Richard Gilbride

For some reason I am unable to post an image larger than 3 kb. But I had a crop ready from Don Roberdeau's Dealey Plaza map, which shows Peggy Hawkin's location in blue type. My apologies for any imprecise language in describing her whereabouts. She is on the sidewalk about 100 feet up from the Stemmons sign, in front of the retaining wall, which she described as "in front of the TSBD building". And she said that she stayed behind there with her small child until she realized there would be no more shots. And then she "walked back to the front of the TSBD Building." Hawkins and her small child have not been located in the Couch film. We can see from Roberdeau's map, or any map, that as soon as she leaves the retaining wall area to walk onto the Elm St. Extension she is at the front of the Depository. "She said that a motorcycle police officer was in front of the building at this time..." We don't see Hawkins & child among any spectators near the front steps. Thus, she saw Baker while she was still walking along the Elm St. Extension. And Baker, of course, was filmed sprinting for the steps. ...and that she heard over his radio some remarks about the railroad yards near the building... Baker was double-timing it and had dismounted quickly. Hawkins heard this radio broadcast after he had left his motorcycle. ...HAWKINS said that she then re-entered the TSBD Building by the front door... And Baker was long gone by the time that Hawkins and her small child walked up the front steps and into the lobby. ******************** And to return to when the subject of Peggy Hawkins got brought up, I had mentioned that While inside the front lobby, Baker asked Truly where the stairs were (III pp. 221, 249) And Bart objected that There is possible evidence to refute this not just from Peggy Hawkins but Truly's statement that they saw no one there. It had been a 10-hour day responding to Bart's post. I had never heard of Peggy Hawkins before, and was provided no reference. Fortunately I located her FBI interview after about 15 minutes of work. And the frustration of added work contributed to my lackadaisical description of Hawkins being "in the vicinity of the Stemmons sign". And this vague description still doesn't matter. Because my point is still correct that since Hawkins went behind the retaining wall, that action took up too much time for her to have any chance of witnessing Truly & Baker in the front lobby. Which refutes Bart's objection. Which means that this point of correspondence still holds true, as regards the T & B testimonies. And that is one of 13 points of correspondence, as regards their testimonies about the elevator & the lunchroom. And those who believe the hoax hypothesis still have not offered a defensible explanation as to why the will-call counter bump, which was superfluous to the main line of action, would be added into a confabulated story.

To whom it may concern, Has there not been a solid 8-10 years of postulating that Baker encountered someone on the 4th floor? And what has pondering about that actually led to? (besides the near-immediate realization that Baker's description doesn't fit Dougherty, Jarman, Williams & Norman). Q- Where did 4th floor man vanish to? A- Into thin air. Is this not a complete dead-end? Hopelessly insoluble? Which makes "4th floor man" useless as a working hypothesis (i.e. as a working construct out of the hoax hypothesis)- this construct does not give a solution that leads anywhere. All we can say is, if there was a 4th-floor man, he vanished into thin air. That's all we can deduce about what went on, just after the assassination, by utilizing the hoax hypothesis to figure out what went on inside the Depository. And so "4th floor man" is an entirely unsatisfactory line of thought. And so the past 2-3 years has found instead favor for postulating that Baker had an extended encounter with PrayerMan on the landing- and this had to be kept secret, which is why the lunchroom encounter was hoaxed. With film evidence of Baker sprinting to the bottom of the steps, and with an affidavit of his that states, "I jumped off my motor and ran inside the building"- the hoaxers are postulating that: no, Baker was on the landing at least several seconds, PrayerMan probably gave him directions upstairs (which, since Oswald was poison, no witness ever mentioned seeing), Baker also interacting with Truly was slowed enough to miss Adams & Styles- and so Baker & Truly went up to the 5th, took the elevator to the roof, came back down and then Baker went out to Parkland and Love Field. And so the hoax necessarily began with Baker's false statement in his affidavit that he "ran inside the building". Meaning that it had to have begun well before Truly mentioned the "snack bar" to the FBI later that evening. And so the idea that Baker had an extended encounter with Oswald on the landing requires that tangible evidence of a hoax starts accumulating once Baker begins writing his affidavit. Does this not imply that a fake lunchroom encounter be agreed upon while Truly & Baker are up on the roof? Such convolutions have not, and cannot, produce sustainable results. After 10+ years, a viable hypothesis should produce at least one lasting fruit- one solid deduction.

Robert Prudhomme- You obviously believe the part of her statement about hiding behind the retaining wall, yet don't believe she is telling the truth about seeing Baker in front of the TSBD, simply because it does not agree with your theory. That is not a good way to conduct research. WCD 897, p. 35- "... She stated she was aware that the President had been shot and was concerned for her own safety and that of her small child who was with her... She stated she stayed behind the retaining wall until she realized there would be no more shots and then walked back to the front of the TSBD Building. She stated that a motorcycle police officer was in front of the building at this time and that she heard over his radio some remarks about the railroad yards near the building. Mrs. Hawkins said that she then re-entered the TSBD Building by the front door and went upstairs to the third floor by elevator." With film of Baker sprinting for the front steps, and with Peggy Hawkins statement that she walked from the retaining wall with her small child, and no comment from her that this motorcycle police officer was still around when she entered the building, true, it does not agree with my theory that "Hawkins was in the front lobby in time to see Truly & Baker there." The bold words are what I put in my post to Bart. And you, Robert, want to construe me as tailoring the evidence to fit my theory, by saying that I "don't believe she is telling the truth about seeing Baker in front of the TSBD." Putting words in my mouth I never said. Or even implied. Is this the reason you got into JFK research, to make one-line cheapshot insults against a person who upsets your world-view about the TSBD, to make false accusations against that person? I'm going to take you up with the moderators if your stalking behavior continues.

