The Finding of the Sniper's Nest

[Alan Ford]

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I believe Euins wrote and signed a statement saying it was a white man before Oswald had even been arrested, but it would be interesting to nail this all down. It could be that he originally believed and said it was a black man, and was coerced into saying it was a white man after Oswald had been arrested. And that the DPD then covered their tracks. If so, well, then it appears he tried to wiggle out of it by saying he'd never said it was a black man or a white man. This might explain then why he was so scared in the years after the shooting, and why he kept such a low profile over the decades to follow. 

Indeed so. But the track-covering can hardly have begun as early as Insp. Sawyer's radio description.

By the time Mr. Euins was giving his affidavit, DPD had a consistent account of a white man seen

---------at the window (Mr. Brennan, Mr. Fischer, Mr. Edwards, & perhaps others lost to history)

---------by the rear stairs several floors up (Officer Baker)

---------running from the building (unnamed witness).

So a tendentious inference as to ethnicity was drawn from Mr. Euins' "white spot" description. And his on-the-scene insistence the shooter was 'colored' was deep-sixed.

A bit like the deep-sixing of Mr. Ochus Campbell's on-the-scene mention to reporters that Mr. Oswald had been seen shortly after the shooting in a storage room on the first floor. Officialdom saw to it that this pesky sighting would never make it into the official record. The incident was un-incidented. It never happened. And Mr. Campbell, like Mr. Euins, had little option but to play along with the scam.

[Alan Ford]

20 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

I discuss this on my website, in my Pinning the Tale on the Oswald chapter. They were both five flights up, above the noise of the street, and they both heard a loud sound well after others heard a loud sound. I conclude this sound was Baker and Truly slamming the hatch door to the roof, as they came back down. The key bit of testimony is actually Truly's. He said he saw Dougherty working on the fifth floor as they came down. So Dougherty comes out of the break room (or bathroom, let's be realistic) AFTER the shots were fired, and AFTER Baker and Truly have run upstairs, and goes back to work on the sixth, then down to the fifth (now vacant as Norman, Jarman, and Williams have already ran down to the fourth) and hears a loud sound from above--essentially the elevator shaft as opposed to the open window in the corner. He continues working as Baker and Truly descend in the east elevator, but then realizes from the noises outside that something is going on. Whereupon he descends in the west elevator and runs into Eddie Piper, who tells him Kennedy has been shot. This scenario answers numerous questions but was dismissed, if even pondered, by the WC lawyers because...it has Dougherty taking the west elevator up a few minutes after the shooting, when Baker and Truly said it was on a high floor just minutes before. IOW, if one puts together the pieces (Dougherty claiming he went upstairs after 12:30, his failure to see or hear N, W, and J on the fifth floor, their simultaneous failure to see him, his hearing a sound from above and not from the SE window, and Truly's seeing him on the fifth floor as he came down) in a manner that makes sense, it becomes obvious that some unidentified person took the west elevator down as Baker and Truly ran up.  

I do quite like this scenario, though I would propose a slightly different version:

1. Mr. Dougherty is still on his lunch break, sitting somewhere out on the shipping floor eating.

2. Officer Baker and Mr. Truly come running in. Officer Baker notices (as per his WC testimony) two white men, one of whom is sitting: this man is Mr. Dougherty.

3. Mr. Truly hollers for the west elevator, but.......... nothing doing. Both freight elevators are stuck on (about) the fifth floor. So they take the stairs instead.

4. Mr. Eddie Piper is on the scene. Mr. Dougherty, putting two and two together, asks Mr. Piper if Pres. Kennedy has been shot. Mr. Piper says he thinks so.

5. Next, the west elevator (the one Mr. Truly was trying to bring down) comes down to one. Off it step men whose faces are familiar to Mr. Dougherty: they are members of the external floor-laying crew that has been working on six.

6. A curious Mr. Dougherty decides to take that west elevator upstairs to have a look for himself.

7. He goes up to six and takes a look over by the south-facing windows. While he is standing by the SN he is noticed by Mrs. Lillian Mooneyham.

8. When he is back at the rear of the building again he hears a loud bang: it's the hatch door to the roof slamming shut.

9. Shortly after this, Officer Baker and Mr. Truly come down from seven in the east elevator. They see Mr. Dougherty on the sixth floor. As Officer Baker recognizes him as one of the two white men he saw on the first floor, he doesn't challenge him.

