Sixth Floor Candidates

[J. Raymond Carroll]

[ In particular, the times that the boys on Six broke for lunch: i; she says ten till, which is the same time Shelley later testified to their having broken for lunch (or maybe five till ... but not in time to also see Lee downstairs "later" at ten till).

Duke: Good job on spotting some errors in Sylvia's work. As the Greeks say, "even Homer nods."

So if he [Givens] "implicated" Oswald at Belin's behest, he immediately qualified it and made it an innocuous rather than sinister thing.

You wouldn't call it innocuous if you were defense counsel for Lee Oswald. One of the Key conclusions in Chapter Four of the Warren Report is headed:

"Oswald's Presence on Sixth Floor Approximately 35 Minutes Before the Assassination"

As we see from page 143 of the Warren Report, this conclusion is based entirely on the new and improved recollections of Charles Givens, in response to the questioning of David Belin.

http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wcr/page143.php

If Givens's memory had not undergone the remarkable transformation uncovered by Sylvia Meagher, the evidence would have indicated that Lee Oswald went downstairs at lunchtime, right behind the others, and may have sat reading a newspaper for a while, per Givens's first account, which would be consistent with Carolyn Arnold.

n the end, we will see that neither what time or even whether Slim Givens went upstairs to retrieve his cigarettes has much actual bearing on what transpired later or determining what times things happened. (Part III is coming up fairly soon .... ph34r.gif )

Bring it on.

[Duke Lane]

So if he [Givens] "implicated" Oswald at Belin's behest, he immediately qualified it and made it an innocuous rather than sinister thing.

You wouldn't call it innocuous if you were defense counsel for Lee Oswald. One of the Key conclusions in Chapter Four of the Warren Report is headed:

"Oswald's Presence on Sixth Floor Approximately 35 Minutes Before the Assassination"

As we see from page 143 of the Warren Report, this conclusion is based entirely on the new and improved recollections of Charles Givens, in response to the questioning of David Belin. http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wcr/page143.php

If Givens's memory had not undergone the remarkable transformation uncovered by Sylvia Meagher, the evidence would have indicated that Lee Oswald went downstairs at lunchtime, right behind the others, and may have sat reading a newspaper for a while, per Givens's first account, which would be consistent with Carolyn Arnold.

Wow: 35 minutes before the assassination! That would be, let's see ... 11:55, when half of the guys who were working up there that morning said that they broke for lunch and "raced" the elevators down! By that measure, about a third of the TSBD Company employees were implicated!

If I were defense counsel, I'd probably opt toward downplaying the "revelation" than trying to prove Givens was lying.

n the end, we will see that neither what time or even whether Slim Givens went upstairs to retrieve his cigarettes has much actual bearing on what transpired later or determining what times things happened. (Part III is coming up fairly soon .... ph34r.gif )

Bring it on.

It is surprisingly difficult. The things that you have in your head - knowing who was where, doing what, etc. - and trying to explain it in a way that [a] is not confusing to most people, and covers all the bases - i.e., addresses questions and criticisms before they arise - whew!

Part III - getting just to where Bonnie Ray gets on the passenger elevator going upstairs (probably not as early as many or most people perceive) - has proven particularly so; what happens after that ... wow! If nothing else, it will end up as one of those "alternate scenarios" that LN's always seem to demand when you say something like "Oswald couldn't have shot JD Tippit" and they want to know who else could have with as much detail as the WC presented.

This one, while maybe not entirely provable, may just stand up to scrutiny!

[Duke Lane]

FYI, I'm trying to find the cite for Bill Shelley's having seen LHO on the first floor "around noon" or "just after noon" or whatever. Does anyone have that handy?

[Duke Lane]

NOTE: Once again, readers responding to this post are requested NOT to copy the entire post into your replies as the material is copyrighted and should be expected to undergo several revisions before being considered complete. Thank you for your consideration and cooperation.

A Person of Interest

The Man on the Sixth Floor

Copyright © 2007, M. Duke Lane

All Rights Reserved

Link to Part I

Link to Part II

Part III

We have seen thus far that "the boys" re-flooring the sixth floor broke for lunch a few minutes earlier than their normal time - 11:55 - and raced both elevators down to the first floor, where they washed up, and generally gathered their lunches and ate. At some point, Jack Dougherty also came down and was eating lunch at the same time as Danny Arce was, in the domino room. This suggests that Jack had re-called the freight elevator and ridden downstairs in it before Charles Givens rode the passenger elevator upstairs to retrieve his smokes.

