Not yet, but soon he might’ve. 
Well, yeah, that’s what I meant
Out,
- In 1963 there was not an armor-clad vehicle in use by the Secret Service to transport the president. The bubble top was used to protect occupants from precipitation only.
- JFK’s life and service, and that of any president, has meaning far beyond the statement you offered regarding historical impact and usefullness of his life. I’m sure you didn’t mean it the way it is worded.
- Standard security precautions were not followed by the Secret Service detail in Dallas to protect JFK. That’s on them, not him. He didn’t cause them to disregard their functions, nor did he cause many of them to stay out all night drinking. The resources of the Secret Service should not be compared to those of a body guard who protects a celebrity. Different scope of responsibility altogether.
- Malvo and his fellow sniper were conspirators. Osama is a conspirator. Apply consistent thought to them and you’ll quickly see there are not rules for conspirators, not for assassins who work alone, not then, and not now.
- Since your Hinkley statement is speculative, it effectively demonstrates you consider speculation reasonable.
- I suggest the FBI did consider whether John Hinkley was part of a conspiracy although President Reagan lived? Do you believe otherwise?
There are facts in each of these cases that are a matter of record. Those facts are essential to reach an educated opinion. The documentaries are interesting, but they often represent a presentation of selective facts toward a particular end.
steve
-
A simple hard top sedan would have made Oswald’s shot a heck of a lot more difficult. From the sixth floor he probably wouldn’t have had any shot at all. Any shot he would have had would have been at a very oblique angle through glass, and it’s almost impossible to reliably hit a target with that kind of shot. (At an oblique angle, even when the bullet penetrates glass the trajectory is seriously, and not very precictably, skewed).
-
Actually, I did mean it in exactly the way it was worded. He was a great speaker, but I’ve never been taken in by the Kennedy family hype and I simply don’t think he was all that special – certainly not worthy of such mass hysteria even 40 years later. I really think that serving as a wakeup call to the secret service and to future presidents may very well have been the most valuable contribution of his presidency.
-
I didn’t see any of those secret service boys out drinking, did you?
Even if they were, though, that proves nothing but carelessness and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that federal employees have fallen down on the job. -
As for Malvo and his buddy, I said organized conspirators. Malvo and Muhamed were clever, but I’d hardly call them organized. They were also not going after a protected target, so trying to use them to refute what I said about conspirators going after protected targets is simply silly.
-
My Hinkley statement was humorous, proving only that I consider such speculation humorous.
-
I’m sure that the authorities did initially consider that Hinkley might be part of a conspiracy. My point was that if Reagan had died it wouldn’t matter that Hinkley was a certifiable wacko acting alone in a twisted attempt to impress an actress, because there would be money to be made by pushing conspiracy theories.
I can’t express just how offensive I find this statement…
How “special” do you have to be to not deserve to be murdered?
Isn’t being a human being, father to young children, a decorated vet, and the President of the USA,
“SPECIAL” ENOUGH FOR YOU???
How “special” are YOU?
(BTW, This will be the last OT thread I read or post here)
Really? Well, we’ll see – I’ll be watchiiinngggg
Seriously, though, I don’t think anyone deserves to be murdered, do you? My point was that the near hysteria about it 40 years later is simply ridiculous. Maybe it’s only because I live in the DFW area, but for the past two or three weeks you can’t turn on the TV or radio without hearing about the assassination of JFK every ten minutes!
As for being a human being, father to young children, and a decorated vet – that applies to millions of dead people and I don’t see any handwringing over them. As for being president; Nixon, Carter, and Clinton (just to name a few recent examples) have proven that you don’t have to be especially worthy to be president.
JFK wasn’t the only one involved that day.
He was loved dearly by much of the nation,
whether or not he deserved to be.
He was young and extraordinarily
charismatic, and he awakened
a great deal of hope in many hearts.
I don’t know where (or if) you were then,
but it was the sort of devastating national
experience that stays alive
in one’s memory. It was
unbelievable, too, not a real possibility
in our minds. Ultimately the concern is about us,
not just him. Best
Apparently Oswald wasn’t so inept with the rifle as we were lead to believe. There is documentation from when he was in the marines that he wasn’t so bad a marksman. Evidently his record shows him hitting man shaped targets with a rifle at 200 yards 49 of 50 and 48 of 50 times. The motorcade at the time of JFK’s passing by was only 88 yards away from where Oswald sat in the book depository.
