When did the second floor lunchroom encounter first come to light?

[Guest]

1 hour ago, David Josephs said:

From what I understand Lance, one of the purposes of a "plan" is to foster and use that confusion...  The two sets of Tramps is a great example...  but that's another story.

Bottom line Lance.... if at this point in history we do not understand that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy which did not...DID NOT involve the man Ruby shot... then there is truly very little point in continuing a conversation....

I was referring to the inevitable confusion and chaos that ensues when a President is shot on a public street in broad daylight and people are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and specifically the confusion within the TBSD, and even more specifically the confusion of two men running through the building with the idea that the shooter(s) might still be inside.  The sense you are talking about, where sowing confusion is actually part of the assassination plan, obviously depends on what the plan was.

1 hour ago, David Josephs said:

We can speculate about why...  I see it firmly avoiding who that person coming down was... given how quickly after the shooting Baker claims to be there... this person would be suspect #1

no?.

I believe the person coming down, as described in Baker's affidavit and the official version, was LHO.  I believe Baker's affidavit is an inartful description of what was later fleshed out as the second floor lunchroom encounter.  You can and presumably will say this is preposterous, but the fact is that the affidavit strikes me as a quick-and-dirty description of the same event as the lunchroom encounter.

 

1 hour ago, David Josephs said:

You're a lawyer, What questions would YOU ask? 

Someone should have asked:   "Officer Baker / Mr. Truly:  the Baker Affidavit 11/22 states you both encountered a man coming down the stairs between the 3rd and 4th floors who worked at the TSBD - who was that?"

Of course, that's what I would have asked.  My guess is, Baker would have said something like:  "The man was Oswald.  In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, I was confused about what floor we were on.  When I said the man was walking away from the stairway, I meant he was walking away from where I was on the stairway, which is why he had to turn when I called to him.  I summarized the event in a couple of lines, having no idea that every word would later be scrutinized with a microscope."  My guess would be that he probably did say something like this, which is why the issue had turned into a pumpkin by the time of his Warren Commission testimony.

 

1 hour ago, David Josephs said:

Are the LN glasses simply for the purpose of analysis - or is that where you've landed? 

How do you start out stating the affidavit would indeed be a problem... then conclude that the affidavit and testimony are not in conflict?  It takes a man FARTHER from the sniper's window and puts him closer and on the stairs coming down...  how much more incriminating does it have to be...  yet we have no idea who that person was....

Well, honestly, who cares what I think?  I haven't even written a book.  But since you've asked, I am heavily inclined to the Lone Nut theory; open to a possible "conspiracy" where LHO was the lone shooter (and lead conspirator) but possibly working with a couple of pro-Castro helpers; and somewhat less open to a small-scale conspiracy where LHO was cooperating with pro-Castro conspirators.  I reject any notion that LHO was a false defector, actually a member of the radical right rather than a Marxist, or a patsy in any sort of elaborate conspiracy involving LBJ, CIA, FBI, Military Intelligence, DPD, Mafia or the other usual suspects.

I can recognize the inconsistency between Baker's affidavit and the official version as "a problem" without regarding it as an insurmountable problem.  Yes, as I said in my OP, even as a more-or-less Lone Nutter I am not entirely happy with the lunchroom encounter - which is one of the reasons I tend to believe it's true.

I'm not laughing at those who see something sinister in these events.  A sinister interpretation is certainly possible.  It just seems weak to me.  (I just downloaded all 1600 pages of Reclaiming History on my Kindle at the exorbitant price of $30, which I never bothered to read when I was more of a conspiracy theorist myself.  So I will presumably emerge in a month or so as a full-tilt Lone Nutter.)

[David Von Pein]

At 10:42 of this 11-29-63 phone conversation, Hoover states that LHO was confronted by police and cleared by LHO's boss at the front door of the TSBD.

Hoover got a lot of things wrong....

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/09/fbi-errors.html

[David Von Pein]

David Josephs said:

Someone should have asked: "Officer Baker / Mr. Truly:  the Baker Affidavit 11/22 states you both encountered a man coming down the stairs between the 3rd and 4th floors who worked at the TSBD - who was that?"

But what difference would it have made to the outer-fringe Internet conspiracy theorists if Marrion Baker HAD been asked the above question by David Belin of the Warren Commission?

Would any CTer here actually have believed Baker's answer if he had said he was merely confused and got the floor number mixed up, and if he had provided an answer about the "stairway" similar to what Lance proposed earlier?

Come now! Let's get real! No (Internet) CTer would suddenly start believing Officer Baker---no matter what he said in front of the WC.