Givens stated that he'd washed his hands - "that's all" - and had a drink of water before realizing he'd left his cigarettes upstairs. He went to the nearest elevator - the passenger elevator to the east - and rode it back upstairs. He made no mention of the position or any movements of the freight elevator. According to Slim's testimony, Lee Oswald was still on the sixth floor - apparently alone other than for Slim - showing that Jack had apparently gone downstairs by that time.

Had he not, both Jack and Lee would have been on the sixth floor together, where the stacked book cartons occupied only about half of the floor. Since most of the boys racing the elevators down weren't certain whether Lee had called out to them while they were still on the sixth floor, or if they were passing the fifth floor when he did, it's possible that Jack and Lee were on the sixth floor together even before the flooring crew left.

If Lee was on the fifth floor when the boys went down, then either Jack called the elevator back up and passed Lee as he was still on 5 or walking upstairs to 6, or else encountered Lee - if only briefly - when Lee had ascended to the sixth floor. For Jack's denial of seeing Lee at any time after 11:00 a.m., the only possible alternative is that Jack rode the elevator downstairs from 6 before Lee ascended to there from 5.

That likewise would provide the only opportunity for Jack to have been in the domino room eating lunch at the same time Danny Arce was, for Danny went outside with Junior Jarman, Hank Norman and Slim Givens shortly after Givens had once again ridden the elevator downstairs and checked the freight elevator's gates for Lee.

According to Slim's testimony, Lee was still upstairs at 11:55, approximately five minutes after the "elevator race," and he'd been about 30-40 feet north of the southeast corner - the "sniper's nest" - about 10 feet west of the east wall, among cartons that had been stacked up along the wall since two or three days before - out of their normal positions, in many cases - walking toward the elevators when Slim was getting ready to get back on the east elevator, itself about 20 feet east of the west wall, or about 70-90 feet from where Lee was walking from. [Note 1]

Slim got on the elevator and rode down. Both elevators, we know, travelled at about the same speed, with the east passenger elevator being slightly faster (it "won" the race, but had to adjust itself at its stop before its passengers could alight). According to a statement made by Billy Lovelady, who'd said that he'd actually timed the elevators at other times, it took 30 seconds for either one to travel from the seventh to the first floors, six stories. That's six seconds per floor, or about 25 seconds to get from the sixth to the first.

Even at a "standard" rate of 30 paces per minute and a stride of 30 inches, Oswald could easily have reached the west-side freight elevator doors and pushed the button by the time Slim reached the first floor (there is no indication of how fast or slow Lee was walking when or after Givens saw him, but Givens did make a point of saying he'd announced to Lee "it's near lunch time," which may have caused Lee to walk a little faster). Allowing a moment or two for the passenger elevator door to open, and another couple of seconds for Slim to have walked around the elevator shaft to check the freight elevator doors, the freight elevator could reasonably have been on its way back up to the sixth floor if the gates were closed to begin with.

The natural reaction of anyone approaching an elevator - even one they think might be in operation - is to push the button to call it. Lee Oswald would likely have done the same thing upon reaching the gates, on the chance the gates would be closed and the elevator would respond. Apparently, it did. The only other option, according to the testimonies taken by the Warren Commission, is for Jack Dougherty to have ridden the elevator up to the sixth floor (as per his own testimony) and met Oswald on the sixth floor, which he said he did not do.

Besides, by 11:55 - the usual quitting time for lunch - or 11:57 or even 12:00 noon, Jack hadn't time to eat in the domino room at the same time as Danny Arce. Thus, the most likely and most logical conclusion is that it was Lee Oswald who'd called the elevator up before Slim Givens got to it on the first floor. This conclusion is further supported by Frankie Kaiser's finding Lee's clipboard "right in front of the elevator ... right next to the stairway" ... right where someone who'd planned on coming back upstairs after lunch might reasonably leave it before getting on the elevator and retrieve it later when he went back to work.[Note 2]

At this point in time, 11:55 a.m., it was only just time for Lee Oswald to have "legally" quit for lunch, at "five minutes before time." Up to then, his job was to have been working, which it appears that he was.

