Joseph McBride

Fascinating point, Gene, yes. Further investigation is warranted. I would just add that Earlene Roberts was the housekeeper. Gladys Johnson was the landlady. I met Mrs. Johnson once at that rooming house. She showed me Oswald's room (it was so tiny it was almost like a closet) but was very guarded and suspicious. Roberts was infirm and died in 1966.

Numerous "witnesses" to the Tippit scene had Ruby connections. Ruby lived very close to where the murder occurred. He may even have been at the scene of the crime himself. It has long been claimed by some people that "Oswald" was walking toward Ruby's apartment house for refuge, but since the Oswald who was arrested on the ground floor of the theater was not at the Tippit murder scene, that is a red herring, though the proximity between the Tippit murder and the Ruby apartment house may have some bearing on the case. (The two Oswalds theory persuasively argued by John Armstrong complicates the situation considerably, though I am less certain than Armstrong is about which Oswald was where at what time. There may well have been both Oswalds at the theater -- including the man arrested in the balcony and taken out the back who disappeared and perhaps was the one seen in Carl Mather's car -- another fascinating lead that has not been adequately explained.) In any case, the Tippit scene was clearly a staged event, and a trap into which the officer was lured in order to be shot. I write about all this in INTO THE NIGHTMARE. The researcher who discovered the pattern of Ruby-connected witnesses at the Tippit murder scene was Jerry Rose. As I write in my book, In a 1985 article for his assassination journal The Third Decade, Jerry Rose discussed “the large number of indirect linkages of Ruby and Tippit” and raised the possibility that “Tippit was recruited into a conspiracy against Oswald by employing the linkages between [Oswald’s] own associations and those of Tippit” (see more about this in Chapter 13). . . . As was mentioned in Chapter 11, Jerry Rose, in his 1985 article for his assassination journal The Third Decade, offered a new paradigm that could help break through the cloud of confusion surrounding the officer’s shooting. Rose proposed "a relatively original approach here to the question of a pre-assassination relationship between Jack Ruby and J. D. Tippit. What I want to bring out here is something of the large number of indirect linkages of Ruby and Tippit: some of the many 'coincidences' of association between Ruby associates and persons who were either associates of Tippit or witnesses to his murder. The purpose of this analysis is to suggest -- certainly not to prove -- that: (a) Tippit was recruited into a conspiracy against Oswald by employing the linkages between his own associations and those of Tippit; and (b) (an entirely original idea, I think) that Ruby used these same linkages to set up a group of 'witnesses' to Tippit’s murder who would implicate Oswald as the murderer." However, it must be said that at least two Ruby-connected witnesses, Helen Markham and T. F. Bowley, provided some evidence that was damaging to the Oswald-did-it hypothesis, though they may have been going off-script (Markham was all over the map, hysterical and manipulated and unreliable except, it seems, for the question of when the shooting occurred). I did the first interview with Bowley that he gave other than to the police and the HSCA, and he seemed largely credible to me, although he did minimize his Ruby involvement, the full extent of which only came out years after I interviewed him (when the city of Dallas honored him; it seems his Ruby involvement was one reason he was generally reluctant to put himself forward, although evidently hardly anyone before me had tried, and I found him approachable). It does seem there were two sets of witnesses at that RASHOMON-like Tippit murder scene, which took me years to try to sort out.

Two witnesses to the Top Ten phone call by the officer, the store owner, J. W. (Dub) Stark, and a former employee of Stark's, Louis Cortinas, identified the officer as Tippit. They said they knew him well. Tippit being outside his district is suspicious, although he was said by some witnesses to have frequently been in the area where he was killed. His assigned district was four miles from where he was shot. Tippit was shot in the district assigned to Officer William D. Mentzel; the two of them were secretly assigned that day to hunt down Oswald after the presidential assassination, before Oswald was officially identified as a suspect and before his name officially was known to the police. I discuss all this in detail in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE.

One thing I can't stand about JFK assassination forums is all the wrangling that goes on. I try to not indulge that. It's counterproductive. Let people state their views and agree to disagree. Otherwise it just wastes time, which I guess is the point of it.

In addition to the TSBD workers involved in the refurbishing work, at least two strangers, if not more, were seen on the upper floors by witnesses. They might have taken advantage of the construction work to blend in. http://harveyandlee.net/TSBD_Elevator/TSBD_elevator.html

