David Harold Byrd

[Dan O'meara]

The credible evidence regarding who was on the 6th floor of the TSBD building just before, during and after the assassination ALL points away from Oswald.
As such, it is my opinion that Oswald did not take the shots that killed JFK
This makes me a Conspiracy Theorist, by default.
When I look for a motive in this crime I have to ask - who benefited the most from the death of JFK?
As far as I'm concerned, the man who benefited most was Lyndon Johnson.
It has always struck me as a curious coincidence that the building from which the fatal shots were fired was owned by Johnson's good friend, David Harold Byrd.
As I started to examine the connection between Byrd and Johnson I came across the work of Joan Mellen:

"Among those who benefited immediately from the removal of President Kennedy and the ascendancy of Lyndon Johnson was a fabulously successful wildcatter named David Harold, also known as D.H. for “dry hole” Byrd. (Not all the holes, of course, were dry). Byrd’s company LTV was about to go under. In early November, 1963, Byrd and a partner, James Ling, bought a sizable amount of outstanding LTV stock. Then LTV received the first defense contract from the Pentagon – for a fighter plane – accompanying the escalation of the war in Vietnam that was the direct result of the Kennedy assassination. Although that airplane was not ultimately built, LTV stock soared."


In the Conspiracy I am putting forward the decision to assassinate JFK is taken between Johnson and Byrd.
Johnson's only contribution to the assassination is to put his weight behind getting Kennedy to visit Dallas. JFK's route through Dallas was already determined during a visit there in 1960 and it takes him past Byrd's building.

This thread will be an examination of Byrd and his potential connections to the assassination.

[Charles Collins]

The credible evidence regarding who was on the 6th floor of the TSBD building just before, during and after the assassination ALL points away from Oswald.
As such, it is my opinion that Oswald did not take the shots that killed JFK
This makes me a Conspiracy Theorist, by default.
When I look for a motive in this crime I have to ask - who benefited the most from the death of JFK?
As far as I'm concerned, the man who benefited most was Lyndon Johnson.
It has always struck me as a curious coincidence that the building from which the fatal shots were fired was owned by Johnson's good friend, David Harold Byrd.
As I started to examine the connection between Byrd and Johnson I came across the work of Joan Mellen:

"Among those who benefited immediately from the removal of President Kennedy and the ascendancy of Lyndon Johnson was a fabulously successful wildcatter named David Harold, also known as D.H. for “dry hole” Byrd. (Not all the holes, of course, were dry). Byrd’s company LTV was about to go under. In early November, 1963, Byrd and a partner, James Ling, bought a sizable amount of outstanding LTV stock. Then LTV received the first defense contract from the Pentagon – for a fighter plane – accompanying the escalation of the war in Vietnam that was the direct result of the Kennedy assassination. Although that airplane was not ultimately built, LTV stock soared."


In the Conspiracy I am putting forward the decision to assassinate JFK is taken between Johnson and Byrd.
Johnson's only contribution to the assassination is to put his weight behind getting Kennedy to visit Dallas. JFK's route through Dallas was already determined during a visit there in 1960 and it takes him past Byrd's building.

This thread will be an examination of Byrd and his potential connections to the assassination.

So, this thread “is for the birds” I suppose.   

[Dan O'meara]

IMO, Byrd's purchase of LTV shares in Nov' '63 is potential evidence of his foreknowledge of the assassination.
In trying to find the actual proof of this insider trading I came across this extraordinary article by Jeremy Kuzmarov, "LBJ Insiders D.H. Byrd and James Ling Bought 132,000 Shares of Stock in Defense Contractor LTV in November 1963 Around Time of the JFK Assassination" - https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/11/21/lbj-insiders-d-h-byrd-and-james-ling-bought-132000-shares-of-stock-in-defense-contractor-ltv-in-november-1963-around-time-of-the-jfk-assassination/

