Paul Jolliffe

12 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

This is a really interesting story.  Because it shows just how invested in the cover story CBS was, even before the WR was published.

Which is really something since that concept violates ever journalistic standard out there.

Florence Graves was a truly  fine journalist who was quite courageous in taking this issue on.

For me, amid all the interesting revelations in the story, the one that is key is the Bernie Birnbaum quote: CBS was working on this 1964 program months in advance!   Talk about being a lapdog.

The other thing is that Salant switched their policy on outtakes, and lied about it, and he then made up the ridiculous comparison with a reporter's notes.

As I observe in the article, this is no surprise since we know Salant was a xxxx on the JFK case from the 1967 four parter where he lied about McCloy being a consultant.

Amazing what the JFK case does to the MSM isn't it?

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/cbs-and-their-1964-jfk-cover-up

(Again, thanks to Bart and Malcolm)

 

Jim,

I read the article and yes, CBS deserves every ounce of criticism one can level at them. For them to pretend that they somehow "objectively" evaluated the Warren Report's conclusions without access to the evidence the Warren Commission itself would not publish for another two months, is beyond absurd.

CBS lied. No one could have evaluated the WR in such a short time.

But Jim, as you know, CBS was not the first mainstream media outlet to pave the way for the "official" narrative of the assassination: the role the Washington Post played in creating the Warren Commission itself remains unexplored (save for Donald Gibson's excellent work) and largely unknown.

It is clear from the tape of Joseph Alsop's call to LBJ himself on November 25, 1963 that the Washington Post was a very important player in bringing pressure on LBJ to create an "independent" panel of "outsiders" to review the work of the FBI. Not only did Alsop himself implore the President, he dropped the name of the Post's Managing Editor, Albert Friendly, as "going to come out tomorrow morning with a big thing about a . . . a blue ribbon commission which he thought of independently." 

(Sure he did, Joe. Albert Friendly just happened to dream up the Warren Commission "independently" and was threatening to run an editorial criticizing LBJ if he did not sign on. Right!)

Further on, Alsop then said: "if Moyers calls Friendly, you have a terrific support from the Washington Post and from the whole of the rest of the press instantly." 

(Joe Alsop, truer words about the "rest of the press" were never spoken!)

Near the end of the call, Alsop invokes Friendly's name again, and throws in "Kay" (Katherine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post) with the line "they will do you a tremendous piece and I'm sure you will have the strongest possible support . . ."

Without the Warren Commission, the cover-up would not have succeeded. 

And without pressure from the Washington Post, there would have been no Warren Commission.

https://www.maryferrell.org/audio/LbjLib/Audio_lbjlib_WCC1A_LBJ-Alsop_25-Nov-1963_1040AM.mp3

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Fair enough, but the NYT article clearly referred to Truly ("building manager") telling Baker ("first officer to reach the six-story building") that Oswald was an employee

Yes, but that same story also managed to place the alleged encounter "among other persons", which ought to have raised some mighty interesting questions for honest investigators.

13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

So Dulles next question Should have been,  Did you recognize him as the man you encountered in the lunchroom?  Or as the man you saw on the third or fourth floor.  Or as the man you encountered at the front entrance?

Ron,

The last thing Allen Dulles wanted to do was to introduce testimony that the suspect encountered by Baker was not "Oswald"!

Allen Dulles was one of the chief architects of the cover-up. How close he was to those who ordered the assassination remains speculative, at least for now. 

49 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Paul,

Thanks for continuing this discussion.  It is an important issue.

I must say, though, that from the excerpts of Baker’s testimony that you and Tony quoted, I don’t see much to truly discredit Baker’s story over time.  The WC testimony was months after the assassination, when you all seem to believe Baker changed his story to put "Oswald" into the encounter.  I’m hoping some people here will at least scan through Richard Gilbride’s article linked below, which does a nice job gathering at least much of the evidence in support of the Harvey Oswald encounter.  Hoping we can avoid getting into a PrayerMan pissing contest, but I do think Gilbride makes some important points.  Here’s one….

If the above was all a big conspiracy to shore up the lunchroom anteroom encounter, it sure happened fast.  The Nov. 24, 1963 edition of the New York Times (a morning paper), included the following:

“The first officer to reach the six-story building, Lieut. Curry said, found Oswald among other persons in a lunchroom.  He said the building manager identified Oswald as an employee of the book-distribution concern that used the building.  Oswald was not questioned then."
 

Image above captured from DEATH OF THE LUNCHROOM HOAX by Richard Gilbride.
 

Jim,

I suspect that there was some kind of encounter between our "Oswald" and a DPD cop (probably Marrion Baker) somewhere on the first floor. Note that the NYT story of Sunday morning, 11/24/63 (when "Oswald' was still very much alive) did not specify precisely which "lunchroom" the encounter allegedly occurred. (We all know that there were two eating rooms in the TSBD, one of which was on the first floor.) I also suspect that at the very first interrogation of "Oswald" (as recorded by James Hosty), it became obvious that "Oswald" had an alibi - he was on the first floor of the TSBD during the shooting. The second-floor story was needed to get "Oswald" off the first floor and away from witnesses he might later call to testify on his behalf.  This deserves a much fuller development on a separate thread.

But, I will look carefully at Richard Gilbride's essay over the next few days and get back to you.

Meanwhile,  one incredible fact remains: at the very moment he was completing his first day affidavit by hand, Marrion Baker was literally sitting right next to "Oswald" and nowhere in that affidavit did he state that the man right next to him was the same "lt brown jacket" wearing suspect he'd encountered up on the "3rd or 4th floor"!

Further, the suspect description provided by Baker does not really fit our "Oswald" - 30 years old? 165 pounds? "Oswald" was sitting right next to him!

13 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

To Paul J....

Thanks for the nicely-written post on Baker!  Can you tell me how you know that Baker was right next to “Oswald” when he was writing his 11/22 affidavit?

Jim,

From Baker's own WC testimony:

"Representative BOGGS -Let me ask one other question. You later, when you recognized this man as Lee Oswald, is that right, saw pictures of him?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir. I had occasion to see him in the homicide office later that evening after we got through with Parkland Hospital and then Love Field and we went back to the City Hall and I went up there and made this affidavit.
Representative BOGGS -After he had been arrested?
Mr. BAKER - Yes, sir."

