Duke Lane

Great. Here we go from the previous thread. More added after: Bill, This doesn't account for Baker's original first-day affidavit nor the statement that O.V. Campbell made to the press regarding seeing Oswald in a utility cupboard on the first floor shortly after Baker and Truly had entered the building. There was another reason for the change in Baker's affidavit that took the encounter from the 3rd or 4th floor down to the 2nd. I just don't know what it is. Baker states that the man he ran into was walking away from the stairs (no mention of doors, cokes and lunchrooms) was in his thirties and wearing a light brown jacket. Backed up by the witnesses outside the TSBD who saw a man in the window. If the Jack Revill TSBD list was made in the TSBD by speaking to employees and William Shelley then there is evidence that Oswald possibly gave the officers his name and address before leaving and was vouched for by somebody. Truly claims he vouched for Oswald to Baker but perhaps the vouching didn't take place on the 2nd floor. What if the vouching took place on the first floor around 12:45pm and it resulted in Oswald being let loose? Truly moving the encounter to the lunchroom served a purpose. As did Baker reinforcing it by changing his recollections. What was it? Lee I'm well aware that Baker's first report places the encounter on the fourth floor, but I also think, based on everything I can learn about him and his filmed interviews, that he appears to be a good cop that wouldn't lie to fit a cover story, and what I am using as evidence is the evidence used by the WC to frame Oswald - and all three - Baker, Truly and Oswald agree that the encounter occured in the lunchroom which is on the second floor by the coke machine. Now if you look at the youtube of Baker, he says that he saw Oswald "walking away" from him but he saw him through the window in the door. If Oswald had gone through that door, he wouldn't have seen him at all because the door would have been partially open and Oswald would have made the left and not have been visible through the window, and if Oswald had gone through that door, Truly would have surely seen him and didn't. Now you don't want to believe Baker, Truly or Oswald then there's nothing to believe. I believe Baker and I believe the encounter took place, and I believe the door was closed and Baker saw Oswald in the vestibule through the window moving from right to left into the lunchroom and Baker followed him there. Everybody has thresholds of belief, and what will change their minds, but to me this is the key that exonerates Oswald from being the Sixth Floor Sniper, and the quest to find someone else who did that shooting, someone who also had a reason for being in the building at the time, someone who either stayed behind and calmly moved boxes around (as seen by Ms. Mooneyham and confirmed by the Dillard/Powell photos), or somebody who was an acomplace to the shooter who did leave immediately, but still wasn't Oswald. In order to understand the reasoning behind all this you must read the first thread and the chapter in the book that I reference - Michael Roffman's Presumed Guilty, who first recognized this point. Howard Roffman. Thank you Todd. But you're taking Duke's job. How do you get around Roffman's work? Gary Mack says that Oswald just went down the steps quickly and just missed Dougherty and the two secretaries, like the Keystone Cops. Howard Roffman went on to become the personal secretary to a major motion picture director and to publish a photo book of gay couples. BK Bill. One thing is that Roffman made a mistake in his analysis of the Couch film. He says that Baker is not visible running to the TSBD when in fact he is. The result of his error was putting Baker into the TSBD too quickly. Dougherty's testimony is a mess. I suspect he was headed to or on the elevator going down when LHO passed the 5th floor landing. The two secretaries went down after LHO. Todd So how did Oswald go through that door and not be seen by Truly, ahead of Baker. And if Baker saw Oswald through the window, then the door must have been closed. And if Oswald was with Baker and Truly in the lunchroom, who did Ms. Mooneyham see in the Sixth Floor sniper's nest a minute later? How do you get past those three facts? BK Look, the fact that the two secretaries were so anathema to the WC that the COmmission, or someone, altered their testimony, is all you need to know on this issue. Todd, and others like VIncent Bugliosi, don't like Dougherty's testimony. He is bad for them on Oswald's alibi, and he is bad on the "no bag" issue. So they try and discredit the guy. He was either standing where he said he was or not. If you can impeach him, fine. Do it. But the problem is this: if you cannot, then his testimony becomes part of a mosaic. Because there is much more evidence to support him on both issues than there is the official story.

Bill.One thing is that Roffman made a mistake in his analysis of the Couch film. He says that Baker is not visible running to the TSBD when in fact he is. The result of his error was putting Baker into the TSBD too quickly. Dougherty's testimony is a mess. I suspect he was headed to or on the elevator going down when LHO passed the 5th floor landing. The two secretaries went down after LHO. Todd Blah, blah, blah. I'm not sure what my "job" is, but the one I'm going to take on is moving this conversation "offline" into another thread so David Williams' original request - "one piece per person please" - is honored and what he's looking for isn't hijacked by the sixteen different discussions going on. So, if y'all wanna follow me, the discussion continues in the thread "Key Evidence of Conspiracy? Escape from the 6th Floor & The Lunchroom Encounter."

This continues from the thread "Strongest Piece of Evidence" where David Williams was asking people's opinion of what evidence convinced people of a conspiracy, "one piece per person please," a discussion arose about the lunchroom encounter. In an attempt to leave the thread to its intended purpose, and before that discussion spins off to a topic of its own, overwhelming the original one, I'm continuing it here, picking up in the next message where it left off.

