Sunday, August 24, 2014

What amazes me most is that people who ostensibly are defenders of Lee Harvey Oswald want to deny that he was in the doorway. And they usually do so without stipulating any alternate location for him to be. 

Of course, the Oswald accusers do provide him an alternate location; they say he was up on the 6th floor: locking, loading, and pumping rounds into Kennedy. 

But, if you're willing to admit that he wasn't up there, and he wasn't doing that, then you have to provide an alternative location for him. You can't just say he was somewhere in the building. That isn't good enough.  It isn't near good enough.

Behaviorally, the default location for him to be is the doorway. Of the 75 TSBD employees, the vast majority took in the motorcade in one way or another. Most of them went outside to watch it. A few watched it from the windows. The number who ignored the whole event are very few. And what reason is there to think that Oswald would have been one of them? On what information about Oswald is that based?

My opponents don't usually stipulate an alternate location for Oswald when they deny his presence in the doorway. They don't think they have to, although they are mistaken. But when they do stipulate an alternate location for him, they usually say he was in the 2nd floor lunch room. In fact, nobody as ever stipulated anyplace else to me. 

But, let's consider Officer Marrion Baker's testimony. He said that when he first saw Oswald from the stairwell through the glass of the door that Oswald was moving. He wasn't seated in the lunch room; he was walking in the lunch room. 

What does that suggest to you? What it suggests to me is that Oswald just got there. That he was moving because he was still moving from having gone there; that he had just arrived. 

What's the alternative? That he had been there a while and had been seated a while but then decided to get up and go somewhere? 

But, that's just an arbitrary assumption. It's stipulating something outside of the known evidence. The likelihood that Oswald was sitting a while and then got up and started walking just in time to be seen by Baker is capricious. It's just helping yourself to a scenario. 

Is it possible that Oswald heard Truly and Baker climbing the stairs, and so he got up to swift away? But why? He hadn't done anything. He didn't shoot Kennedy, remember? So, why would he care if somebody was coming? 

Mr. BAKER - As I came out to the second floor there, Mr. Truly was ahead of me, and as I come out I was kind of scanning, you know, the rooms, and I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this--I happened to see him through this window in this door. I don't know how come I saw him, but I had a glimpse of him coming down there.
Mr. DULLES - Where was he coming from, do you know?
Mr. BAKER - No, sir. All I seen of him was a glimpse of him go away from me.
Mr. BELIN - What did you do then?
Mr. BAKER - I ran on over there
Representative BOGGS -You mean where he was?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir. There is a door there with a glass, it seemed to me like about a 2 by 2, something like that, and then there is another door which is 6 foot on over there, and there is a hallway over there and a hallway entering into a lunchroom, and when I got to where I could. see him he was walking away from me about 20 feet away from me in the lunchroom.
Mr. BELIN - What did you do?
Mr. BAKER - I hollered at him at that time and said, "Come here." He turned and walked right straight back to me.
Mr. BELIN - Where were you at the time you hollered?
Mr. BAKER - I was standing in the hallway between this door and the second door, right at the edge of the second door.
Mr. BELIN - He walked back toward you then?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.

Mr. BELIN - When you first saw him in which direction was he walking?
Mr. BAKER - He was walking east.
Mr. BELIN - Was--his back away from you, or not, as you first saw him?

Mr. BAKER - He was walking away from me with his back toward me.  Mr. BELIN - When you saw him, he then turned around, is that correct, and then walked back toward you?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir.
Mr. BELIN - Was he carrying anything in his hands?
Mr. BAKER - He had nothing at that time.
Mr. BELIN - All right. Were you carrying anything in either of your hands?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir; I was.
Mr. BELIN - What were you carrying?
Mr. BAKER - I had my revolver out.
Mr. BELIN - When did you take your revolver out?
Mr. BAKER - As I was starting up the stairway.

Mr. BAKER - And as soon as I saw him, I caught a glimpse of him and I ran over there and opened that door and hollered at him.
Mr. DULLES - He had not seen you up to that point probably?
Mr. BAKER - I don't know whether he had or not.
Representative BOGGS -He came up to you?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir; and when I hollered at him he turned around and walked back to me.
Representative BOGGS -Right. What did you say to him?
Mr. BAKER - I didn't get anything out of him. Mr. Truly had come up to my side here, and I turned to Mr. Truly and I says, "Do you know this man, does he work here?" And he said yes, and I turned immediately and went on out up the stairs.


There is nothing there to suggest that Oswald had been there a while doing anything. There is no suggestion that he had been eating there. There is no suggestion that he had been drinking there. If you are going to say that Oswald had been there a while before Baker arrived, you're left stipulating that he was hanging around the lunch room doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. You're saying that he chose to sit around the lunch room doing nothing rather than go outside in the warm sun and watch President Kennedy ride by. 

Alas, a lot of people make that assumption. And they make it because they're talking about Lee Harvey Oswald. Wasn't Oswald eccentric? Disturbed? Detached? Anti-social? Wasn't he so contrary, just for the sake of being contrary, that he surely preferred to sit in a dank lunch room alone doing nothing rather than join people outside in the sunlight watching the President of the United States and his glamorous wife ride by? Aren't we entitled to make that assumption? Because, after all, we are talking about Lee Harvey Oswald: psychopath. 

But, here's the thing: once you reject the murderous portrayal of Oswald, you don't get to keep the psychopathic part. That baby goes out with the bath water. So, why assume that Oswald had no interest in seeing Kennedy? Oswald went to the library and checked out Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy, and he read it. He also started reading James Bond books because he heard that Kennedy was a fan. Oswald worked at Jaggars/Chiles/Stovall during the Cuban Missile Crisis, where they were making classified maps of Cuba. Oswald was married to a Soviet woman during the closest call we ever had to go to war with the Soviet Union, and at the center of it was John F. Kennedy. What right does anybody have to assert that Oswald preferred to sit in a dank lunch room doing nothing rather than gaze at Kennedy?

The conspiracy advocates who are opposing me are floating around in space. They are not on solid ground.  They don't even realize how groundless they are. The fact is: once you remove Oswald from the 6th floor, there is no place else but the doorway for him to land. Nowhere else makes sense. It's the default place for him to be; it's the logical place for him to be; and it is the place for him to be that is overwhelmingly supported by the evidence, including the photographic evidence and more. For Christ's sake, the man said he was out with Bill Shelley in front. What more do you want? 

Oswald was in the doorway, and it's time to stop the nonsense. This has gone on long enough. It's time for all Oswald defenders to come together and unite on this.  There is no excuse any more. There is no counterargument. There are no grounds on which to fight it, and there is no reason to fight it. If you're not pleased about it, just get over it because it is the truth. And, I guarantee you it is the only pathway to vindicating Lee Harvey Oswald. You want to help him? You want to restore his good name? You want to right a terrible, grievous wrong? This is the way. The only way.    

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