Bonus Episode: Response to Rich Lowry’s “Sorry Everyone, Oswald Still Acted Alone”

about a week ago an article was published in the National Review by Rich Lowry titled sorry everyone Oswald still acted alone as I read through this article I realized that Lowry was making a completely one-sided argument that was in support of the Warren Commission and pretty much ignored all evidence to the contrary so in this bonus episode of solving JFK I wanted to go through exactly what Rich Lowry said and his article and provide legitimate counterpoints that make the picture much cloudier than Lowry leads his readers to believe Lowry starts his article out by basically talking about a few folks that he perceives as being on the I guess right side of the right left divide and how they're talking about the JFK assassination was done by the CIA specifically he mentions Shawn Davis of the Federalist uh who's talking about the Trump assassination attempt and then he goes on to say Hey you know they did it to Kennedy and they did they did it to Kennedy's brother and they tried to do it to Trump so sort of you know he's saying the CIA did it you also have Donald Trump Junior saying the same thing you got Tucker Carlson you got Ron Paul saying quote I don't think it's a controversial statement anymore to say that the CIA especially former director Alan Dulles was involved in the assassination ation and you know Ron Paul even called it a coup so there are you know he also talks about Rob Riner and the show who killed JFK his podcast by the way uh Rob Riner is not on the right so now I'll say that you know folks who are in the public sphere and just jump to the point that the CIA is responsible for the assassination really have an obligation to know this case very very well because everything is disputed and uh we have not yet gotten to covering the CIA in depth on solving JFK but we have covered most of the primary evidence we have covered almost all of Lee Harvey Oswald's life and it's certainly possible that the CIA is a you know a candidate for for who could have been behind it but the implications of that are so grave that I think it's necessary to expect people who are in the public sphere who say that to be able to back up their case right so to the extent that's Lowry's point which it's not that that's kind of what I think about all this when it comes to just jumping to the conclusion that the CIA did it it's all disputed you're going to have to make your case anyway so you better know all the granular details if you choose to opine on this topic I'm going to read one little section here how Lowry uh sort of sums up his first section he says quote that such conspiracy theories have so long endured and in fact found new converts on another part of the political spectrum is a stunning victory of paranoia over reason and fiction over fact for all its consequence the JFK assassination is an uncomplicated murder case in fact the Simplicity of the case is inversely related to the complex mental gymnastics necessary to implicate anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald there's a reason that the Dallas Police almost instantly solved it it doesn't matter to the conspiracy theorists that despite all the effort devoted to the attempt they've come up with no evidence for their claims while they reject the massive evidence pointing to Oswald acting alone they recycle the same old misunderstandings of the facts not knowing or caring that they've been debunked long ago Mr Lowry says that he relies solely on Gerald posner's case closed and Vincent bios's reclaiming history and while both of those books are important ones to have if you want to have a full picture of the case and know what all the arguments are including all of the Warren report defense arguments those books take a very clear position and leave out or underemphasize a lot of important evidence so I want to take this as an opportunity to go through Lowry's article and just kind of raise a few issues on some propositions of facts that I don't think are factually supported so let's go ahead and just go through the article Lowry says that almost all of the witnesses thought that the shots came from the schoolbook depository but that's not actually true Vincent buosi is one of the authors that Lowry is relying upon and buosi himself says that of the 88 Witnesses who expressed an opinion on where the shots came from 40 said the grassy null and 41 said the schoolbook depository seven said the shots came from somewhere else so that's 40 for the grassy null versus 41 for the school Book Depository the next thing that Lowry says is that multiple Witness say saw a man with a rifle in the sixth floor window that is a true statement but when we unpack the detail behind that we're going to see that it doesn't really mean that Oswald's guilty just because multiple Witnesses saw a man with a rifle in the sixth floor let me explain what I mean there's a guy Howard Brennan he's the star witness for the Warren report and he is standing across the street leaning up against a little Fountain wall and he said that he looks up to the sixth floor window and he sees according to the Warren report he sees