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

It is daunting to realize that if Oswald knew what was about to happen, and he acted swiftly, he DEFINITELY could have stopped the assassination and saved Kennedy. There are no "ifs" about it. 

All he had to do was run out into the street and physically block the forward progression of the limo. What was the driver going to do? Run him over? Obviously, he would have to hit the break and stop. 

For sure, law enforcement officers of all stripes would have trained their loaded guns on Oswald. But, I think it's unlikely they would have shot him dead. Why? He wasn't threatening anybody. He was showing that he wasn't armed. And if he was talking, they would have wanted to hear what he had to say. If they shot him dead, they wouldn't know. As long as he wasn't a threat to anyone, they would have had no legal grounds to shoot him. 

But, think about it another way. Oswald was the patsy, and if the patsy was out in the street, how could they proceed with the assassination? How could Oswald be out in the street in front of hundreds of people and also be up on the 6th floor shooting at Kennedy? The killers would have had no choice but to abort.

What could have gone wrong? Were there men in the doorway who would have blocked Oswald's egress? Maybe. I might even say probably. But still, it would have made a commotion which would not have gone unnoticed. And just the same, it would have established that Oswald was not up on the 6th floor but rather downstairs scuffling with Bill Shelley and whomever. So even with that, they would have lost their patsy. 

And even if they had another patsy, it would have been too late. The jig would have been up. There were too many people close at hand to hide or deny what happened. It would have become part of the record that a fight broke out in the doorway. And if Oswald had the intent of stopping the assassination, then he surely would have spilled his guts to the police about why he thought that. 

The worst case scenario for Oswald was that, despite my doubts about it, police would have shot him dead. But think about it: he still would have prevailed. He still would have saved Kennedy.

And why wouldn't he have taken the risk? Not doing it would have meant living the rest of his life knowing that he just let Kennedy die. It would have been the first thought on his mind every morning when he woke up and the last thought on his mind every night when he went to sleep. How would he face his kids knowing that? How would he be able to look himself in the mirror? 

His kids weren't in any danger. Nobody was going to go to Irving to kill them because it wouldn't accomplish anything for anybody. It wouldn't be worth the risk of doing it even if you were wicked enough to do it. It would have meant risking his own life only, but if he went out into the street with his arms raised high in the air and his fingers spread wide open, they'd see that he was unarmed and not a threat. So, there would have been no grounds to kill him. And as soon as they heard the words "Stop!" "Danger!" they'd get the idea. And even if they didn't believe him, they'd have thought he was crazy. You don't kill a person for being crazy.

So, the risk to himself was actually very small, and it was certainly worth taking. But live or die, he would have succeeded at saving Kennedy. The very act of causing a ruckus would have ground everything to a halt. It would have been all over- for the assassins. Tough luck. 

So, I only wish to God that Oswald DID know that Kennedy was going to be killed because I have every confidence that he would have stopped it at the risk of his own life.

Why wouldn't I think that about him? I think it about myself. If I were there and I knew, I would have gone out in the street. And I can think of any number of people I know who would have done that for Kennedy.

Oswald didn't know. He may have had an inkling- a bad feeling about it-  but he had no explicit knowledge of the plot.