17 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Custer was not a back-of-the head witness. He was actually quite the opposite.

 

From patspeer.com, chapter 18c:

While radiology tech Jerrol Custer made many statements in the 80's and 90's indicating that he thought the autopsy photos and X-rays were faked, he actually told the ARRB, after having finally been shown the original X-rays, that they were indeed the ones he took on 11-22-63, and that he had been in error. He even specified that the x-rays showed an absence of bone in the parietal region and the temporal region behind the right eye, but a presence of bone in the occipital region. Now, some will say "But of course he caved, he was scared to death" but they really haven't done their homework. Custer told the ARRB a number of things which defied the official story of the assassination. He just didn't tell them what so many conspiracy theorists wanted him to say. 

And it's not as if he changed his statements for the ARRB. Custer was interviewed by Tom Wilson in 1995. As quoted in Donald Phillips' book on Wilson's research, A Deeper, Darker Truth (2009), Custer told Wilson there was a "King-sized hole" in the top right region of Kennedy's head, and that Kennedy's skull was like "somebody took a hardboiled egg and just rolled it around until it was thoroughly cracked...Part of the head would bulge out, another part would sink in. The only thing that held it together was the skin. And even that was loose."

It should come as no surprise, then, that Custer pretty much repeated this in his 1997 testimony before the ARRB. He recalled: "The head was so unstable, due to the fractures. The fractures were extremely numerous. It was like somebody took a hardboiled egg, and just rolled it in their hand. And that's exactly what the head was like...This part of the head would come out. This part of the head would be in...The only thing that held it together was the skin. And even that was loose." He then described "a gaping hole in the right parietal region" and specified that "none" of the "missing" bone was occipital bone. 

Don't believe me? When testifying before the ARRB, Custer added lines to an anatomy drawing of the rear view of the skull. The slanted lines represented the area of the skull that was unstable but extant beneath the scalp when he first viewed the body. Here it is:

 

The occipital bone was intact beneath the skin. 

To wit, when asked by Jeremy Gunn if the wound on the back of the head stretched into the occipital bone (where Gunn's assistant Doug Horne and Horne's close associate David Mantik, among others, place the wound), Custer replied "The hole doesn't" and then clarified that the occipital region from the lambdoid suture to the occipital protuberance (basically the upper half of the occipital bone which Horne and Dr. Mantik claim was missing) "was all unstable material. I mean, completely." "Unstable" isn't "missing." 

And this wasn't just a short-lived thing--a quick retreat before, and during questioning, by the government. In 1998, Custer was interviewed by William Law for his book In The Eye of History. When asked about the supposed wound on the back of the head, Custer corrected: "Here's where a lot of researchers screw up. Not the back of the head. Here's the back of the head (Custer then pointed to the area of the head in contact with the head holder in the left lateral autopsy photo). The occipital region. The defect was in the frontal-temporal region. Now, when you have the body lying like that, everybody points to it and says, 'That’s the back of the head.' No! That’s not the back of the head." He then pointed to the top of the head on the left lateral autopsy photo: "That’s the top of the head!" Law then asked Custer how, if the wound was where researchers claim it was, the head could have rested on the head holder used in the autopsy. Custer then specified: "Because the back of the head wasn’t blown out. This was still intact." (As he said this, he pointed to the lower portion of the back of the head in the left lateral autopsy photo). He continued: "It may not have been perfectly intact, there were fractures in there of course with all the destruction. If the back of the head was gone, there would be nothing there to hold the head up...The (head holder) would have been all inside."

Now this, of course, was years after the publication of Groden's book. Even so, when one watches Groden's video, JFK: The Case For Conspiracy, one can see that Custer was never really a "back of the head" witness, as he does not point out a wound on the back of Kennedy's head, as suggested by the frame used in Groden's book, but drags his hand across the entire top of his head while claiming the wound he saw stretched "From the top of the head almost to the base of the skull..." He was thereby describing the wound's appearance after the scalp was reflected, and the brain was removed. (In support of this proposition, it should be noted that he'd also claimed there was no brain in the skull that he could remember.) 

Now I know this comes as a shock to many readers. Custer is a hero to those claiming the back of Kennedy's head was missing--even though he is actually one of the strongest witnesses supporting that it was not missing. Just think of it. When preparing to take the A-P x-ray, Custer lifted Kennedy's head up to place it on the cassette holding the x-ray film. IF the back of Kennedy's head was missing, Kennedy's brain would have rested directly on this cassette. Custer would undoubtedly have noticed such a thing, and almost certainly have remembered such a thing. And yet Custer not only never mentioned such a thing, he actively disputed that such a thing occurred.

 

Pat,

If Jerrol Custer was correct in his description of the skull wound in the "frontal temporal region", then is he implying that the front/top "flap" skull wound we see on the extant Z-film is, in fact, basically accurate?

I am not taking a position here, merely asking.

19 hours ago, Andrej Stancak said:

Jim:

once  Officer Marrion Baker needs to be brought to support the lift escape theory, something is wrong. There was no second-floor lunchroom encounter between Baker and Lee Oswald, so his referral to a brown shirt which he allegedly saw on Lee Oswald does not sound credible. Bart discovered a few months ago James Hosty's original notes taken during the very first interrogation of Lee Oswald - this authentic record says that Lee went up to the second floor from the first floor (Domino room from where he saw two Afro-American employees passing by), bought Coke, returned back to have lunch and there he was when shots rang out (or when he heard the excitement due to motorcade turning to Houston street). He moved quickly toward the glass door and out and while he stood in the doorway he was photographed by Wiegman and Darnell. At no time point after he bought the Coke did he need to return to the second floor lunchroom to buy another Coke. 

Marrion Baker was told what to say in his reports and since the dark brown shirt was the one which the FBI needed to have pinned to Oswald (the fibres story explained in Pat Speer's book), Baker told he had seen Oswald wearing a brown shirt. He also said he has seen two white men while moving through the first floor, however, there were no white men there at that moment except Baker and Truly.