Even presuming all of the rest to be 100% accurate and valid, I'm a little confused why appointing the Warren Commission prevented LIFE from printing this exposé of Johnson, or thinking better of it. I don't "get it" how the two things have anything to do with each other. I can understand the thinking behind the idea that LBJ was going to be exposed and averted it by his assumption of the presidency (after all, this was back in the days of politesse, before Watergate and the hounding and constant investigations of the president), but if LIFE was planning on printing it anyway despite that, what about the appointment of the Commission superceded it? Even if it was "bigger news," how come it didn't get printed the following week?

Another compelling piece of evidence is the 5th floor landing after the shooting.

Oops. I spoke too soon. My contact at AMC called me after posting the above and said that he cannot speak for the Rambler Division.

Lee, I have it on the best authority possible that the American Motor Company was not involved.

Tippit and everything associated with his death.

The name of Collins Radio keeps popping up in assassination lore, sometimes associated with individuals and other times associated with their operations, almost always in connection with government contracts, often connected to the CIA. Who is (or are) subject matter expert(s), and/or where can some fairly comprehensive and factual data be found about either or all of the company, its operations, government business and/or tie-ins to the JFK assassination? I'm curious because I've recently learned that a long-time friend of mine worked for them in the '60s. While I certainly intend to ask, I'm not yet certain what his role was, how high he eventually rose in the organization (I gather he retired from CR ...?), or what information he might either be able or willing to provide on this subject, or even if he'll be willing to discuss it at all (heck, he might not even be my friend after I ask him!). Any and all help and, naturally, questions are welcome, tho' I'd obviously prefer the former before the latter. Being retired, I might even be able to convince him to join the forum and respond directly. Feel free to send PMs as necessary. Many thanks in advance!

Yeah, Tim, and just 'cuz we're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get us! (Now, will someone please get those assassins off my neighbor's roof every night? The vigil is getting tedious.)

I've worked on one that includes much more pertinent information. It's part of what I'll drop by Craig Watkins' house one day soon, now that he's not facing re-election for a while. When it's ready for prime time, I'll drop you a note and you can add it to this project if you'd like. I've never seen anything else that even remotely approaches it.

No need for anyone to point out the obvious from my previous post. Get the hint, eh?

This really is an interesting thread. I wonder if there are IFO advocates picketing UFO conferences, people who throw insults and tomatoes at the others as they pass in the halls or on the streets, or who feel they must band together to "spread THE TRUTH" (in caps) wherever those paranoid fanatics might gather to counter any possibility that "the public" will fall victim to their piteous fantasies? Or realists who gather to jeer the ghost hunters at the "haunted house" down the street or at the shore? Or Jews or Muslims who feel the need to picket Catholic services lest "this Jesus thing" be perchance taken seriously by the unsuspecting? Grown men who are otherwise presumably reasonable people - on both sides of this particular issue - who live normal lives in normal communities and hold normal jobs to feed normal families are reduced to this puerile name-calling in the name of a 50-year-old murder, each acting as if the other was calling for the complete abolition of everything they respectively believe in. Do y'all react the same way when you find out your co-workers go to a different church, or voted for a candidate other than the one you did? What do you do when you find out that a neighbor's daughter had an abortion or - worse in some people's eyes - got pregnant out of wedlock in the first place? Or went to a Reading Room to rid themselves of cancer? Do you shun them as well? What's with all this casting of stones to exorcise the devil? Are you ALL that fanatical, or just <DELETED BY MODERATOR> up? DO you have any ANY idea how to deal with other people? Unreal. F word deleted by Mod.