The number of people who think that hitting a man-sized target at 200 yards with a modern (i.e. early 20th century onward) rifle is some great feat never ceases to amaze me. That kind of shooting is routine for even casual shooters. Most hunters in the western states can hit a 10" pie plate at 300 yards or more pretty consistently using a scope – and most of them don’t shoot more than a dozen or so rounds a year, if that.
Maybe it’s 'cause I grew up with guns but the crowd I ran with would laugh themselves silly if you missed a man-sized target at 200 yards with a decent rifle, even with open sights.
It’s been a while since I did much rifle shooting, but as I recall “100 yard” bullseye targets are around 10" diameter at the outer ring and have a bullseye about the size of a fifty cent piece, maybe even a little smaller.
I remember during the DC sniping episode all the speculation about how the shooter must be a highly trained ex-military marksman because he was making such difficult shots – and most of them were well under 100 yards! I remember telling my daughter then that they were the kind of shots that just about any kid could make after an hour or two at the range plinking at targets – and guess what, that’s exactly what the shooter was, an untrained kid!
I qualified with pistol (actually, .38 revolver), M-16 rifle, and 12-guage shotgun when I was in the military. I qualified expert on the pistol and rifle (there was no “marksman” qualification for the shotgun ) without any difficulty at all. Of course, I grew up with guns. However, there were several people qualifying with me who had never handled a gun before in their lives and they qualified expert – this after receiving about four hours classroom and live-fire training.
So, now you’ve been let in on the secret – the next time some talking head on the local news channel starts speculating about how an unknown shooter must be ex-military 'cause they made a 100-yard shot you can snort knowingly
John
the one problem i have with this discussion of marksmanship is that 1) shooting on a steep downward trajectory does take some getting used to, and 2) the target was moving, and that too takes some practice. the combination of the two would seem to make it a more difficult shot than the mere range in yards would indicate. not that i have a problem with oswald making the shot–that needn’t have a bearing on any conspiracy theories, anyway.
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Trajectory!?? What difference does it make to the shooter? He is aiming at a target! Point A to point B. Have you ever shot a gun? and if so, explain how this would be relevant?
-
Target was moving, not left to right, but away from the shooter. If it it had been moving left to right, for example, had the shooter been on the grassy knoll, it would have been a difficult shot, but a target moving away, on the same “trajectory”, is dinner on the table, so to speak.
I thought this was an interesting read about the subject.. although very long..maybe go grab yourself a pint to help pass the time
The Mystery of Marina Oswald
Nov 24, 2003
Summary
With the passing of the 40th anniversary of the JFK assassination, Stratfor pauses to consider one of the less-examined aspects of the case: Marina Oswald. Her connections to the Soviet intelligence apparatus and odd marriage to Lee Harvey Oswald are seldom factored into any theories surrounding the assassination. However, the facts of the case make it clear that the Soviet government wanted Marina Prusakova and Oswald together in the United States.
Analysis
The 40th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination has prompted the usual round of articles and TV programs examining the assassination and theories of what actually happened. The speculation is endless – not because people are searching for meaning in a meaningless world, as one TV program suggested. Rather, the speculation is endless because the official explanation offered by the Warren Commission is difficult to believe. That may have been the way it happened, but it is not a genuinely satisfactory explanation.
We don’t have problems with the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was a shooter, but we do have problems with the idea that he was the lone gunman. There are four crucial points that, for us at least, make it extremely unlikely that Oswald was operating alone:
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Oswald had a beautiful, unobstructed shot from the Texas Schoolbook Depository building in Dallas as the presidential motorcade approached. He passed on a perfect shot, choosing instead to allow the motorcade to turn left and proceed below his window, and then took a much more difficult shot with his view partially obscured by a tree. Why would he have done that if he were acting alone?
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The idea that he took three shots with his bolt-action Italian rifle in the elapsed time (a few seconds) – taking out Kennedy with the head shot – is just outside the box of credibility. No matter how we strain, we can’t get there.
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The trajectory of the bullet that was supposed to have hit the president and Texas Gov. John Connolly similarly strains credibility.
