From a faithful reader in Dallas:
“On Saturday October 4, the Sixth Floor Museum’s 2014 Living History Series, presented a talk by Pierce Allman, who was the program director at WFAA Radio in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Allman was in Dealey Plaza at the time of JFK’s assassination, and was one of the first media representatives inside the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) after the shooting.
“Allman’s view of JFK’s assassination is expressed in pretty succinct fashion: three shots, one gun, one man. He admitted he did not actually see the gunman, despite standing at the corner of Elm and Houston, or even see the rifle in the sixth floor window. He did see three African-American men leaning out the fifth floor windows and pointing up at the sixth floor window,. He was standing within feet of Howard Brennan, whom we are told by the Warren Commission, is the best witness to Oswald in the window.
“Allman’s claim to fame is his encounter with Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, inside the TSBD a few minutes after Kennedy was shot and killed.
“Two obvious questions present themselves: How long after the last shot did Allman encounter Oswald?
And, what impression did Oswald like during the encounter, i.e., did he look like he had just killed the leader of the free world, run down from the sixth floor after wiping down and hiding a rifle, been confronted by a pistol packing police officer, and bought a Coca-Cola?
Allman took care of the first question in his talk. He estimated it took three minutes from the last shot to dialing the telephone inside the TSBD. He described his activities after the last shot to the audience but the Secret Service report on his actions is a bit more revealing. Seeing the Newmans fall to the ground, he ran to help them. Newman told Mr. Allman that he and his family were unhurt, but described the President’s head exploding. Allman said he briefly lost it, and began to run, not knowing where, until he regained his composure and remembered he was a newsman and needed to file a report on the biggest story of his life. The TSBD was in front of him, and probably had a telephone. He ran for the door.
In Allman’s mind, Oswald was a cool customer. He had just shot the President. But when Mr. Allman asked Oswald if there was a telephone in the building, here is how Allman described him:
“Oswald was totally calm. How do you do that (kill the President), and stay so calm?” he asked. “He was not in a hurry. Not breathless. Appeared normal.”
I think Allman was asking a very sensible question. How does someone shoot the President of the United States and remain so calm. Well, just maybe that person didn’t shoot anybody. Maybe.
Lee Oswald loved his kids, according to those that knew him.
Do you think he would miss seeing them grow up, deprive them of a father, and put them through the potential misery of others knowing that their father was a murderer? And all for the sake of being famous? I think not.
This is the proof that Lee was innocent.
Yeah. You’re right. I have never heard of a father with children who murdered somebody. It just doesn’t happen. Thank you for solving the Kennedy Assassination for us.
Sure casts doubt on Linnie Mae’s story.
Especially about the kids not witnessesing anything and that they didnt know Lee at all.
That morning their friend Lee supposedly comes by with a package but the children didnt see hear or witness anything in the tiny kitchen/dining room they were all in.
Sure they didnt, if nothing happened.
If Lee their playmate never stops by with a package and stares in the window so Linnie can say Whos that and Buell would answer that Its Lee, etc. right infront of the kids … possibly Bill too but he escaped questions about his knowing anything.
Then there is Bill Randle and the FBI search records under his name for purchase of a rifle scope.
Then there is Mrs Roberts the neighbor saying Bill gave Lee a ride that morning.
Bill was less than forthcoming about knowing Lee.
Besides;
Why would you expect the case to be solved without reopening it? And instead of pinning a tail on a scapegoat actually looking for the killers plural.
Good luck ya armchair quarterback!
Did this man encounter Oswald..?
I do not believe there is enough evidence to claim beyond any doubt that Pierce Allman is the man who encountered Oswald in the TSBD. Allman himself, in early 64, he repeatedly declined to identify Oswald as the man he encountered, stating that if he was to identify Oswald, it would be the “power of suggestion.” He offered nothing further than a white male with dark hair as his description of the man he met in the lobby.
In addition, his companion that day, Terrence Ford also could not identify Oswald as the man they encountered.
Another reporter on the scene, Robert MacNeil, is also sometimes attributed as the man who received directions to the phone from Oswald, and has since came forward to embrace those claims, rejecting his original apprehension to a TSBD Oswald encounter. Now he allows others to advertise him as the man who encountered Oswald and seems willing to accept that fact. However in an early letter, he claims to have encountered two men, one pointing to the other, as they direct him towards the phone, and cannot identify Oswald.
It seems the man or men that Allman and MacNeil encountered that day were TSBD workers. As for the men Oswald pointed to the phone (which he claimed were two Secret Service men who presented credentials) I don’t feel there is enough evidence to say it was either Allman or MacNeil with any certainty. In fact all the evidence points to the contrary.
Leslie..I’m a little confused by the response you made. There were hundreds of witnesses of all types, ear, eyes (and throat) etc. The Warren Commission relied, as is/was posted by Stephen R., on the ‘investigators’, on site (FBI, SS, DPD). That these investigators don’t subscribe to any particular theory that you would like to proliferate isn’t my problem nor theirs. You, for example, focused on the ‘nut’ verbiage and mended it to fit YOUR theory. Well…all I can do is simply do what any reasonable person who happened to work for the FBI,SS, DPD, etc can do. This would be to do just what they did do: What the FBI/SS/WC did was to look at the ‘timing’ issues made by Ms. Adams (alone I may add), understand her story regarding Jack Ruby, of all people, interviewing witnesses within 5 minutes of the shooting,, IN THE MIDDLE OF ELM/HOUSTON STREETS, and then having them taken away by motorcycle police…and consider this testimony as WORTHLESS. If you have trouble admitting that on the very face of it, her testimony is inaccurate (1), incorrect (2), and suspect (3) to say the very least. I’ll break them down for you into the three sections I feel they fit into in another post.
1. Inaccurate: Her testimony flies in the face of reality when she said that she encountered Lovelady and Shelley on the loading dock upon descending the stairs in LESS THAN ONE MINUTE. That just did not happen and the testimony of Lovelady and Shelley PROVES that she is inaccurate about how long she took to get from the window…to the stairs…to the first floor…to the loading dock…etc.
Her own testimony states that she stayed on the 4th floor for about 15-30 seconds BEFORE even going for the landing…let alone heading down the stairs (in her darn high heels with Styles). Just keep in mind that Ms.Garner did not ‘see’ the girls go down the stairs…she only heard them clanking along.
However….I’ll add: The ONLY way for this to be correct is to have her actually encounter Lovelady and Shelley, just where she said, on the loading dock… ONLY 4-5 minutes after the last shot. So she was TOTALLY Inaccurate on the time and the Police…SS…WC investigators knew it..and David Belin knew it better than anyone and was actually ‘kind’ to her in her testimony before the WC. As he rightfully said, according to her, ‘I don’t believe a word (of your story)’. This woman was telling a story that didn’t occur, not just by Govt./FBI/SS/DPD manipulation…no…by the word of people who simply disproved her story from the outset.
2. Incorrect: It’s impossible for her to have not heard the shouts of Truly up that elevator shaft if she were near it…or on the stairs if she were on the way down them. It’s impossible for her to have seen Lovelady and Shelley behind the building, on the loading dock when they were filmed/photographed, IN FRONT OF THE BUILDING.
3. Suspect: This woman had demonstrated, and if you read her testimony carefully…the CT party line. She testified that she saw Jack Ruby on the street questioning people…and that she had enough time to learn that Jack Ruby was at the Dallas Morning News at the time of the Assassination AND THAT THIS WAS BEING DISCUSSED BY A DPD MEMBER ON THE STREET WITHIN 5 MINUTES OF THE ASSASSIATION!!
Here testimony alone is pure fantasy and lastly…How ‘almost’ clever she was. She wanted a ‘stop-watch’ timing like the other had gotten. How cute. Belin asked her every sing time question he could think of and she had EVERY ANSWER EXCEPT ONE: How long was it until you got from the ‘window to the fourth floor landing’. For this question she had no answer. Why? Well how about because she had already painted a time frame of 1 minute to go downstairs beginning after the last shot. I feel she was sharp enough to sense the timing trap Belin was laying out for her and she bailed on him by inserting that she would need a stop-watch test.
She was all about the news she could generate. An investigator who was worth his salt could see that this woman was creating a scenario to fit nicely into. Belin knew it and wanted to trap her. She realized it and bailed.
PS…Styles category? What category would that be? A woman who had no clear recollection of the time, except to say that it was longer than Adams had thought. A woman who appears to be putting as much distance between her and Adams as possible? Or a woman who just didn’t have a lot to offer in terms of substantive, factual material. I’ll go with the latter. That Adams was CLEARLY making up poop made her suspect…that Styles removed herself from the issue is no surprise. Peace.
FBI/SS witness list:
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1381.pdf
Here is the mention by Allie Dorman on her Great Grandmothers/Grandfathers film. Kind of hard to figure out what she is going to go with as she misused his/her…but the link is for you to check out. https://plus.google.com/110080986449412476050/posts
Vanessa. About the coke that Oswald was spotted with. Since I believe that he (tried) to duck into the 2nd floor lunchroom when he heard Truly yelling for the elevator to be sent down….he may have been just quick-thinking enough AFTER he had been literally ‘set-free’ by Baker through Truly’s intervention to get a coke as part of creating his alibi…and in doing so, simply walked all the way across the first floor and then out the door after his being spotted by Mrs. Reid, who testified that she was sure the coke was almost totally full when she saw him with it.
I will assume the devils-advocate role on this: He was seen in the building just after the shooting….so he just kept on keeping cool until/after he exited the building. I’d further be thinking that, since he was on the 6th floor working…and a gun was going to be found (yes..only if he was in fact the shooter) that he knew would be traced back…that this was his backup plan that was quickly formulated after he was intercepted by Baker/Truly.
Let me ask, have you ever checked out Mr. Carr and Mr. Rankin’s notes about how careful Carr needed to proceed should Ruby actually give up some info on why Oswald’s track was so close to Jack Ruby’s Apartment? The WC felt that Ruby really was still holding out about his connection to Oswald (possible connection).
Hello Bill
Apologies for the delay in responding, I’ve been flat out.
I’ve done a couple of searches but can’t find Rankin and Carr’s notes – if you have a link that would be great.
Re-the unidentified man in the doorway in Weigman and Darnell and the coke bottle pictured just where he was standing. There are a few photos of it in the William Allen photos taken about 15 minutes after the shooting.
The link is on CTKA “Where was Oswald during the Shooting” Sean Murphy link on page 84, comment number 1255. There are some other photos on the next pages which establish the time of these photos.
Thanks for your views.
I wanted to add this to the Girl On the Stairs story. I did check around and found exactly what I was looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WQr4y1j4Gw
The first 13 seconds are of the Book Depository and clearly show Lovelady and Shelley standing around outside of the TSBD.
It’s hard to be on the Loading Dock in about 1:10 sec and be seen when you’re Billy Lovelady and you’ve already testified that you were on the front steps and visually seen in Algens 6 and went for a stroll down to the RR Tracks testimony, and then visually seen in Ayala #2 Film. Peace.
Hi Bill
Further to my comment above there is film (and a still photo) of Lovelady and Shelley walking down the street on the CTKA topic “Where was Oswald during the Shooting?”. It’s on page 3 of the link for Sean Murphy.
Thank you. I appreciate you looking for and posting the information. I did find a more clear photo/film. I did get a laugh about the Where was Oswald during the Shooting section. Apparently the ‘prayer man’ concept has developed in a one-sided manner. I tend to look at it like this:
Why in the heck would LHO, watch/listen to an assassination, see a zillion people running down to the scene…and, even though he was only recently removed from the Marines so he had good knowledge/experience with gunshot noises, with only a few seconds of a lead, while NOT taking an elevator, go up to the second floor (incidentally not seeing VAdams or SStyles omg) to grab a coke while the most important political event of his lifetime is playing out in front of him????
Oh…lol…I forgot…which brings me back to the obvious ? Where was Oswald during the shooting….Doing the shooting.
Thanks Bill, I thought it might give you a laugh.
I don’t know how far you got on the Murphy thread (it goes for pages) but he eventually posits that (in agreement with you that going to get the coke after the shooting is a ridiculous idea) Oswald (or whoever it is) got the coke before the shooting and was drinking it during the Wiegman film.
And if memory serves me correctly (it’s been ages since I looked at the whole thread again) they eventually find a photo with a coke bottle just where this unidentified fellow was standing.
Whoever this guy is he doesn’t react like anyone else around him. Doesn’t go down the steps and have a look around like Shelley and Lovelady. Shows no interest whatever in the proceedings – which as you say must have been pandemonium.
I don’t follow along on that Vanessa. I’m not sure of just how long it took. Those on the front steps said they first stepped forward…and then kind of were pushed back. I always find it amazing to see the number of people who are actually seen ‘running’ into the street in front of the TSBD just after the shots. About the coke bottle. I don’t know anything about it. I do know that the African-American couple, that Zapruder/Sitzman mentions breaking a bottle in scurrying away was sitting on a bench that was at the very end of the wall, in front of Zapruder, coincidentally…just where the famous (or infamous) black-dog man is seen in the willis slide. In any case…there was a broken bottle there…another bottle of coke left on the corner of the same wall….and a fast-food box.
This idea that it was pandemonium outside the TSBD immediately after the shooting…
That’s only in witness reports made after they already knew the POTUS was dead.
The films say everyone continued watching the parade through the shooting and some, including Roy Truly were going back inside twenty seconds later, back to work.
Allman is the most brazen charlaton this case has ever seen and his experience in TV makes him the most polished.
This is the best lesson in how worthless real eyewitness testimony is in this case.
Helpful, yes can be but reliable? Never.
The Newmans told him there had been a shooting and JFK was hit in the head that I have no trouble with but before his encounter with them he was clueless.
You’ll find him in Dorman at the corner once you know what he looks like.
Here in Bond we see him in grey suit looking over his right shoulder at the press bus.
http://www.jfkassassinationgallery.com/displayimage.php?album=38&pos=23
Newmans were on their feet and by thier account that day would have sent him up the knoll and that’s were many had already begun chasing Haygood.
Allman went there too following the crowd once more.
Pierce Allman made some serious allegations/claims during the fiftieth and two of which prove he’s a fraud.
The first is his regurgitation of the three men pointing up to the sixth floor falsehood. No one saw any such thing.
That came from Jackson when he needed a reason to explain why he looked at one specific window from so many.
It never happened. Jackson made it up. It’s documented.
But they liked this idea so much and despite the men themselves denying it, it stuck.
Secondly, after one session of verbal diarrhoea last NOV where Allman claimed he looked straight up at the building and saw the gunman fire a second time, he then later says when “heading for that building to get to a phone”…”it never even crossed his mind that a gunman might be in that building”.
Not “still in the building” but “not in that building” at all.
Clearly, his fairy tale needs a bit of polish.
This man had so little to report on the day they purged his appearance from the repeats. He was an embarrassment.
So when later on it is suggested to him that he may have bumped into the assassin on his way out, of course he doesn’t doubt it for a second since that is they only thing of ANY significance that happened to him.
This would be the last person to deny such an awesome encounter.
A TV man who like everyone around him, missed the enter shooting despite apparently having the best vantage point of all.
His performances on TV last year where despicable and one of note he clearly had his “memory” jogged by cue cards or some other visual aid to “remember” exactly how the limo occupants reacted.
My sincere respect to all the members here.
On the Stroud Document: Again, if you read the letter and take it at face value: The girls went down the stairs and the next person(s) Garner saw were Truly and Baker. I’m wondering if there are/is any footage of Lovelady/Shelley in Dealey Plaza mulling around. I know I’ve seen footage of Baker running into the building. Anyone?
Hello Bill
There is footage or photo (sorry, can’t remember which and I can’t check at the moment) of Lovelady and Shelley walking down the street (ID’d from their clothing).
There is a news topic for this on CTKA. Would be very interested to hear your views once you’ve seen it.
Thank you. Actually, I think the more one looks at the inconsistencies in V. Adams story the more one learns. For example, despite what some have written, the interview with Styles does not corroborate he view about the time they began to walk down. The end of her WC Testimony, I feel was indicative of her fascination and desire to be front and center. She must have come off as a complete loon when she said that Jack Ruby was out front interviewing witnesses (and possibly taking them away from the scene). Her story, from the beginning to the end, does just not jibe with what photos show Lovelady and everyone else who was captured on film and in home movies did right after the shooting.
As a matter of fact, the only thing that does fit into her story is when she claimed to have seen Lovelady/Shelley by the back loading dock when she and Styles got to the bottom of the stairs. While it is true that she saw Lovelady (and he told the WC that he may have seen her) the issue is that he was not there for at least 4-5 minutes because he and Shelley went to the RR Track area behind the building…and then re-entered that way.
I think that reporters/writers who just ‘create’ these myths continue to plant these Oliver Stone-esque crumbs and people just snap them up. Even the LEAP to want to have the Stroud Document be some type of Rosetta Stone or Eurika moment is nonsense. Nowhere in that document does Stroud confirm that she saw Truly and Officer Baker come up RIGHT AFTER Adams and Styles went down. All she says is that Baker and Truly were the next people she saw.
Anyway….Mrs. Butler/Styles actually goes a lot further to debunk Adams story with her adamant statement that Lovelady and Shelley were not near the back exit when they came down…as Adams says they were…..
And so it goes.
Thanks Bill. What do you think of the footage though? Do you think that’s Shelley and Lovelady walking down the street? The thing that convinces me is that we can see Baker running past them which was consistent with Lovelady’s testimony about looking back to see a policeman run into the TSBD.
Vanessa. It would make sense for that to be the case. Lovelady said that, as he and Shelley, made their walk down, he heard a holler and turned to see Baker headed up to the front of the building.
Leslie. I wanted to add this point to your post on Adams/Styles. I don’t think the Warren Commission needed to call in Styles. The evidence that she was clearly mistaken about the time she went down is actually more persuasive towards it being ‘later’ rather than earlier. Here is why:
She reported seeing Lovelady when she got to the first floor. But he had gone out into the street and reported that he had seen Baker running into the building. He stood around outside and didn’t reenter for a pretty significant amount of time.
2. Lovelady then walked down off the steps with Shelley.
3. Lovelady see’s Baker running upward toward the TSBD b/c he heard him holler and turned towards the noise. (15 seconds elapsed time).
4. Lovelady continues to stand in street watching people run toward the knoll/overpass area and up comes Gloria Calvary who tells them she saw JFK get shot. (3 minutes 15 sec elapsed time set)
5. Lovelady and Shelley run/trot 75 to 100 yards to the closest RR Track and stay for 1 min 30 sec approx. ( Total Elapsed Time 4 min 45 seconds)
6. Lovelady returns to the depository and enters through the employee door (30 seconds) (Total Elapsed time 5 minutes and 15 seconds)
7. Lovelady now see a woman whom he can’t swear to being Vickie Adams upon reentering the TSBD.
Anyway….Vickie says she got to the 1st Floor and saw Lovelady and Shelley upon arriving on the 1st Floor. Her story seems to fall apart pretty quickly. Even if all of the events were wrong leading up to her encounter with Lovelady….they were outside and went over to the RR Tracks BEFORE reentering the TSBD. She clearly is mistaken about her timeline.
