Duke Lane

... Kaiser allegedly found clipboard on same day Givens makes first ever mention of seeing Oswald on 6th floor - Dec 2. ...

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!

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

I'll begin this thread by re-posting each of the messages that first appeared in the thread "Defend the Warren Commission Report Findings? The 45 Questions (Question #37)."

Defend the Warren Commission Report Findings? The 45 questions

Question #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.

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....

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....

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?

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

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. This clipboard had been made by Kaiser and had his name on it. Kaiser identified it as the clipboard which Oswald had appropriated from him when Oswald came to work at the Depository. Three invoices on this clipboard, each dated November 22, were for Scott-Foresman books, located on the first and sixth floors. Oswald had not filled any of the three orders.

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.

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

[Continued from previous post]

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.

Does anyone believe that? If so, who?

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.

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?

Ah… we've gone "everybody who worked in the TSBD" to just "some".

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.

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!

There is a possibility (based on circumstantial evidence) that some involved in management or supervising aided the plot - I'd speculate if they did, it was on a need-to-know-basis. At least some of your laborers were co-opted to later change their stories to help the authorities deal with problems in their developing narrative. These were mostly black men. It was in the South. It was the early '60s. You think they deserved rewards for that? They got to keep breathing. Nuff said.

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?

... Kaiser allegedly found clipboard on same day Givens makes first ever mention of seeing Oswald on 6th floor - Dec 2. ...

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).

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."

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.

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....

I know you would. Now all you have to do is come up with the evidence. ... 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.

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 ...]

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?)

Well, my primer on how to do "quotes" certainly has made an impression, even if nothing else has!!

(Sorry, but I had to quote the original message!) 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,"

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.

Don't be coy, Greg: what records are you referring to that I've so obviously missed?

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.

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.

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.

Givens' story needed all the support it could get.

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?

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.

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

Ah, but ditto, grasshoppah!

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.

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.

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.

... Kaiser allegedly found clipboard on same day Givens makes first ever mention of seeing Oswald on 6th floor - Dec 2. ...

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!

I wouldn't go quite that far, but I have it on good authority where bears go!

Defend the Warren Commission Report Findings? The 45 questions

Question #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.

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....

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....

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?

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

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. This clipboard had been made by Kaiser and had his name on it. Kaiser identified it as the clipboard which Oswald had appropriated from him when Oswald came to work at the Depository. Three invoices on this clipboard, each dated November 22, were for Scott-Foresman books, located on the first and sixth floors. Oswald had not filled any of the three orders.

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.

Earl Warren allegedly said:

"Never in our lifetimes would we know the entire truth of what happened in Dallas."

• When did he make this statement. Can it be read on a specific document (except quote on Jim Marrs's "Crossfire book")?
  

• If true, did he mean the findings were not quite conclusive?
  

Thank you.

From a Vanity Fair article:

"Back in 1964, asked whether his Commission's documents would be made

public, Chief Justice Earl Warren replied, "Yes, there will come a

time. But it might not be in your lifetime. I am not referring to

anything especially, but there may be some things that would involve

security. This would be preserved but not made public."" [NY Times; 2/5/64]

I think the original quote from Pierre was an amalgamation of Earl Warren's statement above and Jack Ruby's post-conviction press conference (

).

Bernice & Robert,

My comments about the diocese being led by a Catholic and the Cistercian monastery were intended fallaciously, even sarcastically, but certainly not literally. No offense intended and - with a Catholic education through high school - elucidation not needed.

... There are the obvious Catholic areas, Father Mchann and the Dallas Cuban's.......to name but one.......I would encourage Forum members to look at the Cistercian monk who came to Dallas in the late 1950's at the time when Bishop Thomas K Gorman was head of the Dallas Diocese, when President Kennedy was assassinated. ....

Don't you think that it's suspicious that the head of the Dallas Diocese has always been a Catholic? Even today that's true! And let us not forget that there is not just one Cistercian monk - St Bernard's order, he who was a great supporter of the Knights Templar ... and we all know what became of them! - but a whole monastery of them just a few miles from downtown Dallas!