DID Charles "Slim" Givens actually make the trek back upstairs in search of his cigarettes? Not everyone thinks so. At least two writers - Sylvia Meagher in her 1971 commentary about "The Curious Testimony of Mr. Givens" (The Texas Observer, August 13, 1971; online here) and Patricia Lambert in her piece about "Secret Service Report 491" (The Continuing Inquiry, Volume 2, Issues 3 and 4, October and November, 1977) - have also questioned the veracity of Slim Givens' story about having to retrieve his cigarettes, suggesting that it was contrived to incriminate Oswald by making him the last person on the sixth floor, having been "in the vicinity" of the southeast windows, at a time "close to the assassination" (we've already examined all that Givens did in the 35 minutes between his alleged sighting of Lee Oswald on the sixth floor at 11:55 and when he heard the shots at 12:30; certainly Lee could have travelled as far from the sixth floor as he is alleged to have ... only as far as the first floor).

Bonnie Ray Williams was the only one who testified that he thought - almost five months later - that Lee had called out to them while they were on the elevator on either the fifth or sixth floor to send an elevator back up, to which Givens responded "'Come on, boy,' just like that." According to Bonnie Ray, this occurred while they were on the elevators, and - if Lee was on the fifth floor when the exchange(s) occurred - already in motion. Givens himself said that he'd seen Oswald standing by the elevator on the fifth floor on their way down, so it would seem unlikely that he'd call out to him to "come on" when the elevator was already passing him!

Bonnie Ray's account sounds very similar to Givens' own testimony about his trip back upstairs and seeing Oswald. Slim testified that he "was getting ready to get on the elevator, and I say, 'Boy, are you going downstairs?'," an invitation to Lee to hurry up and join him if he was going down. It thus seems more likely that Bonnie Ray remembered this "come on, boy" bit of information from conversations he'd had with Slim after the fact; it is unlikely that he actually remembered Slim inviting Lee onto the elevators while they were already moving or as the "race" was about to begin.

It is likewise noteworthy that of all the six men who were on the sixth floor before noon - Bill Shelley, Danny Arce, Bonnie Ray Williams, Junior Jarman, Billy Lovelady, and johnny-come-lately Hank Norman, who'd been shooting the breeze with the others before lunch - only Williams's testimony described anyone talking to Oswald; the others only mentioned Oswald calling out to them, none the other way around.

Givens also recalled having ridden downstairs the first time in the passenger elevator with other men (it is impossible to say which elevator each man occupied based on the testimony of others since no two testified to the same people being on the same elevator; we can only trust their own recollections, and some were not asked). On his second trip, Slim said he was on the same elevator he'd ridden down in - the passenger elevator - and that he was alone going both up and down. These would thus seem to be separate recollections.

Perhaps most noteworthy is that Givens recalled having alit from the passenger elevator when it reached the first floor the second time, and then having walked around the elevator shaft to check that the gates on the freight elevator were closed, as he said Lee Oswald had asked him to do, but the elevator wasn't there. If the "come on, boy" exchange had happened as Williams described it, the freight elevator would have been there, discharging the other men who had raced downstairs. And since there were men on the freight elevator on the first trip down, there would have been no need for Slim to have gone around and checked the gates since the other men would have or could have closed them.

If Slim Givens concocted his "cigarette trip" out of whole cloth, he is certainly a gifted storyteller who managed not to trip himself up on any of the fine details - an amazing feat requiring much prescience to know anyone would even scrutinize those fine details! - and take such care to ensure that his story didn't contradict anyone else's. Otherwise, he told the truth ... which is what this present writer believes to be the case.

Thus, the following scenario presents itself:

• The boys "raced" both elevators downstairs at 11:50-11:55 and went to wash up and eat their lunches;
  
• Slim Givens realizes he left his smokes upstairs and takes the passenger elevator up to the sixth floor. It was the elevator he'd just ridden down on, and the one closest to the wash room. He sees Oswald near some books to the east of the elevators (this shouldn't be surprising since the west side of the floor had been cleared so new flooring could be laid), asks Lee if he's ready to come down; he's not. Lee asks him to make sure the gates on the freight elevator are closed so he can call the elevator upstairs when he's done;
  
• Slim rides the passenger elevator down; as he does so, Lee approaches the freight elevator shaft and pushes the button to call the elevator up. Surprisingly, the freight elevator begins its ascent: the gates must've been closed, or Slim was already downstairs;
  
• Slim arrives downstairs in the passenger elevator, walks around to the west elevator shaft and finds that the elevator is not there; he does not say if it is still moving, only that it's not there. He joins his friends Junior Jarman, Hank Norman and Danny Arce and goes outside;
  
• The freight elevator descends to the first floor(?); Oswald emerges for lunch(?).
  

