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On film....

Reporter:  "Were you in the building at the time?"

Oswald:  "Naturally, if I work in that building, yes sir."

Oswald admits, on film, that he was inside the building at the time of the shooting.  Therefore, Oswald was not out by the front steps.  If Oswald was not out by the front steps, then he is not prayer man.  If Oswald is not prayer man, then who cares who prayer man was.

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1 hour ago, Bill Brown said:

On film....

Reporter:  "Were you in the building at the time?"

Oswald:  "Naturally, if I work in that building, yes sir."

Oswald admits, on film, that he was inside the building at the time of the shooting.  Therefore, Oswald was not out by the front steps.  If Oswald was not out by the front steps, then he is not prayer man.  If Oswald is not prayer man, then who cares who prayer man was.

So let’s get the full context 

 

Oswald: “I’d like to have some legal representation, these police officers have not allowed me to have any.” “I don’t know what this is all about”

Reporter: “Did you kill The President?”

Oswald: “No Sir I didn’t, people keep asking me that.”

 

Reporter: inaudible as another reporter is asking “Did you shoot The President”

Oswald: “I work in that building”

Reporter: “Where you in the building at the time?”

Oswald: “Naturally if I work in that building, yes Sir.”

 

Reporter: “Did you shoot The President?”

Oswald: “No, they are taking me in because of the fact that I lived in The Soviet Union.” “I’m just a patsy!”

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Indulging in semantics to convince oneself of Oswald's guilt ie 'in the building' is some sort of silver bullet to the Prayerman debate is a waste of time. I prefer Hosty's note, "Then went outside to watch P parade" as a better form of evidence for discussion.

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10 hours ago, Mike Kiely said:

Indulging in semantics to convince oneself of Oswald's guilt ie 'in the building' is some sort of silver bullet to the Prayerman debate is a waste of time. I prefer Hosty's note, "Then went outside to watch P parade" as a better form of evidence for discussion.

image.thumb.png.86cdb44d8035fec0e06caf4be6725d97.png

Just spit-balling here... It's pretty silly to push that Hosty took full-sentence notes in the room. So...when were these notes written? A day later? Two days later? Is it possible he misinterpreted his shorter more cryptic notes?  There's also this: The P Parade would mean the motorcade. When did the last cars drive by the TSBD? Is it possible Oswald said he walked out and saw the end of the motorcade? Or even that he walked out to see the motorcade? But missed it?

Hosty's notes are not the smoking gun people like to pretend they are... 

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It is obvious you are spit balling by the number of question marks. Yes, it is pretty silly to push that Hosty took full sentences when this is quite clearly a form of short-hand. As for misinterpreting his notes, this is a trained FBI man sitting in on an unrecorded interrogation of a man being questioned about the murder of the US president and a Dallas police officer, a man he stated he had been told to check up on and did so, as it turned out, he said, via his wife. You appear to have a very low opinion of Hosty considering he noted down Oswald's defence - whether it was contemporaneous, one day, two days, three weeks after the fact - which he must have known was not what either the Dallas police, his immediate superiors, or those in Washington such as Katzenbach wanted to hear. As for which part of the motorcade he was referring to; well I suppose it depends how fast his little legs could carry him down those stairs from the sixth floor, flying past Williams, Jarman and Norman - who hear neither an elevator move or footsteps above them or down the stairs from six to five, then across the landing to four - then overtaking Adams and Styles on the way. In short, Pat, I respectfully do not agree.

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21 hours ago, Robbie Robertson said:

So let’s get the full context 

 

Oswald: “I’d like to have some legal representation, these police officers have not allowed me to have any.” “I don’t know what this is all about”

Reporter: “Did you kill The President?”

Oswald: “No Sir I didn’t, people keep asking me that.”

 

Reporter: inaudible as another reporter is asking “Did you shoot The President”

Oswald: “I work in that building”

Reporter: “Where you in the building at the time?”

Oswald: “Naturally if I work in that building, yes Sir.”

 

Reporter: “Did you shoot The President?”

Oswald: “No, they are taking me in because of the fact that I lived in The Soviet Union.” “I’m just a patsy!”

Right.  And....?

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Why did Bart leave the forum, whether you believe the Prayerman or not, his work on it has been outstanding? It's fascinating, I am not sure, I am in the camp of Oswald being in the doorway, but I can't rule it out either. I will give this episode a listen. Robbie is doing a great job with these guests, we need more conversation, not less.