The FBI interviewed him while recuperating at Methodist, and he made some rather interesting remarks that contradict his later WC testimony. But let's not belabor that point here: as we'll see below, people just don't want to know. Olsen later told someone that the estate was not an "estate" as in "large house," but rather (part of) the estate of a deceased man whose property was being guarded at the behest of the probate attorney. Either way, there are a few locations along 8th that are, in fact, larger homes than those around it, and on the east side of the expressway (which is not Stemmons at that point, BTW) there were larger lots that could have – but by no means certainly did – fit the description of an "estate." Whatever was on them fifty years ago has been razed and re-developed, including a couple of lots now owned and used by the Dallas school district. The ethnic makeup of the area may now be described as "run down" and "minority" (even though, in Dallas, the "minorities" are now the majority!), but that does not appear to be true half-a-century ago. Not to say that it was ever an affluent neighborhood – it wasn't – but it was by no means an area in need of rehabilitation. ... You claim that Thomas is wrong about the hospital records. That Olsen actually broke his leg twice. ... Anyway, you then use Olsen's testimony to prove this proves Thomas wrong. The only thing that would prove Thomas wrong would be the medical records of Olsen. ... You, Todd, don't expect me to call out Myers for leaving out stuff and not do the same with you, would you? The only thing you have cited as a rebuttal to Thomas' work is the testimony of Harry Olsen. You write: "The only thing you have cited as a rebuttal to Thomas' work is the testimony of Harry Olsen." And that's all Thomas did. And he got it wrong. Had you checked Thomas; citations, you'd have found the same thing. I guess you don't get it. Some people never will. Leaving aside the question of which "assignation" Todd is referring to (but please DO feel free to fill in these elusive details!), if I take the point here correctly, it is that Thomas cites "hospital records" and "employment records" when he offers no such proof, even if he's got it. There is an axiom that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs," which in this case comes down to "if you got the records, show us the records!" Did Baylor or Methodist, both still in operation (tho' the Gaston Avenue hospital has been razed), actually give someone's medical records, even after nearly 50 years, to someone else without either consent or some legal documentation? I guess it's possible, no matter how unlikely it might seem, but I'd think some offer of proof would and should be made. If Thomas does in fact have them, then Lee's statement that "the only thing that would prove Thomas wrong" is absolutely correct. Ditto DPD employment records, although I believe that those are matters of public record, a cop's salary being paid from public funds. But if Thomas' citation is in fact to Olsen's WC testimony, then he did get it wrong, and so did Lee in demanding a proof in return that Thomas himself never offered, and in decrying the use of testimony to refute that self-same testimony. Olsen did not say that he took the Friday off to "nurse his bum leg," nor did he in any way insinuate (that I can recall) that his leg had anything to do with him taking the day off. On the other hand, Todd's plaint that "you don't get it. Some people never will" is far off the mark as well. It appears that he – as do many others with a point to "prove" – wants to take a snippet of the evidence that self-servingly "clears" the subject without any consideration of what else there might be that calls it (or the witness) into question, and thus declare the matter "closed," in this case that Olsen "provably" had absolutely nothing to do with JD Tippit's murder simply because he painted himself as innocent, even unknowledgable, of any such thing. The trouble is that this "innocent man" provably perjured himself during his testimony, or else contradicted himself – including to the FBI during the course of its official investigation – at other times. In making his point, Todd focuses on only a small portion of Olsen's testimony and Thomas' larger argument as if by dint of his testimony lily-white and pure. What shows that not to be the case was not addressed by the WC, but has about as much probative value as much of what the WC decided otherwise about Oswald. The WC, had it not been so intent upon its mission to "dispel rumors" and instead pursued all leads as energetically as it did those involving Oswald, might well have chosen to look into Harry's story a little closer. Those who still subscribe to the notion that the WC was a complete and thorough investigation that left no stones unturned, and that it "ultimately got things right" even when its efforts and methods were less than sterling, are no more interested in hearing about than they are anything else that doesn't paint Oswald as the lone and unaided killer. But then, some people don't get it and never will. How do you know they were "mistaken identity" witnesses, and if they were, how come the ones who saw "Oswald" shoot Tippit at 10th & Patton didn't make the same "mistaken identity," especially if there was someone or more than one person who either looked like Oswald or was intentionally impersonating him?How come all the Tippit murder witnesses, at least in your mind, say they saw the historic LHO, when the others were mistaken, even though Oswald was certainly in the hood at the time? ... How do you differenciate between the positive identifications of Oswald and the bogus ones? The above is a fair example of what I'd meant about not getting it: what does 1:15 have to do with anything? A call came over the police radio at around 1:16, thus supposedly making this time important. Does anyone think that there was suddenly some sort of time warp that allowed a crowd to gather and several attempts at using the police radio to take place after Donny Benavides "waited" in his truck lest the shooter get him too, etc., etc., such that only a minute actually went by between the shooting and the on-air notification of it? In point of fact, many if not most witnesses (and "witnesses") to the event thought it was much later than 1:15 when the shooting took place; the only two who were paying any attention to the time both said it was significantly earlier. They, of course, are "wrong" while the others are merely "mistaken." Based on what? On the presumption that the confluence of events – what all of these people said they saw and did, matched up with what other people said they saw and did – occured in the space of one minute?!? Tom Bowley's radio call (it's now official, by the way: Tom Bowley made the call, and was recently recognized by the City of Dallas for making it, no matter what Donny Benavides and the WC might have said or thought!) is the only bit of "evidence" there is to fall back on to suggest that Oswald could have done it, and then only if we presume that either time slowed down or people speeded up to do all that they needed to do to reach that point in time. Oh, and that Helen Markham and Tom Bowley himself – the only two witnesses who even had any cause to be paying attention to the time – were wrong because ... well, why were they wrong other than the arbitrary determination that, because the call came over the radio at 1:16, the shooting took place only a minute earlier at 1:15? The basis of that – feel free to correct me – is that Oswald couldn't have gotten there much if any sooner, at least not if he'd left and gotten to the other places he is presumed to have been in the time alloted to get to and from them. And, of course, that only Oswald could have possessed the gun that presumably shot Tippit because it was presumably – but not demonstrably – in his possession at the time of his arrest. If we presume that Tippit was actually shot in the timeframe stated by both Markham and Bowley, then Oswald couldn't have been the shooter, or else Oswald wasn't at his rooming house when Earlene Roberts (thought she) saw him, or he didn't get there by Whaley's taxi, or he wasn't on the bus, or ... what? Those who insist that he was all of those places are constrained by an inability to get to 10th & Patton from 1026 North Beckley in any less time without someone having given him a ride, for which there is also no evidence. So, having to put him there as soon as he could be there constrains all other actions to that conclusion, a case of fitting the facts to the theory and ignoring those that don't support it. Some people just don't get it and never will. And the rest of us are idiots. Go figure.

I think this new forum software lets you look up the topics that people have posted in. If so, check out my topics: I've posted to several Tippit threads. There's a lot of information out there, some interesting and accurate, some not, but all generally informative either way.

