Pat Speer

You understate the case. Dougherty was not only "near" the stairway, he was, according to the commission's scenario, just standing there, 20 feet or so away from the open floor Oswald would have to have crossed to go downstairs. They avoided all questions about this because they knew where this would ultimately lead--that Dougherty was not where he said he was when they needed him to be there. Yes, they were in a bit of a bind. They desperately needed Dougherty to be upstairs at the time of the shooting so they could say he was the one who took the elevator down as Baker and Truly ran up. But they couldn't have him descend for 2 minutes or so after the shooting. And, they believed the elevator was already on this floor, within a few feet of where Dougherty had been working. So they just left it at that--they let people think Dougherty was too stupid to notice anyone running past him. But we have reason to suspect they knew this wasn't true. When I read up on Joe Ball's career I was surprised to find he was famous for destroying witnesses on the stand. Apparently, he was particularly famous for making problematic witnesses look stupid, so that his clients (many of whom we can suspect were guilty) would go free. One case I read about stands out, for that matter. A man was accused of raping an underage girl, and Ball found out she'd never learned to read a clock. So he asked her on the record to tell the time on a clock, and then used her failure to undermine her credibility in his final summation. Essentially, he told the jury she was so stupid we couldn't trust her to know if she'd been raped or not. Well, he and his mini-me Belin used this same tactic over and over. They smeared Rowland using his wife. They avoided asking key questions and smeared Piper and Dougherty in the WR. And they used Lovelady and Shelley's inconsistent testimony to smear Adams. And, at the same time, they propped up Givens--who had a huge sign around his neck saying "unreliable witness." It was all by design. And they weren't the designers. The record is clear that after Specter interviewed the first round of witnesses, and inconsistencies began to appear, that Warren told the staff he wanted a clean record, with minimal inconsistencies. It is also clear that Ball and Belin jumped on board and said they could cut down on the inconsistencies if they could pre-interview witnesses and screen out problematic answers, and that Redlich objected. And that Warren over-ruled Redlich. This is what happened. It's all in Willens' diary. The Warren Commission was a cover-up. Pure and simple. They may not have known what they were covering up, but that's a separate discussion.

Some more thoughts about Shelley's affidavit claiming he'd left Dougherty in charge of the elevator. 1. As neither Shelley nor Dougherty were asked about this on the record, even though the WC had written internal memos expressing their concerns about Dougherty and their desire to establish his activities on the day of the shooting, it seems likely Ball/Belin asked about this off the record, and didn't like the answers they received. Perhaps, then, Shelley or Dougherty or both indicated this happened shortly after the shots, before Dougherty went upstairs and heard a sound. 2. Similarly, neither Truly nor Shelley were asked just when it was that Truly told Shelley to guard the elevators--before or after he went upstairs with Baker. As it makes far less sense for Truly to have told an unarmed Shelley to block a potential assassin from coming off an elevator AFTER Truly had come down from the roof--when armed policemen were filling the building--than it does for Truly to have told this to Shelley before the police invaded, it seems likely that this occurred before Truly climbed the stairs. In such case, it would once again appear to be no accident that this question was not asked on the record. 3. Shelley's affidavit said "I left Jack Dougherty in charge of the elevator." This is fairly vague. I mean, did he actually speak to Dougherty? Or did he tell Lovelady or someone else to get Dougherty to do it? Or was Shelley just lying, knowing Dougherty's issues would lead people to believe him over Dougherty? At the time of Shelley's affidavit, it was not yet established how Oswald got out of the building. Supposedly, Oswald told his interviewers he spoke to Shelley who said it was okay to go home. Perhaps, then, Shelley was frightened he would be blamed for Oswald's "escape" and the subsequent killing of Tippit, and decided to blame the "retard"--kinda like the way people blame the dog when they cut a fart. At that time, Shelley may have thought Oswald had taken the passenger elevator down--or that people would come to believe as much. So, his saying he left Dougherty in charge may have been his way of saying "Hey, don't blame me! I took the cops upstairs to the fourth floor. If Oswald took the elevator down while we were upstairs, well, it's not my fault--I told Dougherty to watch the elevator. Blame him!" Addendum: It should be pointed out as well that Shelley worked for Truly and that Truly had given him an order to block anyone's coming off the elevator. Shelley may have been worried that Truly--who was understandably upset that he'd vouched for Oswald on the second floor--would come to blame him for letting Oswald leave the building entirely. So he dumped the blame on Dougherty, who had trouble communicating, and was kinda like Truly's pet.