Actually….I thought she was a red-herring when she stated this:
Miss ADAMS – There was a man that was standing on the corner of Houston and Elm asking questions there. He was dressed in a suit and a hat, and when I encountered Avery Davis going down, we asked who he was, because he was questioning people as if he were a police officer, and we noticed him take a colored boy away on a motorcycle, and this man was asking questions very efficaciously, and we said, “I guess he is maybe a reporter,” and later on on television, there was a man that looked very similar to him, and he was identified as Ruby. And on questioning some police officer, they said they had witnesses to the fact that he was in the Dallas Morning News at the time. And I don’t know whether that is relevant or what.
Her story is just that. A Story. She seemed hell-bent on getting inserted into an event and I guess she succeeded. It’s no wonder Belin didn’t told her he didn’t believe a word she said. (of course…I think SHE reported that too). 🙂
Bill Calahan, I missed your comment.
The issue isn’t whether or not Styles was a credible witness, but that in the eyes of the Warren Commission she wasn’t a witness at all. I’ve read Ms. Davison’s assertion that Styles couldn’t have traversed the floor in the time she recalls because she was wearing high heels. That is an effective bit of visual theatrics designed to discredit a witness, but in this day and time it is not only offensive and politically incorrect, it is absurd logic. Styles was not wearing stilts. How many women would accept an appraisal of their attire to diminish their experience and recall?
How can an investigation be thorough without the fullness of testimony particularly of the people – a very limited number including Sandra Styles – who were in the closest proximity to events on the 6th and 5th floors and the stairwell of the depository in the immediate aftermath of the assassination?
The Warren Commission relegated a number of people including Styles to the status of non-person during their investigation. Had you been positioned where Styles was, would you accept being discounted as a witness for any reason whatsoever regardless of your inexactitude?
Ms. Davison and others use such phrases as “apparently she was mistaken, or clearly he misremembered.” In a criminal case, prosecution and/or defense would have demanded the right to make a clear determinations of any witness’ credibility, and would not have written off a witness so cavalierly. Effective counsel would make mincemeat of such arguments; sadly for Oswald and for Kennedy, we never got there.
Leslie….may I ask: What are you talking about to me?? I don’t understand the ‘I missed your comment’ part. Maybe you can redirect me ok?
I’m not totally sure of the role S. Styles in the entire thing anyway. She doesn’t verify Adams..and, according to her own words, was just not totally tuned in. She didn’t even remember Dorman at the window. I thought I read that she the comment about not knowing anything about Dorman in looking up what she had to offer. My point is pretty straight-forward on her. While I don’t feel the entire high heel issue is really an issue either way…I would say ‘Yes’. I do feel I should be discounted as a witness for my level of ‘blonde momentness’ (may fit). S. Styles simply didn’t have anything concrete. As a matter of fact, she was a ‘witness’ only to the sound of gunshots during the shooting.
She could hardly be called to say….’Whatever they said I’ll agree with’. Which is what she basically says anyway. Heck, I even read a comment on Facebook, written by the granddaughter of Elsie Dorman, who said that the film was, in fact, shot be her grandfather who then had snuck into the building to use his camera. The granddaughter then goes on to say the film sat there until much later and, by the time it was collected, Elsie just signed for it as if she took it. Crazy comment right? But it is what it is.
🙂
Bill Callahan, I had missed your previous comment that opened with the following so I responded.
“Leslie. I wanted to add this point to your post on Adams/Styles. I don’t think the Warren Commission needed to call in Styles. The evidence that she was clearly mistaken about the time she went down is actually more persuasive towards it being ‘later’ rather than earlier. …”
Perhaps I’m talking into an empty barrel on this issue but I continue to take exception to the position that the Commission didn’t need to call in Styles. You are either assessing her statements as if they had been carefully considered (which you are in no position to determine) or you are acknowledging that they were never considered but it didn’t matter anyway because in hindsight you know that she wasn’t persuasive. As a matter of debate this might acceptable; as a matter of law I doubt that it is.
As I’ve pointed out previously, the issue is not Styles’ recollection. The issue is that no investigator (let alone any author, journalist or commenter participating on this site in retrospect) had the authority to decide who and who was not a “good witness” unless of course the investigation was being orchestrated in a certain direction toward a specific conclusion.
Members of the Commission acting in good faith should have asked “have we heard from everyone within close proximity to Oswald’s alleged movements in the minutes following the assassination?” Regardless of any investigators’ appraisal that Styles had nothing to offer, would not at least one Commission member have insisted “but I still want to hear what she had to say because I might detect a small detail that has been overlooked.”
I anticipate either silence or a barrage of specific anecdotes but I’ll go out on a limb here and add this: I detect a degree of intimidation in Sandra Styles’ statements. We only have to review Mary Ferrell’s comments in the months before she died when she worried that her index cards might implicate people she had known in Dallas to respect that women in that community were loathe to challenge the status quo. The business climate in the city was unique (as is every urban climate, but Dallas had its own brand of compound mentality) in the ‘60’s, 70’s and into the 80’s and in general on average the feminine intellect was not embraced, encouraged or respected. Of course there was a class of women that had made great strides in politics, education and commerce, but for the average working woman their role in society was narrowly defined and institutionalized. I detect in Ms. Styles a reticence and lack of confidence that exemplifies the intimidation many women experienced in Dallas during those decades.
In light of the book that Jeff Morley has highlighted in a new post addressing Jackie Kennedy’s experience in the aftermath of 11.22.63, I think more consideration should be given to the ethos of the times, how women were ‘expected’ to respond and reflect on their roles during traumatic events. Perhaps Ms. Styles is a victim of expectation as well.
Leslie. Ok. Thank you for your thoughts. Styles signed her statement on the March 19th and Adams signed hers 4 days later, on the 23rd of March. Adams was the first on page 2-3…and Styles statement is found on 90.
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh22/pdf/WH22_CE_1381.pdf
In my view, after Reading Earl Warren’s Oral History (http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/Warren-E/Warren-e.PDF) the FBI/SS/DPD listened to what the potential witnesses would have to say and then made a determination on which persons to call. Evidentially, with the way V. Adams had waffled in her remarks, they decided to just bring her in and get her statement on record and let us, in the future ponder her credibility.
In my view her credibility was devastated by her own remarks, at the end of her testimony, when she went on and on about Jack Ruby being in front of the TSBD interviewing witnesses and having them taken away. End of story on that.
Leslie, I do believe you are wrong when you wrote this however:
“As I’ve pointed out previously, the issue is not Styles’ recollection. The issue is that no investigator (let alone any author, journalist or commenter participating on this site in retrospect) had the authority to decide who and who was not a “good witness” unless of course the investigation was being orchestrated in a certain direction toward a specific conclusion.”.
The ‘investigators’ do have to use some type of judgement in order to move an investigation forward. How else could they be sure that this woman wasn’t a nut?? As a matter of fact…it is borne out with her own comments to a large degree. As for the latter part of your statement you go about the ‘orchestrated’ investigation leading toward a certain conclusion. While that is a reasonable statement to make one would have to be on the losing side to make it.
I’ll just fall back on the difference between what Adams said vs. what Styles said. As for Garner, her comment, taken at face value, NEVER stated how much time had elapsed between the girls going down and Baker/Truly coming up. And that is the big deal. Everything after that is hyperbole (added).
Bill, I’m afraid I can’t follow this line of reasoning: “The ‘investigators’ do have to use some type of judgement in order to move an investigation forward. How else could they be sure that this woman wasn’t a nut??”
If they were vetting for ‘nut’ status (a term that gets tossed around a lot), they don’t appear to have gone on the record as relegating either of the women to being of unsound mind (assuming that’s what you infer by “nut,’ or is it an opportunity to compare them with Oswald?) but rather they determined their testimony lacked – what? Conformity? With whom? The fascinating suggestion is that Styles and or Adams would not have “moved the investigation forward.” What a strange reason to diminish or dismiss entirely their testimony; it does little to reassure Americans that the burden of proof was on the prosecution.
And we’re back the the central question: you have yet to provide a convincing reason that some but not all of the witnesses in the immediate vicinity in the immediate aftermath should have been heard by the Warren Commission. You are defending what did in fact occur, but you are avoiding the central issue.
“As for the latter part of your statement you go about the ‘orchestrated’ investigation leading toward a certain conclusion. While that is a reasonable statement to make one would have to be on the losing side to make it.”
Would that losing side be the failure to provide justice to Oswald and to Kennedy for that matter? If so, then yes I continue to be on the losing side, and I continue to ask the question: was the investigation orchestrated toward a certain [predetermined] conclusion?
The Warren Commission never had any thought of calling ALL the witnesses for testimony. The Police and FBI interviewed all of the DP witnesses and many hundreds more in other areas of the case. Due to the cost, travel and time factors, the WC could only call a representative few from each of the areas of concern. In many ways, we know more about the case now, with 50 years to digest it: I doubt that the WC saw anything of significance in her statements.
A predetermined agenda? No. But most of them believed the evidence was overwhelming that Oswald was the shooter and that he acted alone.
A reasonable person can look at the WC materials and see this, without becoming hyper-suspicious.
Stephen Roy: you state, “Due to the cost, travel and time factors, the WC could only call a representative few from each of the areas of concern.”
Are you suggesting that American Democracy hinged on the budget of the Warren Commission and “time factors?” I respect you may be sincere in which case you’re entitled to the benefit of doubt, so I’ll ask what reason do you have for believing that the commission did not have the funds for a thorough investigation and careful consideration of testimony and that they were operating under a deadline? Are you privy to the budget the WC was required to adhere to and can you rationalize a deadline? If so, can you share the specifics and cite sources? Would this be a restrictive budget on the heels of the authorization of a record setting budget to escalate the war in Vietnam? Of course the costs would have been separate line items within different budgets, but bottom line do you honestly believe that a veteran of some of the country’s ugliest politics, Lyndon Johnson, would have subjected himself to scrutiny of limited funding for the investigation into the murder of his predecessor? Can you hear Johnson saying, “I’ll fund a war but there’s no money to investigate the assassination of my predecessor?” I have never read the argument that the Warren Commission lacked the funds to investigate the assassination of a sitting president so I’m fascinated with your hypothesis.
“The Warren Commission never had any thought of calling ALL the witnesses for testimony.”
How do you know this? And if they didn’t, why not? Were they looking for a composite witness, and if so what criteria did they apply? Who met their requirements and who didn’t?
“The Police and FBI interviewed all of the DP witnesses and many hundreds more in other areas of the case.”
You suggest knowledge of the compartmentalization of the investigation. To whom did the task of integrating all of the testimony and evidence eventually rest?
” I doubt that the WC saw anything of significance in her statements.”
If by ‘her’you mean Styles, are you stating that the WC heard her testimony and saw no significance in her statements?
“A predetermined agenda? No. But most of them believed the evidence was overwhelming that Oswald was the shooter and that he acted alone.”
You are satisfied with “most of them” rather than applying the standard in a jury trial? You are comfortable with the reality that a democratic vote was taken to determine the outcome of a murder investigation?
“A reasonable person can look at the WC materials and see this [the evidence was overwhelming that Oswald was the shooter and that he acted alone], without becoming hyper-suspicious.”
And yet the HSCA contradicted that conclusion, albeit in a cowardly fashion? Hyper suspicious sounds redundant. One is either suspicious or they aren’t unless maybe one has a modicum of doubt i.e. suspicion but is not enraged enough to speak out for fear of appearing “hyper” enraged.
Have you studied the online documents of the Warren Commission, as a whole?
What I said is factual, and it is the way an investigation was conducted then and now. You can’t create an overwrought 2014 standard and superimpose it on what happened 50 years ago.
The White House and the Commissioners wanted it all wrapped up fairly soon, before the election. They had about 10 areas to investigate, and they called the most important witnesses in each category. If the testimony was to be taken in DC, it cost money to bring the witnesses to DC and get them hotels. If the testimony was to be taken in Dallas, New Orleans or elsewhere, it cost money to transport and out up the Commissioners and staff.
Given the near consensus that Oswald was the lone assassin, in the case of the Dealey witnesses, there was no point in having witness after witness come in to say exactly the same thing, so they picked some who supported the TSBD thesis (Brennan, Norman, etc) and some who offered contrary testimony (Holland, etc.), and relied on the police and FBI statements for the rest. The Commissioners didn’t really want to attend even more testimony sessions.
My last comment was that anybody who studies the actual WC working papers can see the process and decisions they made to conduct their investigation. I’m not advocating any theory, I’m just telling you what the files show.
We can criticize it now for not going far enough, but to cast it in a sinister light would be a mischaracterization of what the files show.
Stephen Roy,
I asked: . . . was the investigation orchestrated toward a certain [predetermined] conclusion?
and you have responded . . . “Given the near consensus that Oswald was the lone assassin . . .”
So we agree on that point.
” . . but to cast it in a sinister light would be a mischaracterization of what the files show. . . ”
I didn’t actually say there was something ‘sinister’ going on, but you can assume I inferred it.
Your defense of the WC would be plausible except that you have gone to the source itself to argue its credibility. Where is your objective opinion of the commission and the report? I detect a hint when you say “We can criticize it now for not going far enough, . .” and I concur, they didn’t go far enough because the near consensus that Oswald was the lone assassin drove every decision including which witnesses to call. Five weeks after the assassination during the earliest meeting of the commission the leading member, fired DCI Allen Dulles introduced the lone assassin theory. Where were they to go from there?
” . . . they called the most important witnesses in each category.”
And how did they determine “most important?” Those who supported the lone gunman theory? If Holland is the benchmark for contrary theory -and we know how the commission interpreted his statements – we can presume that nothing any witness said was going to distract from the predetermined conclusion. That is the undertow evident to anyone that studies the documents and the same undertow applies in this debate.
You can keep trying to cast it in a melodramatic light, if you must, but the WC was not intended to be an investigation. They had no investigators and were only supposed to review the FBI report. What limited them from calling everybody was logistics: time and money.
And yes, most, if not all of them thought that the evidence against Oswald was pretty strong.
Read the WC documents at the Ferrell site.
Stephen Roy, blanketing your arguments with the suggestion that those who disagree are hyper-suspicious, overwrought, and melodramatic is an indication of your frustration. You just want for all of this to go away, as do so many.
Advanced societies encourage fierceness when confronted with evil.
Speaking of history you might return to the Geat Woman in Beaowulf: In Seamus Heaneys translation, he directs the reader to Beowulf’s funeral where a Geat woman wails and mourns not only the passing of Beowulf but the impending destruction of her culture by foreign invaders now that their defending hero is gone.
Beowulf ends on an ominous note. There is a sense that an era has passed for the Geats, and that the future is grim and uncertain: “So it is goodbye now to all you know and love”
For some, this is an appropriate epitaph for America on November 22, 1963.
I know, melodramatic.
Darn it! I run the pool, and I was betting that the next descriptor would be “hysterical.” Trust me, it was coming.
“Melodramatic” was a crafty choice. Well played.
Ms. Sharp,something about you brings out the tiger in Mr. Roy. Consistently. Eerily. Keep up the good work and thanks for slugging it out for the silent reader.
The thread’s gone mad—but the exchanges have been oh-so-good.
Hyper-bemusedly,
Denise
Ms. Sharp!
It’s common courtesy when you’re attacking someone’s statements to quote them verbatim. Kindly quote me saying that Styles [Adams?] couldn’t have crossed the floor in the time she stated because she was wearing high heels. I don’t believe I’ve ever said such a thing. I remember mentioning heels as a possible reason to *doubt* they’d come downstairs as fast as she thought. Would you run down these stairs in high heels?
http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth339694/small/
As to why the WC didn’t call her, here’s what Styles herself told Sean Murphy:
“We were all interviewed several times by different
entities over the next year. I always said the same thing to each one: that I had nothing of importance to help their investigation. Their concern was whether I knew Oswald, had ever seen him, etc. As to the timing of the whole thing, I wasn’t sure then and can’t say for certain now.”
AND:
“My hesitancy on the timing in all the interviews probably accounts for why they did not pursue further information from me. As I told everyone who ever asked, I had no real sense of that aspect of the investigation. Still, logic tells me it had to take a couple of minutes at least for things to sink in and to make the decision to go. Therefore, I’ll give up a few of those minutes but still don’t remember it’s being a
matter of a few seconds. However, I yield to wiser heads if the evidence is there.”
First post in the “Sandra Styles” thread here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/alt.assassination.jfk/sandra$20AND$20styles$20AND$20authorname$3A%22sean$20murphy%22/alt.assassination.jfk/3Dsk9bpdySI
Why don’t you go argue with her now, Ms. Sharp?
Jean, you don’t need to shout with your exclamation points. I recognize you are constantly frustrated with my comments, and my paraphrasing often leaves us at odds with one another. It should be obvious that it’s not your specific wording but the meaning you leave with the reader that creates the confusion and fuels the debate. On the one hand, you now speculate that no one could navigate down those stairs in high heels, but you argue that you never said that high heels impeded Styles from crossing the 6th Floor. Surely you can see the confusion your nuance creates … subtle as ever.
Whether or not Styles believed she had anything to contribute is of little importance in my argument with you. That was not her call to make, nor was it the call of the investigators to determine she was an insignificant witness. It was their responsibility to see to it that the Warren Commission had the testimony of every person in the TSBD within close proximity – above all those who might or might not have crossed paths with Oswald in the seconds after the assassination. It was sloppy work and surely you must concede that. Had there been hundreds of employees at the depository I can understand the investigators in narrowing down those who mattered to their investigation, but there weren’t, and there were only a few that fall into Styles category. The Commission should have considered her testimony – weak as it might have been – as a matter of form and to instill confidence every stone was being turned. Again, sloppy at best and your insistence this is a non-issue continues to fuel my suspicion of your good faith.
Ms. Sharp,
True, shouting doesn’t help. You don’t hear me. I’m responsible for my specific wording, not for whatever imaginary “nuance” you and your suspicion read into it. For instance, I did not “speculate that no one could navigate down those stairs in high heels.” Obviously she did navigate down the stairs in heels — the question was how *fast*.
“Whether or not Styles believed she had anything to contribute is of little importance in my argument with you. That was not her call to make, nor was it the call of the investigators to determine she was an insignificant witness.”
So whose call was it then? Yours?
“Would you run down these stairs in high heels?”
vs.
