Did Baker ever suffer any blowback over Oswald?

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Allen Lowe writes:

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one thing we are missing is that Baker's story about Oswald and the lunchroom is possibly a fiction concocted as part of the cover up. His original affidavit, made on 11/22/63, says "as we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway....I called to the man and he turned around, and came back toward me...the manager said "I know that man he works here."

Describing someone who does not resemble Oswald, and placing the encounter on the wrong floor, of course generates suspicion that the man Baker encountered was not Oswald. One might argue that Baker simply got some of the details wrong. He was in an unfamiliar building, and he'd never seen Oswald before or since.

But in fact Baker did see Oswald afterwards. When Baker was sitting in an office in the police HQ, writing his statement (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338819/), Oswald was actually in the room with him! As Baker explained to the Warren Commission:

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As I was in the homicide office there writing this, giving this affidavit, I got hung in one of those little small offices back there, while the Secret Service took Mr. Oswald in there and questioned him and I couldn't get out by him while they were questioning him, and I did get to see him at that time.

(WCHE, vol.3, pp.257–258: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=39#relPageId=265)

Baker would surely have known that the description he gave did not match that of the suspect who was with him in "one of those little small offices". We might also expect him to have written that the man he encountered was the very man who had been arrested.

[Tommy Tomlinson]

18 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Baker didn't see the rifle. He said many times he thought something had happened on the roof of the TSBD or Dal-Tex, and he ran up there to get a better look. IOW, he would have looked pretty foolish if he'd raced in there and shut down the building and it turned out the sounds he'd heard had been backfires. 

It seems possible, moreover, that he talked to Truly as they ran in, and Truly placed Shelley at the front door and Piper at the back, to stop anyone from running out. This is but one of the many areas avoided by Ball and Belin. 

It is an odd omission from the double act when you think about it. It would have added to the case against Oswald if they could have set the scene as being quickly "Closed down" by Shelley etc after he had left, and limiting the pool of alternates who could have come and gone.

It seems a free hit for them PR wise. Or am I missing something?

[Pat Speer]

10 minutes ago, Tommy Tomlinson said:

It is an odd omission from the double act when you think about it. It would have added to the case against Oswald if they could have set the scene as being quickly "Closed down" by Shelley etc after he had left, and limiting the pool of alternates who could have come and gone.

It seems a free hit for them PR wise. Or am I missing something?

A decision was made early on that no one should be blamed but Oswald. The Secret Service was not to be blamed for staying out all night drinking. Baker was not to be blamed for letting Oswald go inside the building. And no one was to be blamed for Oswald's escape from the building. 

It must have dawned on Ball and Belin that the west entrance/exit through the loading dock was open and unwatched for some time after the shooting. If they tried to make a big deal about the front entrance being shut down, it would have opened up that can of worms. I suspect then they made a conscious decision not to look into how Oswald escaped, and whether or not he would have been seen by Shelley. If they established that Shelley was by the front entrance when they thought Oswald left the building, after all, it would have cut it into their plan to use Shelley to shut down Adams, whose statements and testimony had called into question Oswald's guilt. Better to let everyone think Oswald just walked out the front without being noticed than to have that.

[Tommy Tomlinson]

3 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

A decision was made early on that no one should be blamed but Oswald. The Secret Service was not to be blamed for staying out all night drinking. Baker was not to be blamed for letting Oswald go inside the building. And no one was to be blamed for Oswald's escape from the building. 

It must have dawned on Ball and Belin that the west entrance/exit through the loading dock was open and unwatched for some time after the shooting. If they tried to make a big deal about the front entrance being shut down, it would have opened up that can of worms. I suspect then they made a conscious decision not to look into how Oswald escaped, and whether or not he would have been seen by Shelley. If they established that Shelley was by the front entrance when they thought Oswald left the building, after all, it would have cut it into their plan to use Shelley to shut down Adams, whose statements and testimony had called into question Oswald's guilt. Better to let everyone think Oswald just walked out the front without being noticed than to have that.

Yes... that makes sense.

I suppose they would have also needed to co-opt Shelley, and if he had in any way been shown to be at fault for allowing Oswald to leave, I doubt his cooperation would have been quite so forthcoming to the point of him being a liability.

[Denis Morissette]

Officer W.E. Barnett covered the TSBD doorway thinking that officer Joe Smith would be covering the back entrance, which he did not. Joe Smith ran to the grassy knoll where he was informed by a lady that "they shot from the bushes". I doubt that Smith got any problems because of that.  

Ellis asked me to be gentle on Baker if I ever talked to him on that issue. Baker was very sensitive on that issue. I never did.

[Tommy Tomlinson]

On 12/30/2022 at 10:50 PM, Denis Morissette said:

Officer W.E. Barnett covered the TSBD doorway thinking that officer Joe Smith would be covering the back entrance, which he did not. Joe Smith ran to the grassy knoll where he was informed by a lady that "they shot from the bushes". I doubt that Smith got any problems because of that.  

Ellis asked me to be gentle on Baker if I ever talked to him on that issue. Baker was very sensitive on that issue. I never did.

 Sorry Denis, I missed this reply.

That's interesting to know. If people knew he was sensitive about it it suggests it may have come up on occasion.

My google-fu is weak today, any idea for a link to something that points out what time Barnett took up his position?

[Denis Morissette]

4 hours ago, Tommy Tomlinson said:

 Sorry Denis, I missed this reply.

That's interesting to know. If people knew he was sensitive about it it suggests it may have come up on occasion.

My google-fu is weak today, any idea for a link to something that points out what time Barnett took up his position?

Thanks for asking since it led me to learn that Barnett's 6FM oral history is online.

https://emuseum.jfk.org/objects/38314/we-gene-barnett-oral-history

[Tommy Tomlinson]

1 hour ago, Denis Morissette said:

Thanks for asking since it led me to learn that Barnett's 6FM oral history is online.

https://emuseum.jfk.org/objects/38314/we-gene-barnett-oral-history

Splendid! I'll give that a watch tonight.

Thank you!