Still within the scenario of this present threadLet us recall what Chief Jesse Curry was telling press within hours of the shooting:
Oswald rushed out--------just as an officer was rushing inThat verb-----------------'rushed'------------------will also be used by our friend Mr Harry D. Holmes in recalling Mr Oswald's account in custody:
There was a commotion outside, which he later rushed downstairs to go out to see what was going on. He didn't say whether he took the stairs down. He didn't say whether he took the elevator down.
But he went downstairs, and as he went out the front, it seems as though he did have a coke with him, or he stopped at the coke machine, or somebody else was trying to get a coke, but there was a coke involved.
He mentioned something about a coke. But a police officer asked him who he was, and just as he started to identify himself, his superintendent came up and said, "He is one of our men." And the policeman said, "Well, you step aside for a little bit."Mr Holmes is actually recalling Mr Oswald's description of
the same event described by Chief Curry: his rushing
DOWN THE FRONT STEPS immediately after the shots.
Cf this from Mr Holmes' same WC testimony:
Mr. BELIN. Did he say where he was at the time of the shooting?
Mr. HOLMES. He just said he was still up in the building when the commotion-- he kind of----
Mr. BELIN. Did he gesture with his hands, do you remember?
Mr. HOLMES. He talked with his hands all the time. Well, indeed so: Mr Oswald was still UP on those front steps, and hence still UP in the building, when the commotion broke out; he rushed DOWN those steps in order to go OUT and see what the heck was happening in the street.
**
Now!
How do we square this with Mr Holmes' memory of Mr Oswald relating this RUSHING DOWN as having been interrupted by a cop at the door?
Easy!
Mr Holmes is compressing events severely not because Mr Oswald did so but because all Mr Holmes had to go on was Mr Oswald's responses to
time-hopping questions put by Captain Fritz.
It went something like this:
FRITZ: Ok, so talk us through this again. When did you break for lunch?
LHO: Around noon. One of the colored guys asked me if I was going downstairs. I told him (etc.)
(============> AROUND NOON)
FRITZ: And you bought a coke in the lunchroom?
LHO: Yes. I went to the coke machine on the second floor.
(============> A FEW MINUTES BEFORE MOTORCADE)
FRITZ: And you say you rushed down the steps after hearing the commotion?
LHO: Yes. I've told you all this twenty times already.
(============> TIME OF SHOOTING)
FRITZ: I know, son. We just want to get everything totally straight. And an officer stopped you?
LHO: Yes. In the vestibule. I had just come up to the front door to get the coke I'd left out on the steps when (etc.)
(============> CA. 10 MINS POST-SHOOTING)Mr Holmes is, understandably, giving us a somewhat garbled version of what Mr Oswald actually said. But he is still giving us
crucial information suppressed in the official interrogation reports of Capt. Fritz, Agents Bookhout & Hosty, et al.
**
Mr Oswald's story, in short, did not change one iota between the story he told in his first interrogation Friday afternoon and the story he told in his final interrogation Sunday morning.
The all-important core claim remained:
