Richard Gilbride

Tommy, Apologies on the bad link I provided. To get the Weisberg memo, google up "stavis ellis jfk water cooler" and hit the link "Item 01.pdf" The first sentence of the relevant paragraph is missing a noun or two.

Ed Ledoux, post #143- What Gilbride would posit is a sloped line on a graph where either party being fast or slow shows up as a higher or lower floor (vertical) and speed in the horizontal. This line would need one exact point where both parties' speeds and timing allow each, party of two, a chance to pass each other. Yet we saw no Adams and Styles re-enactment with Truly and Baker included. Of course best to leave unknown variables out of an equation if you want a known condition. Speed (i.e. distance/time) doesn't change very much- except when they stopped at the west elevator- and won't yield much information. I think the relation you mean to describe is higher-or-lower-floor vs. elapsed-time. And just because a re-enactment wasn't attempted doesn't mean that we have to hide our heads in the sand and conclude that it's forever unknowable. The timing situation is illustrated in Inside Job pp. 27-29. Fast-forward to the answer: 50 seconds. Baker is rounding the stairs to the 2nd-floor landing. Truly is somewhere up ahead of him. Adams & Styles are nearing the 3rd-floor landing. The pieces to the puzzle align when one visualizes Truly & Baker making a "mad dash" across the warehouse. This was Michael T. Griffith's insight. ...lot of black men... C'mon, Ed, you know that Piper and West are the only two black employees not outside or up on the 5th. It was West who almost certainly was still sitting at his wrapping paper table when Baker got to the west elevator, then got up when Adams encountered him by the east elevator. To make the case for Piper you'd have to have him going back to West's area and sitting down. But he testified he was "standing right there where they make coffee." Baker and Truly spotted by Garner, after Adams and Styles descended, deposits your math course in the circular file professor... The purpose of Garner's statement was to refute the WC argument that Adams must have gone downstairs several minutes after the shots, because otherwise she should have encountered LHO fleeing down the steps (thus no re-enactment). The Stroud document, coupled with our knowledge of the timelines, gives the unavoidable conclusion that T & B were in the lunchroom when A & S passed. http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/E%20Disk/Ellis%20Starvis%20Major/Hem%2001.pdf Major Stavis Ellis, who rode in front of the motorcade relayed his talks after the assassination with and he said This officer (as told by ELLIS) stated he was directly under the building when the shots were fired. They blocked the main, entrance and after the supervisor arrived he started up the stairs. The building was the Book Depository. Upon going up the stairs, he and the supervisor encountered someone on either the third or fourth floor. This person was drinking water from the water cooler- he did not stop because the supervisor advised the officer that the man was an employee. MAJOR ELLIS stated this officer later identified the man by the water cooler as LEE HARVEY OSWALD!- I have confirmation that the water cooler was between the men's and women's bathroom on the second floor. Baker mentioned a water cooler that he saw Oswald drinking from. Thanks to Sean Murphy for this. Where does this leave the LRE (lunchroom encounter)? Well, it gives yet another location which disputes the LRE/Alamo. Please note that Harold Weisberg typed in at the top- "I do not recall my source on this. Perhaps Garrison." And that the document begins with- "From a conversation that occurred at Ft. Chaffin, Arkansas, during the period 22 July- 5 August." No year given. So it is evidently information Ellis relayed several years after the assassination. Presumably this information pertained to a conversation Ellis & Baker had shortly after the assassination. Not only doers the location of the water cooler not jive with the other pertinent detail rendered- someone on either the third or fourth floor. Memory plays tricks with witnesses, and we have no certitude that the water cooler wasn't a detail noted from a later conversation or later visit by Ellis or Baker. And no certitude that this isn't an embellished memory of Baker's or mis-recall by Ellis. No More Silence, p. 151- Stavis Ellis: Baker said that he saw something that would indicate that somebody was shooting out of that window. When he got off his motor near the front of that building, he told the man in charge of that operation and they went inside. They couldn' t get the freight elevator down, so Baker and the man went up the stairs. That's when they encountered Oswald drinking a Coke on the second floor. Baker was told that he was all right, that he worked there. That's where Baker messed up! He should have sealed off the building and not let anybody out till it was ascertained that nobody there had anything to do with it. He could have saved an officer's life had he arrested him there, had he done what he was supposed to have done. We don't say anything to him about it; officers make mistakes just like everybody else. On the other hand, Baker wasn't real bright either. Before he went to Washington to testify to the Warren Commission he went into Captain Lawrence's office and said, "Captain, I've got to go to Washington. Don't you think the city ought to buy me a suit?" Ain't that some bull crap? I don't know why, but the boys called him "Momma Son". But he was always slow. That's the reason I didn't have him in a responsible position in that escort. When I got the assignment from the chief to put somebody on that press bus, I put him there to just trail along." You put together a good response, Ed, but you're making a huge systemic error by accepting the hoax hypothesis whilst neglecting the 6 conditions I laid out in post #131.