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The idea that Jack Ruby, a strip club owner and connected guy, went to the Dallas police station on an impulse and was so overwhelmed by uncontrollable rage at the death of his president that he shot Lee Harvey Oswald strains our credulity beyond its limits. Ruby was a lot of things, but sentimental was not one of them. Ruby looked out for Ruby. Whatever brought him to the station and to kill Oswald was not uncontrolled emotion.
There are lots of other things, but for us, these four issues – taken together – make it very difficult to buy the Warren report. We can probably explain away any one of these aspects, but the four things taken together with other anomalous facts create a critical mass of doubt.
The only strength of the Warren Commission report is the weakness of the alternative explanations:
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Kennedy was killed by the American Mafia because Bobby Kennedy came after them, despite the fact that Joseph Kennedy had cut a deal with Sam Giancana over the West Virginia primary and the graveyard vote in Illinois. This is a reasonable explanation, except for the fact that it leaves no explanation for Oswald’s role in the president’s killing.
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Kennedy was killed by Cuban Intelligence because the Kennedys tried to kill Fidel Castro. This is an interesting theory, except that it doesn’t explain where Jack Ruby fits in.
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Kennedy was killed by the CIA because he wanted to pull out of Vietnam. This one suffers from the fact that the evidence that Kennedy wanted to pull out of Vietnam is pretty skimpy and the greater fact that, in 1963, Vietnam was one of a dozen foreign policy issues out there. The idea that the agency was so passionate about Vietnam that operatives would kill the president over it is just silly.
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Cuban exiles killed Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs and the pledge not to invade after the Cuban missile crisis. The problem, again, is Oswald.
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Hybrids of more than one of these theories. These make for interesting reading, but the problem is that all of the hybrids wind up involving dozens of people from multiple groups, none with any reason to trust each other. How do you keep a hybrid from leaking?
The only way some of these theories work is if Lee Harvey Oswald was not involved or somehow was, in his words, made into a “patsy.” For any of the conspiracy theories to work, Oswald would either have had to be an innocent victim, had someone else masquerading as him or been part of a conspiracy that his own background didn’t easily bring him into. It really all comes down to who Lee Harvey Oswald was – a subject that has garnered endless speculation.
Far less speculation has gone into what is, in our view, a significantly neglected aspect of this story: Marina Oswald. From Stratfor’s standpoint, she is at least one of the keys to whatever happened on Nov. 22, 1963. Our image of Marina Oswald, dating back to the days following the assassination, is that of a simple, frightened young woman, stunned by what had happened and in way over her head. That image of a more or less innocent bystander has remained intact for 40 years, even though the facts have consistently pointed to her being a much more important figure in the story.
Marina Oswald – born Marina Prusakova – met Lee Harvey Oswald in Minsk, where he worked in an electronics factory after having defected to the Soviet Union in 1959. She was then 19 years old. Her father had been killed in the war; she lived with her stepfather in Archangel, in the far north of Russia, before moving to Moldova as a small child and then to Leningrad at age 12. In 1955, she entered the Pharmacy Technikum for what the Warren Report called “special training.” She received a diploma in pharmacology in June 1959 and then was assigned to a job in a warehouse, which she quit after a day.
Two months later, she moved to live with her uncle in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Her uncle was a colonel in the MVD – the Russian Interior Ministry security service. At that time, the agency – which was a mixture of a national police force and the FBI – carried out several functions, from running large parts of the Gulag to serving as an internal security force. According to the Warren Commission, Col. Prusakov was head of the local lumber industry, which would have certainly made him part of the Gulag apparatus and therefore part of the security structure. With a rank of colonel, he clearly had substantial responsibilities. According to the Warren Commission, Prusakov “… had one of the best apartments in a building reserved for MVD employees.”
In Minsk, Marina finally got a job in the pharmacy of a hospital. At the same time, she joined Komsomol, the Communist youth organization – a fairly common thing to do and something that her uncle, given his standing in the government apparatus, certainly would have expected her to do. She had a good many friends when, seven months after moving to Minsk, she was introduced to Lee Harvey Oswald. They had one date – at a dance. Immediately after the dance, Oswald was taken ill and checked into a hospital, though not the one where Marina worked. Marina visited him often in the hospital, although they had met only twice prior to his hospitalization. She was able to visit him outside of regular visiting hours, according to the Warren Commission, because of her uniform. Oswald was hospitalized from March 30 until April 11. It is not clear what illness kept him hospitalized for almost two weeks, but he was cared for at an ear, nose and throat clinic: He apparently had the mother of all sinus headaches.
