Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (9 page)

Witt told the Committee that on the spur of the moment, he grabbed a
large black umbrella and went to Dealey Plaza to heckle Kennedy. He
claimed that someone had told him that an open umbrella would rile
Kennedy. While Witt offered no further explanation of how his umbrella
could heckle the president, Committee members theorized that the umbrella
in some way referred to the pro-German sympathies of Kennedy's father
while serving as U.S. ambassador to Britain just prior to World War II. They
said the umbrella may have symbolized the appeasement policies of Britain's
prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who always carried an umbrella.
According to Witt:

I think I went sort of maybe halfway up the grassy area [on the north
side of Elm Street], somewhere in that vicinity. I am pretty sure I sat
down. . . . [when the motorcade approached] I think I got up and
started fiddling with that umbrella trying to get it open, and at the same
time I was walking forward, walking toward the street. . . . Whereas
other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I
did not see this because of this thing [the umbrella] in front of me. . . .
My view of the car during that length of time was blocked by the
umbrella's being open.

Based on the available photographs made that day, none of Witt's statements were an accurate account of the actions of the "umbrella man" who
stood waiting for the motorcade with his umbrella in the normal over-thehead position and then pumped it in the air as Kennedy passed.

Witt's bizarre story-unsubstantiated and totally at variance with the
actions of the man in the photographs-resulted in few, if any, researchers
accepting Louis Steven Witt as the "umbrella man."

And there continues to be no official accounting for the dark-complected
man who appears to have been talking on a radio moments after the
assassination. The House Committee failed to identify or locate this man
and Witt claimed he had no recollection of such a person, despite photographs that seem to show the "umbrella man" talking with the dark man.

Witt claimed only to recall that a "Negro man" sat down near him and
kept repeating: "They done shot them folks."

Interestingly, one of the Committee attorneys asked Witt specifically if
he recalled seeing the man with a walkie-talkie, although officially no one
has ever admitted the possibility of radios in use in Dealey Plaza.

These two men are still among the mystery people of Dealey Plaza.

Dolores Kounas was a clerk-typist with McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, which had offices on the third floor of the Depository building. She,
along with two other McGraw-Hill employees, were standing just west of
the Depository across Elm Street from Millican and the Chisms. She, too,
thought the first shot was a firecracker, but after hearing a second shot and
seeing people fall to the ground, she realized they were shots. She later
told the FBI:

Although I was across the street from the Despository building and was
looking in the direction of the building as the motorcade passed and
following the shots, I did not look up at the building as I had thought
the shots came from a westernly direction in the vicinity of the viaduct.

James Altgens, forty-four, a photographer for the Associated Press in
Dallas, arrived in Dealey Plaza early. He had been assigned to get a
picture of Kennedy as he passed through downtown Dallas and decided the
west end of Dealey Plaza would provide an excellent opportunity to catch
the President with the downtown buildings in the background. However,
when Altgens tried to station himself on the Triple Underpass, he was
shooed away by a Dallas policeman, who told him it was railroad property
and only railroad employees were allowed there.

So Altgens walked around by the Depository, then on to the intersection
of Main and Houston, where he took a photo as the President passed. He
then ran farther into the plaza, where he made several photographs as the
motorcade approached from the south curb of Elm. Altgens told the
Warren Commission:

I made one picture at the time I heard a noise that sounded like a
firecracker.... I figured it was nothing more than a firecracker because from my position down here the sound was not of such volume
that it would indicate to me it was a high-velocity rifle.... It sounded
like it was coming up from behind the car . . . who counts fireworks
explosions? I wasn't keeping track of the number of pops that took place, but I could vouch for No. 1 and I can vouch for the last shot, but
I cannot tell you how many shots were in between. There was not
another shot fired after the President was struck in the head. That was
the last shot-that much I will say with a great degree of certainty.

One of Altgens's photos was taken just seconds after the first shots were
fired and showed a slender man standing in the doorway of the Depository.
Many people have claimed the man was Lee Harvey Oswald.

In the May 24, 1964, issue of the New York Herald Tribune magazine
section, there was an article regarding Altgens's photograph. This article
raised the question:

Isn't it odd that J. W. Altgens, a veteran Associated Press photographer
in Dallas, who took a picture of the Kennedy assassination-one of the
witnesses close enough to see the President shot and able to describe
second-by-second what happened-has been questioned neither by the
FBI nor the Warren Commission?

On June 2, 1964, Altgens was interviewed by FBI agents. The agents
reported: "He recalled that at about the instant he snapped the picture, he
heard a burst of noise which he thought was firecrackers . . . he then
turned the film in his camera . . . when he heard another report which he
recognized as a gunshot."

Near Altgens on the grassy triangle in the lower part of Dealey Plaza
were a handful of people, all the closest witnesses to the actual assassination. Only a couple of these witnesses testified to the Warren Commission
and one of the closest was never identified until years later when she was
interviewed by an assassination researcher.

Charles Brehm, along with his five-year-old son, had watched the
presidential motorcade turn onto Houston from near the Depository building. Then, holding his son, Brehm ran across Elm and stationed himself
halfway between Houston and the Triple Underpass on the grassy triangle
south of Elm. In a 1966 film documentary, Brehm stated:

I very definitely saw the effect of the second bullet that struck the
President. That which appeared to be a portion of the President's skull
went flying slightly to the rear of the President's car and directly to its
left. It did fly over toward the curb to the left and to the rear.

