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

Oswald left $170 in cash with Marina, which is equivalent to $1727.80 today. I used an inflation calculator to determine that. Obviously, that was a lot of cash. But, where did he get it? 

Lee and Marina Oswald were very poor the whole time they lived in the U.S. The various jobs that Lee had were very low-paying, bottom of the barrel. And he didn't work consistently. They often had to depend on the largess of others. Weren't they doing that with Ruth Paine?  

Lee lost his job as a machine greaser at the Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans at the end of July. So, they had no income in August and September. Marina returned to Dallas with Ruth Paine in late September, who drove down to get her. The story went that Oswald snuck his rifle into her station wagon, knowing that, as a pacifist, she did not approve of firearms and would not allow one at her house. But, how did the rifle get from the station wagon into Ruth's garage? Oswald wasn't there to bring it in. Did Marina sneak it in? She never said that. When first asked,  Marina didn't know anything about Oswald owning a rifle. When first asked, she said that Oswald used to own a rifle back in Russia, but he sold it. Actually, it was a shotgun. But, why would she mention that if she knew he currently owned a rifle? She wouldn't. I realize that eventually, she sang like a canary about Oswald and his rifle, but that was only after she was MKULTRA'd by the FBI and Secret Service. She said all kinds of  things, some of which were outrageously and patently false. 

But, after Marina returned to Dallas with RP, Oswald, reportedly, went to Mexico City, but that is a lie. I had the privilege of talking with Mark Lane on the phone once for an hour and a half. We talked about quite a few things, including Oswald's supposed trip to Mexico City. Mark Lane knew by December 6, 1963 that Oswald  never went to Mexico City. He included it in his A Lawyer's Brief, which was published on that day. 

Mark told me that he gave a lecture once in Royce Hall at UCLA. That rang a bell because I went to UCLA, and I had classes in Royce Hall. It's a big magnificent gothic building right across from the main library on the campus. In his lecture, he established that Oswald never went to Mexico City. At the end of the lecture, an attendee went up to him and identified himself as David Atlee Phillips, and he told Mark Lane that the CIA knows full well that Oswald never went to Mexico City. 

I spoke about it with John Armstrong once, who also knows that Oswald never went to Mexico City, and he told me that it's possible that Oswald went to Houston in search of work at that time. I don't recall the basis for him saying that. And when first asked, Marina knew nothing about Oswald going to Mexico City. Oswald, himself, denied ever going to Mexico City. That came out in the very first interview. According to James Bookhout, Oswald said that the only time he ever set foot in Mexico is when he took a look at Tijuana. That was when  he was stationed as a Marine in Oceanside in San Diego County. I lived in Oceanside once myself. Actually, it was Carlsbad,  but I worked in Oceanside. 

But, we do know that Oswald got back to Dallas by bus on October 2, and he started working at the TSBD on  October 16. 

So, he was out of work a long time, from late July to October 16. He earned $1.11/hour at the TSBD. He had to pay rent at his rooming house on Beckley. And reportedly, he was giving money Marina for various things. So, how did he accumulate $170 by November 21? It can't be that he saved it from his salary. And he didn't steal it.  So that leaves only one possibility: somebody must have given it to him.

According to Marina, Oswald went to Iriving that Thursday to plead with her to move back with him. He said he would find an apartment for them in Dallas. She turned him down. She said she wasn't ready yet. But, she didn't do so like a woman who was heading for divorce. In Oswald's mind, they were not offically separated. They were just living apart because of circumstances. And it's fair to say that his family was not just the most important thing in his life; it was the only thing in his life. 

So,  why did Oswald leave all that money with her? It relates to why he went to Irving in the first place. He didn't go there to retrieve a rifle. He couldn't have because he didn't own  a rifle. He certainly didn't go there to get curtain rods. He went there to talk to her about living with him again and to show her that he had the money to launch it. 

I don't know who gave him the money and under what pretense. But, I strongly suspect that whoever gave it to him urged him to give it to his wife right away for safe keeping, imploring him that it wasn't safe to leave it in that rooming house. And that explains why he went to Irving on Thursday night. It had nothing to do with getting a rifle. 