Replay....

"Why can't conspiracists accept Marrion Baker's "third or fourth floor" statement for what it so clearly is — a simple and honest mistake made by a police officer who was in a chaotic and frantic situation within minutes of the President having just been shot, and who was not paying close attention at all to what floor he was standing on when he pointed his gun at Lee Harvey Oswald's stomach in the lunchroom on November 22, 1963?" -- DVP; December 2017

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/The Lunchroom Encounter

 

Edited January 4, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Ron Bulman]

19 hours ago, Bart Kamp said:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1607-for-24-hours-the-second-floor-lunch-room-encounter-did-not-exist

I don't think I've ever seen the FBI reports of Truly's statements on the 23rd, one reputedly dictated on the 22nd. So agents Doyle Williams and Nat Pinkston questioned him on the 22nd but filed their report on the 23rd.  Agent Jackson did so on the 23rd, and never initialed or signed his report.  And the DPD affidavit was on the 23rd.  I.E. 3 of the reporting sources of the first mention of the lunchroom encounter are the FBI, and the fourth came after questioning by them.  While J Edgar Hoover told LBJ "We have our man" (that we've had under observation for quite some time) on the 22nd.  But Baker doesn't mention the incident until March to the Warren Omission.  Strange no one from the press asked Truly, as he seems to have been willing to talk to them, who was the officer you ran up the stairs with?  Stranger still no one asked Baker about it.  Almost as strange as him not mentioning it in his first day affidavit, given the information's importance.  Almost like someone told him not to talk or refused access to him.   Police departments are militaristic organizations.  Captains, Lieutenants, Sargent's.  Officers take orders.  Refusing to follow them has consequences.  Roger Craig got fired, harassed, and shot among other things then committed suicide.  Baker bought a "ranch" on an officers salary and later retired there.     

[Ron Bulman]

20 hours ago, Bart Kamp said:

https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t1607-for-24-hours-the-second-floor-lunch-room-encounter-did-not-exist

I'm trying to piece together statements and timing from the affidavits, FBI reports and Truly's undated hand written statement on an affidavit form.

Truly tells Baker he's the superintendent and Baker says how do we get to the roof.  Rush to the freight elevators.  They won't work.  Run up the stairs to the 2nd floor, Baker notices Oswald in the lunchroom, stops, sticks his head in and questions him, Truly says he's an employee. Per Truly.  They run up to the 3rd or 4th floor, call a man back, he's an employee says Truly per Baker.  They run up to the 5th floor, take the elevator to the 7th, climb onto the roof and search it.  Per the Williams/Pinkston FBI report they then search the 7th floor.  "The officer took a hurried look around on a couple of floors on the way down.", Truly's hand written account.  The 6th and 5th floors because..."we met some other officers on the 4th floor searching the building."  End of that part of the story.  No comment, nobody ever asks.  Did they tell the other officers "we searched the roof and 7th floor, saw guys on the 2nd and 3rd or 4th but they were employees"?  Never mentioned, by anybody, ever???   Instead of helping further with the investigation there Baker leaves, doesn't report anything on the radio.  Truly in the handwritten versions says" some 15 minutes later I was checking our employee's and I did not find Lee".  He then would have called for Lee's personal info and given it to Lumpkin who gave it to Fritz who had it broadcast.  All of this supposedly took 20 minutes.  How do you hear shots, round the corner, park the bike, run in the building question at least one suspect, run up 5 flights of stairs, take the elevator another 2, search the roof, search the 7th floor, "look around" two more floors, encounter other officers on the 4th floor...all in 5 minutes.  I'm tired and breathing hard just thinking about it.  Unlike the calm, cool, collected Lee in the lunchroom.

[James DiEugenio]

Ron:

A few years ago, I stated on this site that I was very glad that we had some new people joining the critical community e.g. people like yourself and Dave Josephs and a few others.

One reason I was glad of that was  it helped us look anew at some WC shibboleths that the first generation of critics blindly accepted.  Among those were the lunchroom encounter, the rifle transaction, the Bledsoe testimony, and Oswald being in Mexico City.  (Although I must say that Garrison really questioned the last.)

Finally, through years and years of work and urging people on, this has finally come to fruition.  Its not just  that they all turned out to be dubious, but that they were always dubious.  And there were indications they were from the start.  But the first generation of critics, as a group, accepted them.  (Another exception is Weisberg, who did  quote from Baker's first day affidavit in Whitewash 2.)