  

Andrej,

You and I agree that the 2nd floor lunchroom encounter between Baker/Truly and "Oswald" was phony. But if we re-read Baker's first day affidavit carefully, we see that he referred not to a shirt, but to a "brown jacket". While it is theoretically possible he mistook an untucked shirt over a white t-shirt for a jacket, it is not very likely. Men customarily wore white t-shirts underneath their shirts in the early 1960's. In my view, Baker would have recognized a shirt over a t-shirt at once - that's what men wore then!

But that is not what he wrote - he wrote "brown jacket". 

Which leads me to suspect Baker did not encounter our "Oswald" - neither in the 2nd floor lunchroom, nor on the 3rd or 4th floor near the stairs. (Whether Baker briefly encountered "Oswald" on the first floor as Baker entered the TSBD is another matter entirely. One that I shall not discuss here.)

Further, Baker's last lines in his 11/22/63 hand-written affidavit indicate that he clearly wanted to place in the record a description of the man he encountered - the suspect. Since Baker completed his affidavit within 15 feet of the then handcuffed "Oswald", and since Baker did not identify "Oswald" as the same suspect he encountered, it is reasonable to suppose that "Oswald" and the suspect Baker encountered were two different people. 

And therefore, I think in his own bumbled way, Marion Baker was initially honest, but was later coerced into narrative he related in his Warren Commission testimony. Which by September of 1964, he could no longer keep straight in his head. 

To Jim Hargrove - you are correct that later on Marvin Johnson completed an affidavit in which he claimed that Marion Baker had identified the handcuffed "Oswald" as the same man he'd encountered a few hours earlier, but nowhere in Baker's own affidavit does that vital, crucial, extremely important identification appear! Instead, we get just the opposite - Baker went out of his way to provide a physical description of his suspect (one that does not match "Oswald") but Baker DID NOT write that it was the same man just a few feet away at that very moment! The physical description was irrelevant - all Baker needed to write was "that's the guy!" 

But he did not!

Remember, at that moment "Oswald" was still wearing his (brownish) shirt over his t-shirt. And at that moment, Baker could see him as he completed his affidavit - yet Baker wrote "jacket", not "shirt"! If Baker really encountered our "Oswald", then all Baker had to do was to move his eyeballs to see what "Oswald" was wearing at that very moment!

It's a shirt, not a jacket!

http://time.com/3804560/an-end-to-conspiracy-rare-photo-of-lee-harvey-oswalds-arrest-suggests-why-hes-guilty/

12 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

I haven't seen the part about how and what time white shirt Oswald enters the TSBD

Tony,

No one knows when the sixth floor team first entered the TSBD. We know from witness testimony that at least two men were up on the sixth floor a few minutes after 12 pm, but precisely when they first got there remains conjecture. 

How did they get there?

Again, no one can say for sure - maybe they entered overnight, and then hid for several hours, only to emerge at the right time (unlikely, in my view, but possible, I guess. Professional snipers are trained to lie in wait for hours. So maybe?)

Or maybe they entered innocuously through one of the loading dock entrances and took a freight elevator up. If so, then it almost certainly would have been at lunch. Also they probably would have been accompanied by a TSBD "insider" to provide a veneer of cover to their arrival. (Roy Truly is a distinct possibility here, in my view.)

If they took a freight elevator up, it would have to have been after the "elevator race" involving the flooring crew from the sixth floor. 

2 hours ago, David Von Pein said:

Game over.  Make all the excuses you can conjure:

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2010/08/Lee Harvey Oswald's Revolver

Dave,

Not even the Warren Commission could link any bullets from that gun to Tippit's body. What they tried to link were the shells (cartridge cases) that were allegedly found at the scene with the above gun, but the problems with the cartridges are infamous: the bullets recovered from Tippit's body don't exactly match the shells. 

Some of the tested shells do match the above gun, but nobody can say for sure that the tested shells were, in fact, the same ones recovered at the Tippit scene. Not even the officers who marked the shells can say for sure. We just don't know, and the possibility of a later switch is real.

Firm conclusions (based solely on the ballistics evidence) are impossible here, thanks to the apparent "mis-handling" of the evidence.

You know this.

1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Game over.  Make all the excuses you can conjure.

Jim,

I will see your 1:15 death certificate and raise you one better :

As you undoubtedly know, the Warren Commission "investigation" was hampered by the apparent incompetence of the Dallas PD in their own inability to make and provide a transcript of all Dallas Police radio traffic for 11/22/63.

The Warren Commission published their Exhibit 705 which were the transcripts from the first and second Dallas PD submissions, plus the March 23, 1964 FBI verified submission of the "complete" logs for channels one and two.

The DPD dispatch log as published by the Warren Commission was typed up by the DPD and verified by the  FBI after listening to the entire DPD tape collection. 

On page 408, after being alerted that Tippit was shot, the following appears:

"Disp: 10-4 603 and 602, 1:10 p .m"

1:10 pm .  .  . 

Lest anyone think this is a typo, check out the time stamp notation at the bottom of page 408. This is only a total of 63 words later than the previous time stamp.

There is a second time stamp of 1:10, but this time the "0" has been partially whited out and typed over with a "9", but the original "0" is still plainly visible.

So, on the logs according to the Dallas Police themselves, and verified by the FBI , the two earliest Dallas dispatch time stamps after the shooting of Tippit read "1:10", one of which was subsequently re-typed to read "1:19"

And the Warren Commission published it!

How did it happen?

My guess is that the DPD and FBI were desperate to push the Tippit shooting back by roughly 7 or 8 minutes, so they phonied up the transcripts by '"adjusting" the times from the originals. Notice that many of the time stamps are (parenthetically noted), but the "1:10 pm" stamp is not. 

I bet someone went through and determined which time stamps needed "adjusting", put a parenthesis around those, and somehow overlooked the 1:10 time stamps. The second one was caught (and typed over), but the first one on page 408 was not.

And there it sits to this day.

The first two Dallas Police Time Stamps after the Tippit shooting were "1:10 pm"

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/pdf/WH17_CE_705.pdf

1 hour ago, Tony Krome said:

According to Brewer, the balcony was empty;

1964

Mr. BREWER - We went back up front and went in the balcony and looked around but we couldn't see anything. 

1996

Brewer - Using the screen as a backlight we could see there were no heads up there

Griggs- So the balcony was totally empty?

Brewer- Yeah

According to Dallas Police Detective Don Stringfellow of the Criminal Intelligence Section, in his memo to Captain W.P. Gannaway of the Special Services Bureau dated November 23, 1963, "Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater."

