Kaiser's Clipboard

[Duke Lane]

I'll begin this thread by re-posting each of the messages that first appeared in the thread "Defend the Warren Commission Report Findings? The 45 Questions (Question #37)."

Defend the Warren Commission Report Findings? The 45 questions

Question #37

The significance of Givens' observation that Oswald was carrying his clipboard became apparent on December 2, 1963, when an employee, Frankie Kaiser, found a clipboard hidden by book cartons in the northwest corner of the sixth floor at the west wall a few feet from where the rifle had been found.

Mr. KAISER. I was over there looking for the Catholic edition--teacher's edition.

Mr. BALL. Where did you see the clipboard?

Mr. KAISER. It was Just laying there in the plain open--and just the plain open boxes-you see, we've got a pretty good space back there and I just noticed it laying over there....

BALL. How long did you stay up on the sixth floor? After you found the location

of the three cartridges?

Mr. MOONEY. Well, I stayed up there not over 15 or 20 minutes longer--after Captain Will Fritz and his officers came over there, Captain Fritz picked up the cartridges, began to examine them, of course I left that particular area. By that time there was a number of officers up there. The floor was covered with officers. And we were searching, trying to find the weapon at that time....

The WC simply lied, when trying to disguise the fact that the many policemen that swamped the sixth floor (See Mooney's statement) couldn't find a clipboard that Kaiser clearly states was in plain sight, and not hidden at all. The clipboard was *NOT* hidden - and an entire working week went by before it was "discovered". Can anyone defend this curious lie of the Warren Commission?

Let's begin by quoting the passage from the Report in full (note italics):

The significance of Givens' observation that Oswald was carrying his clipboard became apparent on December 2, 1963, when an employee, Frankie Kaiser, found a clipboard hidden by book cartons in the northwest corner of the sixth floor at the west wall a few feet from where the rifle had been found. This clipboard had been made by Kaiser and had his name on it. Kaiser identified it as the clipboard which Oswald had appropriated from him when Oswald came to work at the Depository. Three invoices on this clipboard, each dated November 22, were for Scott-Foresman books, located on the first and sixth floors. Oswald had not filled any of the three orders.

The "significance" attributed to the clipboard by the WC is not very clear, but it appears as if it intended the clipboard to somehow "incriminate" Oswald: it was "a few feet from where the rifle had been found," "made by Kaiser and had his name on it," but was "appropriated" by Oswald, and had orders on that Oswald "had not filled," as if that was somehow suspicious. The implications seem to be that Lee was a definite low-life, stealing clipboards from his co-workers, and being either too lazy and/or preoccupied to fill orders ... and, oh, it was right near where he'd supposedly left the rifle after shooting Kennedy, 35 minutes after he'd last had the clipboard.

Big deal. If Lee had been seen at 12:25 with the clipboard and the rifle was found nearby, then perhaps that might've proven significant, but laying down the clipboard 35 minutes earlier hardly ties the two items together. Kaiser also downplayed the "thievery," noting elsewhere in his testimony (or maybe it was Roy Truly?) that he was "always making clipboards," and it was no big deal that Oswald had one with his name on it. He didn't say that he'd suddenly found his prize clipboard missing and was forced to make another, realizing later that dirty rotten Lee had usurped it from him.

As to the WC's "lie" about the clipboard, it really did no more than bolster Slim Givens' story about seeing Lee upstairs with it in hand. As will be seen in my forthcoming essay "The Elevator Shuffle," if Givens' story is true, then other events will show that it made perfect sense for Lee to have left the clipboard there.

The challenge of this question, however, is a non-sequitur: "The WC simply lied, when trying to disguise the fact that the many policemen that swamped the sixth floor couldn't find a clipboard that Kaiser clearly states was in plain sight, and not hidden at all. The clipboard was *NOT* hidden - and an entire working week went by before it was 'discovered.'" What's this "couldn't" stuff??

Luke Mooney said, "the floor was covered with officers. And we were searching, trying to find the weapon at that time." I think it's fair to say - and I doubt anyone reading this will argue the point - that most of the policemen swarming over the sixth floor were confident that Jack Kennedy hadn't been killed by a clipboard. Likewise, I think it's also fair to say that most policemen, then or now, do not consider a clipboard to be a "weapon" (Homeland Security might, but cops don't!).

Thus the fact that they didn't take particular note of nor take into evidence one homemade clipboard is hardly surprising. They also did not apparently have the name of any person they were looking for at the time, but even if they were looking for anything to do with one missing Lee Oswald, it had Kaiser's name on it, not Oswald's. That they did not do so has absolutely nothing to do with whether it was there when they searched the floor that Friday, any more so than did the fact that they didn't confiscate any of the fire extinguishers, either.

Actually, it was only Givens' testimony of seeing Oswald with the clipboard that even allowed anyone to suggest that Lee had had it: Roy Truly said that there was no way for them to determine who had an order until after the person had filled it and brought the books downstairs, when they would initial it.

Finally, the fact that it was not discovered for a week is likewise not surprising since testimony revealed that the teacher's edition that was stored beside where the clipboard was found, was not among the most popular titles to be filling orders for, especially after the start of the school year, since most if not all teachers already had their copy of that edition and probably didn't lose very many of them.

Perhaps if Rolling Readers were stored there, it might've been found the very next day. In either case, there is no significance whatsoever to the fact that police didn't notice or confiscate it: it was simply not something one might associate with the commission of a crime.

Edited May 24, 2008 by Duke Lane

[Duke Lane]

1/ The cops did find a clipboard.

2/ Kaiser initially said the clipboard he later handed over to the FBI was one he had given to Oswald.

3/ Kaiser allegedly found clipboard on same day Givens makes first ever mention of seeing Oswald on 6th floor - Dec 2. FBI agent Pinkston just happens to be at the TSBD on other unspecified business when Kaiser makes the discovery.

4/ Despite above, FBI does not take possession of the clipboard until Mar 10, 1964.

The Clipboard Chronology

[Duke Lane]

... Kaiser allegedly found clipboard on same day Givens makes first ever mention of seeing Oswald on 6th floor - Dec 2. ...

Three things are surprising in this.

First, that Kaiser would think that he shouldn't touch the clipboard that he "allegedly" found, except that he may have recognized it as the one he gave Oswald, and anything to do with Oswald was like a hot potato (he also found a jacket belonging to Lee, if I remember correctly).

Second, thinking that Kaiser's "alleged" finding of the clipboard would not trigger a memory in someone else. I think some people expect that people who are near to a major event - especially those that are unexpected - will remember every fine detail of their surroundings, immediately and indelibly etched on their minds. Somewhere I recently read where someone expressed surprise and/or disbelief that Bill Shelley couldn't (or wouldn't!) recall the shirts his workers had on that day.

In real life, however, these things happen all the time. Nobody in the TSBD was expecting the President to get shot, or thought that there would ever be any need to remember each and everything they did, saw, heard or said as "just another day" unfolded. When the unexpected happens, some people (but not all!) try to sort through those sort of things with varying degrees of success ... and still overlooking details that, at the time, they didn't consider material or out of the ordinary.