” . . she did navigate down the stairs in heels — the question was how *fast*.”
You asked if I would run down the stairs in high heels to suggest if I wouldn’t, Sandra didn’t. How can any of us know what we would have done under the circumstances? And therein lies my difficulty with most of your arguments. You put yourself and attempt to place the reader in the conditions these people found themselves, and you decide how they reacted, how quickly or slowly, what they saw or heard, what they could accurately recall in the aftermath. That is hubris.
“So whose call was it then?” All the way up the chain of command.
Leslie..I’m a little confused by the response you made. There were hundreds of witnesses of all types, ear, eyes (and throat) etc. The Warren Commission relied, as is/was posted by Stephen R., on the ‘investigators’, on site (FBI, SS, DPD). That these investigators don’t subscribe to any particular theory that you would like to proliferate isn’t my problem nor theirs. You, for example, focused on the ‘nut’ verbiage and mended it to fit YOUR theory. Well…all I can do is simply do what any reasonable person who happened to work for the FBI,SS, DPD, etc can do. This would be to do just what they did do: What the FBI/SS/WC did was to look at the ‘timing’ issues made by Ms. Adams (alone I may add), understand her story regarding Jack Ruby, of all people, interviewing witnesses within 5 minutes of the shooting,, IN THE MIDDLE OF ELM/HOUSTON STREETS, and then having them taken away by motorcycle police…and consider this testimony as WORTHLESS. If you have trouble admitting that on the very face of it, her testimony is inaccurate (1), incorrect (2), and suspect (3) to say the very least. I’ll break them down for you:
1. Inaccurate: Her testimony flies in the face of reality when she said that she encountered Lovelady and Shelley on the loading dock upon descending the stairs in LESS THAN ONE MINUTE. That just did not happen and the testimony of Lovelady and Shelley PROVES that she is inaccurate about how long she took to get from the window…to the stairs…to the first floor…to the loading dock…etc.
Her own testimony states that she stayed on the 4th floor for about 15-30 seconds BEFORE even going for the landing…let alone heading down the stairs (in her darn high heels with Styles). Just keep in mind that Ms.Garner did not ‘see’ the girls go down the stairs…she only heard them clanking along.
However….I’ll add: The ONLY way for this to be correct is to have her actually encounter Lovelady and Shelley, just where she said, on the loading dock… ONLY 4-5 minutes after the last shot. So she was TOTALLY Inaccurate on the time and the Police…SS…WC investigators knew it..and David Belin knew it better than anyone and was actually ‘kind’ to her in her testimony before the WC. As he rightfully said, according to her, ‘I don’t believe a word (of your story)’. This woman was telling a story that didn’t occur, not just by Govt./FBI/SS/DPD manipulation…no…by the word of people who simply disproved her story from the outset.
2. Incorrect: It’s impossible for her to have not heard the shouts of Truly up that elevator shaft if she were near it…or on the stairs if she were on the way down them. It’s impossible for her to have seen Lovelady and Shelley behind the building, on the loading dock when they were filmed/photographed, IN FRONT OF THE BUILDING.
3. Suspect: This woman had demonstrated, and if you read her testimony carefully…the CT party line. She testified that she saw Jack Ruby on the street questioning people…and that she had enough time to learn that Jack Ruby was at the Dallas Morning News at the time of the Assassination AND THAT THIS WAS BEING DISCUSSED BY A DPD MEMBER ON THE STREET WITHIN 5 MINUTES OF THE ASSASSIATION!!
Here testimony alone is pure fantasy and lastly…How ‘almost’ clever she was. She wanted a ‘stop-watch’ timing like the other had gotten. How cute. Belin asked her every sing time question he could think of and she had EVERY ANSWER EXCEPT ONE: How long was it until you got from the ‘window to the fourth floor landing’. For this question she had no answer. Why? Well how about because she had already painted a time frame of 1 minute to go downstairs beginning after the last shot. I feel she was sharp enough to sense the timing trap Belin was laying out for her and she bailed on him by inserting that she would need a stop-watch test.
She was all about the news she could generate. An investigator who was worth his salt could see that this woman was creating a scenario to fit nicely into. Belin knew it and wanted to trap her. She realized it and bailed.
PS…Styles category? What category would that be? A woman who had no clear recollection of the time, except to say that it was longer than Adams had thought. A woman who appears to be putting as much distance between her and Adams as possible? Or a woman who just didn’t have a lot to offer in terms of substantive, factual material. I’ll go with the latter. That Adams was CLEARLY making up poop made her suspect…that Styles removed herself from the issue is no surprise. Peace.
Leslie. Styles is so far off in so many of her details, as to what Adams did, saw, and timing that I wouldn’t even know how to deal with her. Anyway…Issues:
1. Inaccurate: Her testimony flies in the face of reality when she said that she encountered Lovelady and Shelley on the loading dock upon descending the stairs in LESS THAN ONE MINUTE. That just did not happen and the testimony of Lovelady and Shelley PROVES that she is inaccurate about how long she took to get from the window…to the stairs…to the first floor…to the loading dock…etc.
Her own testimony states that she stayed on the 4th floor for about 15-30 seconds BEFORE even going for the landing…let alone heading down the stairs (in her darn high heels with Styles). Just keep in mind that Ms.Garner did not ‘see’ the girls go down the stairs…she only heard them clanking along.
However….I’ll add: The ONLY way for this to be correct is to have her actually encounter Lovelady and Shelley, just where she said, on the loading dock… ONLY 4-5 minutes after the last shot. So she was TOTALLY Inaccurate on the time and the Police…SS…WC investigators knew it..and David Belin knew it better than anyone and was actually ‘kind’ to her in her testimony before the WC. As he rightfully said, according to her, ‘I don’t believe a word (of your story)’. This woman was telling a story that didn’t occur, not just by Govt./FBI/SS/DPD manipulation…no…by the word of people who simply disproved her story from the outset.
2. Incorrect: It’s impossible for her to have not heard the shouts of Truly up that elevator shaft if she were near it…or on the stairs if she were on the way down them. It’s impossible for her to have seen Lovelady and Shelley behind the building, on the loading dock when they were filmed/photographed, IN FRONT OF THE BUILDING.
3. Suspect: This woman had demonstrated, and if you read her testimony carefully…the CT party line. She testified that she saw Jack Ruby on the street questioning people…and that she had enough time to learn that Jack Ruby was at the Dallas Morning News at the time of the Assassination AND THAT THIS WAS BEING DISCUSSED BY A DPD MEMBER ON THE STREET WITHIN 5 MINUTES OF THE ASSASSIATION!!
Here testimony alone is pure fantasy and lastly…How ‘almost’ clever she was. She wanted a ‘stop-watch’ timing like the other had gotten. How cute. Belin asked her every sing time question he could think of and she had EVERY ANSWER EXCEPT ONE: How long was it until you got from the ‘window to the fourth floor landing’. For this question she had no answer. Why? Well how about because she had already painted a time frame of 1 minute to go downstairs beginning after the last shot. I feel she was sharp enough to sense the timing trap Belin was laying out for her and she bailed on him by inserting that she would need a stop-watch test.
She was all about the news she could generate. An investigator who was worth his salt could see that this woman was creating a scenario to fit nicely into. Belin knew it and wanted to trap her. She realized it and bailed.
PS…Styles category? What category would that be? A woman who had no clear recollection of the time, except to say that it was longer than Adams had thought. A woman who appears to be putting as much distance between her and Adams as possible? Or a woman who just didn’t have a lot to offer in terms of substantive, factual material. I’ll go with the latter. That Adams was CLEARLY making up poop made her suspect…that Styles removed herself from the issue is no surprise. Peace.
Bill Callahan, Let’s try another approach. Can a former investigator explain for instance why Doris Burns, employee of Macmillan Publishers, who btw appears to me to be the equivalent of a hostile witness – hostile to the victim John F. Kennedy – was designated by the investigators as WC witness material?
Excerpts:
“Well, I had lunch at the office and then I didn’t intend to go see the President, didn’t have any desire to . . . “
“I thought, well, I guess I will go look out the window. I didn’t care– enough to go downstairs, but I thought I will go look out the window . . . “
Some might argue that she didn’t have to ‘care’ about President Kennedy to be accurate, and that she might have been a better witness because of her clear indifference; others might wonder if her cavalier statements indicate that even in retrospect she maintained a disdain for Kennedy suggesting her recall could well have been tainted.
Her direct testimony before Asst. Counsel for the WC concluded with:
Mr. BALL. Did you hear anybody running down the stairs at any time?
Miss BURNS. Yes, but I didn’t know
Mr. BALL. When?
Miss BURNS. It was after that; I went to the restroom.
Mr. BALL. How long after?
Miss BURNS. I imagine maybe it was 25 minutes.
Mr. BALL. I think that’s all, Miss Burns. . . .
Mr. Ball’s failure to follow up with Burn’s last statement, “maybe it was 25 minutes” is downright irresponsible. Could he not think of one or two more probing questions to ask her? And if the sole significance of her testimony was her claim to have heard one shot, how does that square with those who assert that ear witness testimony is unreliable? What precisely then did Burns contribute? Related to our recent exchange, how or more important WHY did Burns trump Sandra Styles for instance on the witness list if expense was the issue? Burns apparently was in a position to hear commotion yet no one pressed her, what was she doing in the interim?
Once again, I am not claiming that Styles’ testimony might or might not have clarified anything. I am questioning 1) the methods applied by investigators who reported to the Warren Commission 2) the commission members’ failure to question the investigation itself, and their lack of willingness to delve deeper into the facts known by those appearing before them.
….I’m lost on this comment about what Styles said t Murphy: “.. The truth may lie somewhere in between. What is logical is that, in all the pandemonium, it is unlikely that we would hear shots and head for the back stairs!”
Unless I totally missed something on this issue…She then DID the very thing she claims is not logical (head for the back stairs).
Interpretation please.
Alex. I read your note with interest. I agree with some of it but, respectfully, it was in the RETELLING it that made the issue of stories a larger one than it ought to have been.
I actually did convolute the issue myself to a pretty good degree. Let me simplify (fully acknowledging) that there is really no way to do it in the following: Forget Baker for a moment. Forget Truly for a moment. Why? Because we tend to look at them in tandem (largely). Their actions are always construed as ‘they’. It’s just the way it was. Even down to the point Belin made to WC member McCone (I think it was him).
Let’s start at the Elevators because this IS where the issue begins to form:
So…with that being said, after pushing the buttons 2x and getting no elevator noises indicating they were coming down, Truly yells once…waits..and then yells again. He did so in an agitated and loud manner for anyone holding the elevators up to release them. BOTH Baker and Truly are going to run up the stairs. This much is clear.
Discussion: Now someone earlier mentioned Dougherty being up there. This flies in the face of reality because IF Dougherty was working where he said….then HE WOULD HAVE HEARD THE 2 SHOUTS that Baker and Truly say occurred. Since he didn’t hear ANY SHOUTING it’s easy to understand that was not where people want him to be at the time the shouts were made. Period. The TSBD was pretty much ‘Out-to-lunch’ at the time of the shots.
Next, Truly, after waiting a moment or two after his 2nd Yell for the elevators, and who knows the building of course, takes off up the stairs with Baker following as closely as he could. To this point everyone must agree this is situation at this point.
So, Truly is leading by a few steps and Baker, following as he goes, sees a movement and investigates. This is where the first controversy starts. Another writer mentions that Baker would have seen Oswald b/c he was up those stairs faster (thereby cutting time for Oswald to duck into the room apparently). However, in examining the WC Testimony of Truly, you can see that he had only gone 2 or 3 STEPS ahead and then came back down to the 2nd Floor Lunchroom. He says that he ‘heard some voices, or a voice’, and then he RAN over to the 2nd Floor Lunch Room and found Oswald about 2 or 3 feet inside..Baker almost in the doorway with his gun drawn on Oswald. Well…this is CLEARLY MORE THAN 2/3 steps.
Discussion: Yet, almost nobody mentions or notices that it was 20 feet or so from the landing to the door that Oswald was seen walking away from. This means that Baker is further BEHIND TRULY than Truly thought Baker was (he testified only 2/3 steps on the stairs ahead). This translates out to about 6 steps or even 5 steps if one is ‘running’. The point is that he MUST have been further ahead BECAUSE he had to DESCEND the stairs and then walk all the way across the floor TO GET TO THE DOORWAY. Also, and this tends to further cast doubt on where Dougherty was, Truly said he could hear ‘voices or a voice’. The point is: IT WAS SO QUIET that a man could ‘hear’ the ‘voice/voices’ from 20 feet away…THROUGH A CLOSED DOOR. Yet, Dougherty couldn’t hear a man yell very loudly, INTO AN ELEVATOR SHAFT. Or, better yet, ADAMS, STYLES, DOORMAN, and Mrs. GARNER didn’t hear him either?
Those Elevators are unique too. Hey have on ‘Front Door’. Only a metal gate so this means no sound loss and MORE IMPORTANTLY…as Truly YELLED OUT for them to be CUT LOOSE…since they were located on the 5th FLOOR, the sound to anyone on the 4th floor would be even more greatly enhanced. Yet, Adams, Styles, and Garner still didn’t hear the yelling? I would find that incredibly hard to believe.
There has to be a greater delay than Adams stated. In fact, her testimony leads one to wonder why she didn’t do as an officer requested as she and Styles exited the building. Did the police cordon off the Book Depository within 1 or 2 minutes of the Assassination? She stated they were confronted by an officer (or Styles did) and told go ‘Go back’. Yet, incredulously, they didn’t….they went around to the ‘Railroad Yard’, and eventually the front etc. Were police stationed at the back doors and loading dock that quickly? You know…Were the Cops surrounding the Book Depository within 1 minute and 20 seconds??? No. How could they be as Baker himself just ran in and was doing his canvas.
The biggest drawback to Vicky Adams story is in them NOT HEARING ANYTHING (which doesn’t mean that Oswald couldn’t hear them and just chilled in that Lunchroom…and then heard the yelling of Truly about ‘cutting loose the elevator’ and got caught ‘peeking’. He could have let Truly pass and was suddenly found out by Baker slamming up those stairs…possibly much further behind Truly than he wanted to be and, to hear Truly tell it, loosing steam as he started to mount the stairs because he was fatigued…and tried to REENTER the Lunchroom.
About Oswald in this situation. Suppose he did take off down those stairs and was in the Lunchroom at the time he was confronted by Baker. Well…we know he was there because two eyewitness place him there…and so did his own statements, according to Fritz. Yet, I would imagine that Oswald, IF HER WERE THE SHOOTER, would have heard the yells by TRULY as he came down those stairs then literally moved across the landing area into the Lunch Room hoping to dodge people he knew were coming up? After he was spotted he was in the ‘clear’ again. He grabs his coke…and then walks across the second floor in time to be seen by Mrs. Reid, carrying an almost full Coke about 2 minute plus in the offices as he headed toward the front doors.
..and so it goes. 🙂
Bill Kelly: Bill. Why do you state that Dougherty would have seen Oswald. He wrote a statement about his whereabouts at the moment the shooting ended: Here:
November 22, Dougherty gave the following story: On the morning of November 22, I had worked [with the floor laying crew] on the sixth floor until 12:00, when I went down to the first floor to eat my lunch. After lunch I returned to work [on the sixth floor] and then went down to the fifth floor “to get some stock,” when I heard a shot, which sounded as if it had come from inside the building. I then went down to the first floor and asked Eddie Piper, the TSBD Janitor, whether Piper had heard anything. Piper said yes, he had heard 3 shots. Then I returned to the sixth floor. (81B.20)
I’d like to learn how he got up and down the floors.
Oswald’s shirt being white? Why do you say that. He himself correctly ID’s the shirt, and where it was located in his boarding room, and its COLOR, to Fritz. He was also seen wearing it by others that day.
Out of breath? Why? Timed tests prove that it was easily done WITHOUT respiratory distress. If Oswald had tried to go UPSTAIRS, that may lead to a little blood pumping and some shortness of breath…but, tripping down stairs…as we have all done countless times….would hardly cause a bump in our heart rates.
Oswald’s brother Robert. A nice man thrust into an incredibly sad situation. He looks at his brother and he KNOWS. Eos.
http://www.travelchannel.com/video/jfk-assassination-witness
Sandra Styles interview…fwiw.
The problem for the Sandra Styles and Vicky Adams and Dorothy Garner connection. Each of the 3 tell a different story. Aside from the differences they reported, the most obvious comment to derail the ENTIRE ‘Girl on the Stairs’ story is, as reported correctly, the report of Dorothy Garner.
The issue is this: She reported that she saw Baker and Truly come up the stairs. However, what is now a great mystery is this: Baker, who was cautious and carrying his revolver and Truly, his guide, said that they didn’t see ANYONE else on the stairs from the 2nd floor on up.
Now, there are two twists to this story here: First. Baker felt they boarded an elevator on the 3rd Floor…while Truly said in his testimony, it was on the 5th floor. Either way: No mention by Baker or Truly at all.
Also, Mr. Jarman, who was on the 5th floor, say’s when he came down he saw the women from the 4th floor, with cops, when he arrived, about 5 min after the shooting.
Another issue: One of Baker’s statements mentions he saw a man walking away from the stairs on the 4th floor…and that Truly ID’s him as an employee similarly as he did with Oswald. (I’m not confusing this with the same story he told about Oswald on the 2nd Floor…according to what Baker stated or wrote..it was the 4th floor….).
Anyway….interesting. Mrs Garner passed away not very long ago btw. The issue remains: No sighting by Baker or Truly of HER on the way up ( And they may have never even gone to the 4th floor on foot if you believe Baker on his view alone).
In my view…it’s not what she (Mr. Garner said..because she could be mistaken as she said she didn’t ‘see’ them) it’s what Baker and Truly didn’t see…one way or the other. 🙂
re: Bill Callahan, October 10, 2014 @ 7:58pm
Good work, Bill. Many researchers have pondered these questions over the movements of individuals in the TSBD just after the assassination. Why did Baker describe so many accounts of his encounter with Oswald? If you keep looking, you’ll find yet a different newspaper account from Baker. And why such a similar encounter with the man on the fourth floor? There’s more to be found here. Keep digging.
“The issue is this: She reported that she saw Baker and Truly come up the stairs. However, what is now a great mystery is this: Baker, who was cautious and carrying his revolver and Truly, his guide, said that they didn’t see ANYONE else on the stairs from the 2nd floor on up.”
There is no issue here. Mrs. Garner was near the stairs, not on them.
Alex…let me clarify this in case you’re basing you comment directly on what I wrote verbatim. Baker was asked if he saw anyone else after he had his encounter with Oswald in the 2nd Floor Lunchroom. His response was that he did not see anybody else.
