Above, a rifle like this one at the 6th Floor Museum in Dallas is up for auction. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Here's something interesting that is coming up at auction for gun collectors.
It is an exact recreation of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle used to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. It was used during the House Select Committee on Assassinations back in 1978. It was also used in a movie on the assassination.
PR Newswire reported:
BEDFORD, Texas, April 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- An exact recreation of the JFK assassination rifle, owned and utilized by ballistics expert Monty Lutz during his testimony for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, will come to auction this May. The rifle also starred in the 1986 movie "On Trial: Lee Harvey Oswald," where Lutz played himself. Lutz's Carcano rifle will be offered during the first day of Rock Island Auction Company's May 2-4 Premier Auction.
The rifle is an identical configuration to the "Mannlicher-Carcano" rifle long recognized as the weapon used by Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Lutz's rifle was even ordered from the same retailer Oswald used and mounted with an identical scope. Such duplication was critical when this rifle was utilized during the 1978 investigation by the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), where Lutz cited testing the rifle at various distances. The exact replication of the assassination weapon was a quintessential component in the investigation as the nation continued to search for answers in the tragedy's aftermath.
Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle is currently housed at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.
Above, the assassination site in Dallas, Texas. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
As promised, the Trump Administration released the purported "last batch" of JFK Assassination documents.
This was the result of President Trump's executive order made in January.
From the BBC:
The US government has released the final batch of documents on the assassination of President John F Kennedy - a case that still sparks conspiracy theories over 60 years later.
The release follows an executive order in January by President Donald Trump that required unredacted files in the case to be made public.
Experts are combing over the documents, but have said they do not expect many ground-breaking revelations. Trump expected 80,000 pages of records to be unsealed.
US authorities have previously released hundreds of thousands of JFK documents, but held some back, citing national security concerns. Many Americans still believe the gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, did not act alone.
Above, Elm Street in Dealey Plaza in 2021. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
President Donald Trump is continuing to make good on his campaign promises.
The latest is that he issued an executive order to declassify and release the remaining files on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
According to CBS News:
President Trump announced that he'll declassify any remaining files from the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. He signed an executive order at the White House Thursday.
After an aide announced the president was signing the executive action "ordering the declassification of files relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.," Mr. Trump said, "That's a big one, huh? A lot of people are waiting for this for a long — for years, for decades."
The president instructed his aide to give the pen he used to sign the order to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late Robert F. Kennedy and Mr. Trump's nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services. The elder Kennedy served as U.S. attorney general and New York senator and was a Democratic presidential candidate when he was slain in 1968.
Above, a view of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza two windows away from Oswald's sniper's window. Photo by Armand Vaquer
Sixty years is a long time. I can still remember that day almost as if it were yesterday.
Today marks the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. I was in fourth grade at the time at Woodcrest Elementary School in Los Angeles.
Above, a view of Elm Street and the former Texas School Book Depository Building. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
I had just finished lunch in the school cafeteria and got up to bring my tray and dishes to the busboy window. It was there at the window I was told that Kennedy was assassinated, and the school’s flag had been lowered to half-staff. I left the cafeteria and went outside and saw that the flag was indeed at half-staff.
I then went to the playground for the remainder of the lunch hour.
Minutes later, the bell rang for everyone to return to class.
Above, a view of Elm Street from Main Street in 1984. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
There, in class, our teacher tearfully confirmed what had happened. Everyone was in stunned silence. Then, a fire drill bell started ringing and we all headed out to the playground. There, outside of the auditorium at the top of a stairway, the school principal, over a public address system, also told everyone the news and had everyone sing patriotic songs.
He also announced that school would be dismissed for the day following the program.
Above, Oswald's sniper's nest recreated in the Sixth Floor Museum. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
I then headed home (I only lived across the street from the school) with a friend from the Cub Scouts. His mother wasn’t at home so he came home with me. After getting home, we watched the television coverage with my mom. All programming on all television stations were preempted by the assassination coverage. This would ultimately be the case throughout the weekend until after Kennedy’s funeral on Monday, November 25.
