Read other letters about this article
Nobody ever mentions Norman Mailer's excellent book, "Oswald's Tale," which I guess means that nobody has read it, but it's a brilliant study of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Of course Oswald said "I'm a patsy." He had been singing one version or another of that tune his entire life. Oswald was a stone-cold psychopathic, narcissistic, mother-hating, lying, thieving, wife-beating, cop-killer.
He never plotted anything in his life. He just acted, or reacted, on impulse. Thus, his assassination of JFK was done strictly on impulse. He found himself in the right place at the right time, and he acted. It's that simple.
No one who really knew Oswald could ever imagine him being able to enter into a conspiracy with any other person or group. He was too self-absorbed, too anti-social.
Oswald was truly a "lone" gunman in every sense of the word.
In "Oswald's Tale," Mailer presents a plausible counter-theory to the Mafia conspiracy theory. His theory is that the Mafia bosses were NOT involved in the assassination, but after it happened, they claimed responsibility in order to get in the good graces of Jimmy Hoffa, who hated the Kennedys, especially Bobby.
Right after OT was published, Mailer (characteristically) boasted that he believed that, if Oswald had lived and gone to trial, there was an 85% chance that he, Mailer (who is not any attorney), could have gotten Oswald acquitted. Perhaps. But Oswald still would have gone to prison, and eventually to the electric chair, for the murder of Officer Tippett.