Reclaiming History (366 page)

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It has been widely assumed throughout the years that that person was NBC reporter Robert MacNeil. Indeed, in his book
The Right Place at the Right Time
, MacNeil says that as he ran up the steps of the Book Depository Building right after the shooting, he asked a young man in shirt sleeves who was coming out of the building where there was a phone, and the man pointed to another man inside who was talking on a phone and said, “Better ask him.” He adds that although it is “possible” that Oswald was the man he encountered, he had “no way of confirming” that he had spoken to Oswald, and when he saw Oswald on television later that day, “there was no leap of recognition” on his part. “My hair was very short then and I was wearing a White House press badge [Oswald] may have mistaken for Secret Service ID.” (MacNeil,
Right Place at the Right Time
, pp.208, 213)
Although it is not important just whom Oswald spoke to that day, there is a possibility it was someone other than MacNeil. On January 29, 1964, the Secret Service interviewed Pierce Allman, who was a reporter for Dallas TV station WFAA at the time of the assassination. Allman was described in the report as a “white male” with a “crew cut.” The Secret Service report reads that Allman also ran into the Book Depository Building right after the shooting, “where he met a white male whom he could not further identify. He asked this white male for the location of a telephone…The person pointed out a phone to him which was located in an open area on the first floor of the building.” The interview report’s “Synopsis” is that Allman is “believed to be [the] one mentioned by Lee Harvey Oswald as identifying himself as a Secret Service agent.” (CD 354, p.2, Secret Service File 00-2-34,030) Gary Mack, curator at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, agrees: “Photos of MacNeil on November 22 [1963] show he had short hair, but it definitely was not a crew cut. Allman’s the guy Oswald spoke to” (Telephone interview of Gary Mack by author on April 20, 2000).

^*
As Dealey Plaza spectator James L. Simmons told the Warren Commission, “Immediately after the shots were fired, people were running in every direction through the whole area, and there was a scene of mass confusion” (CE 1416, 22 H 833).

† Regarding this cuckoo bird phenomenon, let’s look at what just a few among many have said about the death of Elvis Presley on August 17, 1977, in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of forty-two. The following are from letters written to Ann Landers that were published in her syndicated column of October 23, 1988. From Stamford, Connecticut: “The King lives! I attended his funeral and lingered at the casket for quite awhile before the guards made me move on. Elvis was not in that casket. It was a wax dummy. I stood very close and had the opportunity to look at him for a long time. I would bet my life on it.” From Henderson, Kentucky: “My uncle works in a place that manufactures coffins. The elaborate coffin that Elvis was buried in can be obtained only by special order because it takes a long time to construct. Elvis’ coffin was ordered several weeks in advance, which proves that his ‘death’ was planned long before the public was told that he died.” From Bismarck, North Dakota: “My sister’s niece works in the courthouse where Elvis’ death certificate was processed. The original certificate stated that the body weighed 170 pounds. The paramedics who picked him up said he weighed at least 250 pounds. Looks like there were two corpses, doesn’t it? To add to the mystery, the first death certificate disappeared and was never found.”

^*
In 1986, Hoffman changed the clothing of the men considerably. He told conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs that the man with the rifle was “wearing a dark suit, tie and overcoat” and the second man “was wearing light coveralls and a railroad worker’s hat” (
Coverups
, March 1986, no. 25, p.1).

^*
Hoffman sent a letter on October 3, 1975, to JFK’s brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, telling him of his observations on the day of the assassination, and adding in broken syntax, “I talked F.B.I.’s office in Dallas last 1968 or can’t remember date and year ago. If you will find to see F.B.I.’s report about I talked them. I guess, maybe F.B.I. did not know understand what I talked a thing, because I am deafness and hard to talk F.B.I…. If you will help me and tell some things. Thank you much. Respectfully, Virgil Edward Hoffman.”
Kennedy replied on November 19, 1975: “My family has been aware of various theories concerning the death of President Kennedy…I am sure that it is understood that the continual speculation [about the case] is painful for members of my family. We have always accepted the findings of the Warren Commission Report…Our feeling is that, if there is sufficient evidence to re-examine the circumstances concerning the death of President Kennedy…this judgment would have to be made by the legal authorities responsible for such further examination.” (FBI Record 124-10163-10464, pp.5–6)