Absolutely. Although many LN sources claim the depository was searched from top to bottom, this is wishful thinking. I'm fairly certain the search stopped the moment a rifle was found near the stairs...at around 1:25. By the time Day returned from his office (roughly 2:45 to 3:05), moreover, everyone but his underlings on the crime scene search section had left--and those guys were just taking pictures, and drawing maps of the box arrangement. Apparently, a thorough search of the building was never performed.

I may have mentioned this already but there was a security service that patrolled at night that had keys to the building. As I recall there was no follow-up to determine if any of the keys had been copied or any of the keys were missing.

The much-belated testimony of the witnesses is only part of the story. This comes from the 12-7-63 report of the Secret Service on Oswald's co-workers. "When Dougherty was interviewed, he seemed to be very confused about times and places. Mr. Truly furnished the information that, although Dougherty is a very good employee and a hard worker, he is mentally retarded and has difficulty in remembering facts, such as dates, times, places, and has been especially confused since the assassination. Dougherty was therefore not questioned further." (CD87, p781).

I suspect his months-later testimony is not accurate as to time. The line-up etc did not occur right off the bat. It was much later. The police who rushed into the building subsequent to Baker were in pursuit of an assassin. They ran like mad throughout the building. There's no evidence anyone began taking names in the immediate aftermath. It was a half hour or so before they officially found the sniper's nest. It's possible, of course, that Truly did suspect Oswald within 15 minutes or so after realizing he was missing. But he certainly didn't act on it, or if he did, Fritz didn't act on it. To my recollection, there is no evidence the DPD was looking for Oswald prior to Fritz's departure from the building. More than an hour after the shooting...

No. Truly comes in. He sees Shelley and Lovelady by the phone or near the back elevator. He tells Shelley to go to the front and guard the elevator. He goes to the front and Lovelady goes back outside, where he is captured on film. Sawyer rushes in, and says he wants to go upstairs. Shelley takes him upstairs on the front elevator. But he glances down the hall and sees Dougherty coming out of the Domino room or bathroom or something. So he yells at him to come down and guard the elevator. But Dougherty doesn't understand and just goes back to work, using the west elevator. Maybe. We will never know. Not enough questions were asked. Not enough details were provided. I just know that Sawyer said he was taken upstairs on the front elevator by someone who worked in the building, and the only employee who said he took someone upstairs to the fourth floor was Shelley. So that puts him at the front elevator, not the back elevator, as I think most people had assumed. Incredibly, prior to my doing so, I don't think anyone ever looked at all the TSBD-related testimony and tried to put the pieces together. While some had written on the elevator situation, and some had written on the Adams situation, I don't think anyone had made the connection that the official story had Oswald race right past Dougherty on the fifth floor, or that Shelley and Lovelady were the two men observed by Baker, or that Shelley took Sawyers upstairs, or that Piper talked to Oswald in the Domino Room at 12:00, etc. I think people saw it as too confusing, with too many moving parts, But I'm up to my neck in this stuff.

If I recall, Truly was asked about Dougherty's inconsistencies, and tried to cut off suspicion of him by telling the FBI Dougherty was kinda retarded, or some such thing. Dougherty was the only one believed to have been on the upper floors without an alibi. He was considered suspicious. Truly was trying to help. I am fairly certain, moreover, that Dougherty was not retarded. Frazier told me he read the paper every day. The tape of his conversation with Gil Toff reveals him to be quite normal. So only mildly retarded, if that. But I suspect otherwise. I suspect he was instead autistic--someone addicted to routine, who works better by himself, and has trouble communicating.

Jarman and Norman took the west elevator up to the fifth 20 minutes or so before the shooting. I believe they were non-committal as to whether they left the gate up. But when they got there the east elevator was supposedly up on the sixth. So it seems possible Jarman and Norman left the gate up so they would be guaranteed access for their trip back down. I mean. most people used the front elevator. As far as they knew they were the only ones on the upper floors. So it only makes sense that they would not bring down the gate and lock the elevator on their floor. But we don't know any of this stuff because the DPD and FBI etc either failed to comprehend the importance of the elevator or refused to actually investigate this issue. I don't think there's any memo or report prior to March or April in which the elevator situation was even discussed. The supposed story is that Williams took the east up to the sixth, and then the fifth, where it was locked in place. And that Jarman and Norman took the west up to the fifth but didn't lock it in place. They need this to be so they can explain how Dougherty got back upstairs to go back to work. So he takes it up to the sixth and then the fifth...where he supposedly is at the time of the shooting. But here's one of the massive HOLES in the official story. They then have him standing by the elevator on the fifth for two minutes or so after the shots, when his words suggest he came down n a matter of seconds after hearing the loud sound above him. And this two minutes or so is lethal to the official story, IMO. The west elevator is like 25 feet from the stairwell Oswald supposedly came down on--the stairwell that opens up into the room. IOW, the official story has Oswald run right past Dougherty. So why was Dougherty never asked if he saw or heard Oswald run past him? When I put this together I realized that the whole Dougherty on the fifth floor at the time of the shots story was a concoction and not a conclusion. The relevant questions before one could come to such a conclusion were just never asked. P.S. As the last known movement of the west elevator prior to the shooting was 20 minutes or so before the shooting by Jarman and Norman, it remains possible someone called or took this elevator up to the sixth in that period. As I recall Williams was not asked if he saw this elevator when he took the east elevator down. As far as Truly, I don't put much stock in his claim both elevators were on the same floor. I doubt someone standing on the first floor could quickly glimpse two elevators from below and determine for sure if they were both four floors up, or if one was five floors up. But even if he's correct, it just means that the shooter--after tossing the assassination rifle near the stairwell--ran down the stairs to the fifth, and then took the open west elevator on down.

