The Signal Man on Elm Street

[Jerry Freeman]

  If you remembered the BLM protests last year, the right wing white supremacist infiltrators committing violence were all holding black umbrellas as a symbol.

Perhaps a link on mass umbrella toting interlopers wearing GOP bands on their right arms could be provided?

I found ONE video of ONE guy [dressed in black and wearing a gas mask] with a black umbrella and a hammer.. smashing windows.
Evidence of his political affiliation was not apparent.
I did find videos of riots. The claim was that extremist radical elements were responsible.
Many rioters black and white.
How governmental sympathies were determined was a mystery to me. 
They should have all been arrested, charged, brought up and convicted of felony destruction.
I wouldn't care what side of the political aisle they supported.

I did notice that they these are all liberal news networks [figures]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/29/umbrella-man-white-supremacist-minneapolis/
 https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-and-agitators-in-george-floyd-protests-indicators-of-white-supremacists/
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/authorities-suspect-white-supremacists-and-far-left-extremists-are-behind-violence-at-protests/

[Walt Cakebread]

The umbrella man here is very interesting. If you remembered the BLM protests last year, the right wing white supremacist infiltrators committing violence were all holding black umbrellas as a symbol.   

The umbrella man here is very interesting. If you remembered the BLM protests last year, the right wing white supremacist infiltrators committing violence were all holding black umbrellas as a symbol.    ​


JFK assassination: Why suspicions still linger about 'Umbrella Man'

The man with the black umbrella in the Dallas crowd on the day of the JFK assassination remains an enigma to some and a sinister figure to others. What's wrong with the official explanation about Umbrella Man?

November 22, 2013

Nov. 22, 1963 was not rainy, and yet there he was in the crowd in Dallas's Dealey Square as President John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed by – the man with the black umbrella.

Through the 50 years since the JFK assassination robbed Americans of any semblance of political innocence, questions have persisted about that man and why he opened and pumped his umbrella in the moments before the president was shot. Was the hoisting of the umbrella a signal? Was the umbrella itself a weapon? Did the man know Lee Harvey Oswald?

The explanation from the man himself, coming 15 years later in congressional testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, has not put to rest all suspicions (as is the case with so many other facets of the JFK assassination). Today, 6 in 10 Americans do not believe the official version of what happened – specifically, that Oswald acted alone. Novelist John Updike was once prompted to write that confusion about Umbrella Man hangs over the assassination, dangling around “history’s neck like a fetish.”

“In all of Dallas, there appears to be exactly one person standing under an open black umbrella. And that person is standing where the shots begin to rain into the limousine,” Josiah “Tink” Thompson, author of “Six Seconds in Dallas,” says in a 2011 documentary short by filmmaker Errol Morris. “Can anyone come up with a nonsinister explanation for this? Hmm?”

Louie Steven Witt, aka Umbrella Man, offered one to Congress when he voluntarily came forward to testify – and a peculiar one it was. In his 1978 testimony, he said he had known nothing about the controversy surrounding his rain gear. The umbrella had indeed been intended to convey a message, Mr. Witt told lawmakers, but to Kennedy himself, not to any co-conspirators in an assassination plot. He called his actions that day "a bad joke."

But the photos and film footage of Umbrella Man's actions seem to many to defy explanation – and so they interpret the images themselves.

“One theory is that the assassins wanted Kennedy to know (in his final seconds) exactly why he was being killed,” writes blogger Croft Randle. “The umbrella symbolized Kennedy’s … refusal to provide a covering ‘umbrella’ of air support during the CIA’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The term had been widely used and the significance of the raised umbrella would have instantly been understood by Kennedy.”

In director Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, “JFK,” the Umbrella Man is a signal man. Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly cut his reportorial teeth on the Umbrella Man story.

Mr. Witt, in front of Congress, was asked specifically whether the umbrella was equipped with a shooting mechanism that could launch a flechette. He answered no. Indeed, he brought what he said was the same umbrella to the hearing to demonstrate that it was just an average black umbrella.

When one congressman suggested that Witt thought of himself as a “cool cat,” he replied, "I can assure you I was not all that cool. I think one of my reactions was knowing that I was there with this stupid umbrella and heckling the president."

"I would have to describe it as kind of like a bad joke that had gone sour, or a practical joke you pulled on someone that had gone sour."

The umbrella, Witt explained, was a visual protest, not of Kennedy’s policies, but of the backing that JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., gave to Britain's umbrella-toting Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement policies toward the Nazis in the late 1930s.

“In a coffee break conversation, someone had mentioned that the umbrella was a sore spot with the Kennedy family,” Witt told lawmakers. “Being a conservative-type fellow, I sort of placed him in the liberal camp and I was just going to kind of do a little heckling.”

Asked whether he had anything to add, Witt said, “If the 'Guinness Book of World Records' had a category for people doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place, I would be No. 1 in that position with not even a close runner-up.”

An innocent explanation, but is it true? Mr. Thompson, interviewed in the Errol Morris documentary, calls the explanation “just wacky enough it has to be true.”

Others say there’s no definitive proof that Witt was in fact the Umbrella Man. He fit the image: tall, thin, white. He was a 53-year-old Dallas warehouse manager, according to an AP story at the time he gave his testimony. Since that day, little is known of what became of Witt. He would be 88 now.

