First to Second

Evolution of Oswald-police officer encounter from the first to the second floor
 
Note: Rather than building this and posting it all at once, I plan to put it out in installments over the coming days. Refer to the "Location of Oswald at the Time of the Assassination" thread for early evidence that places Oswald on the first floor.
 
The first reference to a second floor lunchroom incident does not come until the evening of November 22 when Roy Truly is interviewed by the FBI. This interview takes place as a result of Oswald’s first interrogation which concluded earlier. We know this because Truly is asked to answer a disturbing allegation which Oswald has made:

FBI Report by Williams-Pinkston, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.22.1963)
 
Mr. TRULY advised that it is possible OSWALD did see him with a rifle in his hands within the past few days, as a Mr. WARREN CASTER, employed by Southwestern Publishing Co., which company has an office in the same building, had come to his office with two rifles, one a .22 rifle which CASTER said he had purchased for his son and the other a larger more high powered rifle which CASTER said he had purchased with which to go deer hunting, if he got a chance. Mr. TRULY examined the high powered rifle and raised it to his shoulder and sited [sic] over it, then returned it to CASTER, and CASTER left with both rifles. Mr. TRULY stated he does not own a rifle and has had no other rifle in his hands or in his possession in a long period of time.

 
Truly’s story was investigated and found to check out, but the rifle incident was not the only occasion for his name to come up in Oswald’s interrogation. Oswald had also evidently mentioned an incident involving Truly and a police officer. The same report provides Truly’s response to that claim: 

FBI Report by Williams-Pinkston, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.22.1963)
 
He then noticed a Dallas City Police officer wearing a motorcycle helmet and boots running toward the entrance of the depository building and he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed OSWALD in a snack bar there, apparently alone. This snack bar has no windows or doors facing the outside of the building, but is located almost in the center of the building. The officer pointed to OSWALD and asked if OSWALD was an employee of the company and he, TRULY, assured the officer that OSWALD was an employee. He and the officer then proceeded onto the roof of the building....

 
The above text constitutes the earliest reference to a Second Floor lunchroom incident. And it contains five words which, however seemingly innocuous, could be of explosive significance:
 
…he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building…
 
From the book:

Stan Dane, Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light wrote:
"They saw no one there." The fact that Truly is even pointing out this gratuitous fact can only indicate one thing: that he has been confronted with Oswald’s claim that it was precisely "there," inside the front of the building on the First Floor, that the officer and Truly met him. Truly’s disclaimer draws ironic attention to what it is he is disclaiming, said Sean.
 
Whether Truly fed the FBI the Second Floor lunchroom version of events, or whether it was the FBI who helped him get it straight, the upshot is the same: the lunchroom story appears to be a fabrication, a fiction designed for the sole purpose of eliminating Oswald’s all too real alibi for the President’s murder.

TO BE CONTINUED

Before we get to the next reference of a second floor lunchroom incident, let's review the first FBI report by Bookhout & Hosty:

FBI Report by Bookhout & Hosty, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.23.1963, dated 11.23.1963)
 
Oswald stated that he went to lunch at approximately noon and he claimed he ate his lunch on the first floor in the lunchroom; however he went to the second floor where the Coca-Cola machine was located and obtained a bottle of Coca-Cola for his lunch. Oswald claimed to be on the first floor when President John F. Kennedy passed this building.

 
The second floor is only mentioned here as a place where he bought a bottle of Coke, not as a place where any incident or encounter occurred. 

Then, a day later, Bookhout does this solo follow-up report:

FBI Report by Bookhout, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.24.1963, dated 11.25.1963)
 
Oswald stated that on November 22, 1963, at the time of the search of the Texas School Book Depository building by Dallas police officers, he was on the second floor of said building, having just purchased a Coca-cola from the soft-drink machine, at which time a police officer came into the room with pistol drawn and asked him if he worked there. Mr. Truly was present and verified that he was an employee and the police officer thereafter left the room and continued through the building. Oswald stated that he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employee's lunch room. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman Bill Shelly, and thereafter went home.

 
Why did Bookhout need to write a second report? Did Oswald really tell him the things he wrote in the second report, things that he and Hosty forgot to include in their first report? Or were there other reasons? 

Was Bookhout made aware of the Williams-Pinkston report where Truly said Oswald was observed in a snack bar?
 
TO BE CONTINUED

The reason why Hosty was a goner from the reporting is because Hoover took him out of the main game after he had brought the FBI in disrepute with his chat with Jack Revill in the basement of the DPD at 14:25 and Curry mentioning this to the press. A massive stinker for Hosty.

Bart, Bookhout's report was largely a reworking of the joint report putting Oswald "in it" further.

As soon as Oswald was placed on the 2nd floor he was a dead man. And these fucking geniuses who abide by the 2FE still can't grasp why. Pull your fucking heads out of your own arses.

greg parker wrote:Bart, Bookhout's report was largely a reworking of the joint report putting Oswald "in it" further.

Oh no doubt Greg, Bookhout did what he was told and didn't go sideways

The FBI Report by Bookhout & Hosty, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.23.1963, dated 11.23.1963), does not mention the specific location of Oswald on the first floor at the time of the assassination nor does it mention any encounter involving Oswald, a police officer and Truly.
 
If the earliest evidence as to the location of Oswald during the assassination* is true—and we believe the earliest reports and statements are the most reliable—the reason for these details not being mentioned should be clear and painfully obvious.

If Oswald told Bookhout & Hosty what the earliest reports all describe (i.e. he was down in front during the assassination)—and they included this information in their report—well that would be a huge problem if he was to be the designated patsy. No no, not gonna happen.
 
But things got easier on 11.24.1963, Oswald was killed. He could no longer talk or defend himself. He would no longer say things like he went outside to see what the excitement was all about. He would no longer answer any questions about where he was or what he was doing at the time of the assassination with responses like "out with Bill Shelly in front."

So on this very day, Bookhout writes a second, "improved" report, having the now-dead Oswald "confirm" a lunchroom encounter on the second floor, simply moving the key details of what he said all along (Coke, standing outside, police officer, Truly) from the first floor up to the second.

Let that sink in for a minute.  
 
Whoever says dead men don't talk never talked to FBI Agent James Bookhout.
 
*Refer to the "Location of Oswald at the Time of the Assassination" thread for early evidence that places Oswald on the first floor.

TO BE CONTINUED

Goban Saor wrote:Thanks for laying this out again, Stan.

It seems to me that the comparison between the first Bookhout-Hosty FBI report and the second report by Bookhout on his own is revealing not only for what is added but also for what is omitted.

The single most important sentence in the first report is probably: “Oswald claimed to be on the first floor when President John F. Kennedy passed this building.”

It’s omission from the second report cannot be viewed as anything other than a falsification of the record to frame Oswald for the assassination.

Exactly. 

It is only when you come to certain realizations about the case, and how police and other law enforcement operated at the time, that you can start to really see what was happening and begin to piece the facts together.

The next few sections are going to be a bit tricky. I'm attempting to lay everything out in a linear fashion, but since evolution is more of a branching process rather than being purely linear, I'll just lay things out as best I can and try to minimize the need to back up or bounce around as we proceed. There are many branches and offshoots to this.
 
Recall that the Williams-Pinkston FBI Report has Truly describing how he and a police officer went "immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed OSWALD in a snack bar there, apparently alone."
 

Roy Truly Affidavit, 11.23.1963
 
I saw an officer break through the crowd and go into our building. I realized he didn't know anything about the building, so I ran in with him. The officer and I went through the shipping department to the freight elevator.  We then started up the stairway. We hit the second floor landing, the officer stuck his head into the lunch room area where there are coke and candy machines. Lee Oswald was in there. The officer had his gun on Oswald and asked me if he was an employee. I answered yes. We then went up the stairs to the 5th floor where we found the elevator open. 

OK. We have Oswald in the second floor lunchroom area. Period.
 
Reading the above might give the impression to those unfamiliar with the second floor layout that the lunchroom must be right next to the landing. Someone might even think that Truly and Baker, after entering the building, came up the front stairs and proceeded to the rear of the building, passing by lunchroom on the way. The next two articles give that impression, especially the second one:

New York Herald Tribune, "FBI Sifts Oswald Data," 11.27.1963
 
R. S. Truly, head of the book depository, told the Herald Tribune in a telephone interview…
…
I rushed into the building with a policeman. He thought the shooting came from the roof and we ran up the stairway. On the second floor he stuck his head into a snack bar we have and saw Oswald sitting at one of the tables.