Oswald in that window as he's looking across the street and up six stories but on the night of the assassination Howard Brennan was given the opportunity to identify Oswald at the police station and he said that that didn't look like the man that he saw and he could not confirm that that was Lee Harvey oswal If you go to D Plaza and you look up yourself I think you'll be satisfied that you'd be able to tell if someone had had a hat or had glasses maybe the complexion of their skin but you wouldn't be able to tell what someone's face looked like from that far away especially if you'd never seen them before another potential witness who saw a man with a rifle in the six4 window is Amos Yuan he said that he saw a man with a pipe in a high window and it was held by a guy with a bald spot on his head but oswal didn't have a bald spot Lowry also could potentially be talking about Bob Edwards and Ronald fiser who say that they saw a white guy in the window from the street but they didn't identify him as Oswald or he could be talking about Carolyn Walther who said that she saw a shooter in the window and she also saw a man standing behind the shooter wearing a brown sport coat and of course if there's a man behind the shooter then that's two people that's not Oswald alone or I suppose Lowry could be talking about Arnold ran who said that he saw a man with dark hair with a rifle on the sixth floor in a window around 12:15 at the same time when Oswald was still on the second floor according to witness Carolyn Arnold Lowry also says that the police had an accurate gunman description within minutes but the gunman's description was a slender white male about 30 years old 5' 10 in weighing 165 lb Oswald was actually a little younger but this description is not too far off it's just that it came from Howard Brennan who again was standing across the street pretty far away looking six stories up and there's no way from where he was standing that he'd be able to tell how tall someone was in that position so by no means can we say that Brennan reliably identified the gunman within minutes Lowry also goes on to say quote the idea that Oswald couldn't have hit Kennedy or that there were more than three shots is based on a series of misconceptions it is said that Oswald didn't have time to give off the shots often based on a fallacious reading of the zuder tape but the real timing of the shots has been duplicated or improved upon many times in tests end quote this is the next one that I take issue with the shots have not been recreated many times that Oswald attempted the zuder film creates a Time window for exactly how long the shooter would have to take those shots the FBI tried to recreate for the warring commission the same shots that Oswald is alleged to have taken and they had Shooters firing at stationary targets from 30 ft up whereas Oswald was firing at moving targets from 60 ft up even so five of six of the world class Riflemen who tried to hit all three shots when the FBI set this test up they they failed to do it in the allocated amount of time only one of the six worldclass Riflemen could and by the way Oswald was not a world class Riflemen a more accurate experiment was run by CBS News in 1967 where they had 11 professional marksmen try to hit a moving Target from 60 ft up which would more closely resemble what Oswald was supposed to have done the 11 professionals took 37 attempts at hitting two of three shots out of those 37 attempts there were only three successful attempts or 88.1% of the time so no the shots have not been recreated many times in many tests and in fact when Shooters who were by all accounts far better Shooters than Oswald tried to take the same shots or similar shots they weren't able to Lowry goes on quote it is alleged that it would have been impossible for Oswald to hit Kennedy because he was allegedly a poor shot actually he was a good shot during his stent in the Marine Corps exceeding the score needed to be a sharpshooter and he practiced once he procured his rifle so let's unpack that little section we have two shooting tests from Oswald's time in the Marines in 1956 he scored 212 out of 250 to get the Sharpshooter rating just like Lowry said that's true but in 1959 Oswald got a minimum score to pass which was Marksman you start out with a score of 190 and Oswell obtained a 191 out of 250 on that test also numerous Marines who were with Oswald say that he was a very poor shot I don't know Rich Lowry personally but either you don't know all the information when you say this like maybe he just didn't know about the 191 score or he's leaving this information out because by the way the the worst scorer was later in time okay so did you know did he get worse like what happened that's not addressed and it's honestly to me this feels intellectually dishonest it feels like a lie because there's conflicting evidence here it is absolutely not clear that Oswald was a good shooter as as allegedly you know shown by his shooting records next thing on Oswald as a shooter Lowry says that Oswald practiced with a rifle the only alleged time that Oswald ever practiced shooting the rifle was sometime in April Marina at that time said that