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The assassination reports of Pierce Allman WFAA-radio news


Paul Rigby

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1) 1963: November 22

Reporting from phone within TSBD, just a few minutes after assassination.

http://youtu.be/1tsR8PGx2ZE

2) 1963: November 22, circa 1350hrs & shortly after (with edit between his narratives?), CST

Interviewed just after the arrest of Oswald

http://youtu.be/JGGErAUc1x8

http://www.otrcat.com/john-kennedy-p-1453.html?products_id=1453

3) 1963: November 23

Interviewed by Secret Servicemen (see below, 5: “My memory was so vivid that during the interview with the Secret Service the next day, they asked me to recall the timed sequence, and I came out to six and a half seconds.”)

4) 1964: January 29

Interviewed by Secret Servicemen, CD 354, SS Rowley memorandum of 5 February 1964:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do;jsessionid=DA0615661C7103CFBA17F9A42BD56900?docId=10755&relPageId=5

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/A%20Disk/Allman%20Pierce/Item%2003.pdf

5) 1998: November

The Witnesses: What they saw then. Who they are now.

by Joe Nick Patoski

Partial transcript here:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/witnesses

Full here:

http://karws.gso.uri.edu/marsh/jfk-conspiracy/transcripts_1.html

TM: Next we have here Mr. Pierce Allman.... What was your position at WFAA radio?

Pierce: I was manager of programming and production.

TM: Could you tell me where you were November 22, 1963?

Pierce: Early in the morning I was back at the studio, watching the landing, and I was so struck by the natural political mastery of Mr. Kennedy and watching him as he arrived, how he worked the crowds, just had an innate sense to work them. I decided at the last minute to go over during the noon hour and catch the end of the parade. I asked a sales associate there at the station if he wanted to walk over. So, we walked over, ended up standing on the corner, directly opposite the School book depository building, and I'm standing right next to Mr. Brennan, the retired pipefitter or something who ended up giving a lot of testimony to the Warren Commission. It was a pretty good view of everything that happened. One unfortunate, ironic observation I made on the way over, I remember looking at all of the buildings and rooftops and windows, and thinking there's no way the Secret Service, or intelligence, or whoever it is, could cover all these parapets, and all of the openings, and as we neared the corner there, I remember turning over my shoulder to Terry walking with me and saying, 'If anyone were ever going to attempt an assassination, it seems like this would be the likely spot,' glancing up at all the open windows on the depository building and all of the open rooftops.... The only time I was really nervous during the weekend, was during the funeral cortege: very, very nervous, because had there been a conspiracy, that was the one time most of the leadership of the free world had been at one place at one time. And our early warning system was at best 90% efficient. All it would have taken was one airplane. That was...very much on my mind right after the incident. I was quite struck by the persona of Jackie and Jack. Mr. Kennedy had a wave...it wasn't a wave, it was sort of an acknowledgment, the guy looked great, just looked great. And so did Jackie. I don't remember John and Nellie that much. And the first shot, that loud explosion -- it wasn't a sharp, flat crack sound at all, the first shot. It didn't enter my mind at all that it was a shot. I thought, 'Now that was poor taste, this is firecrackers...' Then bam! the second one. And you realized indeed that it was shooting, then the third shot. My memory was so vivid that during the interview with the Secret Service the next day, they asked me to recall the timed sequence, and I came out to six and a half seconds. But on the second shot, I glanced up, my gaze stopped one floor below on the depository building, I saw the three guys looking out of the window, looking up. And I went back to the scene on the street and it was pretty obvious Kennedy had been hit. And, as the car drove off, a uniformed policeman came over and said, 'Everybody down.' On about the second shot, we all got down and of course popped back up as the car sped off. As the car sped off, that's when the Secret Service man from the back had vaulted over and pushed Jackie back in the seat, she was trying to come up, and that's when the body assumed that grotesque position we saw on the way to Parkland. Then I ran across the street, spoke to the Newmans and said, 'Stop!' And why we were running that direction, I couldn't tell you. It was just sort of a flow. I stopped and said, 'Are you ok?' He said, 'Yeah, but they got the president. They blew the side of his head in.' I remember thinking, 'I've got to get to a telephone.' But we continued up the little hill there -- I won't say 'knoll' -- the little hill...

