Oswald: No power lunch

[Walt Cakebread]

"Whoa" yourself Walt.
Go back and read Baker's testimony. At the point you have quoted above Baker has left the stairwell and is stood in the "vestibule".
That's when he makes the reference to "Oswald" walking away from him.
It may well have been dim in the vestibule, it may have been dim in the lunchroom itself, we have no way of knowing.

Baker is very clear he was focused on the man's face:

Mr. BAKER - At that particular time I was looking at his face, and it seemed to me like he had a light brown jacket on and maybe some kind of white-looking shirt.

Mistaking a light brown sports shirt hanging loose for a light brown jacket is no biggie.

What makes you think that?

Baker is very clear he was focused on the man's face:

This is a very weak reply, Dan....   We both know that a persons vision isn't like a photograph which has edges

A person may be focused on something in their field of vision but the eye still sees  other things in the field.....thus even if Baker was looking at Lee's face...he would also have seen the upper garment that he was wearing.....

[Alan Ford]

It isn't really laughable as we don't actually have a clue what the lighting situation was in the room at that time.
Were all the lights on?

All the lights??

We don't know.
What stands in Baker's favour on this point is that it was certainly possible it was dim as there are no windows in that room and it is completely dependent on what lights are switched on. If it was a room with windows, on a bright sunny day, it would have been more difficult to understand.

You can't seriously be suggesting that Officer Baker and Mr Truly saw Mr Oswald in a lunchroom where the ceiling light was switched off--------i.e. a dark lunchroom?

The point I was making here wasn't about the colour, it was about Baker misidentifying the shirt as a jacket because it was hanging out.

Officer Baker is making a point about the color: he tries to resolve the color discrepancy between "light brown jacket" and CE150 by inventing "dim" lighting conditions in the lunchroom. He's being hopelessly helpful in that Whaley kinda way

Mr. BAKER - I could have mistaken it for a jacket, but to my recollection it was a little colored jacket, that is all I can say.

There can be no argument the colour of the jacket Baker gives is light brown and CE151 is described as a light brown sports shirt.

You're quite right that Mr Oswald wore the light brown shirt to work that day. However there is no good reason to believe that the "light brown jacket" Officer Baker described in his same-day affidavit had anything to do with that shirt or its owner. He encountered a man in a light brown jacket by the rear stairway on a floor higher than the second

It is not a massive leap to see how Baker could mistake a shirt for a jacket as it was hanging out.
It is also clear from Baker's testimony that the clothes he sees "Oswald" wearing in the police station are different from those he sees in the TSBD:

Mr. DULLES - Do you recall whether or not he was wearing the same clothes, did he appear to you the same when you saw him in the police station as when you saw him in the lunchroom?
Mr. BAKER - Actually just looking at him, he looked like he didn't have the same thing on.
Mr. BELIN - He looked as though he did not have the same thing on?
Mr. BAKER - He looked like he did not have the same on.

I understand you can't have Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom but Baker's description of his clothes can't really be used to support that point.

Wrong place, wrong clothing, zero connection made between man by rear stairway and man just brought in in handcuffs-------------------it's Officer Baker's own affidavit that disallows this as a lunchroom encounter with Mr Oswald.

As for having Mr Oswald in the 2nd floor lunchroom, I do have him there: before the P. Parade, just like he said

[Alan Ford]

Baker is very clear he was focused on the man's face:

This is a very weak reply, Dan....   We both know that a persons vision isn't like a photograph which has edges

A person may be focused on something in their field of vision but the eye still sees  other things in the field.....thus even if Baker was looking at Lee's face...he would also have seen the upper garment that he was wearing.....

If Officer Baker had not taken in what the man was wearing, he would not have given a confident clothing description: "light brown jacket". Where he was unsure about something, he said so: "on the third or fourth floor".

The affidavit-------------which was not made public until the 1990s---------------is a disaster for the lunchroom story

[Walt Cakebread]

If Officer Baker had not taken in what the man was wearing, he would not have given a confident clothing description: "light brown jacket". Where he was unsure about something, he said so: "on the third or fourth floor".

The affidavit-------------which was not made public until the 1990s---------------is a disaster for the lunchroom story

The affidavit-------------which was not made public until the 1990s--

This is the kind of thing that we have a tendency to forget.  much of the information that we now know didn't surface until decades after the fact.....   If Sylvia Meagher or Mark Lane had known some of the facts that we now know, They could probably have   flushed the Warren Report right down the toilet just Like Hosty did with the Oswald note......

[Alan Ford]

The affidavit-------------which was not made public until the 1990s--

This is the kind of thing that we have a tendency to forget.  much of the information that we now know didn't surface until decades after the fact.....   If Sylvia Meagher or Mark Lane had known some of the facts that we now know, They could probably have   flushed the Warren Report right down the toilet just Like Hosty did with the Oswald note......

Officer Baker saw Mr Oswald brought in and of course knew he was not the man he'd caught walking away from the rear stairway on the third or fourth floor. If he remembered him from their front entrance encounter, he must have assumed he had been arrested for involvement in the assassination