Reclaiming History
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The Warren Commission critics don’t deny these Oswald sightings. They simply believe that they occurred before Piper spoke to Oswald on the first floor and, therefore, are still consistent with the belief that Oswald, after he was seen on the fifth and sixth floors, came down to the first floor for lunch. But there is a very good reason to conclude that Oswald was spotted on the fifth and sixth floors after the conversation with Piper and not before, and hence, remained on the upper floors.
We know that when Shelley left the sixth floor around 11:50 a.m. or a little earlier to go down to the first floor for lunch, this was before the rest of the work crew did, since he was not part of, nor did he testify about, the elevator descent from the sixth floor that subsequently took place. That means that the sixth-floor work crew was still on the sixth floor, with one remaining freight elevator, when Shelley saw Oswald on the first floor. This is an important point because we know that when the sixth-floor work crew broke for lunch a few minutes later, they used both elevators. As Danny Arce said, “Me and Bonnie Ray and…I believe it was Billy Lovelady were on the same elevator, and Charles Givens and the other guys were on the other one and we were racing down.”83 That means that the elevator Shelley likely used to descend to the first floor had been returned (either manually or by remote control) to the sixth floor during the intervening few minutes. It seems pretty obvious that it was Oswald himself who took the freight elevator back up to the sixth floor after talking with Piper, considering the fact that Oswald was seen on, and heard calling from, the fifth floor shortly thereafter by his coworkers descending past him on their way to lunch.
Once again, the cohesiveness of all of the evidence—Oswald’s statement to Piper (“I’m going up to eat lunch”), his presence on the upper floors of the Depository shortly thereafter (as determined by eyewitness testimony and from the movements of the freight elevators), and all of the physical evidence (Oswald’s finger and palm prints in the sniper’s nest, his ownership of murder weapon found on the sixth floor, etc.)—easily overwhelms the allegation that Oswald was eating lunch on the first floor of the Depository at the time of the shooting. Even if Oswald had descended to the first floor to have lunch after being seen by his coworkers on the fifth floor, this would obviously not preclude his having a quick lunch and then going up to the sixth floor to await the motorcade. If Harold Norman could be eating lunch on the first floor after 12:00 noon and still be on the fifth floor to hear the shots being fired above him on the sixth floor at 12:30, why couldn’t Oswald have gotten from the first-floor lunchroom to the sixth floor just as quickly?
In addition to citing Piper and Shelley, critics also point to the testimony of James Jarman Jr. and Harold Norman as supportive of Oswald’s claim, in his interrogation by Captain Fritz, that at the time of the assassination he was “having lunch” on the first floor “with some of the colored boys” who worked with him.84 Pressed to name the employees, Oswald said that one of them was called “Junior” and the other was a short man whose name he did not know.85* Oswald was undoubtedly referring to James “Junior” Jarman and most likely Harold Norman (who was short and with whom Jarman spent most of his lunch break that day), two of three men who would later watch the motorcade from the fifth floor. Conspiracy theorists are quick to emphasize that both men did, in fact, eat lunch on the first floor.86
Conspiracy author Anthony Summers writes, “If Oswald was not indeed on the first floor at some stage, he demonstrated almost psychic powers by describing two men—out of a staff of seventy five—who were actually there.”87 Of course, Oswald’s claim can hardly be considered psychic given the fact that he undoubtedly was, at some stage, on the first floor, being seen there not too long before noon by Shelley and Piper. Also, Oswald could easily and safely have said that Jarman and Norman were also on the first floor at some point during the lunch period. The real question is whether Oswald had lunch with Jarman and Norman, as he told Captain Fritz he did, in the first-floor lunchroom.* The big problem with Oswald’s story is that when Warren Commission counsel asked Jarman, “After his [Oswald’s] arrest, he stated…that he had had lunch with you. Did you have lunch with him?” Jarman answered, “No, sir, I didn’t.”88
What about Norman? Norman testified that while he was having lunch in the domino room, though he never said Oswald was in the room with him, he did say, “I think there was someone else in there.”89 Summers, like critic Sylvia Meagher, suggests that the “someone else” Norman recalled seeing in the lunchroom after 12:00 noon might have been Oswald.90 But Danny Arce told the Warren Commission that he and Jack Dougherty ate their lunch in the domino room during the period Norman described. In fact, Arce was one of those who joined Norman and Jarman when they walked outside a moment later.91 Obviously, Arce and Dougherty were the “someone else” Norman had referred to. Indeed, at the London trial, after Norman testified he saw Oswald around “10, or ten after 10” in the morning at the first-floor window looking out at Elm Street, I asked him, “Did you see him at any other time that day?”
