Greg Doudna

Tony -- As Myers recounts it by about 1:31 pm there was news radio reporting that an officer had been killed but the name was being voluntarily withheld by news stations until the family could be notified, even though police had learned the name of the one of their own who had fallen from police radio by 1:28 pm. The broadcast of the name at 1:49 by one news station (NBC affiliate WBAP-TV in Fort Worth) broke the voluntary news stations' protocol of the others. Myers tells the stories of Tippit family members hearing of the death of J.D. over the radio, phoning Marie Tippit to tell her the news reports, Marie phoning the police to ask what was going on, being told over the phone in response that it was true her husband had been shot and was dead. I don't know that anyone knows for sure what kind of radio Brewer had but most people other than reporters do not normally have police radio. From Myers, With Malice, pp. 738-739 n. 617: "[the shooting of Officer Tippit] was very likely broadcast at about 1:31 p.m. over KBOX radio. There were five major radio stations covering the Dallas area--WFAA (670 AM), WBAP (820 AM), KRLD (1080 AM), KBOX (1480 AM), and KLIF (1190 AM). All of them routinely monitored the Dallas police radio. A review of archival recordings made by the four radio stations show that neither the shooting in Oak Cliff nor its location was broadcast until after Oswald was arrested at 1:51 p.m. [emphasis Myers']. However, the archival recordings of two of the radio stations--WFAA and KBOX--do not cover the entire assassination period. The WFAA recordings begin at 1:47 P.M.; KBOX recordings begin at 1:35 P.M. A 1:59 P.M. KBOX report from newsman Sam Pate, repeats information known to have been previously broadcast, including a report about the Tippit shooting ("Moments ago a police officer reported to have been shot down at Tenth and Patton in the Oak Cliff area. Several squads of police, approximately twenty men, ordered to the Oak Cliff area. A late word shows that the police officer was dead on arrival at Methodist Hospital.") This KBOX report on the Tippit shooting was probably broadcast earlier on KBOX shortly after 1:31 p.m. when it was reported over the Dallas police radio that Tippit was DOA at Methodist Hospital (...) KLIF archival radio recordings show that at 1:27 p.m. KLIF announcers began reporting the 'strong rumor' that the President was dead. The official announcement came eight minutes later, at 1:35 p.m."

Thanks for these comments. Yes, it was striking to me that the most obvious candidate for identification of a person in a car with license plates registered to Carl Mather seemed not to have previously been considered: Carl Mather. That Mather face does have an "Oswald-like" look to it such that one can well imagine mechanic T.F. White's reaction when he saw a photograph of Oswald on the news the night of Nov 22. Of course for some reason Oswald, a somewhat generic and nondescript young white male in appearance, prompted many claims of mistaken claims of sightings on the part of persons who had no prior knowledge of him. The immunity from prosecution detail you mention Miles, yes, that is interesting for the obvious question analogous to when someone takes the Fifth, in court one is not supposed to find that prejudicial but everyone wonders, "what are they afraid will come out about them?" I did not press that point in my paper (beyond passing reference to the immunity) though for this reason: lack of knowledge whether that was usual and a formality (a wise policy if so to encourage all witnesses called by HSCA to be uninhibited in talking)--whether that was general or specific from HSCA to Mather, and whether that was HSCA's initiative or requested by an attorney for Mather, the circumstances of that. Maybe someone knows that information but I do not.

Update Jan 9, 2024. I have removed the article by that title from my website pending rewrite.