I simply cannot wait until I get older and my memory comes back to me!! Somewhere, in some thread recently, someone questioned the validity of Dave Powers' claim of never having left the casket while aboard AF1. In response, a Stoughton photo of LBJ's swearing-in was posted with the notation that "Gary Mack says the guy at the far right is Dave Powers ...." The link to the thumbnail gives a listing of those photograhed, but stops short of this individual, see Stoughton 1A-7-WH63 here (with links to large copies; in the public domain). This is shortly before the actual swearing in, and is the only one this man is seen in. Stoughton also took a photo of Dave Powers before the parade began. Are the two men the same? Ken O'Donnell, General Clifton and Admiral Burkley are each seen in several of these photos as well; Jackie is in most if not all of them. So if that's Dave Powers in the front cabin, as it sure looks to me that it was, who was with the coffin?

Lifton documents from Bernice: BethesdaTimeLine (graphic).pdf BethesdaTimeLine.pdf Nt.pdf (Correspondence from Doug Horne)

... I'm paying attention but I don't know what I can add to the proceedings. Certainly the black hearse was from Gawlers, and whoever was in that hearse (Robinson?) should know where the metal shipping casket came from and how the body got into it. If they released the body to the SS in Dallas under the condition that Gen. McHugh stay with the body, then McHugh should certainly know too. Is he in any of the photos of the swearing in? Or did he stay with the body? And if the body was offloaded the front door right side in the metal shipping casket while the 400 pound bronze casket was removed by the fork lift truck into the white ambulance, then the metal shipping casket with the body had to be helicoptered to Bethesda, and the casket moved from the helicopeter pad to the building via the black hearse. Is that right? Then the guys in the black hearse must know where they got the casket. That's where my thinking leads me. Now, where was it that I read or heard recently that "Dallas officials" had "agreed" that it would be "legally sufficient" if Admiral Burkey, JFK's physician (more logical than a "lay" general cum military aide?) was to accompany the body from Texas? I'm thinking The Kennedy Detail on TV, maybe? I'm kind of losing track with so many different sources these past bunch of days starting with the final chapter of Dick Russell's On the Trail of the JFK Assassins.... Among those sources is the TIME magazine article linked earlier in this thread which, apparently paraphrasing from Best Evidence (the subject of the article, which I've read a couple of times, but it's been a while since the last time and I've slept since then) by conjecturing that the handles of the Dallas casket (which somewhere along the line - in BE? - became known as the "Navy" casket?) were broken during a "casket shuffle" at Bethesda. It seems that Paul O'Connor told Lifton that "there was talk at the hospital afterward of a casket being rushed through the halls," after which "several witnesses reported the bronze coffin appeared damaged, including a broken handle, when it was carried into the morgue by the honor guard" [TIME article, page 3]. What makes that interesting are two - count 'em: two - competing claims in the same program aired recently by The Discovery Channel, The Kennedy Detail. The first of those claims is Clint Hill's, who first made the statement that while "we" (was Hill, who was assigned to Jackie, actually part of the bevy of men hoisting the casket onto AF1? Wasn't there time for anyone to get a lift truck to get the casket aboard, like Andrews did to help take it off?) were trying to get the casket aboard, they "had to break off the handles" to get it through the door; the second is Paul Landis', who said only a short while later that the (a?) handle broke off in his hands as he was helping to carry it off of the plane. How do handles that have already been "broken off" to get it into the door also "break off" later when it's being removed from the plane? I would think that both statements can be validated ... or not. While I'm only aware of Cecil Stoughton's still images of men bringing the coffin onto the plane, and no movie imagery of it, I've never gotten the impression from those that there was any delay in getting the casket aboard such that any of the men removed the handles at the top of the gangway (this should have taken a little while anyway, wouldn't it have?), and I'm thinking that it would've taken superhuman strength to have simply "broken" them off quickly enough that there was no apparent delay in Stoughton's photos. After all, the handles must have been designed to withstand the downward pressure of the weight of the casket (400 lbs, was it?) plus the body of a full-grown human (150-200+ lbs; total 600+ lbs); is it reasonable to even conjecture that a man or men could simply rip them off in seconds by exerting outward pressure? The removal of the casket from AF1 at Andrews AFB was filmed. Once again, I'm unfamiliar with it enough that I don't know either if Landis (or, for that matter, Hill) was among the pall bearers, or where he (they) were situated relative to the camera's perspective to the casket, but if in fact the handle "broke off" in Landis' hands, is it unreasonable to suspect that he would react in some manner, such as stumbling or picking the handle up to stare at it in his hands, or something? Is there any indication of either of these claims being true, or is it simply a matter of a "morphing" of memories, 47 years after the fact, where they recall something like what they described, and remembered the handle(s) being broken/damaged, and they've simply combined the two into something that involved them? (As I've remarked elsewhere, Hill seems to have been the "Man Friday" after the assassination, he whom everyone turned to whenever they needed anything, at least according to his own recollection. Do we really think that Jackie called him back to her on the plane, worried about what would "happen to" him?) Or is it a case of concocting an innocent-sounding explanation of how something happened, to be accepted by the great unwashed masses based on the sole basis of "they were there, they ought to know," thus putting to rest something thus far officially unexplained by creation of a new myth? If so, what could it be that they know that they don't want the public to know about how the handle(s) got broken such that they couldn't even get their stories straight? The fact is - or seems to be - that their stories can't both be true. What are the actual facts?

