Lee Harvey Oswald, the Patsy
An Objective Review of the Evidence Concludes That Oswald Was Framed
[I]t is not unreasonable to doubt the Warren Commission’s conclusion
that Oswald, acting alone, fired three shots from the sixth-sixth-floorfloor of
the Texas School Book Depository building in Dealey Plaza in Dallas and
assassinated President Kennedy.—Joseph Lazzaro
“I’m just a patsy!”—Lee Harvey Oswald
Oswald the Assassin?
Last month Secretary of State John Kerry, commenting in an interview on the
50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, said: “To
this day, I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I certainly
have doubts that he was motivated by himself, I mean I’m not sure if anybody
else was involved . . .”
John Kerry takes it for granted that Oswald shot and killed JFK, leaving
open only the question of whether others were involved with
Oswald.
Many articles in the print and electronic media marking the passage of a
half century since the tragic murder of our 35th president also take the view
that it was Oswald who shot President Kennedy. One article is entitled
“Why’d Oswald Do It?,” while the subtitle of another references “Lee Harvey
Oswald’s bizarre path after killing JFK.” The authors of many of these
articles contend that Oswald was the lone assassin and regard the case as closed
(although some of them admit that Oswald’s motive is unknown). Other authors
believe, like John Kerry, that Oswald may have acted with the encouragement or
assistance of unknown persons.
Not every recent article on the JFK assassination embraces the theory that
Oswald, whether by himself or with the aid of others, murdered Kennedy. Some
articles advance reasons for questioning Oswald’s guilt and for believing that
the assassination resulted from a conspiracy involving conspirators whose
identities remain unknown to this day. In one of these articles assassination
researcher David Talbot not only advances plausible reasons for thinking that
there was a conspiracy, but also reminds us that defenders of the
Oswald-was-the-lone-assassin thesis frequently “seem more interested in
ridiculing and marginalizing even the most credible conspiracy researchers than
in getting at the truth.”
Those who say Oswald was the sole assassin think that the judgment of
history is on their side. Richard Mosk asserts: “The history books now seem
reconciled to the fact that Oswald, acting alone, assassinated the president.”
Similarly, Jill Abramson writes: “The historical consensus seems to be settled
on Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin.” However, it is emphatically not true
that there is an historical consensus that Oswald was the sole assassin.
“[T]here is no such consensus,” David Talbot notes, “only a fractious ongoing
debate.” The truth is that leading responsible assassination
investigators—including academic historians with a Ph.D. such as history
professors Michael L. Kurtz and Gerald D. McKnight—reject the theory that Oswald
was the lone killer and conclude that the Kennedy assassination resulted from a
conspiracy, with the identity of the conspirators being unknown. Public opinion
polls demonstrate that at all times since 1964 a majority of the American people
have believed that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy. Currently,
59 percent suspect multiple persons conspired to kill Kennedy, while only 24
percent think Oswald assassinated the president by himself.
Possible Scenarios
In assessing whether Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy, there are
four possible scenarios. The first is that he was the lone assassin and that he
acted entirely on his own. Under this view, Oswald, without prompting or
assistance from anyone else, and using a 20-year old, bolt-action
military-surplus 6.5 mm Italian Mannlicher Carcano carbine, fired from the
sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository all the shots directed at
the presidential limousine, killing JFK, seriously wounding Texas Gov. John
Connally, and grazing the cheek of bystander James Tague.
The second scenario is that Oswald performed all these acts but did them
with the encouragement or assistance of others.
The third scenario is that Oswald was part of a conspiracy to murder JFK,
which would mean that he probably did fire shots from the sixth-floor but that
he was not the only shooter that day (regardless of which shooter actually
killed the president).
The final possible scenario is that Lee Harvey Oswald was an innocent
person who either was framed or (like numerous other innocent persons
erroneously believed to be guilty of a crime they did not commit) was the victim
of a body of incriminating circumstantial evidence that misleadingly indicated
his guilt. If Oswald was framed, the frame-up must have been principally the
work of the unknown conspirators responsible for the
assassination.
The most probable of these scenarios, I shall show, is that Lee Harvey
Oswald was an innocent man framed for a murder he did not commit—that, as Oswald
himself shouted while under arrest (and before he was murdered in the presence
of 70 police officers while a handcuffed prisoner), he was a “patsy.” The
assassination therefore most likely resulted from a conspiracy, with Oswald not
being one of the conspirators.
Yes, there was evidence of Oswald’s guilt. But it was designed to mislead.
