Sean Murphy's post "Girl on the Stairs" emails exchanges with Sandra Styles

First topic message reminder :

My comments in blue. Highlighting is also mine

Background to exchanges
A couple of years back, I made contact with Sandra Styles. She told me that she felt Victoria Adams had significantly exaggerated the speed with which the pair descended from the fourth to the first floor after the shooting.

In the light of Barry Ernest's new book 'The Girl on the Stairs', I decided to contact Sandra once again to discuss this matter. She has some rather interesting things to say.

Rather than summarise them (and risk putting words in Sandra's mouth), I shall simply offer the relevant text from Sandra's own emails. In a number of places I've asterisked key details.

Before doing so, however, I would like to apologise to Barry Ernest for having on a previous occasion called his integrity as a researcher into question. The gap between what Sandra has told me and what Barry says she told him is not at all as large as I had alleged. My apologies, Barry.
Sean Murphy
***
First email from Sean
In my first email I asked Sandra to respond to the following words from Barry (as posted on a research forum), who was himself responding to what Sandra had told me a couple of years back:

'When I interviewed Sandra Styles in 2002, she said absolutely nothing of the kind to me. What she did say was, she couldn't be sure exactly how quickly she left the window and went down the stairs, but she recalled she did so "rather quickly," in her words, and "when Vicki did," again in her words. Why she would say otherwise now, especially when she said what she did then and added, "Vicki was the more observant one," is beyond me.'

Here was Sandra's response:
'First of all, I do not recall that Barry put much emphasis on the timing or that we spent time discussing that aspect. I stand by what I said to you. *At the time, I first thought we went downstairs quickly; but in thinking about it further, I came to the conclusion that it was not immediately. I told an interviewer (FBI? not sure) that when we got downstairs, the police were there so I assumed we went down quickly; however, the interviewer told me that it took the police 15-20 minutes to get to the Depository, so I accepted that we must have taken longer to get downstairs than I first thought.* I went
with what Victoria said because she spoke with such certainty; since I
couldn't say for sure, I didn't argue with her. *She also told office workers that on the way down, she noticed the freight elevator cables were moving.* I'm not sure what that would prove; but since I did not notice that, that is what I meant when I said she was more observant.

Barry was working closely with her, and I didn't want to get into it with her when I couldn't prove it either way.

Barry's main discussion with me concerned the outlay of the office:
the exact location of the back stairs in relation to the other elevator, which direction the building faced, etc. Since I didn't have scanning capabilities, I had to describe all that verbally in several emails. We were all interviewed several times by different entities over the next year. I always said the the same thing to each one: that I had nothing of importance to help their investigation. Their concern was whether I knew Oswald, had ever seen him, etc. As to the timing of the whole thing, I wasn't sure then and can't say for certain now. I only go by what seems reasonable. I can only report my personal recollections the best I can. I was easily led back then  ol. *If she said we went down immediately, I thought that must be true. If the interviewer said that was not possible due to the amount of time it took the police to get over there, I re-thought it and accepted HIS assessment.* The truth may lie somewhere in between.

What is logical is that, in all the pandemonium, it is unlikely that we would hear shots and head for the back stairs!'


What was most likely said to Sandra by the FBI was that it took 15 to 20 minutes for the police to seal off the building. She recalled it incorrectly as 15 to 20 minutes for them to enter it.

According to the testimony of Shelley and Lovelady, they re-entered the building after about 3 or 4 munites. Shelley also testified that the police were in there pretty quickly after thar. This is further corroborated by the testimonies of Piper and West.

So that gels with Sandras best guess about how quickly they came down, and about seeing police down there. 

I am puzzled to see what you dismiss vs. what you cite for that dismissal.

Yes, Ernest caught up with Garner, then in her 80s, and quoted her as corroborating Adams' estimate of when she and Styles left to go down the stairs:

"Did Miss Adams and Miss Styles leave the window right away?  I asked her.  'The girls did,' she responded. 'I remember them being there and the next thing I knew, they were gone.'  They had left 'very quickly...within a matter of moments', she added" (p.267, paperback ed.)

Btw, do you suppose Ernest has her statement on tape?   
To which you respond:  "She [Garner] certainly never confirmed anything of the sort in an official documentation".  What?  This statement is worse than meaningless.  You know, probably better than I, what the corrupt WC staff did to create a record to frame Oswald.  The WC was desperate to dismiss Adams.  There is no statement or interview from Garner at all, of course. 