Co-worker accused of shooting the President? Did I see him with a gun? No. Was he acting strange? No stranger than usual. Was he sneaking around, or noticeably absent at any particular time, say, at lunch? No, he didn't always stick around, so who'd have noticed?

When Givens saw Oswald on the sixth floor, it was before noon, approaching the usual five-minute advance break to wash up, and so Lee was doing what he normally did, walk around with a clipboard looking for books; what's the big deal here? It was so normal - and more than a half-hour before the shooting - why would it stick out in anyone's mind?

Then someone finds the clipboard and - oh yeah! I remember now: I saw Oswald walking around with a clipboard when I last saw him. Now that I think about it, it's as clear as day; hadn't really given it a thought before! Now that you mention it ....

I'm not of the usual persuasion that first recollections are always the best recollections, nor that later changes or additions to a story are necessarily incorrect (or suspicious!). People DO remember things later. That's what I think happened here.

Try reversing the order of the sentence and see if it sounds as odd, that "Givens first makes mention of seeing Oswald on the 6th floor after Kaiser found the clipboard."

(Which happened first: did Kaiser find the clipboard, or Givens relate his story? Or were they happening at the same time in different places? I'd put money on Kaiser-Givens rather than Givens-Kaiser....)

Third, it's surprising that anyone would use the word "allegedly" when describing Kaiser finding the clipboard. Is there some real suspicion that he didn't find it? That he knew where it was all along (and conveniently revealed it on that particular day so that Slim Givens could add a new twist to the story, or to support it)? That someone else really found it (and if so, who)?

I really don't believe that everybody who worked in the TSBD was in on the plot, or co-opted to tell convincing snippets to create a different appearance than was the reality. And we've got to ask ourselves, if some of these guys were "in on it," how come they kept working there after their raison d'être - probably the most significant thing any of them would have been involved in during their entire lives - was accomplished, in some cases for several more years?

Was this all a conspiracy of laborers, all of whom managed to get off scott free and never come under anything but passing suspicion by the authorities? Man, these guys were good! I wonder why they kept on laboring when they obviously had much greater talents!

[Duke Lane]

The "significance" attributed to the clipboard by the WC is not very clear, but it appears as if it intended the clipboard to somehow "incriminate" Oswald: it was "a few feet from where the rifle had been found,"

Duke, if you go into the records, it becomes much clearer that it was to support Givens sighting. And the location was where the cop is seen on film with a clipboard.

made by Kaiser and had his name on it," but was "appropriated" by Oswald

You are correct to use quote marks. Right up to and including the day Kaiser handed it to agent Arthur Carter on Mar 10, he was saying he gave it to Oswald.

had orders on that Oswald "had not filled," as if that was somehow suspicious. The implications seem to be that Lee was a definite low-life, stealing clipboards from his co-workers, and being either too lazy and/or preoccupied to fill orders ... and, oh, it was right near where he'd supposedly left the rifle after shooting Kennedy, 35 minutes after he'd last had the clipboard.

Yup. The whole idea of the clipboard of course, was to carry a stack of orders at one time so as not to continually have to go get them. That he only had 3 left on it actually should have been an indicator he had been filling orders that morning - just as some co-workers reported he had been.

As to the WC's "lie" about the clipboard, it really did no more than bolster Slim Givens' story about seeing Lee upstairs with it in hand.

Givens' story needed all the support it could get.

As will be seen in my forthcoming essay "The Elevator Shuffle," if Givens' story is true, then other events will show that it made perfect sense for Lee to have left the clipboard there.

Wishing it to be true merely because it supports your thesis doesn't get rid of all the problems with it.

The challenge of this question, however, is a non-sequitur: "The WC simply lied, when trying to disguise the fact that the many policemen that swamped the sixth floor couldn't find a clipboard that Kaiser clearly states was in plain sight, and not hidden at all. The clipboard was *NOT* hidden - and an entire working week went by before it was 'discovered.'" What's this "couldn't" stuff??

Well, in fact the cops did find a clipboard. It was captured on film.

Luke Mooney said, "the floor was covered with officers. And we were searching, trying to find the weapon at that time." I think it's fair to say - and I doubt anyone reading this will argue the point - that most of the policemen swarming over the sixth floor were confident that Jack Kennedy hadn't been killed by a clipboard. Likewise, I think it's also fair to say that most policemen, then or now, do not consider a clipboard to be a "weapon" (Homeland Security might, but cops don't!).

I'm sure they were also confident Kennedy was not killed by a paper bag, chicken scraps, a pop bottle, or a pack of cigarettes either, yet all those items were still taken as evidence.

Thus the fact that they didn't take particular note of nor take into evidence one homemade clipboard is hardly surprising. They also did not apparently have the name of any person they were looking for at the time, but even if they were looking for anything to do with one missing Lee Oswald, it had Kaiser's name on it, not Oswald's. That they did not do so has absolutely nothing to do with whether it was there when they searched the floor that Friday, any more so than did the fact that they didn't confiscate any of the fire extinguishers, either.

The FBI tests showed that the handwriting on the board was "too limited" for adequate comparison with known samples of Oswald's writing. Kaiser was the only individual who associated this clipboard with Oswald - and there was no physical evidence it was Oswald's. Why do suppose no fingerprint results are in the records?

Your "fire extinguisher" analogy fails any test of logic. You may as well have said "floorboards", "window frames" or "light fittings" since all fall within the definition of "fixtures". What they took was stuff found that was not part of the "furniture". This should have included a clipboard - especially one in proximity to the rifle.

[Continued next post]

[Duke Lane]

[Continued from previous post]

Finally, the fact that it was not discovered for a week is likewise not surprising since testimony revealed that the teacher's edition that was stored beside where the clipboard was found, was not among the most popular titles to be filling orders for, especially after the start of the school year, since most if not all teachers already had their copy of that edition and probably didn't lose very many of them.

C'mon, don't be coy... it wasn't just any old Teacher's Edition... it was the CATHOLIC!!! Teacher's Think and Do Edition.

Perhaps if Rolling Readers were stored there, it might've been found the very next day. In either case, there is no significance whatsoever to the fact that police didn't notice or confiscate it: it was simply not something one might associate with the commission of a crime.

Neither are chicken scraps, paper bags, cigarette packs or pop bottles. By your reckoning, None of those items should have been taken?

[Duke Lane]

... Kaiser allegedly found clipboard on same day Givens makes first ever mention of seeing Oswald on 6th floor - Dec 2. ...

Three things are surprising in this.

First, that Kaiser would think that he shouldn't touch the clipboard that he "allegedly" found, except that he may have recognized it as the one he gave Oswald, and anything to do with Oswald was like a hot potato (he also found a jacket belonging to Lee, if I remember correctly).

Duke, you are free to believe Kaiser that he never touched it, but you need to acknowledge that others said differently. Is it important? Maybe not.