When an innocent person is framed—that is, when evidence, whether fabricated or
not, is planted or arranged so as to falsely incriminate an innocent person—the
result is that there exists what appears to be persuasive evidence of his guilt.
The books are full of cases where an innocent person was found guilty of a crime
he didn’t commit on the basis of what appeared to be strong incriminating
evidence which later turned out to be bogus or erroneously indicative of
guilt.
Those who accuse Lee Harvey Oswald of shooting JFK insist that there was
overwhelming evidence he did it. They are wrong.
The Warren Report
The notion that Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy dates back to
the 1964 Warren Report, the official report of the Warren Commission, the
blue-ribbon government body appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson a week
after the assassination to investigate the murder.
It is hardly necessary to point out that today among serious assassination
investigators both the Warren Commission and its final report are largely
discredited. “[T]he Warren Commission,” in the words of Prof. McKnight, “went
through the motions of an investigation that was little more than an improvised
exercise in public relations. The government did not want to delve into the
heart of darkness of the Kennedy assassination because it feared what it might
uncover: the brutal truth . . . that [the] assassination was carried out by
powerful and irrational forces within his own government.” As for the Warren
Report itself, it was, as David Talbot phrases it, “the result of massive
political cunning and investigative fraud” and “remains a notorious symbol of
official coverup.” Apologists for the Warren Report used to insist that the
Warren Commission did a thorough job of investigation and that because it got
the facts right, its conclusions were correct; but now they have retreated to
the backup position that while it is true that the Commission botched its
investigative job in important respects, the conclusions reached in its Report
remain correct.
The Warren Report could not adduce any credible reason why Lee Harvey
Oswald would want to murder President Kennedy and was obliged to engage in
Freudian musing about Oswald being some sort of sociopathic
misfit.
The respective assassins who murdered presidents Lincoln in 1865, Garfield
in 1881, and McKinley in 1901, each had a motive and after the deed each proudly
proclaimed what he had done. Oswald, on the other hand, had no known motive and
denied the deed. Every scrap of relevant evidence suggests that Oswald admired
JFK. Nor have the apologists for the Warren Report been able to come up with a
good reason why Oswald would assassinate JFK, although they have advanced a
number of ridiculous ones. Their latest ploy is to claim that pro-Castroites who
met up with Oswald at a Mexican twist party (yes, a Mexican twist party!!)
during his mysterious trip to Mexico City two months before the assassination
told him things that induced him to decide to murder the president out of love
for Fidel Castro. The many problems with this droll story include that there is
no adequate proof that Oswald attended such a party, or that Oswald was so
stupid or gullible that he would fall for the story allegedly fed him by the
Fidelistas, or that Oswald was in fact a Castro lover (indeed, Oswald’s leftist
activities were all for show; he associated with or worked for American
intelligence or law enforcement officials and his so-called pro-Communist
leanings amounted to what in intelligence parlance is called a “legend,” a cover
story created to mask the real activities or the real purpose of a person
involved in covert activities).
Circumstantial Evidence
The Warren Report cited a number of pieces of circumstantial evidence in
support of its key conclusion that Oswald fired at the limousine from the
sixth-floor window with the Mannlicher Carcano carbine found hidden among some
cartons on that floor by police. This evidence is not
overwhelming.
The six allegedly most incriminating pieces of circumstantial evidence
which the Report thought proof of Oswald’s guilt were these:
1. The carbine found on the sixth-floor “was owned by and in the possession
of Oswald.”
2. Oswald carried the carbine into the Book Depository on the morning of
the assassination.
3. Oswald was present at the sixth-floor window when the shots were
fired.
4. A rifleman with Oswald’s capabilities could have used the sixth-floor
carbine to commit the assassination.
5. Three expended cartridge cases found near the sixth-floor window were
fired from that carbine to the exclusion of all other
weapons.
6. A nearly whole bullet found on Gov. Connally’s stretcher at the hospital
and two bullet fragments found in the limousine were fired from that carbine to
the exclusion of all other weapons.
Let us begin our analysis of this so-called evidence of Oswald’s
culpability by belaboring the obvious: the evidence was entirely
circumstantial; no one saw Oswald fire the weapon and Oswald himself denied
guilt; and even if all this evidence is trustworthy, it fails to prove
that Oswald was the person who fired any of the shots. Furthermore, this
evidence is just as compatible with Oswald being framed as it is with his being
guilty. The evidence is exactly the type of evidence you would expect if
conspirators who murdered a president were covering their tracks by arranging or
planting evidence that would falsely incriminate someone who in the lingo of the
intelligence community is known as a “false sponsor” (a person who will be
publicly blamed for a covert operation after it takes place, thereby diverting
attention away from the real culprits). As a former defector to the Soviet
Union and putatively a leftist extremist, Oswald was the ideal candidate for a
frame-up.
