Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald (29 page)

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Authors: Barry Krusch

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BOOK: Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald
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INTERVIEWER: “Okay, if someone were an agent, and they were involved in something, and nobody believes they are an agent. He is arrested, and trying to communicate, let’s say, and he is one of you guys. What is the procedure?”
MARCHETTI: “I’d kill him.”
INTERVIEWER: “If I were an agent for the Agency, and I was involved in something involving the law domestically and the FBI, would I have a contact to call?”
MARCHETTI: “Yes.”
INTERVIEWER: “A verification contact?”
MARCHETTI: “Yes, you would.”
INTERVIEWER: “Would I be dead?”
MARCHETTI: “It would all depend on the situation. If you get into bad trouble, we’re not going to verify you. No how, no way.”
INTERVIEWER: “But there is a call mechanism set up.”
MARCHETTI: “Yes.”
INTERVIEWER: “So it is conceivable that Lee Harvey Oswald was . . . “
MARCHETTI: “That’s what he was doing. He was trying to call in and say, ‘Tell them I’m all right.’ “
INTERVIEWER: “Was that his death warrant?”
MARCHETTI: “You betcha. Because this time he went over the dam, whether he knew it or not, or whether they set him up or not. It doesn’t matter. He was over the dam. At that point it was executive action.”
So, we have four CIA personnel — Wilcott, Angleton, Hunt, and Marchetti — indicating, in one way or another, Oswald’s connection to the CIA, and a CIA connection to the assassination!
If these statements by CIA insiders weren’t enough, there is also evidence in this December 2, 1963 FBI memo that connects the bullets said to have been used in the assassination with the CIA:
15
In case that is too difficult to read, let us zoom in on the key paragraphs here:
We also have the following memo related to Oswald’s intelligence history, which looks like an answer to this Zen Koan: “what memo tells
nothing
, while at the same time tells
everything?
” (
Searching the Shadows
, p. 213):
Building from evidence like what we have seen above, Craig Roberts, a former police officer and a trained sniper with extensive combat experience (he was part of the first Marine battalion landing team to see action in Vietnam), summarized the line of research developed in this area (
Kill Zone
, pp. 69-70; footnotes omitted):
Entire books have been written describing Oswald’s past and links to the intelligence community. Some say he was recruited by the CIA, others the FBI and still others, the KGB. The most logical assumption is that Oswald was originally ONI — Office of Naval Intelligence. He was recruited while stationed at Atsugi, Japan, as a Marine radar operator working air traffic control. Atsugi was an operational center for “spook” operations such as the U-2 spy planes that overflew China and Russia. Sometime during his tour he, along with Roscoe White, was recruited by the intelligence community, and sometime later — probably just before “defecting” to Russia — he became a shared asset. [90 days after Oswald defected to Russia, an obsolete SAM-2 missile shot CIA U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers out of the sky over Russian territory. This incident effectively cancelled the arms summit between Eisenhower and Kruschev scheduled to occur in Switzerland. In the past, the SAM-2 could not knock down the U-2s because the Russians did not know what altitude the Lockheed spy planes flew at.]
According to Victor Marchetti, Deputy Assistant to the Director of the CIA, Richard Helms, “Oswald was likely a ‘dangle,’ an American intelligence agent put out there for the Soviets to recruit in the hope that he could penetrate the Soviet intelligence network. [He probably worked for] the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Navy’s CIA.”
Regarding Oswald’s status at the time of his defection to Russia, Marchetti said, “I believe Oswald was working with Naval Intelligence, but the FBI was coordinating on the operation, as was the CIA when he was in Russia.”
What is known is this: Oswald had a CIA “201” file. A 201 file is a personnel file which contains all records regarding an employee. In Oswald’s case, his 201 file took up two entire file drawers. He also had an FBI registered informant number, S-179, and drew a monthly paycheck from the Bureau of $200.00.
Marchetti and others say that Oswald was a CIA agent, and there is some evidence that the CIA was involved in the assassination. On the surface, that looks bad for Oswald, but before we automatically jump to the conclusion that Oswald, a CIA agent, was part of a CIA-led conspiracy, we need to dig a little deeper.
Assume for the moment that some employees of the CIA
were
implicated in the assassination of Kennedy, and that Oswald worked for the CIA, either with or without some foreknowledge of the assassination.