My hope for the future, here is where the Martin Luther King activity is happening: the movement in Israel called Standing Together. I like to think JFK and RFK would have supported more room and space for voices like this if they had lived. “None of us will be equal and safe unless the other is equal and safe,” said Abed. “Both peoples are hurting. We need to stop the bloodshed, and that starts from the realization that we all have equal rights to our homeland. We deserve freedom, and no one is going anywhere.” Standing Together (founded eight years ago after another Israeli war on Gaza) and other Israeli peace and justice organizations staunchly oppose Netanyahu, his extreme-right governing coalition, and its religious nationalist mass base (including the settler bloc) and their effort to exploit the crisis to advance an undemocratic, anti-Arab, and ethnic cleansing agenda across what they consider “Greater Israel.” The broader peace movement includes Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence, Peace Now, A Land for All, the parliamentary faction Hadash led by the Communist Party of Israel, and scores of other grassroots peace-oriented groups, kibbutzim, and human rights groups. Vivian Silver, a renowned peace activist slain at the Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, was a member of Women Wage Peace and B'Tselem, a human rights group. These groups reflect one of the contending political currents in Israel. They work at the civil society level to build Jewish-Palestinian unity and forge a new majority consensus for a just peace. They advocate an end to indiscriminate killing of civilians, the siege of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank, settler expansionism and violence, winning recognition of equality and national rights of Palestinians, and security for all. Expressions of Jewish–Palestinian solidarity, despite apartheid-like segregation and polarization, occurred during and in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 atrocities carried out by Hamas. Most Palestinians in Israel, which represent 20% of the population, were horrified. Mansour Abbas, who heads the United Arab List, denounced the attacks, and Bedouin Arabs in the Negev Desert, among those killed by Hamas, attempted to rescue Israeli Jews at significant risk to themselves. This peace and democratic movement strongly believes the 100-year war against Palestinians is a failure, leaving both peoples less secure. Israel cannot destroy Hamas militarily nor ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Nor can Israeli Jews be driven out through armed struggle and terrorism. “A military solution is a very dangerous fantasy,” says Avner Wishnitzer of Combatants for Peace. Only a political solution can create a path to peace, equality, and security for all. “When people have to fight for their humanity or pick a side that cancels the humanity of the other, you need a different solution,” says Abed. “We need a new story and it’s difficult to shift. We need to stop the bloodshed and that starts from the realization that we all deserve equal rights to exist in our homeland and freedom and no one is going anywhere.” (https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/no-ones-going-anywhere-peace-forces-see-intertwined-israeli-and-palestinian-futures/)

In other words, you are not able to produce an identifiable document for the claim even though you have the book. I have the book but it does me no more good than it has you. I could not identify a specific reference either. I am not about to look through the haystack you gave me. You are the one presenting the claim. You should be the one going through that haystack, not me. Usual protocol is when making a claim to cite a specific document and quote from it. You are not doing that.

Marjan, I read the lengthy education forum thread you linked. Like others there I don't buy it. I only found one statement in the entire thread where you spelled out an actual positive argument for a Hickey shooting (the rest was assertions you had found the truth and photo analysis arguing trajectories were theoretically possible): "the strong smell of gunsmoke being the most powerful evidence I think that Hickey fired. No--wrong--the dent in the chrome trim is its most powerful evidence". The problem there is neither of those two items establish Hickey fired since it assumes there are no other reasonable explanations for either of those phenomena, which is not the case. On the other hand, nowhere in the lengthy thread did I see a satisfactory rebuttal to what I cited as two deal-killers to the theory. I don't find satisfactory your only explanation I could find for why no one in the followup car around Hickey told of hearing a burst of automatic weapon fire from Hickey ("I reckon that everybody knew--I mean--Jacki, Bobby, LBJ, Hoover, etc. That's the real reason it has been successfully hidden"). The other, the notion that a random accidental burst from Hickey would only hit the target of the assassination attempt, JFK, exactly where needed to blow his head off, and hit no other person or miss, as opposed to the alternative that that JFK head shot hit JFK where it did because someone aimed it there, I did not see addressed apart from repeated circular assertions that it happened therefore it happened. So thanks, curiosity satisfied concerning what you had, not further curious.

Thanks Gerry. Ewell's detail that the knife was "open bladed" is interesting, not a normal way to carry a knife. Was Oswald fearful of being double-crossed by someone sitting next to him? An open-bladed knife if true should have been part of the investigation as a material fact. The reason it wasn't is explained here as an officer diverting something into private hands. Ewell knew something but Ewell wasn't going to burn a source or a fellow reporter or whatever happened.