It's very likely Garner talked to the cops at some pointsince Oswald was supposed to go down the back steps as he left the 6th floor..  We don't know what she said.  Do you think if Garner had told them what Stroud says she told her, for example, it would be recorded in the official record?  That goes double if she had corroborated Adams' story.  The Oswald-came-down-the-steps fabrication is central to their Oswald frame.  No contradictory information was permitted.


The WC created a record with no one looking over their shoulder.  With impunity.  As one of the spooks (I think it was Angleton) told the House committee when they got him into a room to question him:  politicians and their staff come and go in Washington;  I'm here to stay.


You're aware, I assume, that not only did they "misfile" Stroud's letter detailing what Garner told her, but the changes to Adams' testimony Stroud forwarded to them didn't make it into the official record either.


As to your repeated question of why didn't Adams challenge that statement in her testimony if it was a lie, there is a simple answer, which shouldn't have taken me this long to get to.  It's likely any version shown by staff to Adams for her approval did not contain the false claim. They added it later. The WC was making changes to the record right up to publication. 


Leavelle included the bogus claim in his report after visiting Adams in Feb '64, but neither Adams nor anyone else saw the report.  It was not in any Commission document.  Flip says he found it on the official site of the Dallas Municipal Archives. 
 
You said:  "But in any case, the pair [Adams and Styles] are not needed to prove Oswald's alibi."  I'm not sure what you mean.  Believing Adams  and Garner proves Oswald didn't do it, but not his alibi about where he was.   Is there other evidence that proves Oswald's alibi?  

"Their [S+L] own initial statements place them back in there in [the building] that time [when Adams and Styles reached the first floor]. I saw what Bart posted. It shows that Lovelady having a cigarette outside. That is not proof he was not inside prior to that." 


Lovelady in particular defines the term unreliable witness.  Bart posted more than that.  Bart puts the cigarette smoking at about 25-30 minutes after the murder.  He also says:   Billy Lovelady mentions in his HSCA testimony (at 29:20) that he did not get back in until 25 minutes later. Which completely contradicts his statement on Nov 22nd. 


Bart's concludes:  Lovelady’s presence on the steps after the shooting has serious consequences for the alleged sighting of the ladies coming down the stairs, just after the shots were fired. Lovelady was nowhere near those steps and as the ladies confirmed they were met by a tall black man, which points to Eddie Piper.


"But we do know. They [the cops] talked to everyone as they cleared the building. The purpose was to identify the main witnesses in order to prioritize them for statements.  Both would have told them they watched rom the 4th floor but could not see much because of a tree. Both probably also explained that they left to investigate, but had nothing of value to report from that either.  What they did or didn't see on the 1st floor was far from being of any importance at this early stage.  I don't believe they were contacted for a police statement after that, which was the same with most of the book company employees".  


Nah.  They knew from the beginning that they were going to have explain how and when Oswald got down from the 6th floor after the murder.  These women were right in his path. They were clearly different from most other employees. I believer the women quickly became targets to be made to fit into the WC's fabrication right from the beginning.  Which was made more clear and urgent when they initially heard Adams' story and then realized she was going to be difficult to intimidate.  As per their MO, this was all worked out well before Adam's official testimony of April 7.  After that they were free to "adjust" Adams' testimony without her knowledge to fit the fabrication they had decided on.

"The 6 page statement makes no logical sense at any level (to me) for the reasons previously given. A simple attempt to gather her thoughts would be a simple diary entry... not a 6 page statement about the simple act of going down some stairs that she felt compelled to send to a trusted friend, but not compelled enough to send registered.  A simple act of gathering thoughts does not gel at all with the length of the statment, nor the compuction to send it to a trusted friend. That part sounds like she had a reason for it consistent with fear. It is bullshit Roger. It never happened."

I'm not convinced.  For one thing you've hit on the word "simple" and overworked it.  I suspect the letter was not about the simple act of going down some stairs.  It was about the slaughter in the street of the president and the chaos and trauma that ensued.  She wanted to organize and clarify her thoughts and probably get the reaction from her acquaintance, the newspaper editor.

Call me paranoid, but the disappearance of the letter plays into my sense that Adams was quickly fingered for surveillance because of her obvious importance to their fairytale. They weren't going to let her talk out of turn.  