Norman: “No, sir.”92
So much for Oswald’s claim that he was having lunch in the first-floor lunchroom with Jarman and Norman at the time the president was shot. But that’s not the end of the conspiracy theorists’ arguments that Oswald had an alibi for the time of the shooting.
The principle witness whom conspiracy theorists rely on to establish an alibi for Oswald just prior to the shootings in Dealey Plaza is Carolyn Arnold. Mrs. Arnold reportedly saw Oswald on one of the lower floors of the Depository at about the same time Dealey Plaza witness Arnold Rowland saw a man with a gun in a sixth-floor window, which of course suggests that someone other than Oswald was waiting to shoot the president.
The twenty-year-old Mrs. Arnold was employed as a secretary at the Book Depository Building. She came into prominence for the first time in 1978, fifteen years after the assassination, when she told the Dallas Morning News that around 12:25 p.m. on the day of the assassination, five minutes before the shooting, she left the building to watch the motorcade. On her way out, she claims she saw Oswald in the second-floor lunchroom. “I do not recall that he was doing anything,” she said. “I just recall that he was sitting there…in one of the booth seats on the right hand side of the room as you go in. He was alone as usual and appeared to be having lunch…I recognized him clearly.”93 That same month, Arnold told author Anthony Summers that “she went into the lunchroom on the second floor for a moment” (she was pregnant at the time and had a craving for a glass of water) and saw Oswald there, alone and having lunch. Instead of the 12:25 p.m. time she had given the Dallas Morning News, she told Summers she saw Oswald “about a quarter of an hour before the assassination…about 12:15. It may have been slightly later.”94 Why, fifteen years after an alleged incident, Arnold saw fit to give, within the same month, different times to separate interviewers is not known. But that is the least of the problems with Arnold’s story.
Not only is Mrs. Arnold’s 1978 story diametrically opposed to what Oswald told police (he claimed he ate lunch on the first floor, not the second floor as Arnold said, then went to the second to get a Coke), but when she was interviewed by the FBI just four days after the assassination, she said she saw Oswald a few minutes before 12:15 p.m., and it wasn’t in the second-floor lunchroom at all. The FBI report reads, “As she was standing in front of the building, she stated she thought she caught a fleeting glimpse of Lee Harvey Oswald standing in the hallway between the front door and the double doors leading to the warehouse, located on the first floor. She could not be sure that this was Oswald, but she felt it was.”95 So in 1963 she thinks she saw Oswald on the first floor, and in 1978 she knows she saw him on the second floor. And in 1963 Oswald was standing, whereas in 1978 he was sitting down having lunch.