Thanks Marjan, will do.

Thanks for that Gerry. I never heard of this before, but its obviously some version of the same story and seems to confirm the find. Sure would like to find that documentary and know that retired DPD officer's name and hear that story; I'll keep my eyes out for it, appreciated.

Speaking of Hugh Aynesworth, there was a report by a schoolkid who with his schoolkid friend was seated in the main level seating of the Texas Theatre on Nov 22, 1963, who witnessed Oswald's arrest, who told of seeing police officers searching the seating area in the area where Oswald had been sitting and then taken away under arrest, and finding a knife (pocket knife presumably) on the floor. The one officer picked it up and (according to the schoolkid witness) said to the other, "must be his". However that item was never registered or reported as found property. Somewhere I read something written by Hugh Aynesworth in which as I recall he identified himself as having come into possession of a knife found at the Texas Theatre, or an Oswald knife, something like that, anyway when I read it I identified it as sounding like that unexplained police pocket knife find witnessed by the schoolkid. However I have searched through all I have from Aynesworth--books, articles--and have been unable to locate that reference. Does anyone else recognize this reference? I can only think it must be from some obscure newspaper article or something but I cannot find it. I do not see that any larger issue as to the case itself hinge on this (whether Oswald carried a pocket knife or not) but it is an item of trivia I would dearly love to nail down if possible.

Marjan, on the Hickey shooting idea, may I ask why you think so? I have recently looked at the McLaren and Menninger books which make that case and can't see it. The 6.0 mm measurement for an entrance bullet wound I assume is too close to distinguish from human measurement error and coincidence, and that's about it for the positive case apart from an argument for plausibility. However against plausibility is nobody in the followup car told of hearing Hickey firing (and they surely would have heard it), and its a bit extreme to assume a successful silencing and coverup of all the witnesses in that followup car without someone leaking. And even more, the hit to JFK's head is just obviously from someone intending to hit him, not an accident (too freak perfect of a hit). And Hickey for sure was not intentionally shooting JFK which excludes him as the source on that grounds (extreme improbability). So, no strong positive evidence, and two extreme improbabilities. Please say where you differ? Also, can you say which in-print or off-the-shelf available published argument is in your opinion the best, in making the Hickey case? Incidentally, I think the witnesses who saw and smelled gunsmoke and heard a shot near the limousine probably reflect a gunman firing a shot from the storm drain, perhaps as source of the throat shot entering from the front in an upward trajectory and exiting at the lower back of JFK's head, at Z327, in keeping with the original bullet track of the autopsists (according to Sibert and O'Neill), not a Hickey shooting. So I do not see those arguments as calling for a Hickey shot or shots either. But never mind me, I'm interested in your argument if you can spell it out in a nutshell (and optionally give a reference to read more). Thanks.

Could you cite the document source for this claim that Jean-Pierre Laffite recruited QJ/WIN to assassinate Lumumba? Not a secondary book but the source the secondary book cites? That's what is needed, the documentation for the claim.

