The Assassination and Mrs. Paine-Ruth's Greatest Hits

A review of The Assassination and Mrs. Paine by John Seal noted that Ruth Paine "bats away [difficult questions by filmmaker Max Good and others] with impressive equanimity." Listed here are some of the times Mrs. Paine effectively answered her critics and/or persuasively argued the lone assassin case. My thanks to Greg Doudna for use of his partial transcript of the film.

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Mrs. Paine: "The suspicion [about conspiracy in the death of JFK] comes from people who are looking for plots, and trying to figure out, you know, who or—it's so hard to feel that such a great man could be brought down so easily by such a small person. That’s really hard to take in."

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Mrs. Paine: "It really illustrates how wrong that film [Stone's JFK] was or how ficticious it was because there we were but it was not us and not even our names" (Stone called the Paines "Janet and Bill Williams").

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Mrs. Paine: "The people that are suspicious of me fortunately don’t really come around to talk to me. That does not happen and I’m grateful for that."

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Mrs. Paine: "[commenting on her friend's belief in conspiracy] Yeah, well you're one of my liberal friends."

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Mrs. Paine: "Well you’re [Max Good] making connections. My mother-in-law knew Allen Dulles. [speaking with feigned dramaticism] So obviously there’s a plot."

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Mrs. Paine: "ABC did one of the best [documentaries on the assassination] which began by saying Oswald did it and they were going to show you why."

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Mrs. Paine: "I didn't get into the conspiracies at all because I don't have a paranoid bone in my body. I just don't see ghosts anywhere."

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Mrs. Paine: "He [Oswald] suddenly realized he had an opportunity to no longer be a little guy, but to be someone extraordinary."

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Gerry Spence (represented LHO in a mock trial): "You did give the FBI a letter that was susposed to have been written by Lee to the Soviet embassy didn't you?"
Mrs. Paine: "This was a draft of a letter that he left on my desk ..."
Gerry Spence: "Yes."
Mrs. Paine: ... that concerned me very deeply because I could see that he was lying in it."
Gerry Spence: "He left ..."
Mrs. Paine: "And he'd used my typwriter and that offended me deeply [laughs]."

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Mrs. Paine: "I learned a lot about what is written isn’t always true, in newspapers and magazines."

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Gerry Spence: "Does it just happen as just a coincidence that you chose Russian as a language of your interest? That’s just a coincidence?"

Mrs. Paine: "No, it wasn’t a coincidence at all. I’m telling you that’s because I felt it was really important to communicate among—between our countries in particular. This was the era of the Cold War."

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Good: "How do you feel about this stuff [rumors] proliferating on the internet?"
Mrs. Paine: "Well, I don’t look. That’s how I feel about it. I just live my life separate from that as best I can. I was surprised after there was a little article in the local paper about me. And some of the comments were horrible. Its an open internet. So—it has a lot of things that are not true."

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Good: "I’ve been studying this case for the last few years, and tried to be objective, take in all different viewpoints."
Mrs. Paine: [skeptically] "Oh really? OK."
Good: "And try not to be too biased."
Mrs. Paine: "Shucks" (chortles).
Good: "It seems maybe a little extreme to completely dismiss the questions of conspiracy, with all that’s come out over the years?"
Mrs. Paine: "To you its extreme?"
Good: "Yeah."
Mrs. Paine: "To dismiss the idea of conspiracies? To me its not extreme. Because the things I saw were so telling. Everything I saw pointed to him [Oswald] and him alone."

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Mrs. Paine: "Lee was, in my opinion, not somebody a spy agency would hire. I couldn't see him as connected to the Soviet Union. I think they were very happy to see him leave actually."

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Mrs. Paine: "[commenting on Marina Oswald's recent belief in conspiracy] Wouldn't it be nice to think it wasn't he [Oswald] if you're the wife?"

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Mrs. Paine: "My family had a hostility to communism, because my parents had been active in the cooperative movement—this is New York City—where the local Communist Party people wanted to take over. Part of the things I was raised up knowing is that the communists would think that the end justifies the means, and my folks didn’t feel that way at all, nor do I."

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Good: "Maybe watching Oswald was a job you had to keep an eye on this ...
Mrs. Paine: "Flake."
Good: "... young communist defector who had returned."
Mrs. Paine: "Nonsense. Absolute nonsense."
Good: "Have you ever done any work for the FBI or CIA?"
Mrs. Paine: "[incredulously] No, I haven't. No, I was not Oswald's sitter for the CIA or whatever kind of story they're trying to tell. One of the things that I have felt very strongly is that it was important for me to answer questions and say what I knew because I'm interested in truth. I have really less and less patience with the people who are still looking for a conspiracy. It's great that we live in country that ... where people can put out their false notions freely-that doesn't happen in much of the world. And we can be proud that people can write books that are full of falsehoods and print 'em and not get jailed."

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Mrs. Paine: "I'm a very independent person [laughs]. Nobody tells me what to do."