† When the interviewer pressed Hill as to what kind of dog it was, she said she didn’t know but it was “white and fuzzy” (6 H 214, WCT Jean Lollis Hill). Since there was no dog in the president’s car, Hill took a lot of ribbing for this, and in later years conspiracy theorists tried to restore her credibility on this point by claiming that photographs taken at Love Field show that Mrs. Kennedy had been given a white, stuffed toy representing the famous Sheri Lewis TV puppet Lamb Chop. The claim, however, was based on poor-quality images posted on the Internet. High-quality images show that what critics thought was a Lamb Chop toy was, in fact, a bouquet of white flowers (asters) that someone in the greeting party at Love Field (it is not known who) had given the First Lady in addition to a larger bouquet of red roses given to her by the mayor’s wife. (Trask,
That Day in Dallas
, pp.27, 29) In Richard Trask’s 1994 invaluable book,
Pictures of the Pain
, he said film footage showed that Mrs. Kennedy “was apparently presented with a small stuffed animal…She may have kept the stuffed toy among the roses with which she was also presented” (Trask,
Pictures of the Pain
, p.260 footnote 17). However, no photo of the interior of the car ever showed the toy, and such a toy never surfaced. Four years later, in his 1998 book,
That Day in Dallas
, Trask corrected himself and noted that the “stuffed toy” among the red roses was really a “gift bouquet of white asters” (Trask,
That Day in Dallas
, p.29).

^*
Spence was even more so, telling the jury in his summation that “Mr. Bugliosi can laugh him out of the courtroom,” but actually “old Tom Tilson” was a believable witness, a really genuine, salt-of-the-earth type of person who “would be one of my best friends…if I lived in Dallas…We’d go out…He’s the kind of people I would congregate with” (Transcript of
On Trial
, July 25, 1986, pp.1016–1017).

^*
Indeed, Dealey Plaza witness Amos Lee Euins, though not seeing anyone emerge from the back of the building, said that shortly after the shooting he heard someone tell a police officer “he seen a man run out the back” (2 H 205–206).

^*
However, on November 27, 1963, when the FBI showed Miss Mercer photos of Ruby and Oswald, she could not identify either as the two men she saw, saying only that the driver had a round face like Ruby, and the one with the alleged gun case was the same general build, size, and age as Oswald (12 HSCA 17).

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If you’ve been there, as I have, Mack’s man would only be about twenty feet to the left rear of the main alleged grassy knoll assassin, both men behind the fence and each necessarily aware of the other’s presence, since nothing but the ground would be between them. Hence, if there was a grassy knoll assassin where most conspiracy theorists and the HSCA say he was, and Mack’s man was where Mack says he was, the grassy knoll assassin and Mack’s man (who Mack believes may be the grassy knoll assassin) had to be co-conspirators. (I say “may be” because although the conspiracy community seems to have the impression that Mack believes the man
was
the grassy knoll assassin, in a 2006 letter to me Mack expressly wrote, “I’ve never said that Badge Man was the knoll assassin, but I have said he’s a possibility, that’s all” (Letter from Gary Mack to author dated August 10, 2006, p.1).

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Curiously, over four months after Golz published his article, U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough called Golz and told him, “Immediately
on the firing of the first shot
I saw the man you interviewed throw himself on the ground. He was down within a second of the time the shot was fired and I thought to myself, there’s a combat veteran who knows how to act when weapons start firing” (Earl Golz, “Panel Leaves Question of Imposters,”
Dallas Morning News
, December 31, 1978, p.2A). Conspiracy theorists say this confirms Arnold’s presence on the knoll. But it almost certainly does not. At the time of the first shot, the presidential limousine, we know, had just turned from Houston on to Elm. Yarborough’s car, two cars behind Kennedy’s, would have been right at the intersection of Houston and Elm, and from that position the pergola wall would have completely blocked Yarborough’s view of the place where Arnold claims he was. So Yarborough did not see Arnold for two reasons. One, photographs and film show that Arnold was not there, and two, even if he were, Yarborough couldn’t have seen him. It is difficult to know whom Yarborough saw, since several people dropped to the ground immediately. He may have been referring to Bill Newman, who testified for me in London. Newman was at the bottom of the knoll on the north side (picket fence side) of Elm and would have been visible to Yarborough at the time of the first shot. However, Newman didn’t drop to the ground until after the third shot. Also, if Yarborough were referring to Newman, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have mentioned Newman’s wife and their two young children, all of whom dropped to the ground together.

