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

Yesterday, I watched the movie Reservoir Dogs which was Quentin Tarentino's directorial and acting debut (he has a small role in it).

And I wrote a review of it on Amazon, which you can see here:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2BJOQ0KO2KCLZ 

So, it's a diamond heist that goes wrong, and the reason it goes wrong is because the cops were tipped off. They show up way too early. A lot of people get killed, including two of the robbers. And one of of the robbers takes a bullet in the belly, and it looks like he is terminal. But, he is helped by another robber, played by Harvey Keitel, and they and the others who got away meet up at this abandoned warehouse, and the first thing on their minds is: who is the traitor in the group? Who is the informant?

They don't find out until the end, but the audience finds out pretty early on. In fact, I'll go ahead and tell you: it's the guy who took the bullet in the belly and who was in such bad shape; he was really an under-cover cop. 

But, I couldn't help but think about Oswald because of the claims of Judyth Baker and others that he was an informant, in effect, an under-cover cop in the JFK assassination plot. 

But, Reservoir Dogs (whose title does not come up in any way in the movie; it's just a metaphor, that these guys were as mean and vicious as reservoir dogs) involves a lot of flashbacks, and a lot of them pertain to this under-cover cop. He was a white guy, as they all were, but he had a supervisor who was a black guy and a real expert at under-cover operations. This supervisor was guiding him and teaching him how to sell himself to this vicious gang of criminals. And one of the things he had him do was read and memorize a script. The script was, supposedly, a narrative of something that happened to him after a previous crime. It involved drugs, and he had drugs in his satchel. And he happens to go into a public restroom to urinate, and there happens to be several policeman there talking at the sink. And they happen to have a drug-smelling dog with them, a big German shepherd.  So, the dog starts barking at him for the obvious reason. And he is scared to death that the cops are going to put 2 and 2 together. But, he just acts non-chalant about it, urinating and then washing his hands. He doesn't rush. He doesn't act unnerved. And the cops go on talking amongst themselves about some arrest they had made without ever registering on the fact that their dog was trying to send them a message about this guy. So, he makes it out of there.

But, it's a pretty long script, and the under-cover cop complains about having to learn it all. But, the supervisor is adamant, that this could save his life. He had to learn that script, get the story down pat, but then practice telling it in his own words, to do it naturally. And he even told the guy: "You are an actor!" 

So, you see the guy alone in his apartment practicing the recitation of this script. And then you see him with the gang members telling it to them for real, and of course, he comes off as tough and as street-smart and hardened as they are. And he really convinces them that he is one of them, that he is of their ilk. And in the last, final seconds of the movie, when it's just him and Harvey Keitel, and the cop tells Harvey that he is the under-cover cop, you realize that until that very second, Harvey could not believe it. He refused to believe it. I mean, he believes it after the cop tells him, but not until then. That's how good an actor this cop was.

But, of course, that cop was an actor, and a very good one: Tim Roth, who happens to be British. Of course, he ditched his British accent for the role. 

But, what about Lee Harvey Oswald? Was he an actor? No, he wasn't. Did he ever receive training in such a thing as this, infiltrating a criminal gang and pretending to be one of them? No, not at all. 

And remember, it wasn't just anything brief. On the contrary, it was protracted. Supposedly, for months, he was collaborating with the killers, pretending to be one of them, and winning them over so convincingly that they even assigned him to be a shooter. And supposedly, he bamboozled all of them, including Malcolm Wallace and Jack Ruby. 

So, you should watch Reservoir Dogs if you haven't done so. It is fabulous movie-making- if you can stomach the violence. But, as you are watching it, picture our Lee Harvey Oswald in the role played by Tim Roth, who is known in the story as Mr. Orange. You really think Oswald could have pulled that off? Fat chance. He was no under-cover agent. He was just the patsy; that's all.  He wasn't playing them; they were playing him.