actuary we consulted, but in view of what happened you will, I imagine, agree that his identity is hardly material.

Yours sincerely,
Antony Whitaker,
Legal Manager.
(4 HSCA 464-65)"

 

So you see Neil, your little assertion is based on an erroneous premise that was corrected the day after it was printed, only Mark Lane decided that info wasn't worth telling you. :)

Cmon Neil, if they were going to frame Oswald, why would they plant fingerprints that wouldn't be found until someone invented technology they had no idea would even someday exist?  Why wouldn't they just plant a big ol' fingerprint, instead of a smudge that would only show up using advanced late 20th century computer photo analysis?  Obviously they had access to his prints (how I don't know, that's for you to explain), so you can't seriously think they planned to frame him decades after the fact, using technology they had no idea would someday exist, can you?  Now answer that, and we'll take your next leap frogging from buff point to buff point seriously.

 

By the way Neil, JFK was the most flawed piece of "historical" film ever produced.  It has more holes than swiss cheese, and most of them you could drive a 1962 Lincoln Continental suicide door convertible limousine through.  Referencing JFK is something even most buffs hesitate from doing, so citing it does not help your case.

Dale Myers' simulation has been completely debunked.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJrH62TkCWE
 

Funny how the vast majority of the people think the LNT is malarkey, yet the believers who drink the government Kool Aid refer the disbelievers in completely disparaging terms. Sorry but exactly how does the fact that nobody in the police, FBI or government wanted to hear any witness testimony that did not back up their story leads anyone to believe that it was a completely fair, honest and thorough investigation of all of the facts? Oh, that's right, by labeling anyone who differed from the party line as a kook and discrediting their background and qualifications. And, hey, you wouldn't want to record or take on notes on Oswald's interrogation. He only supposedly killed the president. Not like it was any important crime that you would want to document everything on or anything. You want to know why people don't believe the LNT? Take a look at how flawed and slipshod the entire thing was handled, starting with letting the chief suspect get murdered two days later.

Neil, are you still going to defend that actuarial study that the London Times admitted was based on a bogus premise? :) 

 

It's amusing to me how whenever a question gets thrown back at you and your side, your only response is to pretend the question was never asked and then follow up with more non-sequiturs to deflect from the fact that you didn't answer the questions.

     Okay, so what were the actual odds on that many of the people who had a peripheral involvement dying within 3 years? Not a hundred trillion to one. Okay, so maybe just a trillion to one? A hundred billion? What astronomical number is going to make it sound like an unfortunate coincidence?

    

Neil, those crazy odds were based on the faulty premise of "what are the odds if 15 named people out of the entire population of the world were to die to the exclusion of all others within three years".    The proper question should have been, "What are the odds that out of 500 people associated with the Warren Commission that 15 would be dead by 1967?"   And in that case, what you get is a perfectly normal statistic of people dying after that time frame.

 

Ever bothered to ask who some of these supposed "mystery death" people are?    Or take a look at how unsinister their deaths happened to be?    What's so mysterious about the fact that cab driver William Whaley died because of an 83 year old man forgetting to turn on his headlights and crashing his car into Whaley's?     What's so mysterious about Judge Brown, the presiding judge at the Ruby trial who "ate like a hog and was overweight" dying of a heart attack within three years?

 

The kind of screwball logic that's used to make it sound like anyone's death if they had the most tenuous connection to the assasination is "mysterious" will undoubtedly be used around 2030 to say, "No one's left alive!    Proof of conspiracy!"

 

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/deaths.htm

 

As you can see, when you start looking at these names individually the sinister aspect of it suddenly becomes not so sinister.   Also, it's pretty amusing how this supposedly sinister conspiracy manages to overlook more important people like Howard Brennan (who lived 20 years afterwards) and leaving nutcase witnesses the conspiracy buffs think are so important like Jean Hill all alone!

 

 

This thread started out as a review of a DVD of a JFK assassination-related TV show.

 

How is it that threads like this tend to devolve into a Jerry Springer-esque argument/debate over an unchangeable historical event of nearly a half-century ago?

 

My grandfather believed the moon shots were staged in a TV studio. I think he was incorrect, but he was entitled to his beliefs.

 

Either Oswald did it, or he didn't. Either there was a conspiracy, or there wasn't.

 

Many people hold strong beliefs either one way or the other -- and guess what, NEITHER SIDE IS GOING TO CHANGE THE OTHER'S MIND.

 

Is that OK?

 

And JFK is still dead either way.

 

 Amen

Which of your postings has the most info on Jim Braden, the mafia hitman, who just coincidentally was around when JFK and RFK were assassinated?

