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

James Smith wants to know how I think the whole thing went down- a brief synopsis. I think the first inklings to kill Kennedy started while Oswald was in Russia, and it may have been with the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the Spring of 1961. That's when Kennedy fired Allan Dulles and others, and he paid off Castro- in baby food and baby supplies- to release the anti-Castro fighters. That may be when the plan to kill Kennedy really found traction. But, Oswald was still in Russia at the time, and I don't think they were thinking of him in connection with it. I don't think that Oswald was seriously considered as a patsy until after he got back from Russia in June 1962. 

It's important to remember that there were multiple plots to kill Kennedy, and the Dallas plot was not the first. The Chicago plot was set to happen in October, so that was a month before. And it was a very serious plot: in place, they had the guns the gunmen, and the patsy, whose name was Thomas Arthur Vallee,  who, like Oswald, was a disgruntled ex-Marine. However, he was an ultra-right winger instead of an ultra-left winger. 

But, they chose Oswald for the Dallas plot because he was from the Dallas area, because he was a Soviet defector, and because he had a double that they could use to set him up, as they did when they sent the double to the shooting range, the car dealer, etc. 

In some ways, Oswald was the dream patsy. But, I still think they had to see him and interview him after he returned from Russia to get a sense of how he was physically and mentally before they firmly decided to use him.  

But, once they decided to go with Oswald, it was a matter of monitoring him and controlling him, and they assigned George DeMohreschildt to be his handler. And one of the ways they did that was to keep him poor and hard-up so that he was always struggling, where he would have no choice but to accept the work options that they got for him, including at Jaggars/Chiles/Stovall, Reilly Coffee, and the TSBD- all of which were CIA connected companies. 

Sending him down to New Orleans was for the purpose of establishing his pro-Castro credentials. 

As far as Oswald being an "intelligence agent" at that point, I really think it was something that he played at and that they played him with. Was he really an intelligence agent? If he was, he would have been paid. I know there are references to Oswald being on the FBI payroll for $200/month, but that was quite a lot of money back then, and Oswald would not have been so hard up all the time, repeatedly applying for government benefits and having to seek and obtain help from others if he had such regular money coming in. For me to believe that Oswald was a paid agent, I would have to see the money trail.  

But, I'll admit that it's a very strange thing that Oswald was publicly a pro-Castro activist in New Orleans while hanging out with anti-Castro activists like Bannister, Ferrie, etc. I don't claim to have a handle on Oswald's state of mind at the time except that I don't think he knew anything about the upcoming JFK assassination, and nobody had any reason to tell him anything about it. What for? They didn't need him to be a shooter. That is a ridiculous and absurd idea. Oswald was the patsy. Not the patsy/participant, just the patsy. And you keep the patsy in the dark. Why would they have risked telling him? For what purpose? When had Oswald ever been involved with murder before? Why would they think he had the stomach for it? He wasn't THAT kind of intelligence agent.  

Where he was during the time he was supposed to be in Mexico City, I don't know, but there are rumors that he went to Houston. But, they got Ruth Paine to take his pregnant wife and his daughter back to Dallas, and that was the lure to get him to go back there. For months, they were getting things ready for him at the TSBD, even moving that summer from the Dal-Tex building into 411 Elm just for the assassination. Then, the official story has it that Ruth Paine heard about openings at the TSBD from having afternoon tea and crumpets with the neighbor ladies in Irving, but the truth is that it was planned well in advance to place Oswald there. But, he accepted the job for $1.11/hour because he was desperate for money.  

The official story has it that Oswald got the idea to kill Kennedy from reading the Dallas newspaper on his lunch break at the TSBD just days before the assassination- even though there is no evidence of it. Furthermore- and this isn't emphasized nearly enough- Oswald would have had to be INSANE to enact a murder plan over such a tiny time arc. What I mean is that for most people who commit murder, getting embroiled enough mentally to commit murder is a gradual process. They have to build up to it. It takes time. For Oswald to be calmly sitting there eating his lunch in the lunch room, breezing through the newspaper and seeing the motorcade route listed and suddenly getting the idea: "I'm going to kill Kennedy!" would require such an extreme degree of psychopathology; he would have had to be severely deranged mentally. But, what evidence is there that he was so deranged? Mental derangement doesn't come on overnight either. And I'm sure that's why they made up the story about him trying to kill Walker and wanting to kill Nixon in Dallas in April (even though Nixon wasn't even in Dallas in April) just to create a pattern of extreme mental illness which did not exist. Oswald was not crazy. 

What were Oswald's expectations on November 22? Again, I don't claim to have a handle on exactly what was going through his mind. But, I do know that he was unaware that Kennedy's motorcade would be passing the TSBD building that day because if he knew that, he would have understood why people were gathering on the sidewalk in front. But, he didn't know, so he asked Junior Jarman who told him. And, Jarman didn't know either until he found out shortly before. I think it's also very telling that Frazier denied that, while driving to work that morning, there was any discussion between him and Oswald about the President's visit.  

Think about it from your own perspective and your own experience: You're driving to work with a co-worker, and you know that the President of the United States is going to be driving right by your building that day, and you don't say anything? Neither Frazier nor Oswald knew at that time that this was going to happen. Frazier admitted as much, and we can infer it about Oswald. They both found out AFTER they arrived at work. 

Then, the other thing I think about is the fact that Oswald, in the 12:15 to 12:20 time frame, sat in the Domino room and calmly ate a cheese sandwich and an apple. Who does that knowing that the President of the United States is going to have his head blown off in 10 minutes? And again I say that no matter what you want to claim about Oswald being an "intelligence agent" he wasn't THAT kind of intelligence agent, that is, the kind who is involved with and hardened to cold-blooded murder. Oswald was NEVER a combat Marine. He was never involved in the violent, bloodied side of things. 

So, when he was done eating his lunch in the Domino room, he went out into the doorway. But, he may have lingered for a while inside and just watched through the glass. I think it's very likely that he was the last to go outside.  But, there were people in that doorway whose job it was to make sure that he didn't wander into Dealey Plaza, particularly Bill Shelley. 

Shelley wasn't back in the shadows, as he claimed. Shelley was down on the steps, and he was there to block Oswald from going down further, if it came to that. And then, it was probably Shelley who shooed Oswald up to the lunch room at the crucial moment. I don't know what Shelley told Oswald to get him to go there, but he must have told him something.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Oswald was just a patsy, a mark, a stooge- call him what you will, but he was not an insider nor a participant in the assassination. And I'll leave you with this:

With the unraveling of the Chicago plot, they rounded up Thomas Arthur Vallee, and they brought him in for questioning. They interrogated him for 10 hours: that's the Chicago Police, the FBI, and the Secret Service. And there conclusion was that he knew absolutely NOTHING. Nada, zilch, nunca, nieto. 

Well, if they didn't tell Thomas Arthur Vallee anything about the Chicago plot, what makes you think they would have told Lee Harvey Oswald anything about the Dallas plot?