Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald (Volume One)
Page 23
Now that’s a continuity error!
Maybe we can’t see the rat yet, but we sure can smell it, and by the smell we can be fairly sure it’s a big one. Let’s carry on with the story and see where the scent takes us.
After Brown (and supposedly Drain) had received the envelope with the 2 spent hulls and the live round, those items were sent to Special Agent (SA) J. Doyle Williams of the Dallas FBI Office, who made a photograph of this evidence (and whose initials appear on the identification card on the table) (Bloody Treason, p. 111): 26
A cover sheet prepared for the photograph tells us that what we are seeing is no optical illusion: there are only “two 6.5” hulls in the very first dated and identified photograph taken of the empty shells, as stated in the 3rd line of the description in this photograph (Bloody Treason, p. 110): 27
Photographer Williams dictated a memorandum on November 23 detailing the photographic session of November 22, which was released by the government many months after the Warren Commission report was issued (CD 5, p. 169): 28
The photograph by Williams, along with the cover sheet description and his memorandum above, indicates clearly that on November 22 the Dallas FBI had assumed possession of the two empty shells and the live round, possession that was lengthy enough in time to allow for an extensive photographic session, and these documents taken together confirm the 2:15 pm receipt by Brown of the evidence as indicated by the November 22 CSS Form.
Even though the preceding documents and the November 22 CSS Form prove an early afternoon receipt by the FBI, that’s not the official story. So what is the official story? It’s this:
The evidence was in the possession of the Dallas Police Department (not the FBI) until 11:45 p.m. CST, when it was to be sent to Washington with Vincent Drain.
This story is immediately suspect because Drain’s own affidavit regarding the chain of possession (in Warren Commission Document 5, pp. 159-161) 29 nowhere mentions that after he assumed custody of the evidence he delivered the evidence to J. Doyle Williams to be photographed, proving that the Williams photo was taken before Drain collected the evidence in a box at 11:45 p.m. CST, and that therefore the FBI had possession well before 11:45 pm (i.e. 2:15 pm). Drain was on an extremely tight timeline, and certainly would not have dallied in Dallas for a Williams photo session, as proven by a statement he made in a taped interview (No More Silence, p. 249; emphasis supplied):
By the time we got it all boxed up, it was near midnight. Meanwhile Washington was calling down about every fifteen minutes wanting to know where the material was. All of a sudden I learned that neither American nor Braniff had any flights to Washington out of Dallas after midnight. We were told that the FBI in Washington wanted the material by morning if we had to walk it up there. That’s being facetious, but . . .
Fortunately, the commanding general over at Carswell in Fort Worth happened to be a good friend of mine and was head of SAC (Strategic Air Command) at the time. So I called him and was told that the President had asked him to give us all the help that we needed. Another agent took me to Fort Worth where they had a C-135 tanker plane and crew ready.
Definitely a sense of urgency up there in Washington. No time for more photos, Drain, get a move on! Quite the coincidence too, that the person selected to carry this critical evidence just happened to have a good friend with the Strategic Air Command (the commander of the Carswell Air Force base) ready to pitch in with a tanker plane to transport these select future exhibits (such as two empty cartridge cases, the live round, metal fragments, a shirt, a blanket, and a paper bag),a friend who also just happened to have been contacted by President Johnson before Drain made his request. It’s a small world after all!
Drain arrived at Andrews Air Force base in the C-135 tanker plane at 6:30 AM EST (CD 5, p. 160) 30 on November 23. After Drain left Andrews Air Force Base and delivered the evidence to the Washington FBI laboratory (accompanied by armed guard), the evidence was inventoried in a letter prepared on November 23. Here is the relevant section of the screen capture of the inventory listing the evidence received by Drain (CE 2003, p. 132: 24 H 262): 31
You will note once again that only two shells, not three, were sent to the FBI. Take this as another note: FBI laboratory identification numbers Q6 and Q7 refer to the 2 empty shells (Q8 refers to a live round that was said to have been found in a rifle alleged to be Oswald’s). Remember those “Q” numbers, you will be glad you did!!
This vital evidence, delivered into the hands of the FBI on November 22, left Washington approximately 18 hours later, around midnight of November 23, returning to the Dallas Police Department Sunday morning, November 24 (No More Silence, p. 250), when Oswald was still alive and a forthcoming trial was very much alive as a possibility. A receipt for these items as being delivered into the custody of chief of police Jesse Curry was ostensibly prepared at 3:40 p.m., November 24, 1963 (CD 5, p. 161).32
But this material was only to remain briefly in Dallas. It was returned yet again to the custody of Vince Drain of the FBI at 2:00 pm on November 26 (two days after Oswald had been murdered), as noted by Lieutenant Day in his testimony (4 H 273): 33
There is important documentary evidence indicating the transmission of the evidence the second time to the FBI, on November 26 (after Oswald had been killed, when there was now no forthcoming trial). Observing CE 738 (“Photograph of property released by the Dallas Police Department to the FBI on November 26, 1963,” 17 H 512), 34 we can see that four days after the assassination, there were still only two bullets:
Screen capture of CE 738 showing only two shells.