"and the following was also a lie they inserted

Mr. BELIN - Miss ADAMS, you have the opportunity if you would like, to read this deposition and sign it before it goes to Washington, or you can waive the signing of it and just let the court reporter send it directly to us. Do you have any preference?
Miss ADAMS - I think I will let you use your own discretion.
Mr. BELIN - It doesn't make any difference to us. If it doesn't make any difference, we can waive it and you won't have to make another trip down here.
Miss ADAMS - That is all right."


Yes, I think that likely was another lie.  This was in April almost 5 months after the murder.  By that time, I think she knew enough not to trust WC staff. She was also meticulous and would have wanted to review what staff produced for simple accuracy.  Of course review was fruitless, but I doubt if she thought *that* at the time.

Some housecleaning:


Neither Flip nor anyone else I am aware of said Stroud interviewed witnesses for the WC.  That was my mistake. 


Emphatic was my characterization of Styles' answer to Ernest's question about seeing S+L on the first floor, not Ernest's.

I am puzzled to see what you dismiss vs. what you cite for that dismissal.

Yeah, I'm beginning to think cultural differences are showing via how we view this. We're a bit more laid-back, a lot less divided down "party" lines where everything must be this or that, black or white, left or right etc. Dylan once tried to address this in song by singing there is no left wing, no right wing, only upwing and downwing... anyway... you have clearly chosen your side - whch means in such a culturally partisan land you must support everything that can be placed on your side, regardless of how tenuous it is. 

I honestly do not mean that to be insulting or disrespectful. I just think that these things can become second-nature without a person even realizing it when they're surrounded by warring factions their entire life. Kind of like growing up in a strict religious environment. Or an atheistic one for that matter.

Yes, Ernest caught up with Garner, then in her 80s, and quoted her as corroborating Adams' estimate of when she and Styles left to go down the stairs:

"Did Miss Adams and Miss Styles leave the window right away?  I asked her.  'The girls did,' she responded. 'I remember them being there and the next thing I knew, they were gone.'  They had left 'very quickly...within a matter of moments', she added" (p.267, paperback ed.)

The terms being used are meaningless. "Right away" could be immediately, a few seconds, or even  a minute or so. Since this was the basis of his book, he had a duty to try and get her to define what she meant by "right away". He didn't do that, I suspect I know why. Same goes of course for the other terms used to substitute for actual time measurements.  

I would also ask how Garner could have followed them if they were there and then suddenly gone without her noticing.

Btw, do you suppose Ernest has her statement on tape?   
To which you respond:  "She [Garner] certainly never confirmed anything of the sort in an official documentation".  What?  This statement is worse than meaningless.  You know, probably better than I, what the corrupt WC staff did to create a record to frame Oswald.  The WC was desperate to dismiss Adams.  There is no statement or interview from Garner at all, of course. 

Which is also the case for many of the other book publishing employees. 

It's very likely Garner talked to the cops at some pointsince Oswald was supposed to go down the back steps as he left the 6th floor..  We don't know what she said.  Do you think if Garner had told them what Stroud says she told her, for example, it would be recorded in the official record?   

Absolutely. It was sorely needed to support the 2nd floor lunchroom encounter. The timing issue was less important than that - and an issue they successfuly circumvented in every other instant.

That goes double if she had corroborated Adams' story.  The Oswald-came-down-the-steps fabrication is central to their Oswald frame.  No contradictory information was permitted.

It's not contradictory if they manoeuvre the chess pieces around like they did with others.  Time can be easily strectched or contracted. Barry shows one way to do it. Leave it to the imagination of the reader by keeping terms vague. But witnesses to someone doing something? That either happens or it doesn't. She should have been an important witness to Truly and Baker going up.  One of the geniuses on the commission would have come up with some way to reconsile it all in their favor. Look at the Magic Bullet... 

The WC created a record with no one looking over their shoulder.  With impunity.  As one of the spooks (I think it was Angleton) told the House committee when they got him into a room to question him:  politicians and their staff come and go in Washington;  I'm here to stay.

Yep. That's how it works. You should try and find the British TV comedy from a while back called "Yes, Minister". Shows brilliantly (and hilariously) who runs government and how. But it also clearly shows the stuff-ups and misteps that cause cover-ups and lies. It's not always a conspiracy. That said, stuff-ups and accidents can be manipulated to advantage. That is also shown. 

But let's step back and compare what you claim was the fate of Adams and her testmony and Garner and her statement to how the WC handled Dr Ranatus Hartogs.

