The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (45 page)

Also, by witness statements and his own admission, Oswald remained in close proximity to the first-floor pay telephone around lunch time, as JFK’s motorcade drew closer to Dealey Plaza. Recall that one of
Oswald’s co-workers at the Book Depository told police that “during the lunch breaks, Oswald usually made several phone calls, which were usually short in length.” But according to the Warren Report, Oswald had no one to call but Marina, which raises the question of who else Oswald was calling. Oswald might well have been waiting to make or receive one or more phone calls that day, regarding what he thought was his “mission” to Mexico City and on to Cuba, in the same way that Gilberto Lopez had been waiting for a phone call about going to Cuba on November 17. Guy Banister’s associate Joseph Milteer told William Somersett that Oswald “was downstairs in the Book Depository rather than on the upper floor” when the shots were fired at JFK.

As noted earlier, confessed conspirator John Martino admitted shortly before his death in 1975 that “the anti-Castro people put Oswald together [and] Oswald was to meet his contact at the Texas Theatre [who would] get him out of the country.” However, Martino also admitted to his business partner and to a
Newsday
reporter that “Oswald didn’t know who he was [really] working for—he was just ignorant of who was really putting him together.” Martino said that after they got Oswald “out of the country,” the plotters would “then eliminate him.”

Oswald himself later said that when he finished his lunch, he went up to the second floor, to get a Coke. He would be seen near the Coke machine there less than a minute after 12:30 p.m.

12:15–12:20 p.m.:
Book Depository employee Bonnie Ray Williams finished his lunch on the sixth floor and left, leaving behind the scraps of his lunch, which police later initially assumed were Oswald’s. The FBI later reported that it takes six minutes to assemble a Mannlicher-Carcano, using a dime (since no tools were found)—so that left four to
nine minutes for Oswald alone to supposedly move all the fifty-pound boxes into position in the “sniper’s nest” on that floor, which the
Warren Report
claims he constructed.

12:15–12:20 p.m.:
Jack Ruby was at the
Dallas Morning News
building, where he had been since approximately 11:45 a.m. Ruby was seen sitting on the second floor, in the only chair from which he could see the site where Kennedy would be killed. However, both shortly before and after the shooting, Ruby was not seen in the offices, meaning that he could have slipped away for a time. An FBI report says that “Ruby . . . was missed for a period of about 20 to 25 minutes” and none of the employees knew “where Ruby had gone.” That was the time when JFK’s motorcade was passing by the
Dallas Morning News
offices—grabbing the attention of most of the workers there—and going through Dealey Plaza.

Only two people said they saw Ruby during the time he was missing from the newspaper offices. One, a police officer, is discussed shortly, but the other was television reporter Wes Wise, who said he had seen Jack Ruby near the Book Depository “moments after the shooting.” Wise was a credible reporter, who later became mayor of Dallas. If Ruby was that close to the Book Depository “moments after the shooting,” he was almost certainly in the vicinity during the shooting. It’s documented that within a short time of the shooting, Ruby would admit that he had his pistol with him, and he was seen by his banker with the $7,000 mentioned earlier, so he may well have had both with him when he was near the Book Depository.
*

12:20 p.m.:
Two men who worked for the city and county saw a man in the sixth-floor window, but he was staring and “transfixed” at the area of the grassy knoll, not at the motorcade. One of the men remarked to the other that the man in the window looked “uncomfortable,” like he “must be hiding or something.” The man in the window was wearing an “open neck . . . sport shirt or a T-shirt [that was] light in color, probably white” and they mentioned a “sport shirt [that was] yellow.” One of them later said “he did not think the man in the window was Oswald, insisting that the man in the window had ‘light-colored hair.’”

12:20 p.m.:
Huge, enthusiastic crowds greeted JFK’s motorcade. John Connally later said “the crowds were extremely thick . . . there were at least a quarter of a million people on the parade route that day.” He recalled that even with the throng, “there was this little girl—I guess she was about eight years old—who had a placard that said, ‘President Kennedy . . . will you shake hands with me?’ . . . Well, he immediately stopped the car and shook hands with this little girl, and of course, the car was mobbed.” Later, “there was a nun, a sister, with a bunch of schoolchildren . . . right by the car. And he stopped and spoke to them,” too.

12:24 p.m.:
Prisoners in the Dallas County Jail—which overlooks Dealey Plaza—saw two men, at least one of whom had a dark complexion, on the sixth floor of the Book Depository, adjusting the scope on a rifle.

