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

This is a speech I have prepared for the Citizens Against Political Assassinations Conference. 

Thank you for inviting me to speak on Oswald in the doorway, which was the alibi of Lee Harvey Oswald. Before I begin presenting the evidence for this, I want to point out that in the JFK world, the side of it that disputes the official story of the JFK assassination, there are many who look caustically at the whole idea of Oswald in the doorway, like it's a crackpot idea and an embarrassment to the JFK truth movement. But, let me tell you something about those people. The vast majority of them don't claim to know where Oswald was at the time of the shooting, and they don't seem to care. They think that it's unimportant, and that's because they don't know how to think about the whole investigation.   

The right way to think about it is to imagine that you are Oswald's lawyer, and you are defending him at trial. 

Now, if a man is accused of committing a crime, and he denies doing it, and he also denies having been able to do it, from not being there at the time, what is the most important thing that his lawyer needs to do? It is to establish his whereabouts at the time of the crime. In other words: his alibi. And in that situation, if you don't establish his alibi, you are not defending him. You are not defending him at all. 

And unfortunately, there are people who dispute the official story of the JFK assassination who are not the least bit interested in defending Oswald. Bob Tannenbaum told the jury at the mock trial in Houston that he wasn't there to defend Oswald. Here it was a trial of Oswald, and Oswald's lead attorney tells the jury he's not interested in defending his client. Dr. Cyril Wecht is another guy who states over and over that he is not interested in defending Oswald.  Wecht just enjoys disputing the Single Bullet Theory. But, that has nothing to do with Oswald. In a real trial, Oswald's lawyer woultn't even go into it. He would tell the judge and the jury, "Since my client was not on the 6th floor at the time, and he did not own or possess a rifle, we shall not challenge the State's claim of a single bullet. Whether the damage done to two men was done by one bullet or many has no relevance to my client because there is no chance that he took any shots at all, and that's what we will prove."

Defending Oswald means proving that he wasn't on the 6th floor at the time of the attack. How do you prove that? There's only one way, and that is to prove that he was somewhere else. 

So, to those people who act snooty and contemptuous at the mere mention of Oswald in the doorway, I say to them, that they know where they can go, and they know what they can do when they get there. Because: although they think they have more contempt for me than I have for them, they are sadly mistaken. And I would not even try to cover my contempt and derision for them.  

Now, the second thing to realize is that we live in a finite world. By that, I mean that Oswald had to be somewhere. He didn't vaporize during the assassination. If he wasn't on the 6th floor shooting at Kennedy, he had to be somewhere else, and there aren't that many places he could have been. Let's go through the list because it's pretty damn short. 

First, it was the lunch break, so he wasn't working. So, there is no basis to claim, even theoretically, that he was on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 7th floors. If you tried to claim that, you would just be pulling it from out your ass. You have no right to do it.  Remember that anybody can say anything, and anybody can hit any keys on the keyboard. I can say that I'm secretly Elon Musk. You see how easy it is? And even though it was physically possible for Oswald to have been on one of those floors, there is no basis to propose it as a serious and plausible possibility. So, what's left? Well, there's the second floor, but the only thing on the second floor that would have had any relevance to Oswald was the lunch room. 

There were two lunch rooms at the TSBD, one on the first floor, and one on the second. The second floor lunch room was for the clerical staff that worked on the second floor. The first floor lunch room was for the warehouse workers and "order-fillers" or you could say the grunt workers. That first floor lunch room was also called the domino room because, besides eating there, the men played dominos there. So, let's look at the evidence. 

Oswald told investigators that he ate in the first floor lunch room. Fritz, Hosty, and Bookhout all reported that. There were also statements by other employees that Oswald always ate in the first floor lunch room. What attracted him to it was not the dominos, but the fact that there was usually a newspaper there that he liked to read as he ate. Also, he was not one to buy his lunch; rather, he brought his lunch. And there was a shelf in the domino room where you could stash your lunch until it was time to eat. That was something that Oswald routinely did. 

It's important to realize that they broke for lunch early that day, at 11:50. Usually they broke at Noon. So, why did they break 10 minutes early? It was to give the employees time to eat and freshen up before the motorcade arrived, which was expected to reach Dealey Plaza at 12:25. It, in fact, arrived 5 minutes late, but it was expected at 12:25. 

