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

This is to those who think that Oswald had foreknowledge of the JFK assassination, that the plotters told him about it, even included him in it, operationally.  

My message to you is; you're not thinking straight. It would have made no sense, whatsoever, for the plotters to do that. It would have been insane for them to do it. 

Think about how it went down. It started with the decision to kill Kennedy. Just that. Nothing more. That had to be decided, abstractly.  And it was decided.

OK, so they decided they were going to kill Kennedy. But then, of course, they didn't want to get the chair for it themselves. So, that meant they had to find someone else to blame. 

So, they decided to blame it on one lone nut. Just one guy who did it all by himself and told no one. Not a soul. Not even his own wife. 

It's easy enough to understand why they were led to do that: because it's clean. If the assassination involved as few as two people, it would have been geometrically more complicated than having it be just one lone guy. What they wanted was a story that was so tight, so limited, so contained within very small paradigm, that it could be wrapped up almost immediately. They wanted to be able to cross every t and dot every i and put the whole damn thing to bed- very fast. And that was the advantage of making it one lone solitary guy, who did it alone, without so much as hinting to anyone else what he was going to do. 

So, they made that decision- to blame it all on one guy. And then, they went looking for the guy. And someone must have suggested Oswald. That may have happened while Oswald was still in Russia, and if not, then surely it happened immediately after Oswald returned from Russia. 

I think of the real practical, concrete starting point of the assassination as being April 1963 when JFK fired Allen Dulles as CIA Chief. It was probably very soon after that, if not immediately after that, that the plan got launched. There was outrage in the whole intelligence community that JFK had copped out of invading Cuba in support of the Bay of Pigs operation. Instead, he let it fail, and that was his death sentence. 

So, that was April 1961, and it was 14 months later that Oswald returned from Russia. And that's why I say that the decision to go with Oswald as patsy may have been made while he was still in Russia.  But, if not, it was made at the time of his return to the U.S. in June 1962. And the reason we can be confident about that is because as soon as he returned, right away, the Dallas "White Russian" community started coddling him and his wife (think of the coddling of Mia Farrow's character by the Satanists in Rosemary's Baby).  And likewise, CIA operative George DeMohrenschild was assigned to befriend him and keep him on a short leash and a close watch. Why would they do all that unless they had big plans for Oswald? 

So, they decided to kill Kennedy. Then they decided that they were going to blame it all on one lone nut. And then they decided that Lee Harvey Oswald would be that lone nut. So, that's how the plot developed, and it developed in that order, in that sequence. 

So, that's where they were: they had decided to kill Kennedy, and they had decided that Oswald would be their patsy. Now, what came next? Were they were going to tell Oswald about the plot? Why would they do that? They didn't need him for anything. They certainly didn't need him to be a shooter. They had expert assassins for that. Who had Oswald ever killed in his life? Nobody. He never even fought in a war. He was a radar guy; not a combat soldier. 

Look: let's get something perfectly straight here: Oswald did the MINIMAL amount of shooting required by the Marines, and in his last shooting test which was in the Spring of 1959, he scored 91. The lowest passing score was 90. So, he practically failed his last test. And let's remember that it didn't begin to compare to the difficulty and strenuousness of shooting a real person dead under the 6th floor conditions. Oswald had zero experience at that. And then after that, the ONLY shooting he did was to go rabbit-hunting a couple of times with his Russian buddies, in which they said he stunk at it. Plus, they were using shotguns. Yet, they still said he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, and someone had to shoot a rabbit for him. The idea that the conspirators wanted Oswald to shoot is absolutely and positively INSANE. They would have had to be out of their fucking minds. 

So, what was left for him to do to make it necessary to tell him about the assassination plot? Nothing! Did he have to open a door? No! Somebody else could do that. Did he have to prep the rifle? No! Somebody else could do that. Did he have to be a lookout? No! Somebody else could do that. They didn't need him for anything-except to be the patsy. That's it. Just to take the blame for it; nothing else. 

