- 07 Apr 2018 02:21
#14903815
Not that anyone cares but here is my take:
We know Kennedy was shot and killed.
We know Oswald was in the TSBD at the time of the shooting.
Everything else that happened after is up in the air.
So I rely on what happened before.
+Oswald was a marine
+He defected to the USSR
+He defected back to the US from the USSR and was able to bring his wife with him.
+He visited the Cuban and USSR embassies in Mexico City the month before Kennedy visited Dallas.
The first point was that he at least had some proficiency with a rifle. I'll let those who wish to get into the weeds about the level of proficiency do so. But he did know how to fire one and, at least, was able to use one well enough to keep his enlistment as a Marine
In 1959 he defected to the USSR. In 1961, he married and had a child. Later that year he defected back.
One source about the number of defections from Russia to the US was quoted as saying the following:
I cover some of the same material in this question in my Quora answer to Why did the Soviet Union allow Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald to leave the USSR so quickly? The short answer is that, in the 1970s, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote a report called the Defector Study that compared Lee Harvey Oswald to other Americans who defected to the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1963. The Defector Study showed that Oswald's defection and return to the United States was unusual, but not totally rare. (Other defectors included a RAND Corporation employee who fell in love with his Ukrainian restaurant hostess and an Italian-American guy who didn't particularly know or care about Communism, but just thought it would be easier to get a job in the Soviet Union.) In most cases, the Soviet government would try to pump the defectors for information, but they quickly realized that practically all the defectors were useless for purposes of counterintelligence or propaganda against the United States. After realizing that most of these defectors were useless to them, the Soviet Union typically moved the defectors to some out-of-the-way factory in rural Russia, far away from Moscow, so that they couldn't do much damage. Since the Cold War was still going on, the paranoid Soviet Union still believed that many of these defectors were actually American spies.
Wikipedia opines:
Eastern Bloc emigration and defection was a point of controversy during the Cold War. After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible in order to reunite families or to allow members of minority ethnic groups to return to their homelands.
Eastern Bloc governments argued that strict limits to emigration were necessary to prevent a brain drain. The United States and Western European governments argued that they represented a violation of human rights. Despite the restrictions, defections to the West occurred.
I see there are different figures about the number of persons who moved between the two at-odds super powers during the zenith of the Cold War but the numbers are all pretty low; into the 10,000 per year which isn't that large a number considering the hundreds of millions who live in each nation, the US population largely stemming from Europe at the time and one of the few factors of allowance for emigration being to reunite families. I'm happy with it being called unusual. How many get to leave Russia with their entire family after defecting there? Even less.
So that leads us to the visits to the Cuba and Russian embassies in the month before Kennedy was shot. One recurring fact from Oswald's dossier was that he was no genius when it came to espionage. Yet somehow, the misfit gave the CIA the slip when he crossed over the border, visited two embassies of our enemies, and came back across.
Here is the thing. Presidential assassinations are part of the American experience. There have been numerous attempts through out the history both before and after Kennedy. I find it difficult to believe that one of the few guys who defected to Russia, then from Russia with his family, was suddenly skilled enough to give whatever CIA handlers he had and those who were just watching the embassies the slip...just happened to be working at a medial job directly on the motorcade route.
So, I think he did, in fact, shoot the President. I don't think it is possible that he just thought it up and did it all on his own.
For one thing, his documented leaving of the TSBD. Why did he leave?
For another thing, the package he brought with him when he got a ride to work he reported was "curtain rods". Nobody found the rods.
Here is where it gets crazy (or not).
I think it's pretty much an foregone conclusion that Oswald had some assistance in this matter. Either with:
The routing of the motorcade. And/or
Emigrating from one SuperPower to another And/or
Emigrating with his family And/or
Evading the CIA in meeting with officials from Cuba and the USSR in the month before the hit on Kennedy
I think anyone would be on solid ground if they were suspicious of Soviet Involvement in the crime. If I can see it, I'm sure those on the Warren Commission can see it. Say what you want about them but make sure you include that they were probably not going to be happy with a nuclear exchange with Russia. Surely it would mean the end of the world.
I think they were faced with either reporting that it looks like the Russians were at least involved in the assassination of the President directly or through their puppet state of Cuba which would mean war...likely nuclear war started by whomever was losing.
OR
Telling Johnson that Oswald was this lone nut who just thought it up and did it; with no exit strategy, no support system in place to mount a defense, no leg to stand on with the Feds, etc...
Given the choice between the two; I think they made the right choice. Did the entire commission get together and formulate this fiction? Perhaps. Perhaps they even asked Johnson what version he preferred and LBJ was in on it. Perhaps it was just Earl Warren making the assessment. Don't know.
being my personal favorite. 
- By JohnRawls
- By Fasces