10. The three black workers on five do not see Mr. Dougherty, as he's a floor above. But Mr. Bonnie Ray Williams does see Officer Baker step off the elevator and take a look around the fifth floor:

11. Afterwards, Mr. Dougherty is told by Mr. Truly to take responsibility for the initial descent of the west elevator. So he pretends he went back to work at the normal time (12:45pm), so he can say his reason for being upstairs at the time of hearing a bang was he was 'getting stock'. He was doing no such thing. During his WC testimony he gets rather flustered as he tries to re-tell the required tall tale.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Alan Ford

[Pat Speer]

4 hours ago, Alan Ford said:

Indeed so. But the track-covering can hardly have begun as early as Insp. Sawyer's radio description.

By the time Mr. Euins was giving his affidavit, DPD had a consistent account of a white man seen

---------at the window (Mr. Brennan, Mr. Fischer, Mr. Edwards, & perhaps others lost to history)

---------by the rear stairs several floors up (Officer Baker)

---------running from the building (unnamed witness).

So a tendentious inference as to ethnicity was drawn from Mr. Euins' "white spot" description. And his on-the-scene insistence the shooter was 'colored' was deep-sixed.

A bit like the deep-sixing of Mr. Ochus Campbell's on-the-scene mention to reporters that Mr. Oswald had been seen shortly after the shooting in a storage room on the first floor. Officialdom saw to it that this pesky sighting would never make it into the official record. The incident was un-incidented. It never happened. And Mr. Campbell, like Mr. Euins, had little option but to play along with the scam.

The Campbell article is nonsense, IMO, as are most of the early articles. It  seems clear it was his mis-understanding of what he'd heard from others, perhaps even Truly, or even a misunderstanding on the part of the reporter. It should not be taken seriously, IMO, as Campbell swore he had no recollection of ever seeing Oswald in the building. 

(11-26-63 FBI report, CD5 p336) "Mr. Campbell advised he had viewed the Presidential Motorcade and subsequently heard the shots being fired from a point which he thought was near the railroad tracks located over the viaduct on Elm Street." (2-17-64 statement to the Dallas Police Department, box 3 folder 19 file 4 of the Dallas JFK Archive) "We then walked across Elm Street and stood on the curb near the parade as it turned from Houston Street down under the underpass. I heard the shots, it sounded like they came from the knoll near the railroad tracks. I thought it was fire crackers." (3-19-64 statement to the FBI, 22H638) “Mr. Truly and I decided to view the motorcade and took up a position next to the curb on Elm Street adjacent to the street signal light...I recall that shortly after the car in which the President was riding passed the Texas School Book Depository I heard shots being fired from a point which I thought was near the railroad tracks located over the viaduct on Elm Street…I have had occasion to view photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald and to the best of my recollection never saw him while he was employed at the Texas School Book Depository.” 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Donald Willis]

23 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Euins was almost certainly the source of both the Winchester 30-30 and the bald spot. Winchester 30-30's were probably the most famous automatic rifle in America, as a result of the TV show The Rifle Man, and most every teenage boy in America would associate a rapid volley of shots with that rifle. 

A  bit earlier, there was the James Stewart Western "Winchester '73" (1950).

[Donald Willis]

On 11/16/2023 at 10:57 AM, Pat Speer said:

Why pretend this is credible? This is Batchelor talking, not Sawyer, trying to remember what he'd heard a month before. No one saw anyone running out of the building with a gun. The 30-30/Winchester bit almost certainly came from the statements of Brennan and Euins. One of the top shows at the time was The Rifleman, in which Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain fired a Winchester rifle...a model that could be rapid fired. By telling the DPD he thought it was a Winchester, Euins was saying two of the shots rang out within a second or so of each other, and not the 3 seconds or so one would expect if it had been a bolt-action rifle. So the problem with the timing of the shots--that two of the shots were fired too close together to have come from the M/C rifle--was there from the beginning, in the very first witness statements. 

The dispatches are not only credible, they solve the mystery of how, supposedly, Brennan thought fit to estimate the shooter's height & weight, even though he thought that the man shooting was standing.  The solution: Those weren't Brennan's words.  Then there's the mystery of how Sawyer could have talked with Brennan, Sgt. Harkness, and Patrolman Hill before 12:45, when he, Sawyer, had to be told that there were sightings of a man on the fourth or fifth floor of the building.  About 12:50, finally, after being briefed by the dispatcher, Sawyer entered the building... Brennan could not have been Sawyer's source for the 12:44 description--the witness to the man running from the back of the depository was the source...