So, they had no reason to tell him. And they had numerous reasons not to tell him. For example, what reason did they have to think that Oswald would have cottoned to the very idea of killing Kennedy? Think about it from your own perspective. You are a normal person; right? So imagine that some people come to you and tell you that they are going to kill the President of the United States, and they want you to help them. What are you going to do? You're going to go tell the Police, aren't you? So, Oswald, not having anything against Kennedy, and not having any inclinations whatsoever towards murder, would have reacted the same way as you. And they would have anticipated that. 

But, what about Oswald being an intelligence agent, etc.? Look: there is no evidence at all that the Oswald of fame was ever involved in any kind of violent action. It's complicated because there was another Oswald, referred to as "Lee" in John Armstrong's lexicon. And, undoubtedly, some of the Oswald sightings involved him. And I don't doubt that he was capable of violence and committed violence. But, the Oswald of fame had been living in Russia for three years, where he had no violent activity of any kind. As I said, he couldn't even kill a rabbit. And then he gets back here with his wife and daughter, and he starts struggling to survive, working at low-paying, menial jobs. And the idea that he was in any way prepared, qualified, or even inclined to participate in a murder plot- against anybody- is ridiculous. It's absurd. They had absolutely nothing to gain by including him in it or telling him about it. They would have realized that if they told Oswald what was going to happen on November 22, 1963, that he may have panicked; he may have gone to the police; he may have gone to other law enforcement; or, he may have just grabbed his family and run away. Gotten on a bus at the last minute and split. 

Look what Richard Case Nagell did just from having foreknowledge of the JFK assassination. And, he wasn't even the patsy. What did they need from Oswald? They needed him to not say anything to anybody and to just show up on November 22. I'll say it again: They needed him to not say anything to anybody and to just show up on November 22. And the best way to insure that outcome was to not tell him anything. Don't give him anything to freak out about. Don't give him anything to even ponder. Just play him. Just move him around like a marionette. 

Oswald was just the patsy; nothing more. He wasn't opening any doors. He wasn't a lookout. He certainly wasn't a designated shooter.  He couldn't shoot. He was just the patsy. 

Look: it's impossible to even imagine how the conversation could have gone if it involved telling Oswald about the plot. 

Dulles: We're all set, Mr. Vice President. The operation will occur on November 22. The designated culprit, Lee Harvey Oswald, works in the building; he will be there; and he will be easily identified as the gunman, the lone gunman, after it happens.

LBJ: I see. Very good. And I presume he knows nothing about this. Are you sure he doesn't? 

Dulles: Well, no. Actually, he knows all about it. He knows everything about the operation- except the part about him bearing the sole blame. 

LBJ: What? How did he find out?

Dulles: Well, actually, we told him.

LBJ? What? Why? Are you out of your mind? What did you tell him for?

Dulles: Well, you see, it's like this, Mr. Vice President; it's complicated. There was this parallel operation down in New Orleans that involved trying to develop a poison that would give Castro cancer. And Oswald got involved in that operation, operationally, and that operation overlapped with this operation. So, before we knew it, he was involved in both.

LBJ: Holy Mother of God! Are you shitting me? It wasn't enough that he just be set up as the fall guy in this operation? You had to use him in another operation? 

Dulles: Hey, it wasn't even my operation. Remember, I'm not the CIA Chief any more.

LBJ: What is wrong with the people who did this? What's going to happen now if Oswald gets arrested and starts singing like a canary, spewing everything he knows?  

Dulles: Oh, don't worry, we're planning to kill him that afternoon.

LBJ: You're planning to kill him?

Dulles: Well, not us, but we're setting it up so that the Dallas Police are likely to kill him.

LBJ: Likely to? LIKELY TO??? Am I supposed to take confidence from that?

I could keep going, but you get the idea. The idea of cutting Oswald in on the plot to kill Kennedy would have been stark raving mad. It would have been insane. And these people were not insane. They were evil, and they were fanatically driven, but they were not insane. 

Oswald was the patsy. They knew he could spend some time in custody. (And of course, he did.) Their goal was to make sure that he had little that he could tell authorities and nothing that would be really damaging- to them.

Oswald told the world: "I don't know what this whole situation is about. Nobody has told me anything. I know I am accused of killing a policeman. I know nothing more than that."

That's what he said. He said it directly to us. And, he wasn't lying. He didn't know anything.