The Baker/Truly/Oswald 2nd floor lunchroom encounter

Colin Crow wrote:Looking at the testimonys of Reid and Hine they are mutually exclusive. I have to say that I do not believe Reid saw Oswald crossing the office floor as she claimed.

I find it amazing the a google search only identified Sean's comment regarding this conundrum. The official story has all the hallmarks of Givens' bogus cigarette trip.

If Baker saw someone on the 3rd or 4th floor who was not Oswald, I dont' believe anyone who claimed to have seen Oswald in the TSBD after the shots was telling the truth.

nonsqtr wrote:There's another fellow (named Otis Williams?) who claims he ran directly up the back stairs to the fourth floor. He apparently didn't see anyone either (not Oswald, and not Baker or Truly).

Mr. BALL. When you came back in did you see Mrs. Reid?
Miss HINE. No, sir; I don't believe there was a soul in the office when I came back in right then.
Mr. BALL. Did you see anybody else go in through there?
Miss HINE. No, sir; after I answered the telephone then there was about four or five people that came in.
Mr. BALL. Was there anybody in that room when you came back in and went to the telephone?
 Miss HINE. No, sir; not to my knowledge.
Mr. BALL. Did you see Mrs. Reid come back in?
Miss HINE. Yes, sir; I think I felt sure that I did. I thought that there were five or six that came in together. I thought she was one of those.
Mr. BALL. Mrs. Reid told us she came in alone and when she came in she didn't see anybody there.
Miss HINE. Well, it could be that she did, sir. I was talking on the phones and then came the policemen and then came the press. Everybody was wanting an outside line and then our vice president came in and he said "The next one that was clear, I have to have it and so I was busy with the phone.
Mr. BALL. From the time you walked into the room you became immediately busy with the phone?
Miss HINE. Yes, sir; sure was.
Mr. BALL. Did you see Oswald come in?
Miss HINE. My back would have been to the door he was supposed to have come in at.
Mr. BALL. Were you facing the door he is supposed to have left by?
Miss HINE. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Do you recall seeing him?
Miss HINE. No, sir.
Mr. BALL. Do you have any definite recollection of Mrs. Reid coming in?
Miss HINE. No, sir; I only saw four or five people that came by and they all came and were all talking about how terrible it was.
Mr. BALL. Do you remember their names?
Miss HINE. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Who were they?
Miss HINE. Mr. Williams, Mr. Molina (spelling), Miss Martha Reid, Mrs. Reid, Mrs. Sarah Stanton, and Mr. Campbell; that's all I recall, sir.

beowulf wrote:When he asked Truly about him, Truly said the man was an employee and was 'slightly retarded'."
Was thinking abut this again today. I still think Truly only vouched for one employee but its more likely to be Jack Dougherty on the 4th floor than Eddie Piper (or for that matter, Troy West) on the 1st floor. After all, Truly would tell the Secret Service that, "although [Jack] Dougherty is a very good employee and a hard worker, he is mentally retarded". I'm very skeptical Truly would tell Baker someone was an employee who actually wasn't, it'd leave him incredibly exposed to prosecution as an accomplice as soon as the lie fell apart (i.e. as soon as the cops took a head count of the real employees), so the odds are whoever Baker ran into really did work in the TSBD.

Baker passed Oswald at the front door but had no reason to suspect him, then he passed a black man (either Piper or West) near the elevator, again, too soon after the shooting to be suspect. He then sees a white man on the 3rd or 4th floor. That person was close enough to the roof (where Baker thought the shots had come from) to be suspicious so he asks Truly about him. Truly vouches that he's an employee and says he's retarded-- just as he would tell the Secret Service Dougherty was retarded.

If it was Dougherty on the 4th floor, Baker could have been ordered to change his physical description in the affidavit to make it sound more like Oswald. Of course we don't really know what Dougherty looked like,  the truth could be even simpler-- perhaps Dougherty really was 5'9", 165 lb, with dark hair and wearing a light brown jacket that day.  The WC lawyers knew there was something fishy about Dougherty, but since Baker and Truly had by then moved the alleged Oswald meeting to the 2nd floor, they didn't suspect that he could be the employee by the back stairs Baker had run into.
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t176-jack-edwin-dougherty