Defend the Warren Commission Report Findings? The 45 questions
Question #37

Back by popular demand - the 45 Questions that terrify those who try to defend
the Warren Commission Report. In the past, there have been only two
semi-serious attempts to answer them, one by John McAdams, and one by 'Bud' (the
troll listed below) - Both responses were basically denials of the facts in most
of the 'answers'.

*below question reposted with authors permission -- author: Ben Holmes...*

But first, an important note:

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Important Note for Lurkers - there are many trolls on this forum (alt.conspiracy.jfk) who's
only purpose is to obstruct debate, deny the evidence, and attempt to change message
threads from discussing the evidence, to personal insults and attacks.

These trolls include (but are not limited to):

**22 trolls who post regularly to alt.conspiracy.jfk** names removed -dgh

Please beware when seeing their responses, and note that they will simply
deny the facts I mention, demand citations that I've provided before, or
simply run with insults. These trolls are only good material for the kill
files.

source: alt.conspiracy.jfk
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The silence from the LNT'er camp continues... which merely illustrates the fact
that the evidence *DOESN'T* support the WCR's theory. On to the next:

37. "The significance of Givens' observation that Oswald was carrying his
clipboard became apparent on December 2, 1963, when an employee, Frankie Kaiser,
found a clipboard hidden by book cartons in the northwest corner of the sixth
floor at the west wall a few feet from where the rifle had been found." (WCR
143)

Mr. KAISER. I was over there looking for the Catholic edition--teacher's
edition.
Mr. BALL. Where did you see the clipboard?
Mr. KAISER. It was Just laying there in the plain open--and just the plain open
boxes-you see, we've got a pretty good space back there and I just noticed it
laying over there.
Mr. BALL. Laying. on the floor?
Mr. KAISER. Yes, it was laying on the floor.
Mr. BALL. It was on the floor?
Mr. KAISER. It was on the floor.
Mr. BALL. How close was it to the wall?
Mr. KAISER. It was about---oh--I would say, just guessing, about 5 or 6 inches,
something like that.
Mr. BALL. From the wall and on the floor?
Mr. KAISER. Laying on the floor.
Mr. BALL. And were there any boxes between the wall and the clipboard?
Mr. KAISER. No, not between the wall and the clipboard--there wasn't.
Mr. BALL. Were there boxes between the stairway and the clipboard?
Mr. KAISER. No, you see, here's---let me see just a second---here's the stairs
right here, and we went down this way and here's the stairs this way going up
and here's the and it was laying fight in here by the cards--there are about
four or five cards, I guess, running in front of it--just laying between the
part you go down and the part you go up.
Mr. BALL. You mean laying between the stairway up and the stairway down?
Mr. KAISER. Yes, right there in the corner. (6H 343)

BALL. How long did you stay up on the sixth floor? After you found the location
of the three cartridges?
Mr. MOONEY. Well, I stayed up there not over 15 or 20 minutes longer--after
Captain Will Fritz and his officers came over there, Captain Fritz picked up the
cartridges, began to examine them, of course I left that particular area. By
that time there was a number of officers up there. The floor was covered with
officers. And we were searching, trying to find the weapon at that time. (3H
289)

The WC simply lied, when trying to disguise the fact that the many policemen
that swamped the sixth floor (See Mooney's statement) couldn't find a clipboard
that Kaiser clearly states was in plain sight, and not hidden at all. The
clipboard was *NOT* hidden - and an entire working week went by before it was
"discovered". Can anyone defend this curious lie of the Warren Commission?
eof

Let's begin by quoting the passage from the Report in full (note italics):

The "significance" attributed to the clipboard by the WC is not very clear, but it appears as if it intended the clipboard to somehow "incriminate" Oswald: it was "a few feet from where the rifle had been found," "made by Kaiser and had his name on it," but was "appropriated" by Oswald, and had orders on that Oswald "had not filled," as if that was somehow suspicious. The implications seem to be that Lee was a definite low-life, stealing clipboards from his co-workers, and being either too lazy and/or preoccupied to fill orders ... and, oh, it was right near where he'd supposedly left the rifle after shooting Kennedy, 35 minutes after he'd last had the clipboard.

Big deal. If Lee had been seen at 12:25 with the clipboard and the rifle was found nearby, then perhaps that might've proven significant, but laying down the clipboard 35 minutes earlier hardly ties the two items together. Kaiser also downplayed the "thievery," noting elsewhere in his testimony (or maybe it was Roy Truly?) that he was "always making clipboards," and it was no big deal that Oswald had one with his name on it. He didn't say that he'd suddenly found his prize clipboard missing and was forced to make another, realizing later that dirty rotten Lee had usurped it from him.