he put the rifle under a raincoat on a night when it wasn't raining and then went to the Love Field Airport to practice shooting yes Marina says that Oswald practiced shooting at the airport and he took a a rifle on a bus under a raincoat so that's what you'd have to believe and even if you believe that this is in April there's no reported instance of Oswald go into the rifle range anytime closer to the shooting unless you disagree with the Warren report and you think that the rifle range sighting of Oswald which there were a few sightings that the Warren report said couldn't have been him if you think that was Oswald shooting at the rifle range then who's the guy hanging out with Marina and Ruth Payne at those alleged times there's just no truth whatsoever to the idea that Oswald had practiced in the fall of 1963 with a rifle the proof that he ever had rifle practice is very shaky I would say and by the way Marina says that after his rifle practice he buried the rifle in a field even though there was no dirt found on the rifle when the FBI conducted a microscopic analysis of it so Oswell did not practice and this is one of the reasons why even if he was a good shooter it would be very very hard for him to accomplish what he's alleged to have done because he didn't have any practice Lowry goes on to talk about Oswald's maale order rifle and there are a lot of pieces of evidence that point to Oswald in terms of rifle ownership okay there are I'm not going to say that there are not because that wouldn't be true but there are a few things that are definitely suspicious about the rifle order so the rifle that shipped to Oswald supposedly the one that we have in evidence is 40 in Long the rifle that was ordered on the slip was 36 in Long so they sent a different rifle than the one that was supposedly ordered Oswald allegedly mailed the money order and the order form for the rifle on March 12th of 1963 and he mailed that from Dallas but the money order was deposited in Chicago by Klein on March 13th the next day so one day is unreasonably fast for standard mail to travel from Dallas to Chicago be received and processed by cins internally and then have someone go deposited at the bank and we are to believe that all of that happened the next day possible but it does not seem likely no one ever saw Oswald pick up the rifle or the pistol for that matter and he never signed for either one so oh you know we have the order form but we have these little anomalies which of course Rich Lowry did not mention all right let's let's continue on here Lowry says quote of course there supposedly was no way the Magic Bullet the second shot could have wounded two different men AFK and his fellow passenger in the car Governor John Connelly in multiple places in reality that's what a bullet traveling in that direction would do passing through Kennedy's neck and then through connell's chest as buosi points out it would have taken a real magic bullet to hit Kennedy on the neck and then disappear not hitting Connelly or embedding somewhere in the car instead it did what you'd expect of a bullet passing through the soft tissue of one man and then hitting the man sitting in front of him this too has been confirmed by various studies and tests okay let's look at this question when it comes to the Magic Bullet there's really three different conversations the first one is the trajectory and the entrance point when you study the evidence you'll find that the entry wound in Kennedy's back was too low to possibly have been an exit wound out of the front of Kennedy's neck this is really the core problem with the Warren reports single bullet theory how do we know this well we can look at the autopsy photos the FBI's cyber and O'Neal report we can look at the holes in JFK's suit coat and his shirt we can look at the death certificate itself the location of this wound is the whole key to the magic bullet theory because either it's in his upper right back or it's close to the top of his neck uh towards the right so pretty big difference and if it's where they say it is then yes the magic bullet theory could I suppose be plausible in terms of trajectory but look at the evidence you'll find that that's not the case and also the back wound SL neck wound that hit Kennedy was specifically probed at the autopsy and it did not go through so again just look at the evidence and this is what you'll find the next reason to doubt the magic bullet theory is the condition of the bullet itself c399 there's no possible way that it could have gone through Kennedy's soft tissue hit Connelly's rib wrist and thigh and then be in the condition that c399 is in the reason we know this is because when tests were conducted bullets that hit a human wrist and bullets that hit a goat cadaver were far more mangled and in worse shape then c399 which supposedly hit rib wrist and thigh right after going through Kennedy already also just very basic exercise here I encourage you to go look at c399 and then look at the fragments that were taken from Governor Connelly's body which supposedly came from the c399 bullet and you tell me where on that bullet those fragments go and what you'll find is there's nowhere