Bill: That's all right.

Pierce Allman: And Bob Jackson from the Times-Herald was running behind me. And why we went up there, I don't know, except there was just sort of a movement up there. And then I turned around, ran back down the hill, ran up the sidewalk, went into the depository building, asked the guy where the phone was, went inside, got on the phone, called the station, and had trouble getting through. By the time I got through, said here's what happened, I was more concerned about the implications of what to say. I was fairly sure that...first of all, he was hit. You can't go on air and say the president's been killed. You don't know that. So you can't do that. And I realized you just can't do this. You can't go on the air and say the leader of the free world has just been cut down, you know, in Dallas, during the noonday parade. So I [don't] remember exactly. I heard the tape later, saying that he was hit. Witnesses reported he was hit, slumped forward, you know, and more later. Put the phone down, ran upstairs, then realized, whoop, need the phone, went back down, actually hung up one time, and then realized what I had done, and called back and said, 'Just leave the line open, strap on a tape.' A little later, they did bring, they brought Oswald...they brought the rifle down. A distinct impression: and that was, while I was on the phone, no one ever challenged me. No one ever said, 'Who are you? Who are you calling?' And no one took charge. See, at the time, what you really had was a local homicide. It wasn't against federal law to kill a president. But no one took charge. Lot of uniforms milling around, a lot of plainclothesmen milling around. No one ever said, 'Stop! Hit the wall!,' you know.... Nobody. So it was just this constant milling around. Finally, sometime later, you got back to the station before I did (nodding towards the Newmans) because it was sometime later when a gray-haired guy in a gray suit said [he wanted] to know who I was and what I was doing. And I identified myself and he suggested I wrap it up. I identified him later as Army intelligence. They said that was inaccurate, he might have been CIA or Secret Service, more likely. And when I tried to leave the building I couldn't because it was cordoned off. So I had to stay inside for a while. And when I went outside, [i saw] clusters of people around transistor radios, and I realized what was happening. And sure enough, by that time, what was it, 98% of the [television] sets in the United States were on. So it was birth, the advent of electronic journalism, for better or for worse.

TM: It sounds like once you saw what you saw, you were in newsman mode.

Pierce: Very much. I was really concerned, he was not pronounced dead until after.... In fact I didn't know he had been pronounced dead until I got back to the station, walked into the door, and I've forgotten who I talked to, Jay Watson, I think it was, was temporary PD [program director] on the TV side, and he said, 'Get into the studio.' I said, 'What's happened? How's the president?' He said, 'He's been declared dead.' I said, 'okay, that doesn't surprise me.' But I could not say that...the other thing that goes through your mind very honestly is, 'okay, you realize the president's been shot. Is that merely, if you'll allow that term, an assassination? Is it a coup? Is it a conspiracy?' And if you go on the air and say the president's been shot, who's listening, and what does that trigger?

TM: Are you thinking of all these things?