[Pat Speer]

8 minutes ago, Donald Willis said:

The dispatches are not only credible, they solve the mystery of how, supposedly, Brennan thought fit to estimate the shooter's height & weight, even though he thought that the man shooting was standing.  The solution: Those weren't Brennan's words.  Then there's the mystery of how Sawyer could have talked with Brennan, Sgt. Harkness, and Patrolman Hill before 12:45, when he, Sawyer, had to be told that there were sightings of a man on the fourth or fifth floor of the building.  About 12:50, finally, after being briefed by the dispatcher, Sawyer entered the building... Brennan could not have been Sawyer's source for the 12:44 description--the witness to the man running from the back of the depository was the source...

But they were Brennan's words. 

Howard Brennan was, as shown above, sitting on the Houston side of the wall encircling the fountain at Houston and Elm. He can be seen in the Zapruder and Bell films wearing a hard hat.

(11-22-63 statement to the Dallas Sheriff’s Department, 19H470) “ I was sitting on a ledge or wall near the intersection of Houston Street and Elm Street near the red light pole. I was facing in a northerly direction looking across the street from where I was sitting. I take this building across the street to be about 7 stories anyway in the east end of the building and the second row of windows from the top I saw a man in this window. I had seen him before the President's car arrived. He was just sitting up there looking down apparently waiting for the same thing I was to see the President. I did not notice anything unusual about this man. He was a white man in his early 30's, slender, nice looking, slender and would weigh about 165 to 175 pounds. He had on light colored clothing but definately not a suit. I proceeded to watch the President's car as it turned left at the corner where I was and about 50 yards from the intersection of Elm and Houston and to a point I would say the President's back was in line with the last windows I have previously described I heard what I thought was a back fire. It run in my mind that it might be someone throwing firecrackers out the window of the red brick building and I looked up at the building. I then saw this man I have described in the window and he was taking aim with a high powered rifle. I could see all of the barrel of the gun. I do not know if it had a scope on it or not. I was looking at the man in this windows at the time of the last explosion. Then this man let the gun down to his side and stepped down out of sight. He did not seem to be in any hurry. I could see this man from about his belt up. There was nothing unusual about him at all in appearance. I believe that I could identify this man if I ever saw him again." (Note that on the evening of the 22nd, around 7:00, Brennan was asked by Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels to look at Oswald in a line-up. Although he said that, of the men in the line-up, Oswald looked most like the man he'd seen fire a rifle earlier that day, he nevertheless refused to identify him.)

(11-23-63 FBI report based upon an 11-22-63 interview with agents Gaston C. Thompson and Robert C. Lish, CD5 p12-14) “He said the automobile had passed down Elm Street (going in a westerly direction) 30 yards from where he (Brennan) was seated, when he heard a loud report which he first thought to be the 'backfire' of an automobile. He said he does not distinctly remember a second shot but he remembers “more than one noise” as if someone was shooting fire crackers, and consequently he believes there must have been a second shot before he looked in the direction of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Upon hearing the report, or reports, he looked across the street to the Texas School Book Depository, where he saw a man in a window on the sixth floor near the southeast corner of the building. The man he observed in the window had what appeared to be a 'heavy' rifle in his hands. He could not tell whether or not this rifle had a telescopic sight, as the rifle was protruding only about half its length outside the window. He was positive that after he had observed this man in the window, he saw this person take 'deliberate aim' and fire a shot. He then observed this person take the rifle from his shoulder and hold it by the barrel of the rifle, as if he were resting the butt of the rifle on the floor. He said this individual observed the scene on the street below, and then stepped back from the window...Brennan described the man with the rifle as a white male, who appeared to be in his early 30's, about 5'10" tall, and around 165 pounds in weight. He said this individual was not wearing a hat and was dressed in 'light color clothes in the khaki line.' He added this individual may have been wearing a light-weight jacket or sweater; however, he could not be positive about the jacket or sweater. He advised he attended a lineup at the Dallas Police Department on November 22, 1963, on which occasion he picked Lee Harvey Oswald as the person most closely resembling the man he had observed with a rifle in the window of the Texas School Book Depository. He stated, however, he could not positively identify Oswald as the person he saw fire the rifle.”

