by J. W Lateer
The proposed motorcade route had been driven ahead of time on November 14 by Secret Service Agents Winston Lawson and Forrest Sorrels. After doing that, they met regarding security with Chief of Police Jesse E. Curry, Assistant Chief Charles Batchelor, Deputy Chief N. T. Fisher and several other officers.
Deputy Chief George L. Lumpkin also contributed in planning the security arrangements. The major security issues were; first, what area of Dallas would be brought under security and what would be the levels, and which agency would be providing the security in the various locations. A sub-category of the security plan would be whether the windows of the tall buildings along the motorcade would be watched. This would include making sure all windows were closed and that there were no guns protruding from a window.
There were two particularly dangerous issues regarding the security plan. First, any sort of warehouse-type building is considered a special threat to a motorcade, because there would likely be no workers in any one place at any particular moment.
The second major issue is that of the “dog-leg” turn. The Secret Service Manual specifically forbade a motorcade turn in the road greater than 90 degrees. This is because a very sharp angle would require the limousines to slow to a crawl, thus making the occupants sitting targets.
The motorcade passed in front of a warehouse-type building, the Texas School Book Depository. And the turn from Houston Street onto Elm Street directly in front of the TSBD was 120 degrees.
When the motorcade departed the airport, the order was as follows: 1) the pilot car, 2) the lead car, 3) the Presidential car, 4) the Presidential follow-up car, 5) the Vice Presidential car, 6) the Vice Presidential follow-up car 7) other cars—press, dignitaries, buses and others.
Other anomalies in the security plan were such items as the formation of the motorcycles surrounding the Presidential car. Normally, the motorcycle escort would surround the Presidential limo. Instead, the motorcycle officers formed completely behind the Presidential limo. The press-pool car was normally very near the front of Presidential motorcades to facilitate pictures. In Dallas, the press-pool car was six cars behind the Presidential limousine.
There were more anomalies such as the question as to which agencies would be providing what coverage and where? The Dallas Police and the Secret Service were providing the coverage. The Dallas Police area of coverage ended at the intersection just before the motorcade entered Dealey Plaza. Other than the Secret Service agents riding in the motorcade, there were no agents in Dealey Plaza nor was any agency officially providing security in Dealey Plaza.
The Dallas Sheriff’s Department building was located overlooking Dealey Plaza. In fact, the prisoners in the County Sheriff’s building were able to watch the motorcade from the jail windows. However, the Sheriff’s department was strictly instructed not to provide security for the President of any kind. Immediately following the shooting, though, they went into action confiscating film and cameras, and identifying and even detaining witnesses.
There is a conflict in the facts regarding the role of Military Intelligence and security. Whenever there is a Presidential visit within the area covered by a Military Intelligence post, the members of the unit report to the location of the visit to augment the resources of the Secret Service.
In his book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, Col. Fletcher Prouty states that the 112th Military Intelligence unit at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio were ordered to stand down and not to participate in the security. (There is not corroboration of this, however)..
The sequence of the cars in the motorcade was as follows:
Pilot CarDallas Police Homicide Detective Billy L. Senkel
Dallas Police Homicide Detective F.M. Turner
Deputy Chief George L. Lumpkin, driver
Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer
Lead CarDallas police Chief Jesse Curry, driver
SS Agent Forrest Sorrels
SS Agent Winston Lawson
Dallas County Sheriff J.E. Decker
PresidentialS.S. Agent William Greer, driver
LimousineS.S. Agent Roy Kellerman
Governor and Mrs. John Connally
President and Mrs. John Kennedy
PresidentialSpecial Agent Kinney
ProtectionAsst. Special Agent A. Roberts
Asst. Special Agent McIntyre
Asst. Special Agent Ready
Asst. Special Agent Landis
S.S. Agent Clint Hill
Presidential Aide Kenny O’Donnell
Presidential Aide Dave Powers
In Peter Dale Scott’s, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, at page 257, Scott describes a meeting between three members of related Federal Agencies on the morning of November 22, 1963. The parties present were Frank Ellsworth(ATF), Agent, James Hosty (FBI) and Ed Coyle, an Army Intelligence agent. Scott speculates, and this author would agree, that this meeting was somehow related to the suppressed context of certain events relating to the Oswald firearms.
James Hosty was Ellsworth’s regular FBI contact for Ellsworth’s duties in the ATF. Hosty was also the FBI agent who was monitoring Lee and Marina Oswald up until the assassination. The meeting lasted until 45 minutes prior to 12:30 p.m., the time of the shooting.
In addition, Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin and Ed Coyle both worked at least as reservists with military intelligence. The third such member of Military Intelligence was James W. Powell.
Powell and Ellsworth were both inside the TSBD after it was quickly sealed following the shooting.
When the motorcade traveled through most of downtown Dallas before entering Dealey Plaza, many of the employees of the TSBD went out on their lunch hour to watch the President pass by.