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If not, since the Back Up man, per Mack, was not in a police uniform, then who was the person kicking Arnold? Another co-conspirator of the Badge Man who was dressed in a police uniform? This is all terribly silly.

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In Craig’s Warren Commission testimony he said the station wagon he saw was a “Nash Rambler” and “it looked white to me” (6 H 267). But actually, Ruth Paine owned a green Chevrolet station wagon (2 H 506, WCT Ruth Hyde Paine; CE 2125, 24 H 697). This, apparently, created a problem for Craig. Seven years later, in his 1971 unpublished book manuscript, “When They Kill a President,” he wrote that the Rambler station wagon was “light green” in color (p.12).

† Deputy Sheriff Lewis, now deceased, submitted a report to his office on the afternoon of the assassination concerning his activities and observations that day and made no mention of seeing what Craig allegedly saw (Decker Exhibit No. 5323, 19 H 513).

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Craig not only volunteered to testify for Garrison but also privately started investigating the case for him. An example of his work: knowing that one of Garrison’s zany theories was that a vast homosexual ring conspired to kill Kennedy, Craig wrote a December 7, 1967, memo to Garrison stating that Marina Oswald’s personal physician in Dallas was associated at a hospital there with four doctors (whom Craig identifies by name), all of whom, Craig says, “are reported homosexuals.”

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Per Ken Holmes, president of Southwestern Historical Inc., which runs tours of all the Kennedy assassination sites, the official words on the plaque next to the underpass are “Union Terminal Underpass,” but he said most people in Dallas refer to it as the “Triple Underpass” (Telephone interview of Ken Holmes by author on March 11, 2004). However, assassination literature is filled with references to the site as the “triple overpass,” including, for instance, by the two Dallas officers who were assigned to positions above the underpass on November 22, 1963 (6 H 249, WCT J. W. Foster; 6 H 254, WCT J. C. White). For purposes of this book I use the term “Triple Underpass” to refer to the convergence of the three roads of Commerce, Main, and Elm, and “railroad overpass” to the railroad tracks (and walkway) on top of the three converging roads.

† Clemon Earl Johnson, a machinist for the Union Terminal Company who was on the overpass with Holland, also said he saw “white smoke,” but it was “near the pavillion” (which some people, including Sixth Floor Museum curator Gary Mack, feel is not part of the “grassy knoll”). Further, Johnson felt the smoke came not from a shot but “from a motorcycle abandoned near the spot by a Dallas policeman.” (CE 1422, 22 H 836) Another Union Terminal Company employee (described as a “hostler helper”) atop the railroad overpass on Elm who saw smoke was Nolan H. Potter, but Potter told the FBI that the smoke he saw was “in front of the Texas School Book Depository Building rising from the trees” (FBI Record 124-10026-10153, FBI interview of Nolan H. Potter on March 17, 1964).

‡ However, in a clearer copy sent to me by Steven Tilley of the National Archives, who reproduced the negative for me with special equipment, Holland’s markings on the photograph can be made out, although just barely, and not clear enough for reproduction in this book.

^*
Holland told the Warren Commission that “immediately after the shots were fired,” he ran behind the picket fence to see if he “could see anyone…behind the fence,” but he saw no one. He said by the time he got there “there were twelve or fifteen policemen and plainclothesmen” there, and “we looked for empty shells around there for quite awhile.” Though they found no shells, he did see several cars parked behind the picket fence, including “a station wagon backed up toward the fence” and in “one little spot” around there in an area of three by two feet, it looked to him “like somebody had been standing there for a long time.” Remarkably, and as alluded to earlier, he said there were about “a hundred foot tracks in that little spot.” (6 H 245–247) I should think this would be impossible enough, but in a taped interview with author Josiah Thompson on November 30, 1966, Holland said there were “four or five hundred footprints” in the area behind the station wagon (Thompson,
Six Seconds in Dallas
, p.122). Apparently, the conspirators who had Kennedy killed didn’t bring in just one assassin to shoot Kennedy from behind the picket fence, but imported the Russian army. If Holland’s testimony about footprints was strange, the testimony of Seymour Weitzman, the Dallas deputy constable who misidentified the Carcano, was close. He said that “in the railroad yards” used as a parking lot behind the picket fence, “we noticed numerous kinds [of] footprints that did not make sense because they were going in different directions” (7 H 107). Say what? It’s a parking lot for cars yet all footprints are supposed to be going in the same direction?