Very uniquely qualified, our Mr. Blaine is: five whole years in the Secret Service! Imagine! One would imagine that most agents and former agents look up to him as an authority; wouldn't YOU? Do "motorcades" actually have trunks? Good point. Mr. Hill doesn't really know what happened or what supposedly happened. He is really being used. ... According to Mr. Hill, some 80% of 18 to 29 years olds (an interesting sample) believe in conspiracy. I believe that this age group couldn't tell you what decade Kennedy was killed in, much less have an opinion that anyone cares about. Other than that retail gives a really big and hairy rat's ass about what that demographic thinks, I agree 100% with the last statement. I'm just trying to remember when it was that LBJ got shot. Did Hill really say that? (Tell me it isn't so!) One would think that, before these guys went out to "shoot down" the "conspiracy industry" that they'd at least have become better versed in "what really happened." Sort of like walking into a Star Trek convention and expounding on Leonard Spock, the guy who played Mr. Nimoy. I really liked the sequence where the guys were looking out of the 6th floor window (presumably, the Museum let them behind the plexiglas?) and proclaiming what an "easy shot" the head shot was. Having fired guns, I'm sure they're correct. What was up with those goons who shot for the "official" results anyway? I think - think! - that this probably rests squarely at the feet of the author, and any "co-opting" was his. Motivation? Money. After all, who wouldn't believe a guy who was there, however briefly, and want to know what he had to say? As for Hill, I'm sure you don't think he's doing all this running around the country entirely out of the goodness of his heart, do you?

Bill (you go by Bill?), Sorry if I came across as being critical; that wasn't my intention. Communications available to the general populace in 1963 were indeed "archaic at best" by today's standards, and surely even government communications were not up to today's par, but "archaic" seems a bit of a stretch when you consider, for example, that Greer had a telephone in the limousine! Radio communications were about as fast as they are today (radio signals travelled just as fast), and they were good enough to communicate with a sub-orbital aircraft half-way around the world. Quartz watches hadn't been invented, but people who were concerned with time were in the habit - especially in the military, and presumably in military support capacities - of checking their watches and setting "official" timepieces with a standardized meter. I think you've also got to consider that not "everyone involved" was "very emotional and confused with the situation," but rather in many cases dealt with it as trained professionals. Generals were not expected to "lose it" when they saw missile launches, or to let personal considerations affect their actions (e.g., Seven Days in May, in the extreme). The same is likely the case with medical doctors and technicians and, one presumes, senior government officials. Despite any emotional attachments to a President, it's not like they don't consider contingencies like this every day, or at least regularly. I tend to think of Occam's Razor as the former. The simplest explanation is usually the best. Right or wrong, that is the way it was intended. The actual principle is that "entities should not be multipled unnecessarily," or as Isaac Newton phrased it, "we are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." It is also stated "when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better." It is not intended to address the human condition, but to explain scientific phenomena; its application to logic and argument is largely only to remind one to limit their proposition to only as much as is necessary to convey the premise. FWIW. I'm going to assume that when a funeral home goes out on a first call, they take a hearse and a temporary casket to transport the remains back to the funeral home. So whatever the case, the Gawler people arrived at Bethesda in a hearse which probably had a casket in the back, along with four undertakers, probably wearing black suits as undertakers are likely to do. Again, I'm trying to put myself into the heads of those involved. If I were a SS agent at Bethesda, and I knew "The Boss" was coming, and saw a hearse pull into the loading dock, I would assume it was him and order the sailors to bring the casket inside along with escorting it. If they went out there, and found that it was the funeral home bringing an empty casket, I would probably go back inside with it. I guess you could call that escorting. From Gawler's first call document, I was under the assumption that the undertakers were the ones who removed it from the shipping casket (or it was done in their presence). Are there any statements or documents that detail opening a shipping casket and removing the President's body upon arrival? Prior to the autopsy? Most of the documents I've seen simply say that they removed the President's body from "the casket", and don't specify what kind of casket it was. I'm not saying there are no such documents. I'm just saying that I haven't run across any so far in my limited searching. Also, the final casket, according to the first call sheet, arrived at 2am. Again, I'm guessing that after the autopsy, the President was placed in the shipping casket thinking he was going to be transported back to the funeral home. At some point, the decision was made to do the preparations at Bethesda (which probably had the needed materials), and he was then removed from the temporary casket, prepared, and then placed into the final casket which had arrived by that time. I don't have any concrete evidence to back any of this up. I'm just trying to come up with a plausible scenario using what's available, and filling in the rest using horse sense. And it does explain the two hearses and two caskets arriving 30 minutes apart and the statements by Gawler. Don't consider it serious research, however. Don't get me wrong: I think your solution is elegant; I'm only not sure that it's complete. This is by no means my "area of expertise," but it is fairly well documented with both actual documentation as well as with repeated interviews, some under oath. There are reports and limited documentation of a "shipping" casket's arrival at 18:35 via Navy ambulance. There are reports of a "ceremonial" casket arriving at the rear entrance in a hearse accompanied by men in OR smocks and black suits, brought inside by USSS and others on the scene; I'm not certain what, if any, documentation exists for that. Then there is the "Dallas" casket arriving in a Navy ambulance, off-loaded by the interservice "casket team," very clearly documented by several sources. So if we presume that all three of these incidents occurred when and as described - which we must unless we can somehow determine that someone was lying about any of them - and we add in the presumption that it was the funeral home that brought, early, a "temporary casket" with which to transport the remains back to the mortuary to embalm and prepare the body for viewing and burial, then at least one of these incidents is explained. I have no difficulty with the idea that agents might have thought that "the Boss" was being brought in and, realizing the error beforehand, went ahead and helped the morticians carry the temporary casket inside. It begs the question, though, why someone seeing a temporary casket brought inside would describe it as a "ceremonial" casket, which I would think would be more ornate than one designed simply to carry the remains to the mortuary, especially if the murdered President of the United States was to be laid to rest in it. One possible explanation is that military personnel may have been inured to the sight of shipping caskets - that is, plain metal boxes designed to be carried, possibly among many others (a la Vietnam later), aboard a cargo plane, possibly re-used for the another casualty once it could be cycled back - and that even a "pine box" civilian casket would seem to be "ornate" by comparison. But we don't know that, and I don't know if there is further documentation (or what or where it is) that documents when Grawler's was first contacted, what they were contacted to do, what they actually did, or when they did it. Is there anything that tells us, for example, that they were contacted while AF1 was en route to DC and once Bethesda had been decided upon for autopsy? What time was that? What did they do then? Did they presume as you suggest, and bring a temporary casket immediately to the morgue in anticipation of transporting the body back to the mortuary? When did they arrive? Who went with it? They fairly well documented the later "final" casket arrival and activities, and who participated in them; did they not do the same for the earlier temporary casket? If not, why not? Those three things - an early contact to the funeral home to arrange for body prep, their transporting a "pine box" casket early to the morgue, and military or other personnel mistaking a simple wooden casket for a "ceremonial" one (apropos for a President?) - must all be true for us to conclude that that must be the case: just because the presumption is simple and elegant doesn't make it right. Then, too, there's the question of why, in a morgue where it had apparently been decided that all of the preparatory work would be done there, anyone would bother to put a dessicated and dissected body, even of the POTUS, into a temporary casket when the permanent casket was already presumably on its way and there was still work to be done on the body itself in any case. It seems an unnecessary redundancy. The body's removal from a "shipping" casket - the word used by Grawler's man - was not a personal observation, but one that he either heard or deduced. If it was the temporary casket provided by the mortuary, would a hypersensitive mortician really refer to his own "dignified" temporary casket as a shipping casket (or that "transporting the body" to the mortuary was in any way as base as mere "shipping")? Maybe in the vernacular, but I can't imagine its use on a written form, especially given the importance of the deceased. Understood. I think it's written as if that's the case, but it strikes me that the clarification came about through ARRB queries. I don't remember if that was in any of the actual medical testimony I've read recently, or if it was in the linked article about the "Casket Conspiracy." Statements, yes; documents, no. Or rather, "less-yes." See Lifton and ARRB medical interviews for statements, and the linked article for documents incompletely reporting same. All possible. The only trouble is in determining when things actually occured, and if they actually occurred in this way. A simple and plausible scenario can "make sense" and still be 180 degrees off-base. (If this is all rather verbose, consider two things: that's my nature, and I'm trying to both educate and convince myself as well!

