Longtime JFK Researcher To Speak at Union College

[Benjamin Cole]

https://www.union.edu/news/stories/202404/jfk-assassination-focus-special-ucall-presentation

Not much new herein, but Bob Saltzman has been at this a long time, and deserves a nod. 

(Unimportant side note: More than 150 years ago, Union was one of the big four – right up there with Harvard, Yale and Princeton – before losing ground amid a scandal over college finances.) 

JFK assassination focus of special UCALL presentation

Publication Date

April 16, 2024

For more than 50 years, Robert (Bob) Saltzman ’69 has been on a quest to uncover the truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a car with his wife, First Lady Jackie Onassis and Texas Gov. John Connally.

Robert (Bob) Saltzman ’69 has been on a quest for decades to uncover the truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Lee Harvey Oswald was immediately charged with the killing. Two days later, local nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald. The events sparked a wave of conspiracy theories about who may have been behind the Kennedy assassination.

A week after Kennedy’s killing, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, convened a panel led by Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court, to investigate the case. The Warren Commission’s main conclusion was that Oswald acted alone.

That finding has been challenged over the decades by many, including Saltzman, who took a keen interest in the case shortly after graduating from Union with a B.S. in electrical engineering. Saltzman became a member of the Committee to Investigate Assassinations (CTIA), an unofficial, private organization founded in 1968. He opened a branch office in Niskayuna, N.Y.

Through exhaustive research, Saltzman has amassed a trove of material related to the assassination that he says conclusively proves that there was a conspiracy, and that Oswald likely was not the assassin.

Saltzman has given scores of lectures and presentations around the country on his findings, including at Union.

On Saturday, April 20, from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. in the College Park Hall ballroom, Saltzman returns to his alma mater to present “The Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Fact or Fiction? (JFK Assassination 101 and my 54-year journey Seeking the Truth).” The presentation, free and open to the public, is a special event hosted by UCALL – the Union College Academy of Lifelong Learning. Registration is suggested.

The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When did you first become interested in the JFK assassination?

In late 1964 when the Warren Commission report was released, which I read. I then read an early book about the topic. I wrote a paper in high school about it but did not pursue it in earnest until 1970, after I had graduated from Union.

How did you become involved in the Committee to Investigate Assassinations?

In May 1970, I read an article about the assassination and the use of computers with the photographic evidence. I wrote to the executive editor of the CTIA offering my help. I subsequently developed a comprehensive computer data base and information retrieval system for JFK assassination related evidence and research. The following year, I was asked to fill in for the author of the article I had read. He was supposed to give a presentation for the organization.

Is the committee still active?

It is now the Assassination Archives and Research Center. The founder, and my mentor, Bernard Fensterwald Jr. unfortunately died unexpectedly in 1991.

How much material have you collected related to the assassination?

Quite a bit over 54 years. A huge library of books, images, slides, film, videos, artifacts, documents – much of which I am trying to donate to libraries and other researchers and organizations to carry on the work as I get older.

The central conclusion of the Warren Commission’s 888-page report was that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, firing three bullets from a sixth-floor window, the third of which killed Kennedy. Why do you think the Warren Commission’s findings were flawed?

There is virtually nothing about the Warren Commission’s conclusions that is accurate. They are inconsistent with the evidence in their own 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits, and they blatantly ignored a huge amount of evidence, in addition to vast amounts that were intentionally withheld by government officials at the highest levels. Several of the Commission members did not even want to sign it. The documented proof has been uncovered over the years. Fundamentally, their conclusions are flawed by the simple fact that they defy observations, science and human capabilities.

In most recent polls, 70 percent or more of U.S. adults believe that there was a conspiracy, and also want all of the JFK related records to be released.

In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which mandated that materials related to John F. Kennedy’s killing be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration and that all records be publicly disclosed by 2017. Yet some records remain sealed. Do you think those records could shed more light on what happened?

They likely do. It is not unreasonable to ask the question, “Why are they still hidden after 60 years?” What is there to hide, if this was just the act of a single “lone nut” with no discernable ability or motive? Why have congressional mandates for their release been stonewalled by government agencies and ignored by presidents? Last fall we actually brought a lawsuit against President Biden requesting that he follow the law and have all of the documents released as mandated by the ARCA. It is still an active case in court. In fairness, Obama and Trump did not release them either, despite their commitment to do so. RFK, Jr., has been making a campaign issue of this. Many of the documents that have been released are so highly redacted that they are of little value.

Why do you think, more than 60 years after the assassination, people like you remain obsessed with the case?

I do not feel that I have been obsessed with this event, but maybe rather meticulous, thorough and persistent over a long period of time. I stay with it because of my concerns about the implications of what happened in 1963 affecting us all to this day, well beyond the disenfranchisement that resulted from the murder of an elected president. In general, I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories, but this event is well beyond being a theory. All indications are that the same forces of “hidden government” are still in play today – maybe even more powerful (with potential outcomes that could be very unsettling).

Finally, who killed JFK?

If I knew that answer I would probably not be speaking about it only at Union College. However, over the years, and with document releases and research, the evidence becomes clearer about the who and why. The CIA, FBI or organized crime did not kill JFK. However, there are clearly elements of people in these organizations who appear to have been involved, and had aggregated their resources and expertise to make it happen. It may have been motived by ardent anti-communist and extreme hawkish military types, with counterparts in the CIA, and anti-Castro Cuban community, with assistance from organized crime. Evidence shows that even Oswald was working for both the CIA and FBI. The evidence also shows that he was not knowingly involved in the assassination, but was set up to become exactly what he stated he was after he was arrested and before he was conveniently silenced – a patsy.

[Bill Brown]

8 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

https://www.union.edu/news/stories/202404/jfk-assassination-focus-special-ucall-presentation

Not much new herein, but Bob Saltzman has been at this a long time, and deserves a nod. 

(Unimportant side note: More than 150 years ago, Union was one of the big four – right up there with Harvard, Yale and Princeton – before losing ground amid a scandal over college finances.) 

JFK assassination focus of special UCALL presentation

Publication Date

April 16, 2024

For more than 50 years, Robert (Bob) Saltzman ’69 has been on a quest to uncover the truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a car with his wife, First Lady Jackie Onassis and Texas Gov. John Connally.

Robert (Bob) Saltzman ’69 has been on a quest for decades to uncover the truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Lee Harvey Oswald was immediately charged with the killing. Two days later, local nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald. The events sparked a wave of conspiracy theories about who may have been behind the Kennedy assassination.

A week after Kennedy’s killing, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, convened a panel led by Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court, to investigate the case. The Warren Commission’s main conclusion was that Oswald acted alone.

That finding has been challenged over the decades by many, including Saltzman, who took a keen interest in the case shortly after graduating from Union with a B.S. in electrical engineering. Saltzman became a member of the Committee to Investigate Assassinations (CTIA), an unofficial, private organization founded in 1968. He opened a branch office in Niskayuna, N.Y.

Through exhaustive research, Saltzman has amassed a trove of material related to the assassination that he says conclusively proves that there was a conspiracy, and that Oswald likely was not the assassin.

Saltzman has given scores of lectures and presentations around the country on his findings, including at Union.

On Saturday, April 20, from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. in the College Park Hall ballroom, Saltzman returns to his alma mater to present “The Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Fact or Fiction? (JFK Assassination 101 and my 54-year journey Seeking the Truth).” The presentation, free and open to the public, is a special event hosted by UCALL – the Union College Academy of Lifelong Learning. Registration is suggested.

The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

When did you first become interested in the JFK assassination?

In late 1964 when the Warren Commission report was released, which I read. I then read an early book about the topic. I wrote a paper in high school about it but did not pursue it in earnest until 1970, after I had graduated from Union.

How did you become involved in the Committee to Investigate Assassinations?

In May 1970, I read an article about the assassination and the use of computers with the photographic evidence. I wrote to the executive editor of the CTIA offering my help. I subsequently developed a comprehensive computer data base and information retrieval system for JFK assassination related evidence and research. The following year, I was asked to fill in for the author of the article I had read. He was supposed to give a presentation for the organization.