On the police radio on 11-22-63 you can still hear the Texas School Book Depository called "the Sexton Building." It was owned by oil man D. H. Byrd, who made a fortune out of the Vietnam War. I write about Byrd in my book INTO THE NIGHTMARE. Byrd was an LBJ-Connally associate, an old friend of LBJ's, and was connected to Lee Oswald's CIA handler George de Morenschildt and Jack Crichton through oil business dealings. In addition to being a cofounder of the Civil Air Patrol (in which the teenaged Lee Oswald met flight instructor David Ferrie), Byrd was a major defense contractor through his partnership in the conglomerate Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). According to Peter Dale Scott in his 1970-71 manuscript THE DALLAS CONSPIRACY, Byrd and his business partner James Ling made a prescient purchase of 132,600 shares of LTV stock in November 1963 for about $2 million, whose value rose to about $26 million by 1967 after LBJ's escalation of the war. Russ Baker calls Byrd an "avid Kennedy hater." He was also friendly with Clint Murchison and Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell (CIA liaison) and his brother, U.S. Air Force General Charles Cabell, Allen Dulles's deputy CIA director before both Dulles and Gen. Cabell were forced out by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. It has been suggested that as of 11-63 Byrd's Texas School Book Depository was something of a Potemkin village to allow the plot to function partly out of its premises and to justify placing the unsuspecting Oswald as patsy on the presidential motorcade route through Marina Oswald's CIA handler Ruth Paine. The building was called the Sexton Building before the Texas School Book Depository moved in during the spring of 1963. It "was almost completely devoid of tenants until about six months before the assassination," Baker writes. The sixth floor was being refurbished by outsiders that November, which enabled access to the building by unknown people. Given how many lies have been told about the assassination in history textbooks, it's ironically fitting that the building served as a School Book Depository. Texas public school officials to this day largely set the parameters of what is acceptable in nationally distributed textbooks. According to Baker, Byrd "evidently rejoiced in Kennedy's assassination -- as suggested by the macabre fact that he arranged for the window from which Oswald purportedly fired the fatal shots to be removed and set up at his home." Byrd was a big-game hunter who was on his first foreign safari in Africa at the time of the assassination.

Most of the anchors and TV reporters put out a lot of false information that day, but Bill Ryan seemed to be ahead of the curve with his reckless and repeated jumping to conclusions based on skimpy or erroneous information. I learned that day to get to a radio as fast as possible when something major happens, because the news often changes to fit the official line. From 12:40 to 1 p.m., I was hearing on network radio that the shots came from the hill overlooking Elm Street or the area of the railroad bridge. Then by 1 p.m. the reports changed to all the shots coming from behind, from a building called the Texas School Book Depository, without any explanation being offered on what happened to the shots from the front, and my antennae went up. By the end of the day I wasn't believing the official story that was already solidifying to try, convict, and execute Oswald on television. Over the years the coverage of the first twenty minutes has been proven far more accurate, with witness reports, photographs, and other evidence. And the brief statements Oswald was allowed to give on TV that first night helped convince me he was innocent of killing the president. Little was said on the news about the Tippit killing, but he was accused of that and denied it as well. An FBI document I found showed that he was never even arraigned for the JFK murder, only for the Tippit murder, although he was charged with both. Jim Leavelle told me Oswald was telling the truth at his midnight press conference when he said he had not been told by the police that he was being charged with the president's murder. As I write in INTO THE NIGHTMARE, Leavelle told me Captain Fritz directed him to nail Oswald for the Tippit killing since they didn't have the goods on him for the JFK killing. I asked Leavelle what he thought he had on Oswald for the Tippit murder, and he said he had witnesses, unlike in the president's assassination, but we now know the Tippit witnesses offered highly differing accounts, and some had dubious credibility, particularly their star witness, Helen Markham. And the Warren Commission denied the existence of Acquilla Clemmons, though Leavelle said he knew about her. She was threatened by the police to keep silent; she did not, and she was never seen again after her interview with Mark Lane and Emile de Antonio for the film of RUSH TO JUDGMENT. If we had known on the evening of November 22 what we know now, history would have been very different.

One of the NBC-TV anchors in the posted footage. He's with Frank McGee and Chet Huntley.

It's amazing how almost entirely wrong Bill Ryan was that day.

John Armstrong's HARVEY & LEE is a key book, deeply researched. It's an eye-opener, one of the paradigm-changers in the case. I don't agree with every conclusion, and sometimes I get lost in his certainty in which Oswald is which at a given moment, but the research is overwhelming and generally convincing. John Newman's OSWALD AND THE CIA is also essential. And the Léo Sauvage book THE OSWALD AFFAIR is still valuable. Richard H. Popkin's book THE SECOND OSWALD is thin but anticipates Armstrong.

I think "Whew, Vaughn Meader" is more droll. It lets the audience get it and flatters their intelligence, while capturing the sad desolation of the day.

I guess Donald Rumsfeld may have had something of a point when he remarked that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." But in Rather's case, he gave specific (conflicting) locations for his whereabouts at the time of the assassination, and there is no evidence of him being in those locations either, and though he did not admit to being at the Trade Mart, a colleague said he was there at the time. Eddie Barker was there doing the live hookup -- as I mention in my video, Rather had arranged for CBS-TV to have five complete camera crews in Dallas that day (including the only live coverage), when ABC and NBC each had the usual one. The photo of the station wagon leaving Dealey Plaza at 12:40 p.m. comports with Roger Craig's precise description of Oswald leaving in a station wagon at that time.