for them to go because the fragments did not come from that bullet the last thing on c399 is the chain of custody the first two people who found the bullet could not identify it per an FBI report and what's crazy is the final FBI report about the chain of custody says that the report was conducted by FBI agent Bardwell odm but Bardwell Odum says that he never possessed c399 he never spoke to Tomlin center right about it and that the FBI's reference to him conducting those interviews was completely made up so the chain of custody story is a lie according to the guy who's supposed to have established the chain of custody low next says quote there was no one on the famous grassy null it was an unpropitious spot not behind the motorcade where oswal was but in front of it for everyone to see there is zero evidence none of additional shots no bullets lodged in any cars or were found in the vicinity no spent casing showed up on the grassy null itself it's all made up so low says there's zero proof whatsoever of a shot from the grassy null well there is some proof there are witnesses who saw someone in the grassy null and there is a jarring report that there potentially was Secret Service on the grassy null so there's evidence that a man who identified himself as a secret service agent was on the top of the grassy null telling people to clear the area right after the shots were fired officer Joe Smith and Deputy Constable Seymour whitesman both saw this man and he showed them Secret Service ID but the Secret Service says that there was no one who wasn't with the motorcade in the Secret Service they didn't have anyone stationed there so this man was impersonating Secret Service that's a huge fact and it's established by two police officers that's really one of the central mysteries of this case today three railroad workers SM Holland Richard Dodd and Leon Simmons were on the nearby railroad bridge and ran over to behind the picket fence on the grassy null when they saw a puff of smoke come out from under the trees around the time the shots were fired Lee Bowers who had a great view of the entire scene he was in the railroad tower says that he saw two men standing behind the fence at the top of the grassy null and he saw a flash of light around the time of the shooting also there's Ed Hoffman a deaf mute who says that he saw the shooter fire a shot and then toss the gun to a man in work clothes who broke the Gun Down by twisting it and walked down the railroad track and there's a lot more too this is not all none of these Witnesses individually establishes that there was someone on the grassy null but when you combine all of their testimony you absolutely have to leave the door open for it to say that there's zero proof is not factually true given everything that I just said we also have medical evidence of a shot from the front which would mean that there was someone on the grassy null which is more than zero right so what is that evidence well eight doctors and a nurse in Dallas said that the neck wound was an entrance wound which would mean the shot would have to come from the front eight doctors in Dallas including Kemp Clark the chief of neurosurgery said that they could see the Sarah Bellum in JFK's head wound which if that's true it would mean that the wound was too low to have come from the back and it would be consistent with a large hole in the rear of the president's head the earliest statements of 403 doctors nurses and medical professionals who saw JFK's body in Dallas and in Bethesda was that there was a large wound in the right rear of his head which demonstrates a shot from the front the written Medical report from Dallas says that the head wound was in the right oipal area which is the lower back part of the head which would mean a shot from the front Tom Robinson the mortician who prepared Kennedy's body says that he saw a small hole in the right Temple this hole was also allegedly seen by autopsy photographer Robert kudon and Lieutenant Commander William Pitzer who worked on film at the Bethesda Medical Center so there you have it that's kind of a lot of medical evidence not zero showing that there was a shot from the front Lowry goes on quote Oswald was caught dead to rights the murder weapon was his and it was found where he worked and where people saw and heard a gunman okay so this idea that the murder weapon was Oswald's well we already talked about the maale order one big question on the murder weapon is was it a man liquer Caro or was it a Mouser and if it was a Carano why did everybody say Mouser at first it is a little weird Mouser German made rifle with the sniper scope sight that was found on the German built Mouser with the sniper scope that was used to kill President 7.65 M German rifle familiar to those who serve the world St place it's a 7.65 M it turns out this whole conversation about the Mouser wasn't a simple misunderstanding it couldn't have been and here's why two police officers who were there on the sixth floor when the rifle was discovered Boon and whitesman both said that it was a Mouser and you know they changed their position for the the Warren Commission but when they gave their sworn affidavits