Robert Prudhomme, post #174- I still maintain Truly was in the vestibule no longer than 4-5 seconds, requiring the automatic closer to be VERY fast, as Adams and Styles would require time to cross the 2nd floor landing. And so this solidifies the hoax hypothesis via your interpretation of Truly's length of time in the vestibule, ignoring the 6 conditions (post #131) that oblige us to view this time-length through the lens of the incident's reality. I mentioned that you had cherry-picked an item of testimony and that your pre-judgment was concluding that it supported a hoax and only a hoax. It does not appear to me that you reflected very long on my complaint. Truly, as a conspirator, would be more concerned with what Baker was doing than about some office girls he may have heard on the stairway. ...Truly himself was in and out of there so quickly... We don't know that. Again, this is how you interpret the testimony. We don't know whether or not there was a pregnant pause as Truly moseyed up beside Baker. And I want to re-emphasize that the hoaxers, as this thread has progressed, still have not addressed the 6 critiques I listed in post #131. Without a successful counter to these critiques, their hypothesis will remain fool's gold. No amount of rhetoric, wishful thinking, or looking-through-a-glass-darkly together will change that requirement.

Consider- When Truly, 2-3 steps up toward the 3rd floor, realizes that Baker is not following him and heads for the vestibule door- Adams & Styles are already beginning their descent down the stairs from the 3rd floor. Truly, even if he heard their high heels resonating from the stairwell behind him, would be more concerned with determining what Baker was doing. And the vestibule door remained closed for 8-10-12 or more seconds out of Baker's estimated 30 seconds. And the time period that Truly was inside the vestibule was the time period that Adams & Styles passed by on the landing. And even if Truly had heard their muffled high heels, he had no cause to mention that- in fact, he had cause not to mention that. And even if Baker had heard their muffled high heels, his focus was on the suspect in front of him. Adams' focus was on getting downstairs and outside and with the vestibule door closed she had no reason to think that anyone was inside there, i.e. no reason to attune her ears to a muffled conversation going on inside. Besides, she apparently heard the elevator cables moving while on the 2nd-floor landing and her attention was drawn to that. 3) The vestibule door was completely soundproof. From the beginning I have maintained that this newly-installed, heavy-duty door was put in place to help muffle sounds from the landing and stairwell, so that people in the lunchroom could eat in relative peace and quiet. 4) That Truly and Baker were on the other side of the vestibule door long enough to allow Adams and Styles to pass through the 2nd floor landing, undetected. Correct, except for the last word. Substitute unmentioned, or forgotten-about. My 1st lunchroom essay used the phrase "irrelevant to the gestalt". As if all of this is not bad enough, how did Baker actually see Oswald through the small pane of glass in the vestibule door? And then, Robert, you present a scenario where Baker has to make a "wide sweep" of the 2nd-floor landing in order to catch a glimpse of Oswald in the plate-glass window- as if he were a horse with blinders following Truly, and could never turn his head to look to the right. BAKER: As I came out to the second floor there, Mr. Truly was ahead of me, and as I came out I was kind of scanning, you know, the rooms, and I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this- I happened to see him through this window in this door. (III p. 250) ********************************** Robert, my opinion is that you need to remove your hoax sunglasses in order to be able to see this aspect of the case clearly again. The longer you wear them, the deeper the collective dementia penetrates your psyche. It was a hypothesis never formalized in a position paper, that only perfunctorily addressed its critics' objections. It is a demonstrable falsehood, and will suffer the same fate as "The driver shot JFK".

Part 1 of 2 Robert Prudhomme's post #136 contends that my position, that the lunchroom incident occurred, depends on 4 points about Adams & Styles passing Truly & Baker while they were in the lunchroom/vestibule area. Before addressing these 4 points, I want to emphasize that it would be more accurate to state that- as explained in post #41 of Great New Movie Spells Out the Case for Oswald as PrayerMan- A & S passing T & B is one of the 4 results that materialize when the incident's reality is accepted. There are 6 points, which I reiterated in post #131 of this thread, which oblige us to dismiss completely any notion that the lunchroom incident was hoaxed. These 6 points oblige us to consider every item of evidence through the lens of the incident's reality. But I have extraordinary confidence that A & S passed T & B, and can counter Robert's objections- in his hometown arena, as it were. 1) That Roy Truly actually went through the vestibule door and allowed it to close behind him. ...According to Truly, he "opened the door back and leaned in this way." From this, the brilliant sleuth Gilbride has deduced that Truly went through the door and allowed it to close behind him. The brilliant sleuth Gilbride has far more clever methods with which to form his deductions. 4 replies later, Truly recounts that "When I reached there, the officer had his gun pointing at Oswald." Goodness, did Truly actually mean to say, "When I reached Nirvana, leaning in as I was in the vestibule doorway..."? The lunchroom doorframe was 7-8 feet from the vestibule doorframe. Truly described Baker as almost directly in the lunchroom doorframe, facing Oswald, who was 2-3 feet inside the lunchroom. He could see that Baker had his gun in Oswald's gut and he could see Oswald's facial expression. The point-of-view which enabled these details to be gleaned came about because he had moseyed up beside Baker, i.e. "When I reached there..." And so the vestibule door, 6-7-8 feet behind him, closed automatically. The focus of this portion of the testimony was about Baker confronting Oswald, and the vestibule door's closing mattered little or nothing in that regard. And Belin simply skipped that irrelevant detail. Robert, your critique here is like you telling me you got in your truck and went to the store. So, am I to conclude that you drove with your door open, since you didn't mention closing it? 2) That the automatic closer on the vestibule door was a very fast closer. ...Not only was Truly's time in the vestibule brief (5-6 seconds tops), was the vestibule door closed for all that time? I doubt it, unless the automatic closer on the vestibule door was an EXTREMELY fast closer. In other words, while Baker was asking Truly if Oswald worked there, the vestibule door would likely still be closing. This would make the door still open, and if Adams and Styles were passing through the landing, they would have no trouble hearing Truly and Baker, and Truly and Baker would have no trouble hearing them. The automatic closer on the vestibule door is seen in the Secret Service re-enactment film. It was a standard, commercial-grade, rudimentary pneumatic device. How fast the door closed, of course, depended upon how far it had been opened. Gauging from Truly's testimony- that he had leaned in- it probably got opened in the neighborhood of 30-35 degrees. I'd estimate its required closing time from that position as between 3-4 seconds. Baker also corroborated Truly in that he left "immediately" after hearing Truly's "yes", but he also estimated the elapsed time (between first sighting Oswald and then heading for upstairs) as 30 seconds (III p. 258). Robert, you are making a mistake here of cherry-picking an item of testimony and, through your pre-judgment, concluding that it supports a hoax and only a hoax. But we have to remember that there are 6 conditions (post #131) the hoax hypothesis fails to properly account for. It does not survive the crucible of fire. Although your cherry-picked item, at first blush, seems disposed toward a hoax interpretation, it must be viewed through the lens of the incident's reality.