Washington Post, 12.1.1963
 
"That's my building!" Truly shouted back. "I work in there."
He was quickly joined by a policeman and they ran up the steps together, the officer with gun drawn. The two men scrambled up the stairs to the second floor. As they made their way to a back stairway, the policeman saw Oswald standing beside a soft drink machine, sipping from a Coke bottle. 

 
Notice that we now have Oswald not only in the lunchroom, but he's seen sitting at one at the tables in one report and also seen sipping a Coke in another.

The "Late 1963" Secret Service reenactment film reconstructing Oswald's supposed route from the sixth floor down the stairs to the second floor lunchroom has the actor Oswald going and sitting down at one of the tables.

 
 
To wrap up this installment:

Telephone Conversation between J. Edgar Hoover and President Johnson, 11.29.1963, 1:40PM
 
He then threw the gun aside and came down….at the entrance of the building he was stopped by police officers and some manager in the building told the police officers, "well he’s allright…he works there…you needn’t hold him." They let him go. That is how he got out.
…
...he apparently had come down the five flights of steps—stairway—from the fifth floor…so far we’ve found out the elevator was not used…although he could have used it…but nobody remember whether it was or whether it wasn’t.
 

So Hoover, on November 29, 1963, is apparently clueless as to any encounter between Oswald and a police officer on the second floor in lunchroom.

Evolution is a long process. 

TO BE CONTINUED

Stan dane wrote: So Hoover, on November 29, 1963, is apparently clueless as to any encounter between Oswald and a police officer on the second floor in lunchroom.

Evolution is a long process. 

Hoover hasn't been updated from the earliest reports and is still talking about 5th floor sniper's nest and first floor cop encounter. 

It underlines just how slap-dash and on-the-fly this all was. All because of Oswald surviving as long as he did. A first day dead Oswald and the final scenario would have been nutted out behind locked doors by the 24th.

Recall Marrion Baker's first affidavit, 11.22.1963: "The elevator was hung several floors up so we used the stairs instead. As we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway. I called to that man and he turned around and came back toward me."
 
Now consider this:

Note from J.W. Fritz to Jesse Curry of 12.23.1963
 
As requested I am reporting a list of the more important pieces of evidence in the Lee Harvey Oswald case charge with shooting President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 at about 12:35 pm near the underpass.
…
We also found that this man [Oswald] had been stopped by Officer M. L. Baker while coming down the stairs. Mr. Baker says that he stopped this man on the third or fourth floor on the stairway, but as Mr. Truly identified him as one of the employees, he was released.

 
Here we are, a month after the assassination(!), and "Case Cinched" Fritz says NOTHING about a second floor lunchroom encounter!
 
This despite the "fact" that, as he will tell the Warren Commission only a matter of weeks later, Oswald had personally confirmed the details of the second floor lunchroom incident while in custody!
 
Something stinks bad. Let's call it a day.
 
First to Second Evolution: The process of selectively suppressing facts and creating new ones as necessary to mold a desired reality.
 
TO BE CONTINUED

Two items for this installment.

"First Interview of Lee Harvey Oswald" by Secret Service Inspector Thomas J. Kelley
 
At this time Captain Fritz showed a Selective Service Card that was taken out of his wallet which bore the name of Alex Hidell. Oswald refused to discuss this after being asked for an explanation of it, both by Fritz and by James Bookhout, the FBI Agent. I asked him if he viewed the parade and he said he had not. I then asked him if he had shot the President and he said he had not. I asked him if he has shot governor Connally and he said he had not.

 
All of the words above were spoken during the interrogation, except the underlined sentence. How do we know this? Well, Kelley didn't keep the notes he used to write this report. They took a one-way trip down the memory hole.
 
But we do have the handwritten notes of Fritz, which are a transcription of the contemporaneous interrogation notes of Bookhout. If you read through these five pages of Fritz's handwritten notes (Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light, pages 86-98), you won't find the underlined sentence. Those words were added.
 
