Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (75 page)

Several minutes after the man-identified by Burroughs as Oswaldtook his seat, the pregnant woman got up and went upstairs where the
ladies' restroom was located, said Burroughs. He said he heard the restroom
door close just shortly before Dallas police began rushing into the theater.

Burroughs said: "I don't know what happened to that woman. I don't
know how she got out of the theater. I never saw her again."

The story of Oswald being in the Texas Theater at the time of the Tippit
shooting is further supported by Jack Davis, who today hosts "Gospel
Music Spotlight" on a Dallas Christian radio station.

Davis told this author that on the day of the assassination, he went to the
Texas Theater to see the war movies. The eighteen-year-old Davis found a
seat in the right rear section of the theater and recalled seeing the opening
credits of the first film, which was only minutes past the 1 P.M. starting
time for the feature movie.

He said he was somewhat startled by a man who squeezed past him and
sat down in the seat next to him. He found it odd that this man would
choose the seat adjacent to him in a nine-hundred-seat theater with less than
twenty patrons in it. Davis said the man didn't say a word but quickly got
up and moved across the aisle and took a seat next to another person. Then
shortly, the man got up and walked into the theater's lobby. A few minutes
later, Davis, whose attention had returned to the movie, vaguely remembered seeing the same man enter the center section of the theater from the
far side.

After twenty minutes or so after this incident, according to Davis, the
house lights came on and when he walked to the lobby to ask why, he saw
policeman running in the front door. He recalled:

I was looking for the manager, but I never got to say anything because
the policemen all came rushing past me. I did not see what went on in
the theater, but I heard some scuffling going on. A few minutes later the
police brought out this same man who had sat down next to me. He was
shouting, "I protest this police brutality!" Later, of course, I learned
that this was Lee Harvey Oswald.

If Oswald was already in the theater at the time of the Tippit slaying as
claimed by Burroughs and Davis, then who slipped in about 1:35 P.M.?

Since it can be established that someone was impersonating Oswald in
Dallas prior to the assassination, it can be suggested that someone besides
Oswald lured police to the Texas Theater. But, if this were the case, what
happened to the man who slipped in without buying a ticket? Initial police
reports stated the suspect was in the theater's balcony, this information
perhaps coming from Burroughs's belief that the man who sneaked in went
upstairs.

The Dallas police homicide report on J. D. Tippit of that day stated:
"Suspect was later arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater at 231 W.
Jefferson. "

Was someone else arrested in the Texas Theater? Not according to the
official record. However there is now evidence that perhaps another man
was taken from the rear of the theater.

Bernard J. Haire owned Bernie's Hobby House, located two doors east of
the Texas Theater on W. Jefferson.

On November 22, 1963, Haire, who was unaware of the assassination,
saw the street in front of his business fill up with police cars. He went
outside and saw a crowd gathered at the Texas Theater but could not see
what was happening. Haire was captured in at least one photograph taken
at the time Oswald was brought from the theater by police.

Walking through his store, Haire went into the alley, which he said was
also filled with police cars. Walking toward the theater, Haire was opposite
the rear door when police brought a young white man out. He said the man
was dressed in a pullover shirt and slacks and appeared to be flushed as if
having been in a struggle. Although Haire was unable to see if the man was
handcuffed, he was certainly under the impression that the man was under
arrest. Haire watched police put the man in a police car and drive off.

For nearly twenty-five years Haire believed he had witnessed the arrest
of Lee Harvey Oswald. He was shocked to discover that Oswald had been
handcuffed and brought out the front door of the theater. Recently he
commented: "I don't know who I saw arrested."

Neither does anyone else, but it is eloquent testimony that apparently
someone other than Oswald led police to the Texas Theater.

The arrested Oswald was taken from the Texas Theater shortly before 2
P.M. and driven downtown to police headquarters. He was quickly taken to
the third-floor office of Captain Will Fritz, the crusty chief of the Homicide
Bureau, and placed in a seat in the hallway.

Detective Gus Rose was already busy interviewing assassination witnesses.
He soon took charge of Oswald. Rose recalled:

I took the man to an interrogation office. I removed his handcuffs. I
asked him to identify himself. He refused. In his pockets I found two pieces of identification. One card was for Lee Harvey Oswald, the other
was for Alek Hidell. "Which are you?" He said, "You're the cop. You
figure it out." He told me a lot of lies. Captain Fritz called me out at
sometime near 2:20 P.M. He said that the employees of the Texas School
Book Depository were accounted for-except one. He told me to get
some men together and get out to this address in Irving. I asked what
the man's name was. He said, "Lee Harvey Oswald." I was stunned.
"Captain," I said, "I think this is Oswald, right in there."

With a suspect in custody, the entire complexion of the assassination
investigation changed.

Despite what was heralded as overwhelming proof of Oswald's guilt in
both killings, it was not until late Friday, November 22, 1963, that he was
charged with the murder of Officer Tippit. And it was well after midnight
before he was reportedly charged with the murder of President Kennedy.

Dallas police and federal authorities quickly lost interest in any information, evidence, or detained suspects that did not fit in with the presumed
activities of Lee Harvey Oswald.

An indictment was not even issued in the Tippit slaying, since the
presumed killer-Oswald-was dead.

Yet many items of interest continued to crop up in the aftermath of the
assassination. There were reports of a man seen with a rifle near Cobb
Stadium, located on the Stemmons Freeway route from downtown to the
Trade Mart. Nothing came of this report.