later that same day they continued to say that it was a Mouser when supposedly this you know confusion was cleared up right away right the gun was they found the gun and the guy said oh it was a Mouser and then someone else said no no no it's not a Mouser it's a maner Carano and they said oh okay sounds good but the problem is they're still saying it's a Mouser and their affidavits that doesn't make sense we didn't find a Mouser we have a man the K Carano but there's something going on with the Mouser probably more than just a simple misunderstanding back to Low's article here he says quote OS Wald was obviously a desperate man killing a cop as he tried to get away and fighting the cops when they found him hiding in a movie theater so okay let's look at that statement let's just unpack unpack that just a little bit this idea that Oswald killed a cop as he was trying to get away that's not true so we can debate about whether or not Oswald killed JD tippet that is a murky area that has a lot of granular detail and you know points to consider on both sides of the argument however this notion that Oswald killed the cop as part of his getaway is not consistent with the witness testimony Helen Markham who's one of the key Witnesses said that the man who killed tippet was not being chased instead tippet was driving behind this man in the street and the man was on the sidewalk when tippet stopped his car when the car stopped the man turned back to tip it so you know let's say Oswald is this man he turns around and comes back to the car and what's he do he puts his arms on the passenger door of the car now is that the way that someone acts when they want to get away from the police if he wanted to run away and he's already in front of the cop would he turn around and go back to the cop does that make any sense also if your answer to that question is yeah he wanted to turn around and go back to the cop and and kill the cop to make sure he couldn't get him okay if that's your position why is he leisurely you know in a leisurely manner putting his arms on the passenger side of of the car door like he knows tip it that does not make sense and it's not the behavior of someone who's trying to get away and by the way they checked for fingerprints where you know the man came back and put his arms over the passenger seat window of tipet's car and Oswald's fingerprints were not in that area it's a cloudy very complex conversation about whether or not Oswald killed tippet but it is not complex at all that Oswald was trying to get away that's just not what the evidence shows so you know we got to get the little details right to have a chance of figuring out what actually happened instead of just picking propaganda on the side that we decided we want to cheer for that's not that's not how it works if we're trying to find the actual truth back to Lowry he says quote Oswald had a truly awful upbringing in a broken home as a teenager Oswald was diagnosed with personality pattern disturbance a judge ordered that he' be sent to a home for Disturbed boys as he Grew Older he never fed in anywhere either the Marines or the USSR where he defected for a while and people who knew him thought he was unstable he tried to kill himself in the Soviet Union all right so this idea that Oswald tried to kill himself in the Soviet Union and was ordered to go for a to a home for Disturbed boys I just want to put you know some context around each of those claims he never actually went to a home for Disturbed boys cuz his mom skipped the hearing and they moved to New Orleans but it is true that uh a judge did you know make that determination and it was going down that route but he didn't actually he He was ordered to go there but he didn't actually go regarding this so-called suicide attempt the article uses that to show hey this is a crazy guy and you know he's he's he's had he had a bad upbringing and he's still really just struggling with his mental health but when we look at what the doctor said who treated Oswald in Russia she said it was a quote show suicide since he had been refused political Asylum which he had been demanding so this is the doctor that treated him in Russia that said no he just did it for show he wasn't actually trying to take his own life lowri continues quote this all fits the profile of someone who would be an assassin and sure enough before he killed JFK all the evidence suggest that he tried to shoot and kill the right-wing figure general Edwin Walker okay let's talk about that all of the evidence shows that he tried to kill General Walker wow that's something well there are some pretty good reasons to believe that Oswell did not shoot at General Walker the bullet that hit Walker's wall was from a steel jacketed 30 out 6 that all of a sudden changed to be a copper jacketed 6.5 mm bullet after the Kennedy assassination the house was scoped out by multiple people in advance who drove cars Oswald is alleged to have been alone and he did not drive a car on the night when the shot was fired there was a car seen fleeing the scene and two people were seen driving away the most important thing about the general Walker allegation is that Oswald wasn't even a suspect