We can argue about this until the cows come home. You're not going to sway me as I am not going to sway you. Because of course we know that law enforcement has NEVER made a mistake in convicting someone of a crime. And they have NEVER falsified evidence to conform to their story. Bottom line is that, as even you might attest to, the evidence was entirely circumstancial. The chain of evidence can in no one be seen as untainted. And in no way do all of the facts add up to a conclusive and undeniable end. You can disparage anything I present (like what was Braden doing in the Dal Tex building, for which he had no valid explanation), just as I can your "facts". Isn't the first thing one is taught to look for in any crime, motive? What was Oswald's motive? If it was to make himself famous and make a name for himself, then why would he deny, deny, deny? Oh, because he's a wacko and that's what they do. Right. Except other "wackos", such as David Hinkley, never denied anything. You can tell the public 2 + 2 = 9 all you want but people aren't buying it. It ain't 1963 anymore where the American people would believe anything. Too much has happened since.

Oswald was never convicted. He was arrested, accused and charged, but since he was killed two days after the assassination, there never was a trial.

 

The Warren Commission Report is essentially a "brief for the prosecution" just as Mark Lane's Rush To Judgment is a "brief for the defense." Neither presents its "facts" in a completely straightforward and honest way.

 

What happened? I don't know. I have my opinions, but I'm not going to argue with anyone over them. (That part, I don't get.)

 

Both of you, have a great day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm still waiting for Neil to explain why the framers of Oswald put prints on the gun which were not found until years later, by technology that could not be foreseen in 1963.  Maybe the conspiracists had a time machine? 

 

It was Doc Brown and Marty McFly . . . in the DeLorean . . . behind Statler Motors . . .

Neil, we don't agree very often-or perhaps we do, but differ on the presentation. With regards to this though, we are in agreement 100%.

 

You know Neil, for a guy who had the nerve to insult the majority of Americans who believe in God as believers in "hocus-pocus" in the Hazel thread, it amuses me how you hold such stubborn super-religious faith in some *real* cases of silly hocus-pocus as you've demonstrated in this thread and how EVERY time you've been asked to confront some tough questions that get to the heart of the validity of your premises that justify your religious faith in conspiracies, the silence is always deafening.      Your usual tactic is to pretend that questions are not put to you and to just go on with another question as if you are somehow exempt from having to play the same rules of the game in historical methodology that you keep demanding of Lone Assassin defenders (and which we are always up to the task of doing, because inevitably it gives us a chance to demonstrate how little buffdom really knows about the factual evidence;  a classic case being those who will cite a bogus actuarial study from the PR campaign of a long-discredited movie from 1973 but who don't know that in 1979 the House of Representatives looked into that and found that the newspaper that commissioned the study retracted that the *next day*).

 

No, I won't convince you, but not because the factual evidence and all standards of respectable historical methodology is inconclusive on the subject, it's because for you, belief in a conspiracy is your article of religious faith that you *must* believe in in order to justify certain other attitudes you hold on subjects unrelated to the JFK assassination.    That's fine and well, but when it's suggested that this line of thinking is somehow of equal validity to those who take the time to let the *evidence* and the rule of historical methodology be our guide in answering the question of what happened on that day in Dallas, that is one premise that is totally bogus.     Because the matter of what happened is not a subjective question, it's something for which there is only ONE answer, and that means one side of the debate is right and the other is wrong.       And the only way you can offer any legitimate challenge to the Lone Assassin matter is to put up and tell us just HOW this unfolded in reference to all of the evidence.    No more asking questions and not providing answers of your own.    No more cop-out ca-ca of "how do you know the government didn't fake this?" which is the usual mark of someone who knows he's in trouble when it comes to presenting a coherent factual argument and who then decides that a little speculative hysteria can be his guide instead.      Put up and tell us how many gunmen there were, and just where Oswald was if he was not guilty, and then be man enough to defend that hypothesis against all the counter-questions from our side as we've done in reference to *every* question put forth in challenge to the Lone Assassin conclusion.    So far, instead of putting up, you've just been shutting up a good deal on that point which says it all.

David..while you and I agree to disagree about the "whodunit" of the assassination, I am grateful that you have posted these links to this topic. Of particular interest to me is the complete video of the breakfast meeting held at the Hotel Texas sponsored by the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce on the morning of November 22,1963. While I have seen bits and snippets of this video over the years, this was the first time I have seen this video in its entirety highlighted by Jackie Kennedy's delayed entrance into the hall wearing that soon to be immortalized outfit with the pill box hat, and of course, JFK's final public speech in its entirety. What struck me as really ironic was the fact that while waiting for JFK to make his speech,one of the television announcers made a prolonged reference to the President McKinley assassination in 1901 because of JFK's penchant of mingling with the crowds earlier that day. Another "eerie" moment came when the President of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce offered a stetson to President Kennedy as "protection against the rain". While declining to don the stetson, JFK offered to put it on in The White House on Monday...Monday, November 25th of course, turning out to be the day of his funeral.

      Send me a link as to where I can read about these prints that were found decades later. Then we can discuss it.