Second, thinking that Kaiser's "alleged" finding of the clipboard would not trigger a memory in someone else. I think some people expect that people who are near to a major event - especially those that are unexpected - will remember every fine detail of their surroundings, immediately and indelibly etched on their minds. Somewhere I recently read where someone expressed surprise and/or disbelief that Bill Shelley couldn't (or wouldn't!) recall the shirts his workers had on that day.

A 1997 study of Desert Storm veterans concluded that traumatic memories are not fixed or indelible - they change over time. What it was unable to determine was whether such trauma causes immediate acute dissociation and memory disturbance with true memories later being recovered - or if initial memories are complete and real with distortions and post-event information creeping in over time. If you know which of those is true, please inform the American Journal of Psychiatry - but be sure to tell them you base your findings on the JFK case!

In real life, however, these things happen all the time. Nobody in the TSBD was expecting the President to get shot, or thought that there would ever be any need to remember each and everything they did, saw, heard or said as "just another day" unfolded. When the unexpected happens, some people (but not all!) try to sort through those sort of things with varying degrees of success ... and still overlooking details that, at the time, they didn't consider material or out of the ordinary.

Co-worker accused of shooting the President? Did I see him with a gun? No. Was he acting strange? No stranger than usual. Was he sneaking around, or noticeably absent at any particular time, say, at lunch? No, he didn't always stick around, so who'd have noticed?

When Givens saw Oswald on the sixth floor, it was before noon, approaching the usual five-minute advance break to wash up, and so Lee was doing what he normally did, walk around with a clipboard looking for books; what's the big deal here? It was so normal - and more than a half-hour before the shooting - why would it stick out in anyone's mind?

Let's get this clear. His first mention of seeing Oswald with the clipboard was Dec 2. On that date, he said he saw Oswald at 11:45 prior to breaking for lunch. This story changed again once before the WC. Now he recalled seeing Oswald at 11:55 after he (Givens) went back to get his cigarettes.

Then someone finds the clipboard and - oh yeah! I remember now: I saw Oswald walking around with a clipboard when I last saw him. Now that I think about it, it's as clear as day; hadn't really given it a thought before! Now that you mention it ....

Givens was unable to recall this on multiple occasions under intense questioning - the first of which was on the same day and lasted nearly an hour. If a clipboard was going to trip his memory, how many times did he see clipboards between Nov 22 and Dec 2?

Additionally, there is no indication in the records that the clipboard was found prior to Givens memory jiggle. Your wanting it to be that way doesn't make it so. Dig up some evidence to support it. For example, did Givens ever say the finding of the clipboard reminded him of seeing Oswald with it?

I'm not of the usual persuasion that first recollections are always the best recollections, nor that later changes or additions to a story are necessarily incorrect (or suspicious!). People DO remember things later. That's what I think happened here.

In the face of the evidence, this stance is (almost) on a par with someone maintaining Jarman had plaster in his hair.

Try reversing the order of the sentence and see if it sounds as odd, that "Givens first makes mention of seeing Oswald on the 6th floor after Kaiser found the clipboard."

(Which happened first: did Kaiser find the clipboard, or Givens relate his story? Or were they happening at the same time in different places? I'd put money on Kaiser-Givens rather than Givens-Kaiser....)

I know you would. Now all you have to do is come up with the evidence.

Third, it's surprising that anyone would use the word "allegedly" when describing Kaiser finding the clipboard. Is there some real suspicion that he didn't find it? That he knew where it was all along (and conveniently revealed it on that particular day so that Slim Givens could add a new twist to the story, or to support it)? That someone else really found it (and if so, who)?

Reasons for suspicion: FBI make no report on fingerprint testing. FBI makes no effort to determine it was Kaiser's handwriting on it. No one else backed up Kaiser that this clipboard was one used by Oswald. The timing coinciding with Givens "recall". The FBI agent being present in TSBD at the time of it being found after being sent there on some OTHER unexplained investigation.

I really don't believe that everybody who worked in the TSBD was in on the plot, or co-opted to tell convincing snippets to create a different appearance than was the reality.

Does anyone believe that? If so, who?

And we've got to ask ourselves, if some of these guys were "in on it," how come they kept working there after their raison d'être - probably the most significant thing any of them would have been involved in during their entire lives - was accomplished, in some cases for several more years?

Ah… we've gone "everybody who worked in the TSBD" to just "some".

Was this all a conspiracy of laborers, all of whom managed to get off scott free and never come under anything but passing suspicion by the authorities? Man, these guys were good! I wonder why they kept on laboring when they obviously had much greater talents!

There is a possibility (based on circumstantial evidence) that some involved in management or supervising aided the plot - I'd speculate if they did, it was on a need-to-know-basis. At least some of your laborers were co-opted to later change their stories to help the authorities deal with problems in their developing narrative. These were mostly black men. It was in the South. It was the early '60s. You think they deserved rewards for that? They got to keep breathing. Nuff said.

[Duke Lane]

Well, my primer on how to do "quotes" certainly has made an impression, even if nothing else has!!

(Sorry, but I had to quote the original message!) The "significance" attributed to the clipboard by the WC is not very clear, but it appears as if it intended the clipboard to somehow "incriminate" Oswald: it was "a few feet from where the rifle had been found,"

Duke, if you go into the records, it becomes much clearer that it was to support Givens sighting. And the location was where the cop is seen on film with a clipboard.

Don't be coy, Greg: what records are you referring to that I've so obviously missed?

The whole idea of the clipboard of course, was to carry a stack of orders at one time so as not to continually have to go get them. That he only had 3 left on it actually should have been an indicator he had been filling orders that morning - just as some co-workers reported he had been.

Greg, to say that he only had three "left" is to beg the question, "what did he do with the rest of them that he'd filled, and when?" One then must ask what he was doing downstairs on the first floor after Bill Shelley had gone downstairs and before the "elevator shuffle." In light of comments by Roy Truly and others, Lee Oswald "just worked all the time," and had either gone downstairs to drop off the orders he'd collected in the morning, leaving three on his clipboard, or else had finished the first batch of orders, dropped them off on the first floor, and gotten a small batch of orders that he could've filled before lunch came rolling around in about 10 minutes.

The "boys" having been moving books around to accomodate the flooring job, right up to that morning, means that it's possible if not likely that Oswald, on going upstairs to fill those "last" orders, wasn't able to find the books and decided to go to lunch when Givens suggested it to him.

As to the WC's "lie" about the clipboard, it really did no more than bolster Slim Givens' story about seeing Lee upstairs with it in hand.

Givens' story needed all the support it could get.

This hypothesis demands that Slim's story came first, Kaiser's finding the clipboard afterward. The big question is: to what end?

Let's assume for a moment that the direction you're going with this is correct: why would Givens invent such a story (first) that seemingly exonerated Oswald, and why would Frankie Kaiser concoct yet another story to support Givens' lie?

As will be seen in my forthcoming essay "The Elevator Shuffle," if Givens' story is true, then other events will show that it made perfect sense for Lee to have left the clipboard there.

Wishing it to be true merely because it supports your thesis doesn't get rid of all the problems with it.

Ah, but ditto, grasshoppah!