For some, the Umbrella Man has become a cautionary tale about America’s search for truth and meaning from the assassination, a search that itself has become a sort of societal addiction, in which facts, historical research, and theories continue to clash. For Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze, the investigation itself can muddy understanding, as when a mundane detail – a lone man with an umbrella on a sunny Dallas morning, for instance – becomes, as Mr. Schutze wrote recently, a "trap door" that leads to a "quantum universe of weirdness."

Believe what you will, but this much is true: No umbrellas are allowed in Dealey Plaza during Friday's public commemoration of the assassination.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/1122/JFK-assassination-Why-suspicions-still-linger-about-Umbrella-Man

“One theory is that the assassins wanted Kennedy to know (in his final seconds) exactly why he was being killed,” writes blogger Croft Randle. “The umbrella symbolized Kennedy’s … refusal to provide a covering ‘umbrella’ of air support during the CIA’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The term had been widely used and the significance of the raised umbrella would have instantly been understood by Kennedy.”

The umbrella plus the red rings on the windows of the TSBD was intended to remind JFK that he had  pulled the UMBRELLA OF AIR COVER and the red rings on RED  beach were there as markers to the aircraft ......

[Robert Reeves]

The man with the umbrella in this pic is allegedly Rip Robertson in 1964. It was posted by John O'Hare's son

People have speculated Rip & O'Hare are the guys pictured in the plaza.







O'Hare's son, so far, hasn't said if he believes it was his father & Rip Robertson photographed in dealey plaza. But I thought it was a hint that he posted this pic of his father's friend Rip!

BTW, November 24th 1964 CIA led an invasion into the Congo (Assault on Stanleyville – November 1964), to free some hostages, which O'Hare's son said this pic was then taken (in the Congo). Would be interesting to know the pics real date. Kinda like Rip might have been commemorating something with this umbrella and bottle of booze in his other hand. Just my opinion ... of course.

[Walt Cakebread]

The man with the umbrella in this pic is allegedly Rip Robertson in 1964. It was posted by John O'Hare's son

People have speculated Rip & O'Hare are the guys pictured in the plaza.







O'Hare's son, so far, hasn't said if he believes it was his father & Rip Robertson photographed in dealey plaza. But I thought it was a hint that he posted this pic of his father's friend Rip!

BTW, November 24th 1964 CIA led an invasion into the Congo (Assault on Stanleyville – November 1964), to free some hostages, which O'Hare's son said this pic was then taken (in the Congo). Would be interesting to know the pics real date. Kinda like Rip might have been commemorating something with this umbrella and bottle of booze in his other hand. Just my opinion ... of course.

Interesting stuff, Mr Reeves.....  And your speculation about Rip Robertson commemorating "something" is not without solid reasoning.   Robertson was a card or two short of having a full deck.  ( I think he watched too many John Wayne war movies. )   The fact that he's holding the umbrella and a bottle of booze supports the idea that he was missing a couple of cards....

PS:   I believe that you're on the trail....  Good luck to you. Sir....   

[Walt Cakebread]

Hi Robert,  I just wanted you to know that the photo of Roberson with the umbrella had a real impact ....

I've been ridiculed and mocked because I've pointed out the red rings on the windows of the TSBD were a message to JFK reminding him that he had pulled the air cover for the brigade at Red Beach BOP .
  ( JFK didn't pull the air cover, but the CIA handlers lied to the Cubans and told them that JFK had promised US Navy air cover)

Red Beach was marked for the expected aircover ....Red Rings had been placed on the beach to identify the Brigade's position.

The red rings on the windows of the TSBD came from the same mind that would hold an open umbrella and a bottle of booze....   

[Walt Cakebread]

Why aren't you concerned the photo might be faked.



The rings concerned fire safety regulations.

The rings concerned fire safety regulations.

You WC  believers have been trying to sell that BS  for years....  and it's nothing but BS.


In this photo there are four red rings visible.....( I believe there were actually seven red rings stuck on the windows of the TSBD. ) Perhaps you can verify your contention that they were some sort of weird "fire safety regulation".... by citing that regulation.....  And also perhaps you can explain why the red rings disappeared and do not appear in photos taken a couple of days after the ambush murder. 

[Jerry Freeman]

The man with the black umbrella in the Dallas crowd on the day of the JFK assassination remains an enigma to some and a sinister figure to others.
 Believe what you will, but this much is true: No umbrellas are allowed in Dealey Plaza during Friday's public commemoration of the assassination.
 https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/1122/JFK-assassination-Why-suspicions-still-linger-about-Umbrella-Man

1 The Signal Man on Elm Street was the thread title given by the poster so I thought that is what he believed.
2..I Never knew about the taboo on umbrellas at the 50th anniversary in Dealey.
However on that day they barricaded that general area and only people with tickets to the occasion were allowed in.
Also, it rained that day so those lucky people got a chilly barrage of moisture.

In Dallas, about 5,000 people gathered under a bitterly cold drizzle for the understated ceremony in Dealey Plaza. In a nod to Kennedy’s military service, the US naval academy men’s glee club performed America the Beautiful. Access to Dealey Plaza was tightly controlled: distributed through a lottery, and Dallas police conducted background checks on the winners.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/22/jfk-50th-anniversary-assassination-live