Part 1 I'm sorry, Robert, I won't have time to look through your material for several days. Greg Parker, post #127- Richard's post #126 is so lacking in substance and yet so rich in smell, it could only be accurately described as a long wet passing of wind. Parker's immaturity raises its vile head once again, as he offers up 9th-grade toilet humor. post #135- Let the reader note that Greg does not respond to 5 of the 6 points raised in my post #131, which are the strongest arguments against the hoax. In true sophist fashion, he sidesteps them and constructs an alternative argument. Fact: Baker wrote 3rd or 4th floor. Your opinion is that he was confused. My opinion was based on a fact. As I stated in post #68 of this thread, in the Sept. 23rd affidavit "or third floor" was crossed out, i.e. 6 months after his testimony, which included 2 re-enactments, Baker was confused about the TSBD floor layout. His confusion on Sept. 23rd gives a high probability that the error in the Nov. 22nd affidavit was due to confusion. Greg, on the other hand, gives no explanation as to why "or third floor" was crossed out. It is a piece of evidence that a hoaxer can't sensibly incorporate into his hypothesis. Fact: Baker described a 165 pound 30 year old wearing a light tan jacket. Your opinion is that he was mistaken. This is irrelevant to the 6 points I raised that rebut the hoax hypothesis. Look- Baker's story has big-time problems. But there isn't enough to certify a hoax. And there aren't simultaneous solutions to this set of equations. Either it happened, or it didn't. An extraordinary claim, like a hoax, requires extraordinary proof. And the hoax hypothesis doesn't survive the crucible of fire- it can't withstand the combined might of the aggregate. It is the height of narcissism to continue promulgating it. Fact: Oswald allegedly claimed to buy one coke. Your opinion is that he bought two. The real fact, Greg, is that Oswald was recorded in the Hosty-Bookhout report as claiming he "obtained a bottle of Coca-Cola for his lunch." He made that reply specifically in regards to having eaten his lunch in the domino room. We have no further information (put out while he was alive) as to whether or not he obtained a 2nd Coke after being confronted in the lunchroom by Baker. Does that not explain why Mrs. Reid stated in her testimony that she saw him with a full Coke? Fact: Mrs. Reid stated Oswald wore a white t-shirt. Your opinion is that she was mistaken. Again, this is irrelevant to the 6 points I raised. But let's look at what you are trying to say- that Reid's sighting got changed from a pre-assassination to a post-assassination one. Which does violence to her Nov. 23rd affidavit, which says she saw Oswald after coming back inside. Which does violence to her March 24 testimony, which adds that she was in the lunchroom until shortly before the motorcade. Do you care to state who was going which way, in your pre-assassination scenario? Because there's nothing normal about Oswald, coke in hand, walking through the central office toward the lunchroom while Reid is exiting it. And, of necessity, you've now got to add in Leavelle (who took Reid's affidavit), Belin (who took her testimony), those "in-the-know" at the DPD and those "in-the-know" on the Warren Commission- all of them joining Mrs. Reid in the Truly-Baker mini-conspiracy to fabricate the lunchroom story. It doesn't work, Greg. Never did, never will. Fact: The re-enactments were done over and over again until they could make the timing work. Your opinion is that they were done over and over again to "refresh" Baker's memory. Again, irrelevant to the 6 points I raised. But Greg, sophist extraordinaire, spins my comment that the re-enactments helped refresh details that were omitted from the affidavits (and FBI reports) into the claim that I give no heed to the T & B timing problems- when probably nobody in the history of the research community has worked harder on the timing problems than myself. (one post to follow)

My apologies to you Terry. I don't drink either (20-plus years) and assumed you did from reading a post from you at the present ROKC forum about Australian wines. But I don't think we're getting anywhere, other than talking past each other, and if you want to carry on believing the 5 items I presented favor a hoax, as opposed to the incident's reality, I can't do much about that. Either one or the other happened. As far as waste of time, I would contend the hoax hypothesis is the real waste- I guarantee there will be no objective-verifiable fruits from that line of thinking. You offend me when you insult my understanding of physics. You may enjoy an essay of mine from 1998, up at jfkinsidejob.com, that should change your mind.