And what do Lance and DVP reply with?  Oh it was a confusing day, and the guy on the floor landing really was Oswald (what a hoot that one is--when in fact Worrell saw someone running out the back in a brown jacket).  If Baker had ever been in  a real court of law he would have been done in by his own affidavit. I would have loved to have taken the jury to the second floor lunchroom and walked them inside, had them look at the place for a minute, then taken them up to the third floor landing, stayed there for a minute and then asked Baker: "And you could not recall the difference between the two just a couple of hours later?"  My next question, as I passed out copies of the affidavit to the jury, would have been: "Why didn't you mention the coke?"  My last question would have been, "When you made out the affidavit in the witness room, why did you not ask Oswald his name so you could write it down in the affidavit?"  

After that, I am pretty sure Baker would have been dissipated with  regards to the jury. In fact, one of the brighter ones, unable to contain himself, might have said, "How did they get you to change your story?'

Prayer Man may or may not be Oswald. But IMO, thanks to people like Bart, Greg Parker, Sean Murphy, Sandy Larsen, David Josephs, and my short summary in RP,  this lunchroom incident has been reduced to a myth.  Sort of like the other 880 pages of that Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale formally called the Warren Report.

And it further shows what a runway prosecution can get away with when there are no restraints in place or rules to prevent them from violating every single aspect of proper adversary procedure. The WC threw out every line of the legal code of ethics in regards to the rights of the accused,  proper legal procedure, and the rules of evidence.  A point that Mr Colorado is strangely  silent about.

Edited January 4, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[David Von Pein]

Incredibly, Jim DiEugenio is still under the delusion—here in the year 2018 AD—that the Warren Commission was an "adversary procedure". It wasn't at all, of course. It was a fact-finding investigation. The "accused" was a dead man. The WC was tasked with finding the facts—and the truth—relating to Oswald and the events of 11/22/63. And, in my opinion, they did exactly that during their 10-month (and very detailed) probe — notwithstanding the persistent whining from Internet conspiracy theorists who have a willful desire to tear down Earl Warren's Commission.

The following fact remains perfectly clear (at least to me it's very clear)....

After 50+ years of trying to replace the Warren Commission Report with something better (and something conspiratorial in nature), the thousands upon thousands of JFK conspiracy theorists who have made such an attempt have failed abysmally in their efforts. Because nothing that has ever been put on the table by conspiracists over the years has come even close to matching the Warren Commission's conclusions when it comes to reasonably evaluating the sum total of the raw evidence (both physical and circumstantial) associated with the JFK and J.D. Tippit murders, which includes the Commission's reasonable and logical interpretation of Lee Harvey Oswald's very own actions and movements on November 21 and 22, 1963.

When it comes to evaluating that "sum total of evidence", the Warren Commission and the Warren Report stand alone, IMO. The conspiracy community hasn't even made a dent in those WC conclusions (as far as being able to put on the table an alternative "conspiracy"-based scenario that reasonably and rationally and believably explains every facet of the evidence in the case AND also reasonably explains Lee Oswald's guilty-like actions both on Nov. 21 and Nov. 22). And I don't think they ever will make a dent.

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/06/warren-commission-got-it-right.html

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/09/warren-commission-objectives.html

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edited January 4, 2018 by David Von Pein

[David Von Pein]

"The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists have succeeded in transforming a case very simple and obvious at its core--Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone--into its present form of the most complex murder case, by far, in world history. Refusing to accept the plain truth, and dedicating their existence for over forty years to convincing the American public of the truth of their own charges, the critics have journeyed to the outer margins of their imaginations. Along the way, they have split hairs and then proceeded to split the split hairs, drawn far-fetched and wholly unreasonable inferences from known facts, and literally invented bogus facts from the grist of rumor and speculation. With over 18,000 pages of small print in the 27 Warren Commission volumes alone, and many millions of pages of FBI and CIA documents, any researcher worth his salt can find a sentence here or there to support any ludicrous conspiracy theory he might have. And that, of course, is precisely what the conspiracy community has done." -- Vincent Bugliosi; Page xxvi of "Reclaiming History"

Edited January 4, 2018 by David Von Pein

[Ron Bulman]

10 hours ago, Bart Kamp said:

None whatsoever on the 22nd.

The only encounter mentioned on the 22nd and published in the late evening and next day editions are about an encounter and sightings of Oswald on the 1st floor.

HERE pages 90-99

In the next update there will be more about this.

 

I read your article a few weeks back.  Excellent.  But This connection went right over my head.

