Oswald Leaving TSBD?

[Robert Prudhomme]

Has anyone seen Sean Murphy lately?

[Sean Murphy]

Earlier in this thread we saw Dallas Morning News reporter Kent Biffle's March 1964 note on the nature of the Truly-Baker-Oswald encounter:

"The [TSBD] superintendent [Truly] would recall later that he & a policeman met Oswald as they charged into the building after the shots were fired."

Biffle is not talking off the top of his head here: he got closer to Truly in the TSBD in the immediate aftermath of the assassination than any other news reporter.

And here he is reporting exactly what happened: they met Oswald/Prayer Man at the front entrance to the building as they charged into it.

Baker didn't challenge Oswald or stop him, he simply asked him for help.

**

Shortly after this, a second man would ask Oswald for help at the same front entrance.

His name was Pierce Allman, manager of programming and production at WFAA radio, and here's his 1998 recollection of the incident:

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.

The "guy" in question was, of course, Lee Oswald, who would later erroneously recall the crew-cut credentials-flashing Allman as a Secret Service man whom he had directed to the phone on the first floor, which was located towards the rear of the first floor:

**

Now Allman was noticed shortly after this by Army Intelligence Special Agent James W. Powell:

Powell went up to the second floor to use the available telephone there.

He is surely the "policeman" recalled by Geneva Hine:

**

There is an uncomfortable moment in Hine's WC testimony where she is asked about Jeraldean Reid, who was claiming to have gone up to the second floor office area very shortly after the assassination and to have encountered Lee Oswald there:

Mr. BALL. When you came back in did you see Mrs. Reid?

Miss HINE. No, sir; I don't believe there was a soul in the office when I came back in right then.

...

Mr. BALL. Did you see Mrs. Reid come back in?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; I think I felt sure that I did. I thought that there were five or six that came in together. I thought she was one of those.

Mr. BALL. Mrs. Reid told us she came in alone and when she came in she didn't see anybody there.

Miss HINE. Well, it could be that she did, sir. I was talking on the phones and then came the policemen and then came the press. Everybody was wanting an outside line and then our vice president came in and he said "The next one that was clear, I have to have it and so I was busy with the phone.

Mr. BALL. From the time you walked into the room you became immediately busy with the phone?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; sure was.

(I believe "policemen" here is a stenographer's error and should read "policeman"--i.e. James Powell.)

Hine in the above exchange is clearly trying to be helpful, offering as an explanation for her having missed Reid the circumstance that she (Hine) was so busy with the phones.

But it just doesn't work.

For one thing, how could Reid have missed her and the "policeman" with her?

For another, and even more calamitously for Ball's line of questioning, how could Hine have missed both Reid and Oswald when the desk she was manning the phones at was in the front row of desks facing right where Reid is supposed to have come in and Oswald to have gone out?

Mr. BALL. Did you have to change your desk over to another desk [in order to watch the phones that day]?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; to the middle desk on the front row.

...

Mr. BALL. Did you see Oswald come in?

Miss HINE. My back would have been to the door he was supposed to have come in at.

Mr. BALL. Were you facing the door he is supposed to have left by?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Do you recall seeing him?

Miss HINE. No, sir.

**

How in heaven's name can Hine--desperate for information as to what has happened outside--possibly have missed Reid and Oswald?

And how can Reid possibly have seen Oswald but missed Hine (and the policeman)?

Might it be that the Reid-Oswald encounter happened before Hine reentered the office space?

For anyone wishing to preserve the second-floor lunchroom story, it's a tempting idea.

But it causes a whole new set of problems.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[William Kelly]

Are there any photographs of the wall pay telephones that Oswald referred people to as they came in the building?

Or are there any schematic drawings of the first floor that include the positions of the pay phones? And how many pay phones were on the wall?

Shelley also said that the last time he saw Oswald before the assassination was by the telephones as if waiting for a call.

BK

Edited October 8, 2013 by William Kelly

[Robert Prudhomme]

Welcome back Sean! Getting a little worried there, almost sent a search party out looking for you!

Excellent post, by the way. You definitely have a "nose" for this case and you leave all of us waiting for your next post with bated breath.