According to Marina’s testimony to the Warren Commission, Oswald visited her regularly at her uncle’s apartment after his release. The Commission makes a point of saying that “they were apparently not disturbed by the fact that he was an American and did not disapprove of her seeing him” This is an important point. Oswald was an American defector, clearly regarded with suspicion by Soviet Intelligence. Marina’s uncle was a colonel in the MVD. Having American defectors visit his apartment in 1961 should have concerned him a lot. He would certainly report it to his superior. An American FBI official entertaining his niece’s Soviet defector boyfriend in 1961 would certainly be cautious about its effect on his pension; however, Prusakov apparently was not concerned.
Now it gets interesting. On April 20, a little more than a month since their first meeting, Oswald proposes to Marina. She accepts and they are married on April 30. Let’s pause here. Marina Oswald is an attractive young woman. She holds a diploma in pharmacology from a first-rate technical school in Leningrad. Her uncle is a senior official in the MVD. Lee Harvey Oswald is a foreign defector, without any real future and – we are handicapped here by our glandular bias – not a great looker or sharp dresser. But he must have been a hell of a dancer, because they were married about six weeks after they met with much of the courtship having taken place in a hospital.
OK – it may have been uncontrollable love at first sight. Stranger things have happened, we suppose. The problem was that in order for Marina to marry Oswald, they needed to get special permission from the state, because he was a foreigner. That would have been true if he were the head of the Polish Communist Party. But Oswald wasn’t just a foreigner, he was an American defector. Given the Soviet bureaucracy, someone in Moscow was going to have to sign off on this one – and it had to have kicked off one heck of a security review in her uncle’s office, but permission nevertheless was granted in 10 days.
If that is hard to believe, try the next one. After about a month of marriage, Oswald tells Marina that he’s tired of the Soviet Union and wants to go home. She apparently says “whatever” and they start making arrangements to leave the Soviet Union. At this point, she told the Warren Commission, her aunt and uncle became upset and stopped speaking to her. A great deal has been made of the U.S. Embassy’s willingness to allow Oswald to return to the United States, but not nearly enough has been made of the fact that the Soviets permitted not only Oswald, but also Marina, to leave the country.
In October, while this was going on, Marina decided to take her annual vacation. According to the commission, Oswald and Marina agreed that she needed “a change of scenery.” Having been married less than six months, she took a three-week vacation by herself to visit an aunt in Kharkov. Kharkov in October is not the greatest place to visit, but off she went.
When she returned, she pursued her exit visa. She met with an MVD colonel, Nicolay Aksenov, who had to approve the exit permit. Marina thought that the interview might have been granted because her uncle was also an MVD colonel, but that makes little sense if her uncle opposed her departure. On Dec. 25, 1961, about six weeks after applying, she received her exit visa from the Soviet Union, as did Oswald. Marina told the Commission that she was surprised to receive permission. That is an understatement – what happened was unheard-of. Although the Warren Commission tried to argue that these things were not that uncommon, they just were.
Let’s recap here:
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Marina, part of the Soviet upper-middle class, reasonably educated and an attractive young woman, meets Lee Harvey Oswald and is so smitten by him that she agrees to marry him in a little over a month – two weeks of which he spent courting her from a hospital bed.
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The Soviet government grants Marina permission to marry him in the span of 10 days, despite the fact that this is an MVD colonel’s niece marrying a U.S. defector.
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Oswald immediately decides to head back to the United States, and in spite of her uncle’s supposed objections – and Prusakov could have stopped this dead in its tracks if he wanted – she is granted permission to leave the Soviet Union in the company of an American defector. The time between her formal request and receiving permission is a matter of weeks.
If the Warren Commission has the facts right – and we think they do – then this is clear: the Soviet government wanted Marina and Oswald to marry and they wanted them to go together to the United States. That is crystal clear. Now, we take a leap, but a reasonable one: The only agency in the Soviet Union with the ability and interest to get this done was the KGB. If Marina wasn’t KGB, she did one hell of an imitation.