In the line of questioning he was being asked about seeing ANYONE else as he and Truly made their way up the stairs after they saw Oswald in the Lunchroom. Baker clearly was not just being asked about seeing anyone ‘on the stairs’ alone. He was also asked if he could look out into the floors of the Depository after he and Truly got onto an elevator on the 3rd (According to Baker) or the 5th (According to Truly). He replied that he didn’t see anyone.
Now Mrs. Garner’s comment is, after all, her comment, but at the same time, she did say later that some police were on her floor (and they did walk up…not take the elevator)…and Jarmin and his friends were on the way down and saw the ladies on the 4th Floor WITH POLICE. Jarmin stated that he and his friends came down those stairs at some time within 5 minutes of the last shot.
Baker and Truly, continued upward and eventually did reach the roof where Baker searched the entire roof (which was too high to look over without standing on tip-toes) and then climbed up into the Hertz Rental Car Sign on the roof of the TSBD. He estimated it took approx 10 minutes or so to do his search (You can look up the exact testimony…the 10 minutes is what I think he mentioned).
He did mention that, when he was coming down in the Elevator he went up in, he did stop at the 4th floor on his way back down, where a discussion was taking place and he may have been involved in.
All of the times involved seem to cast doubt on when Mrs. Garner made her observation. Here is a Police Officer running up stairs with is revolver drawn….did Mrs. Garner mention the Officer she saw had a gun out? I don’t remember that…but I’m going to check.
So, in taking the events and trying to allow everyone to be telling the truth about what they saw it just appears that Baker/Truly and which floor they took an elevator on is one. Belin, who was questioning the witness, actually corrected Baker and told him it was the 5th floor (under questioning by McCone I think..but I may be wrong). In any case, you can read that Baker felt he got on the elevator on the 3rd Floor. Of course…later even this statement makes little sense as he (Baker) himself wrote that he saw a man walking away from the stairs on the 4th floor.
I can’t help but ask this here: IF there was a man walking away on the 4th Floor (as per CT’s) why then didn’t Mrs. Garner see this man? The short answer is that Baker had his floors messed up and was simply referring to the Oswald Story on the 2nd Floor. But, CT’s jump on this notation and want it both ways. IF it were to be true…then Mrs. Garner would have seen him and so would the girls who ran down because the timing would be perfect for them to have seen/heard this person). But she makes no mention of this man at all and neither do the two girls.
So, it brings us all the way back to Baker/Truly/Oswald on the second floor at the Lunch Room.
Either the girls were there first (which I believe is the case)…and even Mrs. Garner says they were making a racket as they descended on their way to the first floor. Oswald/Shooter was there next, and happily so, because he could hear the same racket going down in front of him. By the time Baker and Truly got to the elevators, and waited in vain for the elevators to be cut loose from the upper floors, which drew 2 LOUD SHOUTS from Truly, Oswald easily ducked into the 2nd Floor Lunch room. Lastly, Baker/Truly confront Oswald and, just because he made his journey so quickly and easily, had no reason to think he was the shooter and pressed onward. Oswald then grabs his coke and simply walks across the 2nd Floor…right past Mrs. Reid…and right out the front door.
It just fits this way and requires no tweaking at all. For the Girls to not hear Truly yelling up for that elevator (and they surely knew his voice) puts them off the stairs and out the door BEFORE the confrontation. Think about this for a second: They said they took off within a minute. Ok. Let’s let that be true and we’ve no reason to doubt it. Right? They ran…and they had head-start on any shooter coming down from the 6th. Baker/Truly never encountered them…NEVER EVEN HEARD THEM (and the racket) Mrs. Garner said they made). Why? Because they were long gone and that is what fits.
Keep in mind…Mrs. Garner NEVER SAID she saw the girls go down those stairs. She said they were out of sight and she could hear them. This gives the evasive Oswald the perfect chance to be right behind them and then HEAR TRULY YELL FOR THE ELEVATORS….duck into the 2nd floor…and get spotted by Baker as he walks away from the door.
It’s not a perfect defense…but it makes perfect sense for everyone to be correct.
This is all rather convoluted, through no fault of yours but simply due to the source material. However, your logic starts to fall apart when you pick and choose indiscriminately from Baker’s contradictory and evolving statements.
Also, the fact that Commission counsel was “correcting” the witness before him ought to be a pretty apparent red flag from any perspective.
I’m certainly open to the possibility that Mrs. Garner was mistaken as to the timing of her sighting, but Baker’s testimony lacks the evidentiary weight needed to seriously impeach her statements.
That time video is interesting, and lays waste the theory that Oswald couldn’t have made it to the 2nd floor lunchroom in time. Does anyone see any flaws in it?
Hello Thomas. There is even more to the story on Oswald’s sighting. Mrs. Robert Reid, an employee at the offices of the TSBD was outside watching the motorcade and felt for sure that the shots had emanated from directly over her head. She looked up after the last shot and saw the 3 men pictured in the Dillard Photo and commented that she felt the shots came from her building and hoped that ‘our boy’s’ aren’t involved. She that that to a fellow worker, Mr. Campbell. He said to her that he thought the shots came from down the street (toward the underpass area). This just shows you how people can have differing views on the shots and their directions.
Anyway….Mrs. Reid commented, in her statement that she was able to duplicate her entrance back into the TSBD area where she encountered Oswald, holding a full bottle of coke (no cans yet) in her work area in no more than 2 minutes post assassination. This gives us Oswald about who MAY have made it to the Lunchroom in only 48-50 seconds to have his meeting with Officer Baker a full 1 minute to then pick up his drink and meet Mrs. Reid in the office area…next to the Front Door…which was…only a few steps down a corridor…down a few more out the front door (which is where Oswald said he did exit the building).
re: Thomas Tucker, October 9, 2014 @ 2:22pm
All the questions about who was where and when on the stairs can be reduced to one basic question, that makes all others concerning Oswald on the stairs, at any rate, pointless.
As noted earlier in a post on this thread by Bill Kelly, had Oswald been confronted by Baker in the second floor lunchroom after he (Oswald) descended from the sixth floor, why wasn’t Oswald seen by Truly, who was leading Baker and just steps ahead of him? The only logical way for Baker to have seen Oswald without Oswald encountering Truly is for Oswald to have come through the south door of the lunchroom from the first floor, as he said he did. This, of course, excludes his presence on the stairs at the time at issue. He just wasn’t there.
The fuss about the timing on the stairs is another red herring. I believe the real story is in the testimony, but must be teased out.
No one will ever know why Truly didn’t see Oswald, but here’s one possibility. If Oswald heard Truly calling for the elevator or hurrying up the stairs, he may’ve ducked into the foyer and started down the hallway leading to the front stairs (see the floor plan here):
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=139038
However, at about this time Geneva Hine was in the front hallway trying to get into the Southwestern Publishing office so that she could look out a window overlooking Elm St — see her testimony here:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/hine.htm
Hine said she repeatedly called out to the secretary inside the office to open the door. If Oswald heard her and wanted to avoid being seen, he might’ve doubled back in time to be spotted by Baker.
Just speculation, sure, but the fact that Truly didn’t see him doesn’t really exonerate the guy.
Jean…May I ask if you live in Dallas. For some reason I thought that you did. Mrs. Hine is a special person I feel. When I visited the 6th Floor during my last visit, I made a video of the floor because I wanted to refer to it later for something I was interested in. However, last week, in reviewing Mrs. Hine’s testimony before the WC, I noticed that she quickly identified the shots as coming from her building (the TSBD) as she was in it at the time and the shots sounded like cannon fire.
That comment piqued my interest and I looked at the little video I made. Anyway….not that I have a single doubt about the origin of the 3 shots, but I’m wondering if there was an ‘open air heat’ duct/register that ran the length of the SE windows (facing Houston/Elm). I think the shots ‘boomed’ for her because the corner of the heater I happened to catch a glimpse of may actually just carry the sound much more easily and this is why she heard it so clearly. My question…if you…or anyone else can go see if there is a vent/register/grate/duck system (even possibly the cut outs for the pipes that were located just to the shooter’s left for that matter) and where they may lead I’d be interested in learning. Thanks for any consideration. 🙂
Bill (October 12),
I’m sorry I overlooked your message until now, Bill. I’ve never lived in Dallas and have been there only once.
Looking at photos, I don’t see any heat ducts on the 6th floor, only pipes:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Dy16VI8qwQY/UqPdAZg2fxI/AAAAAAAAxX0/ql_J4cc5CuU/s1600/TSBD-Box-In-Snipers-Nest.jpg
also pipes overhead:
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo3/exhibits/ce727.jpg
I’m not sure why the shots sounded so loud to Ms. Hine.
Jean
re: Jean Davison, October 11, 2014 @ 10:02pm
That’s pretty good speculating, but I must respectfully disagree. Let’s go up a few stories and back just a tic. Jack Dougherty was steps from the fifth floor landing, just after the last shot, and didn’t testify to seeing Oswald go down the stairs. What do you make of that? Neither Truly or Dougherty, both of whom should have seen Oswald had he been on the stairs, testified to having seen him. Why? Oswald wasn’t there.
Ken,
There’s a lot the sources who’ve quoted Dougherty for years don’t tell you. When he was interviewed by the FBI his father was there to assist him with his answers:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1136&relPageId=638
In his 11/22 affidavit Dougherty said he heard the shot after lunch at 12:45:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/dougher1.htm
Here’s his testimony. Does he seem certain of where he was and when? I don’t think so.
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=14183
Searchable version:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/doughert.htm
re: Jean Davison, October 14, 2014 @ 12:06pm
Yes, I know Jack Dougherty’s father was with him during an FBI interview. Please explain the relevance of this fact to Mr. Dougherty’s testimony. And yes, Jack Dougherty had some recognized emotional issues. Still he held down a full-time job and was a trusted employee. The WC was interested in what he had to say. In his affidavit, his testimony, in an FBI statement of March 18, ’64, and an FBI report of Dec 19, ’63, Dougherty is not confused about where he was when he heard gunfire: the fifth floor. Twice in his testimony, and in the March 18, ’64, FBI statement he tells us where he was standing when he heard the gunfire: ten feet from the west elevator. That places him close to the stairs. And he is not confused about how many times he saw Oswald: twice. Neither of the times he saw Oswald was after he heard the gunfire. Therefore Dougherty, standing close to the stairs on the fifth floor, did not see Oswald come down the stairs from the sixth floor, immediately after the shots were fired. Dougherty’s confusion makes him an easy target for WC defenders, but on these important points, he is clear.
As a personal aside, I think that laughing publicly at an individual like Jack Dougherty, as David Von Pein does on his website, is unfair to Jack Dougherty. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but Von Pein is offensive. I urge DVP to be a human and either remove or extensively re-edit his page on Dougherty.
KenS,
To me, Dougherty isn’t a reliable witness, not because he had a disability but because his statements seemed contradictory and confused. But after reading it again, I think you’re right — he did consistently say he was on the fifth floor near the elevator when he heard a loud noise. He also said that after hearing the noise he went downstairs on the elevator.
How does his testimony show that Oswald didn’t use the stairs? Oswald had to cross the sixth floor, ditch the rifle and come down a flight of stairs before Doughterty left on the elevator.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to on David von Pein’s page, but you should take that up with him.
re: Jean Davison, October 18, 2014 @ 8:42am
You’re looking at the wrong floor. Truly and Baker could not use the west elevator because it was stuck on the fifth floor with Dougherty. Truly pushed the elevator button twice (per his testimony) and yelled up the elevator shaft to have the elevator lowered twice (per Baker’s testimony), all this taking precious time, before heading for the stairs, where Oswald, if he had come down the stairs, would already be at or near the second floor lunchroom door. Baker, as you well know, testified that when he made the second floor, he saw Oswald through the window of the closed lunchroom door, and Oswald was a few paces into the lunchroom. If Oswald came from the sixth floor, then by Dougherty’s, Truly’s, and Baker’s testimony, Dougherty was in position to see Oswald as he passed on the fifth floor landing on his way to the second floor. Dougherty did not see Oswald after the gunshots, because Oswald was not on the sixth floor at the time of the gunshots and did not descend the stairs.
KenS,
I understand your argument. But…
“Dougherty did not see Oswald after the gunshots, because Oswald was not on the sixth floor at the time of the gunshots and did not descend the stairs.”
That doesn’t follow, because Dougherty’s testimony can’t wave away the evidence against Oswald. It’s like saying “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” as though that cancels out the DNA evidence and the cuts on O.J.’s hand. If there’s no innocent explanation for the other evidence, then there must be some other explanation for the glove.
I don’t know why the glove didn’t fit or why Dougherty didn’t see Oswald, I just know that the reason is not the innocence of the accused.
In all this time, no one has provided a plausible scenario showing how Oswald could’ve been framed — that is, giving an innocent explanation for all the evidence against him. I don’t mean just saying “planted, faked, coincidence” over and over. How could it have been done? Nobody explains that, for good reason.
“Dougherty didn’t see him, so it couldn’t be him”? I don’t think so.
re: Jean Davison, October 19, 2014 @ 11:42am
“If there’s no innocent explanation for the other evidence, then there must be some other explanation for the glove.”
I absolutely agree with you, but let’s not drag OJ into this.
I don’t think I need to go through the evidence with someone as familiar with the case as you to point out all the weaknesses in the evidence against Oswald as the killer of President Kennedy. As much as lone shooter advocates would wish, they simply cannot place Oswald in the sixth floor window, with the murder weapon, at the moment of the murder.
“In all this time, no one has provided a plausible scenario showing how Oswald could’ve been framed — that is, giving an innocent explanation for all the evidence against him. I don’t mean just saying “planted, faked, coincidence” over and over. How could it have been done? Nobody explains that, for good reason.”
This is a disingenuous statement and I really expect better from you. Several very reasonable explanations have been suggested, and I suspect you are aware of them all.
I invite you to write your exculpatory volume on LHO and stash it away in a closet for the day you feel free enough to release it.
KenS,
Pointing out “weaknesses in the evidence” is not an explanation for how that evidence got there if Oswald was innocent.
No, I don’t know of any “very reasonable explanations” showing how Oswald was framed. Could you please be more specific?
Numerous people *claim* he was framed, but who shows how it could’ve been done?
I haven’t read everything, of course, but the only book I’m aware of that has an actual frame-up scenario is Robert Morrow’s “Betrayal” which says, among other things, that Oswald was ordered to hide in the restroom at the time of the shooting so he wouldn’t have an alibi. Others have suggested that he was ordered to wait for a phone call, but neither would guarantee that he wouldn’t be seen by witnesses who could give him an alibi.
Who has explained how the rest of the evidence could have gotten there? For instance, how did a rifle linked to Oswald get to the 6th floor? (Was it stolen from the garage or brought there by Oswald?) Were his prints on the rifle-rest box in the window just a coincidence or planted or did he help build the sniper’s nest? His presence near the back stairway c. 90 after the shots — coincidence? And so on, down the list.
WC critics don’t like the WC’s narrative explaining this evidence, but what’s theirs?
All that was necessary to frame Oswald was the rifle and the shell casings. Getting those items into the building is not an insurmountable problem.
Fingerprints? Oswald’s few prints were not exclusive on the boxes in that area, and can be explained by his job description. Was the rifle “stolen from the garage”? There is no proof that the rifle ever was in the garage.
re: Jean Davison, October 21, 2014 @ 10:53am
Sorry, Jean, I thought you were more well read than your post suggests. Now I can’t get this image of Oswald in the toilet out of my head.
You already know the answers to your own questions, but here goes.
The WC itself could not offer a convincing explanation for this first question. Frazier did not identify the bag as being the bag Oswald carried the morning of the twenty second, no one in the TSBD saw Oswald assembling or carrying a rifle, and no one, including Howard Brennan, made a positive id of Oswald as the man with a rifle in the sixth floor window. (Testifying to seeing Oswald on television before the line-up he attended, Brennan changes his mind, several days after the line-up, and identifies Oswald.) Speaking of Mr. Brennan and rifles, what do think happened to the rifle he saw? He testified that he saw a rifle with no scope in the sixth floor window. No scope! I seem to recall the rifle at issue, the alleged murder weapon, had a scope on it.
But you know, there were a couple of rifles being shown around the TSBD in the days prior to the assassination, and to most people one rifle pretty much looks like another. You don’t suppose… but that’s just conspiracist thinking, isn’t it.
I guess it would seem strange to find Oswald’s prints on boxes in the building where he worked as an order filler, on a floor where he had been working just that morning.
Ditto with his presence near the back stairs in the building where he worked every day, in the lunchroom where he went to buy a Coke at lunch time, something he must have done at least occasionally as there is corroborating testimony that he sought change to do so, occasionally.
I guess the list will go on.
jeffc, 10/21 3:14pm,
Planting the rifle and casings wasn’t all that was necessary. How could the plotters be sure that Oswald wouldn’t get an ironclad alibi by being photographed outside among his coworkers, e.g.? He can’t be in two places at once.
Unlike the larger boxes in the sniper’s nest, the top box in the window had to be brought there from a different area of the 6th floor. Prints from Oswald’s hands were on each side of the box, just as though he’d placed it there:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=171309
Just a coincidence, I suppose.
Whether you think the rifle was in the garage or not, how do you suggest the plotters got hold of it?
KenS, 10/21 5:16pm
I thought you were going to tell me where to find a plausible scenario showing how Oswald could’ve been framed. Instead you’re going back to the same old criticisms of the WC scenario.
If Oswald wasn’t told to wait in the toilet, how *did* the plotters keep him from having an alibi? No point in trying to frame a guy if he’s somewhere else.
Let’s say the rifle Brennan saw actually had no scope. Why would the shooter be using a rifle that’s not Oswald’s? Does the underlying story here make any sense?
re: Jean Davison, October 22, 2014 @ 4:00pm
“Does the underlying story here make any sense?”
Of course, the same question can be asked regarding the WC story.
Sadly, evidence and logic do not seem to be persuasive to you.
Since the evidence is not to your liking, let me leave you with this small, speculative clue about the framing of Oswald. To my thinking, at least one person was required as a confederate within the TSBD to introduce the rifle to the crime scene. This would have been a TSBD employee, a person well placed, and with “plausible deniability.” His position would make him particularly well suited for his role, and his activities 11/22 (and prior to) are suggestive. I think he likely had at least one trusted associate in the TSBD, assisting him in this plan. Oswald would have frequent contact with this person.
Ponder that.
“Prints from Oswald’s hands were on each side of the box, just as though he’d placed it there”
The sniper’s nest was something of a stage set. No actual shooter would have used the placed boxes as a rifle rest. The film of the 1964 Secret Service recreation establishes this.
“Whether you think the rifle was in the garage or not, how do you suggest the plotters got hold of it?”