As to the WC's "lie" about the clipboard, it really did no more than bolster Slim Givens' story about seeing Lee upstairs with it in hand. As will be seen in my forthcoming essay "The Elevator Shuffle," if Givens' story is true, then other events will show that it made perfect sense for Lee to have left the clipboard there.

The challenge of this question, however, is a non-sequitur: "The WC simply lied, when trying to disguise the fact that the many policemen that swamped the sixth floor couldn't find a clipboard that Kaiser clearly states was in plain sight, and not hidden at all. The clipboard was *NOT* hidden - and an entire working week went by before it was 'discovered.'" What's this "couldn't" stuff??

Luke Mooney said, "the floor was covered with officers. And we were searching, trying to find the weapon at that time." I think it's fair to say - and I doubt anyone reading this will argue the point - that most of the policemen swarming over the sixth floor were confident that Jack Kennedy hadn't been killed by a clipboard. Likewise, I think it's also fair to say that most policemen, then or now, do not consider a clipboard to be a "weapon" (Homeland Security might, but cops don't!).

Thus the fact that they didn't take particular note of nor take into evidence one homemade clipboard is hardly surprising. They also did not apparently have the name of any person they were looking for at the time, but even if they were looking for anything to do with one missing Lee Oswald, it had Kaiser's name on it, not Oswald's. That they did not do so has absolutely nothing to do with whether it was there when they searched the floor that Friday, any more so than did the fact that they didn't confiscate any of the fire extinguishers, either.

Actually, it was only Givens' testimony of seeing Oswald with the clipboard that even allowed anyone to suggest that Lee had had it: Roy Truly said that there was no way for them to determine who had an order until after the person had filled it and brought the books downstairs, when they would initial it.

Finally, the fact that it was not discovered for a week is likewise not surprising since testimony revealed that the teacher's edition that was stored beside where the clipboard was found, was not among the most popular titles to be filling orders for, especially after the start of the school year, since most if not all teachers already had their copy of that edition and probably didn't lose very many of them.

Perhaps if Rolling Readers were stored there, it might've been found the very next day. In either case, there is no significance whatsoever to the fact that police didn't notice or confiscate it: it was simply not something one might associate with the commission of a crime.

1/ The cops did find a clipboard.

2/ Kaiser initially said the clipboard he later handed over to the FBI was one he had given to Oswald.

3/ Kaiser allegedly found clipboard on same day Givens makes first ever mention of seeing Oswald on 6th floor - Dec 2. FBI agent Pinkston just happens to be at the TSBD on other unspecified business when Kaiser makes the discovery.

4/ Despite above, FBI does not take possession of the clipboard until Mar 10, 1964.

The Clipboard Chronology

Three things are surprising in this.

First, that Kaiser would think that he shouldn't touch the clipboard that he "allegedly" found, except that he may have recognized it as the one he gave Oswald, and anything to do with Oswald was like a hot potato (he also found a jacket belonging to Lee, if I remember correctly).

Second, thinking that Kaiser's "alleged" finding of the clipboard would not trigger a memory in someone else. I think some people expect that people who are near to a major event - especially those that are unexpected - will remember every fine detail of their surroundings, immediately and indelibly etched on their minds. Somewhere I recently read where someone expressed surprise and/or disbelief that Bill Shelley couldn't (or wouldn't!) recall the shirts his workers had on that day.

In real life, however, these things happen all the time. Nobody in the TSBD was expecting the President to get shot, or thought that there would ever be any need to remember each and everything they did, saw, heard or said as "just another day" unfolded. When the unexpected happens, some people (but not all!) try to sort through those sort of things with varying degrees of success ... and still overlooking details that, at the time, they didn't consider material or out of the ordinary.

Co-worker accused of shooting the President? Did I see him with a gun? No. Was he acting strange? No stranger than usual. Was he sneaking around, or noticeably absent at any particular time, say, at lunch? No, he didn't always stick around, so who'd have noticed?

When Givens saw Oswald on the sixth floor, it was before noon, approaching the usual five-minute advance break to wash up, and so Lee was doing what he normally did, walk around with a clipboard looking for books; what's the big deal here? It was so normal - and more than a half-hour before the shooting - why would it stick out in anyone's mind?

Then someone finds the clipboard and - oh yeah! I remember now: I saw Oswald walking around with a clipboard when I last saw him. Now that I think about it, it's as clear as day; hadn't really given it a thought before! Now that you mention it ....