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth191000/m1/1/

According to the Dallas Police Homicide Report on J.D. Tippit, "Suspect was later arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater"

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth191000/

2 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

I also think Baker and Truly confronted a fellow from the six floor, but it couldn’t have happened on the fourth floor because that would have been right in front of Dorothy Garner, who surely would have remembered such a dramatic encounter.  Garner watched Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles run down the stairs to the first floor and then she saw Baker and Truly as they ran past her on the 4th floor and continued running up the stairway. 

If the conspirators were setting up Classic Oswald for six weeks prior to the assassination by impersonating him in compromising positions,  why stop on the Big Day?  At least some of the witnesses at 10th & Patton thought Tippit’s killer looked like Oswald, including some of the witnesses closest to the hit.  Are we to believe that was a coincidence?   Funny about all those reports of two Oswalds arrested in the Texas Theater.  Just another coincidence?

Jim, see my other post today about what we can and can't say what Dorothy Garner saw and told Martha Jo Stroud.

As for the second part above, I completely agree that an "Oswald" impersonator shot J.D. Tippit. While that suspect may not have been a dead ringer for our "Oswald", he did resemble him enough to confuse strangers who might have seen him.

For readers who may be unaware to what Jim is referring about the two arrests in the Texas Theater, there are not one, but two different official Dallas Police reports extant in which the arrest of "Oswald" took place in the balcony, not the first floor. 

We know that our "Oswald" was arrested on the first floor.

So who was this "LHO" arrested in the balcony?

The same guy who shot Tippit, that's who!

3 hours ago, Tony Krome said:

How was white shirt Oswald tracking brown shirt Oswald so as to avoid bumping into him?

Good question, Tony. I suspect that the impostor in the white tee shirt up on the sixth floor slipped into the building and up to the sixth floor shortly before he was first noticed by Arnold Rowland and others, several minutes after 12:00 pm. At that time, our "Oswald" was probably sitting in the first floor room, eating his lunch after getting a Coke from the 2nd floor lunchroom machine. (That's what he told Captain Fritz.) 

The one time during the work day when our "Oswald" could be reliably in one place was during lunch. The sixth floor was clear for the sixth floor team, including the impersonator. 

After the shots, one of the members of the sixth floor team was intercepted by Baker/Truly (somewhere) and Truly vouched for that person. Whether that suspect actually resembled "Oswald" much, well, there isn't any evidence of it from 11/22/63. The John A./Jim H. theory about the impostor encounter on the 2nd floor is possible, but it requires that the suspect use the passenger elevator only to elude detection from the 6th to the 2nd floors. Then, says this theory, the suspect would dash through the second floor offices to make his way to the back stairs, only to stop short, turn around and flee, only to be accosted by Baker/Truly. After which, says the theory, the suspect would then flee through the second floor offices (again) to be seen and mistakenly identified by an unwitting Mrs. Reid. Moments later, this suspect would then descend the front stairs to the first floor, and walk out the TSBD, thus obviating the entire reason to get off the passenger elevator on the second floor in the first place.

This is theoretically possible.

But, at this moment, I don't think that is very likely.

A far simpler solution has one suspect descend on the passenger elevator all the way to the first floor, exit the elevator (right in front of Herbert Sawyer, just as he testified) and walk out the front door. 

The other suspect went down the back stairs to the level of the third or fourth floor and was briefly accosted by Baker/Truly, before being turned loose to go down to the exits by the back loading dock. (The only obstacle to this is the assumption that because we have no summary statement from Dorothy Garner about seeing any such suspect, that therefore no such suspect could have descended this way. To which I will point out to anyone thinking along those lines the minor fact that we have no direct statement from Dorothy Garner herself at all, so we have no idea what else she might have seen or not seen! We have only a one-line summary from Martha Jo Stroud, confined solely to the timing of Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles. Nothing more!) 

Don't assume that Stroud's summary of Garner's observation about the timing - and only the timing - precludes any stairway-descending suspect from the sixth floor!

It does not!

On 4/18/2019 at 7:39 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

This encounter can also be explained if there was someone who looked like “Lee Harvey Oswald” appearing in the 6th floor window(s), wearing a white shirt, and soon trying to escape the building.  Note the white shirt in the closeup capture from Dillard’s film.

If the white-shirted Oswald’s job was to set up the patsy (the Oswald in the red or brown shirt), when the white shirted Oswald was done parading around on the 6th floor, he had to make an escape, which is the subject of this thread.  John A. thinks the white-shirted Oswald was probably starting to walk down the rear staircase from the second to the first floor when he heard someone coming up and decided to open the door immediately to his right and entered the TSBD office where he was seen by Mrs. Reid.

Mr. BELIN. How did you know the person you saw was Lee Harvey Oswald 
on the second floor?
Mrs. REID. Because it looked just like him.
Mr. BELIN. You mean the picture with the name Lee Harvey Oswald?
Mrs. REID. Oh, yes.
Mr. BELIN. But you had seen him in the building?
Mrs. REID. Other than that day, sure.
Mr. BELIN. Do you remember what clothes he had on when you saw him?
Mrs. REID. What he was wearing, he had on a white T-shirt and some kind
of wash trousers. What color I couldn’t tell you.

Soon after, this white-shirted Oswald was seen by a number of witnesses entering the Nash Rambler.  He went on to his final act of setting up the patsy: killing Officer Tippit and then moving off in the direction of the Texas Theater, where the brown-shirted Oswald was already looking for his contact.  Remember those DPD radio dispatches of the Tippit killer in a WHITE SHIRT!

We have a description on this suspect over here on Jefferson. Last seen about 300 block of East Jefferson. He's a white male, about thirty, five eight, (siren) black hair, slender, wearing white jacket, a white shirt and dark slacks. (Sirens)

If this analysis is correct, it of course means that Mrs. Reid mistook the white-shirted Oswald for the brown-shirted Oswald.  It also means that Roy Truly vouched for the white-shirted Oswald.  Isn’t it amazing that unarmed Roy Truly apparently led the way in front of gun-toting Baker in search of an assassin who might certainly be heavily armed.  What bravery!
 

