Tuesday, June 7, 2022

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.


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."


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").


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."


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


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."


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."


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."


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


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]."


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


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."


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."


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."


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."


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?"


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."


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."


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

1 comment:

  1. The Nix film shows shooters in the pergola. The Mary Moreman photo shows a gunman in the pergola, right behind Mr. Zapruder. Open your eyes and watch this video. The Nix film proofs conspiracy and it can only mean that Oswald was placed at the TSBD. Mrs. Paine is guilty as sin and she will take her secrets to the grave.
    https://youtu.be/uMg1roWrZVc

    ReplyDelete

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