Let us now turn to the Warren Report’s claim that the sixth-floor carbine
“was owned by and in the possession of Oswald,” a claim that is unsubstantiated
and unreliable.
There are many reasons to doubt that the carbine on the sixth floor was
Oswald’s. Assassination investigators have demonstrated that there are
legitimate suspicions about the paperwork purporting to show that Oswald
purchased a Mannlicher Carcano through the mail and about whether if, he did, it
was delivered to him. Neither the FBI nor the Dallas police found Oswald’s
fingerprints on the sixth-floor carbine. Although a Dallas policeman did claim
to have lifted Oswald’s palmprint from the underside of the carbine’s barrel,
the FBI could find no trace of this print and a number of suspicious
circumstances suggest that the palmprint claim was fabricated. Most importantly,
the sixth-floor carbine cannot be proved to be the same carbine allegedly mailed
to Oswald. Both the sixth-floor carbine and the carbine supposedly sent to
Oswald bore the serial number C2766. The Warren Report states that “the rifle
[sic] in question is the only of its type bearing that serial number.” This was
blatantly false. A document provided the Warren Commission by the FBI reveals
that Mannlicher Carcanos were manufactured in Italy from 1891 to 1941; that in
the 1930s all Italian arms factories were ordered to manufacture Mannlicher
Carcanos; and that “[s]ince many concerns were manufacturing the same weapon,
the same serial number appears on weapons manufactured by more than one
concern.” In short, the carbine found on the sixth-floor had a non-unique
serial number! Therefore, it is impossible to prove that the weapon allegedly
sent in the mail to Oswald was the weapon found on the sixth-floor. Therefore,
it is impossible to prove that the sixth-floor weapon was
Oswald’s.
Assassination scholar Sylvia Meagher understated things when she wrote
years ago: “The fact that a considerable number of Mannlicher Carcano rifles
[sic] may bear serial number C2766 clearly weakens the case against Oswald.” (Of
course, even if the weapon was Oswald’s this does not prove that he used it to
shoot JFK.)
The Warren Report’s claim that Oswald carried the carbine into the Book
Depository on the morning of the assassination is also unproven. According to
the Report, Oswald took the disassembled carbine into the building concealed in
a bulky paper bag or wrapping found later on the sixth floor. However, the only
witnesses who saw Oswald with the paper bag that morning—the man who gave Oswald
a ride to work and his sister—repeatedly testified that the sixth-floor bag
definitely was longer than the bag they saw Oswald carrying. A Depository
employee who saw Oswald enter the back of the building that morning testified
positively that Oswald had nothing in his hands.
The Warren Report’s claim that Oswald was present at the sixth-floor window
when the shots were fired also is unproven. The Depository employee on whom the
Commission relied as a witness—and he did not actually say that he saw or knew
that Oswald was on the sixth-floor at the time the president was shot—was of
doubtful credibility; several other employees saw Oswald in or near the second
floor lunchroom at a time when the Report says he was on the sixth-floor; and an
employee who ate a chicken lunch on the sixth-floor until 10 minutes before the
assassination did not see Oswald there (which means that Oswald would have had
10 minutes to reassemble and load the carbine, stack around the so-called
sniper’s perch a shield of 24 cartons each weighing about 50 pounds, and prepare
himself to shoot an American president).
The Report’s claim that a rifleman with Oswald’s capabilities could have
used the sixth-floor carbine to commit the assassination is, true enough,
theoretically possible, but breathtakingly unlikely, to say the least. This will
be explained at length below.
The Report’s assertion that the three empty cartridge cases found near the
sixth-floor window were fired from the sixth-floor carbine to the exclusion of
all other weapons is demonstrably false. A letter to the Warren Commission from
the FBI and signed by J. Edgar Hoover states that “the extractor and ejector
marks on [the three cartridge cases] did not possess sufficient characteristics
for identifying the weapon which produced them.” Thus, as assassination
researcher Sylvia Meagher writes, the Warren Report “misrepresented the nature
of the markings on the cartridge shells.” Of course, even if the cartridge cases
had been ejected from the carbine, this would not be proof that Oswald had done
the shooting, or proof that the cases had been ejected from the carbine at the
time of the assassination. The cases might have been
planted.