I've long suspected that the encounter with the man that eventually morphed into the phony "2nd floor lunchroom" story was not with our "Oswald" at all, but with one of the suspects from the sixth floor. This is not to suggest that the Truly/Baker/Suspect encounter actually happened in the 2nd floor lunchroom, but that there really was some kind of encounter near the stairs, probably around the third or fourth floor. 

Roy Truly is so suspicious here - either he vouched for someone he knew to be a suspect, or he deliberately set the Dallas police chasing "Oswald" at a time when he had no legitimate reason to do so. There is no other possibility. Roy Truly was a witting conspirator to frame "Oswald".  Did he also "persuade" Mrs. Reid (his personal secretary) to prop up his identification of "Oswald" with her story of seeing "Oswald" wander through the second floor?

Seems very possible to me.

As for the Lovelady shirt mess, Harold Weisberg was screaming at the top of his lungs more than fifty years ago about the shirt in the Altgens picture and the shirt the FBI photographed Lovelady wearing in March of 1964. Of course it isn't the same shirt! But the FBI went even further: they asked Lovelady in 1964 to unbutton the top several buttons of his short-sleeved, wide-striped red and white shirt, so that it would approximate the neckline of the long-sleeved, patterned shirt from Altgens when they took the comparison photos! Way to "investigate" the murder of the president, FBI! Way to further obfuscate the issue!

Personally, I suspect the figure in Altgens really is Lovelady, wearing the plaid shirt later photographed in 1976. Lovelady told the HSCA that the FBI had not asked him in 1964 to be sure to wear the same shirt from 11/22/63, so he was not wearing it. That's probably true, in my opinion.

Weisberg suspected that Altgens man was "Oswald" (he told me so in 1993) and therefore the FBI was desperate to hide proof of "Oswald's" innocence. However, I suspect that "Oswald" was Prayerman (not visible in Altgens), but the FBI was mortified that there might be some  inadvertent photo disclosure, and therefore muddied the waters with the Lovelady/Altgens/shirt/doorway man issue. 

That's where I am with this.

18 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Paul,

Thank you for the article links.  This is very interesting.

Seems entirely possible to me that focusing on 1963 instead of 1957 was a clever misdirection.  It reminds me of the following:

The FBI became aware of reports that a “Lee Harvey Oswald” was active in New York City political demonstrations in early 1962, while Classic Oswald® was still in the Soviet Union. The reports indicated that the New York Oswald was staying with some other operatives at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

In order to examine this claim, the FBI sent agents to the Roosevelt Hotel--in New Orleans!  A very careful examination of records at the wrong hotel yielded (surprise!) no evidence that “Lee Harvey Oswald” stayed there.  John A’s write-up about this is here:

THE STORY OF TWO STEVEN LANDESBERGS

Jim,

Yes  I have read John's work about the Steven Landesbergs. Fascinating stuff.

On a different note:

Tangentially related to the possible Ruth Paine/"Oswald"/Antioch College connection, I found the following students at Antioch College had graduated from the Bronx School of Science between 1948 and 1964:

Dr. Carl D. Hyde (Ruth's brother) (Antioch 1948)

Dr. Howard S. Schwartz (Antioch 1964) Professor of Psychology 

Dr. Hannah Goldberg (Antioch 1955) Professor of History and Philosophy

Dr. Steven T. Hauser (Antioch 1956) Professor of Psychiatry (at Harvard)

Dr. Frances Degen Horowitz (Antioch 1954) Developmental Psychology

Dava Sobel (attended Antioch after graduating from the Bronx School of Science in 1964, but transferred to another college) World Renowned Science Writer and Author

Leslie Bingham Williams (Antioch 1956) Apparently an editor

I think it is safe to say that there definitely was (and maybe still is) a connection between the Bronx School of Science and Antioch College. Somebody was directing kids from the Bronx School of Science to Antioch College for years.

"Oswald" spent some time in the Bronx between 1952 and 1954, officially. 

For the discerning reader, there is another link between five of the above, one that may give us some insight into "Oswald's" unusual proficiency with languages (English, Russian, and apparently at least some Spanish, German and Yiddish).

You know, as I re-read Lovelady's first day affidavit, it occurred to me that Billy Lovelady was probably not the kind of guy who was particularly precise in his writing. His phrase "after it was over" seems to imply an immediacy (to us) that he may not have intended or even contemplated.

Could "after it was over" actually refer to a period of say, 20 minutes? 30 minutes? More?

For Billy Lovelady, was the "it" confined solely to the assassination itself, or did "it" also refer to the subsequent general hub-bub and milling around outside, before being allowed to re-enter the TSBD?

I am not advocating a specific position here, merely pointing out that because the Warren Commission did not pin down exactly what Billy Lovelady meant by "after it was over", it is difficult (if not impossible) for us to come to firm conclusions here.

As for Shelley's first day affidavit, he did not mention Lovelady, and nor (as far as I know) was Shelley later identified in either the Hughes film or the Martin film. Because Shelley did write that he was told to guard the elevator shortly after the shots, I think we can say he did go back into the TSBD quickly. (Exactly how quickly? I don't know.) But, he really was back inside soon unless someone can point Shelley out in either of the two films mentioned.

Lovelady's affidavit is a little more suspect - the phrase "we went back into the building and went to work." is what Lovelady originally intended and wrote. However, because the last three words (and the period ending the sentence!) were stricken out and replaced with "took some police officers up to search the building" , I can't help but wonder if someone was "helping" simple Billy Lovelady with his timing of his actions on his affidavit.

Jim's reasonable contention that Lovelady re-entered the TSBD immediately after the shots is based on the idea that Lovelady must have helped in the police search. After all, that's what Lovelady wrote on 11/22/63, right?

However, I wonder  about that though because that's not what Lovelady first wrote - his own earliest extant version of his actions, which omitted his help in the police search (plus the imagery of the Hughes and Martin films, assuming they are authentic) seems to allow for Lovelady to be outside of the TSBD for several minutes before returning.

So, to sum up, I tentatively believe that William Shelley probably did return to the TSBD quite quickly after the shots.

But Billy Lovelady? Maybe not so soon after the shots. (Many minutes later? Perhaps.)

What about Adams and Styles?

Well, they could not have seen Lovelady at the foot of the stairs when they ran down if he was still out front. And he may well have been exactly there!