Pierce: Yeah, yeah, yes. This is going through [my] mind, the whole time I was writing and looking for a phone, and I'm thinking I need to call in. No. You can't say the president's dead, even though your emotions are saying, your eyes are saying, that it was a bad hit. You can't say that. You don't know it for a fact and the implications of saying that are staggering. So you really have to hold off of that. I don't think the conspiracy thing, it was prevalent in everyone's mind, especially after the, uh, you know, the Oswald incident [when he was killed]. The Secret Service when they came to see us a couple days later, they wanted to talk. They went through the timing, the sequence, where did you go, what did you say, what did you do, and they kept going through that. They wanted to know about hand gestures, the whole thing. And they said, 'Are you familiar with the testimony of Lee Harvey Oswald?' They said, 'He states that as he was leaving the depository building, a young man with a crew cut rushed up, identified himself as a newsman and asked him where the phone was.' And they said, 'Your sequence, your gestures, your...everything you've said corroborates exactly what he has said. Can you give us an identification?' I said, 'No.' And we went through this time after time. I said, 'Guys, this is going to be power of suggestion. All I can remember is White Male, and about this height, and the whole thing, not the dark hair, the gestures, and whatever.' At one time, somebody, I think it was the House Select Committee wanted to see if I would undergo hypnosis. I said, 'Sure, I'd do that.' I was fascinated. Anyway, I said, 'Are you saying that I asked Oswald where the phone was?' And they said, 'Yes,' and they wanted an identification. And I couldn't ID him, even after looking at the pictures, you know, later on.

TM: What do you think when you look back at all this? You're an eyewitness to history, this terrible event. Do you feel like time has given you any greater perspective on what you saw then, today? Or was it just coincidence?

Pierce: I think it was coincidence. But insofar as an event that you remember, an event that no one is ever prepared for, cataclysmic, traumatic in the classic sense of the term, changing a lot of things, very much a milestone for electronic journalism, probably for laws -- at that time, as I say, it was not against a federal law to kill a president -- made people think afresh, I think, about the mortality of the office, the line of succession. I think it brought some profound changes in Dallas. And it was something Dallas did not deal with until the 25th Anniversary and the creation of the Sixth Floor Museum. One of the interesting overriding impressions, one of the vivid memories I had is the guys from the BBC. By the time I got back to the station that night, Germans were there, Japanese, BBC, and you realize how small the world really is, and how fast communications were at that time, and of course, that pales beside now. The BBC asked me to assemble a crew for a special broadcast and I got together some folks, and afterwards, this is after the Oswald thing, they said [assumes Brit voice], 'You know, we were terribly shocked about Mr. Kennedy, but we weren't at all surprised you did away with Oswald.' I said, 'Beg your pardon?' They said, 'Oh, no no. We never expected him to come to trial.' I said, 'Why?' They said, 'You Texans are a violent lot. You carry guns, you don't discuss, you go shoot it out. We see it all the time on the telly at home. Wyatt Earp. Bat Masterson.' And I thought, wow, what represents us overseas, what is the image? After you travel for a while, I think even today, there is an association. There's no association with Tennessee and with Newman Luther King, or L.A. and Bobby Kennedy, but Dallas and JFK, I think, are inextricably intertwined forever, for eternity. And why it has bred the industry that it has is not totally beyond thinking since political assassinations seem to fascinate everyone. I'm rather convinced that Oswald did act alone. I think physically it can be done. The adrenaline is flowing, the motivation, I don't think we'll ever know. Unfortunately it may have died with Oswald.

6) Undated:

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/White%20Assassination%20Clippings%20Folders/Chronology/Chron%20003.pdf

Transcript here, page 2:

BBC tape - The Day the President Died

Pierce Allman, a Dallas television executive (WFAA?) "strolled over to the curb on Elm Street which is just at the intersection of Elm and Houston, right across from the Texas School Book Depository."

On tape at 250': Pierce Allman, who was standing outside the Texas School Book Depository recalls a few hours later those few dramatic seconds.

"Then came this big, shiny Lincoln car with the resident and Mrs. Kennedy and I remarked again how different I thought she looked than the photographs which I had seen of her - I had never seen her in person. She was wearing a lovely pink suit. Well, she was on the left hand side of the car, the President was on the right. He was having trouble keeping his hair out of his eyes because of the breeze, travelling slowly, I'd say about 12 to 15 miles an hour, (this.is difficult to judge), and they turned the corner and as they came by me I broke into applause.