All the plotters needed to do was create a paper trail linking Oswald to the rifle. John Armstrong’s research on the paper trail strongly suggests that this is indeed what happened. Oswald was under surveillance by the Dallas Post Office, but no reports were generated regarding the order or receipt of a rifle.
“How could the plotters be sure that Oswald wouldn’t get an ironclad alibi by being photographed outside among his coworkers, e.g.?”
Oswald had no alibi once a rifle that could be tied to him was discovered on the same floor of the TSBD that the shots were believed to have been fired, and where shell casings matched to the rifle were found. Even if Oswald was not the shooter, he could be portrayed as a co-conspirator. The shooter could be said to have somehow slipped away (as appears actually happened), and would be assumed as Cuban or Russian, or under their hire, due to the activity in Mexico City weeks earlier. Oswald, as the patsy, would need to be eliminated. That Oswald was indeed eliminated as the patsy is proved by Ruby’s facilitated entry to the DPD basement and Captain Fritz’s deliberate disengagement from his security position directly ahead of his prisoner.
Contingencies were built into the plot. It could be blamed on an international conspiracy facilitated by Oswald or on the work of a lone nut, dependent on how events played out. This is proved by the delayed and revised autopsy report(s), finalized only after the death of the patsy and after the Cuban/Russian angles had fizzled.
KenS, 10/23
You’re missing the point, I believe. The CT talking points don’t add up to a coherent narrative that explains the evidence. That’s why CT authors keep criticizing the WC story instead of providing their own to show how Oswald was framed. The frame-up story that’s *implied* by these authors is ludicrous.
For example, if the idea is to frame Oswald with the M-C, why leave a “Mauser” or use a rifle without a scope? Why plant a dented cartridge “that couldn’t have been fired that day,” according to some critics? Or plant a “pristine” bullet on the “wrong stretcher”? Were they total idiots?
No, it only seems that way because there were no plotters at work, just a bunch of unrelated anomalies with various explanations.
KenS,
No doubt you have considered what and more significantly who within the TSBD would have been essential to the framing of Oswald with the assassination. I have postulated numerous times on this site that someone within the operation at the depository was involved. Their role was highly compartmentalized ergo the plausible deniability to the extent they could testify with impunity. I have also posited a theory how the rifle was introduced into the building. These are the building blocks of an alternative to Jean Davison’s claim that Oswald alone was responsible for Kennedy’s murder because no one can explain to her how anyone else was. Occam’s Razor aside, the argument boggles the mind.
jeffc 10/23, 2:41 pm
>>Whether you think the rifle was in the garage or not, how do you suggest the plotters got hold of it?”
All the plotters needed to do was create a paper trail linking Oswald to the rifle.<<
Are you saying that Oswald didn't own the rifle, it was only planted? This requires a even more complicated frame-up than having him own the rifle, and I'd love to hear the story of how they did all that: fake documents, forged handwriting, perjury, faked BY photos. Then there's the blanket in the garage that the police recovered. What's the explanation there?
"Oswald was under surveillance by the Dallas Post Office…"
Harry Holmes wasn't "Dallas informant T-2," if that's what you're referring to. The information came from the FBI in New York, but that's a different topic.
re: Jean Davison, October 23, 2014 @ 9:29pm
I understand your point. But I believe internal consistency of the narrative is an issue on both sides of the debate. However, single assassin advocates have a slight advantage, in that the investigations done immediately after the event, when clues were “hot,” were directed toward demonstrating Oswald’s sole guilt. So we’re not exactly on a level playing field, are we?
Howard Brennan’s testimony about the rifle with no scope is less evidence of a different rifle than Brennan’s inability to have seen the shooter and to have made an identification. There is evidence to support a crossfire, and no convincing evidence to show that Oswald was in that window at the time of the shooting, so I conclude there was a conspiracy and that Oswald, whatever his participation in the events of 11/22, was not the killer of the President. Everything else proceeds from that.
re: Jean Davison, October 24, 2014 @ 1:16pm
Would you be kind enough to share a citation for this information about “Dallas informant T-2” and the FBI in New York? There may a gap in my education here and I’m a natural suspicioner.
Oswald owned a rifle and he brought it into the TSBD with the encouragement of Truly and Caster facilitated by Frazier, neighbor of the Paines and fresh into town. All that was required to set Oswald up as the patsy was to get that rifle into the depository building. The complicated and controversial circumstances leading to Oswald’s possession or ownership of the rifle created a smoke screen – did he order it or did someone named Hidel, did he collect it at the post office or did Hidel, did he fire it at local firing ranges or did someone else? Confusion is a primary component of any magic trick – and these unresolved issues meant nothing until and unless the rifle surfaced at 411 Elm Street immediately after the murder of Kennedy. The time and space between Oswald’s alleged position on the 6th Floor and his appearance on the 2nd Floor are inconsequential UNLESS the rifle he brought into the building was found … and it was, during what can only be described as a sloppy search by Dallas law enforcement of the alleged crime scene minutes after Kennedy’s assassination. At that moment, the building blocks of the case against Oswald and the ensuing cover up of the conspiracy were put in place. That is why the timeline of the witnesses in the closest proximity of that scene is such a major stumbling block for those who argue Oswald was a lone assassin. It is a very uncomfortable discussion.
KenS, 10/24, 1:05
>>… I believe internal consistency of the narrative is an issue on both sides of the debate.<>…the investigations done immediately after the event, when clues were “hot,” were directed toward demonstrating Oswald’s sole guilt.<> Howard Brennan’s testimony about the rifle with no scope is less evidence of a different rifle than Brennan’s inability to have seen the shooter and to have made an identification.<>There is evidence to support a crossfire<>… no convincing evidence to show that Oswald was in that window at the time of the shooting…<> Would you be kind enough to share a citation for this information about “Dallas informant T-2″ and the FBI in New York?>>
Yes, but I’ll do it in another post.
The post I submitted at 2:45pm came out garbled, so I’m trying again–
————————————-
KenS, 10/24, 1:05
>>… I believe internal consistency of the narrative is an issue on both sides of the debate.<>…the investigations done immediately after the event, when clues were “hot,” were directed toward demonstrating Oswald’s sole guilt.<> Howard Brennan’s testimony about the rifle with no scope is less evidence of a different rifle than Brennan’s inability to have seen the shooter and to have made an identification.<>There is evidence to support a crossfire<>… no convincing evidence to show that Oswald was in that window at the time of the shooting…<> Would you be kind enough to share a citation for this information about “Dallas informant T-2″ and the FBI in New York?>>
Yes, but I’ll do it in another post.
KenS 10/24, 1:05 (3rd try)
>>…I believe internal consistency of the narrative is an issue on both sides of the debate.<>…the investigations done immediately after the event, when clues were “hot,” were directed toward demonstrating Oswald’s sole guilt.<>Howard Brennan’s testimony about the rifle with no scope is less evidence of a different rifle than Brennan’s inability to have seen the shooter and to have made an identification.<>There is evidence to support a crossfire <> Would you be kind enough to share a citation for this information about “Dallas informant T-2″ and the FBI in New York? There may a gap in my education here and I’m a natural suspicioner.<<
I'll try to post some links tomorrow (Sunday).
KenS,
Informant T-2 was mentioned in CE 829, an FBI report Hosty had written on Oswald on 9/10/63:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1134&relPageId=799
Hosty was asked about this document when he testified:
Mr. HOSTY. It says, “On April 21, 1963, Dallas confidential informant T-2 advised that Lee H. Oswald of Dallas, Tex, was in contact with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New York City at which time he advised that he passed out pamphlets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. According to T-2, Oswald had a placard around his neck reading, ‘Hands Off Cuba, Viva Fidel.'”
Mr. STERN. Did you attempt to verify that information?
Mr. HOSTY. When I got it, it was approximately 6 or 7 weeks old, past the date it allegedly took place, and we had received no information to the effect that anyone had been in the downtown streets of Dallas or anywhere in Dallas with a sign around their neck saying “Hands Off Cuba, Viva Fidel.” [….]
Mr. STERN. When you record this as something that an informant advised about on April 21, that doesn’t mean he advised you or the Dallas office on April 21?
Mr. HOSTY. That is right.
Mr. STERN. Did this information come from another part of the FBI?
Mr. HOSTY. Yes, sir; it came from the New York office of the FBI. They were advised on the 21st of April.
Mr. STERN. But the information didn’t get to you until some time after?
Mr. HOSTY. In June, I believe.
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=13652
After the assassination Hoover disciplined many agents for their handling of the Oswald case. The document below is about that, not about CE829, but it happens to support Hosty’s account that T-2’s information came from New York, even giving the same dates Hosty mentioned:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=75306
Apparently an informant inside the FPCC allowed the FBI to enter and photograph “approximately 200” document. This has been discussed online several places.
The FBI was watching the FPCC and other leftist groups and some of Oswald’s letters got caught up in that net.
KenS,
Sorry about the unreadable messages.
“… I believe internal consistency of the narrative is an issue on both sides of the debate.”
There is no CT narrative, that’s my point.
“…the investigations done immediately after the event, when clues were “hot,” were directed toward demonstrating Oswald’s sole guilt.”
What hot clues? Evidently the only other suspect the police had was Wesley Frazier, who was grilled and given a polygraph.
“ Howard Brennan’s testimony about the rifle with no scope is less evidence of a different rifle than Brennan’s inability to have seen the shooter and to have made an identification.”
Although I don’t rely on Brennan’s ID, Brennan had observed the man before the motorcade arrived but didn’t see the rifle until he was aiming for his last shot. Not much time to examine it. Brennan said “I did not observe a scope” and “I do not know whether it had a scope or not.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=16352
Jean – limiting the discussion to what Hosty said does not provide anything resembling a complete picture.
For instance, in an FBI report from August 1962, “Dallas Confidential Informant T-2” is referred to in a context which has no relation to the FPCC or New York.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10411&relPageId=8
John Armstrong found an administrative FBI informant list in the National Archives (released via JFK Records Act in 1997),with the index number of the Dallas Oswald file (DL 100-10461), which identifies Dallas Confidential Informant T-2 as Dallas postmaster Harry Holmes. A reproduction of the document is included in the Harvey And Lee CD (63-43).
Here is a document generated by the Secret Service a few weeks after the assassination which also confirms the Dallas Post Office’s interest in Oswald: “Mr Riggs also recalled the Postal Inspection Service making some inquiries regarding subversive literature while the Oswald’s were occupants of 2703 Mercedes.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1140&relPageId=885
Oswald was under surveillance by the Dallas post office and so it is hard to believe that he could have ordered and received a mail order rifle under an alias without any report of this being generated.
“The FBI was watching the FPCC and other leftist groups and some of Oswald’s letters got caught up in that net.”
Oswald didn’t get “caught up” – he should have been one of the fish! Here is one of those online articles you mention:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/07/24/fair-play-for-cuba-and-the-cuban-revolution/
As Bill Simpich ably explains, the informant inside the New York hdq of the FPCC was also assisting in providing names for the FBI’s Security Index of Cuban sympathizers in the U.S. – an index which contained over 32, 000 names, none of which were Oswald even though Oswald was, in his own words, intent on organizing and agitating (beyond just “supporting” which alone was enough to get one on the list). Also, moving to New Orleans, Oswald continued his communications to the FPCC’s NYC hdq, whereby he is now setting up a new FPCC chapter – during a period when officially the FBI says they lost track of him. That’s simply not credible.
So there’s far more going on here than simply assuming Hosty got a late referral to information and everyone just shrugged their shoulders.
jeffc, 10/27 3:29pm
If you don’t believe me, would you believe John Newman or Bill Simpich?
Newman wrote, “…this Dallas T-2 source on Oswald was really a New York FBI source – NY-3245-S – as can be seen from newly released JFK files. Similarly, an earlier Dallas T-1 source who had spied on Oswald letter to the Worker also turned out to be a New York source, NY-2343-S.”
(p. 275 of Oswald and the CIA, which can be searched at Amazon.)
Bill Simpich says “informant T-3245-S” was Victor Vicente, a FPCC official.
QUOTE:
On 4/21/63, Vicente “made available records and correspondence currently maintained at FPCC Headquarters…. Approximately 100 photographs were taken of this material…. On April 21, 1963, Vicente advised that Lee H. Oswald of Dallas, Texas, was in contact with FPCC of New York City at which time he advised that he passed out pamphlets for the FPCC.”
UNQUOTE
http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/07/24/fair-play-for-cuba-and-the-cuban-revolution/
Please note that 4/21/63 is the same date mentioned in Hosty’s testimony and in the FBI memo that corroborates his version. That memo said the FBI “obtained and photographed approximately 200 pieces of information. Oswald’s name had no significance to processing agent…”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=75306
As I understand it, the “T” informant numbers were temporary, assigned to different people at different times. Harry Holmes may have been assigned that number at some point for some reason, but the notion that he was reading Oswald’s mail is a myth.
Jean, the issue at hand the several times I have put forth John Armstrong’s ID of Harry Holmes as an FBI informant is less whether Holmes opened Oswald’s mail in April 1963 (I am satisfied with Simpich and Newman’s New York sources), and more whether Oswald was under surveillance by the Dallas Post Office and whether it is credible that he could have ordered a rifle through the mail using an alias and picked it up without anyone noticing. (There is a related ancillary issue whether it is credible that the FBI “lost track” of Oswald after he moved to New Orleans).
Chapter 15 and 16 of John Newman’s Oswald and the CIA is largely concerned with Oswald’s mailings in Dallas 1962-1963:
“Oswald lived at the Mercedes address between August 17 and October 7, 1962. The mail to and from that address during this period was so unusual for Texas that Oswald was probably watched closely…we know that many people with a far more benign history than Oswald were closely watched.”
Newman describes continuous contacts by Oswald during the autumn and winter of ’62-63, through the mail, with various left-wing and Russian groups and publications. He notes that the Dallas Post Office required Oswald to fill out a form 2153-X which is “used by addressees of propaganda-type mail to instruct the Post Office Department as to the disposition of such mail.” This form was specifically tied to P.O. Box 2915, the same p.o. box the alleged rifle allegedly arrived to.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10461&relPageId=5
As demonstrated by numerous researchers, including Newman and Armstrong, both the alleged receipt of a rifle via a p.o. box identified with subversive literature and the alleged disappearance of Oswald from the FBI during May and June – when he was establishing direct contact with the FPCC – are fissures in the Official Story because the scenario painted by the Warren Commission is not credible.
jeffc, 10/28, 3:29 pm
Armstrong’s ID of Holmes was wrong, so what evidence is there that Oswald was “under surveillance by the Dallas P.O.”? I don’t think there is any.
You quote Newman: “…Oswald was probably watched closely.” “Probably”?
I think many WC critics greatly overestimate Oswald’s importance prior to 11/22. His name wouldn’t have meant what it means to us now.
QUOTE:
Newman […]notes that the Dallas Post Office required Oswald to fill out a form 2153-X which is “used by addressees of propaganda-type mail to instruct the Post Office Department as to the disposition of such mail.” This form was specifically tied to P.O. Box 2915, the same p.o. box the alleged rifle allegedly arrived to.
UNQUOTE
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10461&relPageId=5
Your link and others at maryferrell show that it’s wasn’t the Dallas P.O. but U.S. Customs in NY that, following the postal rules at that time, reported the Soviet “propaganda” mailed to him to the NY Post Office – Oswald’s signed form was returned to the NY P.O. This form is a long, long way from demonstrating that anyone was monitoring his post office box in Dallas.
Links on Form 2153-X:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10034&relPageId=61
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10034&relPageId=62
I think the feds were monitoring leftist/Russian entities, not Lee Harvey Oswald in particular.
You say, “There is a related ancillary issue whether it is credible that the FBI “lost track” of Oswald after he moved to New Orleans.”
UNQUOTE
It’s what the record shows.
“Armstrong’s ID of Holmes was wrong”
Armstrong found an administrative sheet identifying Holmes as Dallas Confidential Informant T-2. Holmes can also be identified as Informant T-7 in a document describing information developed after the assassination (CE1152).
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=171015
“what evidence is there that Oswald was “under surveillance by the Dallas P.O.”? …You quote Newman: “…Oswald was probably watched closely.” “Probably”?”
Newman is making an understatement, as the Secret Service report 12-12-63 confirms, which refers to Oswald’s landlord in the summer of 1962: “Mr Riggs also recalled the Postal Inspection Service making some inquiries regarding subversive literature while the Oswald’s were occupants of 2703 Mercedes.”
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1140&relPageId=885
Oswald lived at the Mercedes address from August to early October 1962, less than ten weeks, and, as John Newman describes, from there began his subscriptions to The Worker and the Russian magazine Krokodil, and also began communicating with the Socialist Workers Party, which was federally listed as a subversive organization. The Postal Inspection Service was onto him fairly quickly and investigated Oswald at his address.
“it’s wasn’t the Dallas P.O. but U.S. Customs in NY that, following the postal rules at that time, reported the Soviet “propaganda” mailed to him to the NY Post Office – Oswald’s signed form was returned to the NY P.O. This form is a long, long way from demonstrating that anyone was monitoring his post office box in Dallas.”
That is not a routine form, as noted by Post Office Chief Inspector Montague: “the Post Office does not want to publicize it as it will arouse the wrath of liberal groups such as the ACLU, et cetera.” Oswald writes on the form “I protest this intimidation.” The form links Oswald with P.O. Box 2915, which Oswald opened in early October. Using that p.o. box, Oswald continues to communicate with identified subversive organizations (i.e. SWP), left wing newspapers (The Militant), Soviet magazines, and so on.
“I think the feds were monitoring leftist/Russian entities, not Lee Harvey Oswald in particular.”
Oswald was a leftist/Russian entity, due to his subscriptions, communications with listed subversive organizations, and subsequent direct communication with the FPCC. Bill Simpich’s FPCC article demonstrates the high level of informant-based surveillance activity surrounding identified left-wing organizations and individuals associated with them.
jeffc, 10/30
“Armstrong found an administrative sheet identifying Holmes as Dallas Confidential Informant T-2.”
But that’s not the T-2 we’ve been talking about. The FBI supposedly learned the contents of Oswald’s letter to the FPCC because Holmes was reading his mail, but in reality the FBI was reading the FPCC’s mail.
Holmes may’ve been designated T-2 after the assassination. Did Armstrong’s document give a date or details?
Quoting a Secret Service report:
“Mr Riggs also recalled the Postal Inspection Service making some inquiries regarding subversive literature while the Oswald’s were occupants of 2703 Mercedes.”
UNQUOTE
This sounds similar to the Form 2153-X incident. “Subversive” newspapers and magazine were visible to anyone handling the mail — no one needed access to Oswald’s P.O. Box or a “mail cover” for that.