Speaking of genocide closer to home ... in 1982 I lived and worked in Eureka, California for about six months. It was a coincidence that during those few months I was there, news broke that a coup in Guatemala had occurred and a new general, Rios Montt, had taken power who was an evangelical Christian and member of a sectarian church headquartered none other than in Eureka, California, called Gospel Outreach. I had never heard of it before or the church's Lighthouse Ranch on some acreage in Humboldt County outside Eureka. Guatemala 1980s was the location of perhaps the worst and most horrible massacres of native peoples backed by US supported militaries perhaps in all of Latin American, in sheer numbers, exceeding the horrors of the more well-publicized El Salvador. I remember those days. In my linguistics undergraduate major at the University of Oregon in the 1980s there were in that department fieldworkers who worked in Central America studying indigenous languages and told firsthand some of the stories. What was going on in Guatemala was determined to be genocide by international definitions, and that was not long ago, this was western-hemisphere US, us, in our time (well, forty years ago). General Montt, a devout Christian, came to power in that coup in the midst of the ongoing carnage in Guatemala. I saw Pat Robertson on TV on his national television program, the "700 Club", ecstatic that a fellow evangelical Christian was now in power in Guatemala. How God was moving in world affairs. Etc and etc. General Montt promised to restore order to Guatemala. As I recall he announced, everyone will obey the law, and any who do not will be shot. The reality was the genocidal actions carried out by the army continued and escalated under his time in power, and General Montt spent his old age in court facing criminal prosecution for crimes against humanity. All of this holocaust was US supported. According to the Holocaust Museum Houston, during the full duration of what was considered a Maya holocaust which reached its peak intensity under General Montt, a reported 200,000 Maya Indians were massacred or disappeared and 646 Maya villages destroyed (https://hmh.org/library/research/genocide-in-guatemala-guide/). From a History Today article: While the genocidal killings have ended and dictator Efrain Rios Mott is dead, the United States has not atoned for its heinous actions in supporting the killings. The CIA is widely known to have understood its role in funding genocidal persecution whether intentionally or unintentionally. Regardless of the overarching goals of United States’ Cold War foreign policy in containing the spread of socialism throughout the world, the United States still bears responsibility in perpetuating genocide against the Mayan people of Guatemala. In combatting the denial of the Guatemalan genocide, citizens of both Guatemala and the United States must continue to stand up for the truth in remembering the atrocities of the past committed by both governments. By telling the stories of the Guatemalan Genocide and condemning the crimes against humanity perpetuated upon the Mayan people of Guatemala, further acts of genocide may be prevented in the battle against the violence of the state. (http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2021/7/4/the-cold-war-era-guatemalan-genocide-and-americas-role-in-it) Do most Americans know this history today? No. Just like Indonesia. The amnesia. So recent. No presidents, no CIA decision-makers, get held to account, criminally prosecuted, over things like this. It just goes on and on, again and again. It is hard to imagine JFK/RFK, not perfect, but that they would have gone along with that.

The problem with the General Cappucci comment is how do you know whether he is speaking from suspicion--everybody on earth has opinions on the JFK assassination--or knowledge. It is not evidence unless Cappucci claimed and specified he was speaking from knowledge not suspicion. I ordered Sean Fetter's two volumes based on Robert Morrow's opening description, and Sean Fetter comes across well enough in the interview. He claims he has an original correct solution to the JFK assassination from 40 years of research in a magnum opus that in part deals with something happening to the body but which differs from Lifton whom he says got it wrong. From the interview, it seems Fetter is not arguing for a vast micromanaged plot in advance in explanation of the things which happened but suggests it was a plot which started going wrong immediately in real time and, like a football play where the quarterback is scrambling and nothing is working right, they were scrambling as things were not happening as they were supposed to. Not that the plot did not succeed in killing Kennedy, but the plotters also intended to get away with it and not be identified as the perpetrators, not so easily accomplished when things started falling apart. Fetter doesn't give the evidence he claims he has for this in the interview, says that is in the two volumes, but that seems to be the gist of what he says he argues. He says he obtained original interviews with Air Force personnel on Air Force One and Air Force Two that day which he claims helped crack the case of what happened. In his interview he tells of his starting point long ago: the Fred Whitcomb and Perry Adams 1974 privately circulated book manuscript which received little publicity since it was never published at the time but which is recognized today as having pioneered in original research (e.g. on the witness testimonies who saw and smelled gunsmoke near the limousine and grassy knoll area with gusts of wind from the southwest blowing northeast [therefore not from the 6th floor TSBD], to name just one). I was in the fourth grade in Portage Path Elementary School in Akron, Ohio on Nov 22, 1963 when a child walked into our teacher's classroom and handed a note and our teacher read it to us and then started tearing up. Somewhere in 1976 or the spring of 1977 I was living and working in Santa Barbara, California and by total accident read a feature article in a local newspaper about someone local associated with the U. of California, Santa Barbara, who had coauthored a book manuscript on the JFK assassination, named Perry Adams. The article was so intriguing I looked up Perry Adams in the phone book, called him and asked if it would be possible for me to borrow the manuscript to read. My spirit fell when he said he had no copy he could lend out. But then quickly lifted again when he invited me, if I wanted, to come over to his place and I could read it in his living room. He just was not willing to let his copy out of his sight. So I did, read the manuscript, loose typed pages right in his living room, I think it may have been a Saturday afternoon while his wife took off for some errands and he did other things while I read for a couple of hours, then talked and answered my questions when I was finished reading. He told me of their having sent the mss to every member of Congress and some of the reactions of interest they had received. Perry Adams struck me favorably in person, as an intelligent, left-investigative-journalist or historian type. Adams' basic thesis was the Secret Service under the direction of Johnson and Connally had offed JFK while the government was out of the country in a plane flying over Japan, a coup. (I see here in the archived papers of Perry Adams who passed away in 1997 reference to only a single typescript manuscript draft--maybe that was the one I read in his living room that day: https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt2w1017hx/entire_text/.) Although I did not return until recent years to study the JFK assassination, that early encounter strikes a chord of curiosity of where forty years of research took Sean Fetter from that starting point. Its a chunk of money to set out for something unknown, but I'll report back what I think after the books arrive for the benefit of others less inclined than me to impulse buying.