"And just after they went by me there was a big loud BOOM. It was a reverberating explosion. It was not a sharp, flat crack that one normally associates with a rifle and this is why it didn't even enter my mind at the time that it could be a shot. It was just a BOOM, a big, dull sounding explosion, rather like a shotgun fired in a concrete chamber that reverberates: No one sprang into action, there were mixed reactions, everyone was sort of looking around like I was, and then another very deliberate BOOM! And I looked and the President had slumped•- I thought at the time he was ducking - but now I know of course that he was slumping. He had slumped forward, his left arm was thrown up, Mrs. Kennedy's left hand was on his left arm. The Governor and Mrs. Connally were in the jump seats, the little seats behind the front seat, and the Governor was half-turned and it was the second shot that got him. The President - then there was another dull, one of these booms. These were deliberately spaced things, there was no haste, no panic, no automatic rapidity to them at all, just a Boom. Boom - BOOM!

A very dramatic thing, I can't forget, it at all, I keep hearing the shots. And on the third one the President then - instead of slumping forward it looked like he was, he - he jerked back or was thrown back a little bit. And Mrs. Kennedy then was halfway out of the seat and a Secret Service man - I presume he was - a Secret Service man was then over Mrs. Kennedy. And the car had stopped only momentarily and then immediately sped away at top speed. "And there was a couple on the other side of the street who were on the ground, and immediately after this happened a policeman came towards me, drawing his gun. It was after the third shot that everything erupted, and guns appeared from all directions but they were afraid to fire, naturally, because of the crowd and they didn't know where to fire, quite frankly. And a policeman threw me to the ground, said, 'Hit the dirt', and I got up, immediately, ran across the street because I thought this young couple had been hit, and I said, 'Are you all right?' And he was beating the ground with his fist, saying, 'My God, they shot him! They shot him!'"

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As the car sped off, that's when the Secret Service man from the back had vaulted over and pushed Jackie back in the seat, she was trying to come up, and that's when the body assumed that grotesque position we saw on the way to Parkland.

Is it possible that this confirms that JFK's shoe was above the door sill on the way to Parkland?

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1) 1963: November 22

Reporting from phone within TSBD, just a few minutes after assassination.

http://youtu.be/1tsR8PGx2ZE

2) 1963: November 22, circa 1350hrs & shortly after (with edit between his narratives?), CST

Interviewed just after the arrest of Oswald

http://youtu.be/JGGErAUc1x8

http://www.otrcat.com/john-kennedy-p-1453.html?products_id=1453

So, in his first broadcast report, Allman is unquestionably reliant upon the eyewitness testimony of others.

By his second - at least on my list - he is suddenly himself an eyewitness.

In order to facilitate this shift, Allman changes location from the corner of Houston & Elm, and locates himself instead on the "left" side of, presumably, Elm, whereupon he now remembers that the shooting "happened pretty much in front of me" at a distance of "10 feet".

Very convincing, I must say.

Much more consistent is his determination to establish the TSBD as the location of the marksman: in the first report, the listener is invited to ponder only "from which upper window" the shooting emanated, while in the second, we learn that the TSBD was the "logical place" from which to fire.

Not exactly antithetical to the pre-planned fiction, was he?

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3) 1963: November 23

Interviewed by Secret Servicemen (see below, 5: “My memory was so vivid that during the interview with the Secret Service the next day, they asked me to recall the timed sequence, and I came out to six and a half seconds.”)

4) 1964: January 29

Interviewed by Secret Servicemen, CD 354, SS Rowley memorandum of 5 February 1964:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do;jsessionid=DA0615661C7103CFBA17F9A42BD56900?docId=10755&relPageId=5

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/A%20Disk/Allman%20Pierce/Item%2003.pdf

"My memory was so vivid..." that he couldn't remember whether it was Oswald he met on the steps of the TSBD, or an alien.

Again, I am persuaded that this is an observer we can trust, but only because I have a side-line in used cars.

And what need for a late January 1964 interview with him when, according to Allman, he had been intensively debriefed - when his memory was "vivid," no less - by the same organisation (the Secret Service) the day after the assassination?