Would that have
automatically
made Oswald guilty from the perspective of vicarious liability? Not necessarily. To make that determination, we would have to know the answer to the following absolutely key question:
“Prior to the assassination, what were Oswald’s orders?”
The whole case would rest on this missing piece of information, because there are a whole host of possibilities that do
not
involve Oswald in the assassination as a
witting
participant, but might involve him as an
unwitting
participant, one directed to take actions A, B, and C by his superiors, actions which seemed innocent enough to Oswald enough at the time (given his undercover role), but which in retrospect laid down a trail of evidence designed to anchor his “legend” as a future assassin.
Let us take one simple example. In New Orleans on August 9, 1963, Oswald was passing out pro-Cuba pamphlets in front of the
International Trade Mart
, and a television camera just happened to be around to record that activity. Perhaps Oswald was told that, as an undercover agent, he should pass out the pamphlets so that the television camera could record people taking the pamphlets, so that they could later be tracked by the FBI as potential Communists.
If this was the case, Oswald would have thought he was playing the role of the good mole, but in fact the
real
purpose of the episode would have been to capture
his
activities on film so that he could be linked after the assassination not only as a communist, but also a supporter of Castro.
The orders to enact this COINTELPRO-like scheme could have originated at the highest levels, and only those at the highest levels would have known the true purpose of the orders, getting lower-echelon levels involved in the conspiracy without their knowledge.
As we consider the universe of possibilities, there is no end to scenarios that could exonerate Oswald. According to one hypothesis related to Oswald’s role as an undercover agent, Oswald could even have been informed of plans to assassinate President Kennedy, but only because he was simultaneously told that he was part of a CIA “abort team” that would attempt to
stop
the assassination, and he might have been asked to carry a rifle into the building for the purpose of handing it off to someone else who would try to stop the assassination.
This is not to say that the evidence shows that Oswald
was
carrying a rifle into the building, only that
even if
he was, if
Proposition One
was not proven true beyond a reasonable doubt, that action could be explained in a way that would not implicate him as a guilty party in the assassination (an explanation that would be unavailable if
Proposition One
were true).
16
This is because if that scenario were true, Oswald obviously lacked the intent necessary for the crime of murder, as can be easily seen in the following hypothetical situation:
Suppose someone asks you to deliver a package for them to an attorney’s office because their car has run out of gas. Being the good Samaritan, you do that. 30 minutes after you deliver the package, it explodes.
A crime has been committed. Arguably, by a conspiracy. But are
you
part of the conspiracy? No: you lack the
intent
to commit the crime.
The same would be true in Oswald’s case, for exactly the same reasons. Consequently, evidence regarding Oswald’s possible background as an undercover agent, if indeed he was one, would have to have been explored and developed to discover his intent and foreknowledge of the assassination (if any). Without this key evidence establishing his intent and foreknowledge, a case against him could not move forward.
Here is yet another scenario in which Oswald would not be implicated, mentioned by Walt Brown in his book
Treachery In Dallas
, a scenario again developed from evidence indicating that Oswald had been an undercover agent, specifically, that as a marine, Oswald was also an “asset” stationed at the Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan, working for the Office of Naval Intelligence or the CIA, or both, in an undercover role as a “communist” (developing the credibility that would enable him to infiltrate Castro’s Cuba in lines with his earlier “defection” to the Soviet Union).
From Brown’s perspective, Oswald may have been informed that a
fake
assassination attempt would be launched on the President, much in the manner of the
Operation Northwoods
scheme, and the only purpose of that attempt would be to provide a pretext for the invasion of Cuba. As Brown speculates,
Oswald had been told that the purpose of the fake attempt was that once a bullet or a blank was fired over the limousine into the expanse of lawn in the plaza, the Secret Service would swarm over the President, law-enforcement people would find the Mannlicher as planned, trace it to “Hidell” and hence to pro-Cuban forces, and the United States would clean out Castro’s rats’ nest once and for all. Oswald, who would have to leave town until the noise cleared down, was told that when all was said and done, he would be the hero of the piece, and no blame could attach to him . . .
In this line of analysis developed by Brown, the Kennedy assassination was a fully-contrived plot,
a la
Northwoods, complete with a full set of bogus incidents and motivations.
Recall that the Northwoods plan began with a downed American airplane destroyed remotely by radio transmitter, to be blamed on Cuba. Coincidentally, just two days before Kennedy was assassinated, there happened to be a U-2 incident that provided an Oswald/Cuban nexus (
The New York Times
, 11/21/63):
And these are just some of a whole host of scenarios in which Oswald could have had some possible foreknowledge without the requisite intent.