I've always been given to understand that the idea behind Occam's Razor is not, as some people tend to characterize it, that "the simplest explanation is usually the best" as in "it must be the way it happened," but rather "don't complicate things unnecessarily," as in "don't confuse people with every detail when a synopsis will do." Without going back to compare and contrast, while I like the "simple" possibility of the white-smocked-and-suited casket arrival being folks from Grawlyer's, it strikes me as being inconsistent with some testimonies or statements as detailed by Hornberger's "Kennedy Casket Conspiracy" that opened this thread. Why (if I remember its contents correctly) would USSS agents go out to "escort" an obviously empty casket into the morgue before the Boss's body was even brought in, and then, if they had and recognized the error (or knew what they were doing at the onset: carrying in for the undertakers), carry on as if that empty casket was the Dallas casket? Then there is the question of why, if the body was removed from a metal shipping casket (by others unseen by the mortician) prior to the body's funeral prep, was an "interim" casket used if the final one was already on-site? Why put it in anything ... in a morgue? The article also details and provides links to statements of military teams who each stated that they had unloaded a casket from the back of the morgue and brought it in, one being at 1835 hrs (6:35 pm) and the other at or after 2000 hrs (8:00 pm), some 85 minutes apart. The latter makes detailed statements of their actions from Andrews to Arlington (including riding Army helicopters from Andrews to Bethesda), while in the former case, the NCOIC states that he didn't see the 6:35 shipping casket opened, he was led to believe it to be that containing the President's remains and got a somewhat-cryptic response from Boswell the next day ("you were there, you ought to know") when he'd asked the good doctor which of the caskets contained JFK's body: he was only there for one of them. Dick Russell used an interview with Doug Horne as the final chapter in his recent compendium, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins. In it, Horne talks about the depositions of the autopsists, and characterizes Humes as "slippery" and "evasive" in his answers, and Finck as "scared" (not the "lion" he was characterized as by JAMA and in his Shaw testimony) and "covering his ass;" Boswell, he said, "gave up the store," almost a description of someone who knows there's something else to say, but who likes to share secrets on the sly (poke-poke, wink-wink), since he doesn't admit anything out of the ordinary overtly. The above quote seems consistent with such a description (tho' in truth, while I read all of the autopsists' ARRB testimonies, I didn't find it easy enough to follow/keep track of to form my own opinion one way or the other), and does not rule it out. Horne's later synthesis of these events seems to make sense to me, even if he didn't(?) expound upon the whys and wherefores of such a subterfuge if it occurred.