Hartogs was asked about media stories that he had written a report on Oswald saying he was potentially violent and should be institutionalized. He agreed he had written such a report and went so far as to say the language quoted in the media was language he tended to use in reports. They let him ramble about this for quite a while before absolutely blindsiding him by producing his report - which said none of that. It boiled down to describing Lee as being a lonely, neglected kid, lacking social skills and needing a father-figure and role model.

You would think that the Warren Commission would have been very happy to accommodate Hartogs and fake a report saying exactly what he and and the media claimed he said. It would have solved a lot of headaches for them to have a psychiatric opinion that as a kid he was in dire meed of psychiatric treatment to try and stop his potential for violence manifesting itself. The assasination then could be laid squarely on the welfare system in New York for failing him.

This is the type of nuance that you have to navigate. For all the shitty things they did, there are a few examples like the above. It was the very best of courtroom theater. 

You're aware, I assume, that not only did they "misfile" Stroud's letter detailing what Garner told her, but the changes to Adams' testimony Stroud forwarded to them didn't make it into the official record either.

I just checked. It is weird rather than suspicious.

Here are the changes requested. Minor, insignificant stuff

The weird part is that I can't find the words "service", "Martin" or "officiously" in her testimony anywhere.  So no. The changes were not made as requested. It seems like they just took those parts out altogether.  I know you're gonna hate this, but it looks like an adminstrative blunder to me, bearing in mind that I don't think they added anything. Not the changes requested and not the stuff about seeing Shelley and Lovelady.

As to Ernest's claim that the Stroud document was misfiled -- how does he know where it should have been filed?   Or was he basing that on the fact that none of the requested changes were made? Because they appear to have begun acting on the request and made a mess of it. 

As to your repeated question of why didn't Adams challenge that statement in her testimony if it was a lie, there is a simple answer, which shouldn't have taken me this long to get to.  It's likely any version shown by staff to Adams for her approval did not contain the false claim. They added it later. The WC was making changes to the record right up to publication. 

Okay. But neither of us can prove anything here.  You start from a basis of them inserting lies, so this is your only option in order to maintain that. I don't believe they did insert anything and, unless you're right about when they did, then they never did it all.

Leavelle included the bogus claim in his report after visiting Adams in Feb '64, but neither Adams nor anyone else saw the report.  It was not in any Commission document.  Flip says he found it on the official site of the Dallas Municipal Archives. 

There is no evidence for him adding it except the say-so of Adams and her White Knight on his trusty white spotted ass.

Leavelle was a POS, but even a POS is entitled to have evidence ponied up to support allegations against him. The POS rule is that the bar for evidence doesn't have to be set as high as for say a Nun who has spent her entire life inside a convent and is being accused of being a serial killer in a different state. That bar is going to be fucking sky high. But what I am saying is, give me something other than that he was a POS who may or may not have been capable of doing what you accuse him of.

You said:  "But in any case, the pair [Adams and Styles] are not needed to prove Oswald's alibi."  I'm not sure what you mean.  Believing Adams  and Garner proves Oswald didn't do it, but not his alibi about where he was.   Is there other evidence that proves Oswald's alibi?  

It doesn't prove it beyond a shadow of doubt. There is wiggle room  even if their timing is correct. But even on the timing, there is a question  mark.

There are witnesses to Oswald being on the first floor at noon and and 12:15. There is his statment about seeing Jarman and Norman coming back inside. We can nail that time down to approx 12:25. He could not have seen them from any upper floor. He placed himself in the ideal location to see them re-enter: the domino room. And we have a witness to him being on the first floor straight after the shots - Ochus Campbell in his first press interview before someone tapped him on the shoulder and told him never repeat that story and make sure you give a better version next time.

I'm not convinced.  For one thing you've hit on the word "simple" and overworked it.  I suspect the letter was not about the simple act of going down some stairs.  It was about the slaughter in the street of the president and the chaos and trauma that ensued.  She wanted to organize and clarify her thoughts and probably get the reaction from her acquaintance, the newspaper editor.

Roger, there would have been tens of thousands of letters flying the around the country about the chaos and trauma of the event. If that's what her letter was about, they had no reason to intercept it. The only reason to intercept it would be if it specifically states they went down within seconds of the shots and that they never saw anyone on the first floor.  

You don't know what it was about because it was kept vague, They have left it up to the imagination of the reader and you have obliged by filling in the details yourself. 

Call me paranoid, but the disappearance of the letter plays into my sense that Adams was quickly fingered for surveillance because of her obvious importance to their fairytale. They weren't going to let her talk out of turn.  

