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

 A Nicholas Kilburn has contacted me to inform me about his project entitled: The People vs. Lee Harvey Oswald. It's to simulate Oswald's trial with the assumption that it happened no later than March 1, 1965. So, how would Oswald's trial have gone?

The answer is that Oswald could not be tried. There is no way the plotters could let that happen. It would have been a disaster for them, and they knew it. And it was worse than that because they couldn't even let Oswald see a lawyer: not even once.

Don't you find it strange that Ruby didn't even ask for a lawyer, but they got him one. Ruby was allowed to talk to a lawyer before he even spoke to Fritz. But, Oswald, who wailed about wanting a lawyer wasn't given one.

And what's really chilling is that on Sunday afternoon, Fritz was talking to reporters after Oswald had died, and he said that Jack Ruby was consulting with his lawyer, "which is his right." His right? What about Oswald's right?

And before you tell me that Oswald was offered a lawyer, which he turned down, I tell you that that never happened. The Oswald of fame never met with H. Louis Nichols. That was damage control- from Oswald's Midnight Press Conferrence where he wailed to the world about being denied a lawyer. They waited until Saturday evening when Oswald was taken to his evening interrogation to bring Nichols up to the Jail to visit with Oswald, but the man he saw and spoke with was an Oswald double.

They were never going to let Oswald talk to a lawyer. They were going to kill him before that happened. And they did; eventually. They hoped he would be killed in the Texas Theater, but that didn't work out. Then, they hoped they could kill him at the Midnight Press Conference, but they couldn't pull that off either. Then, after doing the damage control on Saturday evening, they finally succeeded at killing him on Sunday morning.

So, why couldn't they let Oswald talk to a lawyer? It's because the lawyer would surely learn from him that he was standing in the doorway during the motorcade. And then, the lawyer would have showed him the Altgens photo and asked, "Is that you?" And Oswald would have said "Yes, but they tampered with my image." But, he would have had no trouble convincing the lawyer that he was telling the truth.

Then, the lawyer would have asked him if he mail-ordered a rifle from Chicago, and Oswald would have said no. Then, the lawyer would have told him what the FBI was saying, and Oswald would have reacted aghast. And he would have had no trouble convincing the lawyer that there wasn't a word of truth to it.

Everything would have come out: the bogus Backyard photos, the reason he left the doorway to go to the 2nd floor lunch room (Bill Shelley ordered him to); how he he got to the lunch room (using the elegant stairs in the southeast corner and walking across the second floor) that he never ordered a pistol from Seagate Distributors, that he did not kill Tippit, that he never shot at General Walker, etc. And through it all, Oswald would have come across as lucid, sane, and not the least bit deranged. Oswald would have repeated to him, "Why would I shoot President Kennedy? I had no reason to do it. I had no desire to do it. And I had no thought to do it. It's insane."

And what the lawyer would have gotten from that first session was that the government was framing Oswald, which meant that the government must have killed Kennedy.

So, the answer is that there was zero chance that Oswald would be or could be tried. Oswald could die. That was the only thing he could do. And that was baked in the cake before 11/22/63.

So, don't waste time speculating about how the trial of Oswald would have gone. There was never going to be a trial. They had every intention of killing him the same day, before he ever talked to the Police, let alone a lawyer.

The problem with speculating about how the trial of Oswald would have gone is that the inquiry itself implies that there was some case against him. But, there wasn't. There wasn't a speck of evidence against Oswald.

You have to realize that for Oswald to have shot at Kennedy, he would have had to be insane. But, he was not insane, and he showed that to reporters at the MPC, where he was the most lucid person in the room. And it was because he was so lucid that they had to put that racket over his voice in the tapes, including a guy issuing a firing squad order, "At ease!"

So, I say: don't respect the killers by acting like there was a reasonable case they might have made against Oswald at trial. All we need say about it is that they knew they couldn't try Oswald. That is the truth, and it speaks volumes.