After turning onto Houston Street and then turning onto Elm, and after a few hundred feet, there were at least three shots, (many said four). The timing of the alleged fourth shot would have been in between the other three. There was a first shot, a possible second shot and then the last two shots. Most witnesses said the last two shots were very close together. Six witnesses saw a person or persons in the right-most sixth floor window, several also saw a protruding rifle. About half of the witnesses in Dealey Plaza looked or ran toward the TSBD. The remainder ran toward a rising park-like location, henceforth known as the “Grassy Knoll.”
The first shot hit President Kennedy in the throat. Another shot struck him in the back. A third struck Governor Connally, passing through his chest from the rear and then wounding him in the wrist.
The final shot that hit President Kennedy was the devastating head shot, which apparently hit him from the front, knocking him backwards into the lap of his wife. The head shot took out a significant portion of his brain. The brain matter was scattered in a sort of mist that covered much of the area to the rear of the limousine.
There was a witness who was a combat veteran standing near the motorcade. On hearing the noise made by the rifle or rifles, he immediately fell to the ground. He knew the sound was that of a high-powered rifle. Governor Connally, a hunter, said later that he recognized the noise as that of a rifle. Every Secret Service agent riding in the motorcade, though, stated that he thought the sound to be that of firecrackers.
In rounding the corner on to Elm Street, the motorcade slowed to an estimated eleven m.p.h. Although the Presidential limousine was equipped with a powerful engine and although the Secret Service driver is trained to gun the powerful engine upon hearing shots, the reaction to the sounds of the gunfire produced the opposite result. The Presidential limousine, if anything, slowed down. And the driver, S.S. Agent William Greer turned, after the first shot, to look at Kennedy. Then after the later shots, he turned again to observe Kennedy.
According to some observations, at the time of the fatal head shot, the brake lights of the limousine were on.
On a decorative concrete pedestal not thirty feet from the limousine, amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder was taking an 8 mm movie of the entire assassin
ation using his new Bell and Howell camera. The entire sequence of the movie lasted about twenty seconds. Wikipedia says 26.6 seconds.
The order of the shots described above may not be accurately known. An apparent fourth shot hit a curb to the left of the limousine. Since that curb shot went 20 or 30 feet away from the limousine, missing the entire street, it probably could not have come from either the TSBD or the Grassy Knoll. If you stretch a line back from where that shot hit the curb, past the point where the President’s head would have been, and continue that path in a straight line, that line leads to the second floor of a building facing Dealey Plaza called the Dal-Tex building. Police quickly arrested a person in the lobby of that building. The person in question, known as Eugene Hale Brading (a/k/a Braden) had ties to organized crime and other assassination-related people. The actual participation of Brading, however is not supported by direct evidence.
In a Military Intelligence memo to M.I. headquarters in San Antonio, dated 11-27-63, an M.I. agent named Lt. Colonel Robert Jones reported certain facts to San Antonio. Jones had learned these facts from an unnamed M.I. source in Dallas. The source had gotten these facts through the Dallas Police.
“On November 20 last, the Dallas Police sighted two unknown men sighting in a rifle near scene where President was assassinated. Rifle being sighted in at two silhouette targets. Old model car seen in vicinity of men. Police circled to contact men and they disappeared.”
The memo was from SAC San Antonio, addressed to the FBI Director and the FBI Special Agent in Charge in Dallas. This memo in its original can be viewed at the following website, viewed on March 18, 2015 at the maryferrell.org website.
The maryferrell site document is headed “FBI 62-109060 JFK HQ File, Section 12” which is the key to the location of the file in the actual archive.
The above detailed citation is provided to the reader because of the fact that this document seems to decide the issue of the “grassy knoll” and whether there were shooters there.
It would be an understatement to say this memo is of great significance and it raises the following issues:
Virtually all police reports concerning a crime include at least some type of description of the suspects, such as “white males,” “dressed in tee shirts,” etc.
Why would the two men be sighting one rifle at two silhouette targets, if they intended to kill just one person, i.e. the President? One of them could have been merely an assistant. Were they out to kill not one person, but two?
This memo argues against the commonly held theory that assassins slipped into the country and then afterward slipped immediately out.
The memo also belies the theory that the Oswald accomplices were professional killers. Professional killers wouldn’t foolishly expose themselves to capture in this way unless the complicity of the Dallas police was so widespread that they had no fear of arrest.
Why would either the Dallas Police or Military Intelligence pass along this story? Either (a) they had no inkling yet that the lone gunman theory was to be mandatory or (b) they were trying to distance themselves from any accusations of complicity. The fact that the report went from Dallas Police to Military Intelligence suggests that lower-ranking policemen were trying to bypass their superiors with this information.
If the story were merely an invention, why did any of the authorities want to raise the issue of two possible intended victims?
Is it normal, to”sight” a rifle, in this way? Does one have to go to the scene of a future shooting for sighting? Do hunters have to go out into the woods where the deer live in order to sight a rifle to shoot them? Your author has no knowledge which would resolve this question.