Now why do you suppose that happened?
 
The second item:
 
On the evening of 11.22.1963, Captain "Case Closed" Fritz filed a Case Report naming Lee Harvey Oswald as the defendant. On page 2 of the report "Officer Witnesses" are listed, and at the very top is:

Dallas Police Department Case Report, Filed 11.22.1963 by Capt. Fritz

- Page 2 -

M. L. Baker
Solo Motor Officer
Traffic Division
 
Saw Oswald in building after shooting. Identified him in line up. See affidavit.

 
The "Identified him in line up" part is not correct. It wasn't true. It never happened. Saying something isn't true is a nice way of saying something is...a lie. "Identified him in line up" is a lie.
 
But on the evening of 11.22.1963, a lie was good enough. You see, the process of evolution had just begun and Oswald was fingered as the "Missing Link." The bugs in the theory could be worked out later.
 
TO BE CONTINUED

US -  examining Oswald's alibi through a multitude of textual and audio records - with a couple of blurry photos considered icing on the cake should clear scans become available.

OUR DETRACTORS - want to limit the discussion to the blurry photos so they can knock them down without all of that bothersome other data in the way.

US - leery of the propensity for so-called photo experts to disagree with each other on just about any film or photo we therefore (as a rule of thumb), do not discuss the photo record at all - PM and the BYP being the exceptions proving the rule.

OUR DETRACTORS - can be found on other forums and on Facebook on any given day of the week searching the films and photos and offering all sorts of opinions on what they see, and in some cases making identifications on people in photos/films who are not even facing camera! Usually these IDs are made on the basis of very suspect testimony (given that the testimony often varies wildly from original statements)

Can we say "double-standard? When we do it as an adjunct to our usual type of research, we are falsely accused of wild speculation based solely on blurry images. When THEY speculate on even blurrier frames with subjects not even facing the right way - they are serious researchers! Can we say, utter dicks and arseholes?

Great find Stan.

Finally logged on Greg - thanks for all the necessaries.

greg parker wrote:US -  examining Oswald's alibi through a multitude of textual and audio records - with a couple of blurry photos considered icing on the cake should clear scans become available.

OUR DETRACTORS - want to limit the discussion to the blurry photos so they can knock them down without all of that bothersome other data in the way.

US - leery of the propensity for so-called photo experts to disagree with each other on just about any film or photo we therefore (as a rule of thumb), do not discuss the photo record at all - PM and the BYP being the exceptions proving the rule.

OUR DETRACTORS - can be found on other forums and on Facebook on any given day of the week searching the films and photos and offering all sorts of opinions on what they see, and in some cases making identifications on people in photos/films who are not even facing camera! Usually these IDs are made on the basis of very suspect testimony (given that the testimony often varies wildly from original statemenets)

Can we say "double-standard? When we do it as an adjunct to our usual type of research, we are falsely accused of wild speculation based solely on blurry on images. When THEY speculate on even blurrier frames with subjects not even facing the right way - they are serious researchers! Can we say, utter dicks and arseholes?

US- Give a shit about exonerating Oswald as a first point of order before anything else in this debate.
OUR DETRACTORS- Couldn't give two shits about anything new to offer. Same old dead ends that have thwarted this case for 53 years.
We can say they are fucking useless tools as well utter dicks and arseholes, Greg. What purpose do they serve? They do nothing to progress this case. Fuck all. I'd like those who criticise us to outline their contribution to getting this case reopened. If they can't then they should go and get fucked when it comes to Prayer Man.

VanessaL wrote:Great find Stan.

Finally logged on Greg - thanks for all the necessaries.

And not before time!

Things were getting about rowdy there for a second...

greg parker wrote:

VanessaL wrote:Great find Stan.

Finally logged on Greg - thanks for all the necessaries.

And not before time!

Things were getting about rowdy there for a second...

Unruly.

Glad to see you back Ms. V.

For this installment, let's look a little deeper into Kelley's document: 

"First Interview of Lee Harvey Oswald" by Secret Service Inspector Thomas J. Kelley
 
He said he ate his lunch with the colored boys who worked with him. He described one of them as "Junior," a colored boy, and the other was a little short negro boy. He said his lunch consisted of cheese, fruit, and apples, and was the only package he had with him when he went to work.