 

From reviewing this stuff, I now believe Euins DID tell Harkness he saw a black man, and that he was then brought over to Sawyer, where he witnessed Brennan tell  Sawyer it was a white man. In deference to the white man who seemed sure of himself, he then changed his story. . 

Edited November 18, 2023 by Pat Speer

[Alan Ford]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

The Campbell article is nonsense, IMO, as are most of the early articles. It  seems clear it was his mis-understanding of what he'd heard from others, perhaps even Truly, or even a misunderstanding on the part of the reporter. It should not be taken seriously, IMO, as Campbell swore he had no recollection of ever seeing Oswald in the building. 

(11-26-63 FBI report, CD5 p336) "Mr. Campbell advised he had viewed the Presidential Motorcade and subsequently heard the shots being fired from a point which he thought was near the railroad tracks located over the viaduct on Elm Street." (2-17-64 statement to the Dallas Police Department, box 3 folder 19 file 4 of the Dallas JFK Archive) "We then walked across Elm Street and stood on the curb near the parade as it turned from Houston Street down under the underpass. I heard the shots, it sounded like they came from the knoll near the railroad tracks. I thought it was fire crackers." (3-19-64 statement to the FBI, 22H638) “Mr. Truly and I decided to view the motorcade and took up a position next to the curb on Elm Street adjacent to the street signal light...I recall that shortly after the car in which the President was riding passed the Texas School Book Depository I heard shots being fired from a point which I thought was near the railroad tracks located over the viaduct on Elm Street…I have had occasion to view photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald and to the best of my recollection never saw him while he was employed at the Texas School Book Depository.” 

This is about as convincing as 'Biffle and Underwood misheard Euins' or 'Euins misheard Brennan'. Two different reporters (Mr. Biffle being one of them) heard about the first-floor storage room sighting.

Mr. Campbell (TSBD Vice-President) knew the difference between first floor and second floor, storage room and lunchroom.

As for his later official on-the-record indirect disavowal, it's about as solid as Mr. Euins' "white man".

[Alan Ford]

1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:

But they were Brennan's words. 

Howard Brennan was, as shown above, sitting on the Houston side of the wall encircling the fountain at Houston and Elm. He can be seen in the Zapruder and Bell films wearing a hard hat.

(11-22-63 statement to the Dallas Sheriff’s Department, 19H470) “ I was sitting on a ledge or wall near the intersection of Houston Street and Elm Street near the red light pole. I was facing in a northerly direction looking across the street from where I was sitting. I take this building across the street to be about 7 stories anyway in the east end of the building and the second row of windows from the top I saw a man in this window. I had seen him before the President's car arrived. He was just sitting up there looking down apparently waiting for the same thing I was to see the President. I did not notice anything unusual about this man. He was a white man in his early 30's, slender, nice looking, slender and would weigh about 165 to 175 pounds. He had on light colored clothing but definately not a suit. I proceeded to watch the President's car as it turned left at the corner where I was and about 50 yards from the intersection of Elm and Houston and to a point I would say the President's back was in line with the last windows I have previously described I heard what I thought was a back fire. It run in my mind that it might be someone throwing firecrackers out the window of the red brick building and I looked up at the building. I then saw this man I have described in the window and he was taking aim with a high powered rifle. I could see all of the barrel of the gun. I do not know if it had a scope on it or not. I was looking at the man in this windows at the time of the last explosion. Then this man let the gun down to his side and stepped down out of sight. He did not seem to be in any hurry. I could see this man from about his belt up. There was nothing unusual about him at all in appearance. I believe that I could identify this man if I ever saw him again." (Note that on the evening of the 22nd, around 7:00, Brennan was asked by Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels to look at Oswald in a line-up. Although he said that, of the men in the line-up, Oswald looked most like the man he'd seen fire a rifle earlier that day, he nevertheless refused to identify him.)