Ed, Thank you for taking the time to fill us in on Marrion Baker's background. My apologies for my mistake on crediting him with only a 6th-grade education. Nobody is perfect, I had taken a 2-second glance at the 1st page of his testimony and raced back to my work overload. But on top of Stavis Ellis painting Baker as a MommaSon, Baker was referred to as "dopey"- my memory is that information was provided by Duke Lane. I probably jumped on the Baker's-a-dummy bandwagon too loudly, but based on the "dopey" reference, would still place him as below average. Your repetition of Marvin Johnson, Will Fritz & Stavis Ellis as (?) separate sources (?) for a 4th-floor sighting is attributable to a Chinese whispers retelling among the DPD upon learning of Baker's "3rd or 4th floor" man. These "separate sources" wouldn't hold up in a court of law. I have to re-emphasize the 6 conditions I listed in post #131, which Bart admirably took on, and the conditions still remain as listed in post #281. These are the strongest items that speak for the incident's reality and speak against a hoax. It is a grave misdiagnosis of the ambiguous evidence presented, which depends upon convolutions holding up simultaneously (like a plate-spinner on Ed Sullivan), for a way of thinking that gives zero substantiable results. The hoax is only accepted by a small minority of researchers- and Bolshevik-style applause does not add one iota to its being true. Either it happened, or it did not. The hoaxers have presented the ambiguities about the lunchroom incident, but failed to demonstrate that it did not happen.

Re: Robert Prudhomme, post #272- Please note that WCD 897 p. 35 states that Peggy Hawkins "estimated that the President's car was less than fifty feet away from her when he was shot." Therefore, since President Kennedy was shot when his limousine was in the vicinity of the Stemmons sign, I felt it was appropriate for me to synopsize Hawkins' statement by describing her as "in the vicinity of the Stemmons sign", rather than look up her exact location, since it had been a long day. It was not misleading to describe her that way. And after all, her specific location mattered little, since she said that she hid with her small child behind the retaining wall upon hearing shots. And this action took up too much time for her to have any chance of witnessing Truly & Baker in the front lobby. I cannot help you with your anger-management problem, but rather than being a one-line cheap shot artist, you might find some way to express it off-line.

In sum- 1) You have not introduced any evidence that does not have a mundane explanation supporting the lunchroom incident's reality. This is a glaring situation which disposes the observer to conclude that the incident indeed took place. 2) You have not offered a hoax-supportive explanation that accounts for Baker crossing out "or third floor" in his Sept. 23rd affidavit 3) Your hypothesis necessarily accuses Baker of telling a monstrous lie in a filmed 1964 interview and in filmed 1986 testimony, without a single tangible indication of deceit. This from a man with a 6th-grade education, and with no professional training as an actor. 4) Asking for a serious list to back up my claims that there are numerous points of correspondence in the Truly-Baker testimonies, you ridicule it when it is presented to you. These points of correspondence are a very strong indicator that their testimonies are true (about their experiences at the elevator and in the lunchroom) and the telltale common thread- the will-call counter bump- is supported by a line that you omitted from First Day Evidence. 5) You falsely imply corroboration to the Kent Biffle piece about Oswald being seen in a 1st-floor storage room- and no corroboration means almost certainly that this piece was garbled hearsay. 6) You do not present any evidence-supported, or rationally-postulated, reason for Truly & Baker to pause in the front lobby, long enough for Adams & Styles to escape the warehouse unnoticed. Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first drives mad

6) ...I gave them 14 seconds per flight in Inside Job (14 seconds doing a flight? What are you on...) --You're the one who gave them a few seconds to descend the tiny stairs. Again you miss the point- the time estimate presented in Inside Job complied with Adams' own estimate, in order to demonstrate that she exaggerated her speed somewhat.-- The real time was probably approx. 18 seconds per flight. In any case, in order for Adams & Styles to get out of the warehouse unnoticed, you have to add an unnaturally-long pause to Truly & Baker's time in the lobby ...Three floors in 42 seconds!!! --Actually, it's three floors in 38 seconds, since there's no 1st-floor landing to cross. Please look at Inside Job pp. 27-29.-- They never mentioned such a pause, and there were other people in the lobby and they never mentioned seeing Truly & Baker lingering. No Truly said they saw no one there which is iffy to say the least. There were plenty of people in the lobby as described in Baker's affidavit and in their testimonies. Previously we've noted that Truly's "They saw no one there" is probably a denial of PrayerMan- this was Sean's insight. Has it ever occurred to you that the whole episode of Baker entering the TSBD with or without Truly and them going through the shipping department and so on is clouded in mystery? The dichotomy with or without Truly likely resulted from PrayerMan being in the corner. I highly doubt Baker was ever aware of the significance of that. And their timing through the warehouse definitely got clouded so as to enable Oswald to imaginarily flee the sniper's nest. I'd like to introduce Geneva Hine's remarks which you are well aware of which put Reid's story in serious doubt. The lunchroom encounter is a distinct entity from Reid's story about an encounter with Oswald in the office. i.e. the lunchroom encounter does not depend on whether all of Reid's story is true or not. Geneva Hine gave a sharply-defined testimony and her contradiction of Reid has given me the same problems almost all CTers go through, attempting to picture what happened after the lunchroom encounter. That stopwatch business, Reid rehearsing the 2 minutes with Belin, seems contrived. I have concluded Charles Givens for the most part lied, testifying solo, and would not dismiss the possibility that Mrs. Reid for the most part lied. Nor should we attribute 100% perfect recall to Geneva- she may have been busy at her desk and simply missed the brief Oswald-Reid interaction. 100% recall was attributed to Arnold Rowland with misleading results. There is also the possibility that Oswald avoided the office and left by the hallway, which to my knowledge has not been explored. In any case, because we don't have the answer as regards the post-lunchroom scenario, does not mean that a lunchroom hoax occurred. They are distinct entities.