"In November 1963, the month of JFK’s assassination, two of Lyndon B. Johnson’s closest friends, David H. Byrd and James Ling, bought 132,000 shares of Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) stock at approximately $16 per share through the Alpha Omega Corporation investment vehicle.
Byrd already owned 19,948 shares of LTV stock at this time, and his wife Mattie owned another 15,796 shares, which were collectively worth about $571,904. As a founder of one of the companies that merged to become LTV, Ling also (like Byrd) owned thousands of shares before the November 1963 purchase.
...
By 1967, in the middle of the Vietnam War, LTV stock rose to a whopping $169 per share and had a total value of $22,308,000 (which in 2024 dollars would be equal to approximately $207.3 million)"

Although there are certain aspects of Kuzmarov's article I may not necessarily agree with, it is a source of invaluable information linking Byrd to the assassination.

As a motive for killing JFK, Byrd knew that LBJ would reward him with defense contracts and the maintenance of the oil depletion allowance.
But it wasn't just the countless millions he stood to make. Byrd was ultra far-right, he personally met Hitler and was impressed by his "sincerity"!!
He also "developed a close friendship with one of Heinrich Himmler’s former assassins, Werner von Alvensleben, a double agent in World War II who owned and operated the big game hunting company that Byrd allegedly traveled to Mozambique with at the time of the JFK assassination."
There is no surprise that Byrd was out of the country at the time of the assassination,

"In the late 1930s, Byrd co-founded the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), an Air Force auxiliary used for covert operations. As a CAP recruit, Lee Harvey Oswald was sent to the Army Counterintelligence School in Maryland to “be taught the Russian language, Russian military tactics, Russian politics and all characteristics of the Russian people.”

Another connection between Byrd and Oswald is Georges De Morenschildt, the flamboyant socilaite who, for some truly inexplicable reason, took the poverty-stricken, anti-social, wife-beating, delusional loser, Oswald, under his wing.
Go figure.

[Richard Smith]

The credible evidence regarding who was on the 6th floor of the TSBD building just before, during and after the assassination ALL points away from Oswald.

That's quite an assertation.  All the evidence points toward LHO.  "Credible" or otherwise.  Even if you believe that evidence was all planted, the purpose of faking the evidence would seemingly be to frame Oswald.  It's difficult to even contemplate how there could be much more evidence than exists to link Oswald to this crime.  The only relevant question is whether that evidence is genuine or planted.  Merely pointing out that someone arguably benefitted from the assassination is pretty weak sauce to support a conspiracy.  The last person to be involved in such a conspiracy is LBJ.  Conspiring to assassinate the president in broad daylight in front of numerous witnesses and law enforcement would be reckless.  Other options such as working with Hoover to blackmail JFK into stepping down due to his poor health, drug use, and abuse of women would have been more LBJ's style and not risked going to prison or being executed.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

That's quite an assertation.  All the evidence points toward LHO.  "Credible" or otherwise.  Even if you believe that evidence was all planted, the purpose of faking the evidence would seemingly be to frame Oswald.  It's difficult to even contemplate how there could be much more evidence than exists to link Oswald to this crime.  The only relevant question is whether that evidence is genuine or planted.  Merely pointing out that someone arguably benefitted from the assassination is pretty weak sauce to support a conspiracy.  The last person to be involved in such a conspiracy is LBJ.  Conspiring to assassinate the president in broad daylight in front of numerous witnesses and law enforcement would be reckless.  Other options such as working with Hoover to blackmail JFK into stepping down due to his poor health, drug use, and abuse of women would have been more LBJ's style and not risked going to prison or being executed.

Oswald comes out of the building shortly after the shooting and sees this absolute chaos outside. People yelling and screaming, police officers with their guns drawn, spectators running, some throwing themselves on the ground. It's complete madness.

Does he ask about what happened? Stay and talk to Frazier or anyone else? This isn't small talk about the weather or the Cowboys. It's about this chaos going on as he watches. What's happening? He's a political person, is he not interested in what happened to the president? No, he walks seven blocks up the street and catches a bus. There was a bus stop on the corner of Houston and Elm that he could have used. But he decided otherwise. Does he talk to anyone about the event? There is no evidence that he does. He goes to his room where his landlady is watching the news. Does he stop to watch it? No, he rushes by then is out on the street. Not a care at all about the event.