The stigma that is usually associated with him leaving all that money is that he knew he was going to kill Kennedy, and it could be the end for him. So, he wanted Marina to have it since he was determined to go down that road. 

But why, if he knew he was going to kill Kennedy, would he implore her to move in with him? What was all that talk about living in an apartment together? Was it that if she had said yes that he would have been so happy that he would have called off killing Kennedy? It's ridiculous to talk about it because he never had any thought of killing Kennedy. It's a complete fiction. 

It's important to understand Oswald's mindset at that time. It was to get his family under his roof again; to obtain a better job; and to get a driver's license because he thought that would increase his employment possibilities. That's it. Nothing else. He wasn't involved in anything political. He wasn't doing anything with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee at that time. He had no friends in Dallas at that time. He was not seeing Robert or Marina Oswald, his non-brother and non-mother. And that isn't just me talking: that is John Armstrong talking. 

Oswald did not befriend anyone at the TSBD. He wasn't interested. Even Buell Frasier was just a convenient way for him to get to Irving. I'm sure Oswald was civil and pleasant to Frasier, but he wasn't interested in becoming friends with him. They did absolutely nothing together except those drives to and from Irving.

Oswald NEVER ate with anyone. Eating with someone is a social  activity, and he was not interested in being social with anyone at the TSBD.  In his testimony, Will Fritz was asked about Oswald's alibi. Now, we know what it was. He told Fritz that he was "out with Bill Shelley in front"  during the motorcade. And Oswald could not have known that Shelley was out in front at that time unless he was there himself. But, Fritz didn't want to reveal that. "Out with Bill Shelley in front" wasn't discovered until 10 years after Fritz' death.  And it wasn't until the ARRB that it went public. 

But, what Fritz told the WC was that Oswald said he was eating lunch with other employees at the time of the shooting. Now, Oswald never said that, and he never did that, ever. He NEVER ate lunch with other employees at the TSBD. He was totally anti-social there. But, what Fritz was doing was twisting what Oswald did say, which was that while he was eating lunch ALONE in the domino room, that Junior Jarman and Harold Norman ("a short negro) were around. That's it! That is all there was to it. But, Fritz twisted it into what he said. 

So, Oswald was working in Dallas and living an extremely solitary life. Was he lonely? I don't think so. I think it was a time in which he was so focused on getting his family back that he just wasn't interested in developing relationships with other people. 

So, there he was working at the TSBD, and somehow, supposedly, he found out about the motorcade passing the building, and supposedly, a switch got flipped in his brain, and he had the compelling thought to kill Kennedy. That's the story, but it has zero credibility. 

There is no evidence that Oswald knew about the motorcade route, and there is evidence that he didn't. On Friday morning, he asked James Jarman why people were gathering on the sidewalk. He didn't know, and Jarman told him. But, if that is when he found out, then obviously he could not have intended to kill Kennedy. Is there any reason to think that Jarman lied? Of course not. So, why did Oswald do it? Was he putting on an act to Jarman to establish an ignorance alibi? Apparently not because he didn't use it. After he was accused of killing Kennedy, he never said, "How could I have done it when I didn't  even know  he would be passing the building? Just ask Junior Jarman? He'll tell you." Oswald never said it.  

I'll leave you with this: It would take the most extreme degree of insanity and psychosis to be triggered to commit murder from seeing a motorcade route in the newspaper. It's not as though Oswald hated Kennedy. He never in his life said a bad word about Kennedy. He defended Kennedy to his wife's relatives in Russia. The idea that he was harboring any homicidal thoughts- towards Kennedy or anyone else- is preposterous. But, what about the Walker shooting attempt, you ask?

That wasn't Oswald. There are multiple "dealbreakers" why that could not possibly have been him. It was physically and logistically impossible for it to have been him. And again, when first asked, Marina knew nothing about it. It was only after her submersion and subversion into the dark spook world of MKULTRA that she started singing like a canary about the Walker shooting attempt. 

It is simply preposterous to think that Oswald was so deranged as to flip out over a hypothetical sighting of the motorcade route in the newspaper. Whatever his psychological problems and maladjustments were, they did not extend to that realm of deviancy.   

.