Apparently not even (let her talk) about things that didn't matter to their fairy tale, like the chaos and trauma of the event. And why was Adams  being surveilled but not Styles?  

Even the name of the book sucks eggs. "The Girl on the Stairs" indeed. No wonder Styles jokingly said to Sean, "at this point I have to wonder if I was even there!" 

Not everything has to be hammered into a universal conspiracy template. Not every author and their star witnesses are telling you the truth. Not every author and every witness has to be believed just because their story opposes the official narrative. 

Armstrong twisted and contorted and enveigled to get his chosen narrative from witnesses. 

Fucking Groden the absolute cunt, invented a witness around the mispelling of the name of a real witness - then tried to claim the invented witness asked not to have the details published until her "death".  Very conventient. For Groden.

There are other examples, but the authors and books are not well known, so probably no point adding them here. But the same MO.  Grifters. They are a bigger hindrence to getting the facts straight than the government- because they know there is a market for it with people who have rightly lost faith in the MSM, the government and government institutions. One lie replaced with another lie does not equal a real solution, It equals a biggers mess to be cleaned up. 

I'm sorry. But it looks to me that Ernest and Adams belong in this pantheon of villainy. 

Some housecleaning:

Neither Flip nor anyone else I am aware of said Stroud interviewed witnesses for the WC.  That was my mistake. 

Emphatic was my characterization of Styles' answer to Ernest's question about seeing S+L on the first floor, not Ernest's.

These admissions go to your own integrity. Your own honesty is not in question.

Let me try to clear up what I see as the the basic timing of what happened on the stairs.

Adams said she didn't see either Oswald or Baker and Truly when she and Styles went down the steps. The WC said that was because she was mistaken about the timing.  She and Styles descended the steps several minutes after she thought, they said, and *after both* Oswald went down them somehow slipping past them, and Truly and Baker came up, passing the 4th floor.

Garner contradicts the WC claim.  She said Truly and Baker reached the 4th floor *after* Adams and Styles descended the steps, not before.  Neither Adams nor Garner saw or heard Oswald at all.  

By contradicting the WC claim as to sequence, beyond the dispute about timing, as well as never seeing Oswald, Garner leaves Oswald no way to get down the steps after the murder.

Far from being "sorely needed to support the 2nd floor lunchroom encounter" Garner's statement lends it no real  support. The only way Truly and Baker could have confronted Oswald on the 2nd floor *after* the murder is if he went there from the first floor to get a coke *after* eating his lunch.  But Oswald said he got the coke before lunch to drink with it.

In any case, unless the encounter happened after descending the steps from the 6ht floor subsequent to the murder, it loses any claimed of importance to the question of Oswald's guilt.  The threshold issue is where was Oswald during the murder.

As to the misfiling of the Stroud letter, Ernest says he found it by chance at the Archives.  It was not in Rankin's correspondence or working files (to whom it was addressed), or any Victoria Adams files.  Misfiling was Flip's word and I think its reasonable.  In any case, we know the WC knew about what Garner said, they buried it, and went on with their claim that Adams was wrong about when she went down the stairs.   

I said:  It's likely any version shown by staff to Adams for her approval did not contain the false claim. They added it later. The WC was making changes to the record right up to publication. 

You said:  Okay. But neither of us can prove anything here.  You start from a basis of them inserting lies, so this is your only option in order to maintain that. I don't believe they did insert anything and, unless you're right about when they did, then they never did it all.


I do start from the basis that the WC inserted lies into the record when necessary, as well as engaging in a panoply of other misdeeds.  I think you do too.  But that doesn't determine by itself the answer I get about a specific item.  I don't claim, or try not to, that an item is a lie without supporting evidence.  In this case it was clear the WC had to discredit Adams.  The claim that Adams saw S+L when they reached the first floor is the only thing they used to discredit her. And that claim falls flat upon examination, without even getting to the mess about where S+L were after the murder, imo.


"There is no evidence for him [Leavelle] adding it except the say-so of Adams and her White Knight on his trusty white spotted ass."


Flip published an excerpt from the Leavelle's report which quoted Adam's as saying:  "I saw Mr. Shelly and another employee named Bill (when she reached the first floor)".


As for the Adams' 6 page letter I start from the following premises.  They knew Oswald didn't do it; they were framing him and it wasn't going to easy.  Adams was targeted early as a key witness and she had to be discredited.  Whatever Adams had to say must be kept within the bounds of their investigation and controlled by them.  Particularly if she was sending a letter to a newspaper editor.  Intercepting letters, changing testimony, whatever.  They didn't have to know its contents to want to intercept it.