"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie- deliberate, contrived, and dishonest- but the myth- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." -John F. Kennedy, commencement address to Yale University, June 11, 1962 Greg Parker, post #96- In short, [Oswald] followed his natural route of going up and buying a coke and coming back down to have it with his lunch IN THE DOMINO room. The purchase of the coke happened BEFORE the assassination- and that is when he was seen by Reid. ...they brought Baker's encounter down to the 2nd floor lunchroom and claimed it was Oswald and they 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. The confusion about the coke is also resolved by postulating that Oswald purchased two cokes- one for his domino-room lunch and one just after being confronted by Baker. But Greg's scenario shanghais Reid into the lunchroom-hoax mini-conspiracy, and by extension Leavelle & Belin & who-knows-who-else, as he turns her affidavit topsy-turvy in order to make the hoax hypothesis work. These shenanigans stink of artificiality, and they service a hypothesis that yields ephemeral results, which have no empirical substantiation. Even if one discards Tan Jacket Man and Ira Trantham as laughable, Baker's confusion ("3rd or 4th floor") does not automatically transmutate into an encounter with a flesh-and-blood person there. Nor is there even a hint from film or circumstances that Baker & Prayerman had any interaction on the front landing. Yet Greg holds onto the lunchroom-hoax the way Norman Bates shows devotion to his mother in Psycho. Neither rhyme nor reason can shake his tenacious determination that her Aussified remains must live on. Consider when I point out that: 1) every single item of lunchroom-related evidence has a mundane explanation that supports the incident's reality, no answer is given. 2) the Sept. 23rd affidavit shows Baker's continuing confusion with the TSBD floor layout, and cannot be construed as supportive of a hoax, and no answer is given. 3) the 1964 filmed interview shows Baker as a modest man with integrity. His fellow officers called him "MommaSon" 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. 4) the will-call counter bump, a superfluous incident that serves no ostensible 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. But because this detail did not come out until the testimonies (which were preceded by 2 re-enactments), Greg ignores its pertinence. Neglecting that numerous other details about the elevator area & lunchroom were refreshed with the help of the re-enactments. Neglecting that numerous other details about Baker's time in the Depository weren't elaborated on until the testimonies. Greg would have us discount any detail that doesn't fit into his conception of a hoax-supportive deadline. 5) the Biffle story has not one whit of corroboration, nothing that substantiates it as supporting a hoax, and no answer is given. 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. And the men had to have been in the lunchroom when the ladies passed. Yet Greg mis-reads Truly's vestibule-area testimony so as to maintain that this is impossible and thereby enable the hoax. Greg Parker's obstinacy in the face of a cascade of reasoned criticism does not bode well for his grip on reality as regards other JFK matters. His is an immature hypothesis supported only by wishful thinking, sophistic spinning and ad hominum attacks. He and Sean Murphy co-founded and co-advertised this misbegotten school of thought and they have an enormous emotional investment in pretending that it is true. And their efforts have involved recruiting new followers to "get on board" and thereby help confirm the validity of this fruitless, regressive way of thinking. Because they do not have the courage of their convictions and this insecurity requires sycophants. The result has been a collective dementia that favors mullarkey over hard-nosed logical connections. That favors sophistry, and barroom bulls***, over answers that will sustain. The hoax hypothesis doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Its adherents are forced to ignore the uncomfortable fact that all of the pertinent evidence can be interpreted as supportive of the lunchroom incident's reality. And they are forced to ignore that for 5 items- an aggregate of evidence- the clarity is so well-defined that only a contortion of common sense allows any interpretation supporting a hoax. Were there only one item, they might have a case. But there are 5. And probability theory tells us the hoaxers' chances of being correct are infinitesmal, ultramicroscopic. Their position is a demonstrable falsehood.

Sandy Larsen, post #101- Richard, if you will, please explain what complications for hoaxers result from Adams and Styles going down the stairs before Truly and Baker going up, without the two pairs passing each other. The answers are found in a review of my April 2014 essay The Lunchroom Incident: A Short Proof and Long Explanation found at the old ROKC website at http://www.reopenkennedycase.net/the-2nd-floor-lunch-room-encounter-pro-and-con.html I laid the argument out mathematically, that Truly & Baker had to have been in the lunchroom, but I had an erroneous piece of information- Styles had remembered attempting to call the passenger elevator on the way down, but Adams was firm they used the rear office door. The mathematical argument is still valid with this route, but less obvious, and I didn't want to rehash that in Inside Job. It felt more effective, psychologically, to run through the litany of the hoaxers' best arguments and rebut them one by one. We have to understand that Adams & Styles, in 3-inch high heels, could not have beaten Truly & Baker to the freight elevator area. You'd have to imagine the gals as faster than Wilma Rudolph & Wyomia Tyus to get them out of the warehouse unnoticed. Or imagine Truly & Baker as taking a 20-second-plus pause in the lobby, which they nor anybody else ever mentioned. We don't have any cause to corrupt the data given us- Baker gets to the steps at 0:22, Truly's only 10 feet from the steps, it's an adrenalized situation, they rush into the warehouse, Adams & Styles leave their 4th-floor window about 0:10, etc. Not to mention Adams & Baker seeing a large black guy downstairs, at different locations. Therefore, when Adams & Styles ran across the 2nd-floor landing, Truly & Baker had to be inside, in the vestibule & lunchroom. The hoaxers have a mental block that forbids this, because they read the testimony (III p. 225) with an extreme bias. Truly stated, "I opened the [vestibule] door back and leaned in this way." But Belin didn't ask whether, after he leaned in, he allowed the automatic vestibule door to close. The focus of this part of the testimony was about Baker confronting Oswald. Truly described Baker as almost directly in the lunchroom doorframe, facing Oswald, who was 2-3 feet inside the lunchroom. He could see that Baker had his gun in Oswald's gut, and he could see Oswald's facial expression. Baker & Oswald weren't in profile to Truly's point-of-view- they weren't both 2-3 feet inside the lunchroom, they weren't both in the lunchroom doorframe. Truly was able to garner these details because he had moseyed up beside Baker, across 7-8 feet of vestibule floorspace. Letting the heavy-duty vestibule door close behind him. The coaxers- I mean hoaxers- then throw a hissyfit when I suggest that the high heels- irrelevant to the situation, irrelevant to Baker's gestalt- got muffled by the heavy-duty door. No common sense allowed! The Stroud document- which I also examine in my 1st lunchroom essay- involves both the A & S and T & B timelines and seals the deal, as far as T & B having to be in the lunchroom. It's what woke me out of the nightmare of their hoax mullarkey.

