First to Second Evolution – Part 14

It's a new day and a new opportunity to excel. Marrion Baker steps up to the plate:

Warren Commission Testimony of Marrion L. Baker, 3.25.1964

Mr. BAKER: As I came out to the second floor there, Mr. Truly was ahead of me, and as I come out I was kind of scanning, you know, the rooms, and I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this—I happened to see him through this window in this door. I don't know how come I saw him, but I had a glimpse of him coming down there.

...

Mr. BAKER: Now, through this window you can't see too much but I just caught a glimpse of him through this window going away from me and as I ran to this door and opened it, and looked on down in the lunchroom he was on down there about 20 feet so he was moving about as fast as I was.

Oswald was "moving about as fast" into the lunchroom as Baker was moving from the landing just off the stairway to the door? How did that happen?

Baker's story is that he "ran" to the door in order to go after a man he had glimpsed "walking away." Yet we are to believe that they covered about the same distance in the same time—i.e., that Baker running did not cover more ground than Oswald walking.

Evolution is not without irony.

From the book Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light

It's a nonsensical scenario, said Sean, so nonsensical that one wonders why Baker is making such a transparently unrealistic claim. Why doesn't he just say that Oswald was running? Or, alternatively, that Oswald was only a few feet into the lunchroom by the time he himself opened the door and looked into the lunchroom? The short answer is Baker has to merge by force two stories that cannot easily be merged:

1.) I saw a man walking away (as per Baker's November 22 affidavit).

2.) I saw Oswald standing by the coke machine (as per a later draft of the story, as told by [or to?] Roy Truly).

Baker has a real problem here: his November 22 affidavit talked of "a man walking away from the stairway." For Oswald, just behind the glass pane, to be "walking away" in any commonsense meaning of the words, he would need to be walking into—a wall.

From Baker's vantage point "A," the lunchroom is sharply off to the left, not straight ahead—not even close. So Baker, in his Warren Commission performance, has to split his affidavit's single description of a man "walking away" into two incidences of walking away.

The result is an awful mess.

The one thing Baker desperately needs to say—that his first glimpse of Oswald had him "walking away from the stairway"—is the one thing the layout of the landing/door/lunchroom disallows him from saying. And so we get a hesitation around the words "walking away":

Warren Commission Testimony of Marrion L. Baker, 3.25.1964

Mr. BAKER: As I came out to the second floor there, Mr. Truly was ahead of me, and as I come out I was kind of scanning, you know, the rooms, and I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this—I happened to see him through this window in this door. I don't know how come I saw him, but I had a glimpse of him coming down there.

Mr. DULLES: Where was he coming from, do you know?

Mr. BAKER: No, sir. All I seen of him was a glimpse of him go away from me.

"I caught a glimpse of this man walking away from this—"…if only Baker could finish the thought with the one magic word indelibly etched into his mind: "stairway."

But he can't, for to do so would be to make a ridiculous claim that would only draw attention to the discrepancies between his current story and the story told in his affidavit.

Excruciatingly, Oswald walking directly away from Baker's position such that Baker can call to him and have him turn around and come back to where Baker is, has to be held back until Baker has left the stairway and gone over to the door:

Warren Commission Testimony of Marrion L. Baker, 3.25.1964

Mr. BAKER: There is a door there with a glass, it seemed to me like about a 2 by 2, something like that, and then there is another door which is 6 foot on over there, and there is a hallway over there and a hallway entering into a lunchroom, and when I got to where I could see him he was walking away from me about 20 feet away from me in the lunchroom.

Mr. BELIN: What did you do?

Mr. BAKER: I hollered at him at that time and said, "Come here." He turned and walked right straight back to me.

Baker is now, at last, giving a story that sounds a little more like his November 22 affidavit story:

Police Officer Marrion Baker's First Affidavit, 11.22.1963

As we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway. I called to that man and he turned around and came back toward me.

But only a little.

