The Cab Ride

[Sean Coleman]

Is there any detailed information concerning the DPD officers who boarded the bus to search the passengers for weapons? 

[Gil Jesus]

4 minutes ago, Sean Coleman said:

Is there any detailed information concerning the DPD officers who boarded the bus to search the passengers for weapons? 

I don't believe they were ever identified.

[Sean Coleman]

1 hour ago, Gil Jesus said:

I don't believe they were ever identified.

Did it actually happen? Surely that would prove (ish) foreknowledge of his presence on the bus…..

[Gil Jesus]

On 11/5/2021 at 9:15 AM, Sean Coleman said:

Did it actually happen? Surely that would prove (ish) foreknowledge of his presence on the bus…..

According to Milton Jones. ( 25 H 900 )

[David Andrews]

On 11/5/2021 at 9:15 AM, Sean Coleman said:

Did it actually happen? Surely that would prove (ish) foreknowledge of his presence on the bus…..

The bus was stuck in post-assassination traffic, a block away from the TSBD.  It may just have been searched out of cop fervor.

On the other hand, there is the account of Tippit anxiously waiting at the Gloco station for the bus to cross the bridge and stop.

[Karl Hilliard]

On 11/6/2021 at 11:04 AM, David Andrews said:

The bus was stuck in post-assassination traffic, a block away from the TSBD.  It may just have been searched out of cop fervor.

 

Was it a block away or more? In any case..we might wonder why it would take an hour according to the Milton Jones' *statement... for the police to conduct this 'search'.  Perhaps this 'hour' was just an exaggeration as he was a young guy. Then again there was no supportive statements from the only other passenger [that was questioned] or the driver that the police had ever boarded the bus at all was there? I acknowledge that they weren't asked and perhaps if she was, even a scatterbrained Mary Bledsoe would remember the inconvenience of being delayed or having to get off the bus. *I got lost trying to find the post about all of this in the thread called "The Escape". Also reading the testimony of Cecil McWatters is like following the ramblings of a third grader. Applying my Find on Page search he used the expression-- "in other words" --189 times! The word "transfer" was used in that testimony 106 times. It dulls the senses just to read it. Another comment that I caught was the mention of a lady who asked for a transfer telling the driver that she had a train to catch and the bus wasn't moving so she would walk ahead to Union Station. Then why ask for a transfer?

[Karl Hilliard]

Continued from above....according to Jones the bus was about four blocks from Houston [a one way street going south]---

[David Andrews]

58 minutes ago, Karl Hilliard said:

Was it a block away or more? In any case..we might wonder why it would take an hour according to the Milton Jones' *statement... for the police to conduct this 'search'.  Perhaps this 'hour' was just an exaggeration as he was a young guy. Then again there was no supportive statements from the only other passenger [that was questioned] or the driver that the police had ever boarded the bus at all was there? I acknowledge that they weren't asked and perhaps if she was, even a scatterbrained Mary Bledsoe would remember the inconvenience of being delayed or having to get off the bus. *I got lost trying to find the post about all of this in the thread called "The Escape". Also reading the testimony of Cecil McWatters is like following the ramblings of a third grader. Applying my Find on Page search he used the expression-- "in other words" --189 times! The word "transfer" was used in that testimony 106 times. It dulls the senses just to read it. Another comment that I caught was the mention of a lady who asked for a transfer telling the driver that she had a train to catch and the bus wasn't moving so she would walk ahead to Union Station. Then why ask for a transfer?

And while stuck in traffic its photograph was taken, for no particular reason, by a "bystander" linked to Army intelligence.  There's a back thread on this.

[Paul Jolliffe]

On 10/28/2021 at 9:33 AM, Sean Coleman said:

 

It’s a beautiful example in near mint condition made of pretty cheap paper that amazingly survived LHO’s ordeal intact…..

John Armstrong told me he himself had seen this bus transfer up close in person, and that it does have minute wrinkles on it. 

I don't see any in this photo, but that's what he said - there are small wrinkles on it. 

[Paul Jolliffe]

1 hour ago, David Andrews said:

And while stuck in traffic its photograph was taken, for no particular reason, by a "bystander" linked to Army intelligence.  There's a back thread on this.

Dave,

You know better than to mention those Stuart Reed photos (proof positive of foreknowledge) and not show them.

These two photos are overwhelming evidence that Reed was to photo-document the "official" story of "Oswald's" escape and arrest (and murder?)