Much of what was repeatedly shown was the Kennedys at the breakfast in Fort Worth, their arrival at Love Field and some footage of the motorcade. Later, a live feed from Andrews Air Force Base showing the arrival of Air Force One was shown and Lee Harvey Oswald under arrest.
Above, a view of Elm Street from the grassy knoll area. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
As this was a Friday, my family usually went out for dinner. But, for the life of me, I cannot remember if we did or ate at home.
Nobody who was alive at the time would ever forget, just like other generations who remember what they were doing and how they learned about Pearl Harbor and September 11.
Above, the Kennedy limousine after it passed under the triple underpass from a display in the Sixth Floor Museum.
Since then, I have visited Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas twice, being a history buff. The first was during the 1984 Republican National Convention and the second was in January 2021. A visit to the Sixth Floor Museum in the former Texas School Book Depository Building is well worth a visit.
For those who wish to delve further into the Kennedy assassination, these DVDs are recommended:
Above, this DVD by the History Channel is the best one. It covers the assassination and what transpired since, including conspiracy theories.
Above, this National Geographic DVD covers much of the same as the History Channel DVD.
Above, this DVD shows the Zapruder film from sharp photographic copies made from the original camera film.
Below is a video I took of former Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, now 91, giving a talk on the assassination at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California on June 11, 2016.
Above, dinner at Cattlemen's Steakhouse at the Fort Worth Stockyards.
It is sometimes incredible at how time flies.
It was two years ago today that Mitch Geriminsky and I flew back to Albuquerque from Dallas Love Field following out little vacation jaunt to Dallas-Fort Worth. Once we got back to Albuquerque, I bought a new set of tires for the motorhome.
Above, at the John Wayne: An American Experience exhibit. Photo by Mitch Geriminsky.
Flying to Dallas Love Field was a lot easier as it is a smaller airport than the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, which is like a city on its own.
Above, having a brew at Billy Bob's Texas. Photo by Mitch Geriminsky.
One does not immediately think of Dallas or Fort Forth, Texas as vacation spots, but the trip was interesting. I recommend it for those who need a place to travel to.
Above, a view of Elm Street from a sixth floor window of the former Texas School Book Depository. This window is two windows to the west of the actual sniper's window. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
To date, roughly 97% of the previously withheld classified JFK assassination documents have been released. Yesterday, 13,000 more were released.
There's 3% remaining. People are already asking, What are they hiding?
Above, the sniper's next at the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
The Gateway Pundit has jumped into the fray.
They wrote:
In 2017 President Trump approved the release of approximately 2800 long-classified JFK assassination records.
News outlets from around the globe furiously combed through the files in search of more pieces to the puzzling death of President John F. Kennedy.
President Trump released a second trove of documents later that year.
One of the documents revealed that Democrat President Lyndon Johnson was a KKK member.
This was not a surprise.
The Ku Klux Klan was founded as the activist wing of the Democratic Party.
On Thursday the National Archives released thousands of the JFK documents.
But the FBI-CIA would not allow the release of all of the documents. Around 3% of the JFK documents are still being withheld from release to the public — more than 50 years after the assassination.
What are they hiding?
We know how trustworthy the CIA and FBI are these days, don't we?
Above, yours truly in Dealey Plaza early last year. Photo by Mitch Geriminsky.
Articles about the 59th anniversary tomorrow of the assassination of President Kennedy are appearing on the Internet.
They range from eyewitness accounts to a proposal to upgrade Dealey Plaza (not too much could be actually be done there as it is now a National Historic Site).
Six years ago, I headed up to Corte Madera, California to Book Passage to hear former Secret Service agent Clint Hill give a talk on the assassination and his work with different presidents. I blogged about the visit back then, which also includes a video of his talk that I shot. To access it, go here.
Above, ex-Secret Service agent Clint Hill at Book Passage in Corte Madera in 2016. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has posted a collection of photographs from their staff photographers taken during JFK's visit to Dallas. To see them, go here.
Snopes even got into the act with an article on JFK's foreboding feeling about assassination. To access the article, go here.
The Dallas Morning News has an article posted today on how to observe the 59th anniversary. To read it, go here.