 
The two black men referred here are James Jarman and Harold Norman. When they were asked if they had lunch with Oswald they said no.
 
But did Oswald ever really say he had lunch with them in the first place?
 
If we check Fritz's transcription notes—which again record what Bookhout originally wrote—we see that Oswald said he "saw two negroes come in."  
 
So Kelley was twisting things a bit here to make Oswald look like a liar.
 
(Bookhout did a degree of twisting in this instance as well. In his second, reworked, FBI report, he states that Oswald "recalled possibly two Negro employees walking through the room during this period," contrary to his original notes "saw two negroes come in.")
 
Some might argue that these are small, minor points. I would disagree. I think these are examples of a larger process underway that was just beginning to pick up steam: the evolution process from first to second.

TO BE CONTINUED

greg parker wrote:When THEY speculate on even blurrier frames with subjects not even facing the right way - they are serious researchers! Can we say, utter dicks and arseholes?

Utter dicks and arseholes! Oh, and fuckwits too!

On the evening of 11.22, Police Chief Jesse Curry was caught up in the evolution process as well. Curry was telling the press that Oswald had been stopped leaving the building almost immediately following the assassination. 

Washington Post, 11.23.1963
 
"He apparently got out of the building during the time we were surrounding it," Curry said. As an officer rushed into the building Oswald rushed out. The policeman permitted him to pass after the building manager told the policeman that Oswald was an employee.  "He apparently lost himself in the crowd then," Curry added.
…
Police first became aware of Oswald when they learned he had been seen leaving the building immediately after the President was shot from one of its upper windows.

 
Another news article quotes Curry saying: "Later, however, police decided to investigate him because of his quick departure, and a radio lookout was broadcast."

Washington Post, 11.23.1963
 
Secondly, the Chief said there was "the opportunity he had. The fact that he worked there. He was placed there. He was seen to leave there immediately after it happened."

 
At this time, Curry may not have been fully aware of what Oswald was saying in custody ("out with Bill Shelley in front"), so perhaps his knowledge of Oswald's presence down in front was more, in his mind, an indicator of a guilty man trying to make a hasty getaway rather than a situation that would exonerate him as the sixth floor shooter.
 
Curry needed to stress the "immediate" nature of the Oswald-Officer incident and the incriminating immediate nature of Oswald's departure from the building. But as soon as it becomes clear just how "immediate" the incident was and how soon after the last shot had been fired, Curry gets with the program and shuts up.
 
The next day we find him going out with a very different story altogether:

Teletype (date unknown, estimated 11.24.1963 by context)
 
"He was seen sitting in the lunchroom and one of my officers drew a weapon on him," Curry said.

New York Times, 11.24.1963
 
The first officer to reach the six-story building, Lieut. Curry said, found Oswald among other persons in a lunchroom. He said the building manager identified Oswald as an employee of the book-distribution concern that used the building. Oswald was not questioned then.
When the main force of investigating officers reached the building, Oswald had left.

 
From Oswald being stopped as he made his quick departure out the front entrance, to Oswald being seen sitting in a second floor lunchroom.
 
The process of evolution was now in full swing.

TO BE CONTINUED

So in the first week following the assassination, we now have Oswald smack dab in the middle of the second floor lunchroom (aka "snack bar") sitting at one of the tables. And recall that even the Secret Service reenactment of Oswald's supposed movements made shortly after the assassination shows Oswald walking over and sitting down at a table in the lunchroom. That was the prevailing thinking.

But evolution is a process and more evolution was needed to try to work out a large number of kinks. One such kink, a big one, was this: if the translation of the front-stairway-to-lunchroom story to the rear-stairway-to-lunchroom story was to be completed successfully, the officer needed a good reason for interrupting his flight upstairs, going all the way over to the passageway to the door to the lunchroom and checking out what's in the lunchroom.