5) The Biffle story has not one whit of corroboration, nothing that substantiates it as supporting a hoax And you challenge this by showing a Nov. 22 article with an Ochus Campbell quote in the New York Herald Tribune, without a by-line, that has the exact same words as Biffle's article in the Dallas Morning News on Nov. 23rd?!! I suggest you re-read both articles again and there is only to conclude that they are NOT THE EXACT SAME WORDS. This is either an attempt to mislead the readers or a bad mistake on your part. From the New York Herald Tribune- - Mr. Campbell said, "Shortly after the shooting we raced back into the building. We had been outside watching the parade. We saw him (Oswald) in a small storage room on the ground floor. Then we noticed he was gone." - From the Dallas Morning News- - "Shortly after the shooting we raced back into the building. We had been outside watching the parade. We saw him (Oswald) in a small storage room on the ground floor. Then we noticed he was gone." - The Herald Tribune article adds a further quote from Campbell, which is not included in the Morning News. But your reading comprehension skills are taken to the task again here, Bart. Q- What has the exact same words as Biffle's article? A- an Ochus Campbell quote in the Herald Tribune. The fact that the Herald Tribune article adds an additional quote from Campbell does not make it corroboration. Both articles originated from the same source. The additional quote, for our readers, is- Mr. Campbell added, "Of course Oswald and the others were on their lunch hour but he did not have permission to leave the building and we haven't seen him since." - So you make a false accusation, Bart, that I have to go through the labor of defending myself against. John Barleycorn got the best of your reading comprehension skills?

2- Truly ran into the swinging door at the will-call counter and Baker bumped into him (222, 249) This was from the re-enactment? Right... Omitting that first line from the First Day Evidence paragraph exposes your sarcasm here as an avoidance ploy. 7- Truly led the way up the stairs (224, 250) A fairy tale at best, you think the building supervisor went ahead of the armed policeman to possibly counter an armed gunman and be 'in the middle' of it. Come on... again apply common sense. Unless Truly was a ninja martial arts specialist or did he carry a piece as well??? Who in their right mind goes ahead of an armed police officer facing a possible armed felon? The fact remains that this is a point of correspondence in their testimonies. Your inexperience shows here, because a lot of people have pointed this out for a lot of years. 8- B&O were just inside the lunchroom area (225, 250) Oswald was sitting at the table? Standing near the coke machine? Standing against the kitchen counter? In the doorway? Where exactly? Exactly 2-3 feet inside the lunchroom. When you abandon your sarcasm you will calm down and think more clearly. 9- Baker was facing Oswald (225, 250) This and the next four points have no merit since it is abundantly clear the 2nd floor lunchroom encounter was a hoax. Throwing in the towel? What is abundantly clear is that the hoaxers' best arguments fail against the aggregate. 11- Baker left immediately (225, 251) Baker claimed he left immediately when he got down to the 1st floor as well which is a lie since we have him in the Alyea film quacking with Truly and others. Yet that is what he stated in his testimony... so leaving the 2nd fl lunchroom can be doubted as well. You are understanding that immediately means different lengths of time, and depends on the circumstances- it's a colloquial term. 12- Oswald was calm & collected (225, 252) Their words... And whose words were you expecting? This is a bit like the anarchist cop-out- demanding a revolution but having no idea what to replace the existing government with. 13- Oswald had no change of expression as Baker's gun was close to him (225, 252) The point being? And again their words just to make him look like the calm and collected killer he was... oh sure. Nonetheless, regardless of their motive, this was a point of correspondence in each man's testimony. And Dorothy Garner's deposition would have enforced Victoria Adams' contention that she ran downstairs after the 3rd shot. Which she did That would have raised questions about Adams' timeline vs. Oswald's timeline, and then called for an Adams re-enactment. Thus no Garner deposition. Oswald was on the 1st floor... and never went past Garner/Adams... not involving her in the re-enactment is negligent at best. It's not clear who you are referring to. Adams, I presume. And omitting her re-enactment was one of numerous ploys by the Commission, leaving ambiguities unresolved and thereby darkening the truth. (3 posts to follow)

...I expect a serious list to counteract... 1- While inside the front lobby, Baker asked Truly where the stairs were (III pp. 221, 249) There is possible evidence to refute this not just from Peggy Hawkins but Truly's statement that they saw no one there. Bart, I am 61 years old. Would you please extend me the common courtesy of citing a reference for these pronouncements? Truly's statement is from his 11/22 FBI statement. There's nothing on Peggy Hawkins in the Warren Volumes. In WCD 897 pp. 35-36 we find that Peggy Hawkins and her small child watched the motorcade from the sidewalk in the vicinity of the Stemmons sign. They ducked behind the retaining wall when they heard shots. And then she probably heard Decker's transmission about getting some men into the railyard from probably Baker's motorcycle radio. She then re-entered the TSBD via the front door and went up to the 3rd floor via the elevator- little doubt here that was the passenger elevator. So you are out of your tree if you think Peggy Hawkins was in the front lobby in time to see Truly & Baker there. Truly's statement is interesting; Sean pointed this out. There's no ostensible reason for him to say "They saw no one there"- it's a denial about PrayerMan. But your logic is skewed if you think this Truly-statement refutes Baker, inside the lobby, asking where the stairs were. Good night. I have done enough work for one day.

