Baker's HSCA interview Shows He was Given His Later Story

"He returned to hdq and put his bike away. He gave a statement and found out from the officer who had also taken a statement from Mr Truly that the man he accosted on the second floor of the TSBD was Oswald."

After determining the origin of the shots, he jumped from his motor and ran into the building. He found a man who said he was the building manager. Officer Baker and the building manager then went to a stairway and started up the stairs to search the building. On the 4th floor Officer Baker apprehended a man that was walking away from the stairway on that floor. Officer Baker started to search the man, but the building manager stated that the man was an employee of the company and was known to him. Officer Baker released the man and continued his search of the building. Officer Baker later identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he had seen on the 4th floor of the Texas School Book Depository."

"When Patrolman ML Baker identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man that he stopped in the Texas School Book Depository Building, Patrolman Baker was in the Homicide Bureau giving an affidavit and Oswald was brought into the room to talk to some Secret Service men. When Baker saw Oswald he stated, 'that is the man I stopped on the 4th floor of the School Book Depository.'"

beowulf wrote:Hasan, that John Armstrong collection is great. There really is enough evidence for 5 or 6 mutually inconsistent conspiracies buried in there. )

That's true - just as it is true of the volumes of evidence the WC collected.  

One thing I learned skimming through it, in Baker's September 23, 1964 affidavit for WC, he had this cross out--- "I saw a man standing in the lunchroom, holding a coke" (I've made the point that in most of the US South, coke is a generic term for soda, inclusive of Pepsi and Dr. Pepper).  He has also had this crossout I had never seen before--- "On the second or the third floor, where the lunchroom was located". (page 2)
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-arm/id/34249/rec/118

The point about "coke" being generic is one that has long been made - but it is obviously not a universal practice in the South because Buell referred to "Dr Pepper" not "coke". I'm not sure of the utility of this knowledge if it is not a universal (Southern) practice.

I suspect Baker really did stop someone on the third floor at the drinking fountain (as Major Ellis recounted to HSCA what Baker told him, your first link). And it probably really was a third floor employee (weren't there publishers on that floor?) because Dorothy Garner would have noticed someone coming down past the 4th floor before Truly and Baker came up.

Ellis was recalling this years later -- there is no mention of any drinking of water from a fountain by anyone else Baker spoke to on day one or the immediate days following.

The Stroud document and the Ernest interview regarding Garner are interesting, but I think she most likely saw Inspector Sawyer and the employee who escorted him up. According to his testimony, he took the elevator to the fifth floor (accompanied by an employee and a couple of cops) "and we went back to the storage area and looked around and didn't see anything." Trouble is that by his own words and description, he took the passenger elevator - which did not - even for an important police inspector on the hunt for a presidential assassin - ever go higher than the 4th floor. According to the Ernest interview, Garner said she had gone to the storage area for reasons unrecalled. 

In fact, Sawyer inadvertently confirms he was on the 4th later in his testimony:

Mr. BELIN. Was there anything other than a warehouse or storage area there? 
Mr. SAWYER. Well, to one side I could see an office over there with people in it. Some women that apparently were office workers. 

If Mrs Garner insists she saw Truly, that also is possible because he saw officers on the 4th on the way back down. If he saw others - then others could see him.

Mr. TRULY. Then we continued on down, and we saw officers on the fourth floor.
I don't recall that we stopped any more until we reached the first floor. But I do recall there was an officer on the fourth floor, by the time we got down that far.

An encounter with a third floor employee? These were all office workers. Back in the day, they all wore suits. I also don't recall any males claiming to have stayed up on the third floor - let alone any that matched Baker's description or any having a run-in with a gun-toting cop and Roy Truly. 

Here are all the employee statements.  http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=171462 If there is someone in there who fits the bill, I will need to re-evaluate this entire scenario.

On the other hand, if Garner did see someone (whose initials were not LHO) pass through 4th floor or worse saw him confronted by Marrion Baker right in front of her, she'd surely get the "don't be a hero, just walk away" speech from the Feds and then never breathed a word of it.

Final point, in Baker's original Nov. 22 affidavit (same link as above, pg. 14) there's a crossout I can't decipher, replaced by allcaps words in "I SAW A man walking away..."
There's a second crossout, "I ???? called to the man", I'd wager Baker started to write "hollered" and replaced it with "called".

beowulf wrote:"it sure seems strange that Fritz would report to Curry that Oswald was stopped coming down the stairs instead of inside the lunchroom, and it seems to me that Roy Truly was the mastermind behind this storey; in order to discredit both Baker's encounter with Oswald on the first floor, and also the encounter with the real shooter."

I don't think Truly really had leverage here. If Baker did stop someone on the third or fourth floor that Truly had vouched for, he's on the hook for accessory to murder or obstruction of justice if the person he said worked there actually didn't (even if mystery man wasn't the shooter he could have been an accomplice or a witness and now there's no employee records for the police to follow up on).

There are some things that are yet to be made public. You may or may not find it persuasive, but in any case... all in due course!

Llike Mark Twain said, history is a lie agreed upon.  If the official story was that Truly vouched for a non-employee on third floor who's now in the wind, then he's sure to be prosecuted. The second floor story was handed to him and he hung out to it like it was a parachute, which it kind of was. If the man he vouched for (albeit now on the 2nd floor) as an employee was Oswald, then he is blameless. Of course the FBI might have discovered later that the 3rd or 4th floor man was in fact a harmless publisher employee (that is, a TSBD the building employee but not a TSBD the company employee) but by then Truly's story was set in concrete.

Personally, I think that's a dry hole. The shooters either came down on the elevator and went out the back or since they likely had police or Secret Service credentials, just wandered around with the proverbial deerstalker cap and magnifying glass, looking for clues, to blend in with the rest of the coppers doing likewise.

May not be that crazy. According to Mrs Garner, it was pretty much bedlam:

  "It was total confusion," she said.  "The Dallas police, FBI, 
Secret Service were coming up the stairs, in the elevators, in all the 
offices.  The news media and workers and outsiders were going 
everywhere." 

greg parker wrote:Great finds, Hasan! I think Sean Murphy may have found the second one before - but the other two are definitely new to me.

It's more nails in the coffin of a 2nd floor lunchroom encounter.

Joseph Ball was, as was his usual practice, not interested in these "plainclothes...deputy sheriffs" who were on their way down the stairs so soon after the assassination. How did Mooney know they were Deputy Sheriffs and who were they?

I take it you are referring to the Frank Ellsworth revelations?

Mr. McKEOWN - Yes. Well, this, gentleman came out to my place. Not Mr. Butler, somebody else. I do net recall his name. 
Mr. PURDY - Was his name Porter? 
Mr. McKEOWN - Yes, it damn sure was. Jack Porter. 
Mr. PURDY - Please explain the story. 
Mr. McKEOWN - Anyway, he told me that it was a very mysterious thing. He told me, he says, do you have any work clothes like khakis, khaki pants and things? I said well, I can get some. What is the occasion? He said we want you to go to the top floor of the Gulf Building in Houston. We want you to get off two floors before you get to the top and walk up and dress like a working person. So I did.

 Edit: I was going off-topic so I just summarized my point in a paragraph.