     I'm not familiar with that documentary but I really love how LNT people cannot refer to anyone who believes an alternate theory with some kind of disparaging adjective.

The 1993 documentary "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?" and the 1993 book "JFK: First Day Evidence" in which the actual pictures of Oswald's identified partial prints on the rifle are reproduced in full.

From the following link:

http://www.jfk-online.com/prints.html

As the book was headed to press, an independent examination of Rusty's trigger-housing photos was done for the television program FRONTLINE by Vincent J. Scalice, a Certified Latent Print Examiner. Scalice was the fingerprint expert used by the HSCA in 1978. He stated in a letter of conclusions to the author that "Based upon the results of this examination and comparison, it is logical to assume that ALL of these photographs, which exhibit varying degrees of contrast, were not available for detailed comparison purposes in 1963 or 1978." Scalice had not seen all of the photos possessed by Rusty before.

Instead of focusing on only the clearest photograph (detailed in this chapter as performed by Captain Powdrill), Scalice used different enhancement techniques with all of the photographs. He stated. "It was necessary to utilize all of the photographs in order to carry out this procedure as the photographs were taken at different exposures ranging from light to medium and dark. As a result of the varying degrees of contrast from photo to photo, it became possible to locate and identify a sufficient amount of identifying characteristics on which to base a positive identification. As a result of an exacting and detailed examination and comparison under varying degrees of magnification and illumination, I have reached the conclusion that the developed latent prints are the fingerprints of Lee Harvey Oswald's right middle finger (#3) and right ring finger (#4) as they appear on the inked fingerprint card [JFK Exhibit F-400 of the HSCA]."

A comparison was also done by Scalice of Rusty's fingerprint card to JFK Exhibit F-400. He determined that "the inkless prints taken by Rusty [and J. B. Hicks] were indeed those of Lee Harvey Oswald, as they compared favorably with the inked impressions taken on 8-9-63."

Although the trigger-housing fingerprints were "extremely faint and barely distinguishable" and "partially distorted," a positive identification of Lee Harvey Oswald was made by Scalice. This is perhaps the most important finding made since the time of the assassination. It may now be stated as fact that the fingerprints of Lee Harvey Oswald were left behind on the trigger housing of the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository.(11)

 

So that means  what exactly, other than he touched a rifle that he owned?

And please note that Vincent Scalice was the fingerprint tech for the HSCA, at which time he could not fully identify the prints as Oswald's. It was only after he viewed pictures that were in Rusty Livingston's briefcase, and used modern enhancement techniques, that he was able to identify a total of 24 points of identification. Only 10 are needed for a positive ID. So if you are going to accuse Scalice of being a lying stooge, you have to ask if he's lying in 1993, why didn't he lie back in 1978, when it really counted?

Keep reading, Neil.

From the same link:

Fresh prints on a rifle that was planted by others, that Oswald never brought into the TSBD, that he never fired? Did they put LHO in a trance, place his fingers on the trigger guard, then spray him with some forget-me gas? Then convince him to leave the building, walk across town and murder a cop?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2W_-ID8RMI

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pikh6GMyP0A

So *phil, if I read you right, you are alluding to three things.

1) they aren't LHOs prints.

Sorry, but the link I gave explains the uninterrupted chain of custody of the FP card used for ID, which was also matched to LHOs Marine prints.


2) the prints were originally not on the rifle, so either:


A. They were planted.


Sorry, but no one looking to plant prints would be able to predict the pictures taken, or that these pictures would be subject to technology that hadn't been invented yet. So you aren't really suggesting that the prints were planted to be found 3 decades later, finally framing LHO, whom they planned to kill anyway? That's just silly.

B. Scalice is yet another of the thousands involved in the coverup.

Sorry, but if Scalice was involved, he would have iD'd the prints in 1978, when he was being paid by the HSCA. Why wait till 1993 to join the coverup team?

     Okay, now you've seriously lost me. The prints were discovered 30 years later but they were fresh when they were taken off the rifle on Nov. 22, 1963? Please explain how its possible to discover prints 30 years later and then backdate them to an exact time when they were put on something.

It's quite simple, Neil.    The prints are the ones visible on the rifle the day the rifle was found in 1963 and which was photographed from different angles on that day, and which when lifted produced partial prints that were inconclusive (not enough points of identiification) but Scalice discovered in his 1993 re-examination that by combining the different photos taken of the rifle from that first day which had varying degrees of contrast (all of which Scalice did not have accss to in 1978 for his initial re-examination for the House) and studying those prints from before they were lifted, he was able to come up with a match, meaning Lee Harvey Oswald was the one who pulled the trigger of the rifle found on the 6th Floor of the TSBD and found also to be the murder weapon.

 

These were not "new prints" these were the prints known to have been on the rifle from day one but which at the time yielded an inconclusive match but thanks to later developments in technology makes it possible to make a precise match.     It's as simple as that.