Brehm said the piece of skull landed in the grass not far from his location.
He told the FBI some days later that "it seemed quite apparent to him that
the shots came from one of two buildings back at the corner of Elm and
Houston Streets. Brehm also said "it seemed to him that the automobile
almost came to a halt after the first shot," but he was not certain.

Brehm, an ex-serviceman with experience in bolt-action rifles, was probably the closest witness to the fatal head shot. He was not called to
testify to the Warren Commission.

Two significant home movies were made of the assassination other than
the famous Zapruder film. One was made by Mrs. Maria Muchmore, who
had moved from a position near Main and Houston to the center of the
grassy triangle behind Brehm. She caught the final and fatal head shot to
Kennedy and the disappearance of the limousine into the Triple Underpass
on the frames of her film.

Further behind Muchmore, across Main Street, Orville Nix captured the
entire assassination sequence. It is the Nix's film that most clearly shows
the presidential limousine coming to a brief halt with its brake lights on
prior to the fatal head shot. Also in the Nix film are suspicious flashes of
light on the Grassy Knoll, which is in the background of the movie. Are
these muzzle flashes from rifles? To date, no sophisticated analysis has
been conducted.

Nix was interviewed by an assassination researcher some years later and
asked about the direction of the shots. He stated: "I thought it [shots]
came from a fence between the Book Depository and the railroad tracks."

Nix also said that he later talked about the assassination with a friend,
Forrest V. Sorrels, then head of the Dallas Secret Service office. He said
at the time of the assassination, Sorrels, too, believed shots had come from
the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll.

The Warren Commission never called Nix to testify, although he indicated he was willing to do so to the FBI, nor did the Commission have his
film adequately analyzed. Only after some researchers claimed that photographs of a gunman on the Grassy Knoll were visible in the Nix film was it
closely studied. In late 1966, Itek Corporation, which handles government
contacts and is closely tied to the CIA, studied the film on the request of
United Press International. Itek scientists concluded that the gunman figure
was actually shadows from a tree branch.

It might be noted that even this conclusion is not totally accepted by
suspicious researchers since, moments later, Nix panned back over the
same area and the "shadow" figure is no longer visible. If the figure was
merely shadows, it would seem that they should still be there in the later
frames.

Also taking films on the south side of Elm Street was Beverly Oliver,
who stood filming right behind Brehm and his son. From her vantage
point, Oliver's movie would show not only the Grassy Knoll in the
background, but also the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the
shooting.

Despite the most intensive FBI investigation in history, federal authorities officially were unable to locate Oliver and, for years, she was known to
researchers only as the "babushka lady" because of a triangular kerchief
she wore on her head that day.

Perhaps the reason that the federal authorities were unable to identify or
locate the "babushka lady" is the explosive story she has to tell. Located
only in recent years by assassination researchers, Beverly Oliver is now
married to an evangelist, is a "re-born" Christian, and claims:

-Her film was taken and never returned by FBI agents.

-She was a friend of Jack Ruby and many of his employees.

-Ruby once introduced her to "Lee Oswald of the CIA."

-She knows that Ruby, Oswald, and David Ferrie were closely
associated.

-She married a Dallas underworld character closely connected to Ruby
and his associates who, in 1968, met briefly with Richard Nixon.

Oliver was nineteen years old at the time of the assassination and
worked for the Colony Club, a strip-show club located next door to Jack
Ruby's Carousel Club.

On November 22, she took a new Super-8 Yashica movie camera to
Dealey Plaza and ended up just behind Charles Brehm on the grassy
triangle just south of Elm Street.

Photos taken that day show that Oliver filmed the entire assassination as
the motorcade moved down Elm. Undoubtedly her film would have included the windows of the Texas School Book Depository as shots were
fired, clear pictures of the "umbrella man" and the "dark-complexioned
man" on the north side of Elm, and the Grassy Knoll area at the time of
the fatal head shot.

Oliver said on Monday following the assassination, she was approached
by two men near the Colony Club. She believed they were either FBI or
Secret Service agents. They said they knew she had taken film in Dealey
Plaza and wanted to develop it for use as evidence. Oliver was told her
film would be returned to her within ten days. She complied.

She never saw her film again. There was no mention of either her or her
film in the Warren Report.

(Years later, when shown photographs of FBI agents involved in the
assassination, Oliver identified Regis Kennedy as one of the men who took
her film. Kennedy played a key role in the New Orleans aspect of the
assassination investigation and came under suspicion in later years because
of his insistence that reputed New Orleans Mafia Boss Carlos Marcello
was merely a "tomato salesman. ")

Not long after the assassination, Oliver married George McGann, a Dallas
underworld character whose best man was R. D, Matthews. Matthews, a close
friend of Jack Ruby, was described by the House Select Committee on
Assassinations as "actively engaged in criminal activity since the 1940s."

The committee also developed evidence connecting Matthews with associates of Florida Mafia chieftain Santos Trafficante. Further, Matthews
was a father figure to another Dallas thug, convicted murderer-for-hire
Charles V. Harrelson.

Oliver told researcher Gary Shaw that during the presidential campaign
of 1968, she and McGann had a two-hour conversation with candidate
Richard Nixon in a Miami hotel. Why former President Nixon would meet
with a well-known criminal is unclear, but in light of information that has
been made public since the Watergate affair linking Nixon to organized
crime figures, this story no longer seems so far-fetched.