The Evening Star, 11.29.1963
 
Mr. Truly said a young policeman dashed up to him and shouted, "Where the stairway?"
"I'll show you," Mr. Truly said, and he led the policeman up to the second floor. Gun in hand, the policeman began checking offices and rooms and ran squarely into Oswald in the employer lunchroom.
Mr. Truly said the policeman held his gun on Oswald as the youth leaned against a counter and said, "Does this man work here?"
"I told him 'yes'" Mr. Truly said. He added that he did not know who the officer was and has not seen him since.

 
As Sean Murphy pointed out, one gets the impression given that the lunchroom was simply a room—one of several here—passed by the officer on his way to the rear stairway. But what Sean wanted to focus on here is the "counter" detail. Note that Truly is the obvious and sole source of the this information. How does the reporter know there is indeed a counter in the lunchroom? Because Truly has told him. He has given the reporter a clear picture of Oswald leaning against the counter just inside the door.
 
Truly cannot possibly be inferring this image from having himself come on the scene just seconds after this, when Oswald is (as per his and Baker's Warren Commission testimony) at the door with Baker holding his revolver up to him. Nor can he have learned it from the officer, whom he "has not seen [him] since."
 
No, just like the now discarded "sitting at one of the tables" image, this is an invention that Truly is giving—or has been directed to give.
 
But why has Oswald been brought to his feet? The answer comes in two parts.
 
1) Timeline. It has become increasingly evident that Oswald, "The Sixth Floor Assassin," needs to be made appear as though he has only just arrived in the lunchroom. Sitting down at a table doesn't cut it.
 
2) Motivation. Baker needs a reason to check out the lunchroom in the first place. By early December, this becomes that much clearer as Oswald is moved from the "counter" over to the coke machine. (Evolution, baby!)
 

 
Again, bear in mind that Truly—as he will later tell the Warren Commission—is not supposed to have had any contact with Baker since they parted ways on November 22. Yet he is "guessing" with uncanny accuracy what Baker will months later testify to as to the location of Oswald in the lunchroom when he caught his first sighting of him in there.

Sunday Bulletin of Philadelphia, 12.1.1963
 
Truly and the officer raced up the steps.
The patrolman went into a second-floor hallway where there is an 18-by-20 foot lunchroom for employes. It has chairs, tables and vending machines.
Oswald was standing near a Coke machine. "Do you work here," the patrolman shouted at Oswald , thrusting his gun toward him.

Washington Post, 12.1.1963
 
"That's my building!" Truly shouted back. "I work in there."
He was quickly joined by a policeman and they ran up the steps together, the officer with gun drawn. The two men scrambled up the stairs to the second floor. As they made their way to a back stairway, the policeman saw Oswald standing beside a soft drink machine, sipping from a Coke bottle.
The officer ran toward Oswald and held the revolver at close range. "He's all right. He's one of my employes," assured Truly. The two men then continued on their way. Later, the employer described Oswald's demeanor in this incident as "cool as a cucumber—although he seemed a little bothered by the gun."
Oswald walked past a girl clerk who exclaimed, "Oh my land! the President has been shot!"

 
End of installment quiz:

Q: Why do you think Oswald is now being put over by the Coke machine?
 
A: In order to push the explanation that Baker took his significant detour over to the lunchroom because of a noise he heard: the noise of a coke machine in operation, that's why.

For those who passed, take the rest of the day off. For those who failed, go back and reread.

TO BE CONTINUED

A quick recap so far:
 
The Oswald-police officer-Truly encounter at the front entrance initially reported was moved deep into the building, at or near the rear stairs. The third-or-fourth-floor-rear-stairway story was quickly superseded by the lunchroom story. This became: the lunchroom stories—Oswald sitting at a table, Oswald leaning against a counter, Oswald standing by the Coke machine drinking a Coke.
 
The initial plan was simply to transplant Oswald up to the lunchroom, stretch the timeline and worry about the details later. Oswald was still alive and had every prospect of going to trial, so his damaging ability to describe a police officer and Truly coming in to the building needed to be preempted by a story involving the police officer and Truly coming into the lunchroom.
 
Truly's inflated time estimate in the very first reference to the second floor lunchroom incident gives us a clue how this would be played out: 

FBI Report by Williams-Pinkston, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.22.1963).
 