I'd read about Texas School Book Depository Vice President Occus Campbell before.  Truly said they were headed out together for lunch and stopped to watch the parade.  Campbell was quoted, on the 22nd, in it turns out the New York Times Herald as saying that as they went back into the building after the assassination "we saw him (Oswald) in a small Storage Room On The First Floor".   Somebody somewhere once posted a picture of this storage room, it's right by the front door and stairs to the second floor in the entryway/vestibule.

I know I read this part, but the first time, woosh.  In the Dallas Morning News (the Morning edition?) on 11/23/63 Kent Biffle reported "In a Storage Room On the First Floor, the officer, gun drawn, spotted Oswald. "Does this man work here", the officer reportedly asked Truly".  

I'm no attorney in any shape form or fashion but I think Perry Mason might have tried to call that Corroboration on behalf of his client. 

Edited January 4, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

You got that one right Ron.

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Davey loves to recycle more and more of his own BS.  We have been through this several times. As if the WC critics penned or created Baker's first day affidavit.

But there he goes again.

In a fact finding mission, say the Watergate Committee or Iran Contra, there are rules one follows.  And anyone can see that if you watch their hearings.  Plus, they usually have their own investigators.  And they also have minority and majority counsel.

The idea that since Oswald was dead, there could be no adversary procedure, is more Von Peinism.  Never heard of trial in absentia right Davey?

But neither of the above were ever in the cards.

After being harangued and lectured  by Joe Alsop,  LBJ said, he just needed to appoint some panel to ratify a Hoover report.  A report which was done in about nine days. Some inquiry huh? He then scared a coupleof the panelists witless, namely Russell and Warren, with visions of atomic holocaust. And Allen Dulles lobbied his way on. (Geez, wonder why?) Between Hoover, McCloy, Dulles and Ford (who later confessed it was pure malarkey), it was all a joke, and they knew it.

Dulles and Belin had Baker's first day affidavit when he testified, did they not?  Why did they not take him to the TSBD and ask him why he could not tell the difference between the lunchroom and the the third floor landing?

Edited January 4, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[David Von Pein]

22 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Dulles and Belin had Baker's first day affidavit when he testified, did they not?  Why did they not take him to the TSBD and ask him why he could not tell the difference between the lunchroom and the the third floor landing?

Because the WC was capable of doing what most CTers cannot do --- i.e., properly evaluate a witness' first-day affidavit, while realizing that some NON-SINISTER errors of fact might find their way into such a first-day statement.

Ergo, the Warren Commission could easily see that Officer Baker was describing the SAME EVENT in his first-day affidavit that he and Truly described in their respective WC testimony (that is: Baker & Truly encountered Oswald in the lunchroom---not on the "3rd or 4th floor").

[Steve Thomas]

All I can say is, give the guy a break.

 

It was a rough night.

 

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/baker_m1.htm

 

Mr. BELIN - What did you do after you graduated from high school?
Mr. BAKER - I think I got married.

(At this point, the Chief Justice left the hearing room.)

 

Steve Thomas

[Guest]

9 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

 

 

Hoover got a lot of things wrong....

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/09/fbi-errors.html

so did Truly and Baker and Reid and Sanders and Campbell and Lovelady and Shelley.......and Williams and Jarman and Givens and Lewis and Piper and West and so on...

 

There are too many reports of Oswald's sighting/encounter on the first floor. Simples.

Edited January 4, 2018 by Bart Kamp

[Steve Thomas]

7 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/baker_m1.htm

 

Mr. BELIN - What did you do after you graduated from high school?
Mr. BAKER - I think I got married.

(At this point, the Chief Justice left the hearing room.)

 

Steve Thomas

Did Baker actually see Oswald in the lunch room, or just infer it?

 

"Mr. DULLES - Could I ask one question before you ask this question, and this is a bit of a leading question, and think carefully.
If Oswald had been coming down the stairs and going into the lunchroom would he have been following the course insofar as you saw a course, that he--that you saw him follow?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir. The reason I say that, this hallway to the right.
Mr. BELIN - By the right you mean the hallway that goes to the-- this is--
Mr. BAKER - This is a hallway right here.
Mr. BELIN - It is a hallway that has the number 27 on it?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir; from what I understand these are offices in there.
Mr. DULLES - Yes.
Mr. BAKER - And he had no business in there..."

 

And Baker would know this how, exactly?

 

Mr. BAKER - And he had no business in there., and the lunchroom would be the only place that he would be going..."

 

Oh, that's right. I forgot. After high school graduation, things got a little hazy.

 

Steve Thomas