"Prayer Man" on the Education Forum

[ianlloyd]

First topic message reminder :

As I am not a member of the EF, I cannot post there but there is an interesting discussion going on there at the moment regarding a figure in the TSBD doorway generally referred to as "Prayer Man" due to the apparent position of his hands, seemingly clasped in front of his chest as if in prayer.
 
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=20354
 
I recall this person being discussed somewhere many years ago and was referred to as "Prayer Man" pretty much from the outset but I cannot recall where it originated, maybe on Lancer?
 
Anyway, the reason for this post is that, upon looking closely at the various photographs and movie clips presented as part of the discussion, it struck me that his hands don't seem to move from the "prayer" position for what seems to be quite some time. Was he holding something, I wonder? If so, it seems an odd way to hold whatever it was.

[Frankie Vegas]

I guess this would mean we would be investigating Buell Wesley Frazier (or someone else). Or ...
Maybe 'they' did tell Lee Oswald to keep out of sight by the phone on the first floor and wait for a call. But Lee, not being able to help himself (being politically minded), slipped out the door to see President Kennedy and thought he would still be able to hear the phone ring when it did, making himself the 'Prayer Man'.

[StanDane]

Hey Sean:

I'm not sure how often you receive positive encouragement, so I just want to chime in here and urge you to keep up the great work and continue to methodically build your case and to ignore all the "Four legs good, two legs bad" noise out there on some other forums. I don't know how you and researchers like Greg, Lee, and others find the strength to keep at this sometimes. I admire your tenacity, perseverance, scientific curiosity, and intellectual honesty.

For all of the characters who would seek to drown out good solid research with their incessant barking, I believe there's a sizable remnant of people who are still influenced by logic and reason. Deranged souls shouting "kook kook ka ju" do not come across very well, to put it mildly. You're really onto something here with Prayer Man. That's why all the mutts are out in force and howling.

Hopefully someday you'll be able to present your research to a large, receptive audience. I think a jury would find it most compelling (my wishful thinking kicking in here).

In the meantime, I appreciate your great work and wish you all of the intestinal fortitude to continue.

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

I apologize for contributing to the further drift of this thread, but I didn't want to open another one which IMO would distract from the fascinating, detailed discussion of documents and testimony going on here (and to which I would hope we will eventually return). 

Nonetheless, I did want to raise a question for those who have proposed that LHO was not originally intended to be an assassin (let alone the lone assassin).  What, then, do you make of the rifle range sighting(s)?  I suppose getting a rifle fitted with a scope could be explained as intended to implicate Oswald merely as accessory, but why have him be seen practicing with the rifle (and creating the scenes attributed to him)?  And what of Leopoldo's follow-up call to Silvia Odio, where Leon is said to have accused others as not having the guts to kill Kennedy, and of being a little loco? To me, at least, it seems these are indices that his framing was intended to go beyond his simply being an accomplice.

Hi Albert:

First, I must make clear that I speak only for myself, and that others may well disagree with my personal take on this, which is fine. 

However, I've been at it for the past half century, albeit with some waxing and waning as life either intruded or allowed.  I say this only to note that my hypotheses are not the product of merely having read a few books.  But it requires no secret and highly arcane knowledge of  “Deep Politics,” you may be pleased to know.

It may be that this thread is somewhat adrift, but I think the appearance of Oswald in a photo on the TSBD stoop requires consideration as to how it affects all other elements of the crime.  So I think reevaluation can only be helpful in light of this development. 

It has long been suggested Oswald was deliberately sidelined at the critical juncture, be it awaiting a phone call or some other diversion to keep him out of sight.  But the testimony of his coworkers has indicated from Day One that he was not hiding, and his own responses to DPD and FBI questions have likewise from Day One refuted those notions.  Now we may have proof.

As for the rest of it:

*  Goal One was to dirty up Oswald as a creature of the left. 

A massive head-start was provided by his prior "defection" to the USSR.  Upon his return, subscriptions to Soviet periodicals placed him on a Postal Service watch list.  Correspondence with the FPCC placed him on CIA and FBI radar.  The fracas in New Orleans between he and Bringuier, et al, placed him in military intelligence and local police files, and gave him a media profile as a leftist with his appearances on radio and television.  The charade in Mexico City made him the subject of memoranda - and placed him in the files - of FBI, CIA, INS, ONI.  If Oswald so much as passed gas after this cavalcade of provocations, it would be blamed on the Cubans and Soviets.  That none of it was genuine was secondary; it wasn’t designed to withstand close scrutiny, only to sway public sentiment in an immediate and visceral way.

