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

Fabulous letter here from the Wizard!!!

Ralph

I have been re-reading Ruby's WC testimony. It's difficult to say exactly what his state of mind was. The medical profession is good at labeling disorders but not at curing people or knowing what the fault is, so I'm guessing that this was something on the borderline of a personality disorder and mental illness, possibly fueled by drugs or alcohol (or withdrawal in prison). However, there is more of a narrative in what he says than might be apparent in the midst of all the digressions and slang. He seemed aware that he was talking in a 'slipshod' manner and was also trying to see how far he could go with these people, alternately being bold and playing it safe, and at one point feeling that he had lost the battle. One also has to guess exactly how much he knew or had to figure out.

I know that you may be doing another show on the aspect of the staged (fake) shooting, etc. I'm still trying to process it all. For me, the foremost point would be that this was the only way to eliminate Oswald. If he had simply 'died in police custody', unobserved, nobody would have bought that, so they did this as a deception: the presence of the cameras acting as cover. I suspect that Bookhout was told to keep his back to the NBC cameras (Fred Rheinstein's outfit) and that they would alter any adverse footage from the other broadcasters, who were not broadcasting live (or pretending to put it out live, I should probably say). I know that WFAA, for one, did not get Jim Davidson's footage until later and that the news was broken by a news anchor holding a telephone to his ear and also reporting what he had been given in a note. The use of cameras was the trick, suggesting openness and transparency, but, as your Russian colleague pointed out: there were no outsiders there: just police, special services personnel and the camera crew: 'dependable people'.

I saw a comment on a discussion board which suggested that Fritz's notes were copied from Bookhout's, one of the reasons being that Fritz had included 'Myself' among those present, which would have been somewhat redundant, as he already knew that he was there. I wonder if Bookhout and Pinkston were calling the shots for this whole thing (at an operational level). Bookhout was actually waiting at the jail when they brought Oswald in. I suspect that we will eventually find out that Bookhout and Pinkston were part of the Johnson group since the early days and fitted the 'subservient follower' type that Johnson was so skilled at finding and bestowing his patronage upon. I am sure that they knew Oswald before the assassination and that Hosty's public persona was just a distraction.

WWW

Very interesting indeed. I hone in on his comment that Bookhout may have known Oswald prior to the assassination, and I say: probably so. Why? Because of this: 

How could Oswald get so chummy with Bookhout so fast? And from undergoing interrogation in a very hostile situation? He asks him, "What have you got against such and such?" To me that shows a lot of familiarity, a lot of acquaintance. I think it's likely, very likely, that Oswald and Bookhout knew each other before.