People who are determined to believe Howard Brennan will ignore all the problems with his story. Let's just summarize those problems:
* By any fair, objective measurement, Brennan's behavior toward the HSCA was not what one would expect from an honest witness who had nothing to hide and who had no reason to fear being critically questioned about his previous statements.
* Brennan said he did not observe a scope on the rifle, and that he saw 70-85% of the rifle. A scope is a pretty hard thing to miss. A rifle with a scope looks very different from a rifle without one. If Brennan could see so well that he could see the man's face clearly enough to be able to ID him later, he should have had no problem seeing the scope on the rifle. If there was no scope on the rifle, then that rifle was a different rifle than the one that Oswald allegedly used.
* Brennan's belated story that he failed to ID Oswald in the lineup because he feared retribution from accomplices is belied by his willingness to talk with journalists earlier in the day.
* Brennan said the man fired while standing up. Brennan even specified the man's exact position while he was firing: the man was "resting against the left window sill, with gun shouldered to his right shoulder, holding the gun with his left hand and taking positive aim and fired his last shot."
* Brennan said the man lingered in the window for a few seconds and did not appear to be in a hurry, and this part of his testimony agrees with that of the men who were beneath the window, one of whom specified that he did not hear any movement above him right after the shots were fired. This is a devastating blow to the theory that Oswald was in the window and that he dashed from the window down to the second floor in time to be seen by Officer Baker in the second-floor lunchroom.
* Brennan said the man was wearing light-colored clothing. This is another part of Brennan's testimony that agrees with that of four other witnesses, who gave a similar description of the man's clothing and two of whom said the man's shirt was partially unbuttoned, which argues against the theory that the man was just wearing a T-shirt. But we know Oswald wore a dark shirt to work that day and was seen in that shirt less than 90 seconds on the second floor after the shooting.
* Brennan insisted that the man only fired two shots. Here, too, Brennan's testimony agrees with that of a number of other witnesses. It also agrees with the ballistics evidence found in the sniper's nest: one of the spent shells had a dent and could not have been used to fire a bullet that day. Australian detective Colin McLaren reasonably argues that the casing was simply used as a chamber plug to keep dirt and grease out of the chamber. This means that the sixth-floor gunman could have fired only two shots.
* Brennan's distance vision would have had to be remarkable, exceptional to enable him to see the man's face in any detail from 120.2 feet and looking through a halfway-closed window. It is very doubtful that he could have seen the man's face clearly enough to be able to ID him later. Brennan would have been able to see hair color, general facial shape, and complexion, but not specific facial features that would have enabled future identification of the man.
* Brennan repeatedly underestimated how far away he was from the window. He gave two distances, both of which were markedly lower than the actual distance (120.2 feet).
* Brennan said nothing about his alleged anger at reporters in his WC testimony. Not one word.
* The Zapruder film shows that Brennan was not even looking up until after frame 207, over 2 seconds after the first shot was fired (Z145-160).
* Brennan did not agree to ID Oswald as the man in the window until December 17, nearly 4 weeks after the shooting.
* Brennan's foreman said that federal agents pressured Brennan to ID Oswald and that Brennan was "a nervous wreck" after dealing with them.
I would be curious to take a poll among those who accept Brennan's Oswald ID to see how many of them also accept Arnold Rowland's far more credible and far less problematic testimony regarding activity that he saw on the sixth floor 15 minutes before the shooting.