*Goal Two was to place him in proximity to the assassination, and in the days and weeks prior, to leave a lasting impression with bystanders who would thereafter recall him as a nasty, surly man.  

It might be from shooting at someone else's target at a rifle range, or belittling the US to a car salesman and praising the Soviet Union, etc.  And, as you rightly note, being stitched up by anti-Castro Cubans as a loco gringo gunning for Kennedy, both at the Odios’ doorstep and the Parrot Jungle episode in Miami. 

We only know of instances where those bystanders recalled and came forward to cite what they had seen and heard.  We cannot know how many other such provocations went unreported.  (We do know, however, that other instances were brought to the attention of authorities despite the principals not coming forward.  The Dial Ryder scope-mounting incident is a perfect example.  Who alerted police to this?  It seems that those responsible couldn’t resist having it placed on the record, even if they had to drop a dime themselves, in order to make authorities aware of the poison they’d concocted in advance.  And even if the evidence they had fabricated conflicted with reality.  Ryder hadn’t attached the scope, per his own insistence.  But a pre-fabricated provocation was not allowed to go to waste, even if it made no sense; even if it betrayed the sham that was at play.  An unanticipated change in plans required such improvisations.)

Goal One was accomplished largely with Oswald's quiescence (I contend he played little or no role in the Mexico City pantomime.)  Goal Two was pursued entirely without his knowledge.

My personal hypothesis is that Oswald was not to be killed in the TSBD or the Texas Theatre while resisting arrest.  He was to disappear. 

Somebody (read: CIA) had gone to great lengths to fabricate a story of a late-arriving light plane in Mexico City, from which a single passenger transferred to a Cubana Airlines plane headed for Havana, a plane that had stayed on the tarmac well past its original departure time, as though only awaiting that single passenger. 

Although authorities would not thereafter be able to definitively identify that passenger, such a light plane had left Redbird Airport in Dallas not long before, and the footnotes of Dick Russell’s superb “The Man Who Knew Too Much” disclose that “Oswald” luggage was discovered at the Mexico City airport, no doubt planted to implicate him as that single passenger.

How do the foregoing paragraphs comport with an Oswald either killed or arrested in Dallas?  They don’t.  Which is where I contend the plot went seriously awry and improvisations were required.  Suddenly, other Cuban agents were mooted by CIA to have been the passenger, but only because Oswald demonstrably couldn’t have been him.  Suddenly, “Oswald” luggage had to disappear, instead of Oswald, for had that been “found” and disclosed, it would not have incriminated Oswald, but those who planted it.  

I suggest to you that the Hidell ID was not found upon Oswald, but was found in the throwdown wallet left at the Tippit crime scene.  This is why Captain Fritz first retained and then scuttled the superfluous wallet, for even he smelled a rat.  It is also why it took a full day for the word “Hidell” to pass the lips of anyone connected with Oswald’s detention.  Why reveal that he allegedly used the alias of “O.H. Lee” at a boarding house, while keeping secret the alias “Hidell,” for which he was allegedly found carrying ID?

Had Oswald simply vanished, what would have been thought of a man who left a rifle at the assassination scene, a wallet at the Tippit murder scene, and an only newly-disclosed background of consorting with a Soviet KGB agent in charge of western hemisphere assassinations, before fleeing to Havana?  (CIA revealed that Kostikov was the Department 13 chief, in charge of "wet ops," only on 11/22/63.  Timing is everything, innit?)

Even if photographic evidence - such as Prayer Man - had shown conclusively Oswald wasn’t the 6th floor shooter, would he have been thought any less guilty in light of the above?  Would Castro and Khrushchev have been thought any less responsible?

Had it been a requirement of the plotters that Oswald be an assassin, let alone a lone assassin, would they not have troubled themselves to ensure that the murder weapon at least bore his prints?  What they presumably did not think necessary, the Dallas Police Department demonstrably did.

As I said, two sets of priorities working at cross purposes.  Evidence for the contention abounds.  One need only view it in that context to see how it was intended to work, who intended it to work that way, and what went so terribly wrong.

Prayer Man only helps to prove it.  Which is no small thing, needless to say.