Where were these alleged cardboard targets placed? Was it in the middle of the street where Kennedy’s limo would be driven? Wouldn’t this activity draw more attention than just the Dallas Police? Wouldn’t there be any number of drivers who would have seen men doing this by the roadside, and be likely to recall this event after the assassination?
If the Dallas Police had detained anyone on the grassy knoll sighting rifles wouldn’t there be witnesses to this who would come forward after the assassination?
This story of the sighting of the rifles could have been created as a false narrative to further the assassination plan. It could be an invention of either military intelligence or the Dallas Police. This could be an effort in disinformation, not unlike the apparent phony Oswald sightings and impersonations prior to November 22. But on balance, this report seems more likely to be true and accurately reported.
At the moment of the assassination, the Dallas Police immediately sealed off the TSBD within only 90 seconds of the shooting. There was a story started or invented by someone, to the effect that Mr. Roy Truly, the manager at the TSBD, lined up all the employees. So the story went, there was only one employee missing. That employee was Lee Harvey Oswald. This story is false. As mentioned above, there were at least 20 to 30 employees who were outside the building when it was sealed off. They never returned to work according to interviews with these employees themselves. Further, the TSBD contained not only the business of the book distribution, but several offices of book publishers with employees who did not work for Mr. Truly in the distribution of textbooks.
Since the President had been killed in front of their eyes, most people would conclude that there would probably not be much work done that afternoon. One employee, however, did leave the TSBD in a different direction and that was Lee Harvey Oswald.
According to a later reconstruction, it is theorized that Oswald traveled from the TSBD to the rooming house where he lived on foot, then by hiring a cab, then by a public bus. Stopping at the rooming house to pick up a revolver, he then headed for the Texas Theater. On the way, it was alleged that Oswald shot and killed a Dallas policeman named J.D. Tippit.
After Oswald sneaked into the theater without paying and sat down to watch the movie, the police entered the theater and apprehended him after a scuffle.
The movements of Oswald can be explained as follows: LHO knew that after the assassination, he would likely be killed “resisting arrest” even if he did not actually resist. For this reason, he picked up his revolver to protect himself from such a fate. Next, he went to the Texas Theater because, if he were apprehended there, the Police would have so many witnesses that foul play on their part would be impossible.
Lee Harvey Oswald had been an employee of the TSBD for only a few weeks. The morning of the assassination, he rode to work with a friend and co-worker named Buell Wesley Frazier. In the car that morning, Oswald carried a package which he stated were curtain rods. The authorities speculated that this package contained Oswald’s disassembled rifle.
When one traces the hypothetical movement of Oswald from the sixth floor window, down the stairs and into the lunchroom where he was placed by various employees, it is questionable whether Oswald could have moved that fast.
The first policeman into the TSBD entered about 90 seconds after the shooting. His name was Marrion L. Baker. The following information was taken from his testimony before the Warren Commission.
Officer Baker quickly met up with Roy Truly, the building manager, to search the building. The two men immediately encountered Oswald in the second floor lunchroom drinking a bottle of pop from a vending machine in the lunch room. Truly informed Officer Baker that Oswald was an employee, so the two resumed their search. The Officer apparently assumed that the shooter would not have been an employee.
Baker and Truly continued on up the stairway for an unknown number of floors. Then they entered an elevator and took it up as far as it would go which has been described as being the fifth floor. Then they walked up some more stairs and onto the roof. Apparently Officer Baker was thinking that the shooting would most likely have come from the rooftop.
However, in this initial ascension of the stairs and elevator, somehow the 6th floor was skipped entirely. The progress was from the 5th to the roof which was the 7th.
The 6t
h floor was the floor from which the shots were fired.
In some manner or other, the sixth floor was allegedly later searched and the authorities found a “sniper’s nest” there. This nest was a semi-circle of 50 pound book boxes, stacked several layers high, thus obstructing a view of the suspect window from elsewhere on the floor. The extreme difficulty of stacking these boxes in a short time was demonstrated as part of a private research investigation. Further, there was no time for Oswald to do the stacking. And finally, there would have been no purpose, since Oswald was allegedly alone when the shooting took place. If he weren’t, he would surely have encountered the other persons on the floor with him.
The next problem is the rifle.
The rifle, and indeed both of Oswald’s purported weapons are key to the solution of the assassination events. There is no agreement in the evidence of exactly where and when the Oswald rifle was discovered. The best information has it being found on the 4th floor. Oswald would not have had time to make a separate stop on the 4th floor.
The rifle was initially identified as a German 7.65 Mauser. This identification was made by the law enforcement officers, considered to be their best experts. The actual brand of the alleged murder weapon, according to the Warren Commission was a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano Italian-made war surplus weapon.
The Mannlicher-Carcano was a bolt action rifle, but it accepted a clip of 4 bullets. Oswald was alleged to have attempted the assassination with only four bullets in his possession. The last of the 4 bullets was found still in the firing chamber. But it was claimed that the rifle still had the clip attached when it was discovered.