Baker's two stories—his November 22 affidavit plus his Warren Commission testimony—are still irreconcilable. Even after the heavy coaching that Baker has been put through ahead of his Warren Commission appearance (you see much evidence of this reading his entire WC testimony), we still are being asked to believe that an indeterminate glimpse of a man moving behind a door located well off the stairway could be described as a sighting of "a man walking away from the stairway."

The plain sense of those words in Baker's November 22 affidavit cannot be ignored: the man had just left the stairway and was putting distance between it and him. That's what "walking away from" means, and it's how Baker himself is using those words in his Warren Commission testimony.

But with the Warren Commission, all things—including plain, common sense—are ignored if they don't support First to Second Evolution.

First to Second Evolution – Part 13

French Le Figaro correspondent Leo Sauvage was puzzled by press references to Oswald's sipping a coke when the police officer saw him, so he asked Roy Truly about it in early 1964. Truly told him: "From where I stood, I couldn’t see if Oswald held something in his hand."* 

Huh?

Showtime. Warren Commission. Roy Truly is up to bat.

Warren Commission Testimony of Roy S. Truly, 3.24.1964

Mr. BELIN: All right. Could you see whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald had anything in either hand?

Mr. TRULY: I noticed nothing in either hand.

Mr. BELIN: Did you see both of his hands?

Mr. TRULY: I am sure I did. I could be wrong, but I am almost sure. I did.

Why the change? To cut to the chase, it had become painfully clear to the Warren Commission that an Oswald with a Coke already in his hand—meaning an Oswald who had already reached into his pocket, already had pulled out change, already had inserted the correct change, already selected his beverage of choice, already had waited for the "chunk clunk" of the machine to deliver his pop, already had uncapped it and commenced to drinking—this is an Oswald with even less time to descend from the sixth floor (and in case you're wondering, time was critical folks).

Through "unnatural selection," First to Second Evolution determined that Oswald drinking a Coke when a police officer came barging through the door was a trait that no longer was useful so it was excised out of the story.

Not that the story got appreciably better, but it was different, and that was the important thing.

*The Oswald Affair: An examination of the contradictions and omissions of the Warren report, Leo Sauvage, 1966, p. 30.

First to Second Evolution – Part 12

On 11.23.1963 while Jesse Curry was talking to reporters in the corridors of Dallas City Hall, there were three interesting exchanges:

REPORTER: Has he admitted that he was in the building at the time the shots were fired.

CURRY: Yes.

Curry seems to think twice here.

CURRY: Well, we know he couldn't deny that, we have witnesses.

REPORTER: But he did deny it, didn't he?

CURRY: He denies everything.

…

REPORTER: Did you say, Chief, that a policeman had seen him in the building?

CURRY: Yes.

REPORTER: After the shot was fired?

CURRY: Yes.

REPORTER: Why didn’t he arrest him then?

CURRY: Because the manager of the place told us that he was an employee, that he’s alright, he’s an employee.

REPORTER: Did he look suspicious to the policeman at this point?

CURRY: I imagine the policeman was checking everyone he saw as he went into the building.

…

REPORTER: Does he say he was anywhere else at the time this was happening?

Again Curry seems hesitant to commit to a straight answer:

CURRY: I don’t know. He says he was at the building, he says he was there because he worked there.

Sean Murphy said it seemed that Curry's answers were pointing to a front entrance encounter between Oswald and Baker: a boundary/threshold place that is technically "in the building," certainly "at the building"—but not really inside the building. Curry cannot quite say that Oswald is "admitting" to being "in the building." Nor, however, can he quite say that Oswald is denying being "in the building."

If Curry was aware that Oswald had been naming the front steps or front entrance or vestibule/lobby area as his location, then Curry's ambiguous answers make sense. Especially as his words about the policeman "checking everyone he saw as he went into the building" seal the deal: "out in front."

But First to Second Evolution was already well along in the process of messing up the deal.

First to Second Evolution – Part 11

Oswald's on second in the lunchroom. But what was he actually doing there when Baker spotted him?

At first Truly did the Evolution Two-Step to evade the question. In a series of statements, he simply has him "in" the lunchroom; specific location and activity are left to the imagination. Then, pretty quickly, Truly has Oswald sitting at one of the tables.