You omitted the first line of your paragraph-excerpt from First Day Evidence, and you omitted some more. "The man who said he was the building superintendent was outside and met me at the door and went in with me. Shortly after I entered the building I confronted Oswald. The man who identified himself as the superintendent said Oswald was all right, that he was employed there. We left Oswald there, and the supervisor showed the way upstairs. We couldn't get anyone to send the freight elevator down. In giving the place a quick check, I found nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, so I started back to see what had happened. Not knowing for sure what had happened, I was limited in what I could legally do. Omitting that bit out is my fault, but it still does not change anything. Oh, really? Your omission wouldn't have anything to do with Parker's contention that "Truly was inside" already- disputing the will-call bump- would it now, Bart? Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that you were your own man. Baker gave the game away. Hey, in la-la land, everything's possible. The fact that you are not admitting this shows the true state of denial you live in. Denial is a river in Africa. The traditional hoaxer critique concerns the misplacement of sending the freight elevator down. It's an afterthought, from a man with a limited intellect. That's all there is to it. Oh, really. You seem to be missing the all-important fact that he encountered Oswald shortly after they entered and before they went up! And you seem to be missing the all-important fact that Baker only had a 6th-grade education. And, please remember that there is a 1986 filmed testimony as well. Don't you think that Baker would be a tad apprehensive, had a hoax occurred, that Bugliosi would smell it out? Speculation again, and now Bugliosi gets the credit... Oh hey, I forgot, Baker crammed all night with his hoax notes, and fooled Bugliosi! There's no trace, zip. The film evidence is superstrong. This is where you hoaxers go off the reservation. And it will be to your enduring discredit that your character assessment of Baker is 180 degrees wrong. Again merely an opinion by you. Is the fact that you do not recognize modesty and integrity due to the lack of it in your self?

The question of whether or not the FBI is bricking it is irrelevant to the content of the Sept. 23rd affidavit On the contrary, and your denial attitude becomes obvious here The fact is that Baker, 6 months beforehand, had already gone through a lengthy testimony and had spent considerable time in the TSBD doing re-enactments considerable... you are doing some poor defending here, and the re-enactment was fraudulent from a timing perspective His location of the lunchroom was without doubt during his testimony. He wasn't quite as sure when he initially related this information to SA Burnett on Sept. 23rd Major speculation, you are just making stuff up, shameful really. A hoaxer has to take the position that Baker, a man of limited intellect, wove his way masterfully through 6-7 pages of testimony about the lunchroom, but had a failure of nerve on Sept. 23rd- he flubbed the cover story Speculation again, you are dreaming this stuff up. There is no basis for this whatsoever. You seem to have adopted proof by repeated assertion as your flag. A stretch, to say the least. You are throwing up a smokescreen and avoiding this uncomfortable fact. Am I? And all this speculation amounts to what exactly? Bart, you seem to be tagging me as "speculating" whenever I offer an explanation that undermines the hoax hypothesis. It is as clear as day to me, that Baker had no doubts during his testimony regarding the location of the lunchroom, but he had an initial doubt 6 months later- he was confused, and he had a limited education, so that any doubts about his location in his 1st-day affidavit are also attributable to his confusion and limited education. You are cordially invited to explain the hoax-hypothesis view of why Baker crossed out "or third floor" in his Sept. 23rd affidavit. Because without that, I would surmise that this particular reply of yours is just a further smokescreen, just a bunch of rhetoric that avoids addressing the Sept. 23rd affidavit.

Re: Ed LeDoux, post #257 Ed, please read Inside Job p. 3. I cover all of these unofficial accounts of Oswald exiting the Book Depository and also include Jarman's HSCA account. Hicks, by the way, worked for the Auto Theft Bureau. He reported to work at 3:00 PM and so heard his information second-hand. But anyway, these 4 sources give a strongly-corroborated account that Oswald encountered a policeman (Barnett) and a supervisor (Shelley) while exiting the Depository. How you can twist this into painting me as a WC apologist escapes me. Sarcasm, anger, youth- whatever it is, mister, let go of it. The hoax mullarkey produces nothing, leads nowhere, adds confusion, incites divisiveness- and it's your problem that you fell for it. Because you have fellow believers adds not one drop to its veracity.

Ray Mitcham- Baker described the man he saw as "30 years old, 165 lbs, dark hair and wearing a brown jacket". Not only did he not know what floor he was on, but he also described somebody who wasn't Oswald. Strange that. With his brown work-shirt untucked, and starting to bald, I don't have a problem with Baker's overestimation of his weight and age. Skin color, hair color, shirt color are the strongest markers for me. That's how I evaluated all the witness descriptions of the sniper's nest. Did Baker see Oswald "walking away from the stairway" or did he see him through the window in the door? How did somebody who was at a loss when it came to readin', writin' and 'rithmetic manage to get into the Dallas Police? Again, you are better off applying energy to counter the 6 conditions I laid out in post #131- which oblige us to accept the reality of the lunchroom incident- than losing the forest for the trees, trying to literally-interpret Baker's sixth-grade education (III p. 242). And if you know anything about the background of JD Tippit, who at age 28 was evaluated by a psychologist as "wholly devoid of any imaginative facilities", you'll understand that scholarship and being a fine cop ain't necessarily symbiotic.