What about the Warren Report’s claim that a nearly whole bullet found on
Gov. Connally’s stretcher at the hospital and two bullet fragments found in the
limousine were fired from the sixth-floor carbine to the exclusion of all other
weapons?
As for the stretcher bullet, Ms. Meagher’s careful review of the testimony
given to the Warren Commission shows that it is highly unlikely that the bullet
came from Connally’s stretcher; and it is also highly unlikely that this bullet,
which was practically whole and only slightly deformed, and which had no blood
or clothing fibers on it, had, as the Report claims, perforated the bodies of
both JFK and Connally, inflicting seven nonfatal wounds on the two men. (The
injuries suffered by Connally included a fractured rib and a shattering of the
radius of his right wrist.) As for the limousine bullet fragments, the
likelihood is either that the fragments were planted or that they were fired not
from the carbine but from a different, larger weapon firing bullets fitted with
a sabot, which permits smaller caliber slugs to be fired from a larger shell
casing. At any rate, even if all this ballistics evidence genuinely pointed to
the carbine as the weapon that fired at the limousine, this still does not prove
that Oswald was the person who did the shooting.
Now, having exposed weaknesses in the Warren Report’s circumstantial case
against Lee Harvey Oswald, let us to turn to each of the four possible scenarios
regarding Oswald that were set forth above.
Evaluating the Possible Scenarios
Under the first scenario, which was embraced by the Warren Report, Oswald
did all the shooting with an old, flimsy, second-hand, carbine which, as Sylvia
Meagher explains, had a “difficult bolt, eccentric trigger, maladjusted scope,
and disintegrating firing pin,” and which fired small caliber medium velocity
bullets around 20 years old.
According to this scenario, these were the facts: Although the carbine
could hold seven cartridges (six in the clip, and one in the chamber), Oswald
prepared to shoot the president with only four rounds in the weapon. (A live
round was found in the chamber of the carbine and three spent cartridges were
found on the floor.) Oswald fired three shots. One of these shots struck the
seated JFK in the back of his shoulder or neck, exited his throat, and then went
through Connally’s body from back to front (although the Report did acknowledge
the possibility that the two men were hit by separate bullets). Another shot,
presumably the last, struck JFK squarely in the back of the head and killed him.
At the time the shots were fired the limousine was moving at 11 mph downhill and
away from and at an angle to the sixth-floor window (which was 60 feet above
street level). At the time of the fatal headshot the limousine was 88 yards (265
feet) from the window. All the shots were fired within the space of 5.6
seconds.
This scenario, while of course theoretically possible, may be ruled out as
practically impossible. Here are some of the reasons.
● Oswald was a poor shot.
● There was no evidence that Oswald ever practiced firing the
carbine.
● The ammunition used by the carbine had not been manufactured
since 1944.
● The Mannlicher Carcano carbine found on the sixth floor had
been manufactured before 1942, possibly in the 1930s.
● The FBI firearms expert who testified before the Warren
Commission after examining the carbine described it twice as “a cheap old
weapon.”
● Strangely, neither the Dallas police nor the FBI performed a
routine swab test of the inside of the carbine’s barrel. There is no proof,
therefore, that the weapon had recently been fired.
● The owner of The Gun Shop in Dallas told the FBI in March
1964 that Mannlicher Carcanos were “a very cheap rifle and could have been
purchased for $3.00 each in lots of 25.”
● The retail price of the Mannlicher Carcano carbine equipped
with a scope that was allegedly shipped to Oswald was $19.95 (without the scope
the weapon was sold retail for $12.78).
● The carbine allegedly shipped to Oswald had previously been
part of a shipment of rifles that was the subject of a legal proceeding to
collect payment for the shipment of rifles claimed to be
defective.
● It was unusually difficult to work the bolt on the
sixth-floor carbine. The pressure to open the bolt was so great that, in the
absence of proficiency with the weapon, it tended to move the weapon off the
target.
● Unlike most rifles, the sixth-floor carbine had a two-stage
trigger which required getting use to.
● The firing pin of the sixth-floor carbine was worn and there
was rust on it and its spring. In fact, before their firing tests with the
carbine, the master riflemen who performed the tests did not even pull the
trigger, out of fear that they might break the firing pin. (These tests are
discussed below.)
● The sixth-floor carbine’s scope was defective, causing shots
fired from the weapon to land a few inches high and to the right of the target.
The scope could not be properly aligned with the target because the sight
reached the limit of its adjustment before reaching accurate
alignment.
● The shooting tests using the sixth-floor carbine, arranged
by the Warren Commission with the expectation that they would prove that Oswald
could have assassinated JFK with that carbine, ended up proving, on the
contrary, that it was nearly impossible for Oswald (or anyone else) to have used
the weapon to shoot Kennedy.