[beowulf]

Sean Murphy just keeps on going, I wasn't familiar with French journalist (who actually interviewed Truly) Leo Sauvage until Sean quoted him.  Just  Just read a piece he wrote in 1964, interesting fellow. Who knew the FBI was big in recycling way back then?

But like Captain Fritz, Curry seemed perfectly convinced that the chicken was Oswald’s, and on Sunday the FBI agent on the scene, Gordon Shanklin, made it final by informing Fred Powledge of the New York Times that a print of Oswald’s left index finger had been found on the paper bag containing the chicken bone.
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/the_critics/Sauvage/The_Oswald_Affair/Oswald_Affair.html

Oswald's fingerprint and palmprint found on bag.--Using a standard chemical method involving silver nitrates 180 the FBI Laboratory developed a latent palmprint and latent fingerprint on the bag. (See app. X, p. 565.) Sebastian F. Latona, supervisor of the FBI's Latent Fingerprint Section, identified these prints as the left index fingerprint and right palmprint of Lee Harvey Oswald.
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html

At some point it dawned on the Bureau that planting LHO's left index finger print on a paper bag that had carried a rifle might be slightly more incriminating than on a bag that had carried fried chicken.

[Albert Rossi]

Robert,

Thank you for your very detailed post elucidating your reconstruction of these events.  It is indeed clear you have done more than read a few books. Let me also clarify -- in case clarification is needed, which it may not be -- that my questions were real ones, and weren't meant to sound like I was throwing down the gauntlet or something.  I have been following this case for 46 years, too, but some areas of my thinking are very fluid (how can we really be dead certain about anything in this case?), especially when there is new information to be digested.

Let me also assert that a lot of what you state I also happen to agree with:  that Oswald was being "sheep dipped" as a leftist with only his partially conscious cooperation; that he probably wasn't in Mexico City; that all the impostor stuff going on in Dallas in the lead up to 11/22 he was no doubt unaware of; that the Hidell card probably wasn't found on him but may have been planted at the Tippit crime scene; that certain framing details like the scope were outed because incriminating evidence like that tends to carry weight even when it doesn't jibe with other facts (like Klein's catalogue advertising it with a scope; but then the M-C which became the WC exhibit was 40" rather than the 36" Klein model, too, just to name another incongruity).  I also agree about the timing of the Kostikov info, and with John Newman's view of what was going on inside Langley.  The Redbird story (Larry Hancock recently wrote something interesting on this), as well as the bit from Russell's book, are both intriguing as well.

While I will respectfully reserve judgment on whether or not LHO was meant to vanish, if I do follow your argument, you nevertheless do seem to imply that the trail of evidence (and let's not forget about the abortive mailing of the brown paper bag to Ruth Paine's house two days before the assassination) he would have left in his wake would have tended to implicate him as (a) trigger; it seems, if I understand you correctly, that it was just not all that important for him to have remained totally out of sight.  Perhaps the planners even thought any incidental visibility could be obfuscated or covered up in the usual manner? (Indeed, look how long it has taken for Prayer Man to be discovered.)

What is less than clear is the reason why the original plan went wrong -- if that is indeed what happened. In any case, the "alternative" version seems to have been put in place rather quickly.  As I mentioned, there's that Air Force One communiqué; and of course, by the time of the autopsy it is clear that the single gunman conclusion was the one being sought (coerced is probably the better word).

Thanks again, Robert, for a thought-provoking post.  Perhaps we could take further discussion of this off line somewhere, like a PM or email.

[beowulf]

Thanks again, Robert, for a thought-provoking post.  Perhaps we could take further discussion of this off line somewhere, like a PM or email.

Why take it offline? Everyone reading here is interested in discussing this or they probably wouldn't be reading here.

The big question I think is, one you put your finger on, " why the original plan went wrong -- if that is indeed what happened".

Was Tippit supposed to kill him?  Were the cops at the theater? Or did everything go according to plan and the govt  simply turned a blind eye to the bread crumb trail leading to Cuba?

[GuestGuest]

The two big questions I have were the Tippit shooting and the Limo stop. Had Tippit not been shot then it is doubtful the DPD would have descended on the Texas Theatre and Oswald might well have been disappeared. Had Greer followed SS protocal and hit the gas instead of slowing to a virtual stop, the fatal lhead shot would not likely have occurred. Greer could have been confused, perhaps hungover, and responded with incompetence, or he could have been part of the plot. The same with the Tippit shooting. If it was not supposed to have happened, then this was a main factor in things unraveling. I have always felt Oswald's arrest was the main reason the LN scenario was initiated.