Is the committee still active?

It is now the Assassination Archives and Research Center. The founder, and my mentor, Bernard Fensterwald Jr. unfortunately died unexpectedly in 1991.

How much material have you collected related to the assassination?

Quite a bit over 54 years. A huge library of books, images, slides, film, videos, artifacts, documents – much of which I am trying to donate to libraries and other researchers and organizations to carry on the work as I get older.

The central conclusion of the Warren Commission’s 888-page report was that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, firing three bullets from a sixth-floor window, the third of which killed Kennedy. Why do you think the Warren Commission’s findings were flawed?

There is virtually nothing about the Warren Commission’s conclusions that is accurate. They are inconsistent with the evidence in their own 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits, and they blatantly ignored a huge amount of evidence, in addition to vast amounts that were intentionally withheld by government officials at the highest levels. Several of the Commission members did not even want to sign it. The documented proof has been uncovered over the years. Fundamentally, their conclusions are flawed by the simple fact that they defy observations, science and human capabilities.

In most recent polls, 70 percent or more of U.S. adults believe that there was a conspiracy, and also want all of the JFK related records to be released.

In 1992, Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act, which mandated that materials related to John F. Kennedy’s killing be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration and that all records be publicly disclosed by 2017. Yet some records remain sealed. Do you think those records could shed more light on what happened?

They likely do. It is not unreasonable to ask the question, “Why are they still hidden after 60 years?” What is there to hide, if this was just the act of a single “lone nut” with no discernable ability or motive? Why have congressional mandates for their release been stonewalled by government agencies and ignored by presidents? Last fall we actually brought a lawsuit against President Biden requesting that he follow the law and have all of the documents released as mandated by the ARCA. It is still an active case in court. In fairness, Obama and Trump did not release them either, despite their commitment to do so. RFK, Jr., has been making a campaign issue of this. Many of the documents that have been released are so highly redacted that they are of little value.

Why do you think, more than 60 years after the assassination, people like you remain obsessed with the case?

I do not feel that I have been obsessed with this event, but maybe rather meticulous, thorough and persistent over a long period of time. I stay with it because of my concerns about the implications of what happened in 1963 affecting us all to this day, well beyond the disenfranchisement that resulted from the murder of an elected president. In general, I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories, but this event is well beyond being a theory. All indications are that the same forces of “hidden government” are still in play today – maybe even more powerful (with potential outcomes that could be very unsettling).

Finally, who killed JFK?

If I knew that answer I would probably not be speaking about it only at Union College. However, over the years, and with document releases and research, the evidence becomes clearer about the who and why. The CIA, FBI or organized crime did not kill JFK. However, there are clearly elements of people in these organizations who appear to have been involved, and had aggregated their resources and expertise to make it happen. It may have been motived by ardent anti-communist and extreme hawkish military types, with counterparts in the CIA, and anti-Castro Cuban community, with assistance from organized crime. Evidence shows that even Oswald was working for both the CIA and FBI. The evidence also shows that he was not knowingly involved in the assassination, but was set up to become exactly what he stated he was after he was arrested and before he was conveniently silenced – a patsy.

 

"The evidence also shows that he was not knowingly involved in the assassination, but was set up to become exactly what he stated he was after he was arrested and before he was conveniently silenced – a patsy."

 

It's entirely amateurish to believe that Oswald was saying, during his "patsy" statement, that dark sinister forces were conspiring to frame him for the assassination.

You have to take Oswald's statement in it's entirety (which most conspiracy advocates never do)...

"They have taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union.  I'm just a patsy."

"They" is very obviously the Dallas Police Department.  Oswald is clearly (if you consider the statement in it's totality) saying that the Dallas Police are questioning him/charging him  for no other reason than he lived in Russia.

 

[Robert Morrow]

2 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

 

"The evidence also shows that he was not knowingly involved in the assassination, but was set up to become exactly what he stated he was after he was arrested and before he was conveniently silenced – a patsy."

 

It's entirely amateurish to believe that Oswald was saying, during his "patsy" statement, that dark sinister forces were conspiring to frame him for the assassination.

You have to take Oswald's statement in it's entirety (which most conspiracy advocates never do)...

"They have taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union.  I'm just a patsy."

"They" is very obviously the Dallas Police Department.  Oswald is clearly (if you consider the statement in it's totality) saying that the Dallas Police are questioning him/charging him  for no other reason than he lived in Russia.

 

Here is absolute proof that the Dallas Police Department was involved in the frame up of Oswald.

Absolute Proof Lee Harvey Oswald was a *pre-selected patsy* for the JFK assassination: “5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds” https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2023/01/5-feet-10-inches-165-pounds-is-absolute.html  Dallas Police Dispatcher was immediately using Marguerite Oswald’s description of Lee given to Dallas FBI in May, 1960

 

[Bill Brown]

18 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

Here is absolute proof that the Dallas Police Department was involved in the frame up of Oswald.

Absolute Proof Lee Harvey Oswald was a *pre-selected patsy* for the JFK assassination: “5 feet 10 inches, 165 pounds” https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2023/01/5-feet-10-inches-165-pounds-is-absolute.html  Dallas Police Dispatcher was immediately using Marguerite Oswald’s description of Lee given to Dallas FBI in May, 1960

 

 

Howard Brennan gave a description to Herb Sawyer, who then put it out over the police radio.

 

[Benjamin Cole]

7 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

 

"The evidence also shows that he was not knowingly involved in the assassination, but was set up to become exactly what he stated he was after he was arrested and before he was conveniently silenced – a patsy."

 

It's entirely amateurish to believe that Oswald was saying, during his "patsy" statement, that dark sinister forces were conspiring to frame him for the assassination.

You have to take Oswald's statement in it's entirety (which most conspiracy advocates never do)...

"They have taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union.  I'm just a patsy."

"They" is very obviously the Dallas Police Department.  Oswald is clearly (if you consider the statement in it's totality) saying that the Dallas Police are questioning him/charging him  for no other reason than he lived in Russia.

 

BB-

Thanks for you comment.

I do not think JFKA CT researchers take that one "patsy" statement as the conclusive evidence of LHO's involvement in the JFKA.

The "patsy" is part of a huge mosaic. Many of us fully admit that the whole mosaic is not completed---and even you should be outraged that the Biden Administration has done what appears to be a permanent snuff job on the JFK Records Act, and 4000 records, perhaps more, have been buried. 

As you may know, researcher Jefferson Morley has shown that records pertaining to CIA officer George Joannides in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 have been put six-feet under. Really...after 60 years, records of what Joannides was doing in New Orleans in 1963 are threat to national security? Was Joannides involved with LHO? There are solid reasons to suspect as much.

My own guess is LHO was inveigled into what he believed was an anti-Castro red flag op. Instead it became the JFKA, but LHO was in it up to his eyeballs (to outside observers), and he knew it. 

My take is LHO was a CIA asset, and that explains his sojourn to Russia, and later involvement with anti-Castro and Castro elements in New Orleans and Dallas. BTW, the CIA had literally thousands of assets in the US at the time, due to the Cuba situation, and those assets were largely Cuban exiles and other mercs, but also plenty of former Nazis and Eastern Europeans. 

If only a fragment of these various CIA assets, all with the means and motivation, decided to undertake the JFKA....then you have the intel-state involved (even if unwillingly) in the JFKA, but in extremis to keep that story blacked out. 

That's IMHO, and I am sticking with it. 

BTW, LHO was not referring to the DPD as framing him as the patsy. He meant the DPD acting on behalf of the intel state. 

My own guess is the DPD was not involved in the JFKA, pre-event. 

 

Edited April 18 by Benjamin Cole

[Robert Morrow]

7 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

 

Howard Brennan gave a description to Herb Sawyer, who then put it out over the police radio.

 

How can you trust a man who wrote a book "I, Witless to History?" The DPD got Brennan to lie after the death of Oswald so they could frame Oswald, which is what the DPD was doing within 14 minutes of JFK being shot. No, Brennan did not give that description to Herb Sawyer. Both men were lying about that.