Finally, the fact that it was not discovered for a week is likewise not surprising since testimony revealed that the teacher's edition that was stored beside where the clipboard was found, was not among the most popular titles to be filling orders for, especially after the start of the school year, since most if not all teachers already had their copy of that edition and probably didn't lose very many of them.

C'mon, don't be coy... it wasn't just any old Teacher's Edition... it was the CATHOLIC!!! Teacher's Think and Do Edition.

Does that mean that the Masons weren't behind it, and that the Cabell Lodge in Oak Cliff really is just coincidence?

I actually haven't gotten over the fallout from admitting that bears are Catholic, and that popes have shat in the woods several times in the past few hundred years at least, so I thought I'd leave that observation out of it.

[Duke Lane]

... Kaiser allegedly found clipboard on same day Givens makes first ever mention of seeing Oswald on 6th floor - Dec 2. ...

Three things are surprising in this.

First, that Kaiser would think that he shouldn't touch the clipboard that he "allegedly" found, except that he may have recognized it as the one he gave Oswald, and anything to do with Oswald was like a hot potato (he also found a jacket belonging to Lee, if I remember correctly).

Duke, you are free to believe Kaiser that he never touched it, but you need to acknowledge that others said differently. Is it important? Maybe not.

Cite(s)? In the end, I don't think it is important. He may have, and then thought maybe he shouldn't have, so said he didn't ...? So what, he smudged Oswald's fingerprints? To me, Oswald's prints on the clipboard have about as much probative value as his prints on boxes. So? He worked there, and handled both. Doesn't mean squat about him firing a gun or building the "sniper's nest."

A 1997 study of Desert Storm veterans concluded that traumatic memories are not fixed or indelible - they change over time. What it was unable to determine was whether such trauma causes immediate acute dissociation and memory disturbance with true memories later being recovered - or if initial memories are complete and real with distortions and post-event information creeping in over time. If you know which of those is true, please inform the American Journal of Psychiatry - but be sure to tell them you base your findings on the JFK case!

A veritable conundrum, isn't it. A surprising number of people and organizations accept that event as proof. Consider The Washington Post, which is always open to new theories about how Oswald did it.

Which happened first: did Kaiser find the clipboard, or Givens relate his story? Or were they happening at the same time in different places? I'd put money on Kaiser-Givens rather than Givens-Kaiser....

I know you would. Now all you have to do is come up with the evidence. ... Reasons for suspicion: FBI make no report on fingerprint testing. FBI makes no effort to determine it was Kaiser's handwriting on it. No one else backed up Kaiser that this clipboard was one used by Oswald. The timing coinciding with Givens "recall". The FBI agent being present in TSBD at the time of it being found after being sent there on some OTHER unexplained investigation.

Well, we simply don't know either way with any certainty, do we. I don't believe there's evidence either way on this, so we're both left to conjecture, aren't we. Since Givens is deceased and I've got no idea where Frankie Kaiser might be now, so there's no quick way to find out.

Did Slim Givens decide to change his story on the spur of the moment, and Frankie agreed to concoct his "finding the clipboard" story just to support Givens' new lie? Did Givens decide to make up a story to "legitimize" Kaiser's hoked up story? Did they come up with supporting lies independently, coincidentally, on the same day?

Logically, to what end would Givens concoct a story that might be perceived as potentially exonerating Oswald (you know my view on this), or did the FBI show up and tell them the story they needed to come up with in order to place him on the sixth floor 35 whole minutes before the shooting, after everyone else had come down (and had already left him upstairs ... wasn't having him upstairs 45 minutes before the shooting just as good as having him up there 10 minutes later)? Did Pinkston bring the "evidence" with him and give it to Kaiser to "find" and provide a basis for the story he wanted Givens to tell? If so, why didn't he take that "evidence" back with him, why leave it there until March?

You note that "no one else backed up Kaiser that this clipboard was one used by Oswald;" how many others who'd have had that knowledge were asked? If only Truly and Shelley, my guess is that, as management, they'd have bigger concerns and unless the thing was International Orange, they probably didn't notice such little details. Others who might know were Frazier and Daugherty and other order-fillers who likewise used clipboards; I don't recall that they were asked about it.

I don't really understand why fingerprints and handwriting on the clipboard would make a bit of difference, actually. If Kaiser had nothing ever to do with it, why would he lie and say he had? During the three months between December 2 and March 10, is it not possible (if not necessarily likely) that someone else might've used it, at least handled it, such that old prints were smudged ... and so what, afterward, that someone else's prints were on it?

I don't think that everything that can't be easily explained is "suspicious."

[Continued next post ...]

[Duke Lane]

[Continued from previous post]

I really don't believe that everybody who worked in the TSBD was in on the plot, or co-opted to tell convincing snippets to create a different appearance than was the reality.

Does anyone believe that? If so, who?

William Weston, for one, it seems: he was into showing how Buell Frazier was likely and directly involved. I think you'll find a post on this on the forum somewhere. I've also read conjecture that Bill and Linnie Mae Randle effectively set young Buell up to take the fall for the whole deal. Givens lied, as did Bonnie Ray and Junior. If I gave it some more thought, I'd probably come up with a handful more.

And we've got to ask ourselves, if some of these guys were "in on it," how come they kept working there after their raison d'être - probably the most significant thing any of them would have been involved in during their entire lives - was accomplished, in some cases for several more years?

Ah… we've gone "everybody who worked in the TSBD" to just "some".

Read more closely: "all" continued to work there past November 22 (do you have a record of people who did not come back to work on November 25 or ever again? Of the 75± interviewed on March 20, made CE1381, I recall only one who no longer worked there ...), and "some" continued to work there long after. Don't pick nits, it doesn't become you.

Was this all a conspiracy of laborers, all of whom managed to get off scott free and never come under anything but passing suspicion by the authorities? Man, these guys were good! I wonder why they kept on laboring when they obviously had much greater talents!

There is a possibility (based on circumstantial evidence) that some involved in management or supervising aided the plot - I'd speculate if they did, it was on a need-to-know-basis. At least some of your laborers were co-opted to later change their stories to help the authorities deal with problems in their developing narrative. These were mostly black men. It was in the South. It was the early '60s. You think they deserved rewards for that? They got to keep breathing. Nuff said.

I don't debate the last part, which explains "the three blind mice." The first part not be far off base either ... but we'd have to go a lot deeper than "an FBI coverup" or a "developing narrative" to suggest why they would be, at least before the fact. However, they may "mostly" have been black men, but they weren't all. Does the same implied threat also apply to the white guys who worked there because they hadn't much education?

[Duke Lane]

Duke, you are free to believe Kaiser that he never touched it, but you need to acknowledge that others said differently. Is it important? Maybe not.

Cite(s)? In the end, I don't think it is important. He may have, and then thought maybe he shouldn't have, so said he didn't ...? So what, he smudged Oswald's fingerprints? To me, Oswald's prints on the clipboard have about as much probative value as his prints on boxes. So? He worked there, and handled both. Doesn't mean squat about him firing a gun or building the "sniper's nest."

Duke, finding Oswald's prints on it would have gone some way towards proving it was the one he used. It is only the absence of them that doesn't mean squat.