Greg, One of us cannot be wrong, and it will be cataclysmic for you when you finally recognize and admit defeat. It will be similar to the ending of Lord of the Flies, when the adults arrive on the island and shatter the protracted illusion of the boys' tribe. Sean Murphy had a cataclysmic meltdown after his PrayerMan thread, at least as far as JFK matters. His last post was on November 22, 2013. He had nothing more to give- it had all been left on the playing field. His efforts there came in three parts- PrayerMan, the Fritz/Bookhout notes, and then the hypothesis & consequences of Truly & Baker ascending via the west elevator rather than the stairs. I dubbed this "Murphy's Postulate", and showed that this idea was fatally flawed in my first lunchroom essay. Somebody had to do it. I downloaded about 100 pages from that thread, and reviewed that material 2-3 times, in order to give his work the proper respect. It was an ingenious postulate. It directly stemmed from his struggles with the Stroud document. Because Sean understood that Adams & Styles should have intersected Truly & Baker on the stairs. In order for his lunchroom hoax hypothesis to survive, it would be required that Truly & Baker be somewhere other than on the stairs. You have achieved a Bolshevik-style freedom of speech on this issue at your website, where anyone who contradicts the Party line will get thrown to the wolves. You run it like a saloon-keeper. Do you understand that only a small minority are comfortable in places like that? That it all-too-easily morphs into a witches' cauldron of negativity? Bill Kelly showed his gracious manner when he commented, in the PrayerMan thread, that the lunchroom hoaxers are only fooling themselves. I was more contentious, being in the thick of it at the ROKC forum, and that probably stems from my building-trade persona. The point remains- either the lunchroom incident happened, or it did not. You have not addressed why every single item of lunchroom-related evidence has a readily-available mundane explanation, nor any of the items from the aggregate. Until you do that, you are still mired in sophistry.

What I have been contending is that- Oswald was PrayerMan. He went up the lobby stairs. He entered the central offices, while Geneva Hine was down the hall knocking on SouthWestern Publishing's door. Oswald then positioned himself at the plate-glass window of the vestibule door, looking out at the 2nd-floor landing. Truly arrived there moments later, but we don't know whether or not he noticed Oswald. The instant Oswald spotted Baker, he headed into the lunchroom. Baker found this suspicious and went right after him. ****************** The hoaxers cannot give an adequate explanation as to why their hypothesis has produced only brittle results- Tan Jacket Man, Ira Trantham's HSCA memory (which was horrific), Spooky (Baker's 1st-day affidavit's "3rd or 4th floor" man), and Breakfast at Tiffany's (an imagined Baker-Oswald interaction on the front landing, which has no evidentiary support). This is because the hoax is a chimera. The hoaxers refuse to acknowledge that for every single item of lunchroom-related evidence that seemingly speaks for a hoax, there is a readily-available mundane explanation that speaks for the incident's reality. This is because truth is found in the commonplace, not in the ornate. An extraordinary claim, such as the hoax, requires extraordinary proof. The hoaxers refuse to acknowledge that there is an aggregate of evidence- the filmed interviews, the Sept. 23rd affidavit, the will-call counter bump, the lack of corroboration for Biffle's story, the Martha Jo Stroud document- every one of which has a face-value, common-sense interpretation that speaks for the incident's reality. Every one of which has to be contorted in extremis in order to construe it as speaking for the hoax. Like in a Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie detective mystery, the reader is initially presented with ambiguous clues. What this aggregate does is resolve this ambiguity- the hoax is rendered so highly improbable that it is essentially impossible. And anything that seemed ambiguous at first must now be interpreted through the lens of the incident's reality. The research community, largely through the sophistry of the ROKC forum, has been calcified by this school of thought- which has produced no fruit- for too many years. The hoaxers have engendered a situation where objective truth is discerned based upon tribal allegiances. Feelings are not facts, and as passionately as they might argue for a hoax, the fact remains is that its solutions do not work. You may put the following in an envelope marked DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 2020- I guarantee that no objectively-verifiable evidence will come forward supporting the lunchroom hoax hypothesis.

Maybe the Texas Film Commission in Austin has one?