Once again, welcome back. Hate to say it but, things were gettin' pretty damn dull around here without you.

[Richard Hocking]

Miss Geneva Hine made an interesting statement in her testimony.

"...

Miss HINE. Yes, sir: I was alone until the lights all went out and the phones

became dead because the motorcade was coming near us and no one was calling

so I got up and thought I could see it from the east window in our office."

How would callers know exactly what time the motorcade was passing the TSBD so they could refrain from calling?

Unfortunately, Mr. Ball does not ask a most logical followup question to determine whether the lights going out and the phone calls ceasing are related to power going off rather than a lack of phone calls.

One other item of interest is her testimony of looking out of an East facing window. She would be the only TSBD employee to do so. Her description of the shots is markedly different from the employees on the other floors inside the building.

"The building vibrated from the result of the explosion coming in... they sounded like cannon shots they were so terrific... "

If there was a shooter in the Dal-Tex building 2nd or 3rd floor, Miss Hine would have been right across the street and experienced the primary shock waves of the rifle fire.

Another part of her testimony that raises questions:

Miss HINE. Yes: I knew it and the girls were discussing it in the office that

morning. Many of them, probably six, had not seen the President close. You

see, I had seen him on two different occasions and I had been very close to him

and so they were lamenting thst they couldn’t go out so I spoke up and said

“I will he glad to answer the telephone so you girls may go out and see the

motorcade” and I had previously answered the telephone when we were in the

other building before we moved in this building, so they were delighted and I

thought nothing about it.

We know Miss Hine had worked in Texas at the TSBD since 1956. President Kennedy was visiting Texas for the first time.

We are left with the impression that Geneva left Texas twice during the last three years on trips that took her "very close" to the President. Once again, Mr. Ball asks no followup question to reveal any details about this interesting claim.

[Bjørn Gjerde]

Earlier in this thread we saw Dallas Morning News reporter Kent Biffle's March 1964 note on the nature of the Truly-Baker-Oswald encounter:

"The [TSBD] superintendent [Truly] would recall later that he & a policeman met Oswald as they charged into the building after the shots were fired."

Biffle is not talking off the top of his head here: he got closer to Truly in the TSBD in the immediate aftermath of the assassination than any other news reporter.

And here he is reporting exactly what happened: they met Oswald/Prayer Man at the front entrance to the building as they charged into it.

Baker didn't challenge Oswald or stop him, he simply asked him for help.

**

Shortly after this, a second man would ask Oswald for help at the same front entrance.

His name was Pierce Allman, manager of programming and production at WFAA radio, and here's his 1998 recollection of the incident:

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.

The "guy" in question was, of course, Lee Oswald, who would later erroneously recall the crew-cut credentials-flashing Allman as a Secret Service man whom he had directed to the phone on the first floor, which was located towards the rear of the first floor:

**

Now Allman was noticed shortly after this by Army Intelligence Special Agent James W. Powell:

Powell went up to the second floor to use the available telephone there.

He is surely the "policeman" recalled by Geneva Hine:

**

There is an uncomfortable moment in Hine's WC testimony where she is asked about Jeraldean Reid, who was claiming to have gone up to the second floor office area very shortly after the assassination and to have encountered Lee Oswald there:

Mr. BALL. When you came back in did you see Mrs. Reid?

Miss HINE. No, sir; I don't believe there was a soul in the office when I came back in right then.

...

Mr. BALL. Did you see Mrs. Reid come back in?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; I think I felt sure that I did. I thought that there were five or six that came in together. I thought she was one of those.

Mr. BALL. Mrs. Reid told us she came in alone and when she came in she didn't see anybody there.

Miss HINE. Well, it could be that she did, sir. I was talking on the phones and then came the policemen and then came the press. Everybody was wanting an outside line and then our vice president came in and he said "The next one that was clear, I have to have it and so I was busy with the phone.

Mr. BALL. From the time you walked into the room you became immediately busy with the phone?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; sure was.

(I believe "policemen" here is a stenographer's error and should read "policeman"--i.e. James Powell.)