This very statement is typed out and signed by Baker again! The 3rd/4th fl encounter is not just an oversight Bart, you can't justify this second sentence here. Yes, the handwritten affidavit was signed, it was taken to the typist, and that copy was signed. The typed language still means only that the split-level stairway meant, to Baker, that when he reached the landing where he saw Oswald, he was on the 3rd/4th floor. Will Fritz's report a month later i.e. to Curry on December 23, item 6: "While we were still searching the building, Mr. Roy Truly, 4932 Jade Drive, reported to us that one of his men was missing, a Lee Harvey Oswald, whose address was 2515 W. 5th Street, Irving, Texas. We also found that this man had been stopped by Officer M.L. Baker while coming down the stairs. Mr. Baker said he stopped this man on the third or fourth floor on the stairway, but as Mr. Truly identified him as one of the employees, he was released." Of course this should raise an eyebrow, and a gullible researcher will conclude that it supports a hoax and only a hoax. Neglecting the possibility that Fritz could have mistakenly reported the location of the Baker-Oswald encounter. Neglecting the aggregate of evidence which obliges us to conclude that the lunchroom incident couldn't have been hoaxed. Fritz evidently consulted Baker's affidavit, and did not speak to Baker, when he composed this report. And so a description about a man "walking away from the stairway" morphed into a man "coming down the stairs". Fritz had a vested interest in placing Oswald on an escape route from the sniper's nest, and that probably explains why he wrote that Baker met Oswald "coming down the stairs". The lack of any questioning by Belin and co about the discrepancy regarding the floors Nothing definitive here. The floor layout was not confusing to Belin, he had just been inside the TSBD a few days earlier. A WC lawyer has an agenda and he's not required to un-confuse every last detail in the record. It would be beneficial, if there were a big secret to hide about the TSBD, to leave behind some confusion to help muddy the waters. The fact that the word "vestibule" is only used in regard to the TSBD to describe an area on the second floor- and then only in regard to the Baker-Truly-Oswald encounter. Meanwhile, the only real vestibule is on the first floor- yet it is never called one except by Oswald via Holmes. This semantical ploy says it all. Belin had used the word- to refer to the foyer- in Baker's March 24th testimony. Holmes had used the word- to refer to the front entrance area- in his April 2nd testimony. The connection that you are making does not logically follow.

1) every single item of lunchroom-related evidence has a mundane explanation that supports the incident's reality Ed Ledoux- Except every early 11/22 statement, news account and later statement placing one Lee Oswald on the first floor, front entrance, steps, vestibule, exit Ed, would you please cite a single example to enlarge upon this generalized statement? I can think of the Kent Biffle story, and don't think that you want to cross swords with me on that. Stavis Ellis reports what Baker was telling him as a fourth floor encounter with a tan jacket wearing man Please do me the courtesy of providing a reference to this Stavis Ellis report. Before I die of old age looking for it. Nothing in Baker's initial account says anything about a DOOR, LUNCHROOM, WINDOW or COCA-COLA. Baker's crummy description of his whereabouts does not definitively indicate he was referring to a place other than the 2nd-floor landing. You jump to a conclusion by saying this means a hoax occurred. Extraordinary proof is required, not merely a laundry list of ambiguous items of evidence. And Ed, puh-lease, do you not get it that this way of thinking has produced no fruits, i.e. has lead absolutely nowhere, after 10+ years? Need I remind you that a position paper delineating a hoax has never been produced, and Parker's laughable pre-assassination to post-assassination Reid shift is the rationale offered to account for how & why this ruse was put in place? Stairway are the operative word which there are a set in the vestibule Belin said "vestibule going into the lunchroom" (III p. 255) and I will continue to use the word "vestibule" since it is commonly understood among researchers as the foyer or anteroom outside the lunchroom. [i saw a man walking away from the stairway] I called to the man and he turned around and came back toward me Again, you are reading too much into the words of a man who was at a loss when it came to readin', writin' & 'rithmetic.

Baker's fraudulent timings in the re-enactment I agree that this is a disturbing aspect of the case. But it leads me to conclude that what actually occurred on November 22nd was a mad dash through the warehouse. Baker lied about this. But he was not mentally capable of confabulating an elaborate yarn about a lunchroom incident, had it not actually taken place. This is a deception that is an order of magnitude greater. You are putting Baker on a level with Dulles or LBJ or Fritz, when his dumb cop persona evidences just the opposite. The fact that Baker never pointed Oswald out as the man he encountered, while dictating his first statement to MJ which would be a mundane explanation for identifying the suspect no? Please see post #242 as to why Baker did not mention seeing Oswald while writing up his affidavit. Baker did not ID Oswald in a lineup as MJ claimed As I mentioned, Johnson's report states that "Officer Baker later identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he had seen on the 4th floor of the Texas Book Depository." XXIV p. 249 is a list of Officer Witnesses in the DPD's file on their investigation of the assassination. At the top is- M.L. Baker Solo Motor Officer Traffic Division Saw Oswald in building after shooting. Identified him in lineup. See affidavit Bart, you do not know for a fact that Marvin Johnson claimed that Baker ID'd Oswald in a line-up. Baker may well have stated to Johnson personally that Oswald, the man in the back interrogation room, was the man he had seen in the Depository. XXIV p. 347 lists the various police line-ups and notably does not include Howard Brennan. This is a suspicious omission, of course, since Brennan would not positively ID Oswald as the man he'd seen in the sniper's nest. But it's well-established that Baker did not attend any line-ups, and whoever compiled that list of officer witnesses (probably Curry or Fritz or whoever was performing their secretarial functions) was under the mistaken impression that Baker had attended a line-up. Granted, that rumor may have been started by Marvin Johnson, but that is not an established fact. Somebody, somehow, heard that Baker had attended a line-up, and this information got incorporated into Baker's blurb (along with 34 other blurbs) for this list of officer witnesses. I'm more inclined to regard this as an innocent mistake. They do happen.