At no time after the shooting does he show the slightest interest in what happened right outside the building where he worked.

If you don't find that evidence - not proof - but evidence of flight then you simply don't want to see it.

[Dan O'meara]

Oswald comes out of the building shortly after the shooting and sees this absolute chaos outside. People yelling and screaming, police officers with their guns drawn, spectators running, some throwing themselves on the ground. It's complete madness.

Does he ask about what happened? Stay and talk to Frazier or anyone else? This isn't small talk about the weather or the Cowboys. It's about this chaos going on as he watches. What's happening? He's a political person, is he not interested in what happened to the president? No, he walks seven blocks up the street and catches a bus. There was a bus stop on the corner of Houston and Elm that he could have used. But he decided otherwise. Does he talk to anyone about the event? There is no evidence that he does. He goes to his room where his landlady is watching the news. Does he stop to watch it? No, he rushes by then is out on the street. Not a care at all about the event.

At no time after the shooting does he show the slightest interest in what happened right outside the building where he worked.

If you don't find that evidence - not proof - but evidence of flight then you simply don't want to see it.

I agree Steve, it can be interpreted as evidence of flight.
In the theory I'm proposing, when Oswald leaves the TSBD building he is a man on the run.
He has kept just enough money to make it to the border. When he changes shirt he keeps the bus transfer and he is heading for the only place he can use it - Jefferson and Marsalis - when Tippit sees him. He has to get to this stop by 1:15 pm so is probably moving suspiciously quickly.

Hate to disappoint you.
PS: Is there anyone proposing that Oswald was a completely innocent bystander?

[Richard Smith]

Oswald comes out of the building shortly after the shooting and sees this absolute chaos outside. People yelling and screaming, police officers with their guns drawn, spectators running, some throwing themselves on the ground. It's complete madness.

Does he ask about what happened? Stay and talk to Frazier or anyone else? This isn't small talk about the weather or the Cowboys. It's about this chaos going on as he watches. What's happening? He's a political person, is he not interested in what happened to the president? No, he walks seven blocks up the street and catches a bus. There was a bus stop on the corner of Houston and Elm that he could have used. But he decided otherwise. Does he talk to anyone about the event? There is no evidence that he does. He goes to his room where his landlady is watching the news. Does he stop to watch it? No, he rushes by then is out on the street. Not a care at all about the event.

At no time after the shooting does he show the slightest interest in what happened right outside the building where he worked.

If you don't find that evidence - not proof - but evidence of flight then you simply don't want to see it.

Leaving his rifle at the crime scene along with his prints on the SN boxes is also pretty good proof!  I'm not sure how there could be much more evidence than exists to link Oswald to the crime under the circumstances.  It amazes me that the CTers will engage in a tortuous, pedantic analysis of every piece of evidence designed to cast doubt on any evidence that could lend itself to Oswald's guilt while almost any baseless counter possibility to Oswald's guilt as the shooter is accepted with no evidence whatsoever to support it.

[Dan O'meara]

That's quite an assertation.  All the evidence points toward LHO.  "Credible" or otherwise.  Even if you believe that evidence was all planted, the purpose of faking the evidence would seemingly be to frame Oswald.  It's difficult to even contemplate how there could be much more evidence than exists to link Oswald to this crime.  The only relevant question is whether that evidence is genuine or planted.  Merely pointing out that someone arguably benefitted from the assassination is pretty weak sauce to support a conspiracy.  The last person to be involved in such a conspiracy is LBJ.  Conspiring to assassinate the president in broad daylight in front of numerous witnesses and law enforcement would be reckless.  Other options such as working with Hoover to blackmail JFK into stepping down due to his poor health, drug use, and abuse of women would have been more LBJ's style and not risked going to prison or being executed.

That's quite an assertation.

