They Killed Our President
Page 7
Solid eyewitness testimony confirms that Oswald was in the lunchroom on the second floor fifteen minutes before the shooting of the President. As veteran investigative researcher Anthony Summers noted:
The bald fact is that Oswald cannot be placed on the sixth floor either at the time of the shooting or during the half hour before it. The last time he was reliably seen before the assassination was by Mrs. Arnold—in the second floor lunchroom. The next time Oswald was firmly identified was immediately after the assassination—again in the second floor lunchroom.118
Those are strong indications that Oswald was exactly where he told the police he was—eating lunch in the first floor domino room and then going up to the second floor lunchroom and buying a Coca-Cola from the vending machine. Oswald correctly described two employees who walked by him while he ate lunch—researchers have verified the individuals as well as the timing—so he was either right where he said he was, or possessed psychic powers.119
It gets even better. One witness—a man named Howard Brennan—stated that, from outside Oswald’s building, he saw two men in the sixth floor window and one of them had a rifle. As any jury would note—and any defense attorney would absolutely love—even though Mr. Brennan had seen Oswald’s picture on television before going to the police lineup, he failed to make a positive identification of Oswald as one of the men whom he saw in the sixth floor window.
But an employee named Bonnie Ray Williams was eating lunch on the sixth floor until at least 12:15 p.m. and testified that Oswald was not there.120 Williams was right, because as witness Carolyn Arnold substantiated, at 12:15, Oswald was still in the lunchroom. She’s certain she saw him there “about 12:15. It may have been slightly later.” The time that Arnold Rowland saw the rifle in the window was pinpointed by events correlating to the police log: it was between 12:15 and 12:16.121 So the timing actually proves that whoever Rowland saw in that window, it was not Lee Harvey Oswald. Sightings of Oswald downstairs by four eyewitnesses—both before and after Rowland saw the man on the sixth floor with a rifle—make it impossible that Oswald was the man he saw.122
But that didn’t stop the government. They made the case that Oswald finished his lunch, raced upstairs to the “sniper’s nest” that was set up behind some boxes at the sixth floor window, fired three shots at the President, killing him and wounding the Governor of Texas, then—since the elevator was not used—raced down the stairs, back to the second floor lunchroom, where he was seen by Dallas Police Officer Marion Baker and building supervisor Roy Truly. Wouldn’t Oswald have been more than a little out of breath, instead of the calmly collected guy that other witnesses saw?
So, the problem quickly became one of timing.
Keep in mind that the shooter had to also take the time to hide that rifle:
The rifle was found tightly wedged within a stack of books, a task that would seem to require more than a few seconds. It was so deeply hidden in the boxes that one of the Dallas sheriffs claimed that searchers could have walked right by it and not noticed it.123
So the would-be investigators from the Warren Commission quickly sent Dallas police officers scurrying up and down the stairs of the Book Depository and timed them with a stopwatch. But the problem was that there wasn’t really enough time after the assassination for Oswald to have stashed the rifle, run down the stairs from the sixth to the second floor, bought a Coca-Cola at the vending machine, and actually been there at the time the Dallas cop saw him there.
So what did they do? They tried to correct this impossibility by shaving off the time that it took to buy the Coca-Cola from the vending machine! Then the timing was better. While acknowledging that it was close, they said that they had proved that it was physically possible.
Independent researchers tried it and reached quite a different conclusion:
Alternative, independent calculations say that, if Oswald had really been a gunman, he could not have reached the lunchroom in time for the meeting with the policeman.124
Numerous studies have substantiated that, by any realistic standard, Oswald could have not have done it and even if he had, certainly would not have been so calm, cool, and collected when seen right after the assassination.125 It’s quite logical to assume that any person would exhibit some sense of anxiousness after just having killed the President of the United States and wounding the Governor. Especially after racing down the stairs afterwards, sweating would be expected, rapid breathing would be expected, and excitement would be expected. But none of the aforementioned were present in the calm and composed Lee Harvey Oswald.