Ray, please remember that Baker had been out to Parkland and Love Field and then returned to City Hall to sit down and compose an affidavit about a building he had never been inside before. He had run up 7 steps to the front landing. The building, with those peristyles, gives the impression that it may have a half-floor at the ground level- I'd say that Baker thought that he was at the second floor when he reached the top of the landing. And then with a split-level stairway to reach the lunchroom- he can't be certain whether (on the 2nd-floor landing) he's reached the 3rd floor, or maybe it's the 4th floor. And then, he describes seeing a man "walking away from the stairway". Well, that's correct, isn't it? The man was not walking toward the stairway. There's not much room on the stairway, for the man not to be in Baker's way. If the man was somewhere on the landing, walking away from the stairway, yes, Baker's description would be an accurate one. But we can account for Baker's inaccurate description by consulting Stavis Ellis' characterization of Baker in No More Silence- "Baker wasn't real bright either... But he was always slow." The hoaxers are reading too much literally into the words of a man who was at a loss when it came to readin', writin', and 'rithmetic. But he was a damn good cop.

This may help you make a little more sense of it, Ray. Marvin Johnson's statement I assume that you are referring to WC XXIV p. 307 p.2 "While in the office from 3:00 pm until 2:00 am I answered the phone and took an affidavit from Patrolman M.L. Baker. Patrolman Baker stated in his affidavit that he was riding escort... ...After determining the origin of the shots, he jumped from his motor and ran into the building. He found a man that said he was the building manager. Officer Baker and the building manager then went to a stairway and started up the stairs to search the building... Note- Marvin Johnson does not mention that Baker had written that Truly "said let's take the elevator. The elevator was hung several floors up so..." ...On about the 4th floor Baker apprehended a man that was walking away from the stairway on that floor. Officer Baker started to search the man, but the building manager stated that the man was an employee of the company and was known to him. Officer Baker later identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he had seen on the 4th floor of the Texas Book Depository." We get a detail here- Baker's search of Oswald- that wasn't mentioned in the testimony. If it actually occurred, it adds fuel to the contention that Truly & Baker were inside the lunchroom/vestibule long enough for Adams & Styles to pass by outside. And note that the affidavit's "third or fourth floor" becomes "On about the 4th floor" in Johnson's report. Baker ran up a bunch of steps to reach the front lobby and for all he knew that was the second floor. Then he ran up a spit-level stairway to the lunchroom and for all he knew that was the third or fourth floor. And Johnson mis-reports Baker's description and lazymindedly includes only the latter half of Baker's guess. Plain and simple, the argument that Marvin Johnson's report supports a hoax won't hold up in a court of law.

Sorry, Baker's testimony going off-the-record 5 times is just another fun fact. It does not take one iota away from the incident's reality. You are reaching. You have no idea what Baker was told by the WC before his testimony went off the record again in all 5 instances Bart, at least I presented the off-the-record discussions with some context as to what was going on in the testimony when these discussions occurred. You, on the other hand, blindly assume that these interruptions are supportive of a hoax. It's well-established that Baker had a limited intellect- that there were deep concerns about the movement of the west elevator- that Oswald's clothing-at-work and Oswald's clothing-after-work were described differently. There's plenty enough to go off-the-record about, without blindly assuming it must support a hoax. And blindly assume that the WC members spoke to Baker, rather than among themselves, during these breaks. Assuming they were talking about the lunchroom hoax makes about as much sense as assuming they were talking about March Madness.

I am familiar with the hoaxers' complaints of matching up Baker's position with being able to see Oswald- it has led me to conclude that Oswald was up near the glass and flinched away the instant he saw Baker so he goes in and gets the coke and then goes back to the window? On what basis? And no one heard the door and/or saw it swing. Terrible speculation going on here Richard. Because Bart puts words in my mouth? How did the coke enter the scenario? I have consistently maintained in other posts that Oswald came back from PrayerMan's position to the position behind the plate-glass window. I have postulated that he purchased a second coke (i.e. second soft drink) after the confrontation with Baker & Truly; that explains Mrs. Reid's testimony. It's your reading comprehension that needs some sharpening here, Bart. Please do not put words in my mouth and oblige me to defend a position I never posited. Oswald's position inside the lunchroom changed/progressed from sitting at the table, to standing at the coke machine to having a coke standing next to the cupboards... if he had a coke already.. You've fallen for Truly's gambit, which was to shift attention away from the west elevator and onto the lunchroom. speculation Please see Inside Job p. 33 It defies common sense and can be easily dismissed I assume that you are referring to Truly's gambit as defying common sense (which is defined as "sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge, training or the like). It appears to me that you interpret common sense, in this instance, as whatever supports a hoax. How is the following (Inside Job p. 33) easily dismissed? The key detail the lunchroom hoaxers miss in their reading of Truly's FBI report is that Truly avoided any mention of the west elevator. This was the cat he could absolutely not let out of the bag and so he related that "he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor." Brushing over their difficulties summoning the west freight elevator. One of the paramount requirements of the coverup was keeping this elevator's descent out of the newspapers. Because any schoolkid could have figured it out- if he knew that the west elevator went down while Truly & Baker were climbing the stairs- he could have easily deduced that the real killers escaped the building by the west elevator. This crucial fact remained hidden until alluded to gingerly in the Warren Report. And there, it had no bearing on the case, since, after all, "neither elevator could have been used by Oswald as a means of descent. Peter Dale Scott wrote that the Kennedy assassination, although immensely difficult, is a solvable crime. By accepting the lunchroom incident's reality you get answers, results, as to what actually happened inside the Depository. By considering that incident a hoax you get no results, only more confusion, only ill-defined tenuous reconstructions that do not stand up to reasoned critiques.

