Vidor 1 wrote:

"There was a palm print on the rifle. The accusation that the rifle could not be fired is simply false. Not only did investigators fire the rifle, but Oswald's wife testified to how he would dry-fire it over and over again"

The "palm print", as Latonia had already pointed out, was smeared and could have been made subsequent to the events - and even after Oswald's decease.

The rifle could NOT be fired after the WC tried to use it in mock tests. (They replaced the *actual* Oswald rifle with another Mannlicher-Carcano that could be worked. )

Marina Oswald, in a 1993 interview with Tom Brokaw (30th anniv.) denied that she ever told the Warren Commission that LHO "dry fired" it over and over. She averred, as many other witnesses did, that her sworn testimony was deliberately distorted, edited.

While we're on this topic.

Patricia Dumais was suspicious that it was a stage prop

and wanted to see the internal control number supposedly placed on it by Klein's Sporting Goods. She was informed: “We cannot disassemble Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle because this action might be destructive to the object."

A representative of the Sporting Goods Store, Mitchell J. Scibor, himself testified (on May 20, 1964) that "VC836 was the inventory control number for the rifle purchased by Oswald", though a subsequent Archives communique to Dumais asserted "they had examined the rifle 'but did not locate the identification VC836."

All of this discloses the import of “cover-up” and why the would-be debunkers never get it, because they don’t understand how the cover up can work so well. (As for the claim that “no one could keep a secret that many years” – nonsense! The massacre at No Gun Ri was kept hidden for over 50 years)

'Cover -up', logically, is a key part of controlling perceptions. For example, if one can suppress key facts - or at least ensure (should they emerge in some form - say from a previously silent witness) they are never unambiguous, one can sustain a perception that confusion reigns concerning the facts (i.e. about the nature and extent of JFK's head wound) or that no facts exist that are incontrovertible. This is perfect 'psy ops' information warfare.

How might cover up enter into the JFK assassination?

In a variety of ways that need not be mutually exclusive:

i) The deliberate suppression of original data and evidence from the public domain.

ii) The deliberate suppression, confiscation, concealment and/or mutilation of second order evidence (i.e. film confiscated from bystanders that day and not yet returned or returned with critical frames mutilated, as in the Muchmore film.

iii) The deliberate co-opting, compromise of the subsequent

investigation, either by selectively ignoring facts and material witnesses, e.g. Orville Nix or by deliberately distorting and falsifying facts, images (cf. the "falsification" of the FPCC handbills in the Warren Report, reported by Military Science Professor John Newman in his monograph, ‘Oswald and the CIA’. p307

iv) The deliberate withholding and/or extensive redaction of files that would shed unambiguous light on key issues, thereby raising them to unimpeachable factual status.

v) The use of dedicated assets, especially with 'psy ops' background to track and disrupt open exchange of information and sources in any venue dedicated to the case, such as internet newsgroups, blogs, forums or ….letters to news forums.

vi) The concoction of a totally false story regarding the evidence or some aspect of it - which is then circulated.

In line with the above, as Kathryn Olmstead has pointed out (‘Challenging the Secret Government’, University of North Carolina Press, 1996) more than 50 CIA assets were set up in the 1960s as liaisons and contract agents to major newspapers such as the New York Times, and acted to squelch any attempted objective reporting of the JFK assassination when and where it occurred.

To back this up, there is the infamous CIA document 1035-960, ‘Re:Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report’ (available from FOIA files) As it reads:

“1. Our Concern. From the day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for his murder.

Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report,(which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings.

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S.

government, including our organization.

3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active, (business) addresses are requested:

a. To discuss the publicity problem with [?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation.

b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

As we can see, from letters like "vidor's", many of these assets are still in fine fettle. Though some may be “dumb assets” who have simply swallowed the original propaganda hook, line and sinker and can’t help but regurgitate it now. Much like the 28% morons in the populace who still give Bush high approval ratings and think Saddam really really had something to do with 9/11.

One last point: The error of most would–be debunkers as Michael Parenti notes (p. 189, ‘Dirty Truths’) is that they confuse "the low political value of the victim with the high political importance of the assassination." Thus do they come up with codswallop such as assassination “buffs” can’t get over it because of their "obsession" with Kennedy (or "Camelot") and disbelief that a “nobody” could take him out.