With both elevators now on the first floor, both Bonnie Ray Williams and Jack Dougherty will enter them and ride each to the sixth floor. It will soon become apparent that Bonnie Ray did not do so right away, nor as soon as was attributed to him by the Warren Commission; Jack's timing is a question open to speculation. But before we can allow Bonnie Ray and Jack to enter the story in full, we must first examine the subsequent actions of Mr. Givens and company in light of the above.

- - - - -

NOTESNote 1: It is tempting to note that it was still more than half an hour before the shooting, and a man can cover a lot of ground in 35 minutes. Slim Givens himself went downstairs, stood by the window with his friends for a few minutes before deciding to go outside, where he ate his lunch in front of the Depository building before deciding to walk two blocks to watch the parade - another block away - with two other of his friends, and had walked almost another block after the parade had gone by before he'd heard the shots. Had the circumstances been reversed, and Lee Oswald had testified that he'd last seen Slim on the sixth floor 35 minutes before the shooting, would his testimony still have been incriminating to Givens? We shall, however, confine ourselves to the events immediately at hand ....

Note 2: Some have posed the question why it took someone "a week, week and a half" to find a clipboard on the sixth floor when the entire floor had been exhaustively seached by law enforcement personnel that very afternoon, and no mention was made of a clipboard. The answer is twofold: first inasmuch as a clipboard is not generally considered a dangerous weapon, something often carried about by an assassin to take notes during the shooting, and it was, after all, at the extreme opposite end of the floor; second, as Kaiser testified, the particular books that were stored in that corner was a "particular teacher's edition of ... Catholic 'Think and Do' books," separated from the rest. Kaiser had actually found the clipboard because he "went up there to get a teacher's edition," and it was "just laying there." The call for teacher's editions of Catholic handbooks was apparently not that great.

Edited October 27, 2007 by Duke Lane

[Duke Lane]

This has been a disjointed effort so far, inasmuch as I've had to spend several days away from what amounts to a "short story" and then try to piece what I've hand-written in the meanwhile with what had already been typed in. That is a long story. Working on transcribing Part IV, just too damned tired to even think about posting it now.

[Greg Parker]

Duke,

just letting you know I appreciate the effort, and even though I don't agree with you on key points regarding Givens and Williams, you nevertheless put your case well.

You say: If Slim Givens concocted his "cigarette trip" out of whole cloth, he is certainly a gifted storyteller who managed not to trip himself up on any of the fine details - an amazing feat requiring much prescience to know anyone would even scrutinize those fine details!

Trouble is, he did trip up on the fine detail - just as others did - and as with those others, he was not called on it.

Belin - who could only have had the "cigarette trip" in mind with this question asked: "Did you wear a jacket to work that day?" to which Givens responded: "I wore a raincoat, I believe. It was misting that morning."

And then the following exchange:

Mr. BELIN. Did you hang up your [rain]coat in that [Domino] room, too?

Mr. GIVENS. Yes, sir.

No jacket... and his coat was a raincoat - which he'd hung it up in the Domino room - as was usual practice with most of them.

Add that together with multiple failures to tell the authorities about the "cigarette trip" through previous statements and it's hard, despite your sterling effort, to put him back on the 6th floor after his descent.

Similarly, Williams failed to mention anything about going up to the 6th floor for lunch in his original statement. In fact, he clear indicated in that statement that he went straight to the 5th floor with Jarman. His belated effort to explain why he went to the 6th floor (which was that they'd all agreed to meet back there to watch the motorcade) was not corroborated by the actions of anyone else during lunch - nor by any statements or testimony they later gave. Williams was suborned to place himself on the 6th floor in order to account for the chicken bones and/or the "elderly Negro" witnesses had placed there.

Working on transcribing Part IV, just too damned tired to even think about posting it now.

I know the feeling! Have a backlog of articles only half completed for a variety of reasons.

[Duke Lane]

... You say: If Slim Givens concocted his "cigarette trip" out of whole cloth, he is certainly a gifted storyteller who managed not to trip himself up on any of the fine details - an amazing feat requiring much prescience to know anyone would even scrutinize those fine details!

Trouble is, he did trip up on the fine detail - just as others did - and as with those others, he was not called on it.