If you had any clue about the evidence of the case you would know that it isn't "quite an assertion".
This litany of evidence is laid out in the "If I had planned the conspiracy..." thread [REPLY#212]

The collective statements of 4 eyewitnesses have the man on the 6th floor wearing a white/very light coloured shirt, open at the collar - Oswald wore a brown shirt to work that day.
Amos Euins constantly describes a distinctive bald spot on top of the mans head a few inches behind his hairline. Something Oswald didn't have.
Three eyewitnesses describe "Oswald's" hair but fail to mention it's most distinctive feature - that it is receding. In fact, one of them states that he didn't believe the man had a receding hairline.
Three eyewitnesses describe the man having a fair/light complexion, opposed to Oswald's dark, unshaven complexion.
Brennan thought the man was substantially older than Oswald when he saw (and failed to identify) him.
Hank Norman heard the small empty shells hitting the wooden floor directly above his head but, after the third one, failed to hear Oswald's heavy Oxford work shoes clomping around on the same wooden floor which is strange because Oswald is supposed to have started his descent immediately after the third shot in order to get down to the 2nd floor lunchroom to have an encounter with Baker with 3 seconds to spare.
Maybe Norman doesn't hear the footsteps because, as Brennan reported, when the presidential limo entered the underpass he looked back towards the man who was still stood at the window, a good 8 seconds after the last shot (thus scuppering the 3 second window of opportunity).
Jack Dougherty was supposed to be stood a few feet from the stairs when Oswald descended but he neither saw nor heard anything (remember, heavy Oxford work shoes on a wooden floor).
Same thing on the 4th floor with Dorothy Garner who followed Adams and Styles out and who was in that area when Truly and Baker came up, but no Oswald, and it's not just a case of him coming down the stairs, at the bottom of each staircase he has to walk across the floor in order to get to the next staircase.
None of the other women who came out to the 4th floor storage area reported seeing Oswald either.
Oswald reportedly told his interrogators that he had just purchased a coke when Baker came in. In Sept' '64 Baker wrote a report in which he stated that he saw the man in the lunchroom drinking a coke.
Oswald also told them that while he was having lunch in the domino room he had some kind of encounter with two men who can only be Hank Norman and Junior Jarman. This interaction happened about 5 minutes before the shooting. Arnold Rowland had already seen the man with a rifle on the 6th floor ten minutes before this.
And how do we explain the remains of Bonnie Rays lunch on top of the Sniper's Nest when it was first discovered?

ALL of the credible evidence regarding who was on the 6th floor just before, during and after the assassination points away from Oswald.
THERE IS ZERO CREDIBLE EVIDENCE PLACING OSWALD ON THE 6TH FLOOR AT THIS TIME.

This is why I don't accept that Oswald was the shooter. He was framed for the actual shooting with his own rifle.
And if Oswald isn't the shooter then we have a Conspiracy. There is no way around it.
As I've explained, I'm a 'minimalist', I don't buy into various teams of shooters spread around Dealey Plaza firing from different positions which was then going to be made to look like just three shots from the SN. That wouldn't get past the planning stage.
I don't buy into various intelligence agencies or the military/industrial complex because the could have murdered JFK in private. No leads, no mess, no fuss. The shooting in Dealey Plaza has a desperate quality to it, it is really lo-fi.

So, I ask myself - who benefits most from the death of JFK? Who has the most to gain? Who has a motive?
The answer, by a country mile, is LBJ and not just because he craves the presidency and knows he's off the ticket in '64. There was a real possibility that Johnson was on his way to jail, possibly for life.
And who is one of LBJ's closest friends? Only the man who owns the building from where the shots are fired - David Harold Byrd.
Within weeks of gaining the presidency, LBJ awards Byrd's company, LTV, a massive defense contract. LBJ also backtracks on JFK's plans to scrap the oil depletion allowance. Byrd makes tens of millions as a result of these 'favours' [the equivalent of hundreds of millions today].
Byrd's large purchase of shares just before the assassination is surely evidence of foreknowledge.
This is motive - something your own theory sadly lacks.

The last person to be involved in such a conspiracy is LBJ.

In my view LBJ has zero exposure. The decision to assassinate JFK is the result of a private conversation between him and Byrd.
It's Byrd who moves things forward. All LBJ has to do is push for JFK to come to Dallas and he does exactly that.