A clearer picture of the two shells, which appeared on p. 88 of Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry’s book JFK Assassination File.
Now, remember that the FBI had identified these shells as “Q6” and “Q7” before returning them to Dallas. But which is which? Is Q6 the one on the left, or the one on the right? Apparently when the shells were returned to Dallas from the Washington FBI office, they were sent back not in separate envelopes, but both together in one envelope, with no identifying information affixed. We can only infer this, because the Dallas Police Department property clerk’s invoice listing a description of items that were sent back to the FBI (dated November 26, 1963), and clearly showing in the last row that only “2” (not “3”) spent hulls were found under the window of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (CE 2003 at 24 H 252 and 332), has no “Q” number designations (see bottom row): 35
Let’s zoom in on that:
Sloppy, sloppy! The significance of the missing “Q” nomenclature, which at this juncture would appear to be simply an arcane detail, will become readily apparent.
In any event, to get back to the main point, things aren’t looking up for the claim that 3, not 2 hulls were found on the sixth floor. Indeed, all the evidence we have looked at so far is telling the same story, but unfortunately for the Warren Commission and the lone assassin hypothesis, the story it is telling — 2 — does not match the story they have told — 3.
We are in debt to researchers Josiah Thompson, Steven Airheart, John Armstrong, and Noel Tywman for shining the spotlight on this issue and uncovering the key documents we have just seen. 36 Of the books by these researchers, Twyman paid the most attention to this issue, publishing the documents he discovered in his excellent book Bloody Treason.
Unfortunately for Mr. Twyman, his years-long detective work was met with scorn by ace prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who devoted a few pages to an analysis of the issue in his magnum opus on the Kennedy assassination, Reclaiming History, and sought to explain this most anomalous of anomalies, 2 vs. 3.
“Very easy to understand, no problem at all,” the ace prosecutor informs us (Bugliosi is the Warren Commission’s apologist emeritus, the type of guy who will tell you that there is a very simple explanation for why an actor’s tie would appear in one shot and then immediately disappear in another, only to immediately appear again). Here is the resolution Bugliosi most graciously prov
ided for his readers (Reclaiming History, Endnotes, p. 419):
Okay, let’s get this one straight: yes, it is true that all the documents necessary for establishing a chain of custody for this vital evidence demonstrate conclusively that only 2/3 of this evidence actually existed on November 22, 1963, but according to Mr. Bugliosi, we are to ignore these documents, and instead rely on the following story: that in the most significant murder investigation in history, in what would have been the trial of the century in the United States of America, Police Captain John Will Fritz egregiously deviated from the protocol of his own office by not having the evidence he supposedly received logged in the same manner as all the other evidence in the case, as found in over 32 detailed pages found in Commission Exhibit 2003 (24 H 330), down to the most insignificant items, such as film exposure instructions [24 H 334], an address label advertisement [24 H 334], a stack of envelopes [24 H 331] and foreign coins in a Kodak film bag [24 H 340]), but, rather, without bothering to inform anyone in writing, squirreled away an empty shell that supposedly contained a bullet that could have killed the President of the United States — one of the most key pieces of evidence in this most significant of murder cases — in his desk drawer!!
The reader should note that Bugliosi delivers this news with a metaphorical straight face; the withering tone that would be present were he on the side of the defense is entirely absent here. An “explanation” entirely improbable from the outset; no wonder Bugliosi buried this analysis in an endnote contained on a CD to his book, which, were it attached to the book proper, would be found somewhere around page 2077.
It is perhaps not a coincidence that this extra bullet turned up only after Oswald died, when no pesky defense attorneys could throw the spotlight on highly suspect lapses in the chain of custody via dissection of the evidentiary remains.
The significance of this issue cannot be overstated; if in fact Captain Fritz had not stored the bullet in his desk drawer, and if in fact no bullet had been found, then there would not only be a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, but also an “after-the-fact” conspiracy to cover up evidence of the initial conspiracy; indeed, not just a cover-up of evidence, but even worse, a manufacturing of evidence, framing an innocent man to prevent an investigation that could reveal the existence of the guilty.
Unfortunately for the plausibility of this story of Captain Fritz, it doesn’t quite resonate with the facts. The first problem is the CSS Form of November 22, which we saw was timestamped between 1:30 and 2:15 p.m:
You will note the names of the three officers who submitted the evidence of the two spent hulls to the Dallas Police Identification Bureau, which turned out to be, surprisingly enough, “Lt. JC Day,” “R.L. Studebaker,” and “Captain Fritz”!