[Robert Morrow]

Bill Simpich’s State Secret, Chapter 6 is critical to understanding the Frame-Up of Oswald

 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/State_Secret_Chapter6.html

 An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene

Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm.

Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt.

The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject.

Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26.

Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140.

J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. For whatever reason, Hoover was not willing to go along with the Warren Commission’s finding that credited Brennan as the tipster. The HSCA took the same approach as Hoover and did not rely on Brennan in any way. The powerful evidence that Brennan was not the “unidentified citizen” can be reviewed in the attached endnote.[ 3 ]

Sawyer was asked if he personally received the “5’10”/165” tip, and he said that he did. When Sawyer was asked to describe the tipster, he said, “I don’t remember what he was wearing. I remember that he was a white man and that he wasn’t young and he wasn’t old. He was there. That is the only two things that I can remember about him.”[ 4 ] On another occasion, he said the man was middle-aged.

The tip about the five-ten/165 pound man is even more remarkable when you realize that Sawyer reported the witness’ claim that the five-ten/165 pound man was “carrying what looked to be a 30-30, or some type of Winchester rifle”.[ 5 ] When asked if the shooter “was still supposed to be in the building”, Sawyer responded “unknown if he was there in the first place”.

The five-ten/165 tip made it from Sawyer to Hoover in minutes. Hoover circulated among his top officers a chronology of what he learned in the first couple of hours after the assassination. At 1:07 pm CST, Shanklin told Hoover that “he had just received word the President was shot with a Winchester rifle”.[ 6 ] Sawyer’s tip was the only news regarding a Winchester. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all.

Something else to think about is that the CIA and the FBI both had computers in 1963. Within a very short period of time, a Soviet defector and Dallas resident such as Lee Harvey Oswald would have leaped right out from the CIA’s Records Integration Division. As we have seen, the “five-ten/165” Oswald description was embedded right in FBI agent John Fain’s May 12, 1960 memo that CIA officer Bill Bright went to great lengths to include in the CIA’s Records Integration Division files. (See Chapter 1)

I believe that Sawyer was telling the truth. He was told that a man was carrying a Winchester rifle, and that he was 5 foot 10, 165, about 30, with a slender build. It wouldn’t take long to find out which book depository employee fit that rough description.

I don’t believe the unknown witness was telling the truth. The unknown witness was part of an assassination team. He was nondescript: White, not too young, not too old, clothing unknown. I conclude that fifteen minutes after the assassination, Oswald was swept into this case by someone with access to the FBI reports or the CIA HQ description of Oswald as “five feet ten, 165”[ 7 ], and knew how to get it onto the police radio.[ 8 ]

Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting

After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home.

Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ]

The Warren Commission asked three officers if they could explain Tippit’s movements on November 22. Not only could none of them offer a reasonable explanation, but none of them even knew that the dispatcher ordered Tippit to go to the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The Warren Commission also asked police chief Jesse Curry about Jackson’s strange order to Tippit at 12:45 pm, with special concern because it was mysteriously omitted from the original transcription. As one wag put it, Curry suggested that Tippit had moved out of his assigned district to search for his own murderer.

In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ]

What makes this all even more intriguing is that even by the time of Tippit’s death at about 1:09, Oswald has not yet been identified as an assassination suspect because the shells were not found until 1:12. Even after the rifle was found a little later, no one was able to tie the gun or shells to Oswald until early the next morning after visiting Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago, where “Alex Hidell” had mail-ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano found on the sixth floor. Nor was Oswald noticed as missing from the Depository until well into the afternoon.

By around 1 pm, Oswald had reached his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes, grabbed his revolver, and went back out the door. A police car beeped outside Oswald’s home shortly before he left. The distance from Oswald’s house to theater was about a mile – three minutes if he got a ride, at least fifteen minutes if he was on foot. It was roughly the same calculus if Oswald headed towards the Tippit crime scene.

I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt.

Burroughs didn’t have much to offer the Warren Commission - it would be good to find out how he was prepared before his questioning - although he did hear from the shoe store owner down the street that someone had slipped into the theater without paying. This “someone” may have done it precisely to draw attention to Oswald. Burroughs didn’t know who it was, but believed that anyone who did that had gone straight up the stairs to the balcony because otherwise he would have had the right angle to see who it was. Oswald was arrested on the ground floor. He told the Warren Commission, “I hope I helped you some”, and the response was merely, “Yes, I hope you did too.”

Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears.

Burroughs also saw someone who looked a lot like Oswald arrested about four minutes after he was. This Oswald look-alike was taken out through the rear of the theater, rather than the front. Bernard Haire, who ran his business Bernie’s Hobby House two doors away from the theater, thought he had seen Oswald taken away through the rear doors for more than twenty-five years. When he learned that he had seen someone else, he was absolutely stunned.

Burroughs’ story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the opening credits to the movie, then got up quickly and sat down next to someone else. Researcher Dale Myers states that the opening credits for the 1 pm movie ran at 1:20 pm.[ 12 ] The account from neighboring shoe store owner Johnny Brewer was that someone furtively entered the theater without paying at about 1:30 pm. That may have been when someone else entered, or it may have been Oswald after going outside to look for his contact. When Brewer saw the suspicious man enter the theater, he contacted the ticket-taker, and she called the police.

Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills.

Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot. Domingo Benavides, a key witness, was driving his car when he saw Tippit step out of his police car and reach for his gun as he walked towards the front of the car. When the young man saw Tippit draw, he pulled out his gun from his coat pocket and fired several shots at Tippit. The time of the shooting is estimated at 1:09.[ 14 ]

Another witness, Jack Tatum, reported that the gunman then stepped forward and administered a coup de grace to Tippit’s head. The Tippit autopsy report reflected a shot to the head from point-blank range. The HSCA believed that a coup de grace indicated that “this action, which is often encountered in gangland murders…is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension.” Oswald was hardly a professional hitman, and this evidence is extraordinarily important.

One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds"

[Bill Brown]

12 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

How can you trust a man who wrote a book "I, Witless to History?" The DPD got Brennan to lie after the death of Oswald so they could frame Oswald, which is what the DPD was doing within 14 minutes of JFK being shot. No, Brennan did not give that description to Herb Sawyer. Both men were lying about that.

 

Completely unrelated to Herb Sawyer putting out the physical description over the police radio moments after talking to Howard Brennan.

 

[Bill Brown]

10 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

Bill Simpich’s State Secret, Chapter 6 is critical to understanding the Frame-Up of Oswald

 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/State_Secret_Chapter6.html

 An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene

Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm.

Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt.

The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject.

Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26.

Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140.

J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. For whatever reason, Hoover was not willing to go along with the Warren Commission’s finding that credited Brennan as the tipster. The HSCA took the same approach as Hoover and did not rely on Brennan in any way. The powerful evidence that Brennan was not the “unidentified citizen” can be reviewed in the attached endnote.[ 3 ]

Sawyer was asked if he personally received the “5’10”/165” tip, and he said that he did. When Sawyer was asked to describe the tipster, he said, “I don’t remember what he was wearing. I remember that he was a white man and that he wasn’t young and he wasn’t old. He was there. That is the only two things that I can remember about him.”[ 4 ] On another occasion, he said the man was middle-aged.

The tip about the five-ten/165 pound man is even more remarkable when you realize that Sawyer reported the witness’ claim that the five-ten/165 pound man was “carrying what looked to be a 30-30, or some type of Winchester rifle”.[ 5 ] When asked if the shooter “was still supposed to be in the building”, Sawyer responded “unknown if he was there in the first place”.

The five-ten/165 tip made it from Sawyer to Hoover in minutes. Hoover circulated among his top officers a chronology of what he learned in the first couple of hours after the assassination. At 1:07 pm CST, Shanklin told Hoover that “he had just received word the President was shot with a Winchester rifle”.[ 6 ] Sawyer’s tip was the only news regarding a Winchester. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all.