Above, Elm Street at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
In two more days, the 59th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will be observed.
Incredible as it may seem, there's an inter-agency battle over the remaining classified documents and their release according to a 1992 transparency law ordering their release. The CIA and FBI want them kept secret, but the National Achives and Records Administration want them released.
Politico has posted an article on might be the crux of the dispute.
They begin with:
Almost exactly 59 years after those rifle shots rang out in Dealey Plaza, left a president mortally wounded and changed the course of history, there are still secrets that the government admits it is determined to keep about the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. More than 14,000 classified documents somehow related to the president’s murder remain locked away, in part or in full, at the National Archives in clear violation of the spirit of a landmark 1992 transparency law that was supposed to force the release of virtually all of them years ago.
The fact that anything about the assassination is still classified — and that the CIA, FBI and other agencies have refused to provide the public with a detailed explanation of why — has convinced an army of conspiracy theorists that their cynicism has always been justified.
It appears the CIA, FBI and other agencies want to protect still-living foreign informants from reprisals by the Mafia (and possibly others) along with intelligence tools. That is why the battle still goes on.
Politico reported:
In the past, those agencies have provided the public with only vague explanations about their reasoning, citing potential damage to national security and foreign policy.
The Archives correspondence reveals, for the first time, their detailed justifications, providing a rare window into reasoning inside the CIA and FBI. In many cases, it shows, the CIA and FBI pressed to keep documents secret because they contained the names and personal details of still-living intelligence and law-enforcement informants from the 1960’s and 1970’s who could be at risk of intimidation or even violence if they were publicly identified.
Many of those sources — now elderly, if not close to death — are foreigners living outside the United States, which means it would be more difficult for the American government to protect them from threats. The CIA has also withheld information in the documents that identifies the location of CIA stations and safehouses abroad, including several that have been in use continuously since Kennedy’s death in 1963.
Even though it is almost 60 years since the assassination, it is interesting that intelligence and law-enforcement informants could still be put into jeopardy if their identities are revealed. At least, that's what the CIA and FBI contend.
The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, housed in the former Texas School Book Depository building, posted the following on Facebook:
When I was in Dallas last year, I didn't think to visit Parkland Hospital as I was aware that the original building had been remodeled, probably more than once. The emergency entrance was also changed and actually moved to a different, and newer building.
Trauma Room 1, where Kennedy was pronounced dead, was dismantled and its contents had been saved and in storage near Kansas City, Missouri according to a WFAA article.
Above, Cattlemen's Steak House at the Fort Worth Stockyards.
They (whoever they are) say that as one gets older, time seems to fly faster.
I don't know about that, but it is hard to believe that it was a year ago today that Mitch Geriminsky and I arrived at Dallas Love Field in Texas to visit the John Wayne: An American Experience, Fort Worth Stockyards, Dealey Plaza/6th Floor Museum and Southfork Ranch. It seems like only yesterday we were there.
As we arrived in winter, it was on the cool side in Texas. But the weather during our time there was nice and sunny. I have been in Dallas during the summer months and the heat can get brutal (112° during my 1984 visit). The weather was at least comfortable.
For some reason, January 11 was in the back of my mind for the past several days and I finally figured out why. It was the Texas trip last year.
One thing is for certain, should I go back to Dallas/Fort Worth, I will fly to Dallas Love Field again instead of the humongous Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Love Field is a smaller airport and its terminal is a lot easier to navigate around. That includes access to the car rental area of the airport.
Above, Oswald's sniper's nest recreated. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Today marks the 58th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
Mitch Geriminsky and I visited the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza last January.
Above, a view of Elm Street from the stockade fence. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
The Sixth Floor Museum At Dealey Plaza posted a video this morning of some newly-discovered photographic negatives of that day taking by Dallas Times Herald photographers.
Above, a view of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza from a sixth floor window of the former Texas School Book Depository building. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
A few years ago, previously classified documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy were released.
As it turned out, nothing major was discovered in those documents. There are some that hadn't been released and were slated to be released this year. Citing the pandemic, His Fraudulency Joe Biden has delayed the release.