I'm not of the usual persuasion that first recollections are always the best recollections, nor that later changes or additions to a story are necessarily incorrect (or suspicious!). People DO remember things later. That's what I think happened here.

Try reversing the order of the sentence and see if it sounds as odd, that "Givens first makes mention of seeing Oswald on the 6th floor after Kaiser found the clipboard."

(Which happened first: did Kaiser find the clipboard, or Givens relate his story? Or were they happening at the same time in different places? I'd put money on Kaiser-Givens rather than Givens-Kaiser....)

Third, it's surprising that anyone would use the word "allegedly" when describing Kaiser finding the clipboard. Is there some real suspicion that he didn't find it? That he knew where it was all along (and conveniently revealed it on that particular day so that Slim Givens could add a new twist to the story, or to support it)? That someone else really found it (and if so, who)?

I really don't believe that everybody who worked in the TSBD was in on the plot, or co-opted to tell convincing snippets to create a different appearance than was the reality. And we've got to ask ourselves, if some of these guys were "in on it," how come they kept working there after their raison d'être - probably the most significant thing any of them would have been involved in during their entire lives - was accomplished, in some cases for several more years?

Was this all a conspiracy of laborers, all of whom managed to get off scott free and never come under anything but passing suspicion by the authorities? Man, these guys were good! I wonder why they kept on laboring when they obviously had much greater talents!

Duke, if you go into the records, it becomes much clearer that it was to support Givens sighting. And the location was where the cop is seen on film with a clipboard.



You are correct to use quote marks. Right up to and including the day Kaiser handed it to agent Arthur Carter on Mar 10, he was saying he gave it to Oswald.



Yup. The whole idea of the clipboard of course, was to carry a stack of orders at one time so as not to continually have to go get them. That he only had 3 left on it actually should have been an indicator he had been filling orders that morning - just as some co-workers reported he had been.



Givens' story needed all the support it could get.



Wishing it to be true merely because it supports your thesis doesn't get rid of all the problems with it.



Well, in fact the cops did find a clipboard. It was captured on film.



I'm sure they were also confident Kennedy was not killed by a paper bag, chicken scraps, a pop bottle, or a pack of cigarettes either, yet all those items were still taken as evidence.



The FBI tests showed that the handwriting on the board was "too limited" for adequate comparison with known samples of Oswald's writing. Kaiser was the only individual who associated this clipboard with Oswald - and there was no physical evidence it was Oswald's. Why do suppose no fingerprint results are in the records?

Your "fire extinguisher" analogy fails any test of logic. You may as well have said "floorboards", "window frames" or "light fittings" since all fall within the definition of "fixtures". What they took was stuff found that was not part of the "furniture". This should have included a clipboard - especially one in proximity to the rifle.



C'mon, don't be coy... it wasn't just any old Teacher's Edition... it was the CATHOLIC!!! Teacher's Think and Do Edition.



Neither are chicken scraps, paper bags, cigarette packs or pop bottles. By your reckoning, None of those items should have been taken?

Well, my primer on how to do "quotes" certainly has made an impression, even if nothing else has!!
Don't be coy, Greg: what records are you referring to that I've so obviously missed?

Greg, to say that he only had three "left" is to beg the question, "what did he do with the rest of them that he'd filled, and when?" One then must ask what he was doing downstairs on the first floor after Bill Shelley had gone downstairs and before the "elevator shuffle." In light of comments by Roy Truly and others, Lee Oswald "just worked all the time," and had either gone downstairs to drop off the orders he'd collected in the morning, leaving three on his clipboard, or else had finished the first batch of orders, dropped them off on the first floor, and gotten a small batch of orders that he could've filled before lunch came rolling around in about 10 minutes.

The "boys" having been moving books around to accomodate the flooring job, right up to that morning, means that it's possible if not likely that Oswald, on going upstairs to fill those "last" orders, wasn't able to find the books and decided to go to lunch when Givens suggested it to him.

This hypothesis demands that Slim's story came first, Kaiser's finding the clipboard afterward. The big question is: to what end?

Let's assume for a moment that the direction you're going with this is correct: why would Givens invent such a story (first) that seemingly exonerated Oswald, and why would Frankie Kaiser concoct yet another story to support Givens' lie?

Ah, but ditto, grasshoppah!

Does that mean that the Masons weren't behind it, and that the Cabell Lodge in Oak Cliff really is just coincidence?

I actually haven't gotten over the fallout from admitting that bears are Catholic, and that popes have shat in the woods several times in the past few hundred years at least, so I thought I'd leave that observation out of it.