"It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled"- attributed to Mark Twain 1) every single item of lunchroom-related evidence has a mundane explanation that supports the incident's reality Truly had no idea about Baker's "I saw a glimpse through the window" until a day or so before the testimony Mundane explanation- Truly never asked speculation nor did Baker explain speculation what had motivated Baker to head for the lunchroom. It wasn't discussed during their remaining few minutes together in the Depository speculation and Truly didn't see him again until the March 20 re-enactments. The mundane explanation does not have to be historically correct, only reasonable. So Bart, when you offer a piece of evidence that seems to you to not be supportive of the incident's reality, I dispute your contention, and offer a reasonable mundane explanation. We don't jump to the conclusion that Oswald was the sniper's nest shooter because he left his wedding ring behind on Marina'a dresser that morning, do we? And neither should we jump to the conclusion that the lunchroom was hoaxed because Baker didn't mention Oswald when writing his affidavit- there is a reasonable mundane explanation for that. It may have been because he wanted to cut Oswald some slack. It may have been because he heard about the Tippit murder and wanted to give himself an out, and not mention the suspect sitting near him. It may have been because of his limited intellect. We aren't required to determine the correct reason in order to rebut an argument for the hoax. So the item of evidence that you presented, as without a mundane explanation, does have a mundane explanation.

Part 3 of 3 5) the Biffle story has not one whit of corroboration, nothing that substantiates it as supporting a hoax And you challenge this by showing a Nov. 22 article with an Ochus Campbell quote in the New York Herald Tribune, without a by-line, that has the exact same words as Biffle's article in the Dallas Morning News on Nov. 23?!! If anything, this adds fuel to the argument that Biffle may have been involved with Operation Mockingbird. It is not corroboration. 6) The Stroud document, coupled with a fact-based understanding of their timelines, places Adams & Styles on the stairs during the same timeframe that Truly & Baker are ascending the stairs from the elevator area. ...the stairs are tiny it takes a few seconds to descend... 9 steps, a split-level landing, 9 more steps, then a 12-foot landing to cross to get to the next flight... I gave them 14 seconds per flight in Inside Job, and a superOlympian 8 seconds per flight in my 1st lunchroom essay. The real time was probably approx. 18 seconds per flight. In any case, in order for Adams & Styles to get out of the warehouse unnoticed, you have to add an unnaturally-long pause to Truly & Baker's time in the lobby. They never mentioned such a pause, and there were other people in the lobby and they never mentioned seeing Truly & Baker lingering. Otis Williams told the DPD's Walter Potts on Nov. 22 that he "came back into the building, and went to his office on the second floor. He then went to the fourth floor after hearing the President had been shot. He used the stairway to go to the fourth floor, but stated he did not see anyone on the stairway." His 11/23 FBI report repeated that he "immediately went back into the building into his office on the second floor." But by 1996 in No More Silence he had skipped the office stop. "I entered the building immediately, climbed the stairs back where the warehouse elevator was which led to the sixth floor and went up to the fourth floor..." Otis was a portly man. He may have started going up the lobby stairs before Truly & Baker exited the lobby, but stopped at least a minute at the central office and could not have beaten T & B up the stairs to the 4th. I made your mistake here in 2009's The Elevator Escape Theory, which has a whole subsection Otis Williams on the Rear Stairwell. ************************** Who's doing the fantasizing here, Bart? For starters, you hoaxers are asking us to believe that 3-4 pages of Truly's and 6-7 pages of Baker's testimonies are confabulated. Asking us to ignore the Sept. 23rd affidavit. Asking us to believe that one of the dumbest cops on the force told a monstrous lie with deadpan delivery in 1964 and again in 1986. And the following dreck from Greg Parker, offered up after 10+ years as co-founder of the hoax hypothesis- "Since Baker had already claimed in his affidavit to have had an encounter with an employee on the 3rd or 4th floor and Mrs. Reid had seen Oswald on the second floor about to go down with a coke, the answer seemed to be to combine these two events and make them flow one to the other. To do that, they brought Baker's encounter down to the 2nd-floor lunchroom and claimed it was Oswald and changed Reid's sighting from a pre-assassination one to a post-assassination one. Voila! Mission accomplished! This was the whole reason for the confusion about the coke. To achieve this ruse, simply add in Leavelle (who took Reid's affidavit), those "in-the-know" at the DPD, Belin (who took Reid's testimony), those "in-the-know" on the Warren Commission, Jeraldean Reid, the stenographer, and don't forget Ochus Campbell, into the Truly-Baker mini-conspiracy to fabricate the lunchroom story. i.e. A convoluted mess- all for a hypothesis that gives no empirical results. This is a fruitless, regressive school of thought, whose tenets do not survive the crucible of fire- they turn to vapor when tested. You may build your sand castles to your heart's content at the ROKC forum. But please be aware that you will be challenged if you bring that belief system here. Thank you, that was a considered reply, Bart, but there is a quantum-leap in work required to get on a soapbox with extraordinary confidence and declare that the hoaxers are incorrect.

