A CONSPIRACY THEORIST SAID:
>>> "The question still stands. If Oswald acted alone, why impersonate him on the tape and who is the guy in the photo ID'ed as Oswald?" <<<
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Nobody was impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City in September of 1963. To believe there was someone impersonating him is just plain silly. And if you ask me, such a thing doesn't really even make any sense from a conspiracy theorist's point-of-view either.
Why?
Because even if somebody had been pretending to be Lee Oswald in Mexico City, how in the world is such a ruse going to make Oswald appear guilty of shooting President Kennedy in Dallas two months later?
If anything, I can make a pretty strong case for such an impersonation of Oswald actually making the real Oswald look LESS guilty of murdering the President in November.
Why?
Because if the so-called Oswald "impersonator" was successful in his quest to get to Cuba (and then, later, to Russia), then how is he going to be in a position to kill Kennedy in Dallas on November 22nd (or even earlier than November 22, if the plotters were aiming for a "hit" on Kennedy in some other city prior to JFK's Dallas trip)?
I guess maybe the plan of the conspirators who cooked up this silly cloak-and-dagger "Musical Oswalds" game was to have the LHO impersonator, if he had actually been able to get a visa, stay in Cuba (and/or Russia) for a short time and then turn around and come back to Texas (or wherever) to asssassinate the President, and then pin the whole thing on the real Lee Oswald. Was that the plan?
~shrug~
But, then too, why the hell was all of this mumbo-jumbo necessary at all? Any plotters who would have been involved in such an elaborate Mexico City scheme would have already known (or they should have known, if they had done their homework on their "patsy") that Oswald could already very easily be labelled "red" (due to the fact that LHO's attempted defection to the USSR was widely known, via the various pre-1963 newspaper articles that dealt with Oswald's three-year stay in Russia).
Plus, weren't the so-called plotters/conspirators also aware of the fact that the man they would be impersonating had already appeared on radio and television in New Orleans just one month earlier (in August 1963), spouting off about his pro-Castro and pro-Cuba beliefs?
So, why was there any further need in September of '63 to paint Oswald as a Commie or a Communist sympathizer or as a Castro supporter? It's just plain silly, because Oswald HIMSELF had already painted himself as "red" (or "red" enough anyway) and as an obvious supporter of Fidel Castro and Castro's revolutionary causes.
Plus, apparently the goofballs who were in charge of this sloppy "Oswald Impersonation" fiasco south of the border couldn't even manage to pick out a guy to serve as their Oswald double who looked anything like the real Lee Harvey Oswald at all.
In a couple of the Embassy photos [seen below], we see a man who is much older and heavier than Oswald, and this is an "imposter" who is believed by many conspiracy theorists to actually be a man who was supposed to be impersonating 23-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald:
And then there's the hilarious allegation (via Silvia Duran's supposed comments) of an Oswald lookalike who measures only about 5-feet, 3-inches in height! I.E., six inches shorter than Lee Oswald!
You would think that the people setting up Oswald could have found a "double" who was at least the same general height and looked a tad bit like the guy he was supposed to be doubling for, wouldn't you?
In the final analysis, the "Oswald Imposter In Mexico City" theories all fall flat for a variety of reasons. And mainly because they're all so incredibly lame and stupid-sounding.
>>> "Why did Hoover tell LBJ we have a photo and a tape but it's not the same guy?" <<<
Fully explained by James Hosty at the 1986 TV docu-trial, "On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald". Watch:
>>> "And why did they react the way they did? Because they believed something with the "lone assassin" theory didn't fit. And it still doesn't. Period." <<<
Tell me this -- Do you really think that it is entirely necessary to have every last question answered and every last discrepancy ironed out in order to believe that Oswald acted alone?
Example: the Sylvia Odio incident can never really be fully explained, but that doesn't mean we should just chuck all the physical and circumstantial evidence of Lee Oswald's guilt out the nearest window. Does it?
Jean Davison said it very nicely in her masterpiece of a book, "Oswald's Game":
"When these men visited Odio's apartment, Kennedy's trip to Dallas had not even been scheduled, let alone announced. .... No one on earth could have known that Oswald would ultimately land a job in a building that would overlook a Kennedy motorcade. But the frame-up theory's ultimate weakness involves the critics' conception of Lee Harvey Oswald.
In every conspiracy book, Oswald is a piece of chaff blown about by powerful, unseen forces -- he's a dumb and compliant puppet with no volition of his own. If the man Odio saw was an impostor, how could the plotters be certain no witnesses would be able to establish Oswald's presence somewhere else that evening -- unless they ordered the unsuspecting patsy to stay out of sight?
And if the real Oswald was used, how did the anti-Castro plotters get their Marxist enemy to stand at Odio's door to be introduced as a friend of the Cuban exiles? No one has come up with a plausible scenario that can answer those questions. .... The point to be stressed is this: Sylvia Odio gave testimony of obvious, even crucial importance, and no one could explain what it meant."
-- Jean Davison; Pages 193-195 of "Oswald's Game" (c.1983)
David Von Pein
October 9, 2009