Something else to think about is that the CIA and the FBI both had computers in 1963. Within a very short period of time, a Soviet defector and Dallas resident such as Lee Harvey Oswald would have leaped right out from the CIA’s Records Integration Division. As we have seen, the “five-ten/165” Oswald description was embedded right in FBI agent John Fain’s May 12, 1960 memo that CIA officer Bill Bright went to great lengths to include in the CIA’s Records Integration Division files. (See Chapter 1)

I believe that Sawyer was telling the truth. He was told that a man was carrying a Winchester rifle, and that he was 5 foot 10, 165, about 30, with a slender build. It wouldn’t take long to find out which book depository employee fit that rough description.

I don’t believe the unknown witness was telling the truth. The unknown witness was part of an assassination team. He was nondescript: White, not too young, not too old, clothing unknown. I conclude that fifteen minutes after the assassination, Oswald was swept into this case by someone with access to the FBI reports or the CIA HQ description of Oswald as “five feet ten, 165”[ 7 ], and knew how to get it onto the police radio.[ 8 ]

Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting

After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home.

Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ]

The Warren Commission asked three officers if they could explain Tippit’s movements on November 22. Not only could none of them offer a reasonable explanation, but none of them even knew that the dispatcher ordered Tippit to go to the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The Warren Commission also asked police chief Jesse Curry about Jackson’s strange order to Tippit at 12:45 pm, with special concern because it was mysteriously omitted from the original transcription. As one wag put it, Curry suggested that Tippit had moved out of his assigned district to search for his own murderer.

In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ]

What makes this all even more intriguing is that even by the time of Tippit’s death at about 1:09, Oswald has not yet been identified as an assassination suspect because the shells were not found until 1:12. Even after the rifle was found a little later, no one was able to tie the gun or shells to Oswald until early the next morning after visiting Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago, where “Alex Hidell” had mail-ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano found on the sixth floor. Nor was Oswald noticed as missing from the Depository until well into the afternoon.

By around 1 pm, Oswald had reached his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes, grabbed his revolver, and went back out the door. A police car beeped outside Oswald’s home shortly before he left. The distance from Oswald’s house to theater was about a mile – three minutes if he got a ride, at least fifteen minutes if he was on foot. It was roughly the same calculus if Oswald headed towards the Tippit crime scene.

I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt.

Burroughs didn’t have much to offer the Warren Commission - it would be good to find out how he was prepared before his questioning - although he did hear from the shoe store owner down the street that someone had slipped into the theater without paying. This “someone” may have done it precisely to draw attention to Oswald. Burroughs didn’t know who it was, but believed that anyone who did that had gone straight up the stairs to the balcony because otherwise he would have had the right angle to see who it was. Oswald was arrested on the ground floor. He told the Warren Commission, “I hope I helped you some”, and the response was merely, “Yes, I hope you did too.”

Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears.

Burroughs also saw someone who looked a lot like Oswald arrested about four minutes after he was. This Oswald look-alike was taken out through the rear of the theater, rather than the front. Bernard Haire, who ran his business Bernie’s Hobby House two doors away from the theater, thought he had seen Oswald taken away through the rear doors for more than twenty-five years. When he learned that he had seen someone else, he was absolutely stunned.

Burroughs’ story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the opening credits to the movie, then got up quickly and sat down next to someone else. Researcher Dale Myers states that the opening credits for the 1 pm movie ran at 1:20 pm.[ 12 ] The account from neighboring shoe store owner Johnny Brewer was that someone furtively entered the theater without paying at about 1:30 pm. That may have been when someone else entered, or it may have been Oswald after going outside to look for his contact. When Brewer saw the suspicious man enter the theater, he contacted the ticket-taker, and she called the police.

Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills.

Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot. Domingo Benavides, a key witness, was driving his car when he saw Tippit step out of his police car and reach for his gun as he walked towards the front of the car. When the young man saw Tippit draw, he pulled out his gun from his coat pocket and fired several shots at Tippit. The time of the shooting is estimated at 1:09.[ 14 ]

Another witness, Jack Tatum, reported that the gunman then stepped forward and administered a coup de grace to Tippit’s head. The Tippit autopsy report reflected a shot to the head from point-blank range. The HSCA believed that a coup de grace indicated that “this action, which is often encountered in gangland murders…is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension.” Oswald was hardly a professional hitman, and this evidence is extraordinarily important.

One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds"

 

"I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt."

 

Nonsense.

The police asked Burroughs, while the search was going on inside the theater, if he had seen the guy and Burroughs told them that he had not.

This would mean that Burroughs is lying a couple of decades later when he says he sold popcorn to the guy.

 

[Bill Brown]

13 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

Bill Simpich’s State Secret, Chapter 6 is critical to understanding the Frame-Up of Oswald

 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/State_Secret_Chapter6.html

 An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene

Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm.

Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt.

The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject.

Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26.

Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140.

J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. For whatever reason, Hoover was not willing to go along with the Warren Commission’s finding that credited Brennan as the tipster. The HSCA took the same approach as Hoover and did not rely on Brennan in any way. The powerful evidence that Brennan was not the “unidentified citizen” can be reviewed in the attached endnote.[ 3 ]

Sawyer was asked if he personally received the “5’10”/165” tip, and he said that he did. When Sawyer was asked to describe the tipster, he said, “I don’t remember what he was wearing. I remember that he was a white man and that he wasn’t young and he wasn’t old. He was there. That is the only two things that I can remember about him.”[ 4 ] On another occasion, he said the man was middle-aged.

The tip about the five-ten/165 pound man is even more remarkable when you realize that Sawyer reported the witness’ claim that the five-ten/165 pound man was “carrying what looked to be a 30-30, or some type of Winchester rifle”.[ 5 ] When asked if the shooter “was still supposed to be in the building”, Sawyer responded “unknown if he was there in the first place”.

The five-ten/165 tip made it from Sawyer to Hoover in minutes. Hoover circulated among his top officers a chronology of what he learned in the first couple of hours after the assassination. At 1:07 pm CST, Shanklin told Hoover that “he had just received word the President was shot with a Winchester rifle”.[ 6 ] Sawyer’s tip was the only news regarding a Winchester. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all.

Something else to think about is that the CIA and the FBI both had computers in 1963. Within a very short period of time, a Soviet defector and Dallas resident such as Lee Harvey Oswald would have leaped right out from the CIA’s Records Integration Division. As we have seen, the “five-ten/165” Oswald description was embedded right in FBI agent John Fain’s May 12, 1960 memo that CIA officer Bill Bright went to great lengths to include in the CIA’s Records Integration Division files. (See Chapter 1)

I believe that Sawyer was telling the truth. He was told that a man was carrying a Winchester rifle, and that he was 5 foot 10, 165, about 30, with a slender build. It wouldn’t take long to find out which book depository employee fit that rough description.

I don’t believe the unknown witness was telling the truth. The unknown witness was part of an assassination team. He was nondescript: White, not too young, not too old, clothing unknown. I conclude that fifteen minutes after the assassination, Oswald was swept into this case by someone with access to the FBI reports or the CIA HQ description of Oswald as “five feet ten, 165”[ 7 ], and knew how to get it onto the police radio.[ 8 ]

Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting

After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home.

Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ]

The Warren Commission asked three officers if they could explain Tippit’s movements on November 22. Not only could none of them offer a reasonable explanation, but none of them even knew that the dispatcher ordered Tippit to go to the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The Warren Commission also asked police chief Jesse Curry about Jackson’s strange order to Tippit at 12:45 pm, with special concern because it was mysteriously omitted from the original transcription. As one wag put it, Curry suggested that Tippit had moved out of his assigned district to search for his own murderer.

In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ]

What makes this all even more intriguing is that even by the time of Tippit’s death at about 1:09, Oswald has not yet been identified as an assassination suspect because the shells were not found until 1:12. Even after the rifle was found a little later, no one was able to tie the gun or shells to Oswald until early the next morning after visiting Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago, where “Alex Hidell” had mail-ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano found on the sixth floor. Nor was Oswald noticed as missing from the Depository until well into the afternoon.