Endless questions flow from this, ranging from what the mission was to why the U.S. embassy permitted Marina into the country. This now enters into the realm of speculation. However, one thing is clear to us: Any theory as to what happened on Nov. 22, 1963, that does not take into careful account the role of Marina Oswald is inherently flawed. This includes the Warren Commission’s own findings. If Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy, there has been no adequate explanation of Marina Oswald’s role in this.
The only way to dismiss the Marina question is to make the following three assertions:
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You have to believe that Marina, the attractive MVD princess, took one look at Oswald and said, “I’ve got to have that man.”
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You have to argue that obtaining permission in 10 days for an MVD colonel’s live-in niece to marry an American defector was no big deal.
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You have to argue that getting an exit permit from the Soviet Union for Marina in the space of six weeks in 1961 was no big deal.
If ever there was a cooked-up marriage, this was it. Now, how this fits into the assassination story is too speculative to bother with – but that no explanation is possible without building this into the story is obvious.
There has been tremendous focus on Oswald’s stay in the Soviet Union and speculation that his defection might have been part of a CIA plot. That is not inconceivable, although the purpose of the plot is opaque. There has been focus on Washington’s decision to readmit Oswald, even though he had renounced his U.S. citizenship. All of this has focused attention on the CIA, but there has not been equal attention paid to the extraordinary story of Marina Prusakova’s marriage to Oswald and her exit from the Soviet Union.
This does not necessarily clear things up, but in our mind, it sets an additional hurdle that any theory must pass over. The eagerness of the Warren Commission to pass over the strange marriage of these two is one of the reasons we have little confidence in the analysis it contains. The fact of the marriage raises questions of whether Oswald was, simply in the context of his marriage, involved in a conspiracy. If he was the only gunman – which we doubt – he still was not alone.
Copyright 2003 Strategic Forecasting LLC. All rights reserved.
You’ve got a good point, except that at such a short range a downward (or upward) shot doesn’t complicate things a lot, not with modern rifles. Modern rifles have a flat enough trajectory that under 150 to 200 yards you’re in “point-blank” territory.
Speaking of which, there’s another of my pet peeves, the way the media mis-uses the term “point-blank.” They use it meaning “really close” and that’s not even close to what it really means.
Point blank is the range at which you can hold on your target and the shot will fall within a specified distance above or below the point of aim (i.e. the entire area from the muzzle to a potential targe where the bullet trajectory will not be above or below the point of aim by more than a specified distance). This range is determined by how flat the particular cartridge and firearm shoots, how far the sights (or scope) are above the barrel, what range the rifle is sighted in at, and, obviously, how great a distance is permitted for deviation from point of aim. The latter is usually determined based on your target. If you’re hunting squirrel you may set your deviation at 1/2" above or below point of aim. If hunting elk then 3" is acceptable.
For a modern hunting or military rifle shooting at a man-sized target with a scope mounted 1-1/2 inches above the barrel, “point blank range” is typically 150 yards or better. What this means is simply that if you aim right at the center of your man-sized target’s chest, your shot will fall within the “effective zone” if that target is anywhere from immediately in front of you to 150 yards away.
Okay, I explained all that to explain all this. When you’re shooting well within your point-blank range, you are not compensating for “bullet drop” anyway, and there is less need to adjust for the up or down angle of the shot.
In the old days when guys were shooting a big, slow, patched round ball with tons of drag, point blank ranges were very short and angled shots were more difficult.
Finally, people have asked why Oswald would have waited for the car to pass and actually be further away before shooting. Your second point illustrates exactly why – a moving target that is moving mostly away and only slightly laterally is almost as good as a stationary target.
If I was going to attempt a head shot on a passenger in a moving car, I would rather have that car 100 yards away and moving almost straight away from me than twenty-five yards away and moving laterally in relation to my firing position.
SOUNDS GOOD ON PAPER, BUT IS FACTUALLY INCORRECT, I.E.:
- The idea that he took three shots with his bolt-action Italian rifle in the elapsed time (a few seconds) – taking out Kennedy with the head shot – is just outside the box of credibility. No matter how we strain, we can’t get there.