So, according to this document, less than two hours after the assassination, Day, Studebaker, and Fritz had brought back only two spent hulls, which we know from the same document were immediately turned over to Brown of the FBI. Therefore,
There was no third shell for Fritz to confiscate!
An additional problem for the story, if one is needed (and one isn’t), is the date of the Property Invoice Receipt logged by the Warren Commission. Let’s take a closer look at that receipt:
And now, its date:
When we put 2 + 2 together, the meaning is quite clear: Captain Fritz claimed that he had possession of an empty shell from November 22 through November 27. However, as of November 26, 1963, neither he, nor any of his peers, followed the protocol of his office in logging that evidence, as this Property Clerk’s Invoice makes all too clear. From an official perspective, as of November 26, 1963, this shell did not exist. And since these official protocols are designed precisely to ensure the integrity of evidence labeled as such, and to discourage the planting of false evidence, this is a most egregious failure of protocol indeed.
Little help comes from a final piece of documentation, Warren Commission Exhibit 2003, which is officially identified as the “Dallas Police Department file on investigation of the assassination of the President.” Among the many documents contained in that exhibit is the following evidence sheet. Notice the number of rounds that were supposedly turned over to the Warren Commission (CE 2003: 24 H 260): 37
This document is already implausible because, according to the official story, only two bullets were handed over on November 22nd and November 26th, but this document says “3.” Thus, this evidence plainly contradicts the official story, and if that story is true, this document cannot possibly be legitimate. We can prove this by zooming in on the relevant portion of the screen capture, when we notice something strange:
Somehow, this 3 doesn’t look quite right. It almost has a hand-drawn quality, particularly at the bottom. We can confirm our intuitive perception by comparing this “3” (labeled as “C” below) with 2 other 3s that appear on the page, one in the phrase “231 W. Jefferson,” (“A”) and another in the phrase “.38 Slug” (“B”). When we do that, we can see a marked difference between these 3 examples:
Notice the distinct difference between the first two 3s, A and B, and the last 3, C, with its hand-drawn quality. In particular, notice how the base and top of the 3 in A and B goes well past the vertical line drawn through the middle of the number, whereas it just barely goes past those areas in the C version. Also, notice the empty space in the bottom area of the number, which is quite prominent in the hand drawn version, and compressed in the other two.
Though these discrepancies clearly indicate something anomalous about this number, absolute proof that a change was made was provided in Gary Shaw’s 1976 book Cover-Up, on p. 159. Mr. Shaw had discovered the original version of this document in Dallas Police Department records, and it failed to resemble the Warren Commission version of the document in at least one very key area:
Let’s zoom in again on the relevant portion of the screen capture:
When you compare the two images side-by-side, the discrepancy (and modification of the number) is absolutely confirmed:
At this stage of the game, the only documentary evidence we have seen that 3 shells were found turns out, on closer examination, to be an apparent forgery. So, what are we to make of all the evidence (which we formerly thought of as legitimate) that three shells were found: for example, the photograph CE 510 (17 H 221), which shows 3 shells on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, and the testimony of Luke Mooney (3 H 286), Fritz, and Day, among others, that three shells were found? Is this evidence and testimony as solid as we would like it to be? Not necessarily. Take a look at CE 510, which shows three shells:
Does this photograph represent the shells in their actual position? Not according to Luke Mooney’s testimony (3 H 286): 38
That is a slight problem, which is slightly amplified by a second problem: there is no date which appears in the photograph, nor any identifying information regarding the photographer which appears in the photograph. Given this missing information, the exhibit could have been a “re-creation” (read: re-invention) of the way the shells were supposed to have been located on the floor, a photograph that could have been taken anywhere from 2 to 8 days, or even more, after November 22 — and that would be more than a slight problem, because the photograph would not be authentic from the standpoint of Federal Rule Of Evidence 901 (a), which you will recall provides as follows:
If the photograph was a “re-invention”, then it would not be considered real evidence, but demonstrative evidence, evidence of a lower quality because it would not be the thing itself but rather something which purported to resemble the thing itself (like diagrams, models, simulations, etc.). However, the claim by the officers was that this was real evidence, but if in fact it was only demonstrative evidence, then to that extent the photograph would be inauthentic.
If you were a judge, how would you rule on the admissibility of a photograph officers claimed was real when you found out later it was only demonstrative?
Now, you might think it implausible that any of the photog
raphs exhibited before the Warren Commission would be re-creations, but if there is nothing else we learn from the Kennedy case, we at least will learn this: “implausible” is sometimes just a synonym for “certain,” as proven by this evidence of one such reconstruction (4 H 269): 39