I have been tempted by that line of conjecture too so am not unsympathetic to your efforts, but here is my problem with that, actually four problems: the first is skepticism that anyone rational would agree to be falsely blamed for an extended period of life if not forever for an assassination attempt on a popular president one supports. The second is skepticism that anyone in their right mind would believe anyone who tried to recruit one into that kind of operation, without suspecting they would become a dead patsy or double-crossed. The third is skepticism that Oswald would willingly give up seeing his children again, probably the most precious things in his life. And the fourth is lack of positive evidence. The massive number of Dealey Plaza earwitnesses who heard the final two shots close together, and the number of witnesses who both saw and even more importantly smelled gunsmoke at street level in the Grassy Knoll area, with wind direction gusting northeast, are standalone evidences that the JFK assassination was not done entirely from the 6th floor of the TSBD, i.e. something other than or more than Oswald's rifle alone accounting for the shots. But if it was a multiple-shooter situation then it is a professional shooting situation and professionals won't be relying on a Mannlicher-Carcano with only four bullets in a clip that holds six, and a crappy scope meant for use with a .22. But the rifle is easily traceable to the "communist", Oswald, is a setup. And yet Oswald was involved in something, was stalling and lying under interrogation as if maintaining a cover just long enough until intervention could spring him free, but killed before it could be learned what that was about. Oswald, with no rifle ammunition, no cleaning supplies, and no practice shooting in the runup to the assassination, had a gunsmith fix the damaged screw holes of the scope mount, the scope reinstalled and the rifle sighted-in on Nov 11, with apparently no indication that was for his own use to shoot. I think my work has established that date and event as a fact, only the interpretation or what to make of it is at issue (https://www.scrollery.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Irving-Sport-Shop-109-pdf.pdf). It looks like he was preparing the rifle for a sale to someone else rather than for his own use. The logistics of his lack of a car and not returning to Irving again until Nov 21 suggest such a sale or conveyance of the repaired rifle could have either occurred that same day, Nov 11, or he could have stashed the repaired and newly-sighted-in rifle in a storage locker at the bus station for someone else to pick up later. If Oswald is not the lone shooter (established from the two points cited above alone), that suggests Oswald may not have been any shooter, even though the rifle on the 6th floor is traced to him, as a setup--the setup not requiring framing Oswald as the shooter but Oswald as the owner of the rifle involved in what would be presented as a communist conspiracy. The logistics would be worked out in a fluid situation leading up to Nov 22. Not too hard to get people in and out of the TSBD as far as that detail goes. What did Oswald know? What and who was he involved with? I believe Oswald was intending to meet someone in the Texas Theatre which is why he went there, but others knew he was there and sought to kill him there.