The officer pointed to OSWALD and asked if OSWALD was an employee of the company and he, TRULY, assured the officer that OSWALD was an employee. He and the officer then proceeded onto the roof of the building where the officer conducted a thorough search but found nothing. They then searched the 7th floor of the building and by this time many officers were swarming through the building, and he returned to the first floor of the building. The time that he and the officer saw OSWALD in the snack bar could not have been more than two or three minutes after the shooting of President KENNEDY and they saw no one else in the building at that time.

 
Two or three minutes? Yeah, right. The Warren Commission would struggle mightily to stretch the time to 90 seconds. But the state of the evolution process on the evening of November 22 was to simply to chunk out enough time to allow Oswald to run down from the sixth floor, but not too much time to delay his exit from the TSBD. The details could be finessed later. Then all the Oswald accusers had to do was drive home how very odd it was for a man to be alone and loitering in a lunchroom while everyone else was outside or looking outside. 

FBI Teletype from Dallas to Washington, 11.23.1963
 
TRULY WAS ON SIDEWALK IN FRONT OF HIS PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT WITH PRACTICALLY ALL OTHER EMPLOYEES FROM BUILDING WHEN KENNEDY WAS SHOT. HE IMMEDIATELY ACCOMPANIED A POLICE OFFICER INTO THE BUILDING AND UP THE STAIRS TO THE SECOND FLOOR, WHERE THEY OBSERVED OSWALD ALONE IN THE COMPANY SNACK BAR. SNACK BAR IN CENTER OF BUILDING, HAS NO WINDOWS AND WAS UNUSUAL PLACE FOR ANYONE TO BE AT THAT TIME. AFTER SEARCH OF BUILDING COMPLETED, OSWALD COULD NOT BE LOCATED.

 
Like Ol' Man River, First to Second Evolution just keeps rolling along.

TO BE CONTINUED

Oswald's on second in the lunchroom. But what was he actually doing there when Baker spotted him?
 
At first Truly did the Evolution Two-Step to evade the question. In a series of statements, he simply has him "in" the lunchroom; specific location and activity are left to the imagination. Then, pretty quickly, Truly has Oswald sitting at one of the tables.
 
Within a week or so, Oswald is brought to his feet. Truly describes him, first, as leaning against the counter, and then as standing right over by the Coke machine.
 
Why the Coke machine? Because Oswald had talked about purchasing a Coke before the assassination, and having him over by the Coke machine turned this into a cool-as-a-cucumber post-assassination act.
 
But there was a second reason.
 
In February 1964, French writer Leo Sauvage called Roy Truly and grilled him about the lunchroom incident. Truly revealed the game plan as he and Baker were getting ready for their meet up with the Warren Commission a few weeks later in March: the officer (name still unknown to Truly!) evidently had heard a noise coming from the lunchroom, the noise, evidently, of a coke machine delivering up its product to the man who had just shot the President.
 
This was a crucial addition, for it gave Baker a reason for checking out the lunchroom—a reason he badly needed—as the lunchroom was nowhere near being in his line of sight as he came off the landing.
 
Just look how far he would have had to swing over to the right to get a line into the lunchroom:
 
 
 
The door of the lunchroom being open, the "cluck-clunk" noise of the Coke machine would have been heard by Baker. Except it...wouldn't've. For there was another door between Baker and the coke machine, and it was an automatically self-closing door. 

Ruh roh!

Washington Post, 12.1.1963
 
"That's my building!" Truly shouted back. "I work in there."
He was quickly joined by a policeman and they ran up the steps together, the officer with gun drawn. The two men scrambled up the stairs to the second floor. As they made their way to a back stairway, the policeman saw Oswald standing beside a soft drink machine, sipping from a Coke bottle.
The officer ran toward Oswald and held the revolver at close range. "He's all right. He's one of my employes," assured Truly. The two men then continued on their way. Later, the employer described Oswald's demeanor in this incident as "cool as a cucumber—although he seemed a little bothered by the gun."
Oswald walked past a girl clerk who exclaimed, "Oh my land! the President has been shot!"  

 
This news story seemed beautifully clean and convincing. However its lack of acoustic plausibility meant that a further evolutionary step would be necessary.

TO BE CONTINUED

This is beautiful Stan.