According to the Washington Times:
President Biden late Friday signed an order again delaying the public release of records related to the assassination of President Kennedy, saying the COVID-19 pandemic slowed the review process.
Mr. Biden wrote in a memo that the pandemic has halted the government’s ability to decide whether proposed redactions meet the “statutory standard.”
The National Archives and Records Administration earlier this year ruled that the pandemic has had a “significant impact on [government] agencies” and it needed more to research the material and “maximize” the information released about the assassination.
Above, this display includes John Wayne's eyepatch from True Grit (1969). Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Back last January, Mitch Geriminsky and I took a trip to Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas to see some of the attractions there, such as the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Southfork Ranch, the Fort Worth Stockyards, Billy Bob's Texas and the John Wayne: An American Experience. I was in the area once before. It was when I was a part of the 1984 California Reagan Delegation to the Republican National Convention.
It was the Wayne exhibit that spurred me to want to go there this year.
CultureMap Fort Worth posted an article on the John Wayne: An American Experience. Along with details of the exhibit, he article also tells about how the exhibit came to be.
Here's some snippets:
[Ethan] Wayne says he never realized how much memorabilia his father had amassed until he accessed the collection after his oldest half-brother, who previously ran the family business, died in 2003.
“I thought, ‘My gosh, we have a lot of really significant memorabilia here,” he says. “I don’t think the rest of the family really knew. From that moment we started thinking about how we were going to find a home for it.”
An idea sparked when Wayne met Craig Cavileer, executive vice president of Majestic Realty Co. (which developed the Stockyards' Mule Alley complex and Hotel Drover) at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas two years ago. Ethan had set up a pop-up museum there with a small sampling of his father’s memorabilia — just to gauge interest, he says.
Since we saw everything in Dallas and Fort Worth we came to see, today will be a "kick-back" day in Texas. Last night, we drove around Fort Worth with no particular place to see.
There's plenty of brochures in the hotel lobby of attractions in the area, we'll check to see what, if anything, sounds interesting.
We came to see the 6th Floor Museum/Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Southfork Ranch, Billy Bob's and the Stockyards in Fort Worth. We may end up going to the Stockyards Station, which is a shopping mall, for a few hours. We haven't seen it yet.
We'll be heading back to Albuquerque tomorrow, where, upon arrival, I have to get some new tires on The Beast before going back to Jamestown.
Probably the best time to visit the Stockyards is in the spring or summer months, when it is warmer and the attractions are in full operation. Even now, it is a fun place to visit.
Above, the view from a window near Oswald's sniper's nest. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Today was spent in Dallas and in Fort Worth.
In Dallas, we spent the morning touring the 6th Floor Museum at the former Texas School Book Depository building.
One of the things I wanted to do was to have a photo taken of me near where I stood in 1984. Got that done and here's the result:
Above, your truly at Elm Street today. Photo by Mitch Geriminsky.
Above, yours truly on Elm Street in 1984.
There were quite a number of people there, but all kept to their social distancing while looking at the exhibits.
In Fort Worth, we had lunch at Billy Bob's in the Stockyards area.
I was amazed how built up downtown Dallas was. The much taller buildings that were built since my 1984 visit made Dealey Plaza look much smaller than I remembered. It felt like we were in a canyon of buildings.
Here's some highlights of the visit:
Above, a view looking towards the Texas School Book Depository from Elm Street. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, looking towards the triple underpass. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, a display of JFK's arrival at Love Field. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, Oswald's sniper's nest. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, JFK's limo approaching after going under the underpass. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, the clothing James Robert Leavelle (August 23, 1920 – August 29, 2019) was wearing when Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, Jack Ruby's hat. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, Lee Harvey Oswald's wedding ring. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, "Superman's Mission For President Kennedy" drawn by Al Plastino published posthumously. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, FBI model of Dealey Plaza. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, the freight elevator Oswald used on the 6th floor. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, the Grassy Knoll and stockade fence. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, an exact copy of Oswald's rifle. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
Above, Elm Street from the stockade fence above the Grassy Knoll. Photo by Armand Vaquer.