Hine in the above exchange is clearly trying to be helpful, offering as an explanation for her having missed Reid the circumstance that she (Hine) was so busy with the phones.

But it just doesn't work.

For one thing, how could Reid have missed her and the "policeman" with her?

For another, and even more calamitously for Ball's line of questioning, how could Hine have missed both Reid and Oswald when the desk she was manning the phones at was in the front row of desks facing right where Reid is supposed to have come in and Oswald to have gone out?

Mr. BALL. Did you have to change your desk over to another desk [in order to watch the phones that day]?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir; to the middle desk on the front row.

...

Mr. BALL. Did you see Oswald come in?

Miss HINE. My back would have been to the door he was supposed to have come in at.

Mr. BALL. Were you facing the door he is supposed to have left by?

Miss HINE. Yes, sir.

Mr. BALL. Do you recall seeing him?

Miss HINE. No, sir.

**

How in heaven's name can Hine--desperate for information as to what has happened outside--possibly have missed Reid and Oswald?

And how can Reid possibly have seen Oswald but missed Hine (and the policeman)?

Might it be that the Reid-Oswald encounter happened before Hine reentered the office space?

For anyone wishing to preserve the second-floor lunchroom story, it's a tempting idea.

But it causes a whole new set of problems.

I don't think Mrs. Reid ever saw Oswald in the office area shortly after the shooting. I believe she made up this story together with Truly (and Campbell) in order to frame Oswald. In her WC testimony, Geneve Hine just didn't dare to contradict the statements of Mrs. Reid, her superior. However, already on November 23, 1963, Hine gave a statement to E.R. Beck of the DPD, which also shows that Reid did not enter the office before any others after the shooting:

‘Was in the office alone the day of the shooting heard 3 shots and did not know what had happened until the Police came in the office and told the President had been shot.’

Part of Becks report:

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/03/0372-001.gif

Beck's report in full in CE2003

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1140&relPageId=314

Bjørn Gjerde

[Sean Murphy]

I don't think Mrs. Reid ever saw Oswald in the office area shortly after the shooting. I believe she made up this story together with Truly (and Campbell) in order to frame Oswald. In her WC testimony, Geneve Hine just didn't dare to contradict the statements of Mrs. Reid, her superior. However, already on November 23, 1963, Hine gave a statement to E.R. Beck of the DPD, which also shows that Reid did not enter the office before any others after the shooting:

‘Was in the office alone the day of the shooting heard 3 shots and did not know what had happened until the Police came in the office and told the President had been shot.’

Part of Becks report:

http://jfk.ci.dallas.tx.us/03/0372-001.gif

Beck's report in full in CE2003

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1140&relPageId=314

Bjørn Gjerde

Bjorn, the report you cite drives home once again the crucial point in all this:

Geneva Hine was extremely anxious to find out what exactly had happened outside.

The idea that Reid would not have noticed her in the office area is a big stretch, but an even bigger one is the idea that Hine would not have noticed Reid.

**

Reid was drafted in by Truly the day after the shooting to help him seal the deal on his new, phoney lunchroom story.

And boy, did he need help: the evidence suggests that Marrion Baker was not playing ball, and would not start doing so for several months.

Reid, for her part, knows exactly what it is she is required to tell Leavelle about the meaning of her Oswald encounter:

Why doesn't she mention that this door is also located near the men's room or that it leads off the corridor connecting the top of the front stairs with the lunchroom?

Reid's words bias blatantly to the notion that Oswald had come down the rear stairway before entering the lunchroom.

And ain't it just perfect how

a ) her first sighting of Oswald is of him actually coming through the office door: no room for ambiguity there

b ) she has the presence of mind to notice not just which hand he has the coke in but also the fact that the coke is full?

What better way to help her boss out by joining the dots between the lunchroom story and her Oswald encounter?

Edited October 8, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Sean Murphy]

Welcome back Sean! Getting a little worried there, almost sent a search party out looking for you!

Excellent post, by the way. You definitely have a "nose" for this case and you leave all of us waiting for your next post with bated breath.

Once again, welcome back. Hate to say it but, things were gettin' pretty damn dull around here without you.

I was over in the wilds of Connemara, Robert, on blissful holiday from all internet connections!

