August 10, 2013
BREAKING NEWS: OSWALD SHOT JFK STANDING UP
Knoxville, Tennessee (JFKASSASSINATION) Today we have just completed reading "Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot," by Bill O'Reilly* and Martin Dugard.
The number one best selling book, according to the New York Times, gives readers a new twist to the "Oswald did it" scenario.
*William 'Bill' O'Reilly was born in NY City in 1949. He is a graduate of Marist College, Boston University and Harvard. O'Reilly, a columnist and author is best known for his television show 'The Factor' on Fox News.
.jpg)
Bill O'Reilly
World Affairs Council of Philadelphia
Photo by Karppinen (2010)
In chapter 25 headed "November 22, 1963, Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, 12:14 P.M.", the authors write...
"Lee Harvey Oswald would prefer to shoot while in the prone position. That is the optimum for a marksman...but Oswald does not have that option.
He will have to shoot standing up.
Yet as a veteran marksman, he knows to keep his body as still as possible. So now he leans hard against the left window jam and presses the butt of his Italian carbine against his right shoulder.
The scratched wooden stock of the butt is against his cheek...
His right index finger is curled around the...trigger.
Seeing his target clearly, Oswald exhales, gently squeezes the trigger (and)...smoothly pulls back the bolt to chamber another round.
Oswald fires again (and)...pulls the trigger on the third...drops his now-unnecessary Italian carbine and steps from the tower of book boxes behind which he's been hiding."
I found the book actually deserving of its #1 best-selling position. It is very interesting to read and very well written.
But in the years I have spent researching the assassination, the argument that the shooter in the 6th floor corner window was standing up has not been emphasized and in most cases not enough mentioned.
It is true that witnesses reported later that they saw someone standing in the window before the motorcade appeared in Dealey Plaza.
Killing Kennedy does mention Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards "seeing a man in the sixth-floor window" who "never moved...didn't blink...(and) was just gazing, like a statue" but, again, that was well before the motorcade arrived.
*Update 11/24/2013
I have found that the probable source for a shooter standing up in the 6th floor corner window is Howard Brennan's* testimony before the Warren Commission in which he said...
"I glanced up and this man...was aiming for his last shot. It appeared to me he was standing up and resting against the window sill. He drew the gun back from the window...and then disappeared."
*Brennan was sitting on a concrete wall directly opposite the TSBD. He was called to a lineup at Dallas Police HQ where he, at that time, did NOT identify Oswald as the man he had seen in the window.
This testimony lends itself to this important question.
Since the definition of a window sill is that it is a ledge at the BOTTOM of a window, how could the man Brennan saw be "resting against the window sill," which was just a few feet above the floor, if he was standing up?
This testimony is also at odds with the book cartons which were stacked up to serve as a gun rest and on which a crease was found were the rifle had been resting.
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^Brennan circled the window where he said he saw a shooter and marked it "A", and also circled the window he said he saw a person watching the parade and marked it "B".
Also, Bob Jackson, the news photographer who took the Pulitzer Prize winning photo of Ruby shooting Oswald, was sitting on an open press car in the motorcade on Houston Street when he heard shots.
Mr. Jackson looked up just in time to see a rifle barrel, in his own words, being "withdrawn from the window sill."
Mr. Jackson, thus, does not corroborate Brennan's testimony that the shooter was standing up.
Another point I question is the idea that the shooter dropped his rifle as he exited the sniper's nest.
As any JFK assassination researcher knows, the rifle was found partially hidden behind some boxes near the stairs at the other end of the sixth floor.
We also take issue with this statement which appears at the end of the same chapter...
"As is so often his habit when something messes up his hair, John Kennedy's hand reflexively tries to pat the top of his head. But now the top of his head is gone."
Well, excuse me.
The top of his head was not gone. The back of his head was.
All eyewitnesses, in Dealey Plaza....at Parkland Hospital...at the Navy Hospital in Bethesda...observed a massive wound in the right rear of the head.
While I am at it, I need to mention this statement from the book...
"The first impact strikes the president in the back of his lower neck...and then exits his body through the tight knot of his dark blue tie."
Excuse me again.
The entrance wound was not in the back of JFK's lower neck. The entrance wound was in JFK's upper back, 5 and a half inches below the collar line and at the level of the third thoracic vertebrae according to the autopsy protocol at Bethesda.
The wound, as has been mentioned previously on this blog, was not or could not be tracked or linked to the throat wound by the autopsy surgeons.
If the bullet was fired from the 6th floor corner window at a downward trajectory, there is no way it could then move upward to exit the throat.
Lastly, I take issue with this last statement in Chapter 26...
"At 1:07 p.m., forty-eight hours and seven minutes after JFK's death, Lee Harvey Oswald also dies.
But unlike Kennedy, Oswald is not mourned.
By anyone."
Have the authors of this best seller not seen the photographs of Lee Oswald's wife, mother and brother at the graveside. Grief is clearly written on each of their faces.
Lee Harvey Oswald remains a puzzle to us today. Was he the lone assassin or was he just one of the shooters? If he was a shooter, did his shot kill JFK? If he wasn't a shooter, how was he involved in the conspiracy?
There remain many unanswered questions about the man, but to say that he was not mourned by anyone is just wrong.
SOURCE
"Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot," by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2012.
BREAKING NEWS: OSWALD SHOT JFK STANDING UP
Knoxville, Tennessee (JFKASSASSINATION) Today we have just completed reading "Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot," by Bill O'Reilly* and Martin Dugard.