Not testing for them - or doing the tests and not producing them (whichever was the case) is telling in itself.

A 1997 study of Desert Storm veterans concluded that traumatic memories are not fixed or indelible - they change over time. What it was unable to determine was whether such trauma causes immediate acute dissociation and memory disturbance with true memories later being recovered - or if initial memories are complete and real with distortions and post-event information creeping in over time. If you know which of those is true, please inform the American Journal of Psychiatry - but be sure to tell them you base your findings on the JFK case!

A veritable conundrum, isn't it. A surprising number of people and organizations accept that event as proof. Consider The Washington Post, which is always open to new theories about how Oswald did it.

Accept what as proof of what? You were given two possible alternatives...

Reasons for suspicion: FBI make no report on fingerprint testing. FBI makes no effort to determine it was Kaiser's handwriting on it. No one else backed up Kaiser that this clipboard was one used by Oswald. The timing coinciding with Givens "recall". The FBI agent being present in TSBD at the time of it being found after being sent there on some OTHER unexplained investigation.

Well, we simply don't know either way with any certainty, do we. I don't believe there's evidence either way on this, so we're both left to conjecture, aren't we. Since Givens is deceased and I've got no idea where Frankie Kaiser might be now, so there's no quick way to find out.

If givens was lying about his return to 6 and sighting of Oswald, it shortens the odds that Kaiser finding the clipboard was no mere coincidence.

Reminds me of the bus ticket being found at the most opportune moment for the authorities.

From a footnote to Deep Politics III:

Both the Walker note and the Mexican bus ticket were retrieved from the pages of books in Ruth Paine's house, both just when they were needed to fill gaps in the reconstructed Phase-Two account of Oswald's life.

Did Slim Givens decide to change his story on the spur of the moment, and Frankie agreed to concoct his "finding the clipboard" story just to support Givens' new lie? Did Givens decide to make up a story to "legitimize" Kaiser's hoked up story? Did they come up with supporting lies independently, coincidentally, on the same day?

Did the authorities put pressure on them to concoct both stories in order to bolster their shaky case against the accused? The only evidence that the clipboard was Oswald's comes from Kaiser. But the only evidence as to ownership actually points unquestionably to Kaiser.

Logically, to what end would Givens concoct a story that might be perceived as potentially exonerating Oswald (you know my view on this), or did the FBI show up and tell them the story they needed to come up with in order to place him on the sixth floor 35 whole minutes before the shooting, after everyone else had come down (and had already left him upstairs ... wasn't having him upstairs 45 minutes before the shooting just as good as having him up there 10 minutes later)? Did Pinkston bring the "evidence" with him and give it to Kaiser to "find" and provide a basis for the story he wanted Givens to tell? If so, why didn't he take that "evidence" back with him, why leave it there until March?

They were all unanimous in their first statements: Oswald was on 5 as they rode the elevators down. No one put him on 6 anytime close to the assassination until Givens' statement on Dec 2. By the time they appeared before the WC,, some were now equivocating whether it was 5 or 6 while Givens bumped another ten minutes onto his "sighting". Go through all the documentation in chronological order and you can see it as work in progress -- incrementally getting Oswald in place.

You note that "no one else backed up Kaiser that this clipboard was one used by Oswald;" how many others who'd have had that knowledge were asked? If only Truly and Shelley, my guess is that, as management, they'd have bigger concerns and unless the thing was International Orange, they probably didn't notice such little details. Others who might know were Frazier and Daugherty and other order-fillers who likewise used clipboards; I don't recall that they were asked about it.

Regardless of the reason, Kaiser is still the only person putting it in Oswald's hands.

I don't really understand why fingerprints and handwriting on the clipboard would make a bit of difference, actually. If Kaiser had nothing ever to do with it, why would he lie and say he had? During the three months between December 2 and March 10, is it not possible (if not necessarily likely) that someone else might've used it, at least handled it, such that old prints were smudged ... and so what, afterward, that someone else's prints were on it?

If Oswald's prints were on it, he very likely used it. Absence of his prints on the other hand, would have no significance. Unless tests were done, they wouldn't know if anything was smudged.

I don't think that everything that can't be easily explained is "suspicious."

Without suspicion, crimes would never be solved. I'm all for removing items from the "suspicious" list to either the discard pile or the hard evidence file. At the end of that process, you have the makings of a case for conspiracy, along with probable participants... or no case at all and Oswald as Lone Nut.

[Duke Lane]

I really don't believe that everybody who worked in the TSBD was in on the plot, or co-opted to tell convincing snippets to create a different appearance than was the reality.

Does anyone believe that? If so, who?

William Weston, for one, it seems: he was into showing how Buell Frazier was likely and directly involved. I think you'll find a post on this on the forum somewhere. I've also read conjecture that Bill and Linnie Mae Randle effectively set young Buell up to take the fall for the whole deal. Givens lied, as did Bonnie Ray and Junior. If I gave it some more thought, I'd probably come up with a handful more.

Bill and Linnie Mae did not work in the TSBD. It was Linnie Mae who set the police after Buell. Buell was unlikely to have turned up to move in with the Randles uninvited - and the greater opportunities in D/FW for employment as opposed to Huntsville was a logical reason why Linnie Mae would invite him. Bill Randle worked for his brother who was big in local politics and business - yet the family was apparently unable or unwilling to use those connections to help Buell. A co-worker of Bill's had the surname Caster, but neither DPD nor FBI seemed the least bit curious if he was related to Warren Caster. Warren C was not a man to wait till the last minute to buy Christmas gifts - having purchased a rifle for his son two days prior to the motorcade which he displayed at work - along with a hunting rifle purchased at the same time. For reasons unknown, the FBI investigated possible links between the M-C scope and Bill Randle.

Givens and Bonnie Ray demonstrably changed their stories beyond what any innocent explanation should allow. That does not make them complicit in anything before the fact.

As I recall it, Mr Weston's article contained some intriguing facts, for example that the TSBD Co had only occupied that building for a few months at most by Nov 22. This could well coincide with some of the major decisions concerning the Dallas leg of the Texas tour. Prior to moving in, the company did some major renovating, but apparently neglected to notice that the 5th and 6th floors were covered in oil and needed ply laid prior to storing cardboard boxes there. This job was left until mid October and provided a pretext to hire a temp.

Shockingly, this important job still had not been completed by late Feb '64.

The Bee, Danville, Virginia Feb 26, 1964

(AP story - reporter visits TSBD and gets Truly to show him 6th floor)

...The old wooden floor is splintered from years of use. Brown cardboard cases, the size of bread boxes are stacked neatly in rows. It was Oswald's job to carry these cartons...

There is a possibility (based on circumstantial evidence) that some involved in management or supervising aided the plot - I'd speculate if they did, it was on a need-to-know-basis. At least some of your laborers were co-opted to later change their stories to help the authorities deal with problems in their developing narrative. These were mostly black men. It was in the South. It was the early '60s. You think they deserved rewards for that? They got to keep breathing. Nuff said.

