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

Of course, I have written to John Armstrong about the discovery of the head of Lovelady's arrow, and among other things, he said:

IF YOU ARE RIGHT, RALPH YOU WILL HAVE AS MANY ENEMIES AS DO I.  AND IT FOLLOWS FROM IT THAT THE PEOPLE STANDING NEXT TO HARVEY IN THE DOORWAY ARE CO-CONSPIRATORS AND THEIR JOB WAS TO WATCH OVER AND "HANDLE" HARVEY PRIOR TO THE SHOOTING. 

John, it is not as though there was any chance that if someone wanted to say it was Oswald in the doorway that it would have been allowed. You know as well as I do that witnesses were carefully screened and carefully selected. Oswald's Marine buddies, Zac Stout and George whomever, were not allowed to testify that they lived and work with Oswald in Japan, and he was not studying Russian day or night. 

Well, anyone who tried to say it was Oswald in the doorway was undoubtedly pulled aside and informed, in no uncertain terms, that they didn't, and they had better not say it again, in public or in private, if they value their life.

So just treat the Warren Commission testimonies about it like a Stalinist show trial. But, the exception was Lovelady, and before it began, Joseph Ball was afraid. There must have been stirrings that reached him that Lovelady was not cooperating. And that's why, instead of just asking him who the Doorman figure was, as he did with both Buell Frazier and Danny Arce, Ball played the game with the arrow. 

Why? It was because the arrow was non-verbal. It wasn't going to be picked up by a stenographer or anyone else. And at no time, did he or Lovelady articulate out loud where the arrow had been drawn. It was like they were talking in code.

Before you read it, think about what you would do if you were with someone, and you wanted him to identify someone in a picture. You would just point to the person and say, "Who's he?" Right? And that is exactly what Ball did with Buell Frazier and Danny Arce. And with Arce, it was JUST AN HOUR BEFORE BALL QUESTIONED LOVELADY. But, here is how Ball handled it with Lovelady:

Mr. BALL - I have got a picture here, Commission Exhibit 369. Are you on that picture?
Mr. LOVELADY - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - Take a pen or pencil and mark an arrow where you are.
Mr. LOVELADY - Where I thought the shots are?
Mr. BALL - No; you in the picture.
Mr. LOVELADY - Oh, here (indicating).
Mr. BALL - Draw an arrow down to that; do it in the dark. You got an arrow in the dark and one in the white pointing toward you. Where were you when the picture was taken?
Mr. LOVELADY - Right there at the entrance of the building standing on the the step, would be here (indicating).
Mr. BALL - You were standing on which step?
Mr. LOVELADY - It would be your top level.
Mr. BALL - The top step you were standing there?
Mr. LOVELADY - Right.

Now, all that back-and-forth about where Lovelady was, which step, was just damage control. At that point, Ball was sweating bullets. He was shitting bricks. HE WANTED TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT. He wanted to segue to something else. And he never went back to it. 

And of course, Lovelady could have said something out loud, voluntarily. "I was the one shielding my eyes with both hands. The sun was streaming in; it was very blinding."

Lovelady could have said something like that, but he didn't, and it was because he knew that Ball didn't want to hear it. Lovelady knew what was going on. He knew that he was going out on a limb. He didn't want to make it worse by provoking the guy- defying him out loud. 

And look how small Lovelady drew the arrow. Nobody was controlling his hand except him. He did it that way because he was trying to be discreet. He was trying to tell Ball, as quietly as possible, "Psst. I wasn't Doorman. I was this other guy."  

But, in response to what you said, I would say that some of the people in the doorway were co-conspirators, and that definitely included Bill Shelley, and some of them were just scared, frightened people who stayed quiet afterwards in fear for their lives.

Are you familiar with what happened to Joe Molina? He was standing in the doorway in front of and slight east of Oswald. His home was stormed by Dallas Police the night of the assassination- in the wee hours of the morning on 11/23 actually. It scared the bejesus out of him and his family. Ostensibly, it was because of his involvement in the GI Forum, which was a Hispanic civil rights group. Supposedly, the FBI had determined that there were Communists involved in the GI Forum, ipso facto, maybe Molina was a Communist, ipso facto, maybe he was an accomplice of Oswald. It was really a warning to Molina: keep your mouth shut. Ralph