Arnold told both the Dallas Morning News reporter and Summers that the FBI report was wrong and the agent misquoted her. Being misquoted, of course, is not uncommon, but it is somewhat unlikely the FBI agent would have misqu
oted her on not just one but three significant parts of her story. It should be noted on her behalf that this was an FBI report of an interview with her, not a statement signed by Mrs. Arnold. But on March 18, 1964, she did give two FBI agents a signed statement that made no reference to seeing Oswald in the second-floor lunchroom, not mentioning the incident at all, or even that she thought she might have seen him on the first floor. The only reference to Oswald is her saying, “I did not see Lee Harvey Oswald at the time President Kennedy was shot.”96 Conspiracy theorists like author Howard Roffman claim that Mrs. Arnold was not asked about seeing Oswald before the shooting, but was only responding to the specific question of whether she saw Oswald at the time of the shooting, and therefore her reply has no relevance to the issue of whether she saw Oswald in the lunchroom before the assassination. Roffman adds, “There is no reason to expect that the agents who obtained the statements would have sought any further detail, and the final reports reveal that indeed none was sought.”97
But that’s not true. Although the Warren Commission asked the FBI to interview all of the Depository employees and ask them six specific questions,98 many of the respondents volunteered information that was not requested, including the fact that they had not seen Oswald at any time on November 22.99 In fact, two of the four women who accompanied Mrs. Arnold outside—Virgie Rackley and Judy Johnson—reported that they did not see Oswald at any time that day.100 Obviously, Carolyn Arnold had an opportunity in March of 1964 to report seeing Oswald on the morning of the assassination, and common sense would dictate that she would have, had she actually seen him. It may simply be that by 1964 she had decided that she was wrong about catching a “fleeting glimpse” of Oswald. But fifteen years later, Arnold, who had to know by then (the conspiracy theorists had made it well known to the world) that Oswald claimed he was having lunch at the time of the assassination, comes up, for the very first time, with her allegation of seeing Oswald eating lunch inside the second-floor lunchroom just before the shooting in Dealey Plaza.
Quite apart from all the inconsistencies in Mrs. Arnold’s story, it is also not believable because there is a mountain of evidence conclusively proving that Oswald shot Kennedy at 12:30 p.m. (and therefore would not likely be having lunch on the second floor at 12:25 p.m., but would be on the sixth floor getting ready for his murderous mission), and because Arnold is the only witness who claims to have seen Oswald in the lunchroom on the second floor, or on the first floor (Arnold’s 1963 statement) shortly before the assassination or at any time between noon and 12:30. (Piper says he saw him at noon.) The Warren Commission took statements from several Book Depository employees, some of whom had lunch in the second-floor lunchroom on the day of the assassination, where the office personnel normally had their lunch, and some of whom had lunch in the domino room on the first floor, where the regular workers (like Oswald) usually ate their lunch. Although the Commission attorneys could have done a better job in asking specific questions of each of them as to precisely when and where each had lunch that day and whether Oswald was in their presence, it is very inferable (e.g., “Did you see [Oswald] at all on November 22nd?” Answer: “I never did see him”)101 from each of their testimonies that none of them saw Oswald during their lunch break starting at noon up to the time of the assassination at 12:30 p.m.102
So again, the bottom line is that no Book Depository employee other than Mrs. Arnold claims to have seen Oswald on the first or second floor between 12:00 and 12:30 p.m. And she claimed she did, for the first time, fifteen years after the assassination.
Additionally destructive of Mrs. Arnold’s fifteen-year-old claim, Mrs. Pauline Sanders, a fifty-five-year-old clerk-accountant at the Depository, reported leaving the second-floor lunchroom at “approximately 12:20 p.m.” to await the president’s arrival in front of the building. So here we have an employee who was actually in the lunchroom at the precise time that Carolyn Arnold claimed to have seen Oswald there. Yet Mrs. Sanders told the FBI that although she knew Oswald “by sight,” she did not see him “at any time” on November 22, 1963.103 Obviously, there’s no reason or basis to give any credibility at all to the statement Carolyn Arnold made fifteen years after the assassination.
One final observation about the contention that someone other than Oswald was at the sixth-floor sniper’s nest shooting at Kennedy. There is no record of any Book Depository employee seeing a stranger or strangers in the building on the morning of the assassination. In fact, sixty-four Book Depository employees gave signed statements affirmatively declaring that they saw no stranger or strangers in the building that morning. Only one employee, Danny Arce, said that around 11:45 a.m. he saw an “elderly white man” around eighty years old at the entrance of the building. The man asked Arce to direct him to a restroom. Arce did, saying the man was feeble and could “hardly make it up the steps.” Five minutes later the man left the building and Arce saw him enter an old Buick with three women in it and drive off.104 Some sinister stranger.
