Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

If you think that the Dallas Police planted the bus transfer ticket on Oswald, you need to think about it some more, and ask yourself: how? 

One thing is for sure: if Oswald had lived, the plan would have backfired. If Oswald had lived, he'd have gone to trial, and I guarantee you that he would have wound up with a dream team of lawyers working pro bono: Mark Lane and Vincent Salandria for sure, and probably others. And when he told them that he didn't ride any bus and never got any bus transfer ticket, they would have jumped on that like sharks on a bloody carcass. 

So, the whole scheme crucially depended on Oswald being killed, and perhaps you think the Dallas Police knew that was coming. 

But, the thing is: there was no guarantee. Assassination isn't a sure thing. How many times did the CIA try to kill Castro? But, he's still alive, if not completely well, today in 2014. There was lots that could go wrong. Ruby could have shot Oswald but not fatally. People sometimes recover from gunshot wounds to the abdomen. I read the autobiography of Jane Fonda, and it she said that her brother Peter got shot in the belly, accidentally, as a boy. It was a close brush with death, but as you know, Peter Fonda survived.

And they were only going to get one chance at killing Oswald. How could they let such a thing happen twice? A second attempt would have been transparently obvious.    

But wait! Even with Oswald dead, the phony bus and cab story would have been extremely perilous. The guy who drove him could have come forward. "Oswald didn't take the bus and cab; I drove him." And this driver had nothing to worry about. He wasn't guilty of anything. He wasn't a getaway driver because Oswald didn't do anything. He didn't kill Kennedy. It's no crime to give your buddy a ride home from work. 

And even if that guy didn't come forward, someone else who saw them could have come forward. Once the police entered that bus transfer ticket into evidence, they owned it. They could never retract it if something surfaced that refuted it. And at the time they entered it into evidence, they had no idea what could surface.

What was at stake in planting the bus transfer ticket? EVERYTHING. The whole conspiracy. The whole plot and all the players in it. That's what was at stake. 

So, who made the decision? Who made the call? Who decided to hang the entire scheme and everyone involved in it around a bus transfer ticket that didn't exist? 

Think carefully about who would have made that decision, and then think about how that person got so many other people to cooperate with it. It took a lot of legwork to make it happen. They had to decide upon a particular bus to say Oswald was on. They had to hone-in on a driver. Then they had to locate his bus and get on it and issue themselves a transfer ticket that they could claim was Oswald's. 

But, think about this: the bus transfer ticket was entered into evidence at 4:00 PM. But, they didn't reach Cecil McWatters until 6:00 PM. So, they committed themselves-irreversibly- to claiming Oswald's bus ride before even talking to the driver who supposedly drove the bus. 

What if he refused to cooperate? What if he denounced the whole thing? How would it look then? Don't you think they would have made sure that McWatters was going to play ball before committing themselves to an irreversible course? 

And what about the detectives, like Sims and his partner, who were involved? Why did they do it? Why were they willing to do it? What was their motive?  I hope nobody thinks it was their idea to plant a phony bus ticket on Oswald. So, when they were told to do it, it was tantamount to being told: 

"Look, Oswald is innocent; he didn't kill anybody; but we've got to frame him, and that includes framing him for riding a bus and cab. So, figure out a bus and driver, round up some phony witnesses, and see if you can come up with some physical evidence like a transfer ticket. Make it look good." 

What reason did Sims and his partner have to get involved with that? What did they have against Kennedy? What did they have against Oswald? You can't go about setting up a phony story unknowingly. 

Oswald didn't reach the police department until 2:00, and according to the official record, his first interrogation didn't start until 3:15. Therefore, they didn't hear a word from him about anything until then. Yet, somehow, 45 minutes later, they had a phony bus figured out and a phony transfer ticket in hand? How could they possibly have done that so fast?  

The problem is that the people want to claim all this aren't watching the movie in their heads to see how it unfolds. It doesn't unfold well at all. The impracticalities are numerous and huge. There is just no way they could have obtained a phony bus transfer ticket in that amount of time- unless you want to say it was planned well in advance before Kennedy even got killed. But, that's just plain crazy.

Oh, and another problem is that the timeline doesn't work for Oswald. At 12:30, he left the doorway and went to the lunch room. After a very brief (and I mean no more than 10 seconds) encounter with Truly and Baker, he got a Coke, walked through Mrs. Reid's office- without stopping to talk to her. Then, he went downstairs, and gave two people directions to the pay phone, and then he left. 

What do you think that amounts to in time? It could not have been more than 5 minutes, and that's being generous. It was more likely within 4 minutes. It may have been out of there before 12:34, therefore, in the 12:33 minute. So, how could Oswald still be there at 12:45 to get into a Nash Rambler? What do you have him doing between 12:35 and 12:45? Where exactly was he and what was he doing? Do you know how long 10 minutes is when you have nothing to do? Try sitting down at your kitchen table with an egg timer set for 10 minutes. It'll be the longest 10 minutes of your life.