The evidence is clear and overwhelming, and shows how secure they are in the knowledge of never having to admit their hand in the playing out of the Dealey Plaza tragedy by the simple fact that they've remained exactly as before, and if anything have gained an even higher profile!

Further proof - a la Hoover's refusal to allow DPD to attend the FBI Academy in what remained of his lifetime - is that Dallas is still but a diocese - not an archdiocese despite the millions of Catholics there. If little tiny Connecticut can have three archdiocese, why else would huge Texas be limited to just Houston? Hmmm? The pope knows. It's in the same room deep beneath St Peter's where the Fatima predictions are hidden. Wim may know someone who's seen it ....

... The newest theory is that the dreaded Jesuit Order was behind the assassination of President Kennedy ... Maybe instead of acting offended at the unmitigated audacity of an alleged novice questioning this ... the vaunted experts might, quite frankly, put up or shut up regarding their assertions instead of casting stones at me ....

I have over 1,000 posts on the Kennedy Assassination, yet because I have never written a book, or article about the Kennedy Assassination, I find myself viewed with suspicion as some type of charlatan who is viewed as a potential disinformation artist; theater of the absurd indeed. ....

Robert,

You have got to realize that, in order to be a critical thinker and a patriot of the cause, you must support every conspiracy theory that arises ... for to discount or discredit one of them is to discount and discredit all of them and thus to be a true Warrenati attempting to infiltrate.

How else can one expect to reveal that a conspiracy did exist except by overwhelming one's audience with several (or several dozen) presumably authentic conspiracies? When perhaps the powers that be realize that half of the world was in Dealey Plaza pulling triggers will they finally admit that maybe more than just Oswald was. We will leave it to them to sort out which of the myriad conspiracies was really authentic. Anything less than full support is heretical and treacherous.

As a case in point, I present ... myself.

I missed making a presentation at COPA '93 I think it was, and Lisa Pease immediately - and to some extent successfully - portrayed me as a "CIA plant." The fact that I had moved from Texas to northern Virginia (one can only guess what "company" I supposedly went back to), was enough to authenticate the charge. It was proven by my having "turned" Gary Mack in exchange for securing him his position with The Sixth Floor.

Need more (as if that's not plenty)? I actually had the unmitigated gall to prove that David Atlee Phillips was not arrested in Fort Worth on November 22, 1963 ("Cowtown Connection") and that even if Oswald's head had been "severed" in the casket - as it wasn't - Paul Groody hadn't been there to see it ("Grave Doubts"). My more recent critique and deflation of the Ed Hoffman story ("Freeway Man") proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm a government disinformation agent and secret supporter of the Government case because not only did I impale proof of a conspiracy, I also impugned a kindly (and sickly) old man.

(Insert collective gasp here.)

My voluminous posts relating to the Tippit murder illustrating the unlikelihood of Oswald being Tippit's killer can only be construed as further evidence that my real agenda is to convince the conspiracy crowd that Oswald did it all alone and unaided, just like anyone with half a brain would already know.

You as a Catholic, however, are more to be forgiven for not wanting to admit that the Church wanted to martyr one of its own so that it could beatify and canonize him in record time, thus preserving its hegemony over the US presidency and the nation itself. Truth is, ALL the Presidents were Catholics and Masons, and all that crapola about the Pope excommunicating you if you became one was disinformation at its best, of which it is clear that your true purpose is to perpetuate that pablum.

Having said all that, it is certain that the old maxim is the best one: non illiterati carborundum. Keep posting, and remember to occasionally add pictures to help them along.

ZABO

Y'know, I've always wondered about that:

... Officer Tippit spotted Lee Harvey Oswald wearing a zipped-up jacket. It was 68 degrees, and the jacket looked out of place. He stopped his patrol car and got out.

Just goes to show you the danger of letting amateurs get involved!! To some people in Texas, 68 degrees is downright COLD, "chilly" to many more ... and this guy lives there and acts like it ain't so!