Belin - who could only have had the "cigarette trip" in mind with this question asked: "Did you wear a jacket to work that day?" to which Givens responded: "I wore a raincoat, I believe. It was misting that morning."

And then the following exchange:

Mr. BELIN.

Did you hang up your [rain]coat in that [Domino] room, too?

Mr. GIVENS.

Yes, sir

.

No jacket... and his coat was a raincoat - which he'd hung it up in the Domino room - as was usual practice with most of them.

Ah, details, ya gotta love 'em ... if only because there's no end to them!!

I do agree that the general WC practice was to accept whatever testimony implicated LHO and to ignore - or steer the witness away from - anything that might tend to exonerate him ... which, as we'll see, is the point of this entire exercise, to establish (at least) an "alternative scenario" that stands up to at least as much scrutiny as the "official scenario" ... which admittedly leaves me lots of latitude!!

Was it in this section - yes - where I point out that Givens himself walked all over the building and the downtown streets in 35 minutes, yet the WC expects us to believe that if LHO was in one place at 11:55, he therefore was in the same vicinity 35 minutes later and "couldn't" have gone anywhere else? If the situation were reversed - where Givens was to be the "patsy" - Lee might've testified that the last place he'd seen Slim was upstairs on the sixth floor.

A "human" element left out of the above - which may be incorporated as a footnote - is that boxes that had occupied the western half of the sixth floor had been moved by the flooring crew in just the past few days. Ergo, the places where Lee might've gone previously to "get some stock" (a catch-all Jack Dougherty quote!) were no longer the same, and it's very likely that he'd have had to spend a few minutes or so searching around for the books that used to be somewhere else.

Ultimately, no matter the intended purpose of Givens' (and possibly Williams') supposed perjury, the end result is that it really did nothing to make the case against Oswald, and in part exonerated him as potentially being the operator of the freight elevator that was "missing" when Givens got down to the first floor.

We will also see that this scenario sets up Bonnie Ray to have gone upstairs at least several minutes after is generally supposed. We will also see that it is likely that he was on 6 several minutes later than is generally supposed ... but that has little or nothing to do with Givens' "smoke run."

Overall, I think Slim did quite well covering all the bases if he was making all this up. One slip-up on a "jacket" (a heavy shirt?) does not necessarily perjury make. Personally, I'd think if he was going to perjure himself - and especially if it was suborned by counsel (who, we will remember, were under general orders not to challenge or "cross-examine" witnesses) - it would have been much better to have Slim eat his lunch, go looking for his cigarettes, remember they were upstairs, and then go "find" them at 12:15 or so rather than almost immediately after "the boys" had gone downstairs for lunch.

As it was, in the end, his description of LHO's whereabouts 35 minutes before the fact was meaningless, and he actually provided substantiation for LHO's means of egress from the sixth floor. Still, it's all in what you make of it, and the WC made it sinister ... and so it was. QED.

Add that together with multiple failures to tell the authorities about the "cigarette trip" through previous statements and it's hard, despite your sterling effort, to put him back on the 6th floor after his descent.

Similarly, Williams failed to mention anything about going up to the 6th floor for lunch in his original statement. In fact, he clear indicated in that statement that he went straight to the 5th floor with Jarman. His belated effort to explain why he went to the 6th floor (which was that they'd all agreed to meet back there to watch the motorcade) was not corroborated by the actions of anyone else during lunch - nor by any statements or testimony they later gave. Williams was suborned to place himself on the 6th floor in order to account for the chicken bones and/or the "elderly Negro" witnesses had placed there.

The converse side of that argument is that the "rationale" - such as it was - that Hank and Junior gave for going to the fifth floor is pretty flimsy itself ... but I'll be getting to that.

As to the chicken bones, Bill Shelley gave a statement on 11/23 that he'd actually observed "an employee other than Oswald" eating chicken over in the same area "fairly early in the morning" of that Friday (presumably one of the colored boys who, Shelley observed elsewhere, "are always eating chicken"). Just a day later, he didn't identify who the employee was ... or the agent who transcribed his statement didn't think it important enough to inquire about or write down. But we'll go there, too.

The cigarette trip might likewise have been one of those details that was "unimportant" until nobody else could put LHO upstairs after everyone had gone down ... which, actually, five or six other people testified to anyway: Givens' testimony was only that LHO was "still" up there a mere five minutes after the rest had gone downstairs, and then at a time that it was customary for the laboring employees (distinct from executive and clerical employees) to quit to wash up. Big deal.

