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

There are two kinds of people: JFK people and non-JFK people. 

JFK people, usually, and I mean almost always, have the characteristic of being VERY committed to whatever they believe about the JFK assassination and totally impervious to changing their mind about anything; and certainly anything major. 

Take someone like John McAdams or David Von Pein. Do you think there is ANY CHANCE that ANYTHING could come along, any new evidence, any new discovery, any new testimony, that would change their mind about Oswald's guilt? 

For instance, what if it turned out that there was a spectator who took a photo which captured the doorway up-close right when the motorcade passed. And nobody noticed this spectator and asked him to turn over his camera. And he went home with it and had it developed and kept the photo in a safe for 53 years. (And by the way, OIC Chairman Larry Rivera found out that photo shops in Dallas were put on alert to look for and turn over any photographs of the assassination to the police.) And now, say, his son or daughter is making it public. And it shows Oswald standing in the doorway, up-close, plain as day, and just as sharp and clear as we see him in any of the press photos taken of Oswald at the DPD that weekend. 

What would John McAdams and David Von Pein say then? I suspect they would become fast converts to photographic alteration. They would character-assassinate the one who produced the photo, and they would denounce it with irrelevancies, such as, if the photo is legit, how come nobody reported seeing Oswald there? Answer: because it wasn't OK to say that you saw Oswald there; it wasn't allowed. If you tried to say it, you were quickly told that, no, you didn't, and you better not say it again. Look what happened to Carolyn Arnold. That's exactly what happened to Carolyn Arnold. 

The point is that the JFK world is a very polarized world, and it does not reflect the general population. In a word, JFKing can fuck-up a person's head. Look at the ridiculous assertion of Robert Harris from the other day where he said that he took Ruby's shooting of Oswald as a clear sign that Oswald was guilty. Not innocent, but guilty! In the JFK world, if you show them a collage of what is obviously two highly correlated figures, well correlated in both the man and the clothing, they shrug- if it's not what they want to believe.

They shrug even though in their own everyday world if they went to work one morning, and two employees showed up looking this much alike and also dressed this much alike, they would freak. Anyone would. Everyone knows that it's highly unusual, as in: it never happens. But, they make an exception for the JFK assassination. Why? Because it's the JFK assassination. All probabilities and likelihoods go out the window for the JFK assassination. Why? Because it's the JFK assassination. 

It reminds me of the ending of Chinatown where an associate turns to Jack Nicholson's character, trying to get him to settle down and leave a gruesome crime scene by saying, "Come on, Jake. It's Chinatown." Meaning: strange things are expected happen in Chinatown. And likewise: strange things are expected happen in the JFK assassination. 

So, if it was me heading the legal team that will be defending Oswald in Houston in November 2017, I would be very, very, particular in the jury selection. It's the key to the whole thing, in my opinion. And I would try to avoid JFK people. Obviously, I would try to exclude anyone who held the belief that Oswald was guilty or was inclined that way, and obviously, the opposing counsel would try to do the opposite. And if, together, we succeeded at excluding all committed JFKers, it would be fine with me. A jury of all non-JFKers? I'd accept it in a heartbeat.