Zipped up jacket is "out of place." Gimme a break!

I am informed that the writer is on the Washington Bureau of the Dallas Morning News. This makes sense, now: Washington, that half-way place where they don't think 68° is chilly but that a half-inch of snow is a storm!

Either way, it's made up of whole cloth if simply because JD Tippit simply didn't live long enough to tell anyone why he'd stopped Lee Oswald walking down the street ... or, for that matter, even if it was Lee Oswald he'd stopped or someone completely different!

That day, Nov. 22, 1963, he stopped home for lunch — not something he often did. She whipped up some tuna and fried potatoes and he rushed back to work.

Strikes me there's some debate about that since he'd also gotten a bit about 11:30 at a drive-in with his buddy Bill Anglin. Sounds more romantic than factual.

Alaric,

You've done a great job in showing the WC's "anti-Holmesian" nature, that is, opposite of Sherlock Holmes' maxim that "once the impossible has been excluded, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." It began with the "fact" that it was Oswald who shot Tippit, and eliminated the facts that it deemed "impossible" to have been true based on the conclusion, and decided that the "truth" was what remained of the facts that supported the conclusion, no matter how "improbable" it might seem.

Rather than reasoning that "if Tippit was shot at 1:06, Oswald could not have walked or run there and killed him, so someone else must have," it instead concluded "since Oswald shot Tippit, he could not have gotten there before 1:15, so the 1:06 time must be wrong." Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, after all, and Helen Markham was "an utter screwball," the apotheosis of the theorem.

Some thoughts about Markham and her schedule:

If you've discovered CD630c, then you've also found CD630h, which latter indicates that a bus arrived at Jefferson/Patton (J/P) at 1:12, and another was scheduled each 10 minutes thereafter. In 630c, Markham is quoted as saying her bus arrived "about 1:15," which means that, in her mind, the next one is due at 1:25.

If today's schedules are in any way reflective of those 45 years ago, there are - and maybe were - three choices of busses to take to 1404 Main, where Markham worked and needed to be at by 2:00 (I do know that more than one route picked up passengers at that location in 1963, but haven't researched them thoroughly).

Today, one route takes 17 minutes from J/P to near Markham's work, has no transfers required, and requires a .28 mile walk from the closest bus stop to the restaurant (1:14 to 1:31 on the bus, an average 5.7-minute walk after, arrive 1:36/37). Another bus leaves later, also has no transfers, takes only 14 minutes, and has a .09-mile walk (1:27 to 1:42, plus about two minutes, 1:44). A third comes at about the same time as the previous, takes 18 minutes, has one transfer, and leaves a .12-mile walk (1:27 to 1:46, plus 2½ minutes, 1:48/49).

It has been quite a while since I've regularly ridden city busses (high school), but I remember that missing a bus could in some cases cause a "domino effect" that could cause you to be much later to your final destination than the, say, ten minutes it took for the next bus to come. I had to transfer busses downtown; the two busses I took coincided at the downtown stop about five minutes apart. If each bus ride was 20 minutes, then I left at 8:00, got downtown at 8:20, boarded the next bus at 8:25, arrived at my destination at 8:45, to be in my first class at 9:00.

If I missed the first bus, though, and if the one I transferred to didn't keep the same schedule (e.g., my first bus came every 10 minutes, but the other one came only every 20 or 30 minutes), then instead of a five-minute wait to transfer, I could have 15 to 25. Thus I'd get on the first at 8:10, arrive downtown at 8:30, would not board the next bus until 8:45 (on a 20-minute schedule; 8:55 on a 30-minute schedule), and not arrive at my destination until 9:05 (or 9:15).

Thus, by being two minutes late for my 8:00 bus, I was 15 minutes late for the start of my first class ... and I still had to walk a couple of blocks and get to my locker to get my books first.

When this happens the first time, the regular bus learns quickly to always be early for the bus for, even while they're not supposed to leave early, they sometimes do, and being wrong about the time can cost you dearly.