So, Oswald got off work at 11:50. So, what did he do? He went to the first floor lunch room, as he usually did, and he ate. And it makes sense because there was nothing else he had to do. He had no calls to make. There was a pay phone, and he knew where it was, but he had no need to phone anyone. There was no one he needed to talk to. He told investigators that he went to the first floor lunch room and ate. He said nothing about eating with anyone else, and no one ever said he ate with anyone else. They all said that he was a recluse, a loner, all the time. So, there was no chance that he was breaking bread with anyone. However, Oswald said that while he was eating alone in the 1st floor lunch room, that he saw Junior Jarman and the "short negro" which was reference to Harold Norman. 

Both Jarman and Norman testified to the Warren Commission, but they were never informed that Oswald said he saw them at the time he was eating. However, in giving their own accounts of their actions, both said that they went there to the domino room. Jarman said that some time during the morning, he went outside and bought a sandwich from the sandwich truck, and he put it on the shelf in the domino room to eat when they broke for lunch. And that's what he said he did. Norman also said he went to the domino room to get his lunch. So, indirectly, they both confirmed Oswald's claim of seeing them while he was there.  

But, we need to consider the fact that Oswald eating his lunch is very much tied to Oswald bringing his lunch. You have to have a lunch to eat before you can eat it. And Oswald did say that he brought a lunch with him, from Mrs. Paine's house, consisting of a cheese sandwich and an apple. Fritz actually wrote down plural "cheese sandwiches". So, maybe Oswald brought two. But, if Oswald really did bring such a lunch in a brown paper bag, then it means that he was telling the truth, that that's what he brought; not a rifle; but his lunch. 

But, there can't be any doubt that the place that he ate it was the first floor lunch room. The evidence for it, and the rationale for it is so compelling, that the alternate story that surfaced 15 years later, that a woman claiming to be Carolyn Arnold said, for the first time, that she saw him eating in the 2nd floor lunch room at 12:25, that that bizarre story needs to be dismissed out of hand. It's not that it's unlikely; it's that it's impossible. If it were true, then 19 year old Carolyn Arnold would have told it to the FBI agent on November 26, 1963. She wouldn't have waited 15 years to say it; she would have said it right away. 

We're all pretty much scared shitless of the FBI, are we not?  But a pregnant 19 year old girl? She was not going to lie to them. And what she told them on November 26, 1963 is that she believed she saw Oswald standing at the doorway shortly before the motorcade arrived. He was standing inside the glass. He hadn't stepped out yet. But, he was looking out through the clear glass. That's what she said. 

And, there is no reason to doubt what she said on November 26, 1963. And, that's because there isn't the slightest basis to believe that, when first asked, she lied to the FBI. That dog don't hunt. 

So, Oswald got off work at 11:50. He went ot the 1st floor lunch room, and he ate his lunch. There is no basis to doubt that or dispute it. There is no basis to place him anywhere else at the time.

Now, how long does it take to eat two cheese sandwiches and an apple? It could vary quite a lot. There are fast eaters and slow eaters. But, if Oswald was distracted by reading the newspaper at the time, then that would have slowed him down. Could it have taken him a half hour to eat? It might have. I know people who are very slow eaters. I'm not one of them, but they exist. If it took him half an hour, now we're at 12:20. And 12:25 was the expected time of arrival of the motorcade.

Now, we know Oswald knew about it. He discussed JFK coming to Dallas with his wife the night before with Marina. However, he did not know that the motorcade was going to pass his building. That morning, he asked Junior Jarman why people were gathering on the sidewalk, and Jarman told him. Oswald really didn't know. Then, he asked Jarman if he knew what direction it would be coming, and Jarman told him that he presumed it would be coming from Houston Street.  

So, Oswald knew about the Presidential motorcade, and there is every reason to believe he would have wanted to see it. I mean: why not? What else did he have to do? Nothing. What did he have to do that was more interesting and important than seeing the Leader of the Free World and his glamorous wife? Why do idiots believe that he, Lee Harvey Oswald, would have preferred to sit alone in a lunch room counting the holes in the ceiling? He had already eaten. So, he had no further business there. So, after eating, the only thing he could possibly have had to do before going outside was to relieve himself. And maybe he did. He was human, right? 