[John Mooney]

Great post by Robert and good questions following.

I think this - what a non-hiding Oswald implies - should have its own thread. I started the thread drift (sorry) and wasn't sure if I should start one being new here.

I think the evidence thread should just discuss the great work by Sean and others (Robin's stella cleaned up picture). The implications discussion could potentially branch off all over the place and drown the evidence.

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Please add your thoughts here...

[greg_parkerAdmin]

In any case, it would be great for those of us who haven't total recall of eyewitness testimony and official reports if someone could expand the timeline posted by Bill Kelly into a comparative one which contrasts the alternate reconstructions offered by Sean, Greg, Lee, Richard, and Colin, accounting for the movements of all these people in and out of the TSBD.  A real task, I realize.

It is a good idea, but a big undertaking for anyone.

Albert,

I started developing this theory back in 2002-3 on McAdam's forum. It was reading Baker's affidavit that got me started. The more I dug, the more corroboration I got that, whatever actually happened, one thing that didn't was the 2nd floor lunch-room encounter. Then I started looking at others like Williams and Piper... and what came sharply into focus was that the workers in that building were being shifted around like pieces in some warped 3-d version of chess.

It now appears that every single facet of this case needs to be stripped bare of 50 years worth of layering, tampering, trampling, altering, misinforming, disinforming and cherry-picking from the DPD through to James Douglass and beyond.

I think that is largely the task Lee and I are setting ourselves. If nothing else, it will result in a book quite different to what has come out any time in the past.

But I digress...

I gave up at some stage, trying to gain any traction regarding my own take on events in that building. Sean has the touch of a surgeon, the eye of an eagle and the patience of Job. He has made it his own; gone way beyond what I did and refined it beyond recognition to what I had originally envisioned as being the most likely flow of events. The discovery of "Prayer Man" would be considered overkill even in some primitive societies. Queensland comes to mind...    

That is not to say I now agree with Sean 100%.

Here is what keeps me believing that it's at least feasible that T & B took the stairs until the 5th AND that they really did encounter someone on the 4th floor.
--------------------
Mr. Belin. At the time you got up there was there any elevator on floor number two that you can remember, if you can remember? Maybe you cannot remember, I don't know.


Mr. Baker.Evidently--now, I didn't look, evidently it wasn't because it seemed to me like the next floor up Mr. Truly said let's take the elevator.
----------------------
Baker is saying one floor up from where the encounter happened is where they jumped on an elevator.

One floor up from 2 is 3. One floor up from 4 is 5.

Baker is inadvertently placing the encounter back where he originally said it was - on the 4th floor. If the 4th floor encounter was also pure BS, I really can't see Baker making this "mistake".

And it was a mistake that Belin quickly recognised and tried to smooth out by changing Baker's very precise "one floor up" to a more ambiguous "some higher floor" and then immediately goes off the record.

Mr. Belin.At some higher floor after that?


Mr. Baker.Yes, sir.


Mr. Belin. All right, if we can go off the record for a moment here. 

Here is my outline as it was "pre-Prayer-Man"

1.Oswald eats lunch. Sees two of Junior and Shorty re-enter the building.

2.Goes up for coke as per his usual habit.

3. Hears commotion outside. Goes to front door. 

4. Baker rushes in and asks if for anyone who works there to give him directions to stairs/elevators. Truly - either already in there, or quickly arriving, steps forward and takes Baker up the stairs (whether or not first checking elevators) 

5. LHO goes back in and is standing by the little store-room when Campbell and Reid re-enter. 

6. Lingers there for unknown amount of time and decides to go outside. Is stopped by Welcome Barnett and asked to stand aside to give his details. He does this (albeit in his usual non-conforming style), and is allowed to leave. Somewhere in there, Truly or Shelley has vouched he is an employee and also somewhere in there, he overheard a discussion suggesting there would be no more work that day - which is when he decided to go to the movies.   

7. LHO's (slightly "off") name and address is placed at the top of Revill's list. That this information came via Jones from MIG files is one of those apocryphal layers that needs peeling and discarding - whether or not my alternative is correct.

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Greg,

I don't think any data for a typical order-filling regime is available. Meaning any typical timeline would be entirely arbitrary.