(11-23-63 FBI report based upon an 11-22-63 interview with agents Gaston C. Thompson and Robert C. Lish, CD5 p12-14) “He said the automobile had passed down Elm Street (going in a westerly direction) 30 yards from where he (Brennan) was seated, when he heard a loud report which he first thought to be the 'backfire' of an automobile. He said he does not distinctly remember a second shot but he remembers “more than one noise” as if someone was shooting fire crackers, and consequently he believes there must have been a second shot before he looked in the direction of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Upon hearing the report, or reports, he looked across the street to the Texas School Book Depository, where he saw a man in a window on the sixth floor near the southeast corner of the building. The man he observed in the window had what appeared to be a 'heavy' rifle in his hands. He could not tell whether or not this rifle had a telescopic sight, as the rifle was protruding only about half its length outside the window. He was positive that after he had observed this man in the window, he saw this person take 'deliberate aim' and fire a shot. He then observed this person take the rifle from his shoulder and hold it by the barrel of the rifle, as if he were resting the butt of the rifle on the floor. He said this individual observed the scene on the street below, and then stepped back from the window...Brennan described the man with the rifle as a white male, who appeared to be in his early 30's, about 5'10" tall, and around 165 pounds in weight. He said this individual was not wearing a hat and was dressed in 'light color clothes in the khaki line.' He added this individual may have been wearing a light-weight jacket or sweater; however, he could not be positive about the jacket or sweater. He advised he attended a lineup at the Dallas Police Department on November 22, 1963, on which occasion he picked Lee Harvey Oswald as the person most closely resembling the man he had observed with a rifle in the window of the Texas School Book Depository. He stated, however, he could not positively identify Oswald as the person he saw fire the rifle.”

 

From reviewing this stuff, I now believe Euins DID tell Harkness he saw a black man, and that he was then brought over to Sawyer, where he witnessed Brennan tell  Sawyer it was a white man. In deference to the white man who seemed sure of himself, he then changed his story. . 

Mr. Speer, I'm afraid the problem doesn't go away when you leave un-bolded Mr. Brennan's clothing descriptions!

As for Mr. Euins, maybe in January he overheard Asst. Chief Batchelor telling S.A. Shanklin about the man seen running from the Depository, and then-----------in deference to the white man who seemed sure of himself------------changed his story for the WC.

I mean, whatever gets us where we want to go, right?

[Pat Speer]

5 minutes ago, Alan Ford said:

Mr. Speer, I'm afraid the problem doesn't go away when you leave un-bolded Mr. Brennan's clothing descriptions!

As for Mr. Euins, maybe in January he overheard Asst. Chief Batchelor telling S.A. Shanklin about the man seen running from the Depository, and then-----------in deference to the white man who seemed sure of himself------------changed his story for the WC.

I mean, whatever gets us where we want to go, right?

What problem? You have invented an invisible man that nobody saw or recalled seeing and have him saying he saw a man running with a rifle, which nobody else recalled seeing. And to what end? To have someone running from the building with a rifle? Which makes no sense to begin with...

The construction worker Euins saw was Brennan. The odds are far greater that Euins misremembered what Brennan told Sawyer than that some unidentified (and apparently unphotographed) construction worker appeared and told Sawyer something no one else witnessed, and then vanished without a trace. Is that really what you are pushing? And, if so, where does that get us? 

To me. it's 100% clear that a number of researchers have moved on from the majority of the photographic evidence being fake, to the majority of the initial reports and testimony being faked. 

And I think that's ludicrous. The evidence brought before the Warren Commission provided clear and concrete reasons to believe there was more than one shooter, and that Oswald was not among them. To assume the evidence was all sculpted to bring them to a false conclusion is ridiculous, IMO, and lets them off the hook. 

[Donald Willis]

16 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

What problem? You have invented an invisible man that nobody saw or recalled seeing and have him saying he saw a man running with a rifle, which nobody else recalled seeing. And to what end? To have someone running from the building with a rifle? Which makes no sense to begin with...

The construction worker Euins saw was Brennan. The odds are far greater that Euins misremembered what Brennan told Sawyer than that some unidentified (and apparently unphotographed) construction worker appeared and told Sawyer something no one else witnessed, and then vanished without a trace. Is that really what you are pushing? And, if so, where does that get us? 

To me. it's 100% clear that a number of researchers have moved on from the majority of the photographic evidence being fake, to the majority of the initial reports and testimony being faked. 

And I think that's ludicrous. The evidence brought before the Warren Commission provided clear and concrete reasons to believe there was more than one shooter, and that Oswald was not among them.

Good enough.  I won't quibble about the details then.  Though I'm not sure that Oswald was not among them.  I used to think that, but I'm not so sure now, mainly because I don't think that the conspirators would have Oswald running loose around 12:30 if he was going to be their patsy.