And where is that interview? Have I missed it?

Is this really a man in whom we should repose any trust?

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Thanks for those links Paul,

In his first report, you can hear Allman is out of breath and hyper from having run about 50 feet and just witnessed the shooting, though I think his confusion is understandable, and as a journalist, he knows he must be as accurate as possible about what he knows.

After making his first report, he apparently went up to the second floor - how and why did he do that? To go to the men's room? To buy a coke?

Then realizing the TSBD is becoming the center of the action he goes back to the phone and calls his news desk back and tells them to run a tape and keep the line open, so they should have a recording of whatever was described happening there at the time.

For Oswald to have directed Allman and his associate to the phone - I still haven't seen a photo or location of the TSBD lobby phone - Oswald must have just come down the steps from the second floor and still had the coke in his hand, but I don't think it odd that Allman couldn't positively ID Oswald as the guy who directed him to the phone.

The videos that go with the tape also show a lot of the front door of the TSBD, and how they conjugated there - including Howard Brennan and Lovelady, who must have come back to the front after being out back with Shelley.

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[...]

In his first report, you can hear Allman is out of breath and hyper from having run about 50 feet and just witnessed the shooting...

[...]

Bill,

I think he was out of breath from running a bit more than 50 feet.

From his 1998 full text, unedited interview with Joe Bill Patoski:

Pierce Allman: "As the car sped off, that's when the Secret Service man from the back had vaulted over and pushed Jackie back in the seat, she was trying to come up, and that's when the body assumed that grotesque position we saw on the way to Parkland. Then I ran across the street, spoke to the Newmans and said, 'Stop!' And why we were running that direction, I couldn't tell you. It was just sort of a flow. I stopped and said, 'Are you ok?' He said, 'Yeah, but they got the president. They blew the side of his head in.' I remember thinking, 'I've got to get to a telephone.' But we continued up the little hill there -- I won't say 'knoll' -- the little hill..."

Bill: "That's all right."

Pierce Allman: "And Bob Jackson from the Times-Herald was running behind me. And why we went up there, I don't know, except there was just sort of a movement up there. And then I turned around, ran back down the hill, ran up the sidewalk, went into the depository building, asked the guy where the phone was, went inside, got on the phone, called the station, and had trouble getting through."

--Tommy :sun

Questions for everyone:

Earlier in this full text, unedited 1998 interview with Joe Bill Patoski, Allman said that he and his sidekick Terry Ford were standing near Howard Brennan during the assassination. Are there any photographs or films showing Allman or Ford near Brennan at the time?

In the full text, unedited interview with Patoski, Allman says something which I find to be very confusing. In relaying what he'd told the Secret Service when they tried to get him to ID Oswald as the guy he'd asked about the telephone, Allman says: "I said, 'Guys, this is going to be power of suggestion. All I can remember is White Male, and about this height, and the whole thing, not the dark hair, the gestures, and whatever.'" [emphasis added] Question: Is the "not" a typo? And if not, what does he mean by "not the dark hair?" (Compare this to what he is quoted as saying in the highly-edited version for the Texas Monthly magazine: "I said, ‘Guys, this is going to be power of suggestion. All I can remember is white male with dark hair, and slender, and his gesture toward the phone.’")

In the youtube video, Allman tells another radio man,"Frank," that one witness saw a man with a gun at a second floor window, and another witness saw a man with a gun at a fourth floor window. Allman said that both he and the police had spoken with both witnesses. Does anyone know the identity of these two witnesses?

In a November 1963 live phone interview in the youtube video, Allman said that the limousine was in the middle of the street, had just passed him, and only about ten feet from him when the shooting started. Thoughts, anyone?