Within a week or so, Oswald is brought to his feet. Truly describes him, first, as leaning against the counter, and then as standing right over by the Coke machine.

Why the Coke machine? Because Oswald had talked about purchasing a Coke before the assassination, and having him over by the Coke machine turned this into a cool-as-a-cucumber post-assassination act.

But there was a second reason.

In February 1964, French writer Leo Sauvage called Roy Truly and grilled him about the lunchroom incident. Truly revealed the game plan as he and Baker were getting ready for their meet up with the Warren Commission a few weeks later in March: the officer (name still unknown to Truly!) evidently had heard a noise coming from the lunchroom, the noise, evidently, of a coke machine delivering up its product to the man who had just shot the President.

This was a crucial addition, for it gave Baker a reason for checking out the lunchroom—a reason he badly needed—as the lunchroom was nowhere near being in his line of sight as he came off the landing.

Just look how far he would have had to swing over to the right to get a line into the lunchroom:

The door of the lunchroom being open, the "cluck-clunk" noise of the Coke machine would have been heard by Baker. Except it...wouldn't've. For there was another door between Baker and the coke machine, and it was an automatically self-closing door.

Ruh roh!

Washington Post, 12.1.1963

This news story seemed beautifully clean and convincing. However its lack of acoustic plausibility meant that a further evolutionary step would be necessary.

First to Second Evolution – Part 10

A quick recap so far:

The Oswald-police officer-Truly encounter at the front entrance initially reported was moved deep into the building, at or near the rear stairs. The third-or-fourth-floor-rear-stairway story was quickly superseded by the lunchroom story. This became: the lunchroom stories—Oswald sitting at a table, Oswald leaning against a counter, Oswald standing by the Coke machine drinking a Coke.

The initial plan was simply to transplant Oswald up to the lunchroom, stretch the timeline and worry about the details later. Oswald was still alive and had every prospect of going to trial, so his damaging ability to describe a police officer and Truly coming in to the building needed to be preempted by a story involving the police officer and Truly coming into the lunchroom.

Truly's inflated time estimate in the very first reference to the second floor lunchroom incident gives us a clue how this would be played out:

FBI Report by Williams-Pinkston, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.22.1963)

Two or three minutes? Yeah, right. The Warren Commission would struggle mightily to stretch the time to 90 seconds. But the state of the evolution process on the evening of November 22 was to simply to chunk out enough time to allow Oswald to run down from the sixth floor, but not too much time to delay his exit from the TSBD. The details could be finessed later. Then all the Oswald accusers had to do was drive home how very odd it was for a man to be alone and loitering in a lunchroom while everyone else was outside or looking outside.

FBI Teletype from Dallas to Washington, 11.23.1963

Like Ol' Man River, First to Second Evolution just keeps rolling along.

First to Second Evolution – Part 9

So in the first week following the assassination, we now have Oswald smack dab in the middle of the second floor lunchroom (aka "snack bar") sitting at one of the tables. And recall that even the Secret Service reenactment of Oswald's supposed movements made shortly after the assassination shows Oswald walking over and sitting down at a table in the lunchroom. That was the prevailing thinking.

But evolution is a process and more evolution was needed to try to work out a large number of kinks. One such kink, a big one, was this: if the translation of the front-stairway-to-lunchroom story to the rear-stairway-to-lunchroom story was to be completed successfully, the officer needed a good reason for interrupting his flight upstairs, going all the way over to the passageway to the door to the lunchroom and checking out what's in the lunchroom.

The Evening Star, 11.29.1963

As Sean Murphy pointed out, one gets the impression given that the lunchroom was simply a room—one of several here—passed by the officer on his way to the rear stairway. But what Sean wanted to focus on here is the "counter" detail. Note that Truly is the obvious and sole source of this information. How does the reporter know there is indeed a counter in the lunchroom? Because Truly has told him. He has given the reporter a clear picture of Oswald leaning against the counter just inside the door.