Not knowing for certain, Mrs Markham could well have had the same dilemma, that by missing her 1:12 bus, the 1:22 bus might've had a transfer, might've been running behind and gotten there after the bus she wanted to transfer to and the next could've required a longer walk ... there are all sorts of variables, but the point is that missing her 1:12 bus could've caused her to be later to work than just the 10 minutes' wait to the next one.

Even if she arrived downtown at 1:30 and had a five- or six-minute walk ahead of her, she was not asked about her routine at or before work other than that she "started" at 2:00. Does that mean she had to be walking in the door at two, or ready to be taking orders from customers? Did she have to get an apron, put her hair up, wash her hands, stow her purse somewhere, get a "bank" to work from, order-pads (we know she had to change her shoes!) ... did she smoke and want a cigarette before starting, maybe a cup of coffee usually?

All of these things figure into what time she wanted to arrive at work and why, even if she didn't have to be there by that time. Sure, the next bus might've gotten her in the door by 2:00, but could she have done all she had to do in preparation to actually start working? What about when the bus got held up by traffic and was late?

It likewise doesn't matter what time she thought the bus left, 1:12 or "about 1:15," what mattered is that she knew what time she had to leave her apartment in order to meet it, to have a couple of minutes or more leeway.

I don't think that someone needs to have a "punctuality anxiety" to want to be able to get to work on time and maybe do a couple of other things at one's leisure before starting.

There is something - I can't recall where - that shows that the Dudley Moore Funeral Home ...

try HUGHES - Moore was a comedian

Duh-heeee!

It's tough to be perfect when you're as humbled as I!

... Earlier in this thread Duke Lane took issue with Alaric Rosman's suggestion that Markham saw the gunman walk up to the police car from the rear ...

As I get older, my memory fades ... but if I remember correctly, I took issue with the word "approach" having any particular directionality associated with it, that is, you can "approach" something equally as well from the front, the back, the side, the top....

... No contemporaneous witness contradicted Scoggins on this issue (I am discounting the value of Tatum's 15-year-old recollection), so I submit we have undisputed evidence that the patrol car stopped JUST BEFORE it reached the pedestrian....

Undisputed, certainly; undisputable may be a different story.

I cannot recall the exact source, but there was either testimony or documentation before the WC that no telephone company records were made or kept of local phone calls, only long distance ones. So a call from the Davis house or anywhere in the Dallas area to the Dallas Police would not have been registered.

... If Gary is correct then there is NO EVIDENCE anywhere in the record to contradict Markham's 1.06 time estimate, and NO EVIDENCE to contradict Bowley's affidavit which says the murderer had already left the scene by 1.10.

There is something - I can't recall where - that shows that the Dudley Moore Funeral Home had time-stamped a call from DPD to respond to the Tippit scene at something like 1:18, although I don't know if there is anything corresponding in DPD records that states either when they received the call or when they relayed it to Moore.

That is not directly contradictory evidence, however, since there is no contradiction that Tippit's body was still present when either or both Benavides and/or Bowley made the radio call(s). The only thing that it partially breaks down is the information later and independently gotten from the Wrights as to their actions upon hearing the shots: while Mr Wright went down the street to the murder scene, Mrs Wright called for an ambulance.

The question that the Moore time stamp doesn't and can't answer is not "what time was Tippit shot," but "how long did it take Mrs Wright to contact the police, and them to react?" It seems that she had some confusion of how to reach either the police or the ambulance, and ended up calling the operator, telling her(?) to call the police, that someone (a police officer?) had been shot.

We don't know how long her confusion lasted, how long it took her to call the operator - or to get through to the operator since phone lines were so busy that phone operators (like Mrs Bowley) had to remain on duty for several hours after their regular quitting time - nor whether Mrs Wright was "patched through" to the police, or if the operator relayed it to the police ... and if the latter, what questions she(?) asked Mrs W, how long that took, what procedures she(?) had to go through, if any, before it was relayed, etc.