So if it wasn’t Oswald who shot Kennedy from the sixth-floor window, and no stranger was in the building at the time, it must have been some other Book Depository employee, right? But who? Charles Givens? James Jarman? Victoria Adams? (Why not? Women can pull triggers too, you know.) Or maybe there was a stranger in the building who shot Kennedy from the sixth-floor window, and like his counterpart, the grassy knoll gunman, he had the unprecedented ability to become invisible. Or then again, maybe he exists only in the minds of desperate conspiracy theorists.
A few Dealey Plaza witnesses gave statements of observing men on the upper floors of the Book Depository Building, which, if true, would support the conclusion that whoever shot Kennedy from the building may have had someone else with him. Since this would conflict 100 percent with the Warren Commission’s conclusion of no conspiracy, it arguably spills over and throws into question the Commission’s main conclusion that Oswald killed Kennedy, and I am therefore including this discussion under the “evidence of Oswald’s innocence” rubric. Undoubtedly, a fact that has contributed greatly to the confusion about men on the upper floors is that three Book Depository employees—Harold Norman, Bonnie Ray Williams, and James Jarman—were watching the presidential motorcade go by from the fifth floor (Norman and Williams at the double-windows directly below the sniper’s nest window Oswald was at, Jarman at the double-window immediately to their west) and no Dealey Plaza witness who happened to see them or Oswald in these windows before the shooting commenced would have had any reason at all to make a mental note of exactly who was at what window, and whether they were on the fourth, fifth, or sixth floor. (See the photo section for a photo of Bonnie Ray Williams on the left and Harold Norman on the right in the half-opened double-windows on the southeasternmost side of the fifth floor. The photo, by Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Dillard, was taken within seconds following the third shot.105 Note that the sniper’s nest window, as opposed to the double-windows below, is only one-quarter open—the bottom quarter.106)
The most famous (and most widely quoted by conspiracy theorists) of all the Dealey Plaza witnesses who claim they saw people and happenings on the upper floors of the Book Depository Building that differ from the weight of the evidence and conclusion of the Warren Commission is Arnold Rowland. Rowland was a clearly intelligent and fairly articulate eighteen-year-old high school student who was watching the motorcade with his wife in front of the sheriff’s office on the east side of Houston Street. While waiting for the president’s arrival, they discussed the security measures being taken to protect the president, noting the number of police officers in the Plaza.107
Rowland spoke to several members of law enforcement in Dealey Plaza right after the shooting. It appears he first spoke to Dallas deputy sheriff Roger Craig. Craig testified that Rowland told him that around 12:15 p.m., he saw two men, one holding a rifle with a telescopic sight on it, walking back and forth two windows over from the west side of the sixth floor, not the east side where the sniper’s nest was locat
ed. He assumed they were Secret Service agents. When he looked back a few minutes later, he only saw the man with the rifle.108 In Craig’s report filed the day after the assassination, he not only does not mention the Rowlands, he makes no reference to anyone claiming to have seen two men (one with a rifle) on the sixth floor of the Depository moments before the shooting.109 C. L. “Lummie” Lewis, the Dallas deputy sheriff who escorted the Rowlands to the sheriff’s office to make a statement, did mention the Rowlands in his report of November 23, noting that Arnold Rowland “saw man in bldg about 15 min before shooting with a gun. Wife Barbara was with him,” but not one single word about Arnold Rowland seeing a second man.110 Rowland then told Dallas police detective F. M. Turner that he saw a white man with a rifle that had a telescopic sight standing in the background of an open window on the southwest side of the sixth floor, but made no reference to seeing any second man on the floor.111 And he told Forrest Sorrels, the special agent in charge of the Dallas office of the Secret Service, that he saw a man (he again made no reference to seeing any second man) standing with a rifle several feet back from an open window that was two windows from the westernmost side of the building. (If Rowland told him what floor, Sorrels didn’t say.) The man, whom Rowland said he “could not” identify, was holding the rifle, per Rowland, at the ridiculous formal military position of “port arms.”112