JFK Assassination Forum

DVP -

Yes, it certainly occurred to me that allowing the "holding a coke" affidavit to see the light of day, even with the crossing-out by Baker, cuts against it having any dark significance. Still, considering how critical the issue is, it would have been wonderful if someone had grilled Baker and the FBI agent who (apparently) prepared it about the circumstances of its preparation and what (if anything) was said when Baker crossed it out. My point was more in the vein of how almost spooky it is that the JFKA is plagued with this sort of weirdness at every twist and turn; pretty much nothing is ever clean and simple.

And Bugliosi is certainly correct that Baker's and Truly's emphasis on how calm and collected Oswald was cuts against them having been coached to say the "right" thing. My puzzlement is strictly with this calm and collected behavior.

Still, only in the JFKA, where nothing goes smoothly, would the "holding a coke" statement "just happen" to find its way into a draft affidavit and create havoc.

Excerpts from my "Oswald And The Coke" webpage:

DVP SAID: If some conspiracy theorists think that the FBI was covering up something relating to CE3076 (and a lot of CTers do believe that very thing, of course), then why on Earth wouldn't they have simply torn up the original statement with the crossed-out words "drinking a Coke" and the other cross-out and simply re-write the statement without any reference to the Coke at all? They can fake all kinds of evidence, per the conspiracy theorists, but they're unwilling to toss a piece of paper in the trash and re-write a two-page witness statement?

Seems kinda silly, doesn't it?

Officer Baker's 9/23/64 statement is weird, I'll grant the conspiracy theorists that much. It's obviously not Baker's handwriting. It's someone else's. But Baker DID sign it and initial the cross-outs. There's no doubt about that either. If CTers want to think Baker was coerced into crossing out the "Coke" reference, I'll ask again -- Why didn't the FBI simply re-write the whole thing--sans any "Coke" reference--and then have Baker sign the revised statement? That would have taken--what?--an extra 5 minutes?

The fact that CROSS-OUTS exist in that document at all is pretty good proof that the FBI wasn't hiding anything concerning that document.

Heck, they could also have just as easily crossed out the word "Coke" entirely. But they didn't even do that. The word "Coke" can still easily be read underneath Baker's cross-out.

Some cover-up there.

[...]

DVP SAID: The Sept. '64 affidavits were obviously prepared in a rush. And there's no typed version of either (AFAIK). Plus: They aren't notarized by an official Notary Public, which isn't normal for an affidavit either. Instead of a notary, it seems the FBI merely used a "witness" (Shelley and Hargis).

So, quite obviously, the 9/23/64 statements were not "normal" affidavits. And it's just as obvious that those statements were prepared, as Jean Davison suggested in 2010, for the exclusive purpose of confirming that there was nobody else in the lunchroom when Baker and Truly confronted Oswald. That fact becomes obvious [And I later confirmed it via this FBI document] because I think the only place you'll find those documents used as source material in the Warren Report is with respect to the rumor of others being in the lunchroom with Oswald.

[...]

[FBI Agent] Burnett could have been using Captain Will Fritz' report as a reference for the "drinking a Coke" notation that we see in CE3076. In Fritz' notes detailing his interrogations of Lee Harvey Oswald, Fritz wrote this [which can be found in Commission Exhibit 2003, at 24 H 265, and also in the Warren Report on Page 600]:

"He [Oswald] said he was on the second floor drinking a Coca-Cola when the officer came in."

I think it's possible that the Dallas Police Department could have shared this information with the FBI regarding Fritz' notes.

[...]

IN JANUARY 2024, DVP (that'd be me 😀) ADDED:

It's interesting to note that the late Vincent T. Bugliosi, who wrote the book excerpt pictured below, evidently had no idea at all that today's 21st Century Conspiracy Theorists have invented a brand-new theory regarding the "Second-Floor Lunchroom Encounter". With that ridiculous "new" fantasy theory being, of course: The Lunchroom Encounter Never Happened At All.

[And it also seems as though Mr. Bugliosi, in the book excerpt below, thought that Marrion Baker himself wrote out the Sept. 23rd affidavit. But if Vince had studied the Truly & Baker Sep. '64 statements more closely, he would have easily been able to come to the same conclusion about those documents that I (and many others) have reached---i.e., they were written by an FBI agent, probably Richard J. Burnett.] ....

RS--

Somewhat agree, but then also---what the hell goes on when Trump tweets on Truth Social?

Trump in person, fielding questions from reporters and so on, makes a fair impression. He is no JFK or LBJ, but is OK on his feet. Anyone would say Trump is more in the game than Biden, for example. Or even Bush Jr.

Then Trump gets on Truth Social and appears to be a lunatic.

The problem with that line of thinking is that neither of them knew Oswald was the assassin. Reid had no idea and Baker was suspicious at first but let Oswald go when Truly vouched for him. No reason for him to pay close attention to what Oswald was wearing.

I understand your zeal for the LN narrative, but I think you're grasping here. Reid (she says) encountered Oswald after she came back from watching the horrific JFKA. She was surprised to encounter Oswald (and only Oswald) on her floor and addressed him about the assassination. These were not ordinary circumstances. Unlike you, I have a difficult time believing she would not have recalled what Oswald was wearing by the time of her first (handwritten) statement THE NEXT DAY and her second one a couple of days later. Recalling an Oswald who was wearing a brownish jacket (or shirt) as wearing only a white t-shirt and specifically as neither wearing nor carrying a jacket would be a remarkably faulty memory.

That was his impression based on trying to remember what he saw, even though at the time he had no reason to take note of it.

"Wearing a lt. brown jacket" was one of the few details Baker noted in his handwritten affidavit that was apparently written THE DAY OF THE EVENT: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth338819/m1/5/. He was not having to do much in the way of "trying to remember."

If we're honest, LNers and CTers alike "have a problem" with the reliability of eyewitness and earwitness testimony when it doesn't mesh with what they want to hear and "have no problem" when it fits what they want to hear. There is no reason to think that either Baker or Reid would be unable to remember accurately in these circumstances, yet there is a definite disconnect.

I have no problem with that. I wonder why you keep going down every Soviet rabbit hole you come across. The Soviets had nothing to do with the JFK assassination. Neither did Castro, neither did anyone except little old Lee Harvey Oswald.

"You keep going down every Soviet rabbit hole you come across."

That's a suggestion I refuse to accept.

Regardless, the reason I do "go down" some of them is because "former" KGB counterintelligence officer Vladimir Putin did install "useful idiot" (or worse) Donald Trump as our "President" on 20 January 2017 as the culmination of the Kremlin's 1959-on deception-based Master Plan to get us to tear ourselves apart, and because there are a few Oswald-related JFKA "anomalies" that far-left CTs take to signify that the evil, evil CIA or the evil, evil Military Industrial Intelligence-Community Complex or the evil, evil Deep State (not to be conflated with Steve Bannon's evil, evil Administrative State) killed JFK, which I think bear looking into to determine whether they were, instead, part-and-parcel of said highly successful Master Plan.

Is that okay with you?