This is not a negotiation. There is no linkage between Clemons and Tatum. Either zero, one, or both were witnesses, with neither affecting the other. It is OK with me whatever you judge, I and others can agree or disagree, state our reasons, etc. You say above you have not been convinced Clemons was a Tenth and Patton witness, but then in the same breath you express a conditional, seeming to say (I think) that you will accept her as a Tenth and Patton witness if (the conditional) I accept that Tatum was a Tenth and Patton witness, and ask me if that is "fair". What I think of Tatum--or anyone else, or you on Tatum--should have no logical bearing on your judgment on Clemons. I will tell you straight where I stand: yes Clemons was a witness, and yes Tatum was a witness. I think they both were there, both saw the gunman. We can discuss whether 100 percent of what each of these witnesses--as all the others too--reported was accurate or mistaken in specifics, how to interpret what they said, etc. That is a distinct issue from were they there and did they see. But Tatum has nothing to do with the judgment on Clemons, nothing at all. It is exasperating sometimes trying to get a straight answer from you. Please clarify. You know she was working at a house only two or three houses or however many it was removed from the Tenth and Patton intersection. Do you doubt she worked at or was at that house that day? You know she said she came out to the sidewalk upon hearing the shots. You know from the film interview of her that she says she saw the gunman, in agreement with what other witnesses saw and told. You know that Myers in 2020 reported a Tenth and Patton girl present at the time who told Myers how as a girl she saw a black woman--clearly Acquilla Clemons--at that very Tenth and Patton corner, "bawling" and wringing her hands at what had just happened to Tippit moments after the fact--exactly the position in which Acquilla Clemons was positioned from her testimony to have seen what she said she saw and told. There is no sign Acquilla Clemons materially changed her story over time. There is no sign Acquilla Clemons' story was of late first appearance or origin. There is no sign Acquilla Clemons sought publicity (just the opposite). There is no known sign that Acquilla Clemons had a history of prevarication or dishonesty, unless you have knowledge of something related to her character that has not been made public. Can you say why you have "never been totally convinced that Clemons saw the killer as he was making his escape"?

Is it possible Oswald wore a white shirt, tie, and black pants when he went to the Adlai Stevenson event on Thu Oct 24? And that was what that dry cleaning (I assume it was dry cleaning) was about? The witness's "approximately one month ago, exact date he could not recall" before the Dec 5, 1963 date of that FBI interview? Or Fri Oct 25 when Oswald went with Michael Paine to the ACLU meeting? I believe Oswald's clothing on Nov 22 is known and is not consistent with a white shirt, tie, and black pants, on any of those three counts.

"Martin's recorded interview with Clemons proved that Lane was telling porky pies, regarding a mysterious 2nd female witness to the Tippit murder [other than Helen Markham]." That is not the issue Bill and you know it. The issue is the same as for your other witnesses, that she saw the gunman leaving the scene. The way you cite this, an average reader will read you as saying it was a lie that Acquilla Clemons was a witness of the gunman, although in your hair-splitting meaning of "witness to the Tippit murder" you will deny that you said or meant "witness of the gunman of the Tippit murder". "Because Smith and Benavides testified to the Warren Commission and Clemons refused/was reluctant, it is faulty to place Clemons in the same category of witnesses as Smith, Benavides, Burt, Markham, B. Davis, V. Davis, Scoggins, Guinyard, Callaway, Reynolds, Patterson, Russell and Lewis." Bill, where do you get Clemons "refused/was reluctant" to testify to the Warren Commission?? She was never asked!! The Warren Commission was never informed or had knowledge of her existence as a witness. And who cares whether or not she was reluctant. What does that have to do with it. What does her testimony or lack of such to the Warren Commission have to do with whether she is a witness for historians or investigators today? Let me repeat the question as to the simple starting fact: do you agree that she was a witness? Simple question.