Add to that the highly significant point that President Kennedy’s motorcade was late. Had it been on time—the published time that any assassin would have had to plan for—then the motorcade actually would have passed Oswald’s building at 12:25 p.m., raising a huge timing problem on the front side of the issue as well, because credible witness testimony placed Oswald in the lunch room at 12:15. So he’s calmly eating lunch at 12:15 on the second floor, raising the following huge red flag:
A killer who had planned the assassination would hardly have been sitting around downstairs after 12:15 p.m., as the evidence about Oswald suggests, if he expected to open fire as early as 12:25.126
It got even worse for the government. To prove that it was even possible time-wise for Oswald to have made it downstairs in two minutes after doing the shooting, they had to eliminate the purchase of the Coca-Cola from the vending machine. In fact, if you look at the official statement of Dallas Police Officer Marion Baker, the words “drinking a coke” are crossed out with his initials above. He and Roy Truly, the building supervisor, also specifically noted in their Warren Commission testimony that Oswald did not have a Coca-Cola!
Well, nice try, fellas! Now remember back if you will, fellow juror, to the two points I made at the beginning of this entry.
A witness with no reason to lie.
Two minutes after the assassination.
Two things she remembered about Oswald.
He was very calm; and he had a Coca-Cola in his hand.
If the case went to trial and you were Oswald’s attorney, you’d have a pretty tough time keeping a grin off of your face at that exact point of evidence. But don’t you love it when these sleazebags get caught by their own lies?
And as Anthony Summers and others have pointed out, if there wasn’t a Coca-Cola in his hands, then why on earth was everyone referring to it?
Baker himself initially wrote in his statement that he “saw a man standing in the lunchroom drinking a Coke.” One of the details announced by Police Chief Curry was that Oswald was seen by Baker and the building superintendent Roy Truly, carrying a Coke. If that were not so, it is hard to see how such a precise detail arose in the first place. Yet Baker and Truly ended up saying Oswald had nothing in his hand when they met him.127
So the infamous Coca-Cola in Lee Harvey Oswald’s hand officially disappeared. It had to disappear, because if Oswald had taken all that time after the assassination—coming down all those stairs from the sixth floor to the second, going to the vending machine and buying a Coke—then he could not have been standing there calmly in the lunchroom as Officer Baker officially discovered him.
The question is important to the issue of whether Oswald could have got down from the sixth floor to encounter Baker and Truly when he did. Without obtaining a Coke, it would have been a close shave. If Oswald had purchased and started drinking a Coke by the time of the encounter with the policeman, the known time frame is stretched to the bursting point—some would say beyond.
[Oswald himself, incidentally, told the Chief of Homicide he was “drinking a Coca-Cola when the officer came in.”] In this author’s opinion, the balance of the evidence suggests he was.128
The matter can be put even more bluntly than the manner expressed above by Mr. Summers with his British politeness:
(Officer) Baker was asked by the FBI to give an affidavit regarding his encounter with Oswald in the lunchroom,
Commission Exhibit 3076, Baker makes no mention of seeing someone moving through the glass in the doorway and states that he “saw a man standing in the lunchroom drinking a coke.”
The phrase “drinking a coke” is crossed out and initialed by Baker, but that deleted phrase, by its spontaneous mention, corroborates Oswald’s story that he had already purchased a Coke when stopped by Baker and makes a liar out of both Baker and Roy Truly.129
So the facts are pretty clear and would play that way to a jury. Oswald bought a Coca-Cola, just like he said he did, and just like the witness who had no reason to lie swore that they saw him standing there after the assassination with a bottle of Coke in his hand. That, in itself, proves he could not have had time to fire three shots from the “sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor, stash the rifle, come down to the second floor via the long stairway (which was also slow to traverse because the configuration had a gap between floors, meaning that you had come down one flight of stairs and then had to walk over to the area where the stairs continued down again), go to the vending machine, purchase a drink, and then be in the lunchroom two minutes after the assassination of the President. With the landings between staircases, it actually made it eight flights of stairs that Oswald would have had to run down to get to the lunchroom from the sixth floor.130 The fact that he was already in that lunchroom, and was even calm and unshaken—as several eyewitnesses confirmed—speaks loudly that he was not the shooter on the sixth floor a mere two minutes prior to that time.