I want you to notice that timing for all this fits PERFECTLY with Carolyn Arnold's original and undoubtably true statement that she saw Oswald at the glass doorway at 12:25. Now, the FBI report by the agent questioning her, Richard Emberling, actually states 12:15 as the time she saw Oswald, but he cooked that up, not her. She said many times that she didn't get outside until 12:25. And once she removed the claim of having seen Oswald, they let her say 12:25 and put it in her statement. 

I discussed this at length with Dr. Gerald McKnight, and he said that it is a foregone conclusion that she meant 12:25 all along. The time of 12:15 was invented by Emberling to, theoretically, give Oswald 15 minutes to get up to the 6th floor. But, smarter heads than him at the FBI realized that it was still damning to the official story for Oswald to be gazing through the glass like a tourist at 12:15 if he had any intention of killing Kennedy in 10 minutes. So, they realized that the whole claim had to go. 

So, here's what we know from the evidence: Oswald got off work at 11:50. He went to the domino room. He ate his lunch. He browsed through the paper. He may have gone to the rest room. And then he went to the glass doorway where he was seen by Carolyn Arnold. The timing for all that is spot-on perfect. 

But, what did Oswald say? He told police that he was "out with Bill Shelley in front." But, how did he know that Bill Shelley was out in front? The only way he could have known is if he saw him there. He had to observe it, and to observe it, he had to be there, himself.  

So, Oswald's statement to Fritz was powerful. He not only said where he was; he proved that he wasn't lying. He provided an accurate observation that he could have only known from being there. 

Do you realize what is happening here? What is happening here is that we have proven that Oswald was in the doorway during the shooting without showing a single image. It means that, although it's great to have the Altgens photo which shows Oswald standing there, we don't actually need it. Because, as I said at the beginning, Oswald wasn't a ghost. He didn't vaporize. He had mass; he occupied space, including at the time of the JFK assassination.  And when you consider the very limited possibilities, you realize that there is no place eslse he could have been except the doorway. Every other possibility gets shot down by logical reasoning. In other words, there really are no other possibilties. Oswald was in the doorway during the shooting, and that is true by default. 

But, the fact is we do have photographic evidence. We have Oswald's capture in the Altgens photo, and his capture in the Wiegman film. And there were probably other captures as well that they deviously and malicously obscured. But, we have the two that we have, and in both cases, they went to great lengths to obscure recognizing him. In the case of the Altgens photo, they did all kinds of alterations to it, particularly in the area of the doorway. And in the case of the Wiegman film, the main thing they did was blur the whole thing severely. 

But, you need to realize something that men and clothes are two different things. The physical features of a man are one thing; the clothes he's wearing are something else. With the Altgens Doorman, we can recognize Oswald's physical features: his gaunt face, his long neck, his distant stare, his eyes, his nose, his slender, underweight build. All that can be seen on the Altgens Doorman. But then, there are the clothes; the long-sleeved, grainy outer shirt over the tattered white t-shirt, with the huge exposure of the t-shirt due to the fact that he couldn't button the outer shirt since the buttons were largely missing. So, all that was sartorially true of the Altgens Doorman and Oswald when he was arrested and brought to the DPD where he was marched around and photographed. 

There is zero chance that Billy Lovelady looked that much like Oswald and dressed that much like Oswald. I'm not saying that the chance was infinitesimal, such as .01%. I'm saying that the chance was zero. It is as certain that it was Lee Harvey Oswald standing in the doorway as it is that it was Jesus Christ nailed to the Cross. And anyone who denies that that's Oswald standing in the doorway is either working for the other side or has some other motivation that is warping their ability to think. In other words, they are being extremely stupid.  Either they are bad or they are stupid. 

Oswald was in the doorway. Nothing about the JFK assassination is more certain and more important than that. It is so certain that anytime anyone brings up anything about the JFK assassination, you should reply with, "You know, Oswald was standing in the doorway during the shooting." I am recommending that you do that, and I am asking you to do it. I am asking you to become a warrior for Lee Harvey Oswald. And I'm asking you to do it for him and to do it for us. Because: just as showing the cross to Dracula was the way to shut him down, citing Oswald in the doorway is the way to shut down the Kennedy-killers, past and present.