Thanks, Sandy, I just had a fabulous alternative to Groden suggested to me. So there's a backup or even a cooperative plan shaping up. What is needed now is advice on the proper technology to bring to the Museum to accomplish a scan of this 52-year-old film. I think either Duncan or Bart would have some knowledge of that, or David Healy, and this topic's positioning at the top of the list, with hopefully constantly-changing faces, seems enough of an attention-getter to me. Determining who to do what, with what, and how to get that, and just when, could take a couple months.

I am absolutely in favor of academic discussion- it produces a refinement of ideas. But there is a greater purpose to this PrayerMan debate that I would like to address in this post. It's a new year and we really need to get the show on the road as far as obtaining a clearer copy of the Darnell film image. Meaning that we have to get the Sixth Floor Museum to allow access to the film- specifically Megan Bryant, who's the Director of Collections and Intellectual Property. As far as I understand, Bart Kamp & the ROKC forum have been doing the heavy lifting as far as pushing for access- and with them being mainly overseas, they're fairly easy for the Museum to ignore. This morning I have sent off a query to the Dallas law firm of Gagnon, Peacock & Vereeke, who advertise themselves as "aggressive intellectual property representation". I asked them whether a Power of Attorney can be served upon the Museum, since it is historical material and the public should have fair use of it. And how much $$ that would cost. I need information as to how one performs a scan on a film like that. It is an artifact created in November 1963 and we wouldn't want to injure it in any way. I'm not a techie or geek. There must be some kind of gizmo available that can make a high-quality scan. There must be an area on that floor at the Museum, at least in the building somewhere, where this can be accomplished in a few hours' time. I don't see a better alternative than to try to interest Robert Groden to perform this scan. All I have is his publisher's address, for JFK: Absolute Proof. Does anyone know his P.O. Box, or e-mail? If so, please send me a personal message. By at least Monday morning I will have at least a letter in the mail to Groden's publisher. Your input is welcome and I will keep you posted.

Sorrels sat in on the 1st interrogation on the afternoon of the 22nd, the morning interrogation of the 23rd, and the last interrogation on the 24th. (VII pp. 353-356). He did not file a report. A half-page of handwritten notes from the 23rd spill into Sorrels' handwritten notes from his interrogation of Ruby (XXI p. 543). A search at the National Archives by the ARRB found only photocopies of pages from Sorrels' notebook- not the original notebook ("Lost and Found Oswald Interrogation Notes" by Larry Haapanen, Kennedy Assassination Chronicles, Vol. 7, Issue 3, p. 11). Apparently, he took no notes during that last session on the 24th, and commenced with his Ruby stuff just after his Oswald stuff from the 23rd. What's missing, of course, is Sorrels' account of Oswald's professed whereabouts at lunch- specifically when the President passed the building. According to Hosty & Bookhout's joint report, filed the 23rd (while Oswald was still alive), "OSWALD claimed to be on the first floor when President JOHN F. KENNEDY passed this building." The PM position is on the 1st floor. It is unthinkable that Sorrels would have failed to note where Oswald claimed to be during the assassination. So why did this portion of his notebook disappear? This was intentional- destruction of evidence. It must have spoken for Oswald's innocence.

In 1965 researchers Penn Jones and Gary Shaw "learned from newsmen that something unusual did happen [in the motorcade] on Harwood [street] shortly before the turn to Main Street. No one wanted credit for this, but we were told by reliable newsmen that a man jumped in front of Kennedy's car on Harwood shouting, 'Stop, I must tell you.' [He] was promptly wrestled to the ground and hustled away." "This may explain why Clint Hill felt it was necessary for him to crouch on President Kennedy's limousine as it rounded the corner at Main and Harwood streets. Hill knew President Kennedy did not like the men hanging on his car, but Hill crouched there for he seemed to feel that security demanded that he be there." -The Continuing Inquiry, 1/20/77 Has anyone ever found out any further information about this incident on Harwood Street? Was it DPD or might it have been the Secret Service who wrestled this man to the ground? Leads to an undercover SS man, Chuck Robertson, posing as a postal inspector, did not seem to pan out. And a Rita Rollins, who surfaced in 1967 to confabulate a story about Robertson to researcher Vince Salandria, turned out to be an FBI agent provocateur named Lulu Belle Holmes.

Gene Kelly: ...how the police were co-opted into facilitating the operation. Controlling the crime scene, managing evidence, and limiting bystander action (even intimidating witnesses)... a masterstroke of operational strategy... some form of intelligence orchestration. 3 guys the plot absolutely depended on, in my opinion, were Fritz, Decker & Day. Without their complicity the fact would get exposed that there were multiple shooters. And a high-level government conspiracy. They were central to the plot. Failure was not an option for them. If they screwed up & got caught the whole house of cards would come down. And each of these 3 guys had to know, in advance, the basic game-plan of the plot (location of shooters, their escape routes, coverup story that would frame Oswald). Mayor Earle Cabell was their immediate superior in the Dallas political power structure and has to be considered as one of their enablers- it was his OK or persuasion or tacit agreement that brought them into the plot. Another possibility is LBJ's behind-the-scenes henchman Ed Clark. And/or LBJ aide Cliff Carter. This Texas power structure looks to me as even more critical than the role of intelligence agencies. And I'm reasonably sure that when Decker made this 12:30 broadcast on Chief Curry's mike, just after the shots: "Have my office move all available men out of my office into the railroad yard to try to determine what happened in there and hold everything secure until Homicide and other investigators should get there." that Decker knew that the grassy knoll hit team would make a clean, quick getaway (within 60 seconds) and that his officers wouldn't get there until well after that (75+ seconds). And that with attention focused on the grassy knoll area, the Depository hit team would have sufficient time for their own getaway.