Of course, whether or not any of these scenarios are true can only be determined through an analysis of any evidence that miraculously escaped the shredder, but the fact remains is that these scenarios are certainly possible, and, being possible, provide a potential means for Oswald’s exoneration of the charge of the murder of the President.
In fact, all we really need to do from an evidentiary perspective to cast reasonable doubt on Oswald’s guilt is to show that there was some conspiracy: because the hypotheses just discussed are possible, he must be now presumed innocent in a second (conspiracy-related) case, even in light of the evidence presented against him, based on the very distinct possibility that this evidence could itself be a part of the conspiratorial matrix!
This is why the death of
Proposition One
is also the death of The Case Against Oswald, and any attempt to prove Oswald’s guilt would have to be a new case entirely, built on entirely different premises, using evidence that according to the Warren Commission simply does not exist.
That would be a bad case too. But that’s not this case. That is a future case that would apparently be doomed. With
Proposition One
doomed,
this
case would be doomed in the here and now.
And this is why so much effort has been expended to claim that Oswald, if he acted at all, acted alone. For the parties responsible for erecting and maintaining The Oswald Wall, establishing the validity (or lack thereof) of the “lone gunman” hypothesis is important because the lone gunman scenario itself is a weathervane that, unlike the conspiracy scenario, can point
only
to Oswald.
Think about it: if there is only ONE gunman, and ALL the evidence gathered points to that gunman, who else could it be, besides Oswald? The propositions are mutually confirming.
On the other hand, with multiple gunmen (or even a lone gunman supported by a network of accomplices), we have to ask this question:
If there are MULTIPLE gunmen, why does ALL the evidence gathered point to only
one
gunman — Oswald?
Just this question alone automatically gives us a free pass into the world of reasonable doubt, as Bugliosi himself noted above. Additionally, the observation gives us not only a presumption of innocence on the charge of conspiracy from a vicarious liability perspective, but also a presumption that would be impossible to overcome given the total absence of evidence that Oswald knowingly and willingly participated in the conspiracy.
And this concludes the discussion of our first proposition,
“There was one and only one gunman in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, and that gunman was neither aided nor abetted by any person or group.”
With this proposition in mind, let us move to the statements that enable us to formulate our second proposition.
PROPOSITION TWO
Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.
Again, we have several sources for this proposition, 2 official government records, and the two books previously cited which are proponents of the
Lone Assassin Theory
:
Warren Report, Page 19
“The shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were
fired by Lee Harvey Oswald
.”
Warren Report, Page 195
“On the basis of these findings the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey
Oswald was the assassin
of President Kennedy.”
HSCA Report, Page 51
“
LEE HARVEY OSWALD FIRED THREE SHOTS AT PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
; THE SECOND AND THIRD SHOTS HE FIRED STRUCK THE PRESIDENT; THE THIRD SHOT HE FIRED KILLED THE PRESIDENT.”
Reclaiming History, Page 952
“[I]t is not humanly possible for him to be innocent . . .
Only in a fantasy world could Oswald be innocent
. . . If Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, then Kennedy wasn’t killed on November 22, 1963.”
Case Closed, Page 472
“
Lee Harvey Oswald, driven by his own twisted and impenetrable furies, was the only assassin
at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. To say otherwise, in light of the overwhelming evidence, is to absolve a man with blood on his hands, and to mock the President he killed.”
While there are disagreements among these sources in terms of exactly when the bullets were fired, and which bullet hit President Kennedy or Governor Connally, these sources are unanimous: the gunman who killed President Kennedy was Lee Harvey Oswald.
With this proposition determined from these sources, and no further discussion necessary, we finally reach our conclusion.
CONCLUSION
Therefore, it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shot that killed President John F. Kennedy.
Being a conclusion, this statement itself requires no evidence, or any justification other than the truth of the propositions. If all the evidence which is required to establish the truth of the propositions has been presented, and that evidence is comprehensive, credible, sufficient, and consistent, then this conclusion naturally follows from these propositions.
But evidence is required to support the propositions. And, since the propositions themselves are subdividable into necessary components, evidence is required for those components.
This takes us to our next chapter, the elements of propositions of The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald.
We will turn to those next.

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