BEN HOLMES SAID:
The WC [Warren Commission] clearly didn't want to provide proof that a Thursday visit to Irving was not unique -- for their theory needed a unique visit on a Thursday to pick up a rifle. They simply lied in order to do so.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Contrary to what Kook Holmes believes, the Warren Commission didn't need to "lie" in order to show that Lee Oswald went to Irving on Thursday, November 21 to get his rifle. Oswald's LIES are the ones Holmes should be focusing on -- because it is OSWALD'S LIES about the "curtain rods" that he told to Buell Frazier than indicate Oswald was wanting to hide something with respect to his visit to the Paine home on 11/21/63.
And the cashier, Mrs. Tarrants, of the Atlantic & Pacific store in Irving wasn't exactly sure of the date when Oswald went to that store to cash his unemployment check. CE1165 has these words associated with Mrs. Tarrants' recollections concerning the date the check was cashed: "As best as she recalls" it was on Thursday night, October 31st when Oswald came into the store to cash the check. It certainly could have been the next evening, however--Fri., Nov. 1st.
And it was on April 13, 1964, when Mrs. Tarrants was asked to recall the incident--more than five months after Oswald cashed the check. To think that she would have been able to nail down the date with absolute certainty seems to be asking a little much of the woman's memory. And, as far as I know, in this instance there is no definitive way of knowing the exact date the check was cashed.
Re: Oswald Going To Irving On Weekdays....
I know there was one time when Lee Harvey Oswald went to Irving on a Monday night, which was October 21st, the day after his daughter Rachel was born.
But as far as I know, and as far as the witness testimony indicates, that trip to Irving on Monday, Oct. 21 was the only time LHO went to Irving on a weekday other than his trip to get his rifle on Thursday, November 21.
And Ruth Paine's Warren Commission testimony clearly indicates that Lee Oswald's trip to the Paine home on Thursday, Nov. 21 was quite unusual (and for multiple reasons, not just the day of the week). Let's look at what Ruth had to say about that:
Mr. JENNER -- "Let's proceed with the 21st [of Nov. 1963]. Did anything occur on the 21st with respect to Lee Harvey Oswald, that is a Thursday?"
Mrs. PAINE -- "I arrived home from grocery shopping around 5:30, and he was on the front lawn. I was surprised to see him."
Mr. JENNER -- "You had no advance notice?"
Mrs. PAINE -- "I had no advance notice and he had never before come without asking whether he could."
Mr. JENNER -- "Never before had he come to your home in that form without asking your permission to come?"
Mrs. PAINE -- "Without asking permission; that is right."
BEN HOLMES SAID:
That is, of course, an outright lie on DVP's part. I NOWHERE STATED THAT THE WCR NEEDED TO LIE IN ORDER TO SHOW THAT OSWALD WENT TO IRVING ON THURSDAY...
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
And I never said you did say that.
Note the portion of my quote that Kook Holmes deliberately omitted --- "to get his rifle".
And Holmes is definitely saying that the WC needed to "lie" in order for Oswald to GET HIS RIFLE in Irving on a Thursday.
Here's Benji's exact quote in that regard:
"The WC clearly didn't want to provide proof that a Thursday visit to Irving was not unique - for their theory needed a unique visit on a Thursday to pick up a rifle. They simply lied in order to do so." -- B. Holmes
But Mr. Piecemeal Holmes apparently thought I wouldn't notice that he left out the most important words in that quote that he says I lied about -- "to get his rifle". And that IS the most crucial aspect to Oswald's Thursday-night visit to Irving on Nov. 21, of course -- whether or not he went there to get his rifle.
And there is a lot of evidence that proves Oswald DID pick up his rifle and take it to work with him on Nov. 22....such as Oswald's lies about the curtain rods; the fact that both Frazier and Randle saw LHO with a large package on 11/22; and the fact that LHO's rifle turned up missing from its known storage location in Ruth Paine's garage on 11/22.
Ben, though, wants to argue that the above things have no bearing at all on THIS particular subject of whether Oswald ever went to Irving on previous Thursdays. But I say those things DO have a bearing on what Holmes says are "lies" told by the WC and Vince Bugliosi. [See footnote regarding Bugliosi below, proving that Vince certainly did not ignore this issue at all in his 2007 book.]