Edited by Thomas Graves
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I include this for no other reason than that it made me smile:

Cheney: Protests “Crazy,” Obama “A Train Wreck”

Posted on October 11th, 2011 11:50am by Glenn Hunter

http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2011/10/11/cheney-protesters-crazy-obama-a-train-wreck/

Former Vice President Dick Cheney may be thinner these days, outfitted with a permanent heart pump, and clad in two kinds of shoes due to a leg problem. But he’s still as bluntly outspoken as ever, taking aim at President Barack Obama, his old nemesis The New York Times, and the Occupy Wall Street movement during a Dallas visit flogging his new memoir, In My Time...

The Highland Park visit by Cheney–who was accompanied by his wife, Lynne–was arranged by mega-Realtors Allie Beth and Pierce Allman. Their Dallas company has the listing on the Gillon Avenue mansion (price: $9.65 million). It also handled the sale of the Cheneys’ $3 million house on Euclid when the Cheneys left for Washington D.C., to join the George W. Bush administration.

The same Pierce Allman?

Er, yes.

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Hour’s-worth of edited highlights of WFAA radio’s coverage of the assassination’s aftermath. The selection opens with Allman’s interview numbered 2) above:

http://www.musicbiatch.com/download/8J7H1gdg8Ug/jfks-assassination-11-22-63-wfaa-radio-dallas.mp3

Edited by Paul Rigby
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Thanks for those links Paul,

In his first report, you can hear Allman is out of breath and hyper from having run about 50 feet and just witnessed the shooting, though I think his confusion is understandable, and as a journalist, he knows he must be as accurate as possible about what he knows.

Bill,

I find this impossible to buy.

Is it likely or probable that a professional journalist would forget, or merely be too modest to mention, that he had just observed the impact of bullets on a president?

Worse still for this argument, we have a directly comparable example in that of James Altgens, who, like Allman, makes haste to report his observations to his office, and yet still manages to recall that he saw the bullets impacting.

Then let's turn to Allman's alleged concern for accuracy.

Given his journey to the knoll, on what basis did Allman preclude either that location, or any other, in deference to the claims of an upper window of the TSBD?

What was his basis for doing so? What made him so sure? He had, after all, reached this remarkable conclusion while walking back from the knoll to the TSBD. What investigation was possible in the course of this journey?

Was this insistence compatible with responsible journalism?

Paul

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[...]

In his first report, you can hear Allman is out of breath and hyper from having run about 50 feet and just witnessed the shooting...

[...]

Bill,

I think he was out of breath from running a bit more than 50 feet.

From his 1998 full text, unedited interview with Joe Bill Patoski:

Pierce Allman: "As the car sped off, that's when the Secret Service man from the back had vaulted over and pushed Jackie back in the seat, she was trying to come up, and that's when the body assumed that grotesque position we saw on the way to Parkland. Then I ran across the street, spoke to the Newmans and said, 'Stop!' And why we were running that direction, I couldn't tell you. It was just sort of a flow. I stopped and said, 'Are you ok?' He said, 'Yeah, but they got the president. They blew the side of his head in.' I remember thinking, 'I've got to get to a telephone.' But we continued up the little hill there -- I won't say 'knoll' -- the little hill..."

Bill: "That's all right."

Pierce Allman: "And Bob Jackson from the Times-Herald was running behind me. And why we went up there, I don't know, except there was just sort of a movement up there. And then I turned around, ran back down the hill, ran up the sidewalk, went into the depository building, asked the guy where the phone was, went inside, got on the phone, called the station, and had trouble getting through."

--Tommy :sun

Questions for everyone:

Earlier in this full text, unedited 1998 interview with Joe Bill Patoski, Allman said that he and his sidekick Terry Ford were standing near Howard Brennan during the assassination. Are there any photographs or films showing Allman or Ford near Brennan at the time?