Thanks for the very kind words btw.

[Bjørn Gjerde]

Sean,

You have probably noticed long ago that Truly's lunch room story was more or less settled by December 4, when the Secret Service were in the TSBD for their re-enactment.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10490&relPageId=792

Baker, on the other hand, was still unaware of this development, as reflected in Fritz' note to Curry dated DECEMBER, 23:

‘We also found that this man [=Oswald] had been stopped by Officer M. L. Baker while coming down the stairs. Mr. Baker says that he stopped this man on the third or fourth floor on the stairway, but as Mr. Truly identified him as one of the employees, he was released.’

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=29121&relPageId=2

I believe Baker and Truly did encounter a person on the 3rd or 4th floor, and that Truly, being part of the conspiracy, falsely claimed that man worked in the building. Similarly, Truly's eagerness to accompany Baker into and through the building was most likely due to the fact that Truly wanted to steer Baker away from those leaving the TSBD from the 6th floor.

If Baker had NOT entered the building so soon after the shooting, I guess Mrs. Reid would have been the ONLY witness 'seeing' Oswald at a suspicious location inside TSBD immediately after the shooting. So her story might have been invented before November 22.

Bjørn Gjerde

[William Kelly]

Sean Mentions Kent Biffle's DMN notes on the Baker-Truly Encounter. I must have missed that. What else did he say?

I agree that Roy Truly's behavior is suspicious - giving Oswald a pass on the second floor and then a few minutes later considering him suspiciously missing, getting his address from the front office, then after talking to Deptuty Chief Lumpkin (who drove the pilot car in the motorcade and stopped and told the cops at Houston and Elm - and the sixth floor sniper - that the motorcade was minutes away), gives Oswald's name and address to Capt. Fritz - beginning the Ozzie Rabbit hunt.

So if Truly is part of the Pin the Tail on the Rabbit and Dealey Plaza Cleanup and Coverup Crew - why would he make up the second floor encounter with Oswald, which exonerates him from being the Sixth Floor Sniper?

And why would Baker and Reid go along with him, and confirm that they saw Oswald in the Second floor lunchroom at a minute and a half after the assassination and in the outer office with coke two minutes after the assassination?

Mrs. Hine, because her desk was close to the front of the office, she often gave Oswald change to use for soda machine (or phone?), and may have done so around the time of the assassination. She must have viewed the motorcade from one of the two small offices that had windows facing Houston Street - I think these offices belonged to different publishers. Then she walked around the corner, past the elevator and stairs, and after knocking on the first door with windows fronting Elm Street - she went down the hall to the other offices but even though there was someone in the office and was on the phone they wouldn't open the door for her. So Hine was on the other side of the building when Reid and Oswald were in the office together and didn't see Hine.

I believe Baker, Reid, Hine and Oswald as to what they did at the time of and the first few minutes after the assassination, and that exonerates Oswald as JFK's killer, so why would they create a false story about a second floor lunchroom encounter - that proves Oswald didn't do it?

Also: can anyone point to a photo of the TSBD pay phones near the front door and note where they were located on a map of the first floor?

BK -

And as a Gunga Din waterboy - I present to you Gary Mack's comments of relevance - and reconsider the role of the Dealey Plaza Cleanup Crew:

Sorry, folks, you cannot use Pierce Allman to turn Oswald into PM. I’ve known Pierce for many years, and this account is the story he has always told and sticks with today: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10755&relPageId=4. (The report has one error I know of: Pierce was program director of WFAA radio, not TV, and once Oswald pointed to the phone, Pierce called the radio station.)

Based on his travel down to the Newmans TWICE from the Elm-Houston intersection, he could not have gotten to the TSBD door for 2, 3, maybe 4 minutes depending on how long he spoke to them, whether he spoke to others, or just looked around before heading to the building and dodging traffic.

For Oswald to be PM, he would have had to hang around the front door for several minutes from the moment of the shooting until he was met by Pierce, and that is highly unlikely. One or more fellow employees would have seen him and eventually reported it. Instead, Pierce stopped Oswald as Oswald left the building following the lunchroom encounter, for no other explanation makes sense.