12:27 p.m.:
Twenty-two-year-old soldier Gordon Arnold was walking behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll, in the parking lot, when he was confronted by someone who “showed me a badge and
said he was with the Secret Service and that he didn’t want anybody up there.” Arnold then went on the other side of the fence, on the grassy side of the knoll. Warren Commission files confirm that no Secret Service agents were on the knoll, or in Dealey Plaza at all. They were all either with the motorcade, or miles away at the site of JFK’s scheduled speech at the Dallas Trade Mart.

12:28 p.m.:
Lee Bowers, in the railroad tower overlooking the parking lot behind the grassy knoll’s fence, told attorney Mark Lane that he noticed two men behind the stockade fence, looking up toward Main and Houston. One of the men was “middle-aged” and “fairly heavyset,” wearing a white shirt and dark trousers. The other, about ten to fifteen feet away from the first man, was in his “mid-twenties” and wearing “either a plaid shirt or plaid coat.”

12:29 p.m.:
JFK’s limo turned onto Houston Street and was heading toward the Book Depository. JFK’s driver, Secret Service agent William Greer, testified that “when they got to Houston from Main Street, he felt relieved. He felt they were in the clear, the crowds were thinning and . . . he did begin to feel relieved. . . .” However, the limo was moving closer and closer to the Book Depository and the alleged “sniper’s nest” at the easternmost window on the sixth floor of the building, closest to Houston Street.

For almost a minute, anyone in that perch would have a totally unobstructed shot at a slow-moving car, with the target getting larger with each passing second. The limo had to slow even more as it made the 120-degree turn onto Elm, passing directly underneath the “sniper’s nest,” still with no trees or obstructions of any kind. As JFK’s limo continued down Elm, away from the Depository, the view from the
“sniper’s nest”—or any of the sixth-floor windows, for that matter—would have been obscured by the branches of a large tree in the small park that includes the grassy knoll.

12:30 p.m.:
Mrs. Nellie Connally, riding in the limo with JFK, Jackie, and Nellie’s husband, John Connally, told JFK, “Mr. Kennedy, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.” JFK, impressed by the huge, enthusiastic throngs, which were only now starting to thin out, replied, “That is very obvious.”

12:30:12 p.m.:
One shot was fired at the President’s limousine. JFK raised his hands to his neck. One of the emergency-room physicians, Dr. Carrico, would later describe the small wound in JFK’s throat as an entrance wound. Secret Service agent Sam Kinney, in the limo directly behind JFK’s, would later say that “the first shot ‘hit the President in the throat.’” Kennedy aide David Powers, in the same limo as Kinney, was sure that the shot came from the right front—the grassy knoll—as was another Kennedy aide, Kenneth O’Donnell, who was in the limo with Powers. Soldier Gordon Arnold, on the grassy knoll, said “the shot came from behind me, only inches over my left shoulder. I had just gotten out of basic training . . . and I hit the dirt.” According to Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough, who was two cars behind JFK, “immediately on the firing of the first shot I saw the man . . . throw himself on the ground . . . he was down within a second, and I thought to myself, ‘There’s a combat veteran who knows how to act when weapons start firing.’” (Yarborough himself was a World War II combat veteran.) Secret Service agent Lem Johns, in the limo behind Yarborough, later testified that “the first two [shots] sounded like they were on the side of me towards the grassy knoll. . . .”

JFK’S LIMO, WHICH accelerated to a speed of around 11 miles an hour after making the turn onto Elm, slowed down. Powers told my researcher that he felt they were riding into an ambush, which explains why JFK’s limo initially slowed so much. John Connally turned to the right, because he thought the sound came from over his right shoulder. Not seeing JFK out of the corner of his eye, Connally started to turn back toward his left. Connally can be seen in the Zapruder film holding his Stetson hat well after JFK has already been hit in the throat; Connally’s wrist would have been shattered at that point if both men had been hit by the same bullet.

1.65 seconds later:
One or more shots were fired from above and behind JFK’s limo. JFK’s limo continued to slow as the driver looked toward the back seat. David Powers is adamant that “the same bullet that hit JFK did not hit John Connally,” meaning one of these shots probably hit Connally.