I don't debate the last part, which explains "the three blind mice." The first part not be far off base either ... but we'd have to go a lot deeper than "an FBI coverup" or a "developing narrative" to suggest why they would be, at least before the fact. However, they may "mostly" have been black men, but they weren't all. Does the same implied threat also apply to the white guys who worked there because they hadn't much education?

Buell was young and not overly bright so could probably be easily manipulated by those far more worldly. Reading his testimony, I get the impression he was not all that close to his more upwardly mobile sister.

Jack Dougherty suffered some type of personality or psychological defect and relied heavily - and perhaps entirely - on Roy Truly's interest in him for his self-esteem. Without Truly's carrots and sticks to give him his sense of worth, he was probably doomed to live in his room at his parents place. That buys a lot of trust, loyalty and obedience in someone like JD.

[Duke Lane]

OK ... on to new original messages ...

Duke, finding Oswald's prints on [the clipboard] would have gone some way towards proving it was the one he used. It is only the absence of them that doesn't mean squat. Not testing for them - or doing the tests and not producing them (whichever was the case) is telling in itself.

Knowing the clipboard that Oswald did use is of little consequence in my mind (which is also of little consequence, I've been told! - grin). Using it to place him on the sixth floor before noon is likewise of little consequence. There are several reasons for this:

First, regardless of whether he was on the fifth floor or the sixth floor when the flooring crew broke for lunch, he was left alone on the upper floors of the TSBD after they had gone downstairs. There is absolutely nothing that would prevent him from walking up to the sixth floor if he was on the fifth, and nobody who would have seen him do so ... or be able to state that he didn't. This only would matter if he wasn't later seen downstairs, as he was, "right at noon," by Eddie Piper.

For the purposes of his "conviction," he only needed to be alone upstairs; it wasn't necessary to place him alone on the sixth floor, especially since "alone on the sixth floor 35 minutes before the shooting" doesn't really trump "alone upstairs 40 minutes before the shooting" in any significant way.

When you consider ...

• that the elevator race took place from the sixth floor, and
  
• that both elevators were there at the sixth floor when the race began, and
  
• that Bill Shelley had already gone downstairs on the passenger elevator, and
  
• that Shelley had seen Oswald on the first floor when he'd gone down, and
  
• that nobody other than Lee Oswald had come back upstairs with an elevator, and
  
• that the passenger elevator couldn't be moved without someone in it (meaning Oswald hadn't gotten out on the fifth floor since nobody had to go down to the fifth floor to get it so they could all race down again), and
  
• that the only other person likely to have been using the elevators during that time, Jack Daugherty, was allegedly already upstairs (although he didn't take part in the elevator race ... meaning that he, too, was left upstairs "alone") ...
  

... then all roads lead to Oswald having at least ridden to the sixth floor before going down to the fifth floor ... if he didn't remain on the sixth floor the whole time. In sum, Oswald was already on the sixth floor before noon, it wasn't necessary to place him on the floor again five minutes later to say that he was definitely there.

The clipboard could only have solidified a notion that really didn't need to be solidified. If it's contrived evidence, then it's almost "protesting overmuch," adding weight to an already overloaded case.

Let's break this question down to its elemental parts:

• Frankie Kaiser wasn't at work on November 22; he was having dental work done at the Baylor Dental College.
  
• Kaiser "allegedly" found a clipboard 10 days later, on December 2, in the corner between the stairs coming up from the fifth floor and those going up to the seventh floor;
  
• the clipboard "allegedly" was laying in plain sight, overlooked by police and unseen by order-fillers since the books it was near - a teacher's edition of a text book - were seldom ordered after the start of the school year;
  
• the clipboard "allegedly" had three orders on it, all dated November 22;
  
• Kaiser "allegedly" went to notify his supervisor, Bill Shelley, about it, but "allegedly" did not pick it up;
  
• Shelley was "allegedly" with Nat Pinkston of the FBI at the time;
  
• Pinkston "allegedly" went to the sixth floor with either or both Roy Truly and/or Bill Shelley (and Frankie Kaiser);
  
• Pinkston took possession of the clipboard, examined it, gave the order sheets to Roy Truly who wished to fill the orders;
  
• Pinkston apparently returned the clipboard to one of the three men - Truly, Shelley or Kaiser - and did not take it into evidence;
  
• Another FBI agent took it (or "a" clipboard!) into evidence on March 10, 1964, more than three months later. There is nothing on record to indicate "the" clipboard's disposition or use between December 2 and March 10.
  

Let us assume for a moment that the clipboard wasn't really there, that either someone "planted" it there for Kaiser (or someone else) to find, or in some manner coerced Kaiser to say that he found it there. Of these, the former seems more likely only inasmuch as the coercion might eventually become known: better to lay the bait and hope it's found - as it probably eventually will - than to force someone to find it.

This requires that someone at least put their hands on a clipboard similar to one that Lee Oswald had used, if not the actual clipboard that he did use. They then must have dug up some unfilled orders from November 22, put them on the clipboard, and put the clipboard where it would eventually be found at a fortuitous time. Pinkston's presence at TSBD was either that - fortuitous - or else Kaiser was, indeed, forced to "find" it.

That the orders were unfilled is evidenced only by the fact that they were not initialled by the order-filler, as Truly stated they normally were. To my knowledge, however, there is no firm evidence that any filled orders were in fact so initialled. Likewise, as far as I know, no effort was made to determine if the people whose names were on the orders had already gotten their orders, or got their orders late, or even had them duplicated.

Thus, it is possible that an elaborate ruse was put together, using old, uninitialled orders for books that had already been filled - which could explain how the "unfilled" orders were not detected as Truly suggested they normally would be - and citing business exigencies, got the orders back from Pinkston so they could be "filled" now that they'd been "found" (it was not as if they could go to the office copy machine so Pinkston could retain the originals ... although they could certainly have filled out duplicate new orders). Truly could then have simply filed them back in the "filled orders" drawers where they'd been before the ruse was cooked up, or may have gone through the trouble of filling the orders again just in case they were followed up on, for how could he know they wouldn't be unless Pinkston, too, was "in on it?"

Once the bait was swallowed (but by whom, who wasn't already in on it?), the hook had to be set by telling Slim Givens that he'd better tell everyone that he'd seen Oswald upstairs five or ten minutes after everyone else had also seen Oswald upstairs, and that he'd been carrying this newly-planted clipboard with the resuscitated orders on it just to wrap the whole thing up into a nice, neat little package, squarely putting Oswald smack-dab where everyone already knew he'd been, or been within a floor of.

What would be the point?

(I will suggest one later, but I'm curious to hear your answer first.)

If Givens was lying about his return to 6 and sighting of Oswald, it shortens the odds that Kaiser finding the clipboard was no mere coincidence.

Again, we get to "if," which event occurred first (Givens' changed story with Kaiser's finding the clipboard to support the lie, or the lie told to explain how Kaiser came to find the clipboard), and to what end. It could not have been to further implicate Oswald, who was as "implicated" as he ever needed being.