 

To assume the evidence was all sculpted to bring them to a false conclusion is ridiculous, IMO, and lets them off the hook. 

 

[Alan Ford]

44 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

What problem? You have invented an invisible man that nobody saw or recalled seeing and have him saying he saw a man running with a rifle,

I have invented nothing, Mr. Speer. Your claim is that Asst. Chief Batchelor invented him, and that his invention just so happened to coincide with Mr. Euins' bizarre 'mis-hearing' of what Mr. Brennan described. Perfectly absurd.

Perfectly absurd also is the idea that Insp. Sawyer would forget or unaccountably decide not to include Mr. Brennan's clothing description in his radio message.

As for your article of faith that the 'investigating' authorities had a uniquely non-interventionist policy with regard to one and only one type of evidence (the visual record)----------such that they wouldn't have dreamed of tampering with it even if it meant letting the public see Mr. Oswald's alibi-----------I find it quaint and irrational. It's little more than a way of evading photo-analytic claims with a wave of the hand.

The "majority of the photographic evdience being fake" strawman you construct does your argument no favors either btw.

But hey, one thing at a time. The issue of photo-alteration is not to the purpose in the present discussion. The Sawyer description, and its explanation by Asst. Chief Batchelor, is.

[Pat Speer]

34 minutes ago, Alan Ford said:

I have invented nothing, Mr. Speer. Your claim is that Asst. Chief Batchelor invented him, and that his invention just so happened to coincide with Mr. Euins' bizarre 'mis-hearing' of what Mr. Brennan described. Perfectly absurd.

Perfectly absurd also is the idea that Insp. Sawyer would forget or unaccountably decide not to include Mr. Brennan's clothing description in his radio message.

As for your article of faith that the 'investigating' authorities had a uniquely non-interventionist policy with regard to one and only one type of evidence (the visual record)----------such that they wouldn't have dreamed of tampering with it even if it meant letting the public see Mr. Oswald's alibi-----------I find it quaint and irrational. It's little more than a way of evading photo-analytic claims with a wave of the hand.

The "majority of the photographic evdience being fake" strawman you construct does your argument no favors either btw.

But hey, one thing at a time. The issue of photo-alteration is not to the purpose in the present discussion. The Sawyer description, and its explanation by Asst. Chief Batchelor, is.

We must live on different planets. You think Batchelor's weeks-later memory of what he heard second-hand is more reliable than the contemporaneous reports and statements of those actually involved? 

Brennan was the only construction worker Euins saw talking to Sawyer. If you don't believe that, then find us something where he said there were two.  Brennan said he saw a man and could identify him, and gave a description of this man. Euins thought this man had a bald spot. Euins thought the man had been firing an automatic rifle, such as a Winchester. These facts were combined in Sawyer's broadcast, and apparently in Euins' memory, where he came to believe Brennan had said he saw such a man running away. When you read all the statements and testimony, moreover, you will find that Brennan DID see someone, actually three someones, on the upper floors, who then left the building. And had them stopped and returned to the building. Perhaps Euins witnessed this and came to believe Brennan had previously seen the man he saw on the sixth floor leave the building.

In any event, to create my website, I had to read and/or transcribe hundreds of interviews, and hundreds of articles for which witnesses were interviewed. And the witnesses are not consistent with each other or even with themselves, and are in fact, incredibly erratic. Not because the evil guv'ment made them erratic, but because human memory is erratic, and incredibly prone to suggestion. 

So, no, piecing together what one cop said he heard weeks or months after the shooting, with what one kid said he recalled months later, is not reliable at all. It could be true. It could not. But in this case we have dozens of witnesses who were in the vicinity of the building who spoke up right after the shooting, and there is no record of any of them saying THEY saw a man run from the building with a rifle. It did not happen.

And, as stated, it doesn't even pass a simple smell test. "Yes, I killed the President, and now I'm gonna get away...by running straight out into a crowd while carrying a rifle!" Ludicrous. 

 

[Alan Ford]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Brennan was the only construction worker Euins saw talking to Sawyer

Mr. SPECTER. Do you know what the name of that policeman was, who was in that position where you have marked C?

Mr. EUINS. No, sir. He was kind of an old policeman. I ran down and got him. And he ran up here.

Mr. SPECTER. You mean--

Mr. EUINS. The Book Depository Building. Then he called some more cars. They got all the way around the building. And then after that, well, he seen another man. Another man told him he seen a man run out the back.