Because Holmes wants to believe that the WC needed to lie about the "Thursday" thing. But I say that such a notion is crazy -- and that's because there was NO NEED TO LIE about any "Thursday" pattern when it comes to the most important question the WC needed to answer in a satisfactory way -- Did Lee Oswald go to Irving on Thursday, 11/21 to get his rifle?
And that question can easily be answered "Yes", and without ever needing to "lie" about a damn thing.
The WC obviously arrived at the conclusion that Oswald was not in Irving on Thursday, Oct. 31, and they said so in the WCR. They felt that Mrs. Tarrants at the grocery store was incorrect (and by only a single day) when she said LHO cashed his check on a Thursday. But the more reliable evidence (in this instance the testimony of Marina Oswald and Ruth Paine) indicates that Tarrants was very likely mistaken as to the exact date.
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WESLEY LIEBELER -- "After Rachel was born and after Lee had been there on Monday [10/21/63] to see you, did he come back to Irving at any time during the week except the night before the assassination?"
MARINA OSWALD -- "No. He came to Irving only the weekends--only on weekends."
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Here's another interesting piece of testimony that comes from the lips of Marina Oswald (taken from Marina's testimony at the 1969 Clay Shaw trial): *
QUESTION -- "Did you see Lee at any time the night of the 21st [of November 1963] go into the Paine garage?"
MARINA OSWALD -- "Yes, he went a few times."
QUESTION -- "You saw him actually go into the garage?"
MARINA OSWALD -- "Yes."
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Footnote:
In his book "Reclaiming History", author Vincent Bugliosi doesn't "ignore" the possibility of Lee Oswald going to Irving on a Thursday prior to 11/21/63. In fact, Vince deals with the "Tarrants" matter in a decent-sized endnote in his book. So, once again, Ben Holmes is dead wrong when he said this:
"Bugliosi...simply lied. He KNEW that there was evidence of visits on other days of the week, and simply ignored them." -- B. Holmes
Below is the text from Bugliosi's endnote that deals with this "Thursday night" topic. I guess this constitutes "ignoring" the issue completely, per a kook named Holmes. And, btw, I found this relevant passage in Bugliosi's book only AFTER I had written my initial post in this thread, which is a post that includes these remarks (which directly mirror some of Mr. Bugliosi's comments on the matter):
"It was on April 13, 1964, when Mrs. Tarrants was asked to recall the incident--more than five months after Oswald cashed the check. To think that she would have been able to nail down the date with absolute certainty seems to be asking a little much of the woman's memory. And, AFAIK, in this instance there is no definitive way of knowing the exact date the check was cashed."
-- DVP; 12/31/2011
[BUGLIOSI QUOTE ON:]
"Warren Commission critic Sylvia Meagher says, “Oswald’s visit to Irving on Thursday night, November 21, may not have been unprecedented” (Meagher, Accessories after the Fact, p.37), but there is no credible evidence to support this.
Troy Erwin, the manager of the Atlantic & Pacific supermarket in Irving, told the FBI that check G493187, a Texas Unemployment Commission check for $33.00 payable to Lee Harvey Oswald, was cashed at his store on either Thursday, October 31, 1963, or Friday, November 1, 1963.
On April 13, 1964, the cashier at the store, Mrs. Georgia Tarrants, told the FBI that as best she recalls, Oswald cashed the check on Thursday night (CE 1165, 22 H 224–225). But it seems inconceivable that Mrs. Tarrants, almost five months after the assassination, would be able to look back and recall whether Oswald cashed the check on Thursday as opposed to Friday night, especially since at that time she would have no reason to make note of what night Oswald was at the store.
But Marina Oswald, Ruth Paine, and Wesley Frazier would have every reason to remember that Oswald had never, before November 21, come to Irving on a Thursday night. Moreover, Oswald had been instructed NOT to come on any Thursday night, and Friday night made more sense since he could stay for the weekend." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page 529 of Endnotes in "Reclaiming History"
[BUGLIOSI QUOTE OFF.]
Regarding this quote of Mr. Bugliosi's --- "Oswald had been instructed NOT to come on any Thursday night..." ....
I have no idea what the source is for the above conclusion reached by Bugliosi. It's not sourced in the endnote on Page 529 of Vincent's book, and I have looked through the complete testimony of Ruth Paine, Michael Paine, and Marina Oswald, and I found nothing that would indicate that any of those people had told Lee Oswald never to come to the Paine home on a Thursday. So I haven't the foggiest notion from whom Vince got that idea. But I also have little doubt that Vince DID get that idea from somebody. I just don't know the source. But I certainly don't think Mr. Bugliosi just made it up out of thin air.