He's not. While it's impossible to work it all out, it appears that Dougherty was confused in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Perhaps then he didn't understand what Shelley told him and just went back to work. No one said they saw him by the elevator, and the only contact with the police (or FBI) Dougherty would cop to was a good deal later--when he went up to the sixth floor looking for Truly. Assuming Dougherty went back to work, then, we can assume he got up to the sixth floor at 12:35 or so. He then went down to the fifth at say 12:37. At such time he heard a loud sound above him that was actually Baker and Truly coming down from the roof. I believe they said they saw Sawyer as they came down--and I think Sawyer ran back outside at 12:37 or so... But that's me just going off the top of my head...

OK. The assumption was that if any shots were fired from the TSBD they were fired from the front of the building. Truly thought the freight elevators were locked in place. So he told Shelley to go guard the front elevator. It makes perfect sense.

Truly was tired from climbing the stairs. He looked for the elevators on every floor. The first floor one he saw was on the fifth.

Baker said he wasn't sure if the shots came from the building. He just knew he could get a good look from the roof. Truly said he thought the shots came from the railroad yards. He thought the elevators at the back of the building were locked up on the fifth, and told Shelley to go make sure no one suspicious came out the elevator at the front of the building from where he would have to have assumed the shots were fired, if indeed they were fired from the building. He also tells Piper to guard the back door. He runs with Baker up to the second floor. Baker stops to get a look at Oswald. Truly gives Oswald the OK. They then proceed up to the fifth, take the elevator to the seventh, and go up on the roof. At this point neither of them have reason to suspect Oswald. As Truly comes down moreover he sees Dougherty working and assumes it was Dougherty who rode the elevator down as they ran up. Soon thereafter the Dallas police officers and county sheriffs, who had almost universally raced to the train yards, race into the building, searching for the shooter they assume is hiding in the building. Serious attention is paid to the seventh floor, which is dark and has a small room in the corner. They send out for lights. After 20 minutes or so of this chaos, Mooney finds the sniper's nest on the sixth floor and another 10 minutes or so pass before Fritz comes up and begins the search for the rifle. Boone finds it 10 minutes later. It would only now dawn on Truly that Oswald may have been the shooter. Either he goes looking for him, or is told Oswald is missing, and this alarms him to the extent he tells Fritz. It is more than an hour after the shooting.

I need some clarification. You write that Oswald's name was being bandied about within 30 minutes. What is your evidence for this? My recollection is that Truly told Fritz of Oswald's MIA status just before Fritz left the building (which was more than an hour after the shooting), and that Fritz did NOTHING about this prior to his arriving at the station. At which point he said we need to pick up this guy Oswald, and was told "No need. We just picked him up at the theater." To my recollection no alarm bells went off about Oswald until after he'd emerged as the top suspect in killing Tippit. Tippit, after all, was given a vague description of the presumed shooter, based upon the statements of Brennan and perhaps Euins. As far as we know, he was not told to look for Oswald. Correct? What am I missing?

Once again, there's nothing suspicious about this. Williams was 19 and black and scared as heck. His subsequent confession and testimony he was on the sixth floor up until 12:15 or so was a HUGE problem for the WC.It was a hindrance, not a help. Here they were pushing this scenario that Oswald was up there for some time building a sniper's nest and putting together his rifle and YIKES Bonnie Ray comes along and throws a spanner in the works. I

Thanks. I copied a lot of those HSCA interviews off another site, seeing as the MFF site never got around to putting them online. (There are thousands of HSCA interviews and FBI files the MFF never got around to putting online--which begs the question...if they succeed in their lawsuit and get access to the remaining documents...will they actually make them available to non-members? I suspect not...)

