Did Captain Fritz show Mr Oswald a Mauser?

[Steve M. Galbraith]

This forum is not a court of law, nor even a platform for formal debate. No ivory tower, this.

This case is a slam dunk. A good defense team would advise Oswald to plead out.

And what some call 'discrepancies', others might call minutia.

It appears that the Oswald defenders think the WC shouldn't have conducted an investigation because they may have found someone culpable in the assassination. In this case Oswald. And that would have violated his (or others') non-existent, for the WC investigation, right to a presumption of innocence.

The presumption of innocence is, as you point out, for a court of law. It's for a criminal proceeding and for the jury to adhere to. The WC wasn't a criminal proceeding. It had no power to indict anyone; even for perjury.

So the Warren Commission was wrong because they accused Oswald of a crime. And that was a violation of what? His right to a presumption of innocence? But he was dead and he couldn't be prosecuted. So we can't have an investigation - that would violate his rights - and he couldn't be prosecuted - he was dead. What was supposed to happen?

This is why we call them Oswald cultists.

And just to note: Jim Garrison accused all sorts of people, including dead ones (Ferrie), of crimes. Murder, conspiracy to murder, perjury....and some (not all but some) of the same people upset at what happened to Oswald are largely silent. In fact, some are big Garrison defenders.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

There are no cults about Oswald, Bill. Quite honestly, the man never got his day in court. Any good defense lawyer would have been able to reveal discrepancies in his case. I don't know where you're from, but here in the U.S., all people are innocent until proven guilty. The Warren Report is not a document that sprouted from a full-fledged courtroom trial with the living accused in attendance.

Question, please: After the assassination, what should the government have done?

Oswald is dead. You can't prosecute him. And you say the WC was wrong because it wasn't a "full-fledged courtroom trial." But it was an investigation not a criminal prosecution. It had no power to indict anyone, not even for perjury. It didn't, because it couldn't, charge Oswald with any crimes. His "presumption of innocence" - which is for a trial - wasn't violated.

So what was there to do? If the government investigates the assassination and finds evidence indicating Oswald was the assassin should they not reveal that? What exactly could be done?

And the Dallas country prosecutor charged Oswald with the crimes - the murder of JFK and of Tippit. Was that wrong too? Every day the government accuses people of crimes. They are indicted. How is accusing or prosecuting a person a violation of their "presumption of innocence"?

[Michael Walton]

This forum is not a court of law, nor even a platform for formal debate. No ivory tower, this.

This case is a slam dunk. A good defense team would advise Oswald to plead out.

And what some call 'discrepancies', others might call minutia.

Never said it was a court of law, Bill. You're venturing into hyperbole here. Lee never got his day in court.

[Michael Walton]

Never said it was a court of law, Bill. You're venturing into hyperbole here. Lee never got his day in court.

The Katzenbach letter and the Hoover memo pretty much start off the Warren Commission with a foregone conclusion. From there, there was absolutely no chance their report would have been conducted in an honest manner. Not all the WC members supported the "conclusions" it came up with. The investigation was rotten from the start. So to answer your question, it would have helped tremendously if the investigation had been started from the get-go in an honest and forthright manner.

[Richard Smith]

The Katzenbach letter and the Hoover memo pretty much start off the Warren Commission with a foregone conclusion. From there, there was absolutely no chance their report would have been conducted in an honest manner. Not all the WC members supported the "conclusions" it came up with. The investigation was rotten from the start. So to answer your question, it would have helped tremendously if the investigation had been started from the get-go in an honest and forthright manner.

The WC investigation against Oswald was only biased in the sense that all the evidence pointed toward his guilt.  Katzenbach may have felt that it was important that the public be convinced of Oswald's guilt not due to any frame up but because Oswald was guilty and there were risks that nutty CTers could convince the public that a foreign power was behind the assassination and start WWIII on a false premise. 

[Bill Chapman]

Never said it was a court of law, Bill. You're venturing into hyperbole here. Lee never got his day in court.

'Lee' haha. The 'identifier': The not-so-secret (virtual) handshake. Y'know, the first-name-basis thing.

You've ventured into cult-think.

[Bill Chapman]

The Katzenbach letter and the Hoover memo pretty much start off the Warren Commission with a foregone conclusion. From there, there was absolutely no chance their report would have been conducted in an honest manner. Not all the WC members supported the "conclusions" it came up with. The investigation was rotten from the start. So to answer your question, it would have helped tremendously if the investigation had been started from the get-go in an honest and forthright manner.

They figured they had Oswald dead-to-rights.
So they in fact were honest from the get-go.
They wanted to make sure there were no conspirators.
That's it.

But their messaging was badly written, at least in part.
Just bad enough to get the cultists all atwitter.

[Michael Walton]

They figured they had Oswald dead-to-rights.
So they in fact were honest from the get-go.
They wanted to make sure there were no conspirators.
That's it.

But their messaging was badly written, at least in part.
Just bad enough to get the cultists all atwitter.

It was a very dishonest process. There were no dead-to-rights for Lee. J. Edgar Hoover said in a memo two days after John F. Kennedy's assassination that the public must be led to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. You don't lead someone to believe something until all of the evidence is compiled and this memo was released mere weeks after the murder. They hadn't even yet come up with an explanation for the shot sequence and timing.

Katzenbach's memo says that "...it is important that all of the facts surrounding President Kennedy’s Assassination be made public in a way..." that he's the lone assassin. The "in a way" is another example of putting the cart before the horse.

There was no such thing as dead-to-rights. Oswald has absolutely no legal representation during the time he was in custody which is why he asked for representation at the press conference. It was his right to retain legal representation.

Some WC members did not agree fully with the WC's conclusions. It's a mess beyond all comprehension.