What about Shelley?

Hard to say for sure one way or the other, but right now, I'm leaning toward no, they probably did not see him.

(Having said all of that, whether Shelley or Lovelady were or were not near the fuse boxes in the TSBD shortly after the shots in no way invalidates John Armstrong's hypothesis that the passenger elevator may have been used as an escape route for at least one of the sixth floor team. Personally, I find that hypothesis very intriguing.)

58 minutes ago, Denis Morissette said:

How did we go from a Mauser to a plan on erasing Oswald at the Texas Theatre???

Good question, Denis. I suspect the plan all along was to kill "Oswald" and the frame would fall into place. Since there is no evidence from 11/22/63 that the rifle recovered on the 6th floor was an Italian 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, and since Eugene Boone could not say under oath in the televised "trial" of Lee Harvey Oswald that the weapon he found was, in fact, the Mannlicher-Carcano, I think it's fair to suspect that it was not the rifle discovered up there. Was it actually a Mauser? Could have been, but I doubt we'll ever know for certain.

I am convinced that the "evidence" linking "Oswald" to the Mannlicher-Carcano was created after the fact, including the Klein's order form, the money order used to pay for the rifle (never deposited into any financial institution), the disappearance of the postal form that would have showed who (if anyone) signed to pick up the rifle sent to "Oswald's" P. O. Box, etc.

In other words, part of the frame-up of "Oswald" was after the fact. 

And that, I think, was due to the fact that "Oswald" was still very much alive, and threatening to talk.

I remain convinced the number one priority for the conspirators was to kill "Oswald" so that the "evidence" against him would never be tested in court.

Here is Dallas Sheriff's Deputy Eugene Boone, under oath, admitting that the rifle he found on the 6th floor of the TSBD was not identified as a "6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano" until after it was in the possession of the FBI. He also admitted that he could not identify the weapon in the National Archives, the infamous Mannlicher-Carcano, as the same rifle that he found!

Why not?

Because it wasn't the same rifle!

From the 11:33 mark until 12: 34, here is Eugene Boone:

3 hours ago, David Boylan said:

Paul said:

 

"Plan C" was to kill "Oswald" in the Texas Theater, and had not "Oswald" shouted at the top of his lungs "I am not resisting arrest, I am not resisting arrest" it seems certain he would have been shot right there.

Paul,

"Plan C" is interesting. John Martino stated that Oswald was to meet his contact in the Texas Theater and get flown out of the country where he would be eliminated. He kept changing seats to see if his contact provided some form of recognition. I'm speculating but I believe it was a torn-in half-dollar bill. John Armstrong noted that Oswald had in his possession when arrested 2 torn in half dollar bills. He also provided a doc showing that AMBIDDY-1, real name Manuel Artime, used this method also. Artime's case officer and AMWORLD contact officer was Henry Hecksher signer of this doc. Fonzi noted in The Last Investigation that Artime had "guilty knowledge" of the assassination. 

 

 

 

 David,

Yes I agree about the torn dollar bills. I remember talking to John A. about that years ago. We both agreed that it was classic "tradecraft" and there was no way to disguise it as anything else - so the Warren Commission made sure the record of those bills never made it into their records. "Oswald" was obviously looking for his contact at the Texas Theater, but that person was actually part of the frame (unbeknownst to "Oswald".)

An interesting question to me is whether that person, "Oswald's" contact, was the one who gave to him there in the Texas Theater, the revolver used to shoot Tippit, or was "Oswald" given a different revolver earlier, one that was later switched out for the one that fired the shots that killed Tippit?

In other words, did the Dallas PD really take the real weapon used to kill Tippit off of "Oswald" in the theater, or did they later substitute the real one for "Oswald's" revolver from the theater, and no one was supposed to be the wiser?

If you go back and read FBI ballistics man Cortlandt Cunningham's testimony about the revolver, he said that the firing pin on the one he tested was operable, and not damaged. This implies (if the Dallas PD were truthful in their original description of the revolver taken from "Oswald" in the theater) that the weapon Cunningham tested and the weapon taken from "Oswald" were not the same weapons. 

A switch. (Assuming, of course, that Cunningham told the truth. Which may be a heroic assumption!)

"Mr. EISENBERG. Now, Mr. Cunningham, to focus this line of questioning, Officer McDonald, who has reported that he was in a struggle with Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22d, while Oswald was in possession of this revolver, has stated that--I am reading now from an affidavit, from a letter from Officer McDonald to Mr. J. E. Curry, chief of police of the Dallas Police Force, dated December 3, 1963. 
He states in this letter that as he came in contact with Oswald, "I managed to get my right hand on the pistol over the suspect's hand. I could feel his hand on the trigger. I then got a secure grip on the butt of the pistol. I jerked the pistol and as it was clearing the suspect's clothing and grip, I heard the snap of the hammer, and the pistol crossed over my left cheek. I marked the pistol and six rounds at central station. The primer of one round was dented on misfire at the time of the struggle with the suspect." 
Now, in light of your examination of this weapon, and your discussion, could you comment on this statement? 
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I personally have fired this weapon numerous times, as well as Special Agents Robert Frazier and Charles Killion. At no time did we ever attempt to fire this weapon that it misfired. It operated excellently and every time we have tried to fire it, it has fired."

"Mr. EISENBERG. Now, Officer McDonald's statement that the primer of one round was dented on misfire: as far as you can tell, could this statement be confirmed? 
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. No, sir; we found nothing to indicate that this weapon's firing pin had struck the primer of any of these cartridges."

Joe said:

"I watched Ruby shoot Oswald on live TV.

Like your mother, I instantly felt that Oswald's murder by Ruby in the DPD building SHOUTED conspiracy.

And I've never read or seen anything that has changed my mind since."

Joe, I suspect that Ruby was emergency"Plan D" for the conspirators: they never worried about a trial for "Oswald" because they never intended that he would live long. I believe that Roy Milton Jones' statement about two (unidentified!) Dallas PD officers boarding the bus on Elm Street just after "Oswald" departed is evidence that "Oswald" was originally to be killed right there on the bus, as part of a "search for weapons." (Plan A.)

The fact that the Warren Commission completely failed to investigate this bizarre event is proof positive to me that they did not want to know how in the world two cops tracked the suspect to that bus within just a very few minutes of the assassination.