There are claims that Oneal was never paid for the coffin, but conversely, I've never heard of them suing for its return as unpaid or stolen merchandise. It can only be claimed as "government property" under some equivalent of "eminent domain" or, as the adage goes, "possession being 9/10ths of the law." "Title" would seem cloudy at best. I have to agree with Katzenbach, tho': I can't conceive of how it could possibly be conceived as any evidence of the murder. In the very "best"-case scenario, I could only imagine its still having some remnants of rubber from a body bag, but since there's no claim that's what the body bag was contained in (rather, the gray shipping casket), that question would be moot. As to any inappropriate use, all I can say is to witness Oneal's plan and the recent sale of Oswald's original pine casket.

I concur with your observations, except that one of the agents referred to (at least I thought he did) the dispute between DPD and the Secret Service agents over the removal of JFK's corpse from Parkland. As I recall, they discussed the dispute they'd had with the Dallas coroner. Landis even admitted that they were taking the body and the law be damned. But no one mentioned that there was an actual fight between an SS agent and an FBI agent, and that the FBI agent was knocked to the ground when he ran towards the emergency room without showing his ID. Would the fact that the casket had to have it's handles removed before it would fit through the door of the plane be a difinitive way to tell if it was changed at some point to fit the" two caskets " theory? One of the agents descibed the casket as a cheap affair for the president's body to be shipped in and i have never heard of the handles removal before. He even goes on to say the piece of broken handle he was holding slipped from his grasp at one point almost causing a dropped casket. Some interesting points. Hill did say that the casket "couldn't fit through the hatch" and that they "broke the handles off" to get it inside (Staughton's photographs don't seem to suggest any delay of the casket's entry onto the plane), yet they appeared intact when the casket was removed from the plane at Andrews without any explanation of how they "un-broke them back on" at any time. Landis described how one of the supposedly "removed" handles "broke" while he was helping to unload the casket. Unless both Landis was holding one of the head or foot handles and those men at the sides of the casket were in fact holding onto the bottom of the casket and not handles, Hill seems to be massively in error here. My recollection (not looking for any of the above, specifically) is that the discussion (by Hill) was of a dispute with Dallas "officials," with no indication of who those officials may have been. One gets the impression that it was a reasoned discussion among professionals that reached an amicable "solution" rather than a stand-off or altercation: Landis said that they were taking the body "legal or not," but described how "an agreement was reached" whereby it would be "acceptable" to do so, as long as Admiral Burkley maintained official custody of the body and "never left its side." I also thought it interesting how Hill described, in effect, his indispensibility to all concerned, as if the only man who actually made it to the limousine was the one whom everyone trusted to "get things done right" throughout the weekend. Despite his being a relatively junior agent (he'd joined the USSS — or perhaps WHD? — only four years earlier, in 1959) and assigned not to the President but to the First Lady, he recalls how people pulled him aside for special attentions such as procuring the casket from O'Neil's ("the best you've got"), getting scissors for Jackie while viewing the body, and Jackie's concern for "what will happen to you now" commisseration with him aboard AF1, among others. As far as it went, The Kennedy Detail documentary (advertorial?) — and potentially the book — is a nice piece of emotional fluff, and certainly no effort to "set the record straight" other than as one man's argument: it is far from, say, the ARRB interviews of Sibert and O'Neill, or those present during the autopsy (even as limited as some people may consider them). It was by no means intended as, nor did it achieve being "the final answer" to all or any of the points that Pat Speer raised above, and it was by no means an adversarial proceeding: they — mostly Blaine — merely said what they wanted to, or responded to what they were asked (we don't see entire interviews, and have no idea what ended up on the cutting room floor or the what the context of their responses was (and like most people, they were cooperative to TDC's and Blaine's efforts and the attention they got). It is, to me, perfectly understandable that they, all or any of them, take exception to Hickey's theoretical shooting of the AR-15, but it is hardly dispositive that these self-same agents who did not foil the assassination attempt in Dealey Plaza have any idea whatsoever what the nature of what defeated them actually was: they can have all the faith in the Oswald-did-it scenario that they'd like, it does nothing toward proving or showing that they know beyond any doubt what the underlying nature of the action against their protectee actually was. Had they been, they would have been able to prevent it and done so. They were caught by surprise, failed — deliberately or otherwise, on anyone's part — and have no more idea of what the actuality of the attack was than the next guy. "Being there" means nothing, and gives no-one a special insight into the mechanics of the shooting: even if one of them had looked up and seen the rifle barrel (as claimed by several civilian witnesses), they have no way of knowing who was at the other end of it. Among all of the former agents who were on the show, only Blaine seemed to come off smugly (other than with respect to the notion of a USSS "conspiracy"), which may be understandable in light of his being the author and it being "his story" that was headlined, but somewhat curious in light of his being among the first, if not the first, to leave the Service, shortly after the assassination. That being so, even considering his being a founder and past president of the Association of Former Agents, and given the fact(?) that November 22, 1963, was a "forbidden topic" at any of its conferences, one must wonder at Blaine's omniscience of all that went on, what everyone