Truly cannot possibly be inferring this image from having himself come on the scene just seconds after this, when Oswald is (as per his and Baker's Warren Commission testimony) at the door with Baker holding his revolver up to him. Nor can he have learned it from the officer, whom he "has not seen [him] since."

No, just like the now discarded "sitting at one of the tables" image, this is an invention that Truly is giving—or has been directed to give.

But why has Oswald been brought to his feet? The answer comes in two parts:

1) Timeline. It has become increasingly evident that Oswald, "The Sixth Floor Assassin," needs to be made appear as though he has only just arrived in the lunchroom. Sitting down at a table doesn't cut it.

2) Motivation. Baker needs a reason to check out the lunchroom in the first place. By early December, this becomes that much clearer as Oswald is moved from the "counter" over to the coke machine. (Evolution, baby!)

Again, bear in mind that Truly—as he will later tell the Warren Commission—is not supposed to have had any contact with Baker since they parted ways on November 22. Yet he is "guessing" with uncanny accuracy what Baker will months later testify to as to the location of Oswald in the lunchroom when he caught his first sighting of him in there.

Sunday Bulletin of Philadelphia, 12.1.1963

   

Washington Post, 12.1.1963

End of installment quiz:

Q: Why do you think Oswald is now being put over by the Coke machine?

A: In order to push the explanation that Baker took his significant detour over to the lunchroom because of a noise he heard: the noise of a coke machine in operation, that's why.

For those who passed, give yourself a pat on the back. For those who failed, reread and try again.

First to Second Evolution – Part 8

On the evening of 11.22, Police Chief Jesse Curry was caught up in the evolution process as well. Curry was telling the press that Oswald had been stopped leaving the building almost immediately following the assassination.

Washington Post, 11.23.1963

Elsewhere in the newspaper was this: 

"Police first became aware of Oswald when they learned he had been seen leaving the building immediately after the President was shot from one of its upper windows." 

Another news article quotes Curry saying: 

Washington Post, 11.23.1963

At this time, Curry may not have been fully aware of what Oswald was saying in custody ("out with Bill Shelley in front"), so perhaps his knowledge of Oswald's presence down in front was more, in his mind, an indicator of a guilty man trying to make a hasty getaway rather than a situation that would exonerate him as the sixth floor shooter.

Curry needed to stress the "immediate" nature of the Oswald-Officer incident and the incriminating immediate nature of Oswald's departure from the building. But as soon as it becomes clear just how "immediate" the incident was and how soon after the last shot had been fired, Curry gets with the program and shuts up.

The next day we find him going out with a very different story altogether:

Teletype (date not provided, estimated 11.24.1963 by context):

"He was seen sitting in the lunchroom and one of my officers drew a weapon on him," Curry said.

New York Times, 11.24.1963

From Oswald being stopped as he made his quick departure out the front entrance, to Oswald being seen sitting in a second floor lunchroom.

The process of evolution was now in full swing.

First to Second Evolution – Part 7

For this installment, let's look a little deeper into Kelley's document:

"First Interview of Lee Harvey Oswald" by Secret Service Inspector Thomas J. Kelley

"He said he ate his lunch with the colored boys who worked with him. He described one of them as 'Junior,' a colored boy, and the other was a little short negro boy. He said his lunch consisted of cheese, fruit, and apples, and was the only package he had with him when he went to work."

The two black men referred here are James Jarman and Harold Norman. When they were asked if they had lunch with Oswald they said no.

But did Oswald ever really say he had lunch with them in the first place?

If we check Fritz's transcription notes—which again record what Bookhout originally wrote—we see that Oswald said he "saw two negroes come in." 

So Kelley was twisting things a bit here to make Oswald look like a liar.

(Bookhout did a degree of twisting in this instance as well. In his second, reworked, FBI report, he states that Oswald "recalled possibly two Negro employees walking through the room during this period," contrary to his original notes "saw two negroes come in.")

Some might argue that these are small, minor points. I would disagree. I think these are examples of a larger process underway that was just beginning to pick up steam: the Evolution from First to Second.