"Plan B" involved J.D. Tippit - he was obviously looking for someone in the final few minutes of his life, driving frantically all over Oak Cliff after waiting at the GLOCO station for the "Oswald" bus to stop after crossing the Houston Street viaduct. When it did not stop (and "Oswald" did not depart), then Tippit began driving all over the place. Was Tippit to kill "Oswald" if the bus search failed? Probably.

"Plan C" was to kill "Oswald" in the Texas Theater, and had not "Oswald" shouted at the top of his lungs "I am not resisting arrest, I am not resisting arrest" it seems certain he would have been shot right there.

"Plan D" was Ruby. From the time of "Oswald's" arrest a little before 2 pm on Friday and until he was shot at 11:17 am Sunday, it was almost 46 hours. The conspirators had to sweat it out, wondering when "Oswald" would start talking. "Oswald" did tell the Secret Service on Sunday morning that he would tell them everything he knew, once he had secured a lawyer. And then, just a few minutes later, he was shot dead by Jack Ruby.

Note, too the misdirection of this Columbus Dispatch article published on December 3,  1963 - a "high ranking police officer" "checking reports Oswald visited the campus in Yellow Springs two months ago."

Two months earlier was early October. Our man "Oswald" was (officially, anyway) on his way back from his Mexican sojourn. (Since "Oswald" never actually went to Mexico, we can't say for certain where he was.)

By focusing on 1963, any vague memories of "Oswald" on campus back in 1957 would become blurred and confused. When the official story came down that, no, "Oswald" had not been on campus (in 1963) that may well have closed the case for any few who might have remembered otherwise.

Was this a classic "limited hang-out"? 

Admit there was something to the idea that "Oswald" might have been on campus, but then destroy it by going after the wrong time frame?

I wonder.

http://enews.antiochcollege.org/2013/12/songs-stacks/did-oswald-make-recent-antioch-visit

On 4/14/2019 at 7:32 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

Considering her involvement with Harvey and Marina and her nearly limitless help locating new “evidence” against the patsy, Ruth Paine’s relationship, including her initial contact, with “LHO” should have been put under a microscope.  But exploration of this potentially much earlier contact appears to have been deliberately avoided by Jenner.  This is yet another smoking gun in the FBI/WC’s increasingly obvious murder of the truth in this case.

While I am in danger of overreaching here, it seems possible that "Oswald's" parents/guardians/caretakers knew the senior Hyde's in New York or New Jersey in the 1940's. (Dr Carl D. Hyde, a 1948 graduate of Antioch and Ruth's older brother, had returned to Yellow Springs beginning in 1954 to practice medicine. )

If our "Oswald" really did attend Antioch briefly in the 1957, and if John A's theory that Ruth Paine and "Oswald" had originally been pen pals is true, then Carl Hyde certainly would have met/known of "Oswald" and may well have been his host during that brief period. (While doubtless Carl Hyde  would never admit that, he might possibly admit that he occasionally entertained/dined with/put up students at his home. Which would be a significant step forward!)

Note that the parents of Ruth and Carl were socialists, and that Carl first heard about Antioch College while attending  the Bronx School of Science in the 1940's. That tells us there was a small but real pipeline in the 1940's between the Bronx and Antioch College - that hotbed of social justice activism and "radicals." 

Some socialist in the Bronx was steering bright young people (and persuading their parents) to Antioch College. 

And the Hyde's responded.

Did "Oswald" later, very briefly heed the call?

https://ysnews.com/news/2016/11/a-habit-of-caring-and-aging-well

3 hours ago, John Butler said:

If statements can be believed Shelley and Lovelady were in the railroad yards at the same time as Adams and Styles.  No one mentions seeing either in the railroad yards.  About the only agreement in their statements, I think I recall this, was that an officer told them to go back to the building.

John,

You are almost correct: Lovelady testified that "We went as far as the first tracks and everybody was hollering and crying and policemen started running out that way and we said we better get back into the building, so we went back into the west entrance on the back dock had that low ramp and went into the back dock back inside the building." ("we said"? or "they said"? I wonder if the Warren Commission "fixed" this bit of testimony.)

At the very least Lovelady is tacitly implying that the police in the rail yard were shooing people out of the parking lot and back into the TSBD. (Except that we know that neither Joe Marshall Smith nor Edgar L. Smith were doing that, and they were two of the first officers on the scene. So who was it?) Lovelady's testimony tends to support Victoria Adams claim she was confronted by a cop right around there who wouldn't let her go any farther.

Also note that Lovelady would seem to be implying here that he and Shelley were back inside the TSBD awfully quickly - within a minute or so of the shots. (Could they have made it in time to be near the back stairs by the time Victoria Adams and Sandra Styles descended? It doesn't seem very likely, yet it is possible, I suppose.)

Shelley did not testify about a direct confrontation with a cop, but when questioned by Ball:

Mr. BALL - What did you and Billy Lovelady do?
Mr. SHELLEY - We walked on down to the first railroad track there on the dead-end street and stood there and watched them searching cars down there in the parking lots for a little while and then we came in through our parking lot at the west end."

We know that Joe Marshall Smith testified to checking cars quickly. Did Lovelady and Shelley witness J. M. Smith at that moment? How long was "a little while"? Did "them" mean multiple cops were "searching" cars within a minute or two of the shots? That's what Joe Marshall Smith seemed to be saying in his testimony. 

Nothing in the testimony of Joe Marshall Smith, Edgar L. Smith, Billy Nolan Lovelady, or William H. Shelley precludes the possibility/probability that there were unidentified "officers" in the parking lot and up on the rail overpass in a very short time after the shots. Were these all legitimate law enforcement officers?

Since the Warren Commission did not bother to find out, I think we can guess the answer.

(Also, as a "Prayerman" aside, note that Joseph Ball quickly cut off Lovelady just as Lovelady was about to tell who was standing "right behind" him on the steps of the TSBD: 

Mr. BALL - You ate your lunch on the steps? 
Mr. LOVELADY - Yes, sir. 
Mr. BALL - Who was with you? 
Mr. LOVELADY - Bill Shelley and Sarah Stanton, and right behind me ( . . . Yes? Who, Billy? Who was standing "right behind" you? Gosh, I hope Joseph Ball doesn't interrupt the answer!)
Mr. BALL - What was that last name? (Darn! Ball did interrupt the witness and did prevent the answer! What a surprise!)
Mr. LOVELADY - Stanton.") 😉

Re-reading Victoria Adams' testimony makes me wonder which DPD "officer"  she encountered out in the parking lot after she exited the back of the TSBD and why that particular officer was not later called by the WC.