The initial part of your response was interesting.  I do need to think more about whether I arrived at answer B because it fits more snugly with answer A.

Roger, thanks for the reply.

If the letter contained only thoughts about the carnage down in the Plaza, why didn't they reseal it and let it go through? Weren't they fuelling suspicion by with-holding a letter that posed no problems for them?

At what point did Adams realize the letter never got through? 

Did she wait a certain amount of time and phone him?

Or did she write a second letter? If so, why not register that one? Surely at some stage she exchanged mail or phone calls about it with him? What is known of that?

Do we even know the name of the intended recipient?

If you can't answer these questions, it is because they were never asked or reqired to be answered. You, as the reader, have been expected to take very vague information and accept it on face value, filling in the blanks yourself. Which you have been doing and then having to backtrack and say that it you making x point, not Ernest or de Mey.

I am just as cynical about the motives of some authors as I am on the USG. There is just not enough to convince me any of this is factual. And all of that vagueness and lack of internal logic to some of it,  does lean me toward the position I hold.

The letter was sent to John O'Connor. editor of the Monitor, Catholic newspaper in San Francisco.  Adams detailed what she did that day, and especially what she saw (Ernest).  Adams had worked for O'Connor in high school and her foster father worked for the Monitor at the time as advertising manager. She trusted O'Connor, per Flip. It was her father who told her O'Connor never received the letter.

The letter is a minor part of the story, indicative, if you believe it was intercepted, of how quickly the WC saw her as an important witness and the extent it was willing to go to to control the information coming from her.  The latter should not surprise anyone.

More important is the fact that, if you believe what Garner told Stroud, which was consistent with what she later told Ernest, the WC story of Oswald's escape down the back stairs collapses.

Here's another piece of information that should give you pause about claiming Adams' testimony was not altered.  Ernest asked the Archives to see the official stenographer's tape of the Adams' interview, rather than relying on a typewritten copy of it. There are 16 boxes of such tapes at the Archives.  The answer:  not only is Adams' tape missing but so are the tapes of Shelly and Lovelady, conducted the same day (April 7).   

Am I right in assuming typewritten copies are easy to change; tapes are not?

There are 16 boxes of such tapes at the Archives. 
Source?

There are 16 boxes of such tapes at the Archives. 
Source?


Bart,


This is from The Girl on the Stairs, Barry Ernest, Epilogue, p. 281, paperback edition.  He says:  "According to an inventory of JFK records available at the National Archives, they [stenographers' tapes] are contained in sixteen boxes under the title 'Entry39:  Stenotype Notes of Proceedings'  For the message that all three testimonies on April 7 --Adams, Shelly, and Lovelady--were missing, Ernest cites an email from Amy DeLong, archivist, NARA, Sept 20, 2012 (footnote 11, Epilogue)


Ernest goes on in footnote 11: He filed a Freedom of Information request with the archives, "seeking a list of the contents of Entry 39".  He was told the stenographic tapes in the 16 boxes were arranged chronologically by date, not by the name of the person being interviewed. 


I'm looking into Greg's idea that the Darnell film should be classified as a JFKA record by the Archives.  It surely qualifies under the ARRB definition of 1995, which is now the responsibility of NARA to implement. The lawsuit filed against the Archives last week by the Mary Ferrell Foundation recognizes this,  Multiple times it mentions NARA's responsibility to review additional records, not currently recognized, as part of what it it seeking.  The collection of JFK records was not intended to end with the closing of the Board in 1998.


The Archives successfully "took" the Zapruder film original from the family, while paying them $16 million.  I see Darnell as a sequel, recording the aftermath of the shots (not to mention Oswald on the steps).


Do you, or anyone you work with, have contacts at the Archives that could help to bring this issue to the fore?  Did Malcolm Blunt originally get a copy of the Hosty notes from the Archives?

From MB: I got them on my cart once...all wrapped tightly like bricks in brown paper with blue labels ...nothing to indicate contents...impossible to inspect and translate....


The Hosty note was part of a set of Hosty papers, submitted by him to the ARRB early 1997. Not one person knew or realised what that note actually meant. Malcolm had it but did not realise he had that valuable piece, it was me who read it first in early Feb 2019. I have a slighter better copy and I am writing something about it in the next month or so.
Weisberg had his hands on it and was just ranting in his correspondence about these papers.