The number one best selling book, according to the New York Times, gives readers a new twist to the "Oswald did it" scenario.
*William 'Bill' O'Reilly was born in NY City in 1949. He is a graduate of Marist College, Boston University and Harvard. O'Reilly, a columnist and author is best known for his television show 'The Factor' on Fox News.
.jpg)
Bill O'Reilly
World Affairs Council of Philadelphia
Photo by Karppinen (2010)
In chapter 25 headed "November 22, 1963, Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, 12:14 P.M.", the authors write...
"Lee Harvey Oswald would prefer to shoot while in the prone position. That is the optimum for a marksman...but Oswald does not have that option.
He will have to shoot standing up.
Yet as a veteran marksman, he knows to keep his body as still as possible. So now he leans hard against the left window jam and presses the butt of his Italian carbine against his right shoulder.
The scratched wooden stock of the butt is against his cheek...
His right index finger is curled around the...trigger.
Seeing his target clearly, Oswald exhales, gently squeezes the trigger (and)...smoothly pulls back the bolt to chamber another round.
Oswald fires again (and)...pulls the trigger on the third...drops his now-unnecessary Italian carbine and steps from the tower of book boxes behind which he's been hiding."
I found the book actually deserving of its #1 best-selling position. It is very interesting to read and very well written.
But in the years I have spent researching the assassination, the argument that the shooter in the 6th floor corner window was standing up has not been emphasized and in most cases not enough mentioned.
It is true that witnesses reported later that they saw someone standing in the window before the motorcade appeared in Dealey Plaza.
Killing Kennedy does mention Ronald Fischer and Robert Edwards "seeing a man in the sixth-floor window" who "never moved...didn't blink...(and) was just gazing, like a statue" but, again, that was well before the motorcade arrived.
*Update 11/24/2013
I have found that the probable source for a shooter standing up in the 6th floor corner window is Howard Brennan's* testimony before the Warren Commission in which he said...
"I glanced up and this man...was aiming for his last shot. It appeared to me he was standing up and resting against the window sill. He drew the gun back from the window...and then disappeared."
*Brennan was sitting on a concrete wall directly opposite the TSBD. He was called to a lineup at Dallas Police HQ where he, at that time, did NOT identify Oswald as the man he had seen in the window.
This testimony lends itself to this important question.
Since the definition of a window sill is that it is a ledge at the BOTTOM of a window, how could the man Brennan saw be "resting against the window sill," which was just a few feet above the floor, if he was standing up?
This testimony is also at odds with the book cartons which were stacked up to serve as a gun rest and on which a crease was found were the rifle had been resting.
.jpg)
Howard Brennan
Sitting Across from the Depository
March 20, 1964^
^Brennan circled the window where he said he saw a shooter and marked it "A", and also circled the window he said he saw a person watching the parade and marked it "B".
Also, Bob Jackson, the news photographer who took the Pulitzer Prize winning photo of Ruby shooting Oswald, was sitting on an open press car in the motorcade on Houston Street when he heard shots.
Mr. Jackson looked up just in time to see a rifle barrel, in his own words, being "withdrawn from the window sill."
Mr. Jackson, thus, does not corroborate Brennan's testimony that the shooter was standing up.
Another point I question is the idea that the shooter dropped his rifle as he exited the sniper's nest.
As any JFK assassination researcher knows, the rifle was found partially hidden behind some boxes near the stairs at the other end of the sixth floor.
We also take issue with this statement which appears at the end of the same chapter...
"As is so often his habit when something messes up his hair, John Kennedy's hand reflexively tries to pat the top of his head. But now the top of his head is gone."
Well, excuse me.
The top of his head was not gone. The back of his head was.
All eyewitnesses, in Dealey Plaza....at Parkland Hospital...at the Navy Hospital in Bethesda...observed a massive wound in the right rear of the head.
While I am at it, I need to mention this statement from the book...
"The first impact strikes the president in the back of his lower neck...and then exits his body through the tight knot of his dark blue tie."
Excuse me again.
The entrance wound was not in the back of JFK's lower neck. The entrance wound was in JFK's upper back, 5 and a half inches below the collar line and at the level of the third thoracic vertebrae according to the autopsy protocol at Bethesda.
The wound, as has been mentioned previously on this blog, was not or could not be tracked or linked to the throat wound by the autopsy surgeons.
If the bullet was fired from the 6th floor corner window at a downward trajectory, there is no way it could then move upward to exit the throat.
Lastly, I take issue with this last statement in Chapter 26...
"At 1:07 p.m., forty-eight hours and seven minutes after JFK's death, Lee Harvey Oswald also dies.
But unlike Kennedy, Oswald is not mourned.
By anyone."
Have the authors of this best seller not seen the photographs of Lee Oswald's wife, mother and brother at the graveside. Grief is clearly written on each of their faces.
Lee Harvey Oswald remains a puzzle to us today. Was he the lone assassin or was he just one of the shooters? If he was a shooter, did his shot kill JFK? If he wasn't a shooter, how was he involved in the conspiracy?
There remain many unanswered questions about the man, but to say that he was not mourned by anyone is just wrong.
SOURCE
"Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot," by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2012.
There is no way that Oswald was standing up. The open window he fired from was not far from the floor. He was probably in a kneeling or partially sitting while leaning up against the window frame for support. He had to stand up to walk away and make his escape.
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