No one, and I mean no one, takes random pictures of a bus stuck in traffic. Reed was an intelligence asset whose job was to take pictures of the "official" narrative for the assassination. 

Reed's photo of the "Oswald" bus, taken facing east down Elm, several blocks east of Dealey Plaza:

Reed's photo, now facing west toward Dealey Plaza, taken a bit later, still from the south side of Elm Street:

[David Andrews]

4 minutes ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Dave,

You know better than to mention those Stuart Reed photos (proof positive of foreknowledge) and not show them.

 

Just a bit busy today.  Thanks for taking up the slack.  However, "Check the back threads" is a good way to promote research into some formidable past achievements here.  Like yours.

[Paul Jolliffe]

On 10/25/2021 at 9:07 PM, Greg Doudna said:

I like a lot of your analysis but here is a counterpoint on this particular one, just to give another point of view for consideration.

-- Nothing fake about the bus transfer. He said he pre-prepared them for 1 pm, and that is what that transfer shows. Instead of multiple quarter-hours for which one needs to be punched to identify, he cut off all times below 1 pm itself. The first time at the top of the uncut form, the line for 1 pm, is still remaining. Since that is the only time showing, there was no need to punch it to identify which time that bus transfer was for. Does this reconstruction make sense?

-- The vehicle which Roger Craig and other witnesses saw picking someone up who ran from around behind the TSBD, which Roger Craig said was Oswald, suffers from all of the problems in trusting that identification as you rightly bring out regarding the Tippit killing witnesses. There is a photo of Roger Craig looking at that car and he looks too far away to trust that as a secure identification. There is no question a man ran to the street and got in a car but there is no evidence there was anything sinister or Oswald related about it--lots of people watching the parade that day, somebody may have gotten separated from their ride, ran to the car so as to minimize holding up traffic behind the car, etc. The main problem with the idea of Oswald getting a ride is it makes no sense. To drive him to his rooming house? Then to drive him again to the Texas Theatre so that he could meet a getaway car at the Theatre? Makes no sense. If the car was Oswald's getaway why bother with the rooming house and Texas Theatre at all, since he already is in a getaway car. The car pickup idea also rules out--on no real evidence apart from the questionable Roger Craig distance identification which probably was mistaken--the possibility that Oswald was not part of any conspiracy but realized there had been one and he somehow needed to escape on his own.

-- The planting of the bus ticket by officers on Oswald's person is really a problem and a stretch, not because its absolutely impossible, but because it is so ad hoc and makes little actual sense. First it requires at least one of those officers, plus at least one superior commanding officer, that makes two so far, to be complicit in planting that evidence, and being trusted never to reveal it or talk for the rest of their life. And for what reason or motivation? To remove Oswald having a car ride which would mean he was involved in a conspiracy with others? But a lot of the best researchers think the Oswald-alone idea was not even the original idea, but rather an Oswald-part-of-Cuban-conspiracy was the original idea. But here one has to suppose multiple officers including regular police on the street were involved in planting a bus transfer on Oswald, which is not evidence of guilt, not something that actually matters in incriminating Oswald, but rather far-fetched so as to remove the possibility that he was not on his own. This is just a lot of complexity, and all founded on no substantial evidence.

-- Bledsoe the landlady is admittedly a weak witness but it raises the question, if it wasn't Oswald she saw, how did she get involved in that in the first place. She imagined it on her own? Or was she put up to it? By the same handlers who gave the instructions to plant the bus transfer to the officers searching Oswald? This just gets too complex. Better: he had been her tenant for a week; she recognized him, was not wrong about that. On the torn shirt, that was completely her getting that from the agents showing her that jacket, which she then described in her testimony because she "knew" that was what he had worn. So she was a bit screwed up on her testimony. But her testimony is not necessary to reconstruct Oswald getting the cab that day as his mode of transportation to Oak Cliff.

