Mark is going to call
me a dog with a bone next
, but here's the latest ...
Reviewing the 2025 thread at the Ed Forum, I see the connection Ben is making. He is
assuming that Sawyer’s WC testimony, in which he simply confirmed the physical description that he relayed, was referring to the citizen described in the 1/9/64 Airtel as having seen someone running from the TSBD with a rifle. (I was wrong in one statement above: The transmission to all units by Sgt. Henslee did refer to the suspect as “believed to be armed with a .30 caliber rifle.”) But as I have stated, the Airtel is not Sawyer speaking – it is a multiple-hearsay description of what Shanklin is telling Hoover that Malley told him that Batchelor told Drain as to what Sawyer had supposedly said (and we don’t know where Batchelor heard it). There is no compelling reason to make the connection Ben is making –
i.e., that Sawyer at the WC was confirming the part about someone running from the TSBD with a rifle.
The provenance of the Airtel is odd. It stands alone, among many other documents, in FBI Oswald Headquarters File (105-82555), Section 64, page 117:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57753#relPageId=117.
At the 2025 thread, Steve Thomas provided further information (as previously gathered by Bill Simpich):
On January 19, 1964, Hoover responded to Rankin concerning the description of Oswald that was broadcast. This is in the same HQ File, page 109:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=57753#relPageId=109. Hoover wrote that the DPD said that the description was “by an unidentified citizen who had observed an individual approximating Oswald’s description running from the Texas School Book Depository Building immediately after the assassination. Although this citizen was requested by Dallas authorities to proceed to the Sheriff’s Office for further questioning, he apparently never appeared as the Dallas Sheriff’s Office can locate no record on this citizen.” (How weird would
that have been?)
Unless Hoover is just making stuff up to make the issue go away – entirely possible – it sounds as though he had at least a bit more information than was contained in the Airtel. Petrhaps there was a follow-up call that made clear there was nothing on whoever supposedly saw the man running from the TSBD.
On November 12, 1964 – after the WR had been issued – Hoover reiterated to Rankin that the information for the transmitted description came from an unidentified citizen and stated that he didn’t think further follow-up would be productive:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60311#relPageId=72. A follow-up letter from Rankin to Hoover refers to Hoover’s letter of November 12 and the desirability of nailing down the source of the description:
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=60312#relPageId=33. Simpich says there didn’t seem to be anything further.
At the WC, all that Sawyer could remember was that the information for the description came “mainly from one witness,” a “white man” who “wasn’t young” but “wasn’t old” and who “claimed to have seen the rifle barrel in the fifth or sixth floor of the building, and claimed to have been able to see the man up there.”
That’s
Brennan.My guess: The whole “man running from the rear of the TSBD with a rifle” is a red herring, all flowing from the multiple-hearsay 1/9/64 Airtel. It is inconceivable that if someone had actually said he had seen a man running from the rear of the TSBD with a rifle, Sawyer would have failed to immediately relay this critical information to anyone and would have simply said, “Go on down to the Sheriff’s Office and tell them your story, willya?” At the Ed Forum, however, the whole thing spiraled off into the conspiracy ozone.
