Can we be honest about Oswald's "patsy" statement?

[Watson Phillips]

He said he was a patsy, he said he was a patsy, he said he was a patsy ... of the arresting DPD officers.

The only person asking him completely irrelevant questions to the shooting, questions about, travel to Russia , Medals he received in the military, etc, etc,,,,,was FBI agent Hosty.
The DPD officer did not ask him one question about Russia .
Do you think Oswald thought the previous harassment he says he & Marina suffered from the FBI agent Hosty sitting in front of him  , harassment he slams his fist on the table about in anger  had anything to do with Russia ?
Why do you think the FBI was tracking him to begin with ?
Could it be Russia , Russia, Russia ?
You don't think Oswald knew that ?
Given how the FBI had dogged him & Marina over the past weeks in Dallas , and then having the same harassing FBI agent walk in the interrogation room , why would Oswald think anybody but the FBI was responsible for his being singled out for arrest ?
The DPD were just the delivery boys in Oswald's mind once Hosty entered the room and made clear who was in charge .

[Steve M. Galbraith]

You're going all ad hoc on us again. Why would he have immediately connected "the assassination" to "the plan" (to do what - toss water balloons out the window? wave protest signs?)? Why would he have played dumb in the lunchroom encounter and the encounter with Mrs. Reid? Why would he have hopped a bus, changed to a taxi, had Whaley drop him off past the rooming house, yada yada yada? This is your idea of how a patsy in some non-lethal plan "seeks out his contacts"? Why did he resist arrest, refuse to cooperate in the interrogation, give no clue to reporters or his family that his only involvement was in some non-lethal plan? If one thought one were involved in some non-lethal plan and had actually done nothing, would not the rational response in the face of a Presidential assassination be to remain in place and be fully cooperative? Your excuses for his actual conduct are entirely ad hoc and entirely lacking in plausibility.

If he was a patsy in what he thought was a non-lethal plan that turned lethal - that is, an innocent person caught up in something larger - then here is the opportunity (among others) to expose it. And clear his name. But instead of saving himself and becoming a hero by exposing the traitors, Oswald says: "I don't know what this is all about."

I'd still like to know how an innocent Oswald comes out of the building and immediately figures out what happened. It was chaos out there; nobody knew exactly what happened. Any explanation that has Oswald as some sort of innocent person - fully or in part - has to simply make things up, grab explanations out of thin air. It's the only way they work.

[Lance Payette]

The only person asking him completely irrelevant questions to the shooting, questions about, travel to Russia , Medals he received in the military, etc, etc,,,,,was FBI agent Hosty.
The DPD officer did not ask him one question about Russia .
Do you think Oswald thought the previous harassment he says he & Marina suffered from the FBI agent Hosty sitting in front of him  , harassment he slams his fist on the table about in anger  had anything to do with Russia ?
Why do you think the FBI was tracking him to begin with ?
Could it be Russia , Russia, Russia ?
You don't think Oswald knew that ?
Given how the FBI had dogged him & Marina over the past weeks in Dallas , and then having the same harassing FBI agent walk in the interrogation room , why would Oswald think anybody but the FBI was responsible for his being singled out for arrest ?
The DPD were just the delivery boys in Oswald's mind once Hosty entered the room and made clear who was in charge .

I'm beginning to think your avatar is perhaps an actual photo of yourself.    You are persistently - perhaps willfully? - missing the point. My point is in regard to the patsy statement: he never suggested he was a patsy in any conspiracy. You now want to shift this is to: he was telling the truth, he actually was arrested only because he'd been to Russia. That's an entirely different issue. If you want to believe this explains Oswald's actions on the day of the assassination, be my guest. You are forced to adopt the complete fantasy that the FBI had been closely monitoring him - but again, be my guest.

As I've stated previously, the CT community comprises two distinct types:

1. Oswald as one of the assassins. This is where at least superficial plausibility is to be found.

2. Oswald as an innocent patsy. This requires so many ad hoc explanations, so many absurdities, that it is where the tinfoil hats are to be found.

[Watson Phillips]

You are forced to adopt the complete fantasy that the FBI had been closely monitoring him - but again, be my guest.

Mr. HOSTY. Yes; that is my recollection that we looked it [where Oswald was working] up in her telephone book to show it at 411 Elm Street, Dallas, Tex.

Are you saying the FBI"s stated  full knowledge that Oswald had a custom made snipers nest directly above the President's motorcade  as a fringe benefit of his daily employed presence at the school Book depository  was  found out by  "fantasy" ?