Given the apparent volume of phone traffic, etc., is it reasonable to suggest that it could have taken Mrs W five minutes to get through to either the operator and/or the police, who likewise most likely had phones ringing off the hook? (I wonder if there's a record of "crank" calls DPD had received or those just mistakenly reporting that they'd seen someone suspicious, etc.?)

I think you'll find that then and now, no phone companies, other than cell phone providers, track local calls. There would be billions of calls every month if phone companies did that.

In those days, and now, calls from Dallas to Fort Worth were long distance and that's why there's a record of Ruby calling his backer, Ralph Paul, and Little Lynn calling Ruby from her apartment in Fort Worth. Long distance records are kept only to charge an additional fee for the service.

... Looking down the opposite end of the telescope, as far as I know there is no record of the time the Dallas Police received the Davis phone call, although here you would expect that the Police SHOULD have routinely time-stamped the receipt of such a call.

... But one must ask: from 12:30 until about, say, 2:30, was anything "routine?" And again, the question of heavy call volume at DPD related (and unrelated) to the assassination ... did they take the time to do "routine" things?

... I submit that this evidence is consistent with a gunman who anticipated Tippit's imminent arrival at the scene.

The question then becomes whether this man had signalled or "flagged down" the patrolman while Markham's attention was elsewhere, causing the patrolman to slow down and stop. Markham's testimony that the pedestrian "approached" the patrol car and that the two men were having a nice friendly conversation, as though the pedestrian was reporting some disturbance in the house, is consistent with a scenario in which it was the pedestrian who stopped Tippit, and not the other way round as the WC assumed.

I'm not disagreeing when I say that such a pedestrian would have had to have some sort of reason to "anticipate Tippit's imminent arrival at the scene." What could it have been?

[Regarding Jack's map:]

... A distance that Google Earth measures at 100± feet, 4.3 ft/sec 23 seconds walking, half that running.

... at 400 E 10th, diagonally across from where Helen Markham stood. Tippit was shot, according to Virginia or Charlie Davis, "in front of the hedgerow between the house next door [to us] and the house that he lived in." In fact, he was shot in front of the driveway between the second and third houses from the corner, opposite where Frank and Peter Cimino lived at 405 ("in front of" their house, according to Frank).

400 and the house next door are gone, but the third house, I think, remains. See Google map here.

Your point is well taken, Ray. I was thinking from the standpoint of records of incoming calls being made at DPD, such official records having more likelihood of surviving to today than those of a private company that - unless they had a Sylvia Meagher on staff! - might not have realized in the course of the (non-)investigation that they might have been important, and thus - just like several government agencies (TFIC) - would have routinely destroyed them.

The investigation zeroed in on Ruby, et al., almost immediately, and certainly within the time frame that a customer - such as Ruby - might have called requesting a second copy of their bill, and thus was able to get ahold of them. After a period of time - say, six months? - other records would have been destroyed; I wonder, for example, if the 1963 phone company's successor company still has Ruby's records available 45 years later, as historically important (or at least curious) they might be?

(I know for a fact that the Civil Air Patrol has none of Oswald's records available, the originals and all copies having been rounded up during the WC investigation.)

Ruby's phone calls survive because someone "made a record" of them. Unless someone did the same with the Davises', etc., then no "record" was presumably made. Is it possible, much less likely, that the phone records for Dallas, November 22, 1963, were preserved out of simple historical importance? Wouldn't THAT be a find!!

So to continue the thinking, if no official anybody requested copies of the relevent (and inconvenient) phone records for those particular individuals, my guess is that they've vanished into the ether. If the investigators had deemed these inconvenient witnesses' records relevent, I'm sure they'd have been saved ... but they were, after all, inconvenient, so why save them?

L.J. Lewis was at the same dealership that Warren Reynolds was. Reynolds' testimony doesn't say that he did. His brother Johnny owned the place. It would have been or would be easy to ascertain the time of the call, but only if a record was made of it.