After all, such an officer could (theoretically) testify that his encounter with Miss Adams occurred say, five minutes after the shots and therefore effectively discredit the timeline for Miss Adams. (Which we know is precisely what the WC wanted.) Yet the WC took no testimony (that I am aware of, anyway) from any officer about an encounter with Adams in the lot near the tracks on the west side of the TSBD despite their strong incentive to do so.

At that moment of the Adams encounter, this "officer" apparently believed that either

1. The parking lot was a (potential) crime scene and therefore no witnesses should be tramping around in it, or

2. Witnesses just might see something they were not supposed to see (say, a vehicle leaving the lot, men with suits or walkie-talkies in the lot, or worst of all, an actual shooter with a rifle, for example) and therefore the "officer" was protecting the conspirators.

The fact that the WC did not clear this up for us does not inspire confidence in the official version.

Who was the "officer" who confronted Victoria Adams in the parking lot and why didn't the WC identify that officer and take specific testimony from him about the timing of the encounter with Adams?

DPD officer Joe Marshall Smith's encounter with an unidentified woman can't be Victoria Adams because Smith quotes the woman as saying the same thing that Gloria Calvary told Shelley and Lovelady: "they are shooting the president from the bushes". Adams, of course, had no such knowledge and wanted to find out what happened. Therefore, Adams did not confront J.M. Smith.

(By the way, who were the "two other officers" who were already up on the railroad tracks on the overpass as Joe Marshall Smith arrived into the parking lot to check around?)

If DPD officer Edgar L. Smith encountered Victoria Adams, then the timing isn't right - Smith's description of his own actions would seem to prevent him from getting to the railroad tracks before Adams. Also, he said nothing about either Victoria Adams specifically or an urgent need generally to clear the lot - instead he testified to the opposite: "well, I don't know who they was checking because there was so much milling around." 

Again, thanks to the Warren Commission's incompetence, we can't say for certain who spoke to her and when. And the possibility that she met an impostor cop, covering for the conspirators, remains open.

7 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

It's pretty limited, Paul, but see pp. 166-167 of Harvey and Lee, summarized and excerpted here.  Ruth graduated from Antioch College in 1955.  "On November 29, 1963 Sgt. Donald Swartz, of the Intelligence Unit of the Columbus, Ohio Police De­partment, received information that Oswald attended classes at Antioch College 'for a short period of time.' Sgt. Swartz said, "He was dismissed because he was unable to prove his graduation from high school.50" [H&L, 166]

Antioch College was a mighty small Yankee school for these two southerners to just happen to attend.  Add to it Ruth Paine's study of Russian and her involvement with the Young Friends Movement, through which she may have met Harvey Oswald, and the coincidences begin to sound unreasonable.  From H&L:

 After the assassination FBI Agents John R. Wineberg and William Betts interviewed
people who knew Ruth Paine when she attended summer sessions at the University of
Pennsylvania in 1957. An FBI informant, "PH T-1", advised that Ruth had studied
Russian and was a member of the Young Friends Movement. This group, located in
Philadelphia, was interested in relaxing East-West tensions. The FBI informant said
that it was through the Young Friends Movement that Ruth Paine had first got in con­
tact with Lee Harvey Oswald through pen pal activity. 52

NOTE: Warren Commission attorney Albert Jenner briefly touched on the subject of
''pen pal activity" with Ruth Paine. Jenner said, "And out of this interest and activity
arose the Russian pen pal activity and bringing of some Russian students over to America
to see and observe America?" When Ruth answered, "Yes," Jenner said, "I won't go into
that."53 Jenner, and the Warren Commission, refused to explore the possibility that Ruth
Paine's first contact with Harvey Oswald was in the 1950's .

Sgt. Swartz passed the information about Oswald's possible attendance at
Antioch College to FBI Agent Robert F. Mahler. If Lee Harvey Oswald was in Yellow
Springs, Ohio for a few weeks in the fall of 1957, he soon left and moved to New
Orleans.

Harvey's pattern of briefly attending schools without evidence of prior coursework at other schools is quite familiar by now.

Thanks, Jim. I'd forgotten that passage from "Harvey & Lee". So if ol' Ruth was hoping for some genuine contact with "Russian" students, imagine her disappointment when she discovered her pen pal was (supposedly) from New Orleans!

I don't believe our "Oswald" was born in New Orleans. But I am not sure he was an ethnic Russian, either. 

Anyway, this is the kind of thing I was looking for: evidence (not beyond a reasonable doubt, but not terrible either) that "Oswald" and Ruth Paine may have been acquainted or at least in touch before the party in 1963. 

5 hours ago, John Butler said:

Just one more question or two.  Did Rackley or Romack see anyone enter the building from the rear or north face?  Did Barnett say anything about anyone entering the building?  Did Worrell say anything about anyone entering the building? 

List of witnesses who knew something about what happened at the rear of the TSBD and on North Houston.

1.  Welcome Barnett

2. James Worrell

3.  Richard Carr

4.  Sandra Styles

5.  Vickie Adams

6.  James Romack

7.  George Rackley

The thing about George Rackley and James Romack is they did not sign their WC statements.  The bold, honest, and upright interrogators of the WC could have had them saying anything without challenge.

Billy Lovelady initially said he entered the building after his walk down into the railroad yards at the rear of the building the north face.  Bill Shelley who was with Lovelady said he reentered the building from the west face doors.  Billy Lovelady corrected his testimony after some confusion by Mr. Ball to say the same as Shelley.

 

John, 

I have found no statements from any witness who described anyone entering the back of the TSBD within the first 3 minutes (or so) of the shots. Rackley and Romack claimed that they didn't see anyone enter until about five minutes after the shooting. Of course, all time estimations are subject to second guessing. As far as I know, neither Barnett nor Worrell claimed to have seen anyone enter the back at any time after the shooting.