Truly described orders as varying from $3-4 to $300-400. He detailed (III pp. 215-216) that the 1st floor & basement held bin stock (aka shelf stock) and the 5th, 6th and part of the 7th held overflow stock (aka reserve stock).  "...the boys have to go to those floors all during the day to pick up stock and bring it to the 1st floor ... We have a large quantity of (Scott, Foresman) books on the 6th floor ... (Oswald) had occasion to go to the 6th floor quite a number of times every day ... all of our boys, all of our order fillers have worked at some time or other on (Scott, Foresman) ..."

If I remember correctly, even Wesley Frazier went up to the 6th around 10:00 AM on the 22nd.

***

The problem with Dougherty's contention that he was "getting stock" off the 6th & 5th is that it reeks of an alibi:

VI, p. 377

BALL: And how long were you on the 6th floor?
DOUGHERTY: Well, just long enough to get some stock.
BALL: Where did you go then?
DOUGHERTY: I went to the 5th floor.
BALL: What did you do then?
DOUGHERTY: Well, I went to the 5th floor to get some stock also on the 5th floor...

p. 380

BALL: Where did you take that- to what floor?
DOUGHERTY: I took it up to the 6th floor.
BALL: Then what did you do?
DOUGHERTY: Well, when I got through getting stock off of the 6th floor, I came back down to the 5th floor.
BALL: What did you do on the 5th floor?
DOUGHERTY: Well, I got some stock...

Naturally, Ball never probed as to just what Dougherty may have seen while on the 6th floor.

***

Now, Sean has Dougherty spotting a rifle while up on the 6th. He beats a retreat to the 5th. While about 10 feet from the west elevator (as he'd stated to the FBI March 18) he hears a loud shot/explosion (singular), and immediately runs down the noisy stairwell.

It's not specified, but I'm assuming that Sean has Dougherty taking the west elevator back to the 6th & 5th after his early lunch. The noisy west elevator. And so the snipers, upon hearing his arrival, simply tell him to "Get lost"?? And Dougherty, to make himself scarce, retreats only to the 5th?? And, he closes the elevator gates behind him (a circumstance which Truly & Baker soon utilize to take the west elevator up)??

I'm quite skeptical of this scenario.

Dougherty's proximity to the 6th-floor hit team- immediately before the hit- and his obfuscation as regards his true activities/movements on the 6th- speak to me of complicity. Of an in-house conspirator assisting the hit team with their vital escape method. How else would strangers on the 6th floor know- and be depended upon, in the heat of the moment- that both gates must be closed for the elevators to move? The inner 3/4 gate (4-foot high) and the outer full-size gate, that rolled down from its overhead holder. Providing the hit team with an escort would ease the mechanics of their escape.

Thanks Richard,

what i was trying to get at was the usual process.

1. collect books (from downstairs unless book/s not there - then get it/them upstairs)
2. Go to wrapping table.
3. Weigh items.
4. ?

I'm trying to see if Dougherty's movements are consistent with filling an order - which entails at least the steps above.

He is a pretty lousy order filler if he is going back and forth on floors 5 and 6 - and pretty unlucky he needed to look up there at all considering Cason's statements that order-fillers only needed to go up there on average every 3 or 4 days.

[Vinny]

Now the lone nutters have started bashing this theory.



http://facts-carlier-jfk-assassination.blogspot.com/2013/09/proof-of-conspiracy-at-last.html

[greg_parkerAdmin]

Now the lone nutters have started bashing this theory.



http://facts-carlier-jfk-assassination.blogspot.com/2013/09/proof-of-conspiracy-at-last.html

Amid strong competiton, Frankie remains the most self-delusional nutter out there.

[John Mooney]

That is the most outrageous treatment of Sean's work.

But that's what they do.

[Albert Rossi]

Please add your thoughts here...

OK, Greg (and beowulf).  My suggestion was not in order to deprive others of the exchange, but simply in the interest of keeping the thread coherent.

When I first started reading this forum, what impressed me most was its practice of close reading (to use a lit crit term).  The kind of exchanges going on here distinguish this site from many other fora and blogs (with perhaps the exception of Sean's EF contributions).  While there is obviously nothing wrong with discussing implications and "the bigger picture" (and in the end our entire effort makes no sense without such attempts at synthesis), it is nevertheless true that that kind of thing already goes on in many other venues, whereas the careful picking apart of testimony does not, and is a real strength of this place.