And as for the "elderly Negro?" Bonnie Ray with sawdust in his hair? More on that later, too.

If those boys lied, it was for another reason than putting Lee in the right place more than a half-hour early and explaining away someone else's chicken bones. Just because Lee didn't bring lunch with him does not mean that he didn't buy it off the "roach coach" that came in the mornings, a lead that apparently wasn't followed up beyond maybe one or two people saying that they didn't remember him doing so; at least one other employee, as I recall, said that he did: why not Lee?

And, of course, we'll go there, too!

[Duke Lane]

... Just letting you know I appreciate the effort, and even though I don't agree with you on key points regarding Givens and Williams, you nevertheless put your case well.

You say: If Slim Givens concocted his "cigarette trip" out of whole cloth, he is certainly a gifted storyteller who managed not to trip himself up on any of the fine details - an amazing feat requiring much prescience to know anyone would even scrutinize those fine details!

Trouble is, he did trip up on the fine detail - just as others did - and as with those others, he was not called on it.

Belin - who could only have had the "cigarette trip" in mind with this question asked: "Did you wear a jacket to work that day?" to which Givens responded: "I wore a raincoat, I believe. It was misting that morning."

And then the following exchange:

Mr. BELIN. Did you hang up your [rain]coat in that [Domino] room, too?

Mr. GIVENS. Yes, sir.

No jacket... and his coat was a raincoat - which he'd hung it up in the Domino room - as was usual practice with most of them.

While I'm by no means attempting to "apologize" for these guys, I still have to say that if this is the only mistake he made - you only cited one "mistake" he'd made, if it was that - then it is an impressive "story" if it's not true. I'll also add that not only Sylvia Meagher (cited above), but also Patricia Lambert made strong arguments that these guys were full of it. Unfortunately, they were so intent on portraying the WC as suborners of perjury, they missed out on some of the "big picture" things, and by so doing, call some of their own details into question.

One thing that's overlooked in large measure, I think, is that up until the time of the shooting and its aftermath, it was just a normal day ... with the sole exception that they'd be seeing a parade featuring the President of the United States during the lunch hour. Nobody had any reason up to that point - and may well have been wrapped up in the anxiety and activity afterward - to pay attention to seemingly inconsequential details that had no bearing on anything until much later. If only they'd known what was going to happen, perhaps they'd have paid closer attention. (NOT!)

A case in point (besides where Hank left his jacket) is what I call "The Great Elevator Shuffle." There are charges of "lying" when different people place other men on different elevators as they went downstairs, but we overlook the point that, since it was a "kid's game" just to pass the time, nobody had any reason to make note of who rode down on which elevator at the time. Asked even half an hour later, they might've gotten the answers wrong.

But in reality, there is absolutely no question about which elevator who was on if we confine ourselves to the question of "where were YOU?" and not concerning ourselves with where they thought anyone else was. In fact, we'd find that, out of five men involved in the "elevator race," only one made a mistake about where anyone else was, and that mistake is confined to where only one of the other four was. One of them wasn't even asked about this, and another gave answer only in a different context.

I'd also point out that they both make a big deal out of Hank's supposedly seeing Oswald on the first floor at 11:50. If either of them had considered this more fully, they'd have known that this was impossible because at 11:50, both Hank and Lee were on the sixth floor. Hank also said in the same statement that they'd broken for lunch from the floor-laying project (which Hank was not actually a part of, but let's not split hairs here) at 11:30, which we also know not to be a fact. So was Hank "lying," or merely mistaken in his time estimates? Why lie and say "I saw Lee downstairs at 11:50 reading a newspaper, and then saw him five minutes later, upstairs, with a clipboard in his hands that seemed to have orders on it; I presumed he was working?" Makes no sense at all as a lie, but makes quite a bit as a simple error.

Since my last post on this question, I've put together about 20 pages or so of examination of the events surrounding the elevator usage both before and after the lunch hour. The first part - "The Great Elevator Shuffle" - I'll probably finish (with or without citations) in the next week or so; it deals with events before and up to noon; the second - "The Three Blind Mice and the Invisible Man" - will look at those after noon and to within a few minutes after the shooting. (I have no idea how long that's going to take.)