I don’t understand Jimmy Burt’s testimony, there are contradictions in his tellings. I agree his claim of witnessing the killer’s hands touching the top of the right front passenger door where the fingerprints were lifted 20 minutes later, as you note from 300 feet away (if his location at that moment was as he said), is not stronger than supporting plausibility that the killer touched (since he said he saw the killer there).

Wait a minute Bill. You have William Smith on your list, he was after the fact. You have Benavides on your list. He was after the fact. It is true you did not include Tatum. But back to Benavides. Why Benavides but not Acquilla Clemons? Acquilla Clemons said she was visited early on by an officer bearing a sidearm, which sounds like some law enforcement talked to her, knew she was a witness but made a decision not to use her. I hope that decision at the time was not because her witness description was not deemed useful to what was wanted, or because she was deemed less important because she was black. I suspect both of those were factors. There is no question she was a witness, and her story is firsthand on videotape. For a late-breaking additional confirmation of Acquilla Clemons as a witness, Myers in 2020 of Mary Little who told of Acquilla Clemons at 10th and Patton that day, https://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/2020/11/emory-austin-his-daughter-mary-and.htm. Perhaps your unstated criterion was witnesses who became publicly identified no later than the time of the Warren Commission. But going by actual witnesses, not simply by an arbitrary dividing line based on who was known to the Warren Commission, is there any reason for excluding Acquilla Clemons as a witness in studying the Tippit case? Incidentally Acquilla Clemons' story is not materially different than what the other witnesses saw and told. She echoes what the other witnesses told, she saw what the others saw. But that is beside the point from establishing, do you agree, that she was a witness.

Michael K., I see in the earlier Bill Drenas article Kinsley is quoted earlier, "He was heading for the library". That plus Kinsley saying the man was on the median divider on Jefferson, and the Myers' quote of Kinsley saying the ambulance turned "onto Jefferson heading east", OK, I concede you are right the man was heading east, in the direction of the library, and it seems Kinsley's route for the ambulance was correct and Butler's incorrect. The gunman ended up passing Brewer's store and into the balcony of the Texas Theatre ca. 1:35 pm which is about 15 minutes later. There are some minutes unexplained time gap in that; it doesn't take 15 minutes for the gunman to get there. Hypothetically it could be possible for the gunman to have been seen by Kinsley going east on Jefferson, doubling back in the same direction he originally came from, then somehow out of the ambulance's sight he doubled back again to make his way heading west again to the Texas Theatre. But it is difficult to imagine why and it makes no sense. If Warren Reynolds is excluded as a mismatch to the man because of Kinsley's thinking the man looked like Oswald, maybe it was Patterson (do you know of a photo of Patterson?) or someone else.

