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

I have read more of the book A Cruel and Shocking Act by Philip Shenon, and again: the thesis of the book is an abomination, but still, there are some enlightening tidbits.

Shenon spends quite a bit of time trashing Mark Lane, and that includes Lane's championing of Oswald in the doorway. But, it's amazing how badly Shenon mangled the facts about it.

First, Shenon never named the photo at the center of the firestorm: the Altgens photo. It would seem to be mandatory to do so, but he didn't.  

Then, Shenon described it as a photo taken minutes after the shooting. No! It was taken DURING the shooting. And that is an extremely important point because if Oswald was outside while the shooting was going on, then obviously, he could not have been up on the sixth floor doing the shooting. 

So, Shenon made it "minutes later" which was totally bogus. 

Then, he said that Lovelady "publicly identified himself as the man in the photograph." No! Lovelady did not! At the time, the FBI released a statement saying that Lovelady identified himself as the man in the photograph, but that's the FBI going public, not Lovelady. They could have sat Lovelady down in front of a sea of microphones to declare to all reporters present and to the world at large that he was the man in the doorway. But, they didn't do that. On the contrary, they fought hard to keep anyone from getting to Lovelady- with a mic or a camera. 

And when it was Lovelady's turn to testify to the Warren Commission in April 1964, he was never asked to state whether he was the man in the doorway. The question was studiously avoided by WC Attorney Joseph Ball. Instead, Ball played a game with Lovelady, having him draw an arrow to himself in the picture but never clarifying which figure Lovelady drew his arrow to. He drew it to another figure; not Doorman.

But, Shenon did admit after all that that, "Mark Lane continued to insist it was Oswald on the steps- proof, Lane suggested, that Oswald must have been innocent of the President's murder because he did not flee the scene of the crime." 

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! It wasn't about Oswald not fleeing the scene of the crime; it was about Oswald not being in the Sniper's Nest right during the shooting. What Shenon tried to do with this is ratchet it down to a much lower level of significance and importance. What it really involves is: Oswald's alibi for his whereabouts during the shooting. You would think Shenon would have had the decency to admit that. And I don't think for one second that he just got it wrong. After 50 years? Shenon deliberately sought to play it down and misrepresent it to reduce its immense importance. And this is really unforgivable because we are talking about basic points of fact here- points of fact that are not in dispute.    

This is really despicable, but it's a good example- a textbook case- of a book that is supposedly written from a highly independent investigative perspective but is really just a paean to the official story and all those involved in it. No wonder it received so much praise from the mainstream media.  In a word, it is the worst kind of JFK book there is.