So, if Somebody was so afraid of Oswald squealing that he had to be eliminated immediately, why did He wait two days to kill Oswald, giving him the chance to spill all sorts of dirty secrets?
If you’re really afraid of what somebody might say under questioning, you don’t hire them in the first place. And in fact I think that’s one of the big arguments against Oswald being part of a conspiracy in the first place: he was a disturbed flake and not the kind of guy you’d trust to carry out an assassination.
Truly Oswald was a “flake”…but I believe that he (Oswald) actually believed that he was working for the CIA. His erratic behaviour may well have been a CIA planted “trail”-of the type that CIA director J.J. Angleton was so fond of. How did Ruby enter into this?
only momo Giancan knows, and he died under mysterious circumstances.
You’re missing the point. Most versions of the multiple-gunman conspiracy theory assume Oswald (even if he did shoot at Kennedy) wasn’t the one hired for the job.
So, if Oswald wasn’t hired for the job, and wasn’t part of the “conspiracy”, why would “the conspirators” have Jack Ruby kill him?
Just guessing (I haven’t actually read any of those conspiracy-theory books, though I did see Oliver Stone’s JFK), but Oswald might have been placed in the textbook depository as a backup, or as a fall guy. They (whoever They are) couldn’t be sure he would be caught, but they could be sure he would be more likely to be caught than the real, professional assassin, who would be gone out of Dallas within the hour. And once Oswald was caught, they activated Plan B – Jack Ruby. Which did have the intended effect of forestalling any real, effective investigation.
Yeah, but, then, again, it gets down to probabilities. Isn’t it more likely to assume that, if you have a mentally disturbed communist who has a history of taking shots at politicians he doesn’t like, who dislikes the President, is a trained marksman, and works in a building that gives him an unimpeded shot at the back of the President’s head, he’s more likely to be the guy who shot the President, than some shadowy conspiracy involving multiple gunmen and a fallguy to be killed by a strip club owner who’s secretly a mob assassin?
That’s crazy talk.
Never heard that part before. Who did Oswald ever try to shoot, prior to Kennedy?
He defected to Russia and was so annoying that they pretty much handed him a one-way ticket. If he was a CIA operative, he failed in every possible sense of the word. IN any event,m he was hardly the sort of person the CIA would take out of the Marines. IIRC, he was considered a leftist then, was viewed as an annoying prick by the other Marines, and generally thought of as being a contrary fool.
Not realy an exception. While Lincoln’s assassin wasn’t a nutcase, Booth was blinded by delusions of drama and grandeur, and kept making fantastic plans.
If Oswald was supposed to be a back-up, why not use somebody reliable?
If Oswald was supposed to be a fall guy, wouldn’t they want to keep him around to … oh … ACTUALLY TAKE THE FALL?
If Ruby was Plan B, shouldn’t he have been ON TIME at the police station? He showed up AFTER Oswald was scheduled to have been transported. Only an unexpected delay put them both in the same place at the same time.
Emotions were running very high after the Kennedy assassination. Ruby happened to accidentally find himself with a pistol in his pocket, and within shooting distance of Oswald. There are millions of people in the United States who, in the same circumstances, would have done the same thing.
He tried to kill General Walker, and outspoken anti-communist (I’m being mild about that). Only a window frame deflecting the bullet saved Walker.
By the way, nobody has mentioned the single best argument against Ruby being involved in any kind of conspiracy to kill Oswald: Until moments before the killing, Ruby was across the street at a Western Union wiring money to one of his strippers. There was even a time-stamped receipt fropm the transaction in his pocket when he was arrested, which conclusively established the time of the transaction as 11:17 am.
But Oswald had been scheduled to be transferred from police headquarters to the Dallas County Jail at 10 am. Due to a series of delays (including the fact that they were still interrogating Oswald until almost 11 am), the police were not ready to do the transfer until a little after 11 am, but that was delayed even further when Oswald asked to change his clothes, then asked for a sweater. These delays meant that Oswald did not walk into the garage, where Ruby shot and killed him, until 11:21 am.
So if the conspiracy decided to send Jack Ruby to kill Oswald, why wouldn’t Ruby have been there on time for the scheduled transfer? Or, if you’re seriously conspiracy-minded, how would he have known to be there at precisely 11:21–to have known so precisely, in fact, that he had been running an errand right up until the appointed time–when that actual transfer time was delayed until 11:21 by Oswald himself deciding to change clothes?
I think by “exception”, it meant it wasn’t solely the work of a lone nutcase. There was a conspiracy that included Lewis Powell (who tried to kill Secretary of State William Seward the same night Booth shot Lincoln), David Herold (who rode with Booth to get Booth’s broken leg treated by Dr. Samuel Mudd), George Atzerodt (who had planned to kill Vice-President Andrew Johnson but had not carried out the mission) among others.
Obviously, Oswald was in on it!
[sub]We’re through the looking-glass, people…[/sub]
It’s worth noting that, YEARS before John Kennedy Was elected President, Jack Ruby was well known to the Dallas police. He was a self-described police “buff” who hung around police stations, trying to ingratiate himself with the Dallas cops.Ruby regarded the cops as his best pals, while they regarded Ruby as a harmless buffoon and a pest.
My sense is, Jack Ruby was a nobody who liked to tell himself and others that he was well-connected to important people, be it the Mob or the Dallas Police. I think he overstated his importance to both groups.
Certainly the Dallas police laughed off any suggestions that Ruby was a big shot in the syndictae. The chief of police told the Warren Commission “If Jack Ruby was in the Mafia, the Mafia needs a new personnel director.”
And don’t forget that Oswald was the guy that owned the murder weapon, that he was seen going to work that day carrying a long thin package, that he was seen going up to the third floor of the book depository carrying that package a short while before the President drove by, that several witnesses in a building across the street watched him shooting the rifle out the window at the President, that a guy on the second floor leaned out his window after hearing the first shot and looked up at Oswald shooting a few feet above him, that Oswald was then seen fleeing down the stairs form the room where the shots were fired from, that the police found Oswald’s rifle in that room with Oswald’s prints all over it.
I can see why the DA must have been worried - there was so little evidence to pin Oswald to the crime.
Why would he have wanted to work for the CIA in the first place? You’re talking about a guy who defected to the USSR, and then wanted to go to Cuba.
Or so you keep saying. I’m pretty sure I know.
That’s an occupational hazard when you’re in the mob.
Oh god. I don’t think you could create a better source of misinformation than that movie.
If Oswald was a decoy or a patsy, you have to wonder why he was walking around with a gun later that day and murdered a cop.
All true.
Not that it would surprise me, but: Cite?
Also, it was the sicth floor, not the third, that he fired from.
Cite? I’m aware of the guy who saw him from ground level across the street, but not of anybody across the plaza (note that there is no building “across the street”–Dealey Plaza is two blocks wide).
Cite? I know there were three guys on the fifth floor who heard the firing above them, and even heard the empty shells hitting the floor, but none of them were reported to have seen the shooter.
Nobody saw him “fleeing.” He was observed sometime after the shooting by a police officer and a TSBD supervisor in a break room several floors below the 6th floor, drinking a Coke. He was not observed “fleeing” although several witnesses observed his casual depature from the scene at various points.
IIRC, Oswald’s prints were only in one or two places, not “all over” the rifle.
I’ve heard that too, but I’m not sure where.