117 Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy? (Sphere Books: 2007 ), 64.
118 Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 62.
119 Ibid, 59.
120 Ibid, 59.
121 Ibid, 61.
122 Gil Jesus, “Evidence Oswald was on the 1st floor at the time of the shooting,” retrieved 18 April 2013: giljesus.com/jfk/alibi.htm
123 John S. Craig, The Guns of Dealey Plaza, retrieved 24 April 2013: acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/11th_issue/guns_dp.html
124 Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 63.
125 William Kelly, “Physics Proves Oswald Innocent,” 7 Feb. 2010: educationforum.ipbhost. com/index.php?showtopic=15429 Richard Belzer, “Defaming History or, Who Didn’t Kill JFK,” August 13, 2007, Huff Post. huffingtonpost.com/richard-belzer/defaming-history-or-who-d_b_60188.html
126 Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 63.
127 Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 403.
128 Summers, Kennedy Conspiracy, 403.
129 Gil Jesus, “The Lunchroom Encounter,” retrieved 18 April 2013: giljesus.com/jfk/lunchroom_encounter.htm
130 Belzer, “Defaming History or, Who Didn’t Kill JFK”
16
Mauser Rifle Was Found
There’s a huge problem with the Mannlicher rifle that was supposedly found on the sixth floor and was used to connect Oswald to the assassination. When the rifle was first found, it was not identified that way. It was identified instead as a 7.65 millimeter Mauser rifle. That identification was made— and made quite clearly—by law enforcement officials themselves who were right at the scene. It was even made by law enforcement officials at the scene who were closely familiar with rifles!
Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone discovered the rifle and then wrote the following words in his official statement:
I was assisting in the search of the 6th floor of the Dallas County Book Depository at Elm St. and Houston St. proceeding from the east side of the building. Officer Weitzman DPD and I were together as we approached the Northwest corner of the building. I saw the rifle partially hidden behind a row of books with two (2) other boxes of books against the rifle. The rifle appeared to be a 7.65mm Mauser with a telescope sight on the rifle.131
That Officer Weitzman of the Dallas Police Department, whom Deputy Boone refers to above, not only agreed with Boone on the rifle, but, now get a load of this: Weitzman was a “gun buff” who had even “had a sporting goods store at one time” and was hence, an expert on rifles.
In Deputy Boone’s second report, he again made the point of describing the rifle they found on the 6th floor as a 7.65 Mauser:
In the northwest corner of the building approximately three (3) feet from the east wall of the stairwell and behind a row of cases of books, I saw the rifle, what appeared to be a 7.65mm Mauser with a telescopic site. The rifle had what appeared to be a brownish, black stock and blue steel, metal parts.132
Deputy Sheriff Boone also told the Warren Commission that Captain Will Fritz himself—the Chief of the Homicide Detail—also described the rifle as a 7.65mm Mauser. Notice though, that when covering such a delicate matter in the official transcript, they sort of hedge the issue:
MR. BALL: Who referred to it as a Mauser that day?
