I see several reasons to doubt him.
1. There's no corroboration for his recollection.
Think about it Hank. The cops were all persuaded to change their stories. But they obviously, forgot about Ellsworth, who didn't work at the DPD or the FBI office. He was an ATF agent - independent from the other agencies.
So, he didn't get the pitch.
2. His recollection is from decades after the fact.
And that proves his very specific description of events was false?
This was a federal officer for god's sake. And he had very clear recollections of other things the La Fontaines interviewed him about.
3. The contemporaneous testimony and memos put the recovered weapon on the same floor as the recovered shells.
The contemporaneous, documented description of the rifle found on the sixth floor was that it was a 7.65 Mauser.
4. Photos and films show the weapon recovered was on the sixth floor.
Begging the question. Prove that the photos and films were taken at the time of the search.
5. No photos and films exist of this supposed other rifle.
Begging the question again. How did you confirm that photos weren't taken that weren't released to the public.
6. Only one weapon was removed from the Depository on the afternoon of 11/22/63 - the MC with the serial # C2766.[/I]
Flagrant begging of the question. You have never proven that either.
[COLOR]Why should we trust the outlier recollection? [/COLOR]
For the same reasons we would trust any federal agent, other than those who were officially committed to a predefined conclusion.
I already covered the Katzenbach memo in detail, showing how you were taking a few lines out of context, and ignoring Katzenbach's testimony explaining the memo, and how you were merely putting your interpretation of the memo in place of his explanation of the memo. You didn't address any of that. You ignored it. Repeating the same claims, and failing to address the rebuttal, isn't a good approach.
I often ignore ridiculous statements.
1. The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.
The second declaration at the top of the list was this,
"2. Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting the thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat-- too obvious (Marxist, Cuba , Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced."
Tell me Hank, why would they have wanted to "cut off" the notion that Oswald conspired with the commies or the fanatical right wingers? How could they have possibly felt certain about that, within 48 hours of the murder?
No. Not in the least. According to you, there weren't two rifles recovered on the sixth floor. Only one. According to the hard evidence (films and photos), the rifle found on the sixth floor was a Mannlicher-Carcano. And not just any Mannlicher-Carcano.
You have not proven the existence of ANY evidence which confirms that the rifle found on the sixth floor was Oswald's. All you really have is version #2 of the description of the rifle and scope that was found there, and a publicly stated policy that the FBI's main goal was to "
convince the public" that Oswald acted alone.
Is is obvious, that they followed their orders quite well.
Oh, and before you start stereotyping me, understand that I am not saying that ANY of the cops or FBI people were "in on it" or had sinister motives.
I can remember sitting with my parents in the living room, watching coverage of the assassination, and me shooting my mouth off (hard to imagine that, eh
declaring that the commies were behind the assassination and that WW3 will be starting soon.
If the govt. had accepted what the DPD and pretty much everyone else suspected, there would have been a huge public outcry that we declare war on Castro, who was tightly allied with the Soviet Union.
And if such a crisis took place, my little prediction just might have come true. And on top of that, the US would have had a hard time maintaining the moral high ground, since we had been trying to assassinate Castro for nearly a year.
That's why I think Jackie was convinced to change her testimony and why some personnel at Parkland covered up evidence that the bullet which wounded the two victims was not CE399. It would also explain why a few people in the DPD agreed to help turn two rifles into one.