-- On Whaley and the cab, I am inclined to give a cab driver quite a bit of credibility in identifying a passenger they carried sitting right next to them on the front seat. This is somewhat stronger evidence than eyewitnesses like the Tippit killer eyewitnesses who saw someone a few moments from a distance. As Whaley put it in his testimony and I believe it, as a cab driver it was his habit to quickly look over a new customer carefully, size him up, make a quick judgment before letting him into his cab, as a necessary survival skill. It doesn't matter that there was that business of #2 or #3 in the lineup mixup on the numbers: he never wavered in interviews etc. in saying his passenger was Oswald that he saw on TV. Furthermore his original statement said Oswald was wearing gray pants and I believe he said matching gray jacket but which the original FBI agent mistakenly wrote as "matching (gray) shirt" which was not correct. Later in his Warren Commission testimony Whaley changed the pants color from original gray to "faded blue", then had Oswald wearing his heavy blue jacket over the gray jacket which makes no sense. But that was months later. His original FBI interview had Oswald wearing gray pants and (reconstructed with the FBI report correction) matching gray jacket, pure and simple--which is what Oswald was wearing according to TSBD witnesses and Buell Wesley Frazier. Even in the video of Whaley that David Andrews posted above, right at 0:18 Whaley says "gray work clothes" with no mention of blue--and that video of Whaley was filmed after his WC testimony because elsewhere in that video he refers backward to it as past. I do think he added the "blue" and the "second blue jacket over the first" later, out of some kind of confusion or trying to cooperate or whatever when he was on the spot before the Warren Commission.  

-- On Oswald's movements. Yes Whaley's passenger gets out of the cab away from his rooming house and Whaley sees him walk away in the wrong direction (if it was; in the video he basically has Oswald crossing Beckley to the side of Beckley that the rooming house was up the street, which is not clearly walking away from it). But it is all consistent with Oswald acting evasively consistent with his leaving the TSBD immediately in the first place. That he was acting evasively is clear from how Earlene Roberts saw him standing at the northbound bus stop on Beckley after leaving the rooming house. I interpret that as Oswald knew she could see, knew that she would look and would see, and that was an intentional feint as if he was heading north (which she would report if asked), when actually he headed south when out of her sight, probably taking a bus south to the Texas Theatre.

-- Bottom line: if Oswald had an escape car pick him up, his stops at both the rooming house and then to the Texas Theatre, both alone, make no sense--because he already is in an escape car (if so) which can drive him wherever. Instead Oswald's movements all agree with a lone fugitive, who may or may not have believed he would meet someone in the Theatre. As to who he was running from, and why, those are other questions. 

-- Then there is this, from William Kelly, concerning the Rio Grande Building, 251 N. Field Street. (https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2019/06/view-from-snipers-nest.html )

. . . the Rio Grande building, - which included the Army Intelligence, Secret Service and the Emigration and Naturalization Service, who all shared the same cafeteria where Witt said he learned of the Kennedy’s distaste for umbrellas. Was it someone in cafeteria from Army Intelligence or the Secret Service who told Witt of the meaning of appeasement and symbol of the umbrella? It is a building that Oswald visited a number of times.

Supposedly the bus stop where Oswald walked to get on a bus from the TSBD, was right in front of that Rio Grande building. It has occurred to me--I don't know if to anyone else--that if Oswald had a contact with an agency (as his personal history makes plausible) that contact could well have been located in that Rio Grande building. Maybe he went there not to catch a bus but to try to find someone, then instead got on the bus, then the cab? Who knows. But the evidence that does stand out to me is Earlene seeing him at the rooming house, the Whaley ID outside of the police lineup, the bus transfer, Oswald alone in the theatre, and no evidence of any other travel mechanism to Oak Cliff (long-distance claimed sighting of him getting into a car by a witness who had never seen him before, not good enough). And supposedly he basically confirmed as much to Fritz in questioning, which was likely heard by witnesses in addition to Fritz. 

Anyway this is an alternative point of view on this one from someone who respects your work.

As far as I can tell, William Whaley decided on his own on Saturday morning that the accused assassin had been in his cab the previous day. Nobody told him to do so. At that moment, on Saturday morning,  no one in law enforcement, from the FBI to the Dallas Police to the Sheriff's Office had any idea that "Oswald" had been in a cab, right?

Now perhaps Whaley was mistaken, and the passenger whom he picked up at the Greyhound Bus Station around 12:45 and whom he drove to (either 500 or 700 N. Beckley) Oak Cliff merely  resembled "Oswald"  in Whaley's mind. 

Perhaps.

Harold Weisberg and Gil Jesus have done a fine job of demonstrating that Whaley's identification of "Oswald" would have been picked apart by a competent defense lawyer at trial. I totally agree - Whaley would not have been any help to the prosecution at trial.

But don't we all agree that Whaley really did pick up someone who generally looked like our "Oswald" at that time and place, and really did drive that same someone to somewhere on Beckley in Oak Cliff shortly before 1 pm ?

That can't be a coincidence, right?