First to Second Evolution – Part 6

Two items for this installment.

"First Interview of Lee Harvey Oswald" by Secret Service Inspector Thomas J. Kelley

"At this time Captain Fritz showed a Selective Service Card that was taken out of his wallet which bore the name of Alex Hidell. Oswald refused to discuss this after being asked for an explanation of it, both by Fritz and by James Bookhout, the FBI Agent. I asked him if he viewed the parade and he said he had not. I then asked him if he had shot the President and he said he had not. I asked him if he has shot governor Connally and he said he had not."

All of the words above were spoken during the interrogation, except the underlined sentence. How do we know this? Well, Kelley didn't keep the notes he used to write this report. They took a one-way trip down the memory hole.

But we do have the handwritten notes of Fritz, which are a transcription of the contemporaneous interrogation notes of Bookhout. If you read through these five pages of Fritz's handwritten notes (Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light, pages 86-98), you won't find the underlined sentence.

Those words were added.

Now why do you suppose that happened?

The second item:

On the evening of 11.22.1963, Captain "Case Closed" Fritz filed a Case Report naming Lee Harvey Oswald as the defendant. On page 2 of the report "Officer Witnesses" are listed, and at the very top is:

Dallas Police Department Case Report, Filed 11.22.1963 by Capt. Fritz, Page 2

The "Identified him in line up" part is not correct. It wasn't true. It never happened. Saying something isn't true is a nice way of saying something is...a lie. "Identified him in line up" is a lie.

But on the evening of 11.22.1963, a lie was good enough. You see, the process of First to Second Evolution had just begun and Oswald was fingered as the "Missing Link." The bugs in the theory could be worked out later.

First to Second Evolution – Part 5

Recall Marrion Baker's first affidavit, 11.22.1963:

"The elevator was hung several floors up so we used the stairs instead. As we reached the third or fourth floor I saw a man walking away from the stairway. I called to that man and he turned around and came back toward me."

Now consider this:

Letter from J. W. Fritz to Jesse Curry of 12.23.1963

Here we are, a month after the assassination, and "Case Cinched" Fritz says NOTHING about a second floor lunchroom encounter!

Jesse Curry must have scratched his head when he read Fritz’s reference to a "third or fourth floor" rear stairway meeting. Wasn't Fritz aware that Oswald had been stopped in the lunchroom on the second floor?

And get this: Fritz would tell the Warren Commission only a matter of weeks later that Oswald had personally confirmed the details of the second floor lunchroom incident while in custody!

Something stinks bad. Let's call it a day and let the place air out.

First to Second Evolution: The process of selectively suppressing facts and creating new ones as necessary to mold a desired reality.

First to Second Evolution – Part 4

Recall that the Williams-Pinkston FBI Report has Truly describing how he and a police officer went "immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building, where the officer noticed a door and stepped through the door, gun in hand, and observed OSWALD in a snack bar there, apparently alone."

Roy Truly Affidavit, 11.23.1963

  

OK. We have Oswald in the second floor lunchroom area. Period.

Reading the above might give the impression to those unfamiliar with the second floor layout that the lunchroom must be right next to the landing. Someone might even think that Truly and Baker, after entering the building, came up the front stairs and proceeded to the rear of the building, passing by lunchroom on the way. The next two articles give that impression, especially the second one:

New York Herald Tribune, "FBI Sifts Oswald Data," 11.27.1963

  

Washington Post, 12.1.1963

Notice that we now have Oswald not only in the lunchroom, but he's seen sitting at one at the tables in one report and also seen sipping a Coke in another.

The "Late 1963" Secret Service reenactment film reconstructing Oswald's supposed route from the sixth floor down the stairs to the second floor lunchroom has the actor Oswald going and sitting down at one of the tables.

To wrap up this installment:

Telephone Conversation between J. Edgar Hoover and President Johnson, 11.29.1963, 1:40PM

So Hoover, on November 29, 1963, is apparently clueless as to any encounter between Oswald and a police officer on the second floor in lunchroom.