in the Walker shooting until after the JFK assassination the article goes on to say quote why if the CIA is omnicompetent enough to pull off such an operation did it not deploy a super sniper who could get in and out of Dallas with no issue at the very least it should have secured some sort of getaway vehicle or plan for Oswald instead it allowed him only to narrowly escape the depository as a matter of sheer luck and then to careen through the street of Dallas a clearly desperate man then it permitted him to be interrogated by the police for days when he could have unraveled the entire plot instead of acting like a guilty as hell lone gunman this argument by low really misstates and misunderstands what the conspiracy argument is you know I don't know if if low is someone who has read any other books aside from uh pner and buosi but if he has if he's read any of the you know conspiracy SL critic leaning books he would know that there's not anyone who believes that Oswald was a CIA assassin you're successfully defeating an argument That No One Believes I believe that's called straw Manning right that's what's happening here no one thinks Oswald was hired as a CIA assassin the argument is that he was a CIA asset who was used to infiltrate leftist groups this becomes clear when you look at Oswald's time in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 he's working for guy banister handing out flyers for fair play for Cuba some of these materials are stamped with guy bannister's office yes there's all asterisks and disclaimers and you got to zoom into it and there's Nuance but if you study the case you'll find that to the extent there is an oswal connection it's not as a secret double agent assassin and by the way there are dozens of instances of well being impersonated so why would you impersonate somebody if he's just a regular person I mean what it's more than a coincidence it's voluminous too long to cover here but suffice it to say this person is being impersonated many times it doesn't make sense for impersonations to be happening on that scale unless there's something else going on finally low has this to say about Jack Ruby quote his murderous Act was was an extremely near- run thing he had agreed to wire one of his strippers $25 he went to a Western Union a block from the police headquarters he didn't strike the clerk as being in any particular hurry as it turned out a transfer of Oswald from the police to County Jail had been delayed earlier that morning Ruby had assumed it had already happened but a final minutes long delay Oswald wanted a change of clothes that Oswald was in the basement just as Ruby arrived if it had been 3 seconds later I would have missed this person Ruby noted later so Lowry gives the Warren report position which is that Ruby just happened to spur of the moment decided to kill Oswald it wasn't planned out it was just done at the last second and by the way the evidence for that is this whole Western Union conversation how could he possibly have planned to kill Oswald if he was getting a Western Union transfer done at that time he couldn't have possibly killed Oswald because he was getting the transfer done this is the argument well Ruby relies on being at Western Union to show that killing Oswald was a Spur ofth the- moment decision right but the problem is that Jack Ruby set up the Western Union payment in advance the night before with his dancer Karen Carlin it was Ruby's idea she didn't need the money because she had rent due but the landlord was soft with the payments so he he didn't really care when it would be and by the way her paycheck was the next day she was about to get paid anyway she didn't need this money Ruby spoke to her in advance about it that's what she says that's what Karen Carlin herself says Ruby was visited by Dr jolon West while he was in prison this is the same Doctor Who was a subcontractor for the cia's MK Ultra program probably the biggest reason to be suspicious of of Ruby being in evolved somehow is the quote that he gives where he says that everything pertaining to what's happening will never come to the surface because of powerful people he basically says like hey there's this big conspiracy and uh you know it's not it's not what it seems it is everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface the world will never know the true facts of what occurred my motives the people have that have so much to gain and have such aerial motive for put me in a position on him we'll never let true F come up our board to the to the world now these people are very yes all these points that I've made today are just counterpoints to Rich Lowry's piece I have not established that there was a conspiracy I have not established you know what what it would be or any of the details but what I have done is lay out the very very basic extremely highlevel case for the counterpoints to be made against these specific assertions by Lowry and I think when you look at this information you'll find that the case is far more interesting than Lowry says it is far more confusing and you'll likely come to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone to kill President Kennedy [Music]