Book review: "Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics" by Peter Dale Scott

Once you see it you can't unsee it

WARNING: I'm a libertarian. Some of what I write below may offend the Left, the Right, or both. But as Walt Whitman asked, "Who are you who only wants to be told what you've heard before?"

I recently finished reading Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics by Peter Dale Scott, The author is a former Canadian diplomat and professor at U.C. Berkely. He has written numerous books on the JFK assassination and the clandestine aspects of U.S. diplomacy.

The book predates the 1990s review and release of JFK documents by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Indeed, the book aimed to tell the ARRB what to look for. That makes it dated, but it is still worth reading. Scott is persuasive about three subjects...

ONE: The spooks and/or the generals framed Oswald

Scott amply demonstrates that Oswald was impersonated and framed in Mexico City. I draw the following conclusions...

The impersonation's nature demonstrates the frame's intention - to make Oswald a patsy for the JFK murder and thereby spark a war with Cuba and the Soviet Union, his supposed sponsors.

Only one group had the means and motive to do this: the Military Industrial Intelligence Complex. Neither Lyndon Johnson nor the Mafia nor the Texas oil barons had the needed skills. It had to be the spooks or the generals or both. The details indict the spooks.

This one fact, even if we knew nothing else about the case, proves conspiracy. It also tends to exonerate Oswald. If the assassination was a conspiracy, then it wasn't executed by a lone nut. It also doesn't make sense that a conspiracy would choose Oswald to be one of the shooters, except to set him up as a patsy. The fact that Oswald was impersonated increases the possibility that other evidence against him was also fabricated. I will return to this point in section three below.

TWO: The JFK conspirators had conflicting motives

Scott also shows how the conspirators evolved the motive ascribed to Oswald. There were two stages. In stage one, authorities promoted the idea that Oswald killed JFK in servivce to a conspiracy involving the Soviet Union and Cuba. In stage two, the Soviet Union and Cuba are removed from the story, and Oswald becomes a lone nut acting for obscure reasons.

Scott does not say this directly in the book, but I think this narrative change reflects the conflicting motives of the conspirators involved.

The intelligence community wanted an excuse to invade Cuba. The Pentagon wanted that too, but also a general war with the Soviet Union and its proxies. They had constantly agitated Kennedy toward that end and had even proposed a nuclear first strike on two occasions. General Curtis LeMay had all but accused JFK of appeasement during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and there were few accusations worse than that in 1962.

LBJ and Hoover had different interests. Hoover wanted to keep his job. He knew the Kennedy brothers planned to retire him if they were re-elected. Johnson wanted to avoid prison and win the White House. He knew the brothers would drop him from the ticket in 1964. RFK was also funneling evidence to Congressional investigators to land Johnson in prison for the rest of his life.

When JFK died, Hoover got to keep his job while LBJ won the White House and avoided prison. Once those goals were accomplished, neither Johnson nor Hoover needed or wanted a general war. And so it was that LBJ and Hoover were the specific people who directed the official narrative away from a communist plot in favor of a lone nut. The CIA's framing and sheep-dipping of Oswald availed them not, except to direct blame to their chosen pasty. The CIA and the Pentagon got the Vietnam War as a consolation prize, LBJ's defense industry friends got the profits, and the American people got the bills and the body bags.

This road to hell was paved with at least a few good intentions. The spooks and the generals legitimately thought they were saving the world from a commie sympathizing appeaser, while LBJ and Hoover, who were close friends and neighbors, were quite convinced they were the best-qualified people to run the country. Of course, we mere citizens must reject these self-serving excuses for assassination.

THREE: Case Closed by Gerald Posner is a fraudulent book

Scott includes an appendix with his review of Case Closed by Gerald Posner. I had a long infatuation with Posner's book. I read it multiple times and even gave copies away. I sneered at anyone who disbelieved that Oswald acted alone. I exalted Posner's work as a supreme example of critical thinking and forensic analysis. Alas, I was wrong. It is nothing of the sort.

Scott's review demonstrates multiple examples of Posner cherry-picking evidence, distorting evidence, and sometimes even lying. Scott even tells us how to spot the lies. If Posner fails to mention a specific page number in a footnote, Scott says the section cited will fail to say what Posner claims it does.

To me, the most telling examples of fraud have to do with Oswald's probable location when the shots were fired. The early evidence was overwhelming that Oswald was in the vicinity of the first floor. I have come to believe he was actually standing outside on the top step to the right of his friend Buell Leslie Frazier when the shots were fired, but making the case for that is a complicated subject for another day. For now, I will simply point out that the Warren Commission distorted what witnesses originally said about Oswald's location, and Posner doubles down on that deceit.

In recent years, the case against Oswald being on the sixth floor has only grown stronger, as has the case against all the other evidence fabricated to smear him. The spooks did a sloppy job setting up their patsy, but it worked well enough for six decades, given the supine compliance of the mainstream media and academia.

Case Closed captures the imagination not merely because it's a great, if fraudulent, lawyer's brief, but mainly because it is a powerful work of fiction. Posner has cherry-picked and distorted the evidence about Oswald to transform him into an entirely different person. The Oswald Posner created is one of the most compelling characters in all of literature, and the fictions Posner tells about him make a gripping read, but it's a novel, not a work of history or critical thinking.

Scott's book review has forced a change in my behavior. I have long recommended Case Closed as the best presentation of the case for two lone nuts, Oswald and Ruby. I can no longer do that. Case Closed is simply a fraud. There is no good book to promote the lone nut case because there is no case to be made.

*****

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Copyright © Perry Willis 2025

Perry Willis is the co-founder of Downsize DC and the Zero Aggression Project. He co-created, with Jim Babka, the Read the Bills Act, the One Subject at a Time Act, and the Write the Laws Act, all of which have been introduced in Congress. He is a past Executive Director of the national Libertarian Party and was the campaign manager for Harry Browne for President in 2000.