HERE IS A CLIP OF JOSIAH THOMPSON, A JFK CONSPIRATIST WHO INSISTS THAT THE RIFLE CANNOT BE OPERATED IN LESS THAN 2.3 SECONDS, PERSONALLY OPERATING THE MECHANISM IN 1.83 SECONDS. SEZ A LOT ABOUT CONSPIRACY LOGIC…
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/tink.rm
DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE REST OF THE “CONSPIRATORIAL” HOG-WASH…
As I recall, the ‘incredibility of getting three shots off’
in the time frame, which I think was six seconds,
went something like this:
It took time to work the bolt on
Oswald’s rifle. So that’s three workings of the bolt,
which leaves him not enough time to
aim and fire three shots in six seconds.
But the time starts simply with the first shot–
then there are only two workings of the bolt in
the remaining six seconds, leaving him time to aim
and fire two more shots.
Out:
I agree with everything you say, but…
The difficulty is in lack of experience in that type of shooting situation. Most people, even those who have shot at targets a fair bit, but who have not had some practice with moving targets tend to jerk the trigger and fail to follow through on the motion. The steep down ward angle could lead to shooting low for those who are lacking experience, especially with a moving target. However, the fact that the car was moving almost straight away would, in my mind, help the inexperienced shooter because it should minimize the movement of the barrel and present less of a sensation of movement to disturb the inexperienced shooter. I know I would probably prefer that shot to an approaching shot if that required me to depress the muzzle as the car approached. I’m certainly not suggesting that it was an impossible shot, and I wouldn’t want to judge at all without actually being in the window–I don’t know nearly enough about the particulars to judge.
Stewy:
I’ve had pretty extensive experience with a fairly wide variety of firearms–revolvers, semi-autos, sub machine guns, bolt action rifles, shotguns (from skeet to 00 to slugs) and assault style rifles. I’m puzzled by your unnecessary vehemence.
I think that is exactly right. My belief is that that Oswald was the lone-nut-lone-gunman with little or no logistical backing and probably none at the scene. I think that there were just some strange and freakish things about the assassination that lead people to think in terms of conspiracy. But, I think Tom has nailed the main reason for conspiracy theories in general and JFK conspiracy theories in particular. Nobody really wants to deal with the horrible reality that one silly person can alter the course of history. But, hey, it has always been so and will always be so that single people can cause tremendous good and tremendous harm.
Dale
elendil,
I am sorry but in all my years of prepping for hunting season never have I bothered to practice shooting downward because it is a shot that takes getting used to, nor have I ever missed a shot because it was downward, nor have I ever heard of a fellow hunter missing a shot because it was downward and inherently more difficult!
If it seems unnecessary it is because I fail to see the relevance!
Stew
I am sorry but in all my years of prepping for hunting season never have I bothered to practice shooting downward because it is a shot that takes getting used to, nor have I ever heard of a fellow hunter missing a shot because it was downward and inherently more difficult! If it seemed unnecessary it is because I utterly failed to see the point.
I understand what you’re saying. My point is not that it’s inherently more difficult, just that it’s a different perspective and a different way of holding the rifle (if the angle is steep enough) that it simply takes some getting used to. When the target is moving, that accentuates the problem. I’m no expert on this event, so I’m not really in a position to say exactly what the downward angle would have been or what effect the motion of the car would have had. I do know that Oswald was in a sixth story window, not that far from his target. I’d be surprised if you have ever had to shoot at a target the size of a human head that was moving at that speed and at that steep an angle. It was by no means impossible, but to me it was a good piece of shooting for someone with no particular experience in that sort of shooting. It’s also true that the first, most important shot, was the one that he had the most time to get right. I am a little surprised at the speed and accuracy of his follow up shots in that situation. I would have expected that he would have wanted to be sure he had really hit the President of the United States–not quickly acquire a new target of such lesser importance. Absorbing the recoil and the report (he had probably never fired from inside a room before), registering the effect of the first shot, working the bolt, acquiring the new target, allowing for motion, controlling the adrenalin rush, etc. This all takes time–and more so because of the situation and his apparent lack of practice for such a situation. So, to that extent I would temper Out’s characterization of the shooting as simple. I think it was pretty good shooting in the circumstances. The other side of the coin is the number of psychological imponderables that come into play: motivation, focus, etc. People are capable of far more remarkable feats than this one when well motivated. So, I’m not a conspiracy theorist and don’t claim to know the answers. On the other hand, I don’t think I’m privy to all the facts, either.
point taken.
Stew