DEPUTY BOONE: I believe Captain Fritz. He had knelt down there to look at it, and before he removed it, not knowing what it was, he said that is what it looks like. This is when Lieutenant Day, I believe his name is, the ID man was getting ready to photograph it. We were just discussing it back and forth. And he said it looks like a 7.65 Mauser.133
But, according to Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, Officer Weitzman and the others were not just “discussing it back and forth”134—they had positively identified that rifle as a Mauser 7.65:
I believe Day [Lieutenant Carl Day who was in charge of the Dallas Police Crime Lab] pulled the rifle out and handed it to Captain Fritz, who held it up by the strap . . . and asked if anyone knew what kind of rifle it was. By that time, Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman had joined us. Weitzman was a gun buff. He had a sporting goods store at one time and he was very good with weapons and he said it looks like a Mauser. And he walked over to Fritz and Captain Fritz was holding the rifle up in the air and I was standing next to Weitzman who was standing next to Fritz. And we were no more than 6 to 8 inches from the rifle and stamped right on the barrel of the rifle was “7.65 Mauser”. And that’s when Weitzman said, “It is a Mauser,” and pointed to the 7.65 Mauser stamp on the barrel.135
That sounds pretty damn clear to me. The rifle they found was a Mauser. That would even make sense. A Mauser 7.65 is a darn good rifle. An assassin could actually do some shooting with a weapon like that; as opposed to the Mannlicher which, we’ve already established, is a total piece of junk.
So, just to further complicate matters that are already ridiculously complicated regarding that rifle, the entire provenance of the rifle is also highly suspect; there’s no way to be sure that the Mannlicher rifle they say was used in the shooting—actually was or was not used in the shooting. There are even a lot of reasons to doubt that the Mannlicher rifle was the rifle that was actually found! And that’s not because of me or because of some “conspiracy theorist”—that’s because of the direct testimony from the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department! The record proves one thing very clearly—at first they said the rifle that they found was a Mauser rifle, not a Mannlicher.
Keep in mind, please, the context of the situation. This is the “Crime of the Century”; the President of the United States has just been assassinated in broad daylight. They find the rifle. They hold it up. The head of Homicide is there. The head of the crime lab is there. A cop who’s a gun expert is there. Doesn’t it defy credulity to say that they all got it wrong on such a simple point at an extremely important time? It sure in hell does to me. They said it was even stamped on the rifle, for Pete’s sake. If these guys knew how to read, then it was a Mauser.
I don’t know why they changed the official version to read that a Mannlicher was used in the assassination, but I do say that the rifle they found on the 6th floor was a Mauser, not a Mannlicher. In fact, I don’t even have to say that. The Dallas authorities are clearly on record as having said that themselves.
Various news reports, including Walter Cronkite on CBS News, also verified that the rifle was a Mauser.136 The CIA also described the rifle as a Mauser.137
And if you listen to Sheriff Craig describe the discovery of the rifle in a clip that is available right
on the Internet,138 it sure in hell sounds like they found a Mauser.
There are also other serious discrepancies regarding the search and discovery of the rifles—that’s right, plural—that were found that day.
Frank Ellsworth was an ATF agent (Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) and was in his office not far from the Depository when he was told of the shooting. He ran to the Depository and entered the building with Captain Will Fritz. Ellsworth said that he found the so-called “sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor, but was sure that the “gun was not found on the same floor as the cartridges, but on a lower floor by a couple of city detectives . . . I think the rifle was found on the fourth floor.”139
Agent Ellsworth said he then participated in a second search of the Depository after 1:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963. The gun that was found during that later search was the Italian Mannlicher-Carcano and it was hidden behind boxes near the “stairwell back in the northwest corner.”140
Numerous other reports distinctly named a completely different rifle being found during one of the searches of the building—not a Mannlicher-Carcano or a Mauser. NBC reported that police found a British Enfield .303 rifle—and they sounded sure about it.
Gary Mack, the archivist for the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, noted that this was even in the NBC book There Was A President. Tom Whalen was a reporter for the NBC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth, WBAP-TV. And there is even a news videotape that shows Whalen being given the following announcement from the WBAP studio in Fort Worth:
Reporter Tom Whalen, at 2:13 p.m. CST, said, “The weapon which was used to kill the president, and which wounded Gov. Connally, has been found in the Texas School Book Depository on the sixth floor—a British .303 rifle with a telescopic sight. Three empty cartridge cases were found beside the weapon. It appeared that whoever had occupied this sniper’s nest had been here for some time.”141
So I’m not sure what exactly was going on with all of that musical rifles game, but I can tell you this—our government sure in hell isn’t giving us the straight story on that.