In any event, as can be seen in the above-quoted section of "Reclaiming History", Vincent Bugliosi did not "ignore" the possibility of Lee Oswald taking a trip to Irving on Thursday, October 31, 1963.
Additional Footnote For Ben Holmes:
Please go back to ignoring me. I like it much better that way. Then I won't need to straighten out your lies and misrepresentations when it comes to examining the TOTALITY of the evidence in the JFK case.
Because, as we all know, when it comes to logically and reasonably evaluating and assessing the TOTALITY or SUM TOTAL of the evidence in the JFK assassination, conspiracy mongers like Benjamin Holmes always end up looking like the desperate chaff-loving clowns they are. And this "Thursday night" thread is no exception. It's nothing but another one of the hundreds of examples of how a conspiracy kook will slice off a piece of totally unimportant chaff connected with the Kennedy assassination and blow it up out of all reasonable proportion.
Because even if Oswald had gone to Irving on Thursday, Oct. 31, that fact would not eliminate the other evidence (and LHO's own lies) that tells all reasonable people that Oswald did, in fact, pick up his rifle on Thursday, Nov. 21st. And the Warren Commission knew that, too. Therefore, as mentioned previously, there would have been absolutely no logical reason for the Commission to want to deliberately lie about any possible Oswald visits to Irving on previous occasions.
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* Addendum About Marina Oswald Saying That LHO Was In The Paine Garage On 11/21/63:
Before the CTers jump on my case for not calling attention to Marina Oswald's inconsistent testimony regarding Lee being in the garage, let me quote from Marina's Warren Commission testimony, where she totally contradicts her later 1969 Shaw Trial testimony:
MARINA OSWALD (1964) -- "Ruth [Paine] told me that in the evening she had worked in the garage and she knows that she had put out the light but that the light was on later--that the light was on in the morning. And she guessed that Lee was in the garage. But I didn't see it."
------------------
And there's also this HSCA testimony from Marina in 1978, which totally conflicts with her earlier 1969 remarks:
QUESTION -- "On the night of the 21st, did you see Lee go into the garage?"
MARINA OSWALD-PORTER -- "No."
TIM BRENNAN SAID:
The lady's supervisor, in the SAME document, advises the check was cashed sometime between Thursday afternoon and COB [Close Of Business] on Friday. In other words, it's simply MORE proof that Oswald arrived in Irving on Friday night.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Indeed. You are correct.
The "Friday, November 1" reference is on page 5 of CE1165, HERE.
The person who said that Oswald's unemployment check could have been cashed on Friday, November 1st was Troy Erwin, the manager of the A&P store in Irving where Oswald definitely did cash the check. And Erwin said the check positively had to have been cashed on one of those two dates (Oct. 31 or Nov. 1), which is perfectly consistent with Oswald having gone to Irving after work on Fri., Nov. 1 (with Buell Frazier), and then very likely he cashed the check at the grocery store before it closed on Friday night.
Of course, Erwin wasn't the person who actually cashed the check, and he wasn't the person who saw LHO in the store. But Erwin's interview with the FBI on 4/13/64 does confirm, beyond all doubt, that the check COULD have been cashed at his store on Friday, November 1st.
And given Oswald's general habit of going to Irving on Fridays with Buell Wesley Frazier, coupled with Troy Erwin's confirmation that the check definitely could have been cashed on Friday, Nov. 1st, the Warren Commission concluded the same thing that almost any reasonable person would conclude -- and that is: the cashier, Mrs. Tarrants, was simply mistaken when she said Oswald probably cashed the check on Thursday. And she was only mistaken by a mere 24 hours. And she was attempting, more than five months later, to recall something very innocuous and ordinary (the cashing of one particular check).
But this is just the kind of bottom-of-the-barrel nonsense that conspiracists like Ben Holmes love to prop up as meaningful and conclusive "evidence" in their efforts to try and prove that the Warren Commission lied about something.
But when we look deeper into the record (as Tim Brennan did regarding this check-cashing topic), we can easily see that there is always--invariably--a reasonable, non-sinister, and non-conspiratorial explanation to virtually every barrel-scraping effort made by the conspiracy theorists when it comes to the JFK assassination.
Thanks, Tim, for pointing out the "November 1" portion of CE1165.
David Von Pein
December 31, 2011—January 7, 2012