By around 1 pm, Oswald had reached his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes, grabbed his revolver, and went back out the door. A police car beeped outside Oswald’s home shortly before he left. The distance from Oswald’s house to theater was about a mile – three minutes if he got a ride, at least fifteen minutes if he was on foot. It was roughly the same calculus if Oswald headed towards the Tippit crime scene.

I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt.

Burroughs didn’t have much to offer the Warren Commission - it would be good to find out how he was prepared before his questioning - although he did hear from the shoe store owner down the street that someone had slipped into the theater without paying. This “someone” may have done it precisely to draw attention to Oswald. Burroughs didn’t know who it was, but believed that anyone who did that had gone straight up the stairs to the balcony because otherwise he would have had the right angle to see who it was. Oswald was arrested on the ground floor. He told the Warren Commission, “I hope I helped you some”, and the response was merely, “Yes, I hope you did too.”

Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears.

Burroughs also saw someone who looked a lot like Oswald arrested about four minutes after he was. This Oswald look-alike was taken out through the rear of the theater, rather than the front. Bernard Haire, who ran his business Bernie’s Hobby House two doors away from the theater, thought he had seen Oswald taken away through the rear doors for more than twenty-five years. When he learned that he had seen someone else, he was absolutely stunned.

Burroughs’ story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the opening credits to the movie, then got up quickly and sat down next to someone else. Researcher Dale Myers states that the opening credits for the 1 pm movie ran at 1:20 pm.[ 12 ] The account from neighboring shoe store owner Johnny Brewer was that someone furtively entered the theater without paying at about 1:30 pm. That may have been when someone else entered, or it may have been Oswald after going outside to look for his contact. When Brewer saw the suspicious man enter the theater, he contacted the ticket-taker, and she called the police.

Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills.

Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot. Domingo Benavides, a key witness, was driving his car when he saw Tippit step out of his police car and reach for his gun as he walked towards the front of the car. When the young man saw Tippit draw, he pulled out his gun from his coat pocket and fired several shots at Tippit. The time of the shooting is estimated at 1:09.[ 14 ]

Another witness, Jack Tatum, reported that the gunman then stepped forward and administered a coup de grace to Tippit’s head. The Tippit autopsy report reflected a shot to the head from point-blank range. The HSCA believed that a coup de grace indicated that “this action, which is often encountered in gangland murders…is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension.” Oswald was hardly a professional hitman, and this evidence is extraordinarily important.

One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds"

 

"Burroughs also saw someone who looked a lot like Oswald arrested about four minutes after he was. This Oswald look-alike was taken out through the rear of the theater, rather than the front. Bernard Haire, who ran his business Bernie’s Hobby House two doors away from the theater, thought he had seen Oswald taken away through the rear doors for more than twenty-five years. When he learned that he had seen someone else, he was absolutely stunned."

 

One could make a pretty good argument that Bernard Haire is captured in a photo out in front of the Texas Theater as crowds gathered to get a look at the potential assassin.  If true, then Haire would be lying when he said that "all these years, I had always believed Oswald was taken out the back blah blah blah..."

 

[Bill Brown]

18 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

Bill Simpich’s State Secret, Chapter 6 is critical to understanding the Frame-Up of Oswald

 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/State_Secret_Chapter6.html

 An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene

Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm.

Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt.

The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject.

Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26.

Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140.

J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. For whatever reason, Hoover was not willing to go along with the Warren Commission’s finding that credited Brennan as the tipster. The HSCA took the same approach as Hoover and did not rely on Brennan in any way. The powerful evidence that Brennan was not the “unidentified citizen” can be reviewed in the attached endnote.[ 3 ]

Sawyer was asked if he personally received the “5’10”/165” tip, and he said that he did. When Sawyer was asked to describe the tipster, he said, “I don’t remember what he was wearing. I remember that he was a white man and that he wasn’t young and he wasn’t old. He was there. That is the only two things that I can remember about him.”[ 4 ] On another occasion, he said the man was middle-aged.

The tip about the five-ten/165 pound man is even more remarkable when you realize that Sawyer reported the witness’ claim that the five-ten/165 pound man was “carrying what looked to be a 30-30, or some type of Winchester rifle”.[ 5 ] When asked if the shooter “was still supposed to be in the building”, Sawyer responded “unknown if he was there in the first place”.

The five-ten/165 tip made it from Sawyer to Hoover in minutes. Hoover circulated among his top officers a chronology of what he learned in the first couple of hours after the assassination. At 1:07 pm CST, Shanklin told Hoover that “he had just received word the President was shot with a Winchester rifle”.[ 6 ] Sawyer’s tip was the only news regarding a Winchester. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all.

Something else to think about is that the CIA and the FBI both had computers in 1963. Within a very short period of time, a Soviet defector and Dallas resident such as Lee Harvey Oswald would have leaped right out from the CIA’s Records Integration Division. As we have seen, the “five-ten/165” Oswald description was embedded right in FBI agent John Fain’s May 12, 1960 memo that CIA officer Bill Bright went to great lengths to include in the CIA’s Records Integration Division files. (See Chapter 1)

I believe that Sawyer was telling the truth. He was told that a man was carrying a Winchester rifle, and that he was 5 foot 10, 165, about 30, with a slender build. It wouldn’t take long to find out which book depository employee fit that rough description.

I don’t believe the unknown witness was telling the truth. The unknown witness was part of an assassination team. He was nondescript: White, not too young, not too old, clothing unknown. I conclude that fifteen minutes after the assassination, Oswald was swept into this case by someone with access to the FBI reports or the CIA HQ description of Oswald as “five feet ten, 165”[ 7 ], and knew how to get it onto the police radio.[ 8 ]

Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting

After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home.

Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ]

The Warren Commission asked three officers if they could explain Tippit’s movements on November 22. Not only could none of them offer a reasonable explanation, but none of them even knew that the dispatcher ordered Tippit to go to the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The Warren Commission also asked police chief Jesse Curry about Jackson’s strange order to Tippit at 12:45 pm, with special concern because it was mysteriously omitted from the original transcription. As one wag put it, Curry suggested that Tippit had moved out of his assigned district to search for his own murderer.

In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ]

What makes this all even more intriguing is that even by the time of Tippit’s death at about 1:09, Oswald has not yet been identified as an assassination suspect because the shells were not found until 1:12. Even after the rifle was found a little later, no one was able to tie the gun or shells to Oswald until early the next morning after visiting Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago, where “Alex Hidell” had mail-ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano found on the sixth floor. Nor was Oswald noticed as missing from the Depository until well into the afternoon.

By around 1 pm, Oswald had reached his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes, grabbed his revolver, and went back out the door. A police car beeped outside Oswald’s home shortly before he left. The distance from Oswald’s house to theater was about a mile – three minutes if he got a ride, at least fifteen minutes if he was on foot. It was roughly the same calculus if Oswald headed towards the Tippit crime scene.

I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt.

Burroughs didn’t have much to offer the Warren Commission - it would be good to find out how he was prepared before his questioning - although he did hear from the shoe store owner down the street that someone had slipped into the theater without paying. This “someone” may have done it precisely to draw attention to Oswald. Burroughs didn’t know who it was, but believed that anyone who did that had gone straight up the stairs to the balcony because otherwise he would have had the right angle to see who it was. Oswald was arrested on the ground floor. He told the Warren Commission, “I hope I helped you some”, and the response was merely, “Yes, I hope you did too.”

Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears.

Burroughs also saw someone who looked a lot like Oswald arrested about four minutes after he was. This Oswald look-alike was taken out through the rear of the theater, rather than the front. Bernard Haire, who ran his business Bernie’s Hobby House two doors away from the theater, thought he had seen Oswald taken away through the rear doors for more than twenty-five years. When he learned that he had seen someone else, he was absolutely stunned.

Burroughs’ story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the opening credits to the movie, then got up quickly and sat down next to someone else. Researcher Dale Myers states that the opening credits for the 1 pm movie ran at 1:20 pm.[ 12 ] The account from neighboring shoe store owner Johnny Brewer was that someone furtively entered the theater without paying at about 1:30 pm. That may have been when someone else entered, or it may have been Oswald after going outside to look for his contact. When Brewer saw the suspicious man enter the theater, he contacted the ticket-taker, and she called the police.

Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills.

Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot. Domingo Benavides, a key witness, was driving his car when he saw Tippit step out of his police car and reach for his gun as he walked towards the front of the car. When the young man saw Tippit draw, he pulled out his gun from his coat pocket and fired several shots at Tippit. The time of the shooting is estimated at 1:09.[ 14 ]

Another witness, Jack Tatum, reported that the gunman then stepped forward and administered a coup de grace to Tippit’s head. The Tippit autopsy report reflected a shot to the head from point-blank range. The HSCA believed that a coup de grace indicated that “this action, which is often encountered in gangland murders…is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension.” Oswald was hardly a professional hitman, and this evidence is extraordinarily important.

One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds"

 

"Burroughs’ story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the opening credits to the movie..."

 

Except that Davis doesn't say that at all.  When one has to twist things around to make your point, then the point becomes completely invalid.

 

Edited April 18 by Bill Brown

[Bill Brown]

20 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

Bill Simpich’s State Secret, Chapter 6 is critical to understanding the Frame-Up of Oswald

 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/State_Secret_Chapter6.html

 An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene

Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm.

Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt.

The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject.

Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26.

Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140.

J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. For whatever reason, Hoover was not willing to go along with the Warren Commission’s finding that credited Brennan as the tipster. The HSCA took the same approach as Hoover and did not rely on Brennan in any way. The powerful evidence that Brennan was not the “unidentified citizen” can be reviewed in the attached endnote.[ 3 ]

Sawyer was asked if he personally received the “5’10”/165” tip, and he said that he did. When Sawyer was asked to describe the tipster, he said, “I don’t remember what he was wearing. I remember that he was a white man and that he wasn’t young and he wasn’t old. He was there. That is the only two things that I can remember about him.”[ 4 ] On another occasion, he said the man was middle-aged.

The tip about the five-ten/165 pound man is even more remarkable when you realize that Sawyer reported the witness’ claim that the five-ten/165 pound man was “carrying what looked to be a 30-30, or some type of Winchester rifle”.[ 5 ] When asked if the shooter “was still supposed to be in the building”, Sawyer responded “unknown if he was there in the first place”.

The five-ten/165 tip made it from Sawyer to Hoover in minutes. Hoover circulated among his top officers a chronology of what he learned in the first couple of hours after the assassination. At 1:07 pm CST, Shanklin told Hoover that “he had just received word the President was shot with a Winchester rifle”.[ 6 ] Sawyer’s tip was the only news regarding a Winchester. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all.

Something else to think about is that the CIA and the FBI both had computers in 1963. Within a very short period of time, a Soviet defector and Dallas resident such as Lee Harvey Oswald would have leaped right out from the CIA’s Records Integration Division. As we have seen, the “five-ten/165” Oswald description was embedded right in FBI agent John Fain’s May 12, 1960 memo that CIA officer Bill Bright went to great lengths to include in the CIA’s Records Integration Division files. (See Chapter 1)

I believe that Sawyer was telling the truth. He was told that a man was carrying a Winchester rifle, and that he was 5 foot 10, 165, about 30, with a slender build. It wouldn’t take long to find out which book depository employee fit that rough description.

I don’t believe the unknown witness was telling the truth. The unknown witness was part of an assassination team. He was nondescript: White, not too young, not too old, clothing unknown. I conclude that fifteen minutes after the assassination, Oswald was swept into this case by someone with access to the FBI reports or the CIA HQ description of Oswald as “five feet ten, 165”[ 7 ], and knew how to get it onto the police radio.[ 8 ]

Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting

After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home.

Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ]

The Warren Commission asked three officers if they could explain Tippit’s movements on November 22. Not only could none of them offer a reasonable explanation, but none of them even knew that the dispatcher ordered Tippit to go to the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The Warren Commission also asked police chief Jesse Curry about Jackson’s strange order to Tippit at 12:45 pm, with special concern because it was mysteriously omitted from the original transcription. As one wag put it, Curry suggested that Tippit had moved out of his assigned district to search for his own murderer.

In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ]

What makes this all even more intriguing is that even by the time of Tippit’s death at about 1:09, Oswald has not yet been identified as an assassination suspect because the shells were not found until 1:12. Even after the rifle was found a little later, no one was able to tie the gun or shells to Oswald until early the next morning after visiting Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago, where “Alex Hidell” had mail-ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano found on the sixth floor. Nor was Oswald noticed as missing from the Depository until well into the afternoon.

By around 1 pm, Oswald had reached his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes, grabbed his revolver, and went back out the door. A police car beeped outside Oswald’s home shortly before he left. The distance from Oswald’s house to theater was about a mile – three minutes if he got a ride, at least fifteen minutes if he was on foot. It was roughly the same calculus if Oswald headed towards the Tippit crime scene.

I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt.

Burroughs didn’t have much to offer the Warren Commission - it would be good to find out how he was prepared before his questioning - although he did hear from the shoe store owner down the street that someone had slipped into the theater without paying. This “someone” may have done it precisely to draw attention to Oswald. Burroughs didn’t know who it was, but believed that anyone who did that had gone straight up the stairs to the balcony because otherwise he would have had the right angle to see who it was. Oswald was arrested on the ground floor. He told the Warren Commission, “I hope I helped you some”, and the response was merely, “Yes, I hope you did too.”

Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears.

Burroughs also saw someone who looked a lot like Oswald arrested about four minutes after he was. This Oswald look-alike was taken out through the rear of the theater, rather than the front. Bernard Haire, who ran his business Bernie’s Hobby House two doors away from the theater, thought he had seen Oswald taken away through the rear doors for more than twenty-five years. When he learned that he had seen someone else, he was absolutely stunned.

Burroughs’ story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the opening credits to the movie, then got up quickly and sat down next to someone else. Researcher Dale Myers states that the opening credits for the 1 pm movie ran at 1:20 pm.[ 12 ] The account from neighboring shoe store owner Johnny Brewer was that someone furtively entered the theater without paying at about 1:30 pm. That may have been when someone else entered, or it may have been Oswald after going outside to look for his contact. When Brewer saw the suspicious man enter the theater, he contacted the ticket-taker, and she called the police.

Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills.

Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot. Domingo Benavides, a key witness, was driving his car when he saw Tippit step out of his police car and reach for his gun as he walked towards the front of the car. When the young man saw Tippit draw, he pulled out his gun from his coat pocket and fired several shots at Tippit. The time of the shooting is estimated at 1:09.[ 14 ]

Another witness, Jack Tatum, reported that the gunman then stepped forward and administered a coup de grace to Tippit’s head. The Tippit autopsy report reflected a shot to the head from point-blank range. The HSCA believed that a coup de grace indicated that “this action, which is often encountered in gangland murders…is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension.” Oswald was hardly a professional hitman, and this evidence is extraordinarily important.

One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds"

 

"Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot."

 

There is no evidence whatsoever that Tippit attempted to radio the dispatcher at 1:08.  There's not much more to add here.

 

[Bill Brown]

22 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

Bill Simpich’s State Secret, Chapter 6 is critical to understanding the Frame-Up of Oswald

 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/State_Secret_Chapter6.html

 An unknown man provided “5 foot 10, 165 pounds” tip at JFK crime scene

Fourteen minutes after the shooting, a 12:44 pm radio call in Dallas gave a description of a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository. This radio call was based on the report of an “unknown white man’s” report to police inspector Herbert Sawyer. “Slender white male about 30, five feet ten, 165”.[ 2 ] The dispatcher Murray Jackson relied on this description, providing it again at 12:47, 12:49, 12:55 and 1:08, offering it as “all we have” prior to the shooting of Tippit at 1:09 pm.

Ann Egerter and the FBI had used the phony Webster-like description of Oswald as “5 feet ten, 165” repeatedly to describe Oswald since his time in the USSR in 1960. This was no molehunt. This was a manhunt.