I haven't looked for Aynesworth in the photos, so I don't know if he can be seen or not. What do you think? Thanks for making these photos (and your video collection) available. There is a fascinating unpublished ms. called THE RATHER NARRATIVE that goes into Rather's behavior in the case in detail. I also deal with it in my 50 REASONS . . . FOR 50 YEARS video for Len Osanic (with videography by Jeff Carter), "Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination," currently available on Vimeo.

Notice how Dan Rather is not in the photo of the Queen Mary driving toward Stemmons Freeway, despite his claim that he was standing in that area and ran over the hill to see the commotion after the shooting. (Rather has also claimed to have been in other locations at the time of the shooting. A colleague said Rather was actually at the Trade Mart.) I have often wondered what it was like for the men on the running board to hold on all the way to Parkland. JFK's limousine was going 70 mph -- "fast but safe" was the order. I have driven that route at 70 mph many times. It takes four minutes to get to Parkland at that speed. The shooting took place at 12:30, so the limo probably arrived about 12:34, and estimates of a later arrival are probably wrong. The hospital was not ready for the arrival.

I heard it reported as "Phew -- Vaughn Meader," in a sadly resigned voice. And that it was on the night of Nov. 22. Bruce spent the afternoon trying to figure out how to come onto the stage.

Vaughn Meader was terrific as JFK. One night when I lived in LA I saw him sitting alone at the bar and restaurant Joe Allen's, so I went over and talked with him. He was distressed at how his career had been ruined by the assassination. He was a desolate figure. Someone announced plans to make a movie about that, which would be a good idea, but I haven't heard anything about it for a while. He learned of the assassination (as I did) in Milwaukee. Meader was riding a cab from the airport for an engagement. The cabbie asked if he had heard about Kennedy in Dallas. Meader said, "No, what's the joke?"

Thomas, ouch -- what an author wants to hear is, "I will buy a copy." I ordered a copy of Jim's book, and it will arrive today. Support your respected JFK assassination authors!

Good to know it's out. I just ordered it and look forward to starting to read it tomorrow. I am glad you updated it and included material on THE POST, etc. The analysis of Bugliosi, Spielberg, and Hanks in the previous edition is acute and important -- the way books and films propagandize for the official theory is a serious problem with the case, as is the ongoing dishonesty of the news media in its "reporting" of the assassination, i.e., largely an avoidance of actual reporting while retailing tired old lies incessantly.

I appreciate your good work on the case, Bill, and John Armstrong's, along with that of Jim and others. The late Larry Ray Harris blazed the trail, as did Gary Murr. Greg Lowrey and Bill Pulte have done some crucial work.

Thanks, Jim DiEugenio, Robert Harper, and others for your good words about my work on the Kennedy and Tippit cases. I spent thirty-one years on INTO THE NIGHTMARE, although I did a lot else during that time. But I was always researching the book and regard the assassination as my main interest in life, even though I've spent much of my life writing books about film and spent eighteen years writing film and TV scripts (the most satisfying were five American film Institute Life Achievement Awards). The assassination has been my principal focus since the moment it happened, and before -- I wrote a short story about it, "The Plot Against a Country," for my freshman English class at Marquette University High School in October 1961. I've always had a book in the works since May 1963 and next month will publish my critical study of the great German American director Ernst Lubitsch, HOW DID LUBITSCH DO IT?. That Columbia University Press book has been in progress for nine years. I've just launched a website for the book, http://howdidlubitschdoit.com. I always continue researching the Kennedy and Tippit cases and value the work of Jim and others on this forum and other sites.

Jack Daniel told me the boys in his film are his sons. They didn't know the assassination had just occurred. The reason the framing is bad and he loses most of the limousine when he pans with it as it passes is that he was holding the camera up to his chest and not looking through the viewfinder, he said. He did that because he wanted to look directly at the motorcade.

The reference to Marquette briefly made me wonder what the FBI was up to with John McAdams on Nov. 23, 1963. I learned about the assassination while in the line for lunch at Marquette University High School.

I went looking for the cemetery with Oswald's grave on one of my first trips to Texas. I pulled into a Dallas cemetery to ask for directions to the right one. The man there was nice and told me where Oswald is buried (in Fort Worth), but he insisted Oswald was not from Dallas, he was from Fort Worth. Oswald sure got around for a guy of only 24.

Thanks for all the videos, David. You've done us a real service by finding them and posting them.

When Marguerite that weekend suggested that Lee should be buried in Arlington Cemetery, Robert said, "Shut up, mother." She actually had a good point. He was a patriotic veteran who tried to foil the plot as an FBI informant and wound up being made its patsy.