Thanks, Greg, for the information you provided as to the 1941 HUAC hearings. It was my guess, as expressed in post #4, that this Harvey & Lee information might relate to the biological production of a doppelganger. Evidently it does not. I don't see how you can spin that bad guess of mine into you being correct about the 2nd-floor lunchroom. Here is one of your bad guesses to ponder: your mini-essay at the old ROKC forum, Was Eddie Piper on the Sixth Floor? Greg Parker: How's that sword in the ground holding up, sport? You're getting into ad hominem attacks, and follow that up with 5 consecutive posts flailing against me. Having anger management issues, Greg? You hate me, don't you, for exposing your lunchroom sophistry. Maybe your ROKC tribe can sport up for a groupview of Breakfast at Tiffany's.

I agree just about entirely, Gene. This snippet of Ruby's testimony, where he says "Bill Decker said be a man and say it" is intriguing to me because, although Ruby thinks the official record will reflect that he was spurred on by Decker to reveal his pent-up secrets, what follows is utter BS (as opposed to just plain BS). I think Ruby is laying a red-herring here, about the John Birch Society. I would be surprised if Ruby & Decker didn't have a long-term friendship, akin to Ruby's "one-of-the-boys" camaraderie with the Dallas police. Decker, like Fritz, had been a mainstay of Dallas law enforcement. Which had been completely corrupted by the Mob since at least '47-'48, when Ruby moved there, if not sooner. Jan. 28, 1964- Jack Ruby and Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker after Ruby's psychiatric tests: I think at 1:46 that is Decker's voice off-screen who says "Let's go" and cuts short Ruby's remarks. Decker apparently wanted to make a deathbed confession in 1970, but officers were stationed by his hospital door to prevent visitors. He was said to be senile and making "incoherent ramblings" about the assassination.

I have to repeat myself, and will confine my remarks to WC 3076 and the 1964 filmed interview. These are two of the stronger items of the aggregate that speak to the lunchroom incident's reality, that have to be contorted in order to be construed as "supporting the hoax". In every single instance where an item of evidence can be construed as "supports the hoax", it can also be construed as "supports the incident". There is a reasonable explanation, readily available, that say OK, that is a somewhat ambiguous item, but it doesn't necessarily mean there was a hoax. For example, the ten FBI routes in FBI 105-82555 Oswald HQ File Section 21 pp. 129-131, five of which omit the lunchroom, can be attributed to Hoover requesting as thorough a job as possible when determining Oswald's possible escape routes, or even the agents taking it on themselves to "take nothing for granted" and so please the Boss. There's no reason, a priori, to "sex up" this item of evidence and look at it as favoring the hoax. In WC 3076, the Sept. 23rd affidavit (p. 34 of Inside Job), the fifth paragraph initially began "On the second or third floor, where the lunchroom is located..." but ""or third floor" was crossed out, i.e. 6 months after his testimony, which included 2 re-enactments, Baker was still confused about the TSBD floor layout. Just like he was during his 1st-day affidavit. Alfred Goldberg, the co-author of the Warren Report (which was issued Sept. 26th) contacted the FBI and requested that they get a further statement from Baker about the lunchroom incident. A hoaxer cannot account for Baker's cross-out, except to conjecture that Baker had a failure of nerve 3 days before the Warren Report was published, i.e. he flubbed up the Truly-Baker mini-conspiracy's cover story. He flubbed up the location of the fabricated lunchroom incident, but he had it down during his testimony. The face-value common-sense interpretation of WC 3076 says that Baker, who was characterized as being of a modest-ranged intellect by his fellow officers (i.e. nickname: MommaSon, and referred to as "dopey"), was simply confused about the TSBD floor layout. He did not have the benefit of diagrams that we enjoy. He was not going to night school studying to be an architect. In the filmed 1964 interview, Baker comes across as a modest man with integrity. And it will be to their enduring discredit that the hoaxers cannot recognize this, that they paint Baker as a flagrant xxxx- without proof, with only wishful thinking. This is how deeply the psychosis of their hypothesis pervades. Not only is Baker, a modest man with integrity, with a modest-ranged intellect, psychologically incapable of telling a whopper such as that the lunchroom incident occurred, if it hadn't. But a whopper such as lying about the location of an event is a philosophically different order of magnitude than, for example, fudging how long it took him to arrive at the lunchroom. This is in league with, as an example, Baker witnessing Sean Murphy emerge from a crowd to shoot Richard Gilbride, and knowingly saying that the assailant was someone who was only standing nearby. The face-value common-sense interpretation of the filmed interview is that Baker was telling the truth when he described the interaction with Oswald as occurring in the 2nd-floor lunchroom. If he was not telling truth there would be some kind of tangible indication that he was lying. While the hoaxers have fun attempting to contort these items from the aggregate into their "supports the hoax" column, there is more fun to be had attempting to explain why their hypothesis has produced only the woeful results of Tan Jacket Man, Ira Trantham, Spooky, & Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Wow. Here is the problem with the hoaxers, which they repeatedly fail to address: There is an aggregate of lunchroom-related evidence- the filmed interviews, the Sept. 23rd affidavit, the will-call counter bump, the Martha Jo Stroud document, the lack of corroboration for Biffle's story- which has to be contorted in order to be construed as supporting the hoax. Construed from its face-value, common-sense meaning. I have discussed these in depth (excepting the Stroud doc, for lack of time) in posts #148 & #160 on pp. 10-11 of the thread Great New Movie Spells Out the Case for Oswald as Prayer Man. Until the hoaxers can find some way to overcome the weight of this aggregate, it is pointless to introduce ambiguous items such as the 1st-day affidavit and 10 FBI routes taken when re-constructing Oswald's sniper's nest escape. Every such item must be viewed through the lens of the incident's reality. There is no way to overcome the weight of this aggregate, short of doing violence to the evidence listed, of doing violence to probability theory. That is why I am firm on this. And the situation has not been helped by the hoaxers' failure to produce a position paper for their argument. And please, look at the fruits produced by thinking this way- Tan Jacket Man, Ira Trantham, Spooky, Breakfast at Tiffany's (my new slogan for the Baker-Oswald front landing encounter). These ephemeral fruits are supported only by wishful thinking. These ephemeral fruits are a very good indicator of the brittleness of the hoax hypothesis- it does not yield tangible results. It should raise an eyebrow that a dyed-in-the-wool LNer such as David von Pein, and a dyed-in-the-wool CTer such as Richard Gilbride, are united in their efforts to derail this hoax cattle-train before it gathers more victims. His insights are not mine, and they are quite good, and the desired result is the same- we want truth, not wishful thinking. Anyone is welcome to analyse my pieces on this subject- The Lunchroom Incident: A Short Proof and Long Explanation and pp. 26-36 of Inside Job. And consider the thought that went into arranging the argument as it is laid out. This is a politically-charged topic, and breaking through this impasse will likely require someone breaking off from the herd at ROKC- someone who has the moxie to stand up to that abusive herd and assert their voice. Someone who gives a hoot about where JFK research will be in 5 years. Because the hoaxers would have us tent outside Langley, clamoring for that one piece of paper still being withheld about "3rd or 4th floor man".