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On 8/3/2022 at 3:07 PM, Mike Kiely said:

It is obvious you are spit balling by the number of question marks. Yes, it is pretty silly to push that Hosty took full sentences when this is quite clearly a form of short-hand. As for misinterpreting his notes, this is a trained FBI man sitting in on an unrecorded interrogation of a man being questioned about the murder of the US president and a Dallas police officer, a man he stated he had been told to check up on and did so, as it turned out, he said, via his wife. You appear to have a very low opinion of Hosty considering he noted down Oswald's defence - whether it was contemporaneous, one day, two days, three weeks after the fact - which he must have known was not what either the Dallas police, his immediate superiors, or those in Washington such as Katzenbach wanted to hear. As for which part of the motorcade he was referring to; well I suppose it depends how fast his little legs could carry him down those stairs from the sixth floor, flying past Williams, Jarman and Norman - who hear neither an elevator move or footsteps above them or down the stairs from six to five, then across the landing to four - then overtaking Adams and Styles on the way. In short, Pat, I respectfully do not agree.

Uhhh... Those aren't Hosty's notes. What you think are Hosty's notes are the beginnings of a draft for a report written within a day or two of the assassination. It seems clear Hosty was going by memory as very little of this was in his original notes. It seems probable in fact that he cut a lot of this out of his subsequent report, seeing as it didn't jive with the recollections of his co-writer, Bookhout. 

Here are his original notes. The only reference to Oswald's departure from the building is on page 2, and says that Oswald "chose to go home because of confusion". So I was wrong in suggesting he misinterpreted his notes, as the incident was not even mentioned in his notes, and was something he thought he remembered later. 

 

 

P.S. I have done a mountain of research into the goings on in the building and it seems near certain Oswald was not on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting. It seems likely, moreover, that the actual shooter took an elevator down after the shooting and arrived on the first floor just after Adams and Styles went out the back, Lovelady and Shelley went back to the front of the building, and Baker and Truly went upstairs. There is strong reason to believe, moreover, that Shelley was standing by the front stairs when Oswald came down from the second floor, and that he did, in fact, tell Oswald it was okay to leave. 

Edited by Pat Speer
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2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

P.S. I have done a mountain of research into the goings on in the building and it seems near certain Oswald was not on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting. It seems likely, moreover, that the actual shooter took an elevator down after the shooting and arrived on the first floor just after Adams and Styles went out the back, Lovelady and Shelley went back to the front of the building, and Baker and Truly went upstairs. There is strong reason to believe, moreover, that Shelley was standing by the front stairs when Oswald came down from the second floor, and that he did, in fact, tell Oswald it was okay to leave. 

Pat,

Then why was the elevator stuck on the 5th floor?

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49 minutes ago, John Butler said:

Pat,

Then why was the elevator stuck on the 5th floor?

To be clear, Baker and Truly tried to call the elevator from the first floor, but it wouldn't come down. They thought it was stuck on the fifth, but it could have been the sixth. They then ran up the stairs. When they got to the fifth the west elevator was missing, so they took the east elevator up to the seventh floor, and from there went up on the roof. In the meantime, Jack Dougherty, who was a bit confused but was consistent on a few points which people tend to ignore, left the lunch room and went over to the west elevator, which was now on the first floor. He took it back upstairs and resumed work. A few minutes later, Baker and Truly came down from the roof, which was accessible by a hatch. The slamming of this hatch may very well have alerted Dougherty that something was going on above him. As they came down via elevator, moreover, Truly saw Dougherty on the fifth floor. It was then and only then that Dougherty came down and talked to Eddie Piper and was told the president had been shot. From this, Dougherty got it in his head that the sound he heard above him was a shot being fired at the President. But this never made any sense. Someone standing by the elevator on the fifth floor would not have heard a shot from the SN as coming from above, but as coming through the open windows in the SE corner inhabited by Norman, Williams, and Jarman.  There's also this: the official story never made sense because 1) a man standing by the elevator on the fifth would have been just a few yards of open space away from anyone running down the stairs, and 2) Norman, Jarman, and Williams failed to see Dougherty on the fifth just after the shooting, and Dougherty said he was unaware of them as well--even though they would have been running around and yammering on on what was an otherwise quiet open warehouse floor. 

It seems clear, then, that Dougherty was telling the truth on one of the points on which he was consistent--that he took the elevator upstairs minutes after 12:30 and not before, and that he arrived on the fifth floor minutes after Norman, Williams, and Jarman had gone down to the fourth floor. 

