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

Tonight, it was Fox News' turn to schlep the JFK bull, and schlep it they did. It was much like the take of CNN from the other night. Never once did they broach the idea that Oswald wasn't guilty. He was up on the 6th floor firing away, and that they assumed with the same degree of certainty as the sun rising in the east and settling in the west. 

However, they carefully let out some rope to divert away from the official story some. For instance, they questioned the Single Bullet Theory. They even questioned the idea that the bullet entered the back of the neck, as per Arlen Specter and Gerald Ford, suggesting instead that it entered the back, which it did, but that it got deflected upward by hitting bone. So, they suggested that it sharply changed direction inside JFK's body. 

The whole thrust of the program was to grant the likelihood that there was a second shooter. As far as who was involved in the conspiracy, they briefly mentioned Russia and Cuba, but what they settled on strongly on the Mafia. They even had a guy who testified that Carlos Marcello, the New Orleans mob boss, testified from prison that he knew Oswald and had set him up to kill Kennedy. 

But, this whole Mafia idea is ridiculous. Could the Mafia have gotten the motorcade route changed? Could the Mafia have controlled the press and media throughout the country? Could the Mafia have gotten a government commission to whitewash the case pinning it on Oswald alone?

And the whole notion that Oswald was a Mafia hit man is laughable. I'm pretty sure that to be regarded as a hit man by the Mafia, you actually have to have performed some hits on people, perhaps quite a few hits. Oswald had never shot anybody in his life. He was never in combat in the military. He very nearly failed his final marksmanship exam. That the Mafia, or anyone else, would have regarded Oswald as a honed assassin is STUPID. 

To make an analogy, choosing Oswald to shoot Kennedy based on his shooting experience in the Marines would have been the same as choosing Oswald to pitch in the World Series because he played baseball a few times as a kid. 

Then, it got absolutely absurd. They repeated the false story that Oswald went to Mexico to obtain a visa to Cuba, and they said the reason was because Oswald was going to assassinate Castro. You tell me how Oswald could go to Cuba and kill Castro. The CIA had been trying with all kinds of manpower and vast resources to kill Castro and without success, but Oswald was going to go there alone and do it????? 

Then, they finished up with John T. Orr who maintains that Oswald fired 3 shots from the 6th floor but that there was another shooter on top of the County Records building who struck Kennedy and Connally with one bullet. 

Orr isn't the only one who maintains that there were shots taken from the roof of the County Records Building, and I have no reason to doubt it. But, the idea that Oswald was up on the 6th floor shooting is just plain ridiculous. For goodness sake, he was standing in the doorway at the time. 

But, here's my take on the whole program: I believe that they (Fox) realized that presenting the straight official story as per the Warren Commission just wasn't going to cut it. Not in 2013. People are just not buying it. They had to assume a contrarian position. But, they went about it very carefully. In the end, they maintained utter disdain for Oswald, which was vital to them. They opened the door to conspiracy, focusing mainly on the Mafia, and secondarily on Cuba. They actually allowed Mark Lane to state that he thought the conspiracy involved the CIA. But, that was it. They didn't react to that; they didn't comment about it; they didn't go anywhere with it. Lane said it, and then it died; it went nowhere. 

So, the net result was that they conveyed the idea and strongly that they, Fox News, don't accept the official story as is, that is, as per the Warren Commission. But, they proclaimed Oswald's guilt as presumptuously as ever. And other than allowing Mark Lane to make one 2 second statement about CIA involvement which went nowhere, they impugned no agency of government. Nor did they impugn individuals such as Johnson or Hoover or George HW Bush.

It was a very calculated thing. They wanted to seem open-minded and un-owned by JFK officialdom. Yet, they rejected Oswald innocence entirely and summarily- as though the very idea of it is inconceivable. And that's the ultimate sell-out. Tinkering around the edges of conspiracy was just a way of throwing people a bone. They scrupulously avoided the key question: Was Oswald guilty? And by not broaching that question, it made them complicit in helping to continue the 50 year old lie. They just gave the lie a little twist, that's all. 

And they went nowhere near the Altgens photo and the question about the Man in the Doorway. No freaking way were they going to touch that third rail. Just to talk about it- just to acknowledge its very existence- would have been deadly. And I hope you can see from that that Oswald-in-the-doorway is the defining, ground-zero issue of the JFK assassination. 

They know it, and that's why they don't go there. We know it, and that's why we do.