[GuestGuest]

In any case, it would be great for those of us who haven't total recall of eyewitness testimony and official reports if someone could expand the timeline posted by Bill Kelly into a comparative one which contrasts the alternate reconstructions offered by Sean, Greg, Lee, Richard, and Colin, accounting for the movements of all these people in and out of the TSBD.  A real task, I realize.

It is a good idea, but a big undertaking for anyone.

Albert,

I started developing this theory back in 2002-3 on McAdam's forum. It was reading Baker's affidavit that got me started. The more I dug, the more corroboration I got that, whatever actually happened, one thing that didn't was the 2nd floor lunch-room encounter. Then I started looking at others like Williams and Piper... and what came sharply into focus was that the workers in that building were being shifted around like pieces in some warped 3-d version of chess.

It now appears that every single facet of this case needs to be stripped bare of 50 years worth of layering, tampering, trampling, altering, misinforming, disinforming and cherry-picking from the DPD through to James Douglass and beyond.

I think that is largely the task Lee and I are setting ourselves. If nothing else, it will result in a book quite different to what has come out any time in the past.

But I digress...

I gave up at some stage, trying to gain any traction regarding my own take on events in that building. Sean has the touch of a surgeon, the eye of an eagle and the patience of Job. He has made it his own; gone way beyond what I did and refined it beyond recognition to what I had originally envisioned as being the most likely flow of events. The discovery of "Prayer Man" would be considered overkill even in some primitive societies. Queensland comes to mind...    

That is not to say I now agree with Sean 100%.

Here is what keeps me believing that it's at least feasible that T & B took the stairs until the 5th AND that they really did encounter someone on the 4th floor.
--------------------
Mr. Belin. At the time you got up there was there any elevator on floor number two that you can remember, if you can remember? Maybe you cannot remember, I don't know.


Mr. Baker.Evidently--now, I didn't look, evidently it wasn't because it seemed to me like the next floor up Mr. Truly said let's take the elevator.
----------------------
Baker is saying one floor up from where the encounter happened is where they jumped on an elevator.

One floor up from 2 is 3. One floor up from 4 is 5.

Baker is inadvertently placing the encounter back where he originally said it was - on the 4th floor. If the 4th floor encounter was also pure BS, I really can't see Baker making this "mistake".

And it was a mistake that Belin quickly recognised and tried to smooth out by changing Baker's very precise "one floor up" to a more ambiguous "some higher floor" and then immediately goes off the record.

Mr. Belin.At some higher floor after that?


Mr. Baker.Yes, sir.


Mr. Belin. All right, if we can go off the record for a moment here. 

Here is my outline as it was "pre-Prayer-Man"

1.Oswald eats lunch. Sees two of Junior and Shorty re-enter the building.

2.Goes up for coke as per his usual habit.

3. Hears commotion outside. Goes to front door. 

4. Baker rushes in and asks if for anyone who works there to give him directions to stairs/elevators. Truly - either already in there, or quickly arriving, steps forward and takes Baker up the stairs (whether or not first checking elevators) 

5. LHO goes back in and is standing by the little store-room when Campbell and Reid re-enter. 

6. Lingers there for unknown amount of time and decides to go outside. Is stopped by Welcome Barnett and asked to stand aside to give his details. He does this (albeit in his usual non-conforming style), and is allowed to leave. Somewhere in there, Truly or Shelley has vouched he is an employee and also somewhere in there, he overheard a discussion suggesting there would be no more work that day - which is when he decided to go to the movies.   

7. LHO's (slightly "off") name and address is placed at the top of Revill's list. That this information came via Jones from MIG files is one of those apocryphal layers that needs peeling and discarding - whether or not my alternative is correct.

Greg, I concur with your versions of Oswald's movements. I do question Bakers 3-4th floor story. Who could the man have been, and why did Truly vouch for him? Suppose B and T see no one all the way up. Baker returns to the station for his affidavit. Sees Oswald and asks why he is there. Fritz explains they suspect him of the Tippit shooting as well as the President's. Baker says he saw Oswald on the first floor as he entered. Fritz says they have it from the SOG himself that Oswald's the guy and they need to build a solid case. Now what floor was that again? And so the stories begain, IMO.