You seem to be arguing that since the FBI followed other leftists closely, it must’ve been following Oswald closely. But Hoover disciplined many of his agents for not following him closely *enough*. He apparently thought Oswald should’ve been on the Security Index, e.g. The HSCA disagreed:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=69313
It may not seem credible to you that the FBI lost track of Oswald because you’re overestimating Oswald’s significance to them prior to 11/22. But he wasn’t really
“Lee Harvey Oswald” yet.
“Holmes may’ve been designated T-2 after the assassination.”
CE1152 appears to ID Holmes as T-7 after the assassination. The administrative sheet Armstrong found is undated, but has the number of Oswald’s file.
““Subversive” newspapers and magazine were visible to anyone handling the mail…”
But the Secret Service report shows that representatives of the Postal Inspection Service made a specific trip to visit Oswald’s then landlord, to ask him questions about his tenant, based on the mail he was receiving. You asked for any proof that Oswald was under any surveillance by the Post Office, and here it is (and it happened fairly quickly, within weeks of his subscriptions).
“You seem to be arguing that since the FBI followed other leftists closely, it must’ve been following Oswald closely.”
Not exactly. The argument, based on what is now known about the types of programs in place in the early sixties, wonders why it is that Oswald receives the attention he did in the way it did. It’s not that he is off or under the radar – he had FBI files, CIA files, Post Office files, etc -but he is subscribing to radical publications and communicating with designated subversive organizations from a conservative bastion like Dallas. How many persons in Dallas were receiving The Militant, Soviet magazines. and letters from the SWP in their mailbox? Likely very few. The Official Story maintains that this highly unusual person regularly receives communist propaganda to his P.O. box for five months, and then one day a five foot long package arrives from the nation’s leading mail-order retailer of firearms, addressed to a new and different person, and no one says anything. Even as the Dallas postmaster is a known FBI informant. (And that is just the start of the many many problems with the mail-order rifle story).
The FPCC is the same story, as is outlined in Simpich’s CounterPunch piece. The FBI has a concerted program designed to infiltrate and disrupt this organization, and suddenly a known person such as Oswald, with his highly unusual background, is not only communicating but expressing his intent to publicly agitate and organize on their behalf and in locations (Dallas, New Orleans) which are conservative and have no FPCC presence. That, in the known context of 1963, is a huge red flag but the response is strangely muted. As Simpich points out, the FBI created a “Cuban Section” to its Security Index in late 1962 which “included not only names of suspected Cuban agents operating in the United States, but also of people who had participated in organizations or picket lines that supported Castro.” Over thirty thousand names were in this Index, but Oswald’s name is not.
“It may not seem credible to you that the FBI lost track of Oswald because you’re overestimating Oswald’s significance to them prior to 11/22. But he wasn’t really “Lee Harvey Oswald” yet.”
I disagree. Oswald became “Lee Harvey Oswald” – the Official Story’s rarely employed quixotic misfit loner prepared to employ violence in service of his psychological profile and radical political beliefs – in March 1963. Until March of 1963, Oswald is handled by Federal agencies just about as should be expected. After March 1963, Oswald’s handling by these agencies, including the FBI and CIA, is quite unusual and inexplicable.
You are claiming somebody was watching all of Oswald’s mail? And knew he was some sort of government operative and needed to be allowed to have a rifle?
In the first place, you have no evidence of that.
Oswald came to the attention of authorities when he did certain things: write the Soviet Embassy, subscribe to subversive periodicals, visit Communist embassies in Mexico City.
You need evidence that he was constantly watched.
Further: do you believe Oswald was some sort of government agent?
If so, do you believe that once government agents recruit an operative of some kind they tell the entire remainder of the U.S. government about it?
Including the Post Office?
jeffc, 10/31
“CE1152 appears to ID Holmes as T-7 after the assassination.”
But these were temporary numbers that varied from one report to another (something I learned only recently). For instance, in this report Dallas T-7 handled Oswald’s unemployment claims:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=691130
“The administrative sheet Armstrong found is undated, but has the number of Oswald’s file.”
It’s undated and the informant numbers are temporary, so this can’t be used as evidence about Holmes and Oswald’s P.O. Box.
“….the Postal Inspection Service made a specific trip to visit Oswald’s then landlord, to ask him questions about his tenant….You asked or any proof that Oswald was under any surveillance by the Post Office, and here it is…”
No, Jeff. I asked in the specific context of your saying on 10/23: “Oswald was under surveillance by the Dallas Post Office, but no reports were generated regarding the order or receipt of a rifle.” You haven’t shown that anyone knew or could’ve known about an order or receipt of a rifle. Talking to his landlord shows no such thing.
“…addressed to a new and different person, and no one says anything. Even as the Dallas postmaster is a known FBI informant.”
Of course Holmes was an FBI informant *after* the assassination. Show me that he or anyone else had knowledge of the packages Oswald received.
“The FBI has a concerted program designed to infiltrate and disrupt this organization, and suddenly a known person such as Oswald, with his highly unusual background, is not only communicating but expressing his intent to publicly agitate and organize on their behalf and in locations (Dallas, New Orleans) which are conservative and have no FPCC presence.”
Again you’re overestimating his importance, imo. Both cities were overwhelmingly anti-Castro. There was nothing in those cities to infiltrate and disrupt, and the FBI knew that.
“Until March of 1963, Oswald is handled by Federal agencies just about as should be expected.”
After the FBI interviewed him twice when he returned from Russia his case was closed(8/62)until March 1963 when Hosty recommended that it be reopened after learning that he was on The Worker’s mailing list:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1464&relPageId=40
“After March 1963, Oswald’s handling by these agencies, including the FBI and CIA, is quite unusual and inexplicable.”
How so?
“You are claiming somebody was watching all of Oswald’s mail?”
The Secret Service Report of 12-12-63 notes that the Postal Inspection Service made “inquiries regarding subversive literature”. So yes, Oswald had come to the attention of postal authorities due to the mail he was receiving. Does this in turn mean he was “constantly watched”?
“Oswald came to the attention of authorities when he did certain things: write the Soviet Embassy, subscribe to subversive periodicals…”
As we know, Oswald communicated with the above groups and others, including the listed subversive organization Socialist Workers Party, fairly steadily through the late summer, autumn and winter of 1962-63. So a steady stream of communist literature was arriving at the Dallas Post office to be placed in P.O. Box 2915. I don’t think Oswald was being “watched”, in the sense that someone was filing reports and noting all activity, but he would have been “monitored”, in the sense that new or unusual activity would be flagged (i.e. mentioned to a supervisor). Such as a large box arriving from Klein’s addressed to a new person (Hidell).
The link of Oswald to the alleged murder weapon is the key to the case against him, but the specific evidence – as John Armstrong convincingly demonstrates in “Harvey and Lee” – is a phantom.
Jean D – “I asked in the specific context of your saying on 10/23: “Oswald was under surveillance by the Dallas Post Office…” You haven’t shown that anyone knew or could’ve known about an order or receipt of a rifle. Talking to his landlord shows no such thing…Of course Holmes was an FBI informant *after* the assassination. Show me that he or anyone else had knowledge of the packages Oswald received.”
I cannot “show” you that as there is no available documentation from the Dallas Post Office on their practices, and the single Post Office official questioned by the Warren Commission was FBI informant Harry Holmes himself. In his two appearances before the Commission, Holmes was not asked a single question about anything occurring before March 1963, even as the Warren Commission was in possession of information which showed that a) Postal Inspectors were investigating Oswald in 1962 due to his receipt of “subversive literature” and b) that Oswald was required to sign a postal form acknowledging receipt of “foreign propaganda” to the P.O. Box which would later allegedly have a rifle delivered to. What resulted from the Postal Inspectors investigation of Oswald? Who were they reporting to, and what else besides the interview of the landlord occured? We don’t know because the Warren Commission, for example, was not curious. The Post Office was not going to share their end of the tale as it got into sources and methods, and was sensitive activity (as can be seen from Montague’s concerns over the ACLU).
However, Holmes’ deposition of April 2, 1964 has him describe himself as a “trained suspicioner”. Holmes suggests that when Oswald opened his new Dallas P.O. Box at the beginning of November 1963, the name “A.J. Hidell” was already known to him via information provided by the New Orleans Post Office. He says that Oswald’s information “was checked out in New Orleans” by a Postal Inspector when he closed his P.O. Box there and left a Dallas forwarding address. That is further confirmation that mailing activities were being surveilled and information shared from city-to-city. As well, a discussion between Belin and Holmes over Holmes Exhibit 5 ( a copy of the JFK Wanted For Treason flyer) reveals that Holmes had received the flyer on the 22nd : “This was handed to me by one of the postal supervisors who brought it to my office stating that it had been brought in by one of the carriers that found it in a collection box on his route…numerous of them were brought in.” This confirms that ground level postal employees would report suspicious activity to their supervisor.
But this also has to be taken in context of the times, and based on the information now available, the level of surveillance and infiltration into perceived left-wing activities in America in the early 1960s was shockingly huge, including into constitutionally protected activity. The Simpich article identifies some of the ramifications of this, as does the Newman book. (I don’t believe you’ve read either other than part of a focussed Google search trying to debunk me). Newman: “…we know that many people with a far more benign history than Oswald were closely watched.”
Jean D – FBI/FPCC and New Orleans -Dallas: “you’re overestimating his importance, imo. Both cities were overwhelmingly anti-Castro. There was nothing in those cities to infiltrate and disrupt, and the FBI knew that.”
Oswald was suggesting he would agitate and organize, not “infiltrate and disrupt”. Two different things, so your characterization of a perceived FBI response is a misrepresentation. The brief sketch you link of Oswald’s FBI files 1962-63 (from the Schweiker investigation) contains none of the context found in Newman or Armstrong. Newman: “His mail was so radically left-wing that he could have been expected to be the subject of FBI scrutiny…September 28…the FBI learned that Oswald subscribed to The Worker…Strangely, these new additions to Oswald’s FBI files did not find a receptive audience…against the backdrop of Marina’s open case and Oswald’s closed case that the following sequence of left wing mail activity took place…” Newman goes on to list over a dozen communications, any single one of which would or should be cause for further investigation.
jeffc, Nov. 1, 9:35pm
No, Holmes didn’t suggest “that when Oswald opened his new Dallas P.O. Box at the beginning of November 1963, the name “A.J. Hidell” was already known to him via information provided by the New Orleans Post Office.” Oswald’s mailbox in N.O. was checked out *after* the assassination. Although it was closed, it contained copies of The Militant that had “not yet been forwarded” to the Paine address:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=17906
Oswald’s postman may have reported his leftist mail as others reported the anti-JFK fliers, and then someone “made inquiries” of the landlord, whatever that means. That’s far from showing that anyone had knowledge of the Klein’s package or Hidell alias pre-assassination.
QUOTE: Newman: “…we know that many people with a far more benign history than Oswald were closely watched.” This can’t substitute for evidence that Oswald was also closely watched, and Newman gave no examples of “more benign histories” for comparison.
QUOTE:
Jean D – FBI/FPCC and New Orleans -Dallas: “you’re overestimating his importance, imo. Both cities were overwhelmingly anti-Castro. There was nothing in those cities to infiltrate and disrupt, and the FBI knew that.
Oswald was suggesting he would agitate and organize, not “infiltrate and disrupt”. Two different things, so your characterization of a perceived FBI response is a misrepresentation.”
UNQUOTE
No, I didn’t misrepresent. You misunderstood me. I was referring to your saying, “The FBI has a concerted program designed to infiltrate and disrupt this organization.” Oswald had no organization.
Whatever Newman or Armstrong imply, the record indicates that the FBI wasn’t keeping a close watch on Oswald and lost track of him at times. Even your quote below suggests this is true:
“His mail was so radically left-wing that he could have been expected to be the subject of FBI scrutiny…September 28…the FBI learned that Oswald subscribed to The Worker…Strangely, these new additions to Oswald’s FBI files did not find a receptive audience…against the backdrop of Marina’s open case and Oswald’s closed case that the following sequence of left wing mail activity took place…” Newman goes on to list over a dozen communications, any single one of which would or should be cause for further investigation.”
Dallas FBI SAC Hosty refers several times in memos generated in Spring / Summer 1963 that he was able to establish information on the Oswalds through the local “Postmaster”. Hosty states in an internal memo to FBI headquarters 3/25/63 that a Dorthea Myers, of the Dallas Postal Inspectors Office, gave him the Oswald’s new Neely Street address. This was on March 11, 1963.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=57690&relPageId=112
The Oswalds were believed to have moved on March 3. Eight days later, their new address is known at the Dallas Postal Inspectors Office, even though no change-of-address cards were generated, as the Oswald mailings were handled through P.O. Box 2915. This again is highly suggestive of a more organized surveillance operation. A week after this inquiry it is alleged that a five foot long box from Klein’s Sporting Goods addressed to A Hidell is received and picked up through P.O. Box 2915. This P.O. Box was at the time regularly receiving subscriptions to The Militant, The Worker, and Russian publications Ogonek, The Agitator, and Krokodil. Oswald was also communicating with the SWP, the Soviet Embassy, and various other publishers and suspected Communist front organizations.
jeffc, 11/2, 8:38pm
QUOTE:
The Oswalds were believed to have moved on March 3. Eight days later, their new address is known at the Dallas Postal Inspectors Office, even though no change-of-address cards were generated, as the Oswald mailings were handled through P.O. Box 2915. This again is highly suggestive of a more organized surveillance operation.
UNQUOTE
Is that what Armstrong said? If so, he’s wrong again. The Post Office did have the new address.
After Ruth met Marina at a party in February Ruth wrote her at the old address. The P.O. must have forwarded it, because Marina wrote back March 6 saying “We’ve moved.”
Scroll down for the postmarked envelope:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=138907
Ruth’s explanation starts bottom of page here:
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=38&relPageId=451
All the leftist mail Oswald received isn’t evidence that anyone knew Oswald had ordered or received a package from Klein’s. Suspicion isn’t evidence, but it’s worse than that — suspicion will make up all kinds of lies.
You indicated earlier that you doubted that the FBI “lost track” of Oswald after he moved to New Orleans. Have you seen this document saying “The Dallas Office is attempting to locate…”?
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?mode=searchResult&absPageId=692443
My main point is, why believe unreliable, misleading sources when it’s possible to search about a million pages of JFK documents and testimony from this page at maryferrell.org?
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/JFK_Assassination_Documents
Jean – I don’t believe the letter to Ruth Paine reveals what you think it does. Marina writes on March 4 (the envelope is postmarked March 6). She says she received Ruth’s letter the previous day. That would be March 3rd, which was a Sunday (and also the day the Oswalds apparently moved from Elsbeth to Neely). I don’t believe the Dallas Post Office was delivering on Sundays, so either Ruth Paine’s letter arrived at the Elsbeth address previously or else it was sent to the P.O. Box and had been picked up that weekend. Paine’s recollection of the party refers only to getting an “address”. If you can find Ruth Paine’s original letter (and envelope) that could possibly clarify. Otherwise we are still left with the Dallas Postal Inspectors Office somehow knowing the Oswald’s new address without any change-of-address paperwork (as P.O. Box 2915 was the sole recipient of mail for them at that time).
The letter itself is odd, with the sketched street map leading to the Oswald’s new address drawn presumably by Lee. Elsbeth and Neely are in the Oak Cliff neighbourhood of Dallas, just a few blocks away from Oswald’s future N Beckley address. A witness said the Oswalds were assisted during their move from Elsbeth to Neely Street by a woman with a white station wagon. There has been some speculation that this may have been Ruth Paine, but this letter seems to establish that not to be the case. Ruth Paine may never have visited the Neely St address at all, although Michael Paine did. Hosty’s memo mentioning the assistance of a “protected source” in the DPO Inspector’s office came from Newman, not Armstrong. You were hasty to declare Armstrong “wrong”.
Newman and Armstrong are both working essentially from the same document set as yourself. You seem to brand them as “unreliable, misleading sources” due to the fact that they are reaching different conclusions from the same information. For example, you accept Hosty’s July 29 memorandum at face value, whereas Newman spends about a whole chapter (sixteen) in “Oswald And The CIA” discussing why it shouldn’t be taken at face value.
But you don’t have any evidence of that. It’s just what you think.
The only actual evidence we have is that when Oswald subscribed to subversive publications, postal authorities checked up on it.
As for Armstrong: he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. David Von Pein, for example, has shown that what Armstrong interprets as a postal code is actually the number of the cancelling machine!
And Oswald’s handwriting is all over the order coupon, envelope, money order, and the application for the box to which the rifle was delivered.
But of course, you can “prove” anything yu want if you are willing to dismiss any contradictory evidence as lies, faked or forged documents, forged or tampered with photos and films, etc.
So exactly why does Newman think the memo should be dismissed?
jeffc, 11/5 1:54pm
You’ve made a good point, and I agree — the letter to Ruth doesn’t show what I thought it did. I didn’t check the date as I should have. My mistake.
But I don’t think that means that your explanation is necessarily the right one, either. When there’s something like this in the record that’s unexplained it’s simply unexplained, literally. Very often it turns out to be human error.
For instance, you mentioned the witness who said a woman in a white station wagon helped the Oswalds move into the Neely apartment. Actually, the Elsbeth landlady saw them moving their belongings toward the nearby location using a baby stroller. Later on Ruth helped them move OUT of the Neely place. Either the witness or the interviewer got it wrong.
Even without knowing that it was an error, though, one ought to be skeptical of the witness’s version because lying about such a thing seems to serve no purpose. What difference does it make when Ruth was there?
I’ve looked at Newman’s chapter on the Hosty memo again, and IMO he often interprets unexplained discrepancies as being sinister even though they don’t add up to a plausible story. The FBI didn’t conceal the fact that it knew where Oswald was living when he carried out the Walker attack or that it knew he was working at the TSBD on 11/22. What was the point in Hosty falsely claiming the FBI lost track of Oswald in N.O.?
Do you think Hosty’s “attempting to locate” memo was a forgery or a lie? What was the point of going to all that trouble? Maybe I missed Newman’s explanation in a quick read. Did he give one? (I take the memo at “face value” because I don’t see a plausible alternative.)
Jean D – “When there’s something like this in the record that’s unexplained it’s simply unexplained, literally. Very often it turns out to be human error.”
There is little in the Hosty memorandum 3/25/63 that can be attributed to human error. Clearly, Hosty considers his Postal Inspectors Office contact a “protected source”, and is able to obtain from her the Oswald’s new address even as there was no reason for change-of address paperwork being submitted by which to transmit this information. This nugget joins the previous information that Postal Inspectors interviewed Oswald’s landlord months previously and Oswald was required to acknowledge receipt of Soviet propaganda tied to his P.O. Box. In my opinion, John Armstrong’s determination that a rifle arriving at P.O. Box 2915 from Klein’s is a phantom event (as in it did not happen) is solid on numerous grounds, the non-reaction by the Post Office being just one.