Did the authorities put pressure on them to concoct both stories in order to bolster their shaky case against the accused? The only evidence that the clipboard was Oswald's comes from Kaiser. But the only evidence as to ownership actually points unquestionably to Kaiser. ... Regardless of the reason, Kaiser is still the only person putting it in Oswald's hands.

Uh-oh ... are we headed toward implicating Kaiser now, too?

They were all unanimous in their first statements: Oswald was on 5 as they rode the elevators down. No one put him on 6 anytime close to the assassination until Givens' statement on Dec 2. By the time they appeared before the WC,, some were now equivocating whether it was 5 or 6 while Givens bumped another ten minutes onto his "sighting". Go through all the documentation in chronological order and you can see it as work in progress -- incrementally getting Oswald in place.

Or ...?

There is a possibility (based on circumstantial evidence) that some involved in management or supervising aided the plot - I'd speculate if they did, it was on a need-to-know-basis. At least some of your laborers were co-opted to later change their stories to help the authorities deal with problems in their developing narrative. These were mostly black men. It was in the South. It was the early '60s. You think they deserved rewards for that? They got to keep breathing. Nuff said.

I don't debate the last part, which explains "the three blind mice." The first part not be far off base either ... but we'd have to go a lot deeper than "an FBI coverup" or a "developing narrative" to suggest why they would be, at least before the fact. However, they may "mostly" have been black men, but they weren't all. Does the same implied threat also apply to the white guys who worked there because they hadn't much education?

Buell was young and not overly bright so could probably be easily manipulated by those far more worldly. Reading his testimony, I get the impression he was not all that close to his more upwardly mobile sister.

Jack Dougherty suffered some type of personality or psychological defect and relied heavily - and perhaps entirely - on Roy Truly's interest in him for his self-esteem. Without Truly's carrots and sticks to give him his sense of worth, he was probably doomed to live in his room at his parents place. That buys a lot of trust, loyalty and obedience in someone like JD.

Jack died living in his parent's house.

Now go ahead and tie this all up together with a neat bow ....

[Greg Parker]

Knowing the clipboard that Oswald did use is of little consequence in my mind (which is also of little consequence, I've been told! - grin). Using it to place him on the sixth floor before noon is likewise of little consequence. There are several reasons for this:

Of little consequence to you, Duke... but clearly not to the WC since it is discussed at length in Chapter IV of the WCR.

Thus, it is possible that an elaborate ruse was put together, using old, uninitialled orders for books that had already been filled - which could explain how the "unfilled" orders were not detected as Truly suggested they normally would be - and citing business exigencies, got the orders back from Pinkston so they could be "filled" now that they'd been "found" (it was not as if they could go to the office copy machine so Pinkston could retain the originals ... although they could certainly have filled out duplicate new orders). Truly could then have simply filed them back in the "filled orders" drawers where they'd been before the ruse was cooked up, or may have gone through the trouble of filling the orders again just in case they were followed up on, for how could he know they wouldn't be unless Pinkston, too, was "in on it?"

The orders were not initialed by the fillers. They wrote their number on them. If any number was one these orders, it wasn't stated.

In testimony, Truly surmised that the clipboard had been found within a few days of the assassination as the girls in the office would usually initiate a search after 3 or 4 days. These three orders were missing 10 days. Was a search conducted between Nov 22 and Dec 2 that was unsuccessful in locating them? Doesn't seem likely as they would have just redone the paperwork and filled them. No search and no duplicate orders = no missing orders and no clipboard left on 6 by Oswald.

Once the bait was swallowed (but by whom, who wasn't already in on it?), the hook had to be set by telling Slim Givens that he'd better tell everyone that he'd seen Oswald upstairs five or ten minutes after everyone else had also seen Oswald upstairs, and that he'd been carrying this newly-planted clipboard with the resuscitated orders on it just to wrap the whole thing up into a nice, neat little package, squarely putting Oswald smack-dab where everyone already knew he'd been, or been within a floor of.

What would be the point?

(I will suggest one later, but I'm curious to hear your answer first.)

The reason was twofold. First, the case was weak. This strengthened it enough for a one-sided commission (it would never have been anywhere near sufficient to survive a proper flailing in court). The second I won't go into here as it would derail the subject of this thread. Apologies, but I'd rather not stray too far from Kaiser and the clipboard.

Using it to place him on the sixth floor before noon is likewise of little consequence. There are several reasons for this:

Of little consequence to you, Duke... but clearly not to the WC since it is discussed at length in Chapter IV of the WCR.

Again, we get to "if," which event occurred first (Givens' changed story with Kaiser's finding the clipboard to support the lie, or the lie told to explain how Kaiser came to find the clipboard), and to what end. It could not have been to further implicate Oswald, who was as "implicated" as he ever needed being.

Doesn't matter which occurred first. Both the finding of the clipboard and Givens' changed account of his alleged Oswald sighting were works of fiction.

Not sure how you can claim it was not to further implicate Oswald since that was the demonstrable outcome. That it didn't go as far as you believe it should have if it were for that purpose, is neither here nor there.

Uh-oh ... are we headed toward implicating Kaiser now, too?

Only in "finding" his own clipboard and claiming variously that he gave it to Oswald/that Oswald commandeered it.

Jack died living in his parent's house.

Yes. But he wasn't living as a hermit in his room. He had a job... and a boss who played George to his Lenny.

Now go ahead and tie this all up together with a neat bow ....

It's being done.

[Duke Lane]

Knowing the clipboard that Oswald did use is of little consequence in my mind (which is also of little consequence, I've been told! - grin). Using it to place him on the sixth floor before noon is likewise of little consequence. There are several reasons for this:

Of little consequence to you, Duke... but clearly not to the WC since it is discussed at length in Chapter IV of the WCR.

With all due respect, I hardly consider a paragraph to be "at length." Paging through the Report, Chapter IV, Page 143, I see:

... [Givens] saw Oswald, a clipboard in hand, walking from the southeast corner of the sixth floor toward the elevator. ... The significance of Givens' observation that Oswald was carrying his clipboard became apparent on December 2, 1963, when an employee, Frankie Kaiser, found a clipboard hidden by book cartons in the northwest corner of the sixth floor at the west wall a few feet from where the rifle had been found. This clipboard had been made by Kaiser and had his name on it. Kaiser identified it as the clipboard which Oswald had appropriated from him when Oswald came to work at the Depository. Three invoices on this clipboard, each dated November 22, were for Scott-Foresman books, located on the first and sixth floors. Oswald had not filled any of the three orders.

They so discussed it at length that they even added details, like that the clipboard was "hidden," which is directly contradictory to Frankie Kaiser's testimony, that it was "in plain sight."

The Commission thought that lots of things were "significant" and of great consequence, especially if it denigrated or implicated Oswald. As evidence the above: he "hid" the clipboard; he "appropriated" it from Kaiser; he didn't fill "any" of the orders on it.