In the full text, unedited interview with Patoski, Allman says something which I find to be very confusing. In relaying what he'd told the Secret Service when they tried to get him to ID Oswald as the guy he'd asked about the telephone, Allman says: "I said, 'Guys, this is going to be power of suggestion. All I can remember is White Male, and about this height, and the whole thing, not the dark hair, the gestures, and whatever.'" [emphasis added] Question: Is the "not" a typo? And if not, what does he mean by "not the dark hair?" (Compare this to what he is quoted as saying in the highly-edited version for the Texas Monthly magazine: "I said, ‘Guys, this is going to be power of suggestion. All I can remember is white male with dark hair, and slender, and his gesture toward the phone.’")

In the youtube video, Allman tells another radio man,"Frank," that one witness saw a man with a gun at a second floor window, and another witness saw a man with a gun at a fourth floor window. Allman said that both he and the police had spoken with both witnesses. Does anyone know the identity of these two witnesses?

In a November 1963 live phone interview in the youtube video, Allman said that the limousine was in the middle of the street, had just passed him, and only about ten feet from him when the shooting started. Thoughts, anyone?

expanded and bumped

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What do you make of Allman's description of the sound of the first shot? He calls it a 'boom', and says it was not the typical sound of a rifle firing. While in some way it makes sense that the volume of sound being greater than a rifle might be because he is near the TSBD. I wonder whether what he really heard was the echo bouncing off the buildings of a shot from somewhere in front of the limo. I always thought the first shot hit JFK in the throat, delivered from the front. If that is true, then what he heard was an echo.

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[...]

In his first report, you can hear Allman is out of breath and hyper from having run about 50 feet and just witnessed the shooting...

[...]

Bill,

I think he was out of breath from running a bit more than 50 feet.

From his 1998 full text, unedited interview with Joe Bill Patoski:

Pierce Allman: "As the car sped off, that's when the Secret Service man from the back had vaulted over and pushed Jackie back in the seat, she was trying to come up, and that's when the body assumed that grotesque position we saw on the way to Parkland. Then I ran across the street, spoke to the Newmans and said, 'Stop!' And why we were running that direction, I couldn't tell you. It was just sort of a flow. I stopped and said, 'Are you ok?' He said, 'Yeah, but they got the president. They blew the side of his head in.' I remember thinking, 'I've got to get to a telephone.' But we continued up the little hill there -- I won't say 'knoll' -- the little hill..."

Bill: "That's all right."

Pierce Allman: "And Bob Jackson from the Times-Herald was running behind me. And why we went up there, I don't know, except there was just sort of a movement up there. And then I turned around, ran back down the hill, ran up the sidewalk, went into the depository building, asked the guy where the phone was, went inside, got on the phone, called the station, and had trouble getting through."

--Tommy :sun

Questions for everyone:

Earlier in this full text, unedited 1998 interview with Joe Bill Patoski, Allman said that he and his sidekick Terry Ford were standing near Howard Brennan during the assassination. Are there any photographs or films showing Allman or Ford near Brennan at the time?

In the full text, unedited interview with Patoski, Allman says something which I find to be very confusing. In relaying what he'd told the Secret Service when they tried to get him to ID Oswald as the guy he'd asked about the telephone, Allman says: "I said, 'Guys, this is going to be power of suggestion. All I can remember is White Male, and about this height, and the whole thing, not the dark hair, the gestures, and whatever.'" [emphasis added] Question: Is the "not" a typo? And if not, what does he mean by "not the dark hair?" (Compare this to what he is quoted as saying in the highly-edited version for the Texas Monthly magazine: "I said, ‘Guys, this is going to be power of suggestion. All I can remember is white male with dark hair, and slender, and his gesture toward the phone.’")

In the youtube video, Allman tells another radio man,"Frank," that one witness saw a man with a gun at a second floor window, and another witness saw a man with a gun at a fourth floor window. Allman said that both he and the police had spoken with both witnesses. Does anyone know the identity of these two witnesses?

In a November 1963 live phone interview in the youtube video, Allman said that the limousine was in the middle of the street, had just passed him, and only about ten feet from him when the shooting started. Thoughts, anyone?

All excellent questions, deserving of a better response than I can currently give you, Tommy.