“I’ve looked at Newman’s chapter on the Hosty memo again, and IMO he often interprets unexplained discrepancies as being sinister even though they don’t add up to a plausible story.”
I don’t think Newman is seeing discrepancies as “sinister”, rather he sees them as clues to an unacknowledged relationship between the FBI and Oswald or as cover for a relationship between Oswald and another agency or program. For example, in an internal memo written on May 28, Hosty claims he has discovered the Oswalds have moved and that a check with the “Postmaster” showed no forwarding address. But the Dallas Post Office had, this time, already received a change-of-address card putting Oswald in New Orleans.
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=139506
I’m not going to otherwise summarize Newman’s book, but I will point out that, once again, here is a highly informative volume that has been around for twenty years, frequently cited by other researchers, and neither yourself or McAdams are really familiar with it at all – even as you (JM in particular) set yourselves as some kind of experts and self-appointed debunkers.
I’ve recently spend a great deal of time looking at the testimony about Ms. Adams, and the Garner document etc. I have some issues with it that I’d like to discuss. Can we start a thread on that?
I see much discussion about Oswald’s alleged movements and the timing predicted on him ‘running’. It’s been established that he certainly didn’t have to run anywhere. Here is timing video that should, unless you don’t have an open mind, put the running Oswald question to bed.
That is a pre-planned carefully-staged simulation that may not accurately reflect the actual Nov. 22/63 TSBD physical dimensions, layout and conditions which a sixth floor assassin would have faced. There is no way of knowing how much additional time would have been needed to make his way through the actual locations of piles of books, find the actual hiding spot for the gun, run down the actual stairs, and yet somehow not be seen or heard by Vicki Adams or Sandra Styles.
Hello Dave. I fully understand that. Yet, in the testimony of Officer Baker and Roy Truly, they participated in a stop-watch timed evacuation of the events and each did them 2x.
In the first walk through, Officer Baker-who heard the first shot and proceeded directly to the book depository because he was certain it came for ‘up high’ (and explains his interest in getting to the roof btw) where he parked his bike in front of the traffic signal just on the corner of Elm and Houston. He was carefully timed and his time from the FIRST SHOT…when he was still on Houston to the 2nd floor Lunchroom and his confrontation with Oswald…at a walking pace…was 90 seconds. On his second run-through it took him 75 seconds (on a trot). I will note that Baker thought it would take him longer but the record shows him already on the move and running to the TSBD as the news camera car film showed just as the last shot was fired.
Conversely, from the 6th floor to the 2nd Floor Lunchroom it would take a low of 78 seconds in a normal walk…and 74 seconds in a rushing (but not running) pace.
So, either way you review the situation, from 6th Floor to 2nd Floor Lunchroom…or from Street to 2nd Floor Lunchroom…Oswald would have had the time. Of course, I’ll use the lowest time for the example for Baker’s movements:
Baker made the trip from Elm/Houston street running/jogging/ in 75 seconds at best speed.
‘Baker’ then made the trip from the SE TSBD Sniper’s Window in 74 seconds at a non-running speed.
There is an issue with having to wait for the elevators to be sent down, Truly called up to have them be released and sent down 2x (in a loud voice) so I don’t know if the timing of them may have caused Oswald to hustle a bit. Maybe…maybe not. I’ll say maybe b/c I know I’d sure as heck pick up the pace if I knew the law was soon to be on my heels.
He did say he saw Oswald with his ‘back’ to him walking away from the door.
In any case…we have the proof (in testimony and timing of the pace that Baker moved at…what can never be known is the pace of Oswald. I’d find it hard to think he didn’t move at a faster than walking pace if he wanted to get away (and he did of course).
Lastly, the ‘Girl in the Stairs’. There are so many MANY holes in her story that I doubt she was there WHEN she said she was. Why? Well…for starters…in her 1 minute to get down from the 4th floor….she said she never heard ANYONE YELL for the Elevators. This tell me she either was WAY FASTER to get out (which she may have done)…or WAY SLOWER that the timeline. One glitch in her statement is that she went to the Office area ‘for a time’, BEFORE exiting the stairs.
My point: 1. How did she not hear Baker? 2. IF Oswald was coming down those stairs he would have heard Baker and gone a different route…or POSSIBLY…Jumped into the 2nd Floor Lunchroom.
I feel this scenario is likely. It fits all sides and does not make Adams a liar. Just wrong in the timing dept. Now…the most important part of the GIRL ON THE STAIRS issue is this: Mrs. Garner, the supervisor. How is it that she didn’t see, or was not confronted by either Baker or Truly ON THE WAY UP (according to their NOT her statements). Actually…Baker and Truly did make it all the way to the roof and, even though he had his revolver in hand, except for Oswald, they say nobody from the time they began the stairway climb 1st floor, until, according to Truly, they hoped on an elevator on the 5th floor. And even this is interesting in that Baker thought he got onto the elevator on the 3rd floor.
And, to top it all off…..Jarmin, a 5th floor witness to the Assassination and his friends come down to the 4th floor and find the ‘women from those offices’ there.
Case Closed.
re: Bill Callahan, October 9, 2014 @ 2:50pm
All that running around makes me tired just reading it. But what do you make of what Baker told Gary Savage for the book, “First Day Evidence”:
“The man who said he was the building superintendent was outside and met me at the door and went in with me. Shortly after I entered the building I confronted Oswald. We left Oswald there, and the supervisor showed me the way upstairs. We couldn’t get anyone to send the freight elevator down.”
Baker confronts Oswald on the first floor?
Hello Ken. I never have been aware of that comment, attributed to Officer Baker as confronting Oswald. It seems to be a jumble of what he reported in his testimony. I guess, technically, he did go in with Truly (who actually smashed into his backside as they tried to get into the pull-out inner doors of the TSBD.
Technically…he did confront Oswald and he left his there (in the 2nd Floor Lunchroom) and they did go up the stairs…and the elevator issue is the first part of the journey after going to the back part of the building to get the elevators (remember…Baker wanted to get to the roof.
I think Gary Savage may have it totally jumbled up here. Why?
Well….for him to not have it correctly means that both Baker, Truly lied. Mrs. Reid would have also lied about seeing Oswald about 2 minutes after the shooting exiting and holding a full bottle of coke. Heck…even Oswald would have lied because, unless I’m wrong on this, and I don’t think I am, he told Capt. Fritz that he ate lunch in the Domino room on the FIRST FLOOR, then he went UPSTAIRS to get a bottle of coke from the 2nd Floor lunchroom (and then had his encounter with Baker and Truly).
I feel it’s just Oswald planting truth’s within the actions he does. But…he certainly did, according to Mrs. Reid, have a coke that was almost full, when she passed by him at 12:32 as he was making his way toward the front stairs of the TSBD.
I find it very difficult to reconcile the accounts and testimony of Oswald’s composure, to the descriptions of him in the mainstream media, and by some authors, in regards to the assassination of JFK. It is of course correct that hit men, intelligence agents are hired precisely because of their ability to remain calm and composed while executing/assassinating people. However, I do not think the evidence is in anyway conclusive that Oswald was a hit man. The standard ‘Oswald did it on his own’ accounts seem to almost always portray him as a dangerous, mentally unstable, political extremist. In other words the Warren Commission/Gerald Posner template. This portrayal does not seem to fit the accounts of Oswald as being quiet, introverted, mild mannered, and generally a composed individual. It is one of the major reasons why I am suspicious and distrustful of the official theory of President Kennedy’s assassination.
There’s no “one size fits all” template for a person who commits a crazy act. Many of them – maybe even most – are often recalled as normal people who “just snapped.” There are a few incidents from Oswald’s life which (if true) seem a bit unusual for an average well-adjusted guy. None of us knew Oswald. We can only go on the few fragments of clips that still exist, or on recollections of others, some of which are contested. That doesn’t give us much to go on to decide if his demeanor was consistent with our idea of how an assassin should act.
Oswald was quite likely the “Prayer Man” seem standing near the TSBD entrance.
I agree Avinash. Has that been discussed on here yet?
No,there has been no discussion of the Prayer Man issue here as far as I know.
Marina said that on April 10 1962 Oswald returned from the Walker shooting sweating, hyper venaliting and extremely nervous – and whether he was the shooter or not his physical and emotional outlets were taxed, yet after shooting another human being in thw head we are to believe he ran the length of a football field without exibiting loss of breath, heavy breathing, hyper venelation or increased blood pressure?
The description of Oswald and his behavior in the first five minutes after the shooting by Baker, Truly, the secretary and Altman all indicate he didn’t shoot anybody and wasn’t on the Sixth Floor at the time.
BK
And yet within an hour he was desperate enough to gun down a police officer in broad daylight in front of witnesses, even to the point of shooting the same cop in the head after he was helpless and fatally wounded. He then tried to shoot another cop in front of multiple witnesses minutes later. On any other day the police would have probably shot him dead for being a cop killer and resisting arrest. So what if he was cool as a cucumber in custody? He knew that he was a dead man walking-he even mentioned that while in custody in the car on the way to the station. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain by lying -principally the attention that he craved and was denied after returning from the U.S.S.R.
You would be surprised how calm people can be when made aware of a fatal prognosis; indeed, when severely depressed people decide to make a serious suicide attempt they often seem to be calm and in excellent spirits.
People need to stop referring to the dime store prognosis of “attention that he craved” as a reason for linking Oswald to the assassination. He calmly denied killing anyone when he was in police custody. This is not the behavior of a man craving attention. Case closed.
He was getting world-wide attention without admitting anything.Why should he have changed an approach that already had made him the center of attraction?
Photon:
Rather than asking people to disprove your negative nonsense, isn’t the burden on you to come up with a coherent theory?
The attention-seeing loon theory has not a scintilla of fact or coherent logic behind it. But it keeps getting repeated by the lone-nut crowd.
Oswald was a Marine who defected to the enemy and came back. He had to have been watched carefully. His life was like a spy movie, certainly not boring or disaffected. He had no known reason for doing what he did.
The only fact we have about motive is that when he was asked about it, he said he was a patsy, which is what a lot of evidence points to. Now the lone gunmen crowd should really negate the only known fact we have with some fact of their own, not fabricated psycho-babble.
I agree Thomas. He was quite emphatic that he didn’t shoot anybody.
Besides if he was craving attention why didn’t he claim responsibility at the time for supposedly killing Gen Walker? He got absolutly no attention out of that.
Vanessa Loney October 9, 2014 at 2:02
Besides if he was craving attention why didn’t he claim responsibility at the time for supposedly killing Gen Walker?
_____________________________________
Er…because no one killed General Walker? He lived on until 1993.
C’mon Bill, get with the program. Everybody knows that Gen. Walker shot himself in front of Peter Sellers in 1964-it is even on film!
And General LeMay at the same time was going to get JFK for ignoring the “Mine Shaft Gap”.
They even know that in Canberra .
Sorry Bill. Of course you’re right, I meant ‘supposedly shooting’ Gen. Walker. If Oswald was after attention then why didn’t he implicate himself in some way for the Walker shooting. That was also all over the news at the time. He got no attention for that.
Of course clever Photon.
But you know I have reason to believe that film might have been altered…..
Canberra? Where’s that?
Re: Photon, October 7, 2014 @ 11:35am
“On any other day the police would have probably shot him dead for being a cop killer and resisting arrest.”
So Photon, why do you think the DPD let Ruby do that particularly odious job for them?
Your comments about Oswald shooting Tippit are unproven assertions, never tested before a jury.
To deny the fact that Oswald shot Tippit in front of multiple witnesses and then attempted to kill another policeman with the same weapon again in front of multiple witnesses is to deny reality.
Photon October 8, 2014 at 11:18 pm
“To deny the fact that Oswald shot Tippit in front of multiple witnesses and then attempted to kill another policeman with the same weapon again in front of multiple witnesses is to deny reality.”
_____________________________________
As is not believing many cop killers didn’t make it to the jail alive. Especially back in the day.
Re: Photon, October 8, 2014 @ 11:18pm
Sorry, Photon, you have to be on the scene to do the deed. WC fudged the time.
That makes no sense. If Oswald had nothing to lose and knew he was a dead man, why would he deny the crimes he was accused of?
I’m aware that killers often lie but if we take Oswald’s political views and the Gen. Walker(“killer of fascists”) stuff at face value, wouldn’t he have been proud of what he had done(killing Kennedy) if it was what he intended to do? Weren’t the backyard photos part of how Oswald wanted to present himself after killing Gen Walker?
It is ludicrous to believe that a killer in custody will behave in a predictable manner. And yet ” experts ” above claim the ability to know what Oswald ” should ” have said.
Oswald was in custody for about 48 hours. To extrapolate from those 48 hrs what Oswald might have said later in the investigation is simply irrational. The man closest to Oswald felt that he was just itching to brag about his deed and felt that he would have at some point. That was his brother, who knew after talking to Lee that he had done the deed.
“The man closest to Oswald felt that he was just itching to brag about his deed and felt that he would have at some point. That was his brother, who knew after talking to Lee that he had done the deed.”
The man Biologically closest to Oswald, his brother Robert, didn’t even know Lee had a second child weeks before the assassination. He didn’t know Lee as an adult very well.
I’m not arguing that Lee’s denials of responsibility for the murders were the truth. Maybe he was just a really good liar.
I just disagree with your reasoning and amateur psycho analysis.
If Oswald was the 6th floor shooter – and descended those steps he should have been seen by Dougherty on the 5th floor landing, the two secretaries descending and their supervisor on the 4th floor landing, and most significantly Truly, who was steps ahead of Baker – who did see Oswald through the window of the closed lunchroom door. If Oswald had gone through that door Truly would have seen him.
And if Oswald had been the sniper on the 6th floor and got around all of these people – and appeared out of breath and cool, calm and collected, as all the post shooting witnesses claim – then he was the greatest assassin in history and not the deranged nut case his accusers make him out to be.
If Oswald was the Sixth Floor sniper he would have had a white shirt on and not a brown one, and as his brother Robert said, he would have had to practice a lot, which we know he didn’t.
It’s also wrong to mischaracterize Robert’s opinions, as he was very suspicious of the official version of events and in no way can anyone attribute a motive to the self-proclaimed Patsy, especially one of self-aggrandizement after be denied the deed.
I’d also like to point out that Robert Oswald’s lawyer worked out of Clint Merchison’s law office in the Southland building where the Phillps-Veciana-Oswald meeting allegedly took place and where Oswald had previously visited to apply for a job.
Photon:
Just like McAdams, you turn the absence of evidence into proof positive of whatever suits your purpose.
What you are saying is that we don’t know what a killer in custody will do, so therefore Oswald denying committing the crime is evidence of guilt. In other words, a confession or suspicious behavior would be credible evidence of guilt, but also denial is also evidence of guilt.
Seriously, do you believe the words you type?
Aside from the “amateur psychoanalysis” ( not amateur at all) the point is that people on this blog have repeatedly claimed that if Oswald was the assassin we would have admitted it; if he was the assassin he could not be calm nor have reasonable answers( despite those answers often being demonstrably false); if he was the assassin there was no reason for him to claim innocence.
Those beliefs have no basis in fact
Again, we only have 48 hours where Oswald faced questioning, and much less time involved in actual interrogation. How would he have responded to the ballistic evidence? How would he have reacted to confronting the overwhelming evidence of the Tippit murder? We will never know, but if you think that his brother would have absolutely no clue as to what Lee was thinking you are grasping at straws.
Robert Oswald has always been an honorable man and has dealt with horrible adversity about as well as anybody could. He did the best he could for his brother, up to the point of paying for and organizing his funeral when nobody but reporters would even tough the coffin. Bill’s comments about trying to link Robert to some grand conspiracy through his attorney are not only pathetic, but probably libelous.
“the “amateur psychoanalysis” ( not amateur at all) the point is that people on this blog have repeatedly claimed that if Oswald was the assassin we would have admitted it”
Surely not a Freudian slip there Photon?
Photon:
Your side is the one doing amateur psychology on Oswald.
The only FACT is that he denied it. Pretty straightforward.
You, on the other hand, claim that he didn’t mean it because killers are unpredictable and so on. But just making general statements is worthless in a particular case. Your speculation on this issue has absolutely no basis in fact.
That doesn’t mean that he was telling the truth, but stop with the nonsense of accusing people of doing stuff when the fact is that it is you who are playing psychologist.
Photon,
How honorable is a man that barely talks to his nieces, Lee’s daughters, in the decades following his brother’s death? I don’t want to weigh in too much on the personal matters of the Oswald family but Robert’s treatment of his family doesn’t sound too honorable to me.
George DeMordenshildt, who was closer to Lee in 1963 than his brother Robert, didn’t believe Oswald would lie about shooting Kennedy. In contrast, he would’ve been proud and made a political statement out of it. However, that assumes Oswald had a political motive, and it’s never been clear that he had a political motive.
As for Lee’s reasons for lying while in police custody, you’d be on solid ground if you stuck with the argument that you believe Lee lied because most of the evidence points to his guilt. Where you went wrong is the psycho-babble about how he lied because he ‘enjoyed the attention and had nothing to lose’.
“Photon” claims that Robert Oswald “knew after talking to Lee that he had done the deed.” Well folks, Robert said no such thing in his Warren Commission testimony. He did say that he had come to believe his brother was guilty, but made clear that he based that entirely on the circumstantial evidence against him and not on any personal insights:
BOGGS: Have you in your own mind reached any conclusions on whether or not your brother killed President Kennedy?
OSWALD: BASED ON THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE that has been reported in newspapers and over the radio and television, I would have to say that it appears that he did kill President Kennedy.
BOGGS: Would you, having reached that conclusion under the circumstances that you outlined a moment ago, and having known him all of his life, although not too intimately the last year of his life, would you give us any reason for why he may have done this?
OSWALD: No, sir: I could not.
BOGGS: It came as, I would think, a great shock to you?
OSWALD: Yes, sir; it certainly did, and I might add that THE LEE HARVEY OSWALD THAT I KNEW WOULD NOT HAVE KILLED ANYBODY(1H314)
And again later in his testimony:
OSWALD: Sir, as I previously testified to that question, BASED ON THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE that has been put forth and that I have read from the newspapers and general impression of the time that the event took place, and the subsequent following days of that event, that I would be of the opinion, PURELY BASED ON THESE CIRCUMSTANTIAL POINTS, that he did actually fire the rifle that killed the President of the United States and wounded the Governor of Texas, Mr. Connally. (1H448)
Photon, a memo by John Hoover(J.Edgar if you might), reports that there was no proof that the gun that killed Tippitt belonged to Oswald. I’m not ready to claim LHO killed Tippitt.