Oops, I was wrong about that "quoting" lesson!!

I think this is a record number of responses to the "Defending the Warren Report" series, don't you?

I'll get back to you later on the other stuff.

(Hey, does this also qualify as a "debate," which some people say there is little enough of here, most of us being CTers and all?)

Cite(s)? In the end, I don't think it is important. He may have, and then thought maybe he shouldn't have, so said he didn't ...? So what, he smudged Oswald's fingerprints? To me, Oswald's prints on the clipboard have about as much probative value as his prints on boxes. So? He worked there, and handled both. Doesn't mean squat about him firing a gun or building the "sniper's nest."

A veritable conundrum, isn't it. A surprising number of people and organizations accept that event as proof. Consider The Washington Post, which is always open to new theories about how Oswald did it.
Well, we simply don't know either way with any certainty, do we. I don't believe there's evidence either way on this, so we're both left to conjecture, aren't we. Since Givens is deceased and I've got no idea where Frankie Kaiser might be now, so there's no quick way to find out.

Did Slim Givens decide to change his story on the spur of the moment, and Frankie agreed to concoct his "finding the clipboard" story just to support Givens' new lie? Did Givens decide to make up a story to "legitimize" Kaiser's hoked up story? Did they come up with supporting lies independently, coincidentally, on the same day?

Logically, to what end would Givens concoct a story that might be perceived as potentially exonerating Oswald (you know my view on this), or did the FBI show up and tell them the story they needed to come up with in order to place him on the sixth floor 35 whole minutes before the shooting, after everyone else had come down (and had already left him upstairs ... wasn't having him upstairs 45 minutes before the shooting just as good as having him up there 10 minutes later)? Did Pinkston bring the "evidence" with him and give it to Kaiser to "find" and provide a basis for the story he wanted Givens to tell? If so, why didn't he take that "evidence" back with him, why leave it there until March?

You note that "no one else backed up Kaiser that this clipboard was one used by Oswald;" how many others who'd have had that knowledge were asked? If only Truly and Shelley, my guess is that, as management, they'd have bigger concerns and unless the thing was International Orange, they probably didn't notice such little details. Others who might know were Frazier and Daugherty and other order-fillers who likewise used clipboards; I don't recall that they were asked about it.

I don't really understand why fingerprints and handwriting on the clipboard would make a bit of difference, actually. If Kaiser had nothing ever to do with it, why would he lie and say he had? During the three months between December 2 and March 10, is it not possible (if not necessarily likely) that someone else might've used it, at least handled it, such that old prints were smudged ... and so what, afterward, that someone else's prints were on it?

I don't think that everything that can't be easily explained is "suspicious."

[Continued next post ...]

[Continued from previous post]

William Weston, for one, it seems: he was into showing how Buell Frazier was likely and directly involved. I think you'll find a post on this on the forum somewhere. I've also read conjecture that Bill and Linnie Mae Randle effectively set young Buell up to take the fall for the whole deal. Givens lied, as did Bonnie Ray and Junior. If I gave it some more thought, I'd probably come up with a handful more.

Read more closely: "all" continued to work there past November 22 (do you have a record of people who did not come back to work on November 25 or ever again? Of the 75± interviewed on March 20, made CE1381, I recall only one who no longer worked there ...), and "some" continued to work there long after. Don't pick nits, it doesn't become you.

I don't debate the last part, which explains "the three blind mice." The first part not be far off base either ... but we'd have to go a lot deeper than "an FBI coverup" or a "developing narrative" to suggest why they would be, at least before the fact. However, they may "mostly" have been black men, but they weren't all. Does the same implied threat also apply to the white guys who worked there because they hadn't much education?

Duke, you tried on the quoting and I thank you for that. But my brain goes into Luddite mode when faced with technical stuff I don't really need. An example: I've never owned a cell phone and wouldn't have the foggiest how to use one.


Yes, this qualifies as a debate.

If there is too little of it here, it may be partly because those who tended to excel at it are AWOL, partly because some current posters are producing threads outside the normal boxes, and partly because other threads are of no interest to anyone wanting to progress this case.

Duke, you are free to believe Kaiser that he never touched it, but you need to acknowledge that others said differently. Is it important? Maybe not.

Cite(s)? In the end, I don't think it is important. He may have, and then thought maybe he shouldn't have, so said he didn't ...? So what, he smudged Oswald's fingerprints? To me, Oswald's prints on the clipboard have about as much probative value as his prints on boxes. So? He worked there, and handled both. Doesn't mean squat about him firing a gun or building the "sniper's nest."