● The shooting tests were performed by three master riflemen
whose shooting skills far exceeded Oswald’s. Each of the riflemen fired two
series of three shots using the carbine’s scope, for a total of 18 shots. The
conditions of the shooting tests differed materially from the conditions
prevailing in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination. The tests involved
firing at stationary rather than moving targets. The target area for the master
riflemen was considerably larger than the alleged sixth-floor assassin’s target
area. The tests were from a height of 30 feet, half that of the sixth-floor
window. The angles to the targets were different from the angles of the
sixth-floor window to the moving limousine. The riflemen, unlike alleged
assassin Oswald, were given as much time as they wanted before firing the first
shot. Before the riflemen engaged in their firing tests with the carbine, shims
were inserted to improve the weapon’s scope; thus, during the tests the experts
used a rebuilt scope rather than the one allegedly used by Oswald (assuming that
he used the scope rather than the iron sights).
● Even though the difficulties facing the riflemen were far
less than those of the alleged assassin, two of the three riflemen were
unable to shoot as fast at stationary targets as Oswald supposedly had at a
moving target; not one of the riflemen struck the head or neck on the target
even once (even though Oswald supposedly did this twice); and of the 18
total shots, the riflemen missed 5 collectively (more than 25%), whereas the
alleged assassin hit the target at least 2 out of 3 times
(67%).
The first scenario—the scenario adopted in the Warren Report—that Lee
Harvey Oswald, acting alone, assassinated President Kennedy, may, therefore,
whatever the theoretical possibilities, be ruled out. Based on the evidence, it
is unreasonable to believe that Oswald shot the president from the Book
Depository with the carbine found on the sixth floor. For Oswald to have
possessed the superlative marksmanship required under this scenario is a
practical impossibility.
Since the second scenario—the scenario John Kerry thinks is
possible—involves Oswald assassinating JFK using the Mannlicher Carcano under
the same circumstances as in the first scenario, it too may be ruled
out.
The third scenario—under which Oswald conspired with others (whose identity
is unknown) to assassinate JFK and presumably used the Mannlicher Carcano to
fire at the president—is absurd and therefore must be
rejected.
There is, of course, ample evidence that a conspiracy was behind the
assassination. Without attempting to summarize this vast mass of evidence, it is
certain that numerous witnesses in Dealey Plaza heard shots fired from the
grassy knoll area in front and to the right of the limousine, while other
witnesses there saw puffs of smoke arising from the knoll area or smelled
gunpowder. After the fatal headshot, the Zapruder film shows Kennedy reacting as
if shot in the right temple from the front and right: his head jerks violently
backward and to the left. And in 1979, it should be remembered, the U.S. House
of Representatives Committee on Assassinations concluded, after reinvestigating
the JFK assassination, that it resulted from a conspiracy.
But no professional conspiracy to murder a president would use a Mannlicher
Carcano to effect the assassination. No plotters and murderers so dangerous, so
ruthless, so calculating, and so fiendishly cold-blooded that they could
successfully plan and carry out a presidential assassination and then elude
investigators would have any conceivable use for the sixth-floor carbine—unless
it was being utilized to confuse investigators and diabolically throw the blame
on some hapless dupe, i.e., Lee Harvey Oswald. Which, of course, would fit
neatly into the fourth scenario.
There are good reasons for rejecting the first three scenarios. There are
no good reasons for rejecting the fourth scenario. Of the four scenarios, the
fourth is the only one that is not highly improbable. The fourth scenario is
therefore the scenario most likely to have occurred and most worthy of belief.
The balance of probabilities is that Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot President
Kennedy and that he was framed by the unknown conspirators who murdered Kennedy
and escaped scot-free.
Conclusion
To discuss the Kennedy assassination by phrasing the questions in terms of
whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or why he killed JFK is fallacious. It
borders on the frivolous to assert that Oswald shot the president. The carbine
and the other evidence found on the sixth floor must have been planted. Oswald
was a patsy, framed by unknown conspirators who planned and carried out the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
In regard to the JFK assassination,
therefore, the correct questions to ask are: Who were the conspirators behind
the assassination? What were their motives? And how could it happen that they
escaped justice after murdering a president? (This last question could equally
be phrased: Why was the investigation of a presidential murder botched?) The
answers to these questions are beyond the purview of this
article.
Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. is a Professor of Law Emeritus at the UGA School
of Law. This is his 35th JFK assassination artic
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