I think that, in it, I show fairly conclusively that Givens' "perjury" actually did more to exonerate Oswald than it did to incriminate him. The "incrimination" came only in the "spin," which was of course to place Lee alone on the sixth floor near the southeast corner while everyone else had gone downstairs. In reality, it was exactly what anyone should have expected, but we'll have to save the proof of that until I'm done with the article. The use of "spin" can be also be illustrated in the fact that Frankie Kaiser was "always making" those clipboards that the WC chose to say was "appropriated from him" by Oswald: hell, the man even stole clipboards from other employees, whaddaya mean he didn't shoot the President? Exactly the sort of behavior you'd expect from an assassin, don't you thinK?

If the WC had really wanted to suborn perjury, they could've come up with some much better and more conclusive stuff. That they didn't shows that they didn't try to.

I'll also add, by way of idiom, that a "raincoat" does not necessarily mean either a yellow slicker or a London Fog belted raincoat, but might mean any jacket that repels rain ... or, more accurately, mist. I myself have what some might call a "windbreaker" - a single layer nylon (or some material) coated jacket - for that purpose; I submit that an Eisenhower jacket - or that of the type(s) that Lee wore that day - might fit within the definition of a "raincoat" that might be worn to protect against a light "mist," hence your note of "no jacket ... and his coat was a raincoat" are not necessarily exclusive: his water-repellent jacket might well have been a "raincoat."

As to his hanging it up downstairs and then having it upstairs later, you do realize that at least two of the men on the floor-laying crew actually testified to going downstairs to use the bathroom during the morning, even tho' none of them were specifically asked if they had? Ergo that those who didn't volunteer the information may have as well?

Moreover, every morning at about 10:00 - that Friday being no exception - a catering truck came by the TSBD, from which the employees bought sandwiches and such. Wesley Frazier bought his lunch from it from time to time, as did Junior Jarman, Billy Lovelady ... and Lee Oswald. Even tho' none made particular note of a "morning break" - someone did mention an afternoon break in connection with playing dominos - it certainly appears as if they had one, and hence another opportunity for Hank to have grabbed his jacket to bring upstairs. (Lee had also told Wesley Frazier that he was going to buy his lunch that day. Guess from where.)

We must also remember that smoking inside was commonplace then (and into the '90s, actually), so the supposition of his wanting to smoke upstairs is quite reasonable.

Anything more will have to wait till I'm done with "Shuffle."

Similarly, Williams failed to mention anything about going up to the 6th floor for lunch in his original statement. In fact, he clear indicated in that statement that he went straight to the 5th floor with Jarman. His belated effort to explain why he went to the 6th floor (which was that they'd all agreed to meet back there to watch the motorcade) was not corroborated by the actions of anyone else during lunch - nor by any statements or testimony they later gave. Williams was suborned to place himself on the 6th floor in order to account for the chicken bones and/or the "elderly Negro" witnesses had placed there.

A careful reading of the testimonies of "the three blind mice" will show that Williams probably had damned good cause for lying, if he did ... but leaving that aside for now too, do you think his claim that they'd all agreed to meet back on the sixth to watch the motorcade is inconsistent or incompatible with Hank and Junior's actual fact of their going back upstairs - if only to the fifth floor - during lunch? Or that Hank's explanation that they'd gone to the fifth floor rather than to the sixth because Hank "was more familiar with" the fifth floor is somehow more credible?

I will say this for now: Hank and Junior were only on the fifth floor for less than five minutes before the shooting, and Bonnie Ray joined them after that. Consider the implications ....

One question: are there any reports as to the disposition of the Dr Pepper bottle or lunch sack found with the chicken lunch? That fingerprints were found on it and that they belonged to Bonnie Ray, or that none were, or ...?

[Duke Lane]

[dupe]

Edited November 23, 2007 by Duke Lane

[William Kelly]

I think this is a very important question.

Besides the Man in the Brown Sportscoat, witnesses saw a man with a white shirt who was holding a rifle, and when he bent down had a bald spot on the top of his head.

Oswald had on a dark shirt and doesn't have a bald spot, so who was that guy?

BK

[Antti Hynonen]

William Kelly Posted Nov 24 2007, 08:37 PM

I think this is a very important question.

Besides the Man in the Brown Sportscoat, witnesses saw a man with a white shirt who was holding a rifle, and when he bent down had a bald spot on the top of his head.

Oswald had on a dark shirt and doesn't have a bald spot, so who was that guy?

BK

Saul Sage a.k.a. Mexico City Embassy man?

[William Kelly]

Bump