Part 2 of 3 2) The Sept. 23rd affidavit shows Baker's continuing confusion with the TSBD floor layout, and cannot be construed as supportive of a hoax This is an opinion by you. There is no evidence to support this... The FBI is bricking it... The question of whether or not the FBI is bricking it is irrelevant to the content of the Sept. 23rd affidavit. The fact is that Baker, 6 months beforehand, had already gone through a lengthy testimony and had spent considerable time in the TSBD doing re-enactments. His location of the lunchroom was without doubt during his testimony. He wasn't quite as sure when he initially related this information to SA Burnett on Sept. 23rd. A hoaxer has to take the position that Baker, a man of limited intellect, wove his way masterfully through 6-7 pages of testimony about the lunchroom, but had a failure of nerve on Sept. 23rd- he flubbed up the cover story. A stretch, to say the least. You are throwing up a smokescreen and avoiding this uncomfortable fact. 3) The 1964 filmed interview shows Baker as a modest man with integrity. His fellow officers called him "Momma Son" and referred to him as "dopey". Yet Greg wants to paint him as a coverup monster, more clever than any professional actors of the day, telling a whopper about the lunchroom with a complete deadpan delivery. You omitted the first line of your paragraph-excerpt from First Day Evidence, and you omitted some more. "The man who said he was the building superintendent was outside and met me at the door and went in with me. Shortly after I entered the building I confronted Oswald. The man who identified himself as the superintendent said Oswald was all right, that he was employed there. We left Oswald there, and the supervisor showed the way upstairs. We couldn't get anyone to send the freight elevator down. In giving the place a quick check, I found nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, so I started back to see what had happened. Not knowing for sure what had happened, I was limited in what I could legally do. The traditional hoaxer critique here concerns the misplacement of sending the freight elevator down. It's an afterthought, from a man with a limited intellect. That's all there is to it. And, please remember that there is a 1986 filmed testimony as well. Don't you think Baker would be a tad apprehensive, had a hoax occurred, that Bugliosi would smell it out? There's no trace, zip. The film evidence is superstrong. This is where you hoaxers go off the reservation. And it will be to your enduring discredit that your character assessment of Baker is 180 degrees wrong. 4) The will-call counter bump, a superfluous incident that serves no purpose in a contrived hoax narrative, is a telltale indicator that other points of correspondence (at the elevator & in the lunchroom) in the Baker/Truly testimonies actually happened... ...I expect a serious list to counteract... 1- While inside the front lobby, Baker asked Truly where the stairs were (III pp. 221, 249) 2- Truly ran into the swinging door at the will-call counter and Baker bumped into him (222, 249) 3- Truly pressed call button and freight elevator did not come down (223, 254) 4- T & B looked up the elevator shaft (223, 254) 5- They saw that the elevators were stuck upstairs (240, 254) 6- Truly yelled up the shaft twice (223, 249) 7- Truly led the way up the stairs (224, 250) 8- B & O were just inside the lunchroom door area (225, 250) 9- Baker was facing Oswald (225, 250) 10- Baker asked "Does he work here?" and Truly says "Yes" (225, 251) 11- Baker left immediately (225, 251) 12- Oswald was calm & collected (225, 252) 13- Oswald had no change of expression as Baker's gun was close to him (225, 252) And Dorothy Garner's deposition would have enforced Victoria Adams' contention that she ran downstairs shortly after the 3rd shot. That would have raised questions about Adams' timeline vs. Oswald's timeline, and then called for an Adams re-enactment. Thus no Garner deposition.

Part 1 of 3 Bart, I appreciate your taking the time to respond to the 6 points I raised critiquing the hoax hypothesis. You are free to believe what you like. As I am free to consider this hypothesis as a fruitless, regressive way of thinking. 1) every single item of lunchroom-related evidence has a mundane explanation that supports the incident's reality. Truly had no idea about Baker's "I saw a glimpse through the window" until a day or so before the WC testimony. Mundane explanation- Truly never asked, nor did Baker explain, what had motivated Baker to head for the lunchroom. It wasn't discussed during their remaining few minutes together in the Depository, and Truly didn't see him again until the March 20 re-enactments (III p. 226). Michael T. Griffith, by the way, published a revised and expanded 4th edition of his Baker-Oswald article in 2001, word-for-word the same as his 2012 article. I do not find it credible that a man of Baker's limited intellect would be able to confabulate 6-7 pages of testimony. Baker's testimony went off the record 5 times A) (III p. 244) Does not apply to our debate. Baker had just testified about traveling 5-10 mph near Main & Record Streets. (p. 254) Belin had just covered Baker's re-enactment timings to the lunchroom, and Oswald's timing from the sniper's nest (run through by Baker with SS agent John Joe Howlett). The latter was 74 seconds. Belin then said he wanted to get the focus back to the 6th floor with some of Dulles' questions about that, and Dulles interrupted. Does not pertain to the hoax vs. incident debate, but... They sequed into rehashing what Baker saw when looking up the west elevator shaft. Baker, previously, had not described this in any detail (p. 249) when he first related about his rush into the warehouse. Truly, who testified the day before, had gone into greater detail about his time at the 1st-floor elevator shaft (223, 240). What was suspicious was the Mystery of the West Elevator, which assistant counsel Norman Redlich prepared a memo about shortly before the Truly-Baker testimonies. C) (p. 255) Conclusion of elevator shaft discussion and segue into what Baker saw in the vestibule door (Belin's term). As Baker was coming around on the landing he caught a glimpse of Oswald in the plate-glass window "and it looked to me like he was going away." I am familiar with the hoaxers' complaints of matching up Baker's position with being able to see Oswald- it has led me to conclude that Oswald was up near the glass and flinched away the instant he saw Baker. Oswald's position inside the lunchroom changed/progressed from sitting at the table, to standing at the coke machine to having a coke standing next to the cupboards... if he had a coke already... You have fallen for Truly's gambit, which was to shift attention away from the west elevator and onto the lunchroom. Please see Inside Job p. 33. D) (p. 256) Baker had marked his position on the 2nd-floor landing- where he was when he spotted Oswald. With a diagram for reference (Exhibit 497), after going off-the-record, Belin rehashes Baker's position during the Oswald encounter. Belin then elicits details as to what Oswald was wearing- and I would hazard a guess that this was the focus of this particular discussion off-the-record. E) (p. 262) After Baker has recounted the tail end of his time in the Depository, Belin shifts gears and asks about his clothing while at DPD HQ. And then Senator Cooper finally breaks in and starts asking some questions. Does not apply to the hoax vs. incident debate. Sorry, Baker's testimony going off-the-record 5 times is just another fun fact. It does not take one iota away from the incident's reality. Need I go on?