Pierce may have flashed his press pass to Oswald, but he didn’t remember doing that nor did co-worker Ford say he did....but he certainly could have done so and it would have been a natural thing to do at the time.

As for Oswald’s belief Allman was a Secret Service man, the notes and recollections say he said the man had a crew cut hair style. Pierce appeared on WFAA-TV later that afternoon, the tape exists, and he certainly did have that hair style. Although Manchester and other books often attribute the TSBD encounter to NBC’s Robert MacNeil, that’s simply wrong. Tapes of MacNeil that day show his hair was much, much longer than Allman’s and it was even longer then than it is today.

Folks will have to look elsewhere to ID the Prayer Man, for he certainly wasn’t Oswald. (Unless, of course, one subscribes to the theory that the polite, ever-trusting killers allowed all TSBD workers who could have seen Oswald on the steps to live for years if not decades after the assassination, hoping they would never tell anyone.)

Gary Mack

[Sean Murphy]

Sean,

You have probably noticed long ago that Truly's lunch room story was more or less settled by December 4, when the Secret Service were in the TSBD for their re-enactment.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10490&relPageId=792

Baker, on the other hand, was still unaware of this development, as reflected in Fritz' note to Curry dated DECEMBER, 23:

‘We also found that this man [=Oswald] had been stopped by Officer M. L. Baker while coming down the stairs. Mr. Baker says that he stopped this man on the third or fourth floor on the stairway, but as Mr. Truly identified him as one of the employees, he was released.’

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=29121&relPageId=2

I believe Baker and Truly did encounter a person on the 3rd or 4th floor, and that Truly, being part of the conspiracy, falsely claimed that man worked in the building. Similarly, Truly's eagerness to accompany Baker into and through the building was most likely due to the fact that Truly wanted to steer Baker away from those leaving the TSBD from the 6th floor.

If Baker had NOT entered the building so soon after the shooting, I guess Mrs. Reid would have been the ONLY witness 'seeing' Oswald at a suspicious location inside TSBD immediately after the shooting. So her story might have been invented before November 22.

Bjørn Gjerde

Bjorn,

I still lean strongly towards the belief that Baker's 11/22 affidavit account of catching a man walking away from the third or fourth floor stairway was a fiction designed to incriminate Oswald.

If it really did happen, however, then you are right: it surely would implicate Truly--being that the description of the man sounds nothing like the "great big husky" 39-year-old Jack Dougherty, it seems hard to find anyone else Truly could have legitimately vouched for as an employee.

Was Oswald set up as the sixth floor shooter by the murderers of President Kennedy? I think it's highly doubtful. The framing of Oswald as triggerman seems to have been the priority of the 'investigating' authorities not the conspirators themselves.

I reckon Truly, Reid & Campbell were innocent parties who were subjected to massive pressure to play ball with the Oswald Alone conclusion that was decided upon within hours of the assassination.

**

The Dec 4 Secret Service interview with Truly does indeed mark the point by which Truly's lunchroom story has stabilised: he now says he saw Baker confronting an Oswald who was just inside the lunchroom door.

However, as we shall see, there was one more piece of choreography to come: the mobilisation of Oswald into a man who was in some very awkward sense "walking away" from Baker into and then in the lunchroom.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Sean Murphy

[Sean Murphy]

My responses (in red) to Gary's email to William Kelly and myself:

"Sorry, folks, you cannot use Pierce Allman to turn Oswald into PM. I’ve known Pierce for many years, and this account is the story he has always told and sticks with today: http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10755&relPageId=4. (The report has one error I know of: Pierce was program director of WFAA radio, not TV, and once Oswald pointed to the phone, Pierce called the radio station.)

Based on his travel down to the Newmans TWICE from the Elm-Houston intersection, he could not have gotten to the TSBD door for 2, 3, maybe 4 minutes depending on how long he spoke to them, whether he spoke to others, or just looked around before heading to the building and dodging traffic.

For Oswald to be PM, he would have had to hang around the front door for several minutes from the moment of the shooting until he was met by Pierce, and that is highly unlikely. One or more fellow employees would have seen him and eventually reported it.