This problematic possibility--which should have been investigated--was smoothed over and buried by Joseph Ball, who interviewed Dougherty and used this opportunity to make Dougherty look retarded, when he was not. It should be pointed out, moreover, that just weeks before this testimony there was a kerfuffle within the WC and it staff, due to Ball, Belin, and Specter's desire to interview witnesses off the record, figure out what questions not to ask, an then re-interview them on the record. This was most distasteful to Redlich. But Ball, Belin, and Specter prevailed after Warren stepped in and declared that he wanted as "clean" a record as possible.

It should be noted as well that Ball was a legendary defense attorney, known for making prosecution witnesses look stupid or even retarded. In one of his most famous cases, he cleared a rapist by asking the victim to tell him the time on a clock, and then used the witness's inability to tell time to suggest she was so retarded that she couldn't possibly know if she'd been raped.

Dougherty was just another one of his victims. 

(I apologize if anyone is offended by my use of the "R" word.)

Edited by Pat Speer
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I'm confused, Pat.  Perhaps you can clear some things up.

You say the Hosty note Bart refers to in which Oswald said he was out front was not made at time of Oswald's questioning on the 22th, but a day or two later in while preparing a report with Bookout.  Hosty's original notes on the 22nd do not mention this.  Hosty, you said, wrote the second note "from memory", though surely after such a short interval everything was still fresh in his mind.

You don't say how you know this but perhaps you have done so elsewhere.  But your claim is hard to accept.  We're talking about Oswald's alibi--where he was when Kennedy was murdered. Which Hosty must have instantly recognized.  Yet he didn't think it was important enough to include in his original notes?  His alibi must have been the focus of that whole interrogation the first day, don't you think?

You say Hosty remembered the alibi a day or two later and wrote it down then.  You don't contest the legitimacy of the note, so I'm left to ponder why your claim about the separate notes matters. 

It's easy to understand why the alibi disappeared from the report and why it was was buried for so long.  It destroys the WR fairy tale.

You say you think it's a near certainty that Oswald was not on the 6th floor at the time of the shooting.  Seems clear to me too.  Where do you think he was if not on the front steps?  Your statements above all pertain to possible movements after the murder.

 

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22 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

I'm confused, Pat.  Perhaps you can clear some things up.

You say the Hosty note Bart refers to in which Oswald said he was out front was not made at time of Oswald's questioning on the 22th, but a day or two later in while preparing a report with Bookout.  Hosty's original notes on the 22nd do not mention this.  Hosty, you said, wrote the second note "from memory", though surely after such a short interval everything was still fresh in his mind.

You don't say how you know this but perhaps you have done so elsewhere.  But your claim is hard to accept.  We're talking about Oswald's alibi--where he was when Kennedy was murdered. Which Hosty must have instantly recognized.  Yet he didn't think it was important enough to include in his original notes?  His alibi must have been the focus of that whole interrogation the first day, don't you think?

You say Hosty remembered the alibi a day or two later and wrote it down then.  You don't contest the legitimacy of the note, so I'm left to ponder why your claim about the separate notes matters. 

It's easy to understand why the alibi disappeared from the report and why it was was buried for so long.  It destroys the WR fairy tale.

You say you think it's a near certainty that Oswald was not on the 6th floor at the time of the shooting.  Seems clear to me too.  Where do you think he was if not on the front steps?  Your statements above all pertain to possible movements after the murder.

 

It's a deduction. Criminal Investigators, doctors, lawyers, etc. don't take notes in full sentences. Secretaries do. The notes I posted were published by Hosty himself, and are clearly actual notes. The piece of paper subsequently discovered by Kamp while combing through Blunt's files is clearly a draft for a report. it is a misnomer that reports are written based entirely on notes. People quite often don't write down what they think they'll remember. I know that when I was in college I wrote down maybe 1/5 of the info that was discussed in class. I would say further that when attending JFK conferences I write down maybe 1/10 of the info that is discussed in a presentation. 

As far as the statements you think are an alibi--you're just assuming Hosty would have seen it that way, because you believe it means Oswald was outside at the time of the shooting. It doesn't say that. The statements of Carolyn Arnold and Jack Dougherty,  moreover, suggest that Oswald may have thought of going outside, but then thought better of it, and went back inside to a lunch room. It seems possible, then, that Oswald told Hosty he tried to go outside, and that Hosty--alone among those observing the interview--thought he said he actually went outside. 

I will grant you this, however. Hosty made numerous statements over the years in which he claimed Oswald confronted him during this first interview, because Hosty had been trying to talk to his wife. In Assignment Oswald, he added that Oswald subsequently apologized for this outburst. Well, if I'm remembering correctly, neither Oswald's yelling at Hosty, nor his subsequent apology, were mentioned in any of the reports on this interview published by the Warren Commission. And this leaves room to wonder what else was left out. 

 

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