[AllenLowe]

just to respond to something earlier, about whether Tippit was supposed to kill Oswald - Duke Lane's theory, which makes sense to me, was that the killing of Tippit was intended to clear the cops out of Dealey plaza; and help everyone to get away (and remember that they never sealed off the Book Depository).

[GuestGuest]

just to respond to something earlier, about whether Tippit was supposed to kill Oswald - Duke Lane's theory, which makes sense to me, was that the killing of Tippit was intended to clear the cops out of Dealey plaza; and help everyone to get away (and remember that they never sealed off the Book Depository).

Why then lead them on a merry chase to the movie theatre where they can't be sure Oswald wont just be arrested? Wouldn't making Oswald disappear be more important. And with the SS credentials I don't think the shooters would have had that much trouble melting away into the crowds and confusion, long enough to get to their rides.

[GuestGuest]

Okay, so how significant is it that it was both Truly and Reid who claimed Oswald was seen wearing just a white t-shirt after the assassination?

What was this trying to cover up?

[AllenLowe]

I think they both wanted to be rid of Oswald AND get the cops out of Dealey; Secret Service credentials aren't enough; there's people and weapons and who-knows-what-else which have to be moved, ops who have to make themselves scarce. Nothing could have been  more convenient than the evacuation of cops from Dealey; no pesky searching for evidence, no pesky dusting for fingerprints. I'm with Duke on this one.

[Albert Rossi]

Okay, so how significant is it that it was both Truly and Reid who claimed Oswald was seen wearing just a white t-shirt after the assassination?

What was this trying to cover up?

Lee, I tried to upload a couple of document images (CE's) but haven't figured out how to do it on this forum. 

Anyway, it seems to me that there are a number of witnesses who id'd the man with the rifle in the window as wearing a white or light shirt, and Arnold Rowland actually said it was either open or collarless (CE 358, vol 16: 489b).  Similar statement from Carolyn Arnold (CE 2086, vol. 24: 270b).  I know there were other similar accounts given to DPD, FBI and reporters.  Of course, these two witnesses also both said they saw two men, the other in a dark jacket.  The same "light clothing" (and T-shirt) traits show up in some of the Tippit witnesses, too.  In any case, if this was an attempt to reconcile some of these "light clothing" reports (even Howard Brennan says this, though he qualifies it with 'khaki") with Oswald, who had a dark shirt on, it then raises the question of how the fibers supposedly from that shirt got on the rifle if he was firing in his T-shirt.

[Hasan Yusuf]

I would add that Truly and Reid claimed he was only wearing a white T-shirt, because he was standing outside wearing a dark coloured shirt at the time the President was shot.

[GuestGuest]

You have to question Reid IMO. She says in the newspaper report that she saw Olawald on the first floor in a storage room, then later says she see's him on the second floor while she is alone there, but evidence suggests she was with a group of people returning from the street.

[beowulf]

Secret Service credentials aren't enough; there's people and weapons and who-knows-what-else which have to be moved, ops who have to make themselves scarce...
Until an actual Secret Service agent showed up (Sorrels around 1), whoever flashed SS credentials in or around Dealey Plaza could do whatever they want unchallenged. Whether by law or custom, at any presidential appearance, everyone obeys Secret Service orders--  civilians, local cops, state police, military, even other federal agencies. The fake agents were long gone (and had taken everything they wanted to take) by the time Tippit was killed.

Its still a mystery to me why Robert Kennedy gave his brother's killers a pass.  Even if an honest investigation meant destroying his own political future, its contemptible he did nothing (As a mystified Jim Garrison put it, "If it were my brother, I'd be in the alley waiting for them with a steak knife"). The man was Attorney General, if he had jumped into the case with both feet, not even Lyndon Johnson could have stopped him. RFK could've announced he was appointing, say, Manhattan DA Frank Hogan as special prosecutor and giving him authority to appoint his ADAs as US Attorneys and NYPD detectives as US Marshals to investigate and there wouldn't be a damn thing LBJ or Hoover could do about it.

[AllenLowe]

1) you need to read Brothers. Bobby no longer had any real power. And your view is anachronistic. The world was not like this back then. Times were much different. It's like the guy I saw who posted on another forum as though everyone on the knoll had phone cameras.

2) I'm glad you are sure that by the time Tippit was shot everything was cleared out of there. Did you do a sweep afterwards? Inventory? Check it against the list the conspirators had?  I mean, if they couldn't complete their getaway for the crime of the century in 49 minutes, what kind of pros were they?

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