At Red Bird Airport, a private field located just south of Dallas, it was
reported that federal officials seized a plane with its engine running the
afternoon of the assassination and placed it in a closed hangar under tight
security. Two days prior to the assassination, the airport's manager,
Wayne January, said three men talked to him about renting an airplane on
November 22 to fly to Mexico. He said one of the men remained sitting in
a car and closely resembled Lee Harvey Oswald. None of these stories
regarding possible escape plans were properly investigated.

But if unfollowed leads remained in Dallas, there was no official doubt
in Washington as to Oswald's guilt. Less than two hours after the
assassination-at a time when Dallas police were not even certain of the
identity of the man they had in custody (recall Detective Rose's story of
an uncooperative Oswald with two separate sets of identification)-FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover called Robert Kennedy. In a Bureau document
released to the public in 1977, Hoover wrote: "I called the attorney
general at his home and told him I thought we had the man who killed the
President down in Dallas . .. "

Hoover went on to describe Oswald as an ex-Marine who had defected
to Russia, a pro-Communist and a "mean-minded individual . . . in the
category of a nut." This incident raises the troubling question of how Hoover could have had all this information on Oswald at a time when the
Dallas authorities were not even certain of their prisoner's identity.

On November 24, less than two hours after Oswald was killed in Dallas,
Hoover telephoned the Johnson White House, saying: "The thing I am
most concerned about . . . is having something issued so we can convince
the public that Oswald is the real assassin."

In 1976 a Senate Select Committee report stated:

Almost immediately after the assassination, Director Hoover, the Justice
Department and the White House "exerted pressure" on senior Bureau
officials to complete their investigation and issue a factual report supporting the conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin.

Over the assassination weekend, information on-and evidence againstOswald continued to pile up. The news media was on around-the-clock
alert. No bit of information was too insignificant to broadcast or publish.

The Dallas Morning News of November 23, 1963, carried a story
stating:

[District Attorney Henry] Wade said preliminary reports indicated more
than one person was involved in the shooting which brought death to the
President and left Gov. John Connally wounded . . . "This is the most
dastardly act I've ever heard about," Wade said. "Everyone who
participated in this crime-anyone who helped plan it or furnished
a weapon, knowing the purposes for which it was intended-is guilty
of murder under Texas law. They should all go to the electric
chair. "

But Wade's initial claim of evidence of a conspiracy quickly faded as
official statements began to center more and more on Oswald. Years later,
Wade recalled why:

Cliff Carter, President Johnson's aide, called me three times from the
White House that Friday night. He said that President Johnson felt any
word of a conspiracy-some plot by foreign nations-to kill President
Kennedy would shake our nation to its foundation. President Johnson
was worried about some conspiracy on the part of the Russians. Oswald
had all sorts of connections and affections toward Castro's Cuba. It
might be possible to prove a conspiracy with Cuba. But it would be very
hard to prove a conspiracy with Russia. Washington's word to me was
that it would hurt foreign relations if I alleged a conspiracy-whether I
could prove it or not. I would just charge Oswald with plain murder and
go for the death penalty. So, I went down to the Police Department at
City Hall to see Captain Fritz-to make sure the Dallas police didn't
involve any foreign country in the assassination.

With an ever-growing pile of evidence of conspiracy in the assassination, the federal government began to assert itself.

Police Chief Curry told the Warren Commission:

The FBI actually had no jurisdiction over [the murder of Kennedy], the
Secret Service actually had no jurisdiction over it. But, in an effort to
cooperate with these agencies we went all out to do whatever they
wanted us to do . . . We kept getting calls from the FBI. They wanted
this evidence up in Washington . . . there was some discussion, [Captain]
Fritz told me, he says, "Well, I need the evidence here, I need to get
some people to try to identify the gun, to try to identify this pistol and
these things, and if it's in Washington, how can I do it?" But, we
finally . . . about midnight of Friday night, we agreed to let the FBI
have all the evidence .. .

However, Curry said, to the best of his knowledge, no one from the Dallas
police accompanied this evidence to FBI headquarters in Washington.
This, of course, caused a serious break in the "chain of evidence."

Curry added:

We got several calls insisting we send this [evidence to Washington],
and nobody would tell me exactly who it was that was insisting, "just
say I got a call from Washington, and they wanted this evidence up
there," insinuating it was someone in high authority that was requesting
this, and we finally agreed . . .

Disjoined and incomplete as Curry's statements are, there now is no
doubt that Washington authorities were putting extreme pressure on Dallas
police as early as Friday night.

A thirty-four-page report on police activities that weekend, sent to Curry
by his assistant chief and two deputy police chiefs, states:

At approximately 12:01 A.M. [other reports state an earlier time], Saturday, November 23, 1963, pertinent physical evidence in the case involving Oswald and the slaying of President Kennedy was turned over
to Mr. Vince Drain of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be delivered in person to the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C., for processing.

Persistent rumors among Dallas policemen have it that some of this
pressure came in the form of a personal call to Captain Fritz from none
other than President Lyndon Johnson. However, Fritz would never confirm
this.

Public awareness of the federal takeover of the Dallas evidence did not
come until November 27, 1963, when the Dallas Morning News reported:
"The White House approved the decision that the FBI take charge of all evidence which officers assembled in their investigation of the murder of
President Kennedy...."

The assassination was now a federal government matter.