The lunchroom incident either happened, or it did not happen. Thanks to the multi-year efforts of Sean Murphy & Greg Parker, a school of thought has emerged that contends that the incident was hoaxed. They refuse to acknowledge that every item of evidence relating to the lunchroom incident has a mundane explanation, readily available, that supports the incident's reality. They refuse to acknowledge that there is a set of items, an aggregate- the filmed interviews, the Sept. 23rd affidavit, the will-call counter bump, the lack of corroboration for Biffle's news story, the Martha Jo Stroud document- and every item of this aggregate has to be contorted, beyond common sense, in order to be construed as supporting the hoax. Even if the researcher successfully un-contorts one of these items, there are four more to justify, and all of them must be justified in order to support a hoax interpretation, i.e. its chances are infinitesmal (if that). Which means that you, the researcher, must evaluate this Bakerview problem through the lens of the lunchroom incident's reality. Sean Murphy & Greg Parker are zealots in regards to this issue. They cannot and will not be reasoned with. To admit defeat would entail a loss of their sycophants, and an extreme loss of face. After all, they are the co-discoverers and marketers of this pernicious school of thought. They might seem progressive, but are actually regressive. In this arena they are sophists extraordinaire.

There is some brief footage of Decker escorting Ruby to trial in Evidence of Revision- Part 1- 9 of 10 from 3:57-4:01 at and in Helmer Reenberg's Texas School Book Depository in the left 1/3 of screen from 1:48-1:52, Decker is escorting Brennan and at 2:02-2:09 Decker is in front of TSBD

It is curious to reflect upon the following passage from "The Sayings of Jack Ruby" (2022) as transcribed from his jail cell while being visited by Earl Warren, Bill Decker & others: "There is a certain organization here, Chief Justice Warren, if it takes my life at this moment to say it, and Bill Decker said be a man and say it, there is a John Birch Society right now in activity, and Edwin Walker is one of the top men of this organization- take it for what it is worth, Chief Justice Warren. Unfortunately for me, for giving people the opportunity to get in power, because of the act I committed, has put a lot of people in jeopardy with their lives. Doesn't register with you, does it?"

#353 Robert Prudhomme: Did Shelley and Lovelady get a chance to talk to Gloria Caverly on the concrete island before they took off down the street to the railyards? My 2 cents on Gloria Caverly: S & L used her as an anchor point for their post-assassination-movements alibi. I spent a page and a little bit more describing this, toward the end of my 2009 essay The Elevator Escape Theory. Importantly, Gloria never mentioned anything about seeing S & L. And Shelley's DPD affidavit stated: "I ran across the street to the corner of the park..." but his testimony reversed this: "She ran back up to the door..." Both guys placed their encounter with Gloria at 3-4 minutes after the shots. And, both guys mentioned they departed the steps after their encounter with Gloria. Some researchers then were hoping to give S & L the benefit of the doubt, that maybe they were mis-remembering those chaotic first couple minutes. Then in 2012 Gerda showed her film clip, like she was shooting the moon in a game of hearts. Whether or not S & L briefly interacted with Gloria during their walk down the Elm St. Extension is immaterial. They got the idea to use her as an anchor point from somewhere.