In case you haven't been following closely, Gary, the claim is not that Oswald just hung around the front door for several minutes.

It's that he popped in to the "small storage room" just off the lobby and was seen there by Ochus Campbell (and possibly Jeraldean Reid too) as he (and possibly she) headed for the front stairs up to the second floor: that's the sighting Ochus Campbell himself was telling news reporters in the TSBD within just two or three hours of the assassination.

Allman's reaching the front door of the TSBD within 2 or 3 minutes of the shooting in no way undermines the case for Oswald as Prayer Man.

Instead, Pierce stopped Oswald as Oswald left the building following the lunchroom encounter, for no other explanation makes sense.

It's important that you not put words in Pierce's mouth, Gary. He did not say he "stopped" Oswald, he merely said he spoke with him.

Precision, please.

Pierce may have flashed his press pass to Oswald, but he didn’t remember doing that nor did co-worker Ford say he did....but he certainly could have done so and it would have been a natural thing to do at the time.

As for Oswald’s belief Allman was a Secret Service man, the notes and recollections say he said the man had a crew cut hair style. Pierce appeared on WFAA-TV later that afternoon, the tape exists, and he certainly did have that hair style. Although Manchester and other books often attribute the TSBD encounter to NBC’s Robert MacNeil, that’s simply wrong. Tapes of MacNeil that day show his hair was much, much longer than Allman’s and it was even longer then than it is today.

I quite agree: Allman is the most likely candidate for the crew-cut man Oswald helped.

Folks will have to look elsewhere to ID the Prayer Man, for he certainly wasn’t Oswald.

Oh dear, Gary, such categorical ruling out of something you simply can not categorically rule out.

Given the certainty with which you issued your erroneous declarations that Prayer Man was (first) Lovelady and (then) Shelley, perhaps a little humility and tentativeness might have been hoped for from you with respect to further suggestions as to the identification of Prayer Man?

(Unless, of course, one subscribes to the theory that the polite, ever-trusting killers allowed all TSBD workers who could have seen Oswald on the steps to live for years if not decades after the assassination, hoping they would never tell anyone.)

Who says the killers of JFK would have been bothered by the revelation that Oswald was not the sixth floor shooter?

Again, please address the Prayer Man theory that is being put forward, not a straw man simplification of it.

Gary Mack"

Question for you, Gary: who do you believe Prayer Man is?

[B. A. Copeland]

I truly look forward to that response from Gary Sean, great defense of your studies.

[Thomas Graves]

Sean Mentions Kent Biffle's DMN notes on the Baker-Truly Encounter. I must have missed that. What else did he say?

I agree that Roy Truly's behavior is suspicious - giving Oswald a pass on the second floor and then a few minutes later considering him suspiciously missing, getting his address from the front office, then after talking to Deptuty Chief Lumpkin (who drove the pilot car in the motorcade and stopped and told the cops at Houston and Elm - and the sixth floor sniper - that the motorcade was minutes away), gives Oswald's name and address to Capt. Fritz - beginning the Ozzie Rabbit hunt.

So if Truly is part of the Pin the Tail on the Rabbit and Dealey Plaza Cleanup and Coverup Crew - why would he make up the second floor encounter with Oswald, which exonerates him from being the Sixth Floor Sniper?

And why would Baker and Reid go along with him, and confirm that they saw Oswald in the Second floor lunchroom at a minute and a half after the assassination and in the outer office with coke two minutes after the assassination?

Mrs. Hine, because her desk was close to the front of the office, she often gave Oswald change to use for soda machine (or phone?), and may have done so around the time of the assassination. She must have viewed the motorcade from one of the two small offices that had windows facing Houston Street - I think these offices belonged to different publishers. Then she walked around the corner, past the elevator and stairs, and after knocking on the first door with windows fronting Elm Street - she went down the hall to the other offices but even though there was someone in the office and was on the phone they wouldn't open the door for her. So Hine was on the other side of the building when Reid and Oswald were in the office together and didn't see Hine.

I believe Baker, Reid, Hine and Oswald as to what they did at the time of and the first few minutes after the assassination, and that exonerates Oswald as JFK's killer, so why would they create a false story about a second floor lunchroom encounter - that proves Oswald didn't do it?