meant, and what was said and believed by others, especially those long dead, and those who were in Dallas when he was himself asleep (by his own words) in Austin. Why should anyone presume that a former agent was given any special insight to what was "really going on" during and following the investigations of JFK's murder? As much as Blaine — it being his story — likes to hang on the device of JFK's supposed "orders" for the PPD team to "stay off the limo" (whether only during "political events" or otherwise), neither he nor anyone else makes the claim of having heard this from JFK himself. Nor should we anticipate that anyone necessarily would have, being "grunts" in the chain of command and any such order or "request" reasonably being made only to the SAIC by JFK (and not his staff, inasmuch as the USSS would not, presumably, have considered anything coming from those who held no sway over it (they say that they could over-rule the President in certain matters, so why would they take "orders" from mere staff?) as having any weight of command. This does not, however, preclude agents' belief that such was JFK's desire, especially if they were told that it was by the SAIC or even an advance man. It is reasonable to believe, IMO, that agents did not routinely ride on the back of the limo when crowds were sparse, since footage shown during this documentary show agents not on the limo when crowds were much denser than in Dealey Plaza. While that may explain why they were on the running boards of the Queen Mary before the shots — be they firecrackers or backfires notwithstanding — it does nothing toward explaining why they didn't apparently react by protecting their charge at those sounds (would it not have been better to have had egg on their faces than blood?), or why they were held back from responding when JFK's distress was evident. (There have been enough independent and unrelated suggestions that at least keeping agents on the back or sides of the limo at a necessary minimum to suggest that it was in fact the case, whether by JFK's direction or someone else's. If there were others who believed otherwise, just as Vince Palamara's review suggests that Blaine's inclusion of which agents were interviewed for the book was limited by Blaine's own prejudices — particularly about "keeping the code," as if cops are duty-bound not to say anything that contradicts an "official story" — so, too, can we reasonably presume that he left out those and others who didn't support his story in full for any reason.) The only explanation that makes sense to me came in Paul Landis's recollection of seeing Hill rushing toward the limousine and thinking "go, Clint, go!" and being concerned that, if he didn't make it, "we were going to run over him." In other words, if the limousine was supposed to have and actually did accelerate out of the area, they'd never have reached their destination or served their purposes as "human shields" even had they left the Queen Mary immediately after the first report. As it was, Hill only barely made it, and anyone leaving after he did might very well have gotten "run over in the line of duty," or at the very least left behind in Dealey Plaza (which might not have been a bad thing, but I recall that their job is not to secure or investigate the crime scene, but to secure the protectee). I don't believe that, if Hill hadn't made it to the limo — and didn't get run over by QM — anyone would have stopped to pick him up, but rather continued on with their jobs and come back for him later, or let him commandeer another ride (more likely). Without ever having mentioned it directly, the whole gambit about how the USSS was supposed to "secure" a parade route, even to the extent of ensuring that windows were not open and that "manholes were welded shut" seems to be some wishful thinking on the part of some CTers. Repeatedly we saw footage of people standing on balconies, hanging out of open windows, even hanging on street poles and construction cranes as the motorcade drove by. We can only estimate how many manholes there might have been along a parade route 10 miles long (as was the case in Dallas), much less ones as long as in Tampa (28 miles, according to Blaine or someone), how long that many would take to locate and secure, and what anyone was supposed to do in the meanwhile between the times of the welding and the parade if something went wrong that required someone's access to what was below. Monday morning quarterbacking by someone not on the field? All in all — and only in so far as it went as the first-ever (and probably only) reunion of several agents of the Kennedy detail in Dallas at Dealey Plaza — it was a great piece of work as an emotional recollection of the events of November 22, but utterly useless as evidentiary documentation, as it was not intended to be. It may be called self-serving (and was, inasmuch as it focused only on the agents and their recollections) and does nothing at all toward "furthering the cause" of determining (as Toby Chandler put it) what "really, really happened" in Dealey Plaza, I'm not quite as certain that it — the TV "documentary," not the book (which I haven't read) — can be put off as "propaganda," as an exercise in finger-pointing ("it was JFK's own fault"), or as anything other than the mere "fluff" that's usually put on parade around the anniversary. In sum, touching but valueless.

... So much has come out since JFK and the subject is ripe for another blokcbuster in the same vein as JFK. Instead Leo will convince people of more lies. If as Jim suggests he is open to being educated, I wonder if he could insist on revisions in the script. Or if the director would be open to a good dose of Jim Douglas. Perhaps David can shed more light on the subject, but how much does an actor, however popular s/he may be, actually influence a screenplay? I can well imagine that nuances within its confines are well within their purview, but can - or would - an actor change the entire direction of a production? "Open to being educated?" Probably, but I'd think only within the confines of the existing screenplay, and not to the extent of either re-writing the script or without "writing themselves out of" it ... that is, getting themselves fired and losing out on that income. Call me a cynic .... A good suspicion is that such a thing will come to fruition ... in as many years after Kennedy's assassination as "The Civil War" followed the real thing.

[Moved]