Duke, finding Oswald's prints on it would have gone some way towards proving it was the one he used. It is only the absence of them that doesn't mean squat.

Not testing for them - or doing the tests and not producing them (whichever was the case) is telling in itself.

A 1997 study of Desert Storm veterans concluded that traumatic memories are not fixed or indelible - they change over time. What it was unable to determine was whether such trauma causes immediate acute dissociation and memory disturbance with true memories later being recovered - or if initial memories are complete and real with distortions and post-event information creeping in over time. If you know which of those is true, please inform the American Journal of Psychiatry - but be sure to tell them you base your findings on the JFK case!

A veritable conundrum, isn't it. A surprising number of people and organizations accept that event as proof. Consider The Washington Post, which is always open to new theories about how Oswald did it.

Accept what as proof of what? You were given two possible alternatives...

Reasons for suspicion: FBI make no report on fingerprint testing. FBI makes no effort to determine it was Kaiser's handwriting on it. No one else backed up Kaiser that this clipboard was one used by Oswald. The timing coinciding with Givens "recall". The FBI agent being present in TSBD at the time of it being found after being sent there on some OTHER unexplained investigation.

Well, we simply don't know either way with any certainty, do we. I don't believe there's evidence either way on this, so we're both left to conjecture, aren't we. Since Givens is deceased and I've got no idea where Frankie Kaiser might be now, so there's no quick way to find out.

If givens was lying about his return to 6 and sighting of Oswald, it shortens the odds that Kaiser finding the clipboard was no mere coincidence.

Reminds me of the bus ticket being found at the most opportune moment for the authorities.

From a footnote to Deep Politics III:

Both the Walker note and the Mexican bus ticket were retrieved from the pages of books in Ruth Paine's house, both just when they were needed to fill gaps in the reconstructed Phase-Two account of Oswald's life.

Did Slim Givens decide to change his story on the spur of the moment, and Frankie agreed to concoct his "finding the clipboard" story just to support Givens' new lie? Did Givens decide to make up a story to "legitimize" Kaiser's hoked up story? Did they come up with supporting lies independently, coincidentally, on the same day?

Did the authorities put pressure on them to concoct both stories in order to bolster their shaky case against the accused? The only evidence that the clipboard was Oswald's comes from Kaiser. But the only evidence as to ownership actually points unquestionably to Kaiser.

Logically, to what end would Givens concoct a story that might be perceived as potentially exonerating Oswald (you know my view on this), or did the FBI show up and tell them the story they needed to come up with in order to place him on the sixth floor 35 whole minutes before the shooting, after everyone else had come down (and had already left him upstairs ... wasn't having him upstairs 45 minutes before the shooting just as good as having him up there 10 minutes later)? Did Pinkston bring the "evidence" with him and give it to Kaiser to "find" and provide a basis for the story he wanted Givens to tell? If so, why didn't he take that "evidence" back with him, why leave it there until March?

They were all unanimous in their first statements: Oswald was on 5 as they rode the elevators down. No one put him on 6 anytime close to the assassination until Givens' statement on Dec 2. By the time they appeared before the WC,, some were now equivocating whether it was 5 or 6 while Givens bumped another ten minutes onto his "sighting". Go through all the documentation in chronological order and you can see it as work in progress -- incrementally getting Oswald in place.

You note that "no one else backed up Kaiser that this clipboard was one used by Oswald;" how many others who'd have had that knowledge were asked? If only Truly and Shelley, my guess is that, as management, they'd have bigger concerns and unless the thing was International Orange, they probably didn't notice such little details. Others who might know were Frazier and Daugherty and other order-fillers who likewise used clipboards; I don't recall that they were asked about it.

Regardless of the reason, Kaiser is still the only person putting it in Oswald's hands.

I don't really understand why fingerprints and handwriting on the clipboard would make a bit of difference, actually. If Kaiser had nothing ever to do with it, why would he lie and say he had? During the three months between December 2 and March 10, is it not possible (if not necessarily likely) that someone else might've used it, at least handled it, such that old prints were smudged ... and so what, afterward, that someone else's prints were on it?

If Oswald's prints were on it, he very likely used it. Absence of his prints on the other hand, would have no significance. Unless tests were done, they wouldn't know if anything was smudged.

I don't think that everything that can't be easily explained is "suspicious."

Without suspicion, crimes would never be solved. I'm all for removing items from the "suspicious" list to either the discard pile or the hard evidence file. At the end of that process, you have the makings of a case for conspiracy, along with probable participants... or no case at all and Oswald as Lone Nut.

Greg, this really needs a thread of its own, so here it goes ...