By the way what did the FBI do when they discovered that Oswald who by their own admission was under investigation as being a Russian asset & also who they knew had a criminal conviction record for illegal firearms, and violent assault, would be viewing the presidents motorcade from his workplace on the 6th floor of the book depository  where he could literally spit on the president , when the President's Secret Service Advance Team came calling wanting to know the local threats .
I'll bet the FBI could not wait to warn the Secret Service advance Team that based on the current criminal investigation of Oswald being a Russian asset , as well as his violent criminal history of assault  , and illegal firearms that the motorcade should stay away from his perfect snipers nest in the book depository ?
Right ?
That is a YES or a NO  by the way ?

"April 11, 1958 Court-Martial: Partly Printed Document. Two two-sided pages, 8" x 12.5", Atsugi Japan, April 11, 1958. Being the "Charge Sheet" which contains Oswald's typed information as the accused, as well as names of witnesses, information provided by commanding officers, Oswald's punishment, and other remarks. On October 27, 1957, Oswald accidentally shot himself in the left elbow with his personal .22 derringer. Possession of such a firearm was in direct violation of "a lawful general order... by having in his possession a privately-owned weapon that was not registered." Following a three-week stay at the Yokosuka Naval Hospital and various unrelated delays, Oswald's court-martial commenced on April 11, 1958, at which time Commanding Officer and Convening Authority Lt. Col. N.D. Glenn made his judgment. Oswald was demoted from private first class to private and ordered "To be confined at hard labor for 20 days, to forfeit $25.00 per month for two months and to be reduced to the grade of private... Approved and ordered executed, but the confinement at hard labor for twenty days is suspended for six months, at which time, unless the suspension is sooner vacated, the sentence to confinement at hard labor for twenty days will be remitted without further action."


June 24, 1958 Court-Martial: Partly Printed Document Signed. Two two-sided pages, 8" x 12.5", Atsugi Japan, June 24, 1958. This "Charge Sheet" contains Oswald's typed information as the accused, the names of witnesses, information provided by commanding officers, Oswald's punishment, and other remarks. Just two months after his first court-martial, Oswald was brought before a second military court on charges that he insulted and assaulted a superior officer."

[Lance Payette]

Mr. HOSTY. Yes; that is my recollection that we looked it [where Oswald was working] up in her telephone book to show it at 411 Elm Street, Dallas, Tex.

Are you saying the FBI"s stated  full knowledge that Oswald had a custom made snipers nest directly above the President's motorcade  as a fringe benefit of his daily employed presence at the school Book depository  was  found out by  "fantasy" ?

By the way what did the FBI do when they discovered that Oswald who by their own admission was under investigation as being a Russian asset & also who they knew had a criminal conviction record for illegal firearms, and violent assault, would be viewing the presidents motorcade from his workplace on the 6th floor of the book depository  where he could literally spit on the president , when the President's Secret Service Advance Team came calling wanting to know the local threats .
I'll bet the FBI could not wait to warn the Secret Service advance Team that based on the current criminal investigation of Oswald being a Russian asset , as well as his violent criminal history of assault  , and illegal firearms that the motorcade should stay away from his perfect snipers nest in the book depository ?
Right ?
That is a YES or a NO  by the way ?

"April 11, 1958 Court-Martial: Partly Printed Document. Two two-sided pages, 8" x 12.5", Atsugi Japan, April 11, 1958. Being the "Charge Sheet" which contains Oswald's typed information as the accused, as well as names of witnesses, information provided by commanding officers, Oswald's punishment, and other remarks. On October 27, 1957, Oswald accidentally shot himself in the left elbow with his personal .22 derringer. Possession of such a firearm was in direct violation of "a lawful general order... by having in his possession a privately-owned weapon that was not registered." Following a three-week stay at the Yokosuka Naval Hospital and various unrelated delays, Oswald's court-martial commenced on April 11, 1958, at which time Commanding Officer and Convening Authority Lt. Col. N.D. Glenn made his judgment. Oswald was demoted from private first class to private and ordered "To be confined at hard labor for 20 days, to forfeit $25.00 per month for two months and to be reduced to the grade of private... Approved and ordered executed, but the confinement at hard labor for twenty days is suspended for six months, at which time, unless the suspension is sooner vacated, the sentence to confinement at hard labor for twenty days will be remitted without further action."