Secret Service agent Glenn Bennett, in the limo with Powers and O’Donnell, “saw what appeared to be a nick in the back of President Kennedy’s coat below the shoulder. He thought the President had been hit in the back.”

At some point, a shot was fired that missed JFK’s limo entirely and struck a curb on Main Street near the bridge that forms the triple underpass with Elm, Main, and Commerce. The shot knocked up a chip of concrete that struck an onlooker, James Teague.

5.91 seconds later:
Lee Bowers, in the railroad tower behind the grassy-knoll parking lot, noticed a flash of “light or smoke” from the two men behind the fence overlooking the grassy knoll. Bowers said that he thought one of the men might have been standing on the
bumper of a car backed up to the fence. This shot blew away a large portion of the President’s skull, rendering him brain-dead, though his heart continued to beat.

Officer Hargis, riding on a motorcycle behind and slightly to the left of Kennedy, was splattered with blood and brain matter. Powers and O’Donnell are certain that shot came from the front, from the fence on the grassy knoll. It’s possible that a shot was fired from above and behind at almost exactly the same time, hitting Kennedy in the back. Secret Service Agent Paul Landis, in the limo with Powers and O’Donnell, said he believed the final head shot came from the grassy knoll but that an earlier shot came from above and behind him (in the direction of the Book Depository). After a moment, JFK’s limo finally sped toward Parkland Hospital, four miles away.

12:30:30 p.m.:
On the fourth floor of the Book Depository, Victoria Adams later testified that “between 15 and 30 seconds” after the last shot, she and a friend left the window where they had been watching the motorcade. They went to the elevator, which “was not running,” so she and her friend took the stairs “down to the first floor.” She said in her police statement that “there was no one [else] on the stairs.”

12:31 p.m.:
A railroad yardman saw someone behind the fence on the grassy knoll “throw something in a bush.” From the roof of the Terminal Annex Building near the Depository, J. C. Price saw a man (about twenty-five, with long dark hair) running full-speed away from the fence and toward the railroad yard. The man was carrying something in his right hand that “could have been a gun.” He was wearing a white dress shirt, no tie, and khaki-colored trousers.

Dallas Police Chief Curry, driving the lead car, radioed to “get a man on top of that triple underpass and see what happened up there.” Dallas Secret Service chief Forrest Sorrels later said that he “looked towards the top of the terrace to my right”—by the grassy knoll—“as the sound of the shots seemed to come from that direction.” Sheriff Bill Decker, riding with Curry and Sorrells, radioed for all available men to head for the railroad yard behind the fence on the grassy knoll.

Photos clearly show that most of the crowd surged toward the grassy-knoll area, including many Dallas deputies. For example, Dallas Deputy Harry Weatherford “heard a loud report, which . . . sounded as if it came from the railroad yard.” After hearing two more shots, he began “running towards the railroad yards where the sound seemed to come from.” In fact, one researcher found that of the twenty deputies who gave statements, “sixteen thought the assassin had fired from the area of the grassy knoll” while three had “no opinion” and only one “decided the shots came from” the Book Depository.

12:31:30 p.m.:
In contrast to the rush toward the grassy knoll, only one police officer, Marion Baker, headed into the Book Depository. He’d seen a flock of pigeons fly from the roof, and he wanted to check it out for a sniper. Baker first encountered Book Depository manager Roy Truly, who told the officer to follow him. (Truly said he initially thought the shooting had come from the area of the knoll.) Officer Baker later told the Warren Commission that while they were still “on the first floor there were two men . . . as we tried to get on the elevators, I remember two men, one was sitting . . . and another one between 20 or 30 feet away from us looking at us.” Baker affirmed that both were “white men,” but the two
have never been identified and apparently were not employees of the Book Depository.

The elevators were not working when Baker and Truly got to them, so they took the stairs to the second floor. Author Michael Benson summarized testimony and documents showing that on the second floor, “between seventy-five and ninety seconds after the assassination,” Officer Baker glimpsed Oswald “standing near a Coke machine in the building’s lunchroom.” Baker asked Truly if he knew the man; Truly said that Oswald worked for him. Baker and Truly then continued up the stairs. About thirty seconds later, “Oswald was seen drinking a Coke by Mrs. Elizabeth Reid,” who worked on that floor. Officer Baker’s initial report stated that Oswald had been “drinking a Coke,” though for some reason, those words were later scratched out. Both “Reid and [Officer] Baker reported that Oswald was not breathing hard.”