JON G. TIDD SAID:
What are the correct questions to ask about the JFK assassination?
I struggle to answer the question I pose.
The Socratic method of teaching, which has been used in law schools, is for the professor to ask questions, not supply answers. The method teaches the student to ask himself or herself correct questions. Learning to ask oneself correct questions leads one to be one's own teacher while continuing to be a student.
A correct question demands a discrete answer. An answer one can defend.
So, what are the correct questions to ask about the JFK assassination?
Here are three, I believe:
1) What was the nature of JFK's skull according to JFK's autopsists?
2) What is the life history of the person accused of killing JFK? Not the psychological profile. The facts.
3) Did Marina testify honestly about her husband to the Warren Commission?
The answers to these questions won't tell who killed JFK or why. The answers may suggest other correct questions.
Again, correct questions are those that can be answered and defended.
I may not have posed correct questions. I struggle to frame my questions about the assassination. What are your questions the answer to which is obtainable and furthers one's grasp of the JFK assassination?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Two good questions off the top of my head....
1. Did Lee Harvey Oswald lie (repeatedly) to the authorities after his arrest on 11/22/63?
2. Did Lee Harvey Oswald take a shot at General Edwin A. Walker on April 10, 1963?
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I believe the answer to both of the above inquiries is a resounding (and
provable) Yes.
And if we can all agree that Question #2 should be answered in the affirmative, then a very important fact about Lee Oswald emerges in the process -- the fact that he was willing, seven months before JFK's trip to Texas, to attempt to kill a human being by shooting him with a gun.
That's an important thing to know about Lee Harvey Oswald, in my opinion.
JON G. TIDD SAID:
David Von Pein,
Your first question is, in my opinion, a correct question. It is answerable, and the answer can be defended. You get an A.
Your second question is, in my opinion, not a correct question. It is not answerable with certainty.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
The evidence against Oswald in the Walker murder attempt is, indeed, circumstantial in nature. I'm not denying that fact. Of course it's circumstantial. But it's also fairly solid circumstantial evidence, in my view.
And in some ways it is the best kind of circumstantial evidence you could get, because Commission Exhibit No. 1 (the note Lee left behind for Marina on the night of 4/10/63) was written by Lee Harvey Oswald himself. It wasn't written by somebody else. It was written by Lee Oswald. So Lee is telling us, in his own words, that something's not quite normal on the night of April 10th, 1963.
Jon, why do you think Lee Oswald wrote the note we find in CE1? If it wasn't written just prior to Lee taking a potshot at General Walker, then why did Lee write such a strange "If I am alive and taken prisoner" note to his wife?
He must have been planning something pretty serious in order to use those words. Right, Jon?
JON G. TIDD SAID:
David,
I ask that you not make assertions. But rather pose questions. Or provide discrete answers to questions.
The Socratic method is to ask questions that have discrete answers.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Oh, okay. So sorry, Jon.
I forgot the "Socratic" rules for a moment. Please forgive me. :)
(Nice dodge, btw.)
JON G. TIDD SAID:
David,
My question is, does the factual record support clearly that the person history knows as Oswald wrote the writing known as C.E. 1?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I would say Yes. Without a speck of a doubt.
But regardless of any psychological evaluation or "historical analysis" you may wish to perform on Mr. Oswald, the clear FACT remains that the handwriting (in Russian) we see in Commission Exhibit No. 1 is positively the handwriting of Lee Harvey Oswald and no one else's (per the various handwriting analysts who have examined that document for the Warren Commission and the HSCA).
Do you want to call into question the conclusions reached by ALL of those handwriting experts, Jon?
Bottom Line --- Lee Harvey Oswald wrote the words we see in CE1.
There's no good (or reasonable) escape hatch for conspiracy theorists in this regard. Which is why I said previously that CE1 is just about the best type of "circumstantial evidence" you can get. Because it is, in effect, Lee Oswald himself telling us that he's about to go out and do something of a criminal nature on the night of April the 10th, 1963. What other kind of activity could possibly explain these words written by Lee Oswald in that CE1 document?:
"If I am alive and taken prisoner..."
"You can either throw out or give my clothing etc. away."
"The Red Cross will help you."
"I left you as much money as I could."
If ever a note reeked with a person's guilt, Warren Commission Exhibit Number One is it.
Plus, there is Marina Oswald's never-wavering account of the Walker shooting incident (consult the audio HERE).
JON G. TIDD SAID:
Is it possible in your view that someone other than Oswald prepared the note?
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Not a chance.
"Commission Exhibit No. 1 was written by Lee Harvey Oswald."
-- James C. Cadigan (FBI); 1964 Warren Commission Testimony [7 H 437]
Your other questions, Jon, are irrelevant given the above determination made by handwriting expert James Cadigan and also when factoring in this additional impossible-to-sidestep fact revealed to the world by Mrs. Marina Oswald....
"When he [Lee Oswald] came back I asked him what had happened. He was very pale. I don't remember the exact time, but it was very late. And he told me not to ask him any questions. He only told me that he had shot at General Walker."
-- Marina Oswald; 1964 Warren Commission Testimony [1 H 16]
Why fight the obvious, Jon? Oswald wrote that note to Marina just before he went out to kill Walker. How can you possibly believe anything else?
JON G. TIDD SAID:
David,
I will not be drawn in this thread to discussing in detail the Walker note. I asked you questions in the hope of furthering my understanding of the note.
In a separate diary, I'll post what I know about the note. Before I do so, I had hoped to have the benefit of your knowledge.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I'm sure your knowledge concerning "the Walker note" is much more extensive and detailed than my own. I know the basic facts regarding the note, however. And those basic facts indicate that Marina Oswald found the note (with a post office key on the top of it) in Lee's "study" (i.e., closet) at the Neely Street apartment in Dallas on the night of 4/10/63.
Marina saved the note by stashing it inside a book. (I've always wondered why Lee didn't demand that Marina give him the note back so he could burn it, but evidently he didn't do that; so the note survives as Commission Exhibit No. 1.)
And the Russian writing we see in that note was determined to be the writing of Lee H. Oswald (sourced previously via an appropriate official FBI source--Cadigan).
And Marina has never recanted her story about Lee telling her on April 10 that he had just shot at Walker.
Those two things--the note and Marina's testimony--are corroborative of one another and form the proof, IMO, that Lee Oswald did, indeed, fire a shot at General Walker.
Plus, the Walker bullet looks very much like CE399 (which we know came out of Oswald's rifle). The FBI could not say that CE573 (the Walker bullet) positively came from Oswald's C2766 Carcano, but on the other hand, the FBI said there was nothing to indicate that 573 did not come from that gun. And as a layperson, just looking at these two bullets, I'm struck by the general similarities in the bullets. I'm sure you can see the similarities as well. (Who couldn't?)....
David Von Pein
January 16-17, 2015