June 24, 1958 Court-Martial: Partly Printed Document Signed. Two two-sided pages, 8" x 12.5", Atsugi Japan, June 24, 1958. This "Charge Sheet" contains Oswald's typed information as the accused, the names of witnesses, information provided by commanding officers, Oswald's punishment, and other remarks. Just two months after his first court-martial, Oswald was brought before a second military court on charges that he insulted and assaulted a superior officer."

I honestly have no idea what point you are trying to make.

1. An 18-year-old kid manages to shoot himself in the elbow at his locker in the barracks with a .22 Derringer that he possesses in contravention of military regulations. The discharge occurs while he is reaching into his locker for shaving cream. He is charged with "wrongful conduct" but not charged with the more serious "misconduct' because it's a minor incident.

2. The same kid, while drunk, accidentally (that was the court finding) spills a drink on a Technical Sergeant, who then shoves him, and the two end up in a minor altercation outside. He is convicted of only one of the charges against him - "using provocative words."

3. For 3+ years in the USSR and U.S., the individual's only brush with the law is for disturbing the peace in violation of a New Orleans municipal ordinance, for which he is fined $10.

4. He was not "under investigation for being a Russian asset." As a former defector with a Russian wife who openly engaged in pro-Castro activities, he was of routine interest to the FBI with no indication he was dangerous or a Russian asset.

5. At the time of the JFKA, he was working as a temporary order filler in a grungy warehouse with some 95 other people, most of whom were employees of well-known publishing companies. He did not have a "workplace on the 6th floor" - it was simply one of the floors from which he filled book orders. There was no "sniper's test" until the day of the JFKA. Every window in every building along the motorcade route was a potential sniper's nest (not to mention all the other locations from which CTers think shots were fired!).

Yet you portray him as someone the FBI should have recognized as John Wilkes Booth, Jr. The fact is, the security for the motorcade was remarkably lax and any number of other gunmen could have popped JFK from any number of other buildings (or storm drains, or picket fences, or triple overpasses, or curbside umbrellas).

Yes, in retrospect it was a massive security failure, both in terms of the motorcade and the failure to at least bring Oswald to the attention of the SS. But you are doing the sort of long-after-the-fact, ad hoc "analysis" that is the lifeblood of conspiracy thinking. The day before the JFKA, Oswald was nothing more than an oddball the SS should probably at least have known about (along with God knows how many others in proximity to the motorcade). With CT 20-20 hindsight, however, he was "obviously" the most dangerous guy in Dallas and should have been chained and shackled a week in advance.

I still don't understand what point you're making. If you think Oswald was such an obvious, known threat to the CIA and FBI that their malfeasance was even greater than the rest of us think it was - well, OK, but so what? Since you interjected this line of thought into the "patsy" thread, I assume it's your position that Oswald was innocent and the FBI not only intentionally failed to alert the SS to his presence in the TSBD but somehow conspired with the real assassins to ensure he would be arrested - is that it? Maybe others are following your point, but I'm not.

[Tom Graves]

I honestly have no idea what point you are trying to make.

1. An 18-year-old kid manages to shoot himself in the elbow at his locker in the barracks with a .22 Derringer that he possesses in contravention of military regulations. The discharge occurs while he is reaching into his locker for shaving cream. He is charged with "wrongful conduct" but not charged with the more serious "misconduct' because it's a minor incident.

2. The same kid, while drunk, accidentally (that was the court finding) spills a drink on a Technical Sergeant, who then shoves him, and the two end up in a minor altercation outside. He is convicted of only one of the charges against him - "using provocative words."

3. For 3+ years in the USSR and U.S., the individual's only brush with the law is for disturbing the peace in violation of a New Orleans municipal ordinance, for which he is fined $10.

4. He was not "under investigation for being a Russian asset." As a former defector with a Russian wife who openly engaged in pro-Castro activities, he was of routine interest to the FBI with no indication he was dangerous or a Russian asset.

5. At the time of the JFKA, he was working as a temporary order filler in a grungy warehouse with some 95 other people, most of whom were employees of well-known publishing companies. He did not have a "workplace on the 6th floor" - it was simply one of the floors from which he filled book orders. There was no "sniper's test" until the day of the JFKA. Every window in every building along the motorcade route was a potential sniper's nest (not to mention all the other locations from which CTers think shots were fired!).

Yet you portray him as someone the FBI should have recognized as John Wilkes Booth, Jr. The fact is, the security for the motorcade was remarkably lax and any number of other gunmen could have popped JFK from any number of other buildings (or storm drains, or picket fences, or triple overpasses, or curbside umbrellas).

