A Rich Man's Trick

[Brian Castle]

It doesn't work the way you are hoping it can. Have you accepted yet that there is a strong proclivity to either be in the "there is no tooth fairy or Easter Bunny" camp, vs. the "Oh, yes there is" camp?

I wasn't including LNs, instead confining my observation to the non-LN's who hold the government to a much higher standard of earnestness, proof, and accuracy than they hold themselves and the ones who take much on faith despite the facts/existing evidence (Lovelady is Oswald, prayerman is Oswald, the ones who post that any official document they disagree with is fake .....) IOW, the faith vs. fact, LN opposition. When you read something that makes you wish you were a card carrying LN instead of having an opinion that neither the shooting of Oswald or the official story of four pilots and fifteen "muscle hijackers" are reasonable, you can identify with the picture I am trying to paint. Assume everything vs. assume nothing, sprinkled with the flavor of what appear to be on the surface, at least, profit driven or government directed, or symptomatic of senility, a Judyth Baker-like medley of "contributors" to the knowledge base of assassination research.

I understand. Yes, I agree, there are some far-fetched theories.

It may be a big tent, this area north of LNicity, but in my experience, it ain't big enough. It can make you
want to sleep out in the rain.

Okay, well.... how can I say this... there is stuff that's "in evidence", and there's models that are built "around" that evidence. For instance, we have the Alyea film. There's no dispute that it exists. It just... "is". And, it shows certain things, and we have various recollections from Alyea himself as to how and when those scenes were filmed, and statements regarding the crime scene made after the fact, like, "there were no chicken bones on the 6th floor, we covered every inch of that floor and there were no bones". Well, unless you have reason to call Alyea a liar, your "model" of what Alyea is saying has to explain the presence of the chicken bones on the 6th floor (as stated by dozens of officers in their testimonies and depositions). So, whatever model you come up with, will first be the subject of some skepticism, 'cause it's 12 to 1 in terms of witnesses - however, it's possible there is a model that makes no one a liar. It's possible there is an explanation for what everyone saw, and it's possible that everyone was telling the truth about what they saw. So then, if you come up with a "theory" (an hypothesis) that says "Fritz found the bones on the fifth floor and took them up to the sixth floor", then people are going to point out that there's no testimony to that effect (not by "anyone"). So then, there are consequences of that model, for instance you have to surmise that half the officers at the TSBD ended up covering for Fritz's incompetence at the crime scene. And then you can further surmise (if you dare) that the incompetence was due to a hidden agenda of some kind.

Again, all these possibilities are very logical, at some point we run out of "possibilities" for the crime scene, yes? Why can't they be simply and logically catalogued? I've heard some oddball stuff about Masons, the Vatican, and even space aliens - these are all "models", they're nothing but one-liners built on top of the basic evidence. Becoming emotionally (or financially) attached to an Oswald double is the same as becoming emotionally (or financially) attached to a theory about space aliens, isn't it?

How many empty cartridges were recovered at the Tippit murder scene, and when actually did the FBI take custody of them?

See? You're raising another perfect example. The short answer is "we don't really know", right? Alyea figures into this story too, he makes some claims about Fritz's handling of the shells. But then we have the whole song and dance with JC Day and the evidence numbers, which required an affidavit to clear up the previous affidavit which was in error, which was already correcting the first affidavit which was also in error. Stuff like that... is comical. What it means is anyone's guess - but at the end of the day you can summarize the original evidence in a few short sentences. And those in turn lead to dozens of possible "crime scene models" to explain the evidence. The separation of the model from the evidence is vital, isn't it? Half the reason people bicker is because they're confused about what's actually evidence and what's just a theory or a conclusion.

The Tomlinson thing with CE-399, there's another good one. People have been arguing about that for years, discussing the timing of the elevators and everything else - and here comes Sam Kinney saying "I did it", which if true completely destroys the Warren Commission's carefully constructed crime scene hypothesis. That possibility however, should have been on the list all along, yes? Because the truth is we have no idea how that bullet got on the stretcher, and we never had any idea how it got there. And furthermore, there have been rumors about "another" bullet for a very long time, one which supposedly did drop out of Connally somehow, and was picked up by a nurse. So maybe now we can finally examine that body of evidence independently, instead of constantly having it tied to the Tomlinson scenario (and having to listen to arguments like, "well, they can't both be true, you have to pick one or the other").

I hear you loud and clear Tom, it's just painful as a n00b having to watch the old-timers at each others' throats, and engaging in unpleasant behavior just because they were mistreated a dozen years ago. Speaking only for myself, I'm not much interested in "theories", I'm more about the uncovering of new evidence. For instance, what are the way in which Oswald might have been recruited up into the ONI? Well, he could have been recruited at an early age in the housing projects of New York, or, he could have come up through the Civil Air Patrol and been identified as somehow "useful" to the Powers That Be, or, he could have been singled out during his tenure at Atsugi... there's only so many possibilities we can dream up, it's a pretty short list. It seems to me a good investigator needs to be able to switch hats and juggle crime scene models quickly and repeatedly, and in the tree of all possible models that say "Oswald was an intelligence agent" there are realities that can be invoked to prune the tree.

So, right at the moment, this is why I'm investigating the civil defense angle in this case, because if the civil defense network was active on that day then it speaks volumes about some of the stuff that's "behind the veil". The Cabinet plane didn't have its code book, and neither did a bunch of SAC planes, what's up with that? The CIA couldn't do that, and neither could the Mafia. The Dallas police certainly couldn't do it, and neither could the FBI or the Secret Service. But, how true is that rumor? I don't know, I haven't gotten around to investigating it yet. I'm still trying to figure out if the communications infrastructure to support such a thing was actually in place. It looks like it might have been, and it looks like the people who were controlling it are the same people who were manipulating Dallas police officers at the various crime scenes. It would be an important model if it can be developed, and a lot of people like PD Scott and Russ Baker and others have gone part of the way down the path, but there's a lot more to it than the suggestions I've read so far. And, maybe I can help in this area, I know 1960's radio technology like the back of my hand, I was immersed in it for dozens of years. Been under the hood of more Collins R-390A's than I can count. Seems to me it would be important to bring some definition to this area, so it can either be considered as an important crime scene model or rejected as just another extremist conspiracy fantasy. I'm willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads, I have no particular attachment to any one model or group of models. And when someone tells me I'm FOS or something, I try to translate to get to the "your model doesn't work because..." part. That's the part I care about, I couldn't care less whether someone wants to call me an ass for daring to float a crime scene model, and when I post a model to the internet I'm really asking, "is this important, and should I be spending any more time on it?" In the case of the 488th and the people swirling around it, it would take "a lot" to convince me to drop that investigation. That stuff just leaps off the page, whenever I start reading about it. But I've checked for first hand information, there's not much of it. I was able to piece together Boise B Smith's service record from newspaper clippings (mainly because of his mom, who was a society lady and got written up in the society columns and was constantly bragging about her wonderful son), but there is ZIP on his actual role in the Dallas City-County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission. I've been able to find a very small body of evidence pertaining to its role in shelter planning and the publicizing of the CD "effort", but there is absolutely nothing on its operations in the National Archives, the Texas State Archives, or the Dallas Archives. So, we're going to have to find out a different way.

This is "research", right? I'd like to spend my time doing "research", instead of arguing about how many shell casings were found in Dealey Plaza. This latter part, should be documented once, thoroughly, because that body of evidence doesn't change over time. Once it's up to date, all that remains is to keep it current, and that could easily be done in a collaborative manner by even a small group of like-minded people. I don't think we're going to find any additional evidence about those casings, do you?