[...]

Bill,

If the second floor lunchroom encounter so obviously, as you claim, exonerated Oswald, why then did the Warren Commission accept it as "fact?"

Answer: Because it was sufficiently plausible (being reported by a policeman and a building superintendent!), it took Oswald off the front steps at the time of the assassination, it placed Oswald a lot closer to the back stairway and the "sniper's nest," and it allowed Oswald to "escape" in a way that didn't cast too much aspersion on the Dallas Police Department.

--Tommy

Edited October 9, 2013 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

As Sean is still trying to be convince us that the Second Floor lunchroom encounter never occurred and was the result of Baker and Truly being told what to say by the nameless screenwriter of the epic JFK assassination coverup, I call your attention to three facts - that the date on the handwritten statement that Sean refers to, with the crossed out "drinking a coke" is dated September 24, 1964, after the Warren Report was written and the day before it was publicly released. What the puck?

Why are they still concerned about this? Because they know its significance, and the fact that if it is reviewed in detail, as the SS did, it exonerates Oswald as being the Sixth Floor Assassin because if Baker saw Oswald through the window of the closed lunchroom door, and Truly, ahead of Baker didn't see him go through that door, he didn't enter the lunchroom through that door but through the other door that leads to the offices which he left by.

Truly testified that he didn't know Baker saw Oswald through the window of the closed door until sometime later, and heard it through the grapevine, just as Baker later heard that Oswald bought the now famous coke and Mrs. Reid saw him with it in his hand.

The clincher however, is when they called Truly back to the Post Office Annex to get him to answer one question under oath - does the lunchroom door with the window through which Baker saw Oswald - does that door have an automatic door closing mechanism - and the answer is yes - it does, securing the fact that the door was tightly closed when Baker saw Oswald on the other side of it - and Truly didn't see Baker go through it.

So Sean would have us believe that the master coverup artists - the author of the fictional second floor encounter - made all this up in order to hide an even more telling truth - that the Baker-Oswald-Truly encounter occurred at the front door.

Now its possible that Oswald is "Prayer Man" and he was like an invisible fly on the wall on the top steps of the front door - and maybe "Prayer Man" even held the door open for Baker, but if that's the case, then when Baker and Truly went to the rear of the building, Oswald - whether Prayer Man or not, he went up the front steps and entered the vestibule of the lunchroom from the south door - so Baker saw him through the window of the closed door - and while Truly continued up the steps to the third floor, Baker investigated - and confronted the man - Oswald.

Now if this story was concocted by anyone, why wouldn't they tell Truly that he had to see Oswald go through the door ahead of Baker? Why would they tell Baker that he saw Oswald through the window of the closed door - and why would they create a scenario that exonerates Oswald?

I'm not trying to convince you of anything, Bill. Your devotion to the lunchroom story is total, and that's fine with me.

You're also perfectly free to mock the notion that the 'investigating' authorities would have worked very hard to cover up inconvenient facts in the case. But you should be aware that when you do so you sound more like David von Pein than your own good self.

**

Now the question you ask is easily answered:

Truly, by the time the 'walking away' element was incorporated into the lunchroom story, had already gone on the record over and over again to the effect that his own first sighting of Oswald post-assassination was of Oswald in the actual lunchroom.

It was too late to embellish along the lines you are suggesting.

**

Why do you keep claiming that the lunchroom scenario, as told by Baker and Truly to the WC, "exonerates Oswald"?

Please show us how the following LN scenario is ruled out by Baker and Truly's testimony:

• Oswald shoots JFK
• Oswald comes down the stairs
• Oswald on the second floor, hearing the noise of someone on the way up, hurries over to the second-floor landing door and goes through it
• Oswald looks through the door window as Truly crosses the landing
• Oswald is about to go back out onto the landing when he is surprised to see an officer hit the landing
• Oswald spins around to head for the lunchroom
• But the officer notices the movement.

[...]

[emphasis added by T. Graves]

Bumped to remind people that "The Second Floor Lunchroom Encounter" could have been a plausible work of fiction.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Thomas Graves