Which policeman is Mr. Euins talking about here? A policeman he had first seen at the point marked 'C' in CE365:

The officer at 'C' ain't Insp. Sawyer. So Insp. Sawyer ain't the officer Mr. Euins heard take a description from a witness who claimed to have "seen a man run out the back".

Whether you like it or not, Mr. Speer, Mr. Euins is independently corroborating what Asst. Chief Batchelor has told S.A. Drain: a man was seen running out the back of the Depository. The coincidence you are trying to posit between the shared 'error' of Asst. Chief Batchelor & Mr. Euins is just off-the-spectrum silly.

Heck, even Captain Fritz didn't try to pretend that no witness claiming to have seen a man run out the back had even existed. His solution? To dismiss the witness and their description of the suspect as irrelevant to the case!

 

Capt. Fritz's spin is admirably candid: The man couldn't have been Oswald, therefore the witness was hallucinating.

Are we seriously to believe that Insp. Sawyer doesn't know the name of Mr. Howard Brennan by the time he is appearing before the WC? For Pete's sake, the man is the official investigation's star TSBD witness! All he has to do to seal the lie is say, 'He was a construction guy who I later learned has the name Brennan'. And yet, Insp. Sawyer knows it's too risky thus to falsely identify the source of the suspect description. Best he can do is serve up this intelligence-insulting garbage: "I remember that he was a white man and that he wasn't young and he wasn't old. He was there."

Edited November 19, 2023 by Alan Ford

[Chris Davidson]

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

 The evidence brought before the Warren Commission provided clear and concrete reasons to believe there was more than one shooter, and that Oswald was not among them. To assume the evidence was all sculpted to bring them to a false conclusion is ridiculous, IMO, and lets them off the hook. 

The Warren Commission created their own false evidence.

Start with CE884 and JFK's head height at extant z313.

[Robert Morrow]

On 11/16/2023 at 12:57 PM, Pat Speer said:

Why pretend this is credible? This is Batchelor talking, not Sawyer, trying to remember what he'd heard a month before. No one saw anyone running out of the building with a gun. The 30-30/Winchester bit almost certainly came from the statements of Brennan and Euins. One of the top shows at the time was The Rifleman, in which Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain fired a Winchester rifle...a model that could be rapid fired. By telling the DPD he thought it was a Winchester, Euins was saying two of the shots rang out within a second or so of each other, and not the 3 seconds or so one would expect if it had been a bolt-action rifle. So the problem with the timing of the shots--that two of the shots were fired too close together to have come from the M/C rifle--was there from the beginning, in the very first witness statements. 

The 30/30 Winchester description, reported on the Dallas Police Dispatcher call at 12:44PM, came from the people who were framing the pre-selected CIA patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. These were the same people using Marguerite Oswald's May, 1960 physical description of Oswald to the FBI to frame Oswald for the JFK assassination: "5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds." (FBI John Fain memo of May 12, 1960 - https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=95569#relPageId=145)

It did NOT come from Brennan or Euins. Not uncoincidentally:

Lyndon Johnson had a 30-30 Winchester Rifle and he shot it a lot. Source: longtime LBJ Secret Service attendant Mike Howard (who I think is still alive on 2/26/24)

 https://www.fieldandstream.com/guns/great-guns-american-presidents/

 QUOTE

 Lyndon Johnson loved his ranch in Texas and made a point of being there for the opening of deer season. Mike Howard, head of President Johnson’s secret service detail, recalled that “the president carried a chrome-plated 30-30 Winchester rifle in the car, all the time, and he went deer hunting with people, and they hunted from the car.” Beside deer, Johnson shot hogs and audad on the ranch. “He shot that Winchester a lot,” said Howard. “I know, because there were times when we (the Secret Service) ducked under my pickup to keep him from shooting us.”

 As vice-president, Johnson once brought John Kennedy to the ranch to hunt deer. Accounts of the hunt vary. Johnson insisted Kennedy enjoyed it and had to be restrained from shooting more deer. Kennedy claimed to hate it, although he did relent and hang a mount from the hunt in White House when Johnson gave it to him.

 UNQUOTE

 [“11 Great Guns of American Presidents,” Phil Bourjaily, Field and Stream, April 2, 2021]

 

 

Edited February 26 by Robert Morrow