Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald (6 page)

“. . . if you knew the facts you would be amazed.”

– Jack Ruby, March 16, 1965.
1

Prepare to be amazed.

You might think that this is a book about the Kennedy assassination. And, at one level, it is. But more importantly, it is really a book about the
perception of reality
— or, more accurately, what people
claim
to be the perception of reality. What people
claim
to be true isn’t always the case, and in this case, that is everything!

Yes, what people
claim
to perceive as reality can
indeed be changed
; scary thought, huh? Consider the following experiment by Solomon Asch, reported in 1951:
2

In Asch’s experiment, subjects were asked to make a very simple determination: decide which line on the right was the closest in length to line X on the left.

Not too difficult — the answer is simple — line B.

But now imagine that you are in a room and you are the fourth person to be asked the question. And, to your amazement, when asked the question, each person in front of you instead says that the answer is “line A.” What will you do, stick to your guns, or go along with the crowd?

When Solomon Asch performed this experiment in 1950, he found that a significant percentage of people conformed (or pretended to conform) with the majority opinion as listed in the table below:
3

What Asch learned is that people will
claim
to conform their judgments based not on what they
themselves
perceive as reality, but on what
others
claim to perceive as reality.

It is important to be clear here: the confederates in front of the subjects
did not actually believe
what they were saying. However, the subject had no way of knowing that. The problem with the subjects who conformed with the false view of reality is that they not only doubted their own judgment — evidence right in front of their eyes — but they also had a misplaced faith in the judgments of others well-undeserving of trust.

The Asch experiment is the key to understanding Kennedy assassination analysis as it has developed over the years. Consider the following multiple-choice question related to the Kennedy assassination, and think of the answers as choices in an Asch–like experiment:

Based on the evidence developed so far, which statement is the
most likely
to be true?

1. There was
   no
   conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.
   
2. There
   was
   a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.
   
3. We can
   never know
   whether or not there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.
   

Now, only
one
of these answers can be correct. The contention of this book is that the
only
answer consonant with the evidence is B, and yet this answer fails to conform with the judgment of the establishment media. School textbooks, newspapers, television programs, historians, all will tell you that the answer is A, and if they are pressed with much contradictory evidence, may be moved to C, but they will rarely admit B.

Notice how much trickier is this situation versus the Asch situation. In the example of the 3 lines, it is perfectly obvious what the correct answer is, and so it is very easy to tell fact from fiction. However, with the Kennedy assassination, things are not nearly as clear-cut on the surface, and even if they are clear-cut once you examine the evidence, your evidence-based perception will come under fire from a media-driven world whose members, Asch-
protégés
all, are constantly telling you otherwise.

To prove that studying the Kennedy assassination will test your ability to distinguish reality from illusion, we will explore a few examples.

Let’s start with the arrangement of boxes where Oswald was supposedly situated. According to the Warren Commission (the first major government investigation of the Kennedy affair in 1964, followed by the second, the House Select Committee On Assassinations in 1979), only
one
of the photographs below represents the original position of the boxes at the “sniper’s nest,” the position they were in after the assassin (if indeed the assassin was located at that position) left the scene.

But which one?

These photographs are evidence in The Case Against Oswald, Warren Commission Exhibit 733 on the left, and 509, on the right.
(Note: Exhibit 733 can be found in Volume 17 of the Warren Commission Hearings, at page 509, which will be cited as
17 H 509
. Exhibit 509 is found at
17 H 220
. These exhibits can be viewed at http://www.historymatters.com/jfkmurder.htm and http://www.maryferrell.org.)
Now, you can immediately see that we’ve got ourselves a real problem here!

A compare and contrast between the photographs, which any third-grader familiar with similar exercises found in
Highlights
should easily be able to do, results in a series of questions.

To prove any third-grader can do it, we can divide these questions into roughly 2 types named in honor of the two main rivals for Darla’s affection in the old
Our Gang
series, rivals who now have decided to stop squabbling and join forces. From this corner emerges Alfalfa, the straight-up earnest cow-licked boy lifted straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting . . .

. . . and from this corner, Butch, the snarling pugilist:

“Alfalfa” questions, just like their namesake, are polite and proper like questions should be, but “Butch” questions, by contrast, are rude and in-your-face in the best Gordon Ramsay style.

These archetypes firmly in mind,
Alfalfa
comes out swinging with his queries about the incompatible box
feng shui
:

• Why are these boxes in different positions?
  
• Did anyone at the Warren Commission notice?
  
• If they did notice, did the Warren Commission not think that
  we
  would notice that these boxes were in different positions — and then start wondering why?
  

Not to be outdone, Butch chimes in with his point of view:

Are you kidding me?

Alfalfa
adds some fast jabs:

• Which of these two photographs, if either, represents the
  original
  position of the boxes at the so-called “sniper’s nest?”
  
• If we are told that the position of the boxes in Exhibit 733 is the one which represents the way the boxes were originally positioned, how come there is an
  alternate
  photo?
  
• Boxes don’t move themselves — someone obviously moved them.
  Who
  moved them?
  When
  did they move them?
  Why
  did they move them?
  

And even more
Alfalfa
flurries:

• If I am told that the position of the boxes in Exhibit 733 represents the
  original
  position, how do I know that I’m being told the truth?
  
• How can anyone
  prove
  that this is the original position? If it is not, doesn’t this affect any analysis related to trajectories and the ability of the assassin to make his shot?
  
• In any event, doesn’t the movement of boxes violate everything we have been told about maintaining the integrity of the crime scene?
  

But of course, as always, we can rely on Butch to go straight to the point:

Hey, what
is
this, a
con job
?

That Butch . . . you gotta love him!

And there are many other questions, which you could easily formulate given the time.

But before you can get to those questions, defenders of the Warren Commission will always come back at you with answers, exposing you to the
First Law Of Kennedy Assassination Motion
:

For every bizarre contradiction there is an equal and opposite “innocent explanation.”

And what is the innocent explanation in this case?

“Tut, tut, my man, ‘tis no problem at all. The Warren Commission never tried to pass off CE 509 (also known as Studebaker Exhibit D) as a photo depicting the Sniper’s Nest boxes as they were first found by the police. Nor did they attempt to pass off CE 733 as a photograph of the boxes in their original position.

Quite the contrary, in fact. The Commission has testimony that CE 509 was a picture that was taken after boxes were moved for fingerprints before photographs were taken, and that CE 733 was a ‘reconstruction’ of the original position, and neither photo represented the configuration of the boxes in their exact position when they were first discovered by police. It's all very innocent, my good man.”