Evolution is a long process.

First to Second Evolution – Part 3

The FBI Report by Bookhout & Hosty, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.23.1963, dated 11.23.1963), does not mention the specific location of Oswald on the first floor at the time of the assassination nor does it mention any encounter involving Oswald, a police officer and Truly.

If the earliest evidence as to the location of Oswald during the assassination is true—and we believe the earliest reports and statements are the most reliable—the reason for these details not being mentioned should be clear and painfully obvious.

If Oswald told Bookhout & Hosty what the earliest reports all describe (i.e. he was down in front during the assassination)—and they included this information in their report—well that would be a huge problem if he was to be the designated patsy. No, no, not gonna happen.

But things got easier on 11.24.1963, Oswald was killed. He could no longer talk or defend himself. He would no longer say things like he went outside to see what the excitement was all about. He would no longer answer any questions about where he was or what he was doing at the time of the assassination with responses like "out with Bill Shelly in front."

So on this very day, Bookhout writes a second, "improved" report, having the now-dead Oswald "confirm" a lunchroom encounter on the second floor, simply moving the key details of what he said all along (Coke, standing outside, police officer, Truly) from the first floor up to the second.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Whoever says dead men don't talk never talked to FBI Agent James Bookhout.

First to Second Evolution – Part 2

Before we get to the next reference of a second floor lunchroom incident, let's review the first FBI report by Bookhout & Hosty:

FBI Report by Bookhout & Hosty, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.23.1963, dated 11.23.1963)

  

The second floor is only mentioned here as a place where he bought a bottle of Coke, not as a place where any incident or encounter occurred.

Then, a day later, Bookhout does this solo follow-up report:

FBI Report by Bookhout, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.24.1963, dated 11.25.1963)

  

Why did Bookhout need to write a second report? Did Oswald really tell him the things he wrote in the second report, things that he and Hosty forgot to include in their first report? Or were there other reasons?

Was Bookhout made aware of the Williams-Pinkston report where Truly said Oswald was observed in a snack bar?

First to Second Evolution had started to crawl.

First to Second Evolution

Although the picture of an unidentified man resembling Lee Oswald is the visual focal point for Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light, the real substance of the book is showing how the Officer Baker-Roy Truly-Lee Oswald encounter that took place on the first floor of the TSBD near the entrance was ultimately relocated to the second floor to eliminate Oswald's alibi. The next series of posts will focus on this evolution process.

The first reference to a second floor lunchroom incident does not come until the evening of November 22, 1963 when Roy Truly is interviewed by the FBI. This interview takes place as a result of Lee Oswald’s first interrogation which concluded earlier. We know this because Truly is asked to answer a disturbing allegation which Oswald has made:

FBI Report by Williams-Pinkston, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.22.1963)

Truly’s story was investigated and found to check out, but the rifle incident was not the only occasion for his name to come up in Oswald’s interrogation. Oswald had also evidently mentioned an incident involving Truly and a police officer. The same report provides Truly’s response to that claim:

FBI Report by Williams-Pinkston, 11.22.1963 (dictated 11.22.1963)

The above text constitutes the earliest reference to a Second Floor lunchroom incident. And it contains five words which, however seemingly innocuous, could be of explosive significance:

…he accompanied the officer into the front of the building. They saw no one there and he accompanied the officer immediately up the stairs to the second floor of the building…

From Prayer Man: Out of the Shadows and Into the Light

"'They saw no one there.' The fact that Truly is even pointing out this gratuitous fact can only indicate one thing: that he has been confronted with Oswald’s claim that it was precisely 'there,' inside the front of the building on the First Floor, that the officer and Truly met him. Truly’s disclaimer draws ironic attention to what it is he is disclaiming, said Sean.

"Whether Truly fed the FBI the Second Floor lunchroom version of events, or whether it was the FBI who helped him get it straight, the upshot is the same: the lunchroom story appears to be a fabrication, a fiction designed for the sole purpose of eliminating Oswald’s all too real alibi for the President’s murder."

First to Second Evolution had just begun.