Yes, in retrospect it was a massive security failure, both in terms of the motorcade and the failure to at least bring Oswald to the attention of the SS. But you are doing the sort of long-after-the-fact, ad hoc "analysis" that is the lifeblood of conspiracy thinking. The day before the JFKA, Oswald was nothing more than an oddball the SS should probably at least have known about (along with God knows how many others in proximity to the motorcade). With CT 20-20 hindsight, however, he was "obviously" the most dangerous guy in Dallas and should have been chained and shackled a week in advance.

I still don't understand what point you're making. If you think Oswald was such an obvious, known threat to the CIA and FBI that their malfeasance was even greater than the rest of us think it was - well, OK, but so what? Since you interjected this line of thought into the "patsy" thread, I assume it's your position that Oswald was innocent and the FBI not only intentionally failed to alert the SS to his presence in the TSBD but somehow conspired with the real assassins to ensure he would be arrested - is that it? Maybe others are following your point, but I'm not.

Going from memory, here, but didn't the FBI accuse the CIA of not informing it that Oswald had allegedly been in contact with a putative Department-13 (assassinations and sabotage) KGB officer in Mexico City about seven weeks before the assassination?

[Jim Hawthorn]

You're going all ad hoc on us again. Why would he have immediately connected "the assassination" to "the plan" (to do what - toss water balloons out the window? wave protest signs?)?

"The plan" could have been anything and not necessarily somehing that was destined to happen that day.

Why would he have hopped a bus, changed to a taxi, had Whaley drop him off past the rooming house, yada yada yada?

The bus got jammed in traffic. If he'd been spooked by what was going on, he might have realised that he now had to be careful.

If one thought one were involved in some non-lethal plan and had actually done nothing, would not the rational response in the face of a Presidential assassination be to remain in place and be fully cooperative?

If he'd been involved in something that already amounted to treason, he would still be on his guard. We don't know what he said to his interrogators behind closed doors.

If he was a patsy in what he thought was a non-lethal plan that turned lethal - that is, an innocent person caught up in something larger - then here is the opportunity (among others) to expose it.

To the world press? I think if he had something to say, he'd have kept it, like I said, behind closed doors.

I'd still like to know how an innocent Oswald comes out of the building and immediately figures out what happened.

Er, people running around saying that the President had been shot?

Any explanation that has Oswald as some sort of innocent person - fully or in part - has to simply make things up, grab explanations out of thin air. It's the only way they work.

Not at all. There are many possibilities. His behaviour doesn't necessarily scream "assassin".

[Michael T. Griffith]

A longtime researcher recently posted on the Ed Forum that “Oswald’s patsy statement speaks volumes.”

Does it?

Oswald said, “They’ve taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy.”

He was saying, clearly, that he was a patsy of the Dallas Police Department.

I will grant, this could suggest Oswald was absolutely clueless as to why he’d been arrested. He didn’t know his rifle was on the 6th floor of the TSBD, didn’t know Tippit had been shot, perhaps didn’t even know JFK was dead. He really thought he'd been arrested only because the DPD knew he'd been in Russia.

But then we have to explain why he left the TSBD, hopped a bus, got impatient and hailed a taxi, had the taxi drop him off past his rooming house, hurried in and got his pistol, Ded Something (perhaps shot Tippit?), lingered suspiciously at the entrance to the shoe store, slipped into the theater, changed seats, resisted arrest, and told whoppers to his interrogators. Hmmm ...

What his statement didn’t suggest is that he was a patsy in any conspiracy. He didn’t say “I’m just a patsy – there’s more to this than you think” or “I’m just a patsy – the truth will come out” or “Others are the criminals – I’m just a patsy" or "I didn't shoot anyone - I was duped - I'm just a patsy."

Yet this “patsy” statement is one of absolute linchpins of conspiracy gospel. CTers get more mileage out of it than fundamentalists get out of any Bible verse.

But Oswald's statement could mean he realized that he had been set up and that his phony defection was now being used against him. Given all that we now know about his "defection," that is a logical, plausible reading of his comment.

Keep in mind, too, Oswald's statement to his brother not to believe the "so-called evidence" against him, and his statement to the police that the backyard rifle photos had been created by someone who placed the image of his onto the backyard figure.

Also, when Oswald was arrested, he repeatedly asked why he was being arrested.

And, when he was arraigned before the judge and learned he was a suspect in JFK's death, he reacted with stunned, angry disbelief.

Finally, voice-stress analysis of his statement to reports that he didn't shoot anyone indicates he was telling the truth.