The specificity of the “5 feet ten, 165” tip cannot be squared with the impossibility of providing a height-and-weight ID of a sixth floor sniper located at a window and only visible from near-waist height. You’re only seeing a portion of his body. There is no way to tell how tall he is, much less how much he weighs. What you would notice would be his clothes – but the witness noticed nothing on that subject.

Also, there’s nothing “slender” about any man who is 5 foot 10 and 165. Such a man comes up with a body mass index (or “BMI”) of 23.7 – right in the middle of the American population. “Average” is BMI of between 23 and 26.

Oswald, however, was generally referred to as “slender” in his CIA and FBI records. His weight was generally between 126 and 140.

J. Edgar Hoover exhausted all leads before concluding that the 5'10"/165 description came from an “unidentified citizen” that approached Sawyer. No one ever convinced the FBI that the alleged witness Howard Brennan provided this tip. For whatever reason, Hoover was not willing to go along with the Warren Commission’s finding that credited Brennan as the tipster. The HSCA took the same approach as Hoover and did not rely on Brennan in any way. The powerful evidence that Brennan was not the “unidentified citizen” can be reviewed in the attached endnote.[ 3 ]

Sawyer was asked if he personally received the “5’10”/165” tip, and he said that he did. When Sawyer was asked to describe the tipster, he said, “I don’t remember what he was wearing. I remember that he was a white man and that he wasn’t young and he wasn’t old. He was there. That is the only two things that I can remember about him.”[ 4 ] On another occasion, he said the man was middle-aged.

The tip about the five-ten/165 pound man is even more remarkable when you realize that Sawyer reported the witness’ claim that the five-ten/165 pound man was “carrying what looked to be a 30-30, or some type of Winchester rifle”.[ 5 ] When asked if the shooter “was still supposed to be in the building”, Sawyer responded “unknown if he was there in the first place”.

The five-ten/165 tip made it from Sawyer to Hoover in minutes. Hoover circulated among his top officers a chronology of what he learned in the first couple of hours after the assassination. At 1:07 pm CST, Shanklin told Hoover that “he had just received word the President was shot with a Winchester rifle”.[ 6 ] Sawyer’s tip was the only news regarding a Winchester. No one to my knowledge ever remarked that the tip largely matched Oswald’s FBI description from 1960 until his arrest in August, 1963, when he was described as five foot nine/140. The absence of important evidence in the record - what Peter Dale Scott refers to as “the negative template” – is often the strongest evidence of all.

Something else to think about is that the CIA and the FBI both had computers in 1963. Within a very short period of time, a Soviet defector and Dallas resident such as Lee Harvey Oswald would have leaped right out from the CIA’s Records Integration Division. As we have seen, the “five-ten/165” Oswald description was embedded right in FBI agent John Fain’s May 12, 1960 memo that CIA officer Bill Bright went to great lengths to include in the CIA’s Records Integration Division files. (See Chapter 1)

I believe that Sawyer was telling the truth. He was told that a man was carrying a Winchester rifle, and that he was 5 foot 10, 165, about 30, with a slender build. It wouldn’t take long to find out which book depository employee fit that rough description.

I don’t believe the unknown witness was telling the truth. The unknown witness was part of an assassination team. He was nondescript: White, not too young, not too old, clothing unknown. I conclude that fifteen minutes after the assassination, Oswald was swept into this case by someone with access to the FBI reports or the CIA HQ description of Oswald as “five feet ten, 165”[ 7 ], and knew how to get it onto the police radio.[ 8 ]

Oswald probably played no role in the Tippit shooting

After Sawyer called in with the five-ten/165 description, police dispatcher Murray Jackson explained over the radio that Sawyer’s call was about a suspect in the President’s shooting that had been sighted at the Texas School Book Depository. Two officers immediately reported that they were either at the location or en route. For no understandable reason, Dispatcher Jackson then summoned patrolmen J. D. Tippit and R. C. Nelson and mysteriously asked them to “move into Central Oak Cliff area”. This is the neighborhood where Oswald lived. By this time, Oswald was heading for home.

Nine minutes later, Dispatcher Jackson informed Tippit at 12:54 that “you will be at large for any emergency that comes in” nearby “Lancaster and 8th” in the Oak Cliff neighborhood – placing him less than a mile from Oswald’s address at 1026 North Beckley and far away from the manhunt in downtown Dallas three miles away! Years later, Jackson made the improbable claim to CBS News that he “realized that, as you said, that we were draining the Oak Cliff area of available police officers, so if there was an emergency, such as an armed robbery or a major accident, to come up, we wouldn’t have anybody there…”[ 9 ]

The Warren Commission asked three officers if they could explain Tippit’s movements on November 22. Not only could none of them offer a reasonable explanation, but none of them even knew that the dispatcher ordered Tippit to go to the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The Warren Commission also asked police chief Jesse Curry about Jackson’s strange order to Tippit at 12:45 pm, with special concern because it was mysteriously omitted from the original transcription. As one wag put it, Curry suggested that Tippit had moved out of his assigned district to search for his own murderer.

In a multiple hearsay story that is worthy of consideration, Tippit’s father told author Joseph McBride that he learned from Tippit’s widow that an officer told her that Tippit and another officer had been assigned by the police to hunt down Oswald in Oak Cliff. The other officer was involved in an accident and never made it to the scene, but “J.D. made it”.[ 10 ] Tippit’s widow has never made a statement for the record. When you have a witness that has offered limited interviews but no sworn testimony, that’s when a hearsay account may provide the reason why the witness is reluctant to talk. Tippit’s story is backed by none other than Johnny Roselli’s associate John Martino – both of these men admitted their involvement in JFK’s murder. Martino said that Oswald “was to meet his contact at the Texas Theater” in his Oak Cliff neighborhood.[ 11 ]

What makes this all even more intriguing is that even by the time of Tippit’s death at about 1:09, Oswald has not yet been identified as an assassination suspect because the shells were not found until 1:12. Even after the rifle was found a little later, no one was able to tie the gun or shells to Oswald until early the next morning after visiting Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago, where “Alex Hidell” had mail-ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano found on the sixth floor. Nor was Oswald noticed as missing from the Depository until well into the afternoon.

By around 1 pm, Oswald had reached his home in Oak Cliff, changed his clothes, grabbed his revolver, and went back out the door. A police car beeped outside Oswald’s home shortly before he left. The distance from Oswald’s house to theater was about a mile – three minutes if he got a ride, at least fifteen minutes if he was on foot. It was roughly the same calculus if Oswald headed towards the Tippit crime scene.

I think it’s more likely that Oswald went straight to the Texas Theater, and was never at the Tippit crime scene. Butch Burroughs, a Texas Theater concessions employee for decades, told author Jim Marrs in 1987 that he sold Oswald popcorn right around 1:15 pm. Author Dale Myers challenged Burroughs, saying that he “told the Warren Commission that he didn’t see Oswald slip into the theater. He also didn’t mention selling popcorn to Oswald.” Myers missed the point. Ticket taker Julia Postal quoted Burroughs as saying “Well, I saw him coming out.”, presumably when Oswald bought the popcorn. Burroughs was never asked by the Warren Commission if he saw Oswald prior to the police hunt.

Burroughs didn’t have much to offer the Warren Commission - it would be good to find out how he was prepared before his questioning - although he did hear from the shoe store owner down the street that someone had slipped into the theater without paying. This “someone” may have done it precisely to draw attention to Oswald. Burroughs didn’t know who it was, but believed that anyone who did that had gone straight up the stairs to the balcony because otherwise he would have had the right angle to see who it was. Oswald was arrested on the ground floor. He told the Warren Commission, “I hope I helped you some”, and the response was merely, “Yes, I hope you did too.”

Burroughs also told Marrs that Julia Postal knew that she sold Oswald a ticket earlier that day, but didn’t want to admit it. She moved away from Dallas to escape questioning on the subject. When Ms. Postal was asked by researcher Jones Harris if she realized upon seeing Oswald’s face that she might have sold him a ticket, she burst out in tears.