I think you better post a link to that supposed memo.
The hulls found at the scene of the Tippit shooting matched Oswald’s revolver to the exclusion of all other weapons.
John’s it’s from Jim Tague’s book, LBJ And the Kennedy Killing.
I don’t have that. Can you post a link to the document? Or quote the relevant passage in context?
FBI experts most clearly said the gun belonged to Oswald. Hell . . . Oswald drew it on Nick McDonald in the Texas Theater!
Tague was manipulated by Weisberg.
He also claimed that there was no Mafia.
Not to mention Barry Ernest’s book “The Girl on the Stairs”, which investigated the timing of Vicki Adams’ and Sandra Styles’ descent down the rear stairs of the TSBD from the 4th floor to the first floor after the last shot was fired, neither seeing nor hearing Oswald come down the stairs from the sixth floor – because he was exactly where he said he was: in the 2nd floor lunchroom, where Truly and Baker encountered him, calmly facing down Baker’s gun.
The Warren Commission didn’t want to have Sandra Styles testify after Adams told them that Sandra would confirm what Vicky had said. I think the WC knew what Sandra would say, which would make them(WC)look kinda bad.
Sandra Styles has been interviewed and she did not confirm what Vicky Adams said. She thought they came down later, and that’s supported by the fact that the women didn’t see or hear Truly and Baker, who were coming *up* the stairs at the same time Oswald was going down.
re: Jean Davison, October 8, 2014 @ 8:15 pm
Jean, please tell us which witness(es) testified s/he saw Oswald descendiing the stairs.
It is fascinating that Jean Davison now chooses to reference Sandra Styles’ statements in Styles’ belated interview when months ago Jean argued on this site that Styles’ experience in the TSBD was irrelevant. Jean has been challenged repeatedly regarding why the Warren Commission failed to require Styles to testify before the commission; however apparently now we are expected to accept that Jean knows a great deal about Sandra Styles’ experience on 11.22.63.
No, the letter US Deputy Attorney Martha Joe Stroud sent to the WC in summer 1963 said that Adams’ and Styles’ supervisor, Dorothy Garner, saw them both head down the stairs and the next persons she saw come up the stairs to the 4th floor were Truly and Baker (after they encountered LHO in the 2nd floor lunchroom).
Jean Davison wrote:
Jean leaves the impression that Sandra Styles had a real sense of the timing of when she and Victoria Adams descended the stairs.
If anyone wants to see just how uncertain Sandra Styles was about the timing, they can Google “Sandra Styles Sean Murphy” and read their email exchange.
If the Styles-Murphy email exchange is the interview that she is referencing, Jean’s statement is incomplete and misleading.
If Jean’s information comes from somewhere else, perhaps she can cite her source.
It has been explained many times that the WC discounted Adams’ testimony for a very good reason. In the WR reconstruction that Adams’ testimony is supposed to refute, Oswald left the window and went downstairs at the same time that Truly and Baker were coming up.
The WR argued that if Adams had actually been on the stairs at the same time Oswald was she should’ve run into Truly and Baker, unless they were already in the lunchroom talking to Oswald. So what is your answer to this argument, folks? Why didn’t Adams see Truly and Baker?
No one else saw Oswald on the stairs because almost everyone was outside or at a window watching the President pass by. Doughtery’s testimony about when he was on the 5th floor was confused and inconsistent:
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/doughert.htm
Here’s a second question WC critics seem to avoid. The back stairway was the sniper’s obvious immediate escape route. How many of you think it was just a coincidence that Oswald was spotted at that particular time right about where the fleeing killer would’ve been?
Here is that letter:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0wMCBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT192&lpg=PT192&dq=Martha+Joe+Stroud+styles&source=bl&ots=raJ0laOGu-&sig=q5KzgGj0gqat_n47N2GxFuAftMw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sE43VLbgIo2nyATzzoDABw&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Martha%20Joe%20Stroud%20styles&f=false
Scroll down.
Taking it at face value, it’s perfectly consistent with Oswald having already gone down, and been confronted by Baker and Truly.
But then you have the problem that Victoria Adams explicitly told the Warren Commission that she saw nobody on the stairs as she went down.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/adams_v.htm
Michael,
I don’t believe what I said was inaccurate or misleading. The CT claim is that the WC should’ve called Styles to testify because she could have confirmed Adams’ time line. Barry Ernest interviewed her. Did he quote her confirming Adams’ timing?
Here’s one of the Sean Murphy posts you mentioned.
QUOTE:
Sandra Styles mentioned to me that this author had contacted her some years ago. She even knew the name of the book (which I hadn’t heard of
myself).
Sandra claimed she told Ernest what she was now telling me: that she and Victoria Adams did *not* go to the rear stairs anything close to as
quickly as Victoria had claimed.
I find it a little worrying that there is no mention of Sandra’s counter-version in any of the promotional material linked here. Why is the
book not titled ‘The GirlS On The Stairs’? It will be interesting to see how Ernest deals with Sandra’s information.
Sean
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.assassination.jfk/W7McW4aaYMc/rmbO883N__wJ
That was in 2011, and I believe Styles has also said she could be wrong, which anyone could be. That’s still not confirmation of Victoria Adams’ time line.
“It has been explained many times that the WC discounted Adams’ testimony for a very good reason.”
In point of fact, they were only able to do so thanks to David Belin’s insertion of fraudulent statements into Adams’ testimony. As she told Barry Ernest, she saw a young African-American employee at the bottom of the stairs, not, as her printed WC testimony would have us believe, Bill Shelley and Billy Lovelady. If I remember Ernest’s book correctly, Belin may have had an assist from Jim Leavelle on this point.
Sandra Styles confirmed the fraud when she told Ernest that she too did NOT see Lovelady or Shelley upon reaching the first floor.
Whether Lovelady’s claim to have spotted “Vicky” at the bottom of the rear stairs after coming into the rear of the TSBD 3-4 minutes after the shooting was prompted off-the-record during his testimony or fraudulently inserted afterward by Belin or Joseph Ball is anyone’s guess. But it didn’t happen.
The only logical conclusion that can be reached is that Adams and Dorothy Garner accurately related the speed of Adams’ flight with Styles down the stairs: it occurred almost immediately after the shooting, and the women reached the bottom of the stairs before Truly and Baker did. If this were not the case, Belin would not have had to manufacture an encounter with two TSBD employees who were known to have spent several minutes outside before returning to the building near the back stairs.
Did Belin manufacture something, or did Adams start telling interesting stories years later?
You know about witnesses whose stories get more “interesting” over time, right?
Jean Davison wrote:
Jean, I wrote that your statement was incomplete and misleading, which it was. Why can’t you get that right?
Inaccurate and incomplete are two different words.
Even now, in your response, your claims are incomplete and misleading – designed to leave a false impression.
Here are some excerpts from that Sean Murphy – Sandra Styles email exchange.
On April 29, 2011 Sean Murphy wrote:
“I would like to apologise to Barry Ernest
for having on a previous occasion called his integrity as a researcher into question. The gap between what Sandra has told me and what Barry says she told him is not at all as large as I had alleged. My apologies, Barry.”
Styles told Murphy:
“As to the timing of the whole thing, I wasn’t sure then and can’t say for certain now. I only go by what seems reasonable. I can only report my personal recollections the best I can. I was easily led back then, lol. If she said we went down immediately, I thought that must be true. If the interviewer said that was not possible due to the amount of time it took the police to get over there, I re-thought it and accepted HIS assessment. The truth may lie somewhere in between. What is logical is that, in all the pandemonium, it is unlikely that we would hear shots and head for the back stairs!”
Also:
“My hesitancy on the timing in all the interviews probably accounts for why they did not pursue further information from me. As I told everyone who ever asked, I had no real sense of that aspect of the investigation. Still, logic tells me it had to take a couple of minutes at least for things to sink in and to make the decision to go. Therefore, I’ll give up a few of those minutes but still don’t remember it’s being a matter of a few seconds. However, I yield to wiser heads if the evidence is there.”
Also:
“It all goes back to the fact that I could be totally off on my calculations, and anything is possible. I cannot swear in any venue that what I thought was actually true. I still see it all in my mind’s eye and have not changed my opinion about what we did and when, but I could be mistaken about the number of minutes.”
In my initial response I wrote that your statement left the impression that Sandra Styles had a real sense of the timing of when she and Victoria Adams descended the stairs and that your statement was incomplete and misleading.
I stand by that.
Finally Jean, you wrote:
Sean Murphy covered this at the very same Google group that you linked to.
But Jean, I don’t see how your comments are really germane to my initial post.
Re: McAdams “Did Belin manufacture something, or did Adams start telling interesting stories years later?”
Well, considering that, AS I JUST STATED, Sandra Styles also did not see Lovelady and Shelley at the bottom of the stairs, I think you’re going to have trouble turning this into a Vicky Adams fantasy. I have no doubt you’ll continue trying though.
Michael,
I said “inaccurate” rather than “incomplete” deliberately because anyone’s excerpts from the Styles/Murphy e-mail will be incomplete, even yours.
I’m sorry that I didn’t make myself clear. I wasn’t arguing that Styles was the better witness or “had a real sense of the timing.” I was just saying that she disagreed with Adams’ time line.
However, I should’ve stressed the main point about Victoria Adams, which is this. Contrary to popular opinion, her testimony doesn’t show that Oswald wasn’t on the stairs.
If Oswald was the sniper and met up with Baker on the second floor, then he was descending at the same time Baker/Truly were coming up, and Adams should’ve seen or heard them. She didn’t. Adams’ own testimony refutes her by showing that she wasn’t on the stairs at the crucial time.
“. . . The CT claim is that the WC should’ve called Styles to testify because she could have confirmed Adams’ time line. . . ”
That is a presumptuous statement. I believe a conspiracy was behind the assassination of President Kennedy, AND that Sandra Styles should have been called to testify because she was among a handful of people that could provide detail to help establish an accurate and thorough timeline of the events immediately following the murder. You are distorting the issue by suggesting some need Styles to confirm Adams’ timeline; Styles should have been called regardless of whose timeline she might or might not have confirmed. Her testimony might have been messy, but the commission and their investigators were obliged to hear her, and it was their responsibility to establish a timeline based on ALL of the witness testimony, not a select few. After all, authorities accepted Howard Brennan’s testimony when it suited.
You might simply admit they erred in their failure to call Styles as a witness and this debate would soon lose steam. Similarly you might admit that the WC made hundreds of similar ‘errors,’ if we are to believe that Rankin erred when he suggested they should determine what Oswald studied at the language institute.
Jean, I wish you would stop introducing comments about Baker/Truly and what could and couldn’t have happened. That has nothing to do with the comments I’ve made. If you want to argue that with others, fine.
This is the part of your statement that I took exception with:
You did not give a source for said “interview,” you furnished no quotes, failed to say when it occurred, and you left the reader with an incomplete and misleading impression.
A reading of the email exchange between Styles and Sean Murphy shows that at one time she went along with what Victoria Adams said. Did you mention that? Why not?
According to Styles, at one time she took the word of an investigator that it took her and Adams 15-20 minutes to make it downstairs. Did you report that? Why not?
Anyone can read that email exchange with Sean Murphy and see that Sandra Styles’ recollections about the timing, by her own admissions, are basically worthless.
Did you convey any of this to the reader? You did not.
Michael, (10/14,9:27)
Here are all the posts from Sean Murphy about Styles that turned up in a search:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/alt.assassination.jfk/sandra$20AND$20styles$20AND$20authorname$3A%22sean$20murphy%22
As I read it, Styles thought they came down sooner than Adams recalled, although when others disagreed with her she wavered and conceded she could’ve been wrong.
You say my comments were incomplete and misleading, Michael, and yet I notice that you lifted the following out of context (unintentionally, I’m sure), when you quoted Murphy saying:
“I would like to apologise to Barry Ernest
for having on a previous occasion called his integrity as a researcher into question. The gap between what Sandra has told me and what Barry says she told him is not at all as large as I had alleged. My apologies, Barry.”
Look at the first paragraph that you left out:
“A couple of years back, I made contact with Sandra Styles. She told me
that she felt Victoria Adams had significantly exaggerated the speed
with which the pair descended from the fourth to the first floor after
the shooting.”
I paid more attention to that part, you to the other.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/alt.assassination.jfk/sandra$20AND$20styles$20AND$20authorname$3A%22sean$20murphy%22/alt.assassination.jfk/3Dsk9bpdySI
I asked you about this, and you didn’t address it.
Explain how Belin “inserted fraudulent statements” in Adams’ testimony.
As NYT reporter Philip Shenon points out in an interview broadcast on CSPAN (http://www.c-span.org/video/?321472-1/discussion-warren-commission) it wasn’t at all unusual for Oswald to display calm in the midst of chaotic situations. He supposedly took a shot at Gen. Walker, came home and was cool as a cucumber.
Oswald was arrested following the altercation on Canal St with Carlos Bringuier, again calmly requested he be allowed to see an FBI agent names Quigley. Oswald allegedly visited both the Cuban & Soviet consulates demanding a visa. Again, he was unsuccessful and calmly made he way back home.
Most notably, as Oswald was being endlessly interrogated by the Dallas police & the FBI for allegedly shooting the president everybody involved noted how calm, cool & collected he remained through it all. So, I’m not so sure the fact he appeared “calm” while being encountered in the TBD lunch room is all that indicative of his guilt or innocence in the matter.
Didn’t newsman Robert McNeil also claim to have run into the TSBD looking for a phone, and ending up asking none other than Oswald where was the nearest phone? So here we have Oswald, in the course of calmly making his way out of the building, helpfully directing not one but at least two frantic journalists to the nearest phone?
Sound like someone who just minutes earlier fired three shots from the sixth floor and assassinated the President?
McNeil never claimed that. Manchester claimed that. Probably, Manchester was mistaken, and the encounter was really with Allman.
Probably not. Here’s MacNeil telling the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfEwPBmTF5A
Start at 22:38 to get the first part of his story, then skip to 38:00 if you don’t want to watch it all (but it’s all good). MacNeil says Manchester told him Oswald said a blond guy asked him for the phone. Allman had dark hair. Here’s a photo of Allman from the time: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-reporters-chance-encounter-with-jfks-assassin/
So your assumptions make no sense.
You’ll like Lehrer though. He’s knows the program. He says that Tippit was shot when Oswald was arrested (inaccurate factoid) and he knows the cop who ran up the knoll was just chasing echoes; the amazing mind reader that he is.
I don’t see McNeil endorsing Manchester’s inference in that video. Likewise, in the video “Beyond JFK” the interviewer confronts McNeil with that claim, and McNeil just replies that Manchester “writes it so” in Death of a President.
So what? MacNeil easily explained that he was so “blinkered” by the need to find a phone that he did not have memory of the face of the man. He definitely has no dispute with the accounting, merely that as a newsman of integrity, he is not able to confirm or deny it. The circumstantial evidence suggest it’s true, per Manchester. It may or may not be so.
You arbitrarily suggested it wasn’t true because Allman was there, but you were totally wrong about that possibility (Oswald being the primary source for “a blond guy”); a fact you conveniently ignored. Typical.
We are left with two newsmen being directed to a phone by Oswald, one blond per LHO’s first hand accounting, the other per the first hand accounting of a dark haired newsman. Sounds to me like he would have lit your cigarette for you if you asked him to. (I don’t smoke though)
Factoid…
Forget trying to duplicate the shots. Each of the members of the Warren Commission should have tried hiding a rifle on the sixth floor, sprinting down four flights, buying a soda, and describing how easy it all was.
The Warren Commission did have an FBI man try it, and the timing worked out.
And when Baker confronted Oswald, he did not yet have the soda. Baker saw him just as he was entering the second floor lunchroom.
Why did the WC not hear testimony from Pierce Allman?
Exactly, Marie. But they probably ignored the idea of doing that, if they thought about it at all, just like they decided not to investigate the rumor of Oswald being an FBI informant.
The Warren Commission’s re-enactment of the lunchroom encounter was taken to pieces by Howard Roffman in his book, Presumed Guilty. The book is out of print, but the text is available online. Here’s the relevant chapter:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/PG/PGchp8.html
Roffman writes that “From beginning to end, the execution of the reconstruction was in disregard of the known actions of the participants, stretching – if not by intent, certainly in effect – the time consumed for Baker to have arrived on the second floor and shrinking the time for the “assassin’s” descent.”
Officer Baker’s reconstructed journey began at the first shot, but he testified that the real journey had actually begun at the final shot, five to eight seconds later. Baker recalled that in the two reconstructions, “we walked” and then “we kind of run”, but several witnesses, and the Malcolm Couch news film, show that he ran quickly into and through the building.
The Secret Service agent representing the “assassin” appears to have set off without ejecting the final bullet shell, which would have added a minimum of 2.3 seconds, and without squeezing out of the narrow “sniper’s nest”. He did not take the time to hide the rifle under several heavy boxes, but merely “placed the rifle on the floor.”
Roffman also points out that the timing question is not the only aspect of the lunchroom encounter that exonerates Oswald. Baker’s location when he spotted Oswald in the vestibule shows that Oswald could only plausibly have entered the vestibule from the direction of the offices, not the stairway. In other words, the alleged assassin had been on the first floor, not the sixth.
I know, I know – Roffman is a “buff”, maybe even a “conspiracist”, and his book is full of “factoids”. I’d advise anyone who isn’t put off by these childish insults to read Presumed Guilty and decide for yourself how reliable it is.
Incidentally, to find out what the word “buff” really means, check out Roffman’s photography books!
‘Presumed Guilty’ is an excellent book and it’s totally free to read online. I highly recommend
Very interesting story and again we must remember that whether Oswald fired or not is not the be all and end all of conspiratorial theories. Even as a shooter there may be more to the picture than him acting alone.
What is interesting to me is that Allman seemed certain the shots came from the TSBD but still wanted to enter to make a phone call. If it was me I’d be pointing up to the window like the workers on the fifth floor and very hesitant to enter a building potentially harboring guns and assassins.
As for Oswald, whether he was a shooter or not he would probably appear fairly calm. Assuming he was a shooter it’s his only means of escape: to appear calm as anything else would be incriminating.
“What is interesting to me is that Allman seemed certain the shots came from the TSBD but still wanted to enter to make a phone call.”
Good point. It’s interesting how there were supposedly so many witnesses who heard shots from TSBD yet most people ran to the railroad tracks after the shooting stopped and the Police didn’t search the Sixth floor or secure the Book Depository building until 30-40 minutes later.
Even Harold Norman and Bonnie Rae Williams, who were on the Fifth floor at the time of the shooting and claimed to have heard shots fired above them, followed the crowd to the railroad tracks and didn’t do anything after the shooting that suggests they thought there was a shooter in the building.