My strong suspicion is that Allman moved - or was directed to move - from the corner of Houston & Elm onto Elm, and from reporter of the observations of others to direct observer, the better to pre-empt unwelcome truths such as the limo stop.

But that must remain mere suspicion for the moment.

Paul

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The question isn't how many feet he ran, I acknowledge it is over 50 feet, but the question should be - how long did it take for Allman to get to the front door of the TSBD, where it is pretty much established that he ran into Oswald and asked him where he could get a phone.

Now what time was that? The Warren Report says it is 12:33 pm when Oswald exited the front door of the TSBD, even though there were many people around and people photographing and filming the front door and there isn't a photo or film of him exiting.

And where was the phone that Oswald directed Allman to?

Was it a pay phone on the wall of the lobby?

Was it the regular phone that went through the TSBD business line?

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Great topic Paul and yet....Allman cannot recall at any time his encounter with Oswald (perhaps he honestly can't recall who helped him w/phone but its odd given that the alleged Assassin of the President helped him and he couldn't recall that it was possibly Oswald at any time later).....given the evidence posted here, I am beginning to understand that is is logical and consistent that he "never saw" Oswald....Of course this is suspicion on my part given my own studies.

Edited by B. A. Copeland
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  • 1 month later...

The question isn't how many feet he ran, I acknowledge it is over 50 feet, but the question should be - how long did it take for Allman to get to the front door of the TSBD, where it is pretty much established that he ran into Oswald and asked him where he could get a phone.

Now what time was that? The Warren Report says it is 12:33 pm when Oswald exited the front door of the TSBD, even though there were many people around and people photographing and filming the front door and there isn't a photo or film of him exiting.

[...]

[emphasis added by T. Graves]

Bill,

That's an excellent question and that's why I'm trying to find out if Pierce Allman was captured on film running down the street of the Grassy Knoll towards the Newman family as he claimed he did, or, after speaking with Bill Newman (and hearing from him that JFK had been struck in the head), running up the Grassy Knoll with reporter Bob Jackson and thence (probably via the Elm St. Extension) to the TSBD to ask Oswald where the phone was, all of which he claimed to do. I mean, if Allman did all of this, shouldn't he have been caught in a photograph or film?

Unfortunately, nobody seems to know.

As you probably know, If Allman did everything he claimed he did, he may have gotten to the TSBD too late to have asked Oswald where the phone was, because Oswald (if Sean Murphy's theory is correct) may have already spoken briefly with Baker and Truly somewhere near the front entrance and / or gone upstairs to the second floor lunchroom to get a Coke. Or something like that.

Of course another way to look at it is that if Allman did interact with Oswald after doing all of that running around, then Oswald was there at or near the front door a lot later than a lot of us would want to admit, because it would tend to conform with the idea that Allman spoke with Oswald while Oswald was escaping from the TSBD.

So there's a lot at stake here.

But, unfortunately, nobody seems to know whether or not Allman was captured on film in the Grassy Knoll area right after the assassination.

If Allman (or to a lesser extent Ford and Jackson) wasn't captured on film during this critical period of time when so many photographs were being taken of the general area of the Grassy Knoll and Elm Street, then that would suggest to me that maybe Allman didn't do everything he claimed to do, and therefore might have arrived at the TSBD much sooner than we have been led to believe, and may have interacted with Oswald early enough to preclude the possibility that it was during the "great escape" by LHO.

But as I said, nobody seems to know if Pierce Allman (or sidekicks Terry Ford and / or Bob Jackson) were captured on film in the Grassy Knoll area right after the assassination.

Perhaps Robin Unger or Gary Mack or someone else will accept this not so veiled challenge to find and post photographic proof that Allman did what he claimed to have done.

And you know what would be a really cool bonus (or not)? A photo or film showing Allman and / or Ford standing near Howard Brennan, like Allman said they were, a short time before the shots rang out!

--Tommy :sun

Edited by Thomas Graves
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