Burroughs also saw someone who looked a lot like Oswald arrested about four minutes after he was. This Oswald look-alike was taken out through the rear of the theater, rather than the front. Bernard Haire, who ran his business Bernie’s Hobby House two doors away from the theater, thought he had seen Oswald taken away through the rear doors for more than twenty-five years. When he learned that he had seen someone else, he was absolutely stunned.

Burroughs’ story was corroborated by eighteen-year-old Jack Davis, never questioned by the Warren Commission, who remembered at 1:15 seeing Oswald squeeze in right next to him at the mostly deserted theater during the opening credits to the movie, then got up quickly and sat down next to someone else. Researcher Dale Myers states that the opening credits for the 1 pm movie ran at 1:20 pm.[ 12 ] The account from neighboring shoe store owner Johnny Brewer was that someone furtively entered the theater without paying at about 1:30 pm. That may have been when someone else entered, or it may have been Oswald after going outside to look for his contact. When Brewer saw the suspicious man enter the theater, he contacted the ticket-taker, and she called the police.

Davis stated that Oswald sat next to him and then another patron before going out to the lobby. According to author Lamar Waldron, Oswald was armed with half a box top saying “Cox’s, Fort Worth”. If Waldron is correct, Oswald was apparently trying to meet someone who had the other box top half.[ 13 ] Manuel Artime did this kind of thing – his practice was to meet AMWORLD officers with torn one dollar bills.

Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot. Domingo Benavides, a key witness, was driving his car when he saw Tippit step out of his police car and reach for his gun as he walked towards the front of the car. When the young man saw Tippit draw, he pulled out his gun from his coat pocket and fired several shots at Tippit. The time of the shooting is estimated at 1:09.[ 14 ]

Another witness, Jack Tatum, reported that the gunman then stepped forward and administered a coup de grace to Tippit’s head. The Tippit autopsy report reflected a shot to the head from point-blank range. The HSCA believed that a coup de grace indicated that “this action, which is often encountered in gangland murders…is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension.” Oswald was hardly a professional hitman, and this evidence is extraordinarily important.

One unknown man described Tippit's shooter as "5 foot 10, 160-170 pounds"

 

"Tippit made an unsuccessful attempt to call the dispatcher at 1:08, right before he stopped his car to question a young man on foot. Domingo Benavides, a key witness, was driving his car when he saw Tippit step out of his police car and reach for his gun as he walked towards the front of the car. When the young man saw Tippit draw, he pulled out his gun from his coat pocket and fired several shots at Tippit. The time of the shooting is estimated at 1:09."

 

Benavides stated that he watched the killer get around the corner and waited "a second or two" (The Warren Report, CBS, 1967) before getting out and going to the patrol car to use the radio.  So Benavides is on the radio within 60 seconds after the shots rang out (90 seconds if I'm being generous).  Benavides doesn't begin keying the mic of the patrol car radio until after 1:15.

 

For the shooting to have occurred at 1:09 as falsely stated above, it would mean that Benavides is still cowering down inside his truck as people like Helen Markham and Frank Cimino begin to hover around Tippit's body.

 

 

 

[Kevin Balch]

15 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

BB-

Thanks for you comment.

I do not think JFKA CT researchers take that one "patsy" statement as the conclusive evidence of LHO's involvement in the JFKA.

The "patsy" is part of a huge mosaic. Many of us fully admit that the whole mosaic is not completed---and even you should be outraged that the Biden Administration has done what appears to be a permanent snuff job on the JFK Records Act, and 4000 records, perhaps more, have been buried. 

As you may know, researcher Jefferson Morley has shown that records pertaining to CIA officer George Joannides in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 have been put six-feet under. Really...after 60 years, records of what Joannides was doing in New Orleans in 1963 are threat to national security? Was Joannides involved with LHO? There are solid reasons to suspect as much.

My own guess is LHO was inveigled into what he believed was an anti-Castro red flag op. Instead it became the JFKA, but LHO was in it up to his eyeballs (to outside observers), and he knew it. 

My take is LHO was a CIA asset, and that explains his sojourn to Russia, and later involvement with anti-Castro and Castro elements in New Orleans and Dallas. BTW, the CIA had literally thousands of assets in the US at the time, due to the Cuba situation, and those assets were largely Cuban exiles and other mercs, but also plenty of former Nazis and Eastern Europeans. 

If only a fragment of these various CIA assets, all with the means and motivation, decided to undertake the JFKA....then you have the intel-state involved (even if unwillingly) in the JFKA, but in extremis to keep that story blacked out. 

That's IMHO, and I am sticking with it. 

BTW, LHO was not referring to the DPD as framing him as the patsy. He meant the DPD acting on behalf of the intel state. 

My own guess is the DPD was not involved in the JFKA, pre-event. 

 

Would the CIA use an asset that they had used extensively in the USSR that could be easily tied to them for a domestic assassination or frame him for it? How could they be sure he wouldn’t talk if captured alive?

On the other hand, if a foreign interest had been able to “turn” Oswald, they could count on the CIA to cover up the assassination just to cover their own asses.

How many of those thousands of anti-Castro Cuban exiles were actually infiltrators sent by Castro’s intelligence service? We are still uncovering Cuban moles in US intelligence and they have had very long careers before getting caught. Ana Montes had been in various US intelligence agencies since the mid-1980s before she was caught a few years ago.

I agree that the DPD was not involved in the JFKA pre-event. I don’t think they were competent enough. Actually, I don’t think the CIA was competent enough (killing Castro with exploding seashells?) If the JFKA was time critical and the chosen opportunity was a motorcade with an open car, the choice of locations was limited by climate at that time of the year.

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Kevin Balch said:

Would the CIA use an asset that they had used extensively in the USSR that could be easily tied to them for a domestic assassination or frame him for it? How could they be sure he wouldn’t talk if captured alive?

On the other hand, if a foreign interest had been able to “turn” Oswald, they could count on the CIA to cover up the assassination just to cover their own asses.

How many of those thousands of anti-Castro Cuban exiles were actually infiltrators sent by Castro’s intelligence service? We are still uncovering Cuban moles in US intelligence and they have had very long careers before getting caught. Ana Montes had been in various US intelligence agencies since the mid-1980s before she was caught a few years ago.

I agree that the DPD was not involved in the JFKA pre-event. I don’t think they were competent enough. Actually, I don’t think the CIA was competent enough (killing Castro with exploding seashells?) If the JFKA was time critical and the chosen opportunity was a motorcade with an open car, the choice of locations was limited by climate at that time of the year.

KB-

Again you raise very interesting observations.

1. I agree, it makes no sense for the CIA proper to use LHO in a planned JFKA, in any role, even as a patsy role, for the reasons you mentioned. Caveat: In times of stress, people make rushed judgments. Sometimes people do not act rationally. I give this low probability.

2. I disagree that the CIA was not competent in assassinations. They conducted quite a few and perhaps many that we do not know of. Talk is easy; actually getting things done in the physical world is a whole 'nother matter.  The best (baseball) batters hit .350. Are they crappy batters? 

3. The DPD? The reason I think they were not involved is that I suspect planning for a JFKA would involve a very small number of people, and would not cross organizational lines, and would involve only very trusted compatriots--such as fellow BoP vets, something along those lines. But again, this is a rational assessment---sometimes people act irrationally, or take big chances. Drug users and alcoholics often lose judgement, as well as those with suicidal tendencies. 

4. Foreign government (Russians) turned LHO? CIA'er Woolsey said this in a book he published. The dubious Richard Case Nagell said something along these lines. Doesn't line up for me; JFK was about as good a leader as Moscow was going to get. But then, perhaps a hawkish and war-loving fragment within the Russia military did not want detente, and they manipulated LHO. I give this low probability.

LHO's manuscript on Russia reveals a man disaffected with Russia. Was it an earnest manuscript? Seems like it. But who knows for sure?

I still contend the Z-film shows shots being fired too rapidly to have been issued by a lone gunman with a single-shot bolt action rifle. So, they had to be two gunsels, or someone armed with a repeating rifle. 

Add on, the WC was an investigation-prosecution, or show trial. The HSCA was a little better, though Blakey was hot on the trial of the Mafia. 

And so it goes.