(See update at end.) Re the man in the street almost run over by the ambulance of Dudley Funeral Home at ca 1:18 pm. From the Dudley Funeral Home, start of the ambulance, at the SE corner of Jefferson and Crawford, the route of the ambulance assume as told by Butler, the driver, in 1981: right turn out of the funeral home on to Crawford heading north, north through Jefferson remaining on Crawford to Tenth, right (east) on Tenth 1.3 blocks to the fallen Tippit at the crime scene on Tenth. (Interview quotations here are from Myers, With Malice, 2013 edition, pp 155-156 and associated endnotes.) Kinsley’s conflicting route description of the ambulance told to Myers in 1986 perhaps is mistaken (as opposed to vice versa). Either because of real error of Kinsley, or error in reporting or misunderstanding of Kinsley. Both Butler (“pulled out from behind the funeral home onto Crawford”) and Kinsley (“We pulled out the side entrance onto Crawford”) agree on the right turn (north) on to Crawford as the start of the ambulance’s direction. Kinsley (as reported) says they next turned right (east) on to Jefferson. But driver Butler said they went straight through on Crawford and turned right on Tenth (not right on Jefferson). One has to pick one. Butler’s route may have been the quicker of the two. A single right turn, versus three turns one being a left turn, to get to the same destination after leaving the Dudley Funeral Home would be more efficient and likely quicker from an experienced driver’s instinctive preference, in this ambulance situation where seconds mattered. Then they encounter the man walking hurriedly in front of the ambulance but not running, almost getting run over, Kinsley yells at him, the man is unfazed, “never looked back…just kept going”, per Kinsley. We know the killer went west to go past Brewer’s shoe store on Jefferson farther west and then still farther west into the balcony of the Texas Theatre. So when Myers reports Kinsley saying that man headed “east” on Jefferson is that a mistake for “west”? I have seen mistakes in transcription of “east”/“west” in archaeological site descriptions. The westward direction of the man might be supported by the description that the man passed in front of the ambulance in the street. If he was actually going east then he would not be crossing Crawford from the Ballew’s Texaco area in front of the ambulance heading north on Crawford. Kinsley says after he shouted at the man, the man did not look back but just kept going. “We had the lights and siren on” (Kinsley) though they were not yet moving fast says Kinsley. As they start to pick up speed going through the Jefferson intersection north on Crawford, they see this man crossing the street in front of them (this would be crossing from the east to the west side) and almost have to hit the brakes to avoid running him over. The man ignores Kinsley’s shouting at him and Kinsley sees the back of the man’s head because he says the man never looked back. This could fit a picture of a man crossing Crawford westward in front of them. Therefore the man almost run over by the ambulance may have been the gunman heading west. If it really was someone heading east on Jefferson—if the Kinsley route was correct and Butler’s the one in error—then it would be someone other than the gunman. Either way, this was not a sighting of the gunman heading east—or if anyone thought it was it would have been a mistaken report. The gunman did not head east on Jefferson, but headed west from around Ballew’s Texaco going to the Texas Theatre. Update: the suggestion outlined above is probably incorrect. Kinsley's route for the ambulance may be correct after all and Butler's incorrect.

In the article posted by Robert M. is this: "According to Kennedy-family confidante Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Bobby Kennedy “found [Bill] Harvey and his meaningless melodrama detestable” while Harvey “hated Kennedy’s guts with a purple passion.” Could someone with access or knowledgeable of Schlesinger's writings verify Schlesinger wrote that? Historian Schlesinger wrote those words? Let me get this straight -- the CIA man in charge of running a government program dedicated to carrying out officially-approved extrajudicial assassinations "hated Kennedy's guts with a purple passion"? Is that really the best kind of person to put in charge of secret assassinations? Maybe CIA's Human Resources department might have recommended finding someone, shall we say, less negatively opinionated about the boss to assign to a position with that kind of sensitive operational capability? Has a US commander-in-chief of the armed forces ever had a fragging issue with subordinates? (My father, WW2 Army Air Force combat veteran New Guinea, told me when he was in basic training one officer had a particular reputation for being a mean dude. One night some enlisted men grabbed him, held him over the side of a ship and threatened to drop him to his death if he did not improve his ways. He promised he would, they did not kill him, and he was less mean from then on.)

Minor point Bill, but why isn't Acquila Clemons in your database of "thirteen REAL witnesses who saw Tippit's killer ... run from the scene holding a gun"? Oversight? She would make fourteen and add one more to your subset of "eyewitnesses who [did] not say if the man was Lee Oswald or not". She described seeing the gunman (from her 1966 interview on YouTube): "reloading his gun" "kind of chunky" "kind of heavy" "not a very big man" "kind of a short guy" "he unloaded and reloaded" "he was short and kind of heavy" But she did not say whether or not she thought that man was the medium-height, thin, 5'9", 140 lb Oswald. (Craford was ca. 5'7-1/2" which qualifies as "short" and weighed ca. 150-160 which would be medium weight for his height, not skinny. The light jacket worn by the gunman if it was loose or billowing might assist in her having seen him as "chunky" for his size.) Acquila Clemons was definitely a "REAL" witness, and there is no justification not to consider her so and list her among the others in your database.

Unless I missed something, I didn’t see any evidence Jerrie Cobb had a disease that scarred her clavicle, or the same kind of disease as June Cobb.