[Karl Hilliard]

1 hour ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

As far as I can tell, William Whaley decided on his own on Saturday morning that the accused assassin had been in his cab the previous day. Nobody told him to do so. At that moment, on Saturday morning,  no one in law enforcement, from the FBI to the Dallas Police to the Sheriff's Office had any idea that "Oswald" had been in a cab, right?

 

 Told his superiors after seeing the evening paper [supposedly]. Also his memory had become enhanced 🐘

Quote

Mr. BALL. Did you notice how he was dressed?
Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir. I didn't pay much attention to it right then. But it all came back when I really found out who I had.

Mr. BALL. Later that day [Friday] did you--were you called down to the police department?
Mr. WHALEY. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. Were you the next day?
Mr. WHALEY. No, sir; they came and got me, sir, the next day after I told my superior when I saw in the paper his picture, I told my superiors that that had been my passenger that day at noon. They called up the police and they came up and got me.
Mr. BALL. When you saw in the newspaper the picture of the man?
Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. You went to your superior and told him you thought he was your passenger?
Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Did the Dallas police come out to see you?
Mr. WHALEY. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Or FBI agents?
Mr. WHALEY. The Dallas police came down and took me down and the FBI was waiting there.

 

 

[Paul Jolliffe]

2 hours ago, Karl Hilliard said:

 Told his superiors after seeing the evening paper [supposedly]. Also his memory had become enhanced 🐘

 

Thanks Karl for the testimony. However, that still tends to reinforce the probability that Whaley genuinely believed he had "Oswald" as a passenger on Friday. 

My point was simple: Whaley started all this by telling his superior at the cab company that "Oswald" was in his cab. Nobody told Whaley to do that. No one in law enforcement had any idea that "Oswald" had been in Whaley's cab until Saturday. 

Therefore, rightly or wrongly, the idea that "Oswald" had been in Whaley's cab started with Whaley and not law enforcement (as part of a set-up.)

Somebody really was in Whaley's cab, and that somebody resembled "Oswald", and that somebody really was dropped off in "Oswald's" neighborhood at about the time that "Oswald" was on the move. 

Either Whaley had the real "Oswald" or an impostor in his cab. 

 

 

[Karl Hilliard]

On 12/5/2021 at 5:08 PM, Paul Jolliffe said:

 

Therefore, rightly or wrongly, the idea that "Oswald" had been in Whaley's cab started with Whaley and not law enforcement (as part of a set-up.)

 

Or so he testified. Our readers are [or should be aware] that William Whaley was brought in 2 more times to testify. Once ... https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/whaley2.htm

Quote

Representative FORD. Did the man you identified have any reaction when they brought the group out, did he have any reaction that you noticed at the time you identified him?
Mr. WHALEY. Only that he was the only one that had the bruise on his head, sir. The only one who acted surly. In other words, I told this Commission this morning you wouldn't have had to have known who it was to have picked him out by the way he acted. But he was the man that I carried in my taxicab. I told them when I identified him.

Then again...  https://www.jfk-assassination.net/russ/testimony/whaley3.htm

David Belin rattled the hell out of Whaley about what number at the line-up was his choice. Six guys crammed into Whaley's cab and drove the route to Beckley---

Quote

Mr. BELIN. Let the record show that the stopwatch was 5 minutes and 30 seconds from the commencement of the ride to the end of the ride, and let the record further show that Dr: Goldberg and Mr. Robert Davis from the Texas attorney general's office and I walked back from the point where the Deponent Whaley told us he let the passenger off at the residence at 1026 North Beckley, and that this walk took 5 minutes and 45 seconds.
And let the record further show that after visiting the rooming house at 1026 North Beckley---that is what I call the "long way around route,"---was walked from 1026 North Beckley to the scene of the Tippit shooting, which took 17 minutes and 45 seconds at an average walking pace, and this route would be to take Beckley to 10th Street and then turn on 10th Street toward Patton, and this is not the most direct route. Rather, the most direct route would be to take Beckley to Davis Street and then turn left or east on Davis, walking a short block to Crawford, and taking Crawford to 10th, and then 10th east to Patton, or taking Davis Street directly to Patton, and taking Patton down to East 10th, and that the more direct nature of the later route appears from the map which I believe is Commission's Exhibit No. 371, which is the Dallas street map.

Years ago when I was curious, that is how I walked from 1026 to the Tippit shooting scene. It took me 18 minutes also....I kept wondering just where in hell am I going? Walking back is quicker...but it's also downhill.