It wasn't a short time. There seems to be some confusion on the timeline. As I recall Truly went up to Fritz as he was leaving the building. That was 1:45 or after, right? So he had an hour to figure out Oswald was missing. I also seem to recall that Jarman said something about this to the HSCA--that he had pointed out Oswald's absence to Truly. But, unfortunately, my copy of the transcript is too blurry to read. No, scratch that. I took a quick look through the pdf posted by Jean Paul and couldn't find what I was looking for.

And the answer remains: Because he'd seen Oswald a few minutes before, and that Oswald had left afterwards. No one else had done so.

Because Oswald had been in the building, and had been the employee he'd last observed before he went up to the roof. Oswald's no longer being there was suspicious, while the others? Not so much. It is telling, moreover, that the DPD put out an APB on Givens. This supports that they were concerned about male warehouse workers who did not return after lunch. Oswald was even more suspicious. He'd left after the shooting. What is revealing per se about all this is not that they focused on Oswald but that the media and Oswald-did-it crowd pushed for decades that they focused on Oswald because he was the ONLY employee who was missing. This wasn't exactly true. It was a shortcut to what was true--that he was the only one known to be in the building who was missing. But it got repeated for decades because those anxious to blame Oswald are also anxious to reduce nuance and detail. There is a desperate desire to paint this whole thing as black and white. And that says more about themselves than it does about what happened. (Other common shortcuts: Oswald was a commie, and commies hate capitalists. Oswald was a wife-beater, and wife-beaters are vicious beasts. Oswald was a nobody, who was anxious to make a name for himself. Oswald was a loser, who hated men of class and privilege. The use of these shortcuts, IMO, is not necessarily the mark of a low intellect, so much as it is a sign of a lack of curiosity, and courage).

It's probably just another one of their glitches. I placed a 15 dollar order awhile back that was supposed to come in 2 days via Amazon Prime. It didn't show. They sent me a message apologizing for the delay and said it would show the next day. It didn't show. After 5 days I looked around and actually found a customer service rep I could communicate with. He apologized for the problem and said it had been fixed and that the order would show up in 2 days. He added 5 dollars onto my account for my trouble. It didn't show. After 5 days I contacted another rep who apologized and told me that he was personally releasing the order, and that I should expect it in 2 days. He also gave me 5 bucks for my trouble. It didn't show. After about a week I contacted another rep and told him the whole story and he told me that the order was STUCK and that even though it appeared like it could be released, that that he was powerless to release it. He then gave me a full refund plus another 5 dollars and said I should just re-order. By that time I'd found a similar item at Target and decided to just buy that. About two weeks later the item arrived. Apparently the order had come unstuck--even though the rep had canceled the order. Net result: they paid me 30 bucks to buy a 15 dollar item. P.S. I felt so guilty about this I sent Bezos a check. Not.

You're correct. It seems likely Shelley was about to call his wife when Adams came down and that he called her afterwards.

Accounts differ, but it appears there was no "roll call" per se. Employees gathered together on the first floor, and they noticed Oswald was missing. This was alarming to Truly because he'd encountered Oswald just after the shooting. While several other TSBD Building employees did not return from lunch, none of them were believed to have been in the building at the time of the shooting. So there was no APB put out for any of them outside Givens, who had worked on the sixth floor and had a criminal record.

I disagree. Truly encountered one and only one employee while running up the stairs, and that was Oswald. And, yikes, when he looked around 10-20 minutes later, who was missing? Oswald. So of course he says something. The only warehouse worker besides Oswald to not come back inside after the shooting was Givens, and the police put out an APB on him. If they were looking for Givens--who no one recalled being in the building at the time of the shooting--it only makes sense that they would be far more focused on Oswald--who was seen near the back of the building just after the shooting, and then left.

The employees were all milling around so they could be released and Truly realized that Oswald--who he had just seen--was now missing. So he told the police they should check him out. It's not exactly suspicious.

Yikes. When shown the autopsy photos by the ARRB, Riebe deferred to their accuracy. The same goes for Custer, who also told researchers the back of the skull was shattered but in place beneath the scalp. As far as O'Neil, from what I recall he did believe the large head wound was further back on the head than shown in the autopsy photos. But he believed it was at the top of the back of the head, and was the exit for a shot fired from behind. None of these witnesses, and very few of the supposed back of the head witnesses, said there was a large blow out wound on the far back of the head between the ears. So why won't researchers denounce the many books and articles portraying a wound in this location?