What the Commission fails to establish is why a clipboard ostensibly used by Oswald being found on the sixth floor is "significant" in light of his working up there. Carrying a clipboard does not lead inexorably toward carrying a rifle or shooting a President. Using a homemade clipboard - even "appropriating" such a piece of junk - doesn't indelibly brand someone a subversive little thief. Leaving three unfilled orders on a clipboard does not establish that there were no other orders on the clipboard that Oswald did fill.

In fact, outside of Kaiser's belief that it "looked like" one Oswald used, it could just as easily have belonged to Jack Daugherty who did the same job Oswald did, presumably also used a clipboard to hold his orders (just like Oswald and Kaiser did), and had been standing in that very same area when he heard a shot and failed to see the "fleeing assassin." That question was neither asked nor answered. Your "George to his Lenny" comment could explain much in this regard.

Thus, it is possible that an elaborate ruse was put together, using old, uninitialled orders for books that had already been filled - which could explain how the "unfilled" orders were not detected as Truly suggested they normally would be ... Truly could then have simply filed them back in the "filled orders" drawers where they'd been before the ruse was cooked up ...

The orders were not initialed by the fillers. They wrote their number on them. If any number was on these orders, it wasn't stated. ...

Initials, numbers, who cares? Ultra-minor point.

... In testimony, Truly surmised that the clipboard had been found within a few days of the assassination as the girls in the office would usually initiate a search after 3 or 4 days. These three orders were missing 10 days. Was a search conducted between Nov 22 and Dec 2 that was unsuccessful in locating them? Doesn't seem likely as they would have just redone the paperwork and filled them. No search and no duplicate orders = no missing orders and no clipboard left on 6 by Oswald.

Isn't that what I'd said?

You presume the orders weren't missing because nobody looked for them in the intervening five business days, during which much of the time, business was undoubtedly disrupted by DPD, FBI and USSS as they opened their investigation. I don't dispute that in this context. So figure now that these filled orders that weren't missing and therefore caused no search for them ... suddenly ended up on a clipboard that presumably wasn't there the week before.

(Or was it? Didn't you say that a cop was filmed holding "a" clipboard? Where did that clipboard go? Was he told or did he decide that, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't important or wasn't evidence, and simply put it down on top of the stack of books, from which it later fell? Can anyone prove this didn't happen based upon the "other" clipboard being in evidence?)

Anyway, since the "Kaiser clipboard" presumably wasn't there, some brilliant charlatan therefore conceived the idea to take the non-missing orders back out of the filing cabinet (or wherever they were; again, who cares?), dug up a clipboard that could conceivably have been Oswald's - and nobody else's who might miss or recognize or identify it - and run this package upstairs, "hiding it in plain sight" where nobody had seen or noticed it before, then either caused Frankie Kaiser to find it, or hoped that someone would, sooner or later (but not too much later for fear of having to explain why nobody looked for the missing orders!), meanwhile having Slim Givens at the ready to change his story to include Oswald with the clipboard at 11:55 (the normal time to break for lunch, despite the flooring crew having been dismissed a little early by Bill Shelley), all for the sole and singular purpose of placing Oswald on the sixth floor just ten minutes later than half-a-dozen men all more or less agreed he was or could've been just five or ten measly minutes earlier?

C'mon: almost the whole crew testified that he'd been on either the fifth or sixth floor at or 11:50 and that, when they'd left, he essentially had the run of the place. The opportunity already existed: why go through all of this rigamarole just to put a clipboard in his hand five minutes later to "prove" he was someplace a half-dozen men had already said that he was?

All of this demands that, whoever dreamed up this idiocy absolutely had to be either /a/ employees or management within the building, and/or /b/ in the confidence of the management of the building. They had to have access to the filled orders, so all the more likely that they actually worked for the TSBD company. They had to be there to make sure that everything happened according to plan, that nobody bugged out on them and didn't play their planned or coerced part.

But the biggest problem with the scenario is that they already had a good thing going: six men stating that Oswald was alone on the upper floors when they last saw him. Why risk the possibility of something going wrong or someone upsetting this new part of the apple cart? What if, because they had the recipients' contact info, someone had decided to contact them to find out if they'd received their orders, and what if one or all of them said yes? What if someone decided to ask one of the accounting people, or to check to see if the shipped order had been billed (there's no evidence that all or any of the TSBD's orders were pre-paid)? There's not a terribly long list of people who could conceivably ensure all of this.

Why, with all they had to have known they had going for them, would these guys - who have presumably managed for almost 45 years now to have completely evaded detection (and certainly conviction!) - take the huge risk of effectively "returning to the crime scene" to plant more evidence?

Again, what would be the point?

The reason was twofold. First, the case was weak. This strengthened it enough for a one-sided commission (it would never have been anywhere near sufficient to survive a proper flailing in court)....

Can we parse that?

"This case is not going to go to court, the defendant is dead. So we need to bolster the evidence so it can survive in court."

The case was already strong enough for a one-sided Commission ... but of course, nobody would have known at that point that it necessarily would have been a one-sided inquiry. For all they knew, the Presidential Commission would have been even more thorough than an adversarial courtroom proceeding. "Going back to the crime scene to plant more evidence" could have been the very worst possible thing they could have done. Depending upon who you think "they" might have been, they either would have known that, or again, would have run the risk of running afoul of the unsuspecting TSBD employees and management. A risky ploy at best.

Uh-oh ... are we headed toward implicating Kaiser now, too?

Only in "finding" his own clipboard and claiming variously that he gave it to Oswald/that Oswald commandeered it.

Where'd he get the orders from?

Jack died living in his parent's house.

Yes. But he wasn't living as a hermit in his room. He had a job... and a boss who played George to his Lenny.

That only accounts for 8-10 hours of his day ... but it speaks volumes, and provides a better solution to the question of the clipboard than this concoction of getting people to lie to implicate - or exonerate - a dead Oswald.

[Pat Speer]

Duke and Greg, while I haven't read this whole thread, I did do a little reading on the clipboard while writing chapter 4b at patspeer.com.

I believe the clipboard is, in fact, a slight indicator of Oswald's innocence. I've worked in warehouses and pulled orders. You put the orders on your clipboard, and then bring the orders to the billing and shipping departments. So it makes perfect sense that the orders on the clipboard would be unfilled. Secondly, the orders on the clipboard were for Scott-Foresman books actually on the sixth floor. If they were not, then the WC would undoubtedly have made a big deal about it. This suggests that Oswald left his clipboard on the sixth floor in anticipation of returning after lunch. This is supported by the location of the clipboard...IN THE STAIRWELL. Since we know the men engaged in the elevator race did not send the elevator back up for Oswald, it only makes sense that, as he came down for lunch using the stairs, he'd take his completed orders with him and leave his uncompleted orders somewhere where he'd find them after lunch...the stairwell.

The alternate explanation..that he carried the clipboard around after the shots, and after hiding the rifle, and then stashed it in the stairwell, is pretty silly in my opinion. If Oswald was on the run and trying to appear nonchalant, having a clipboard in his hand could have saved his life. On the other hand, if someone looked at the orders on his clipboard, they may have realized he'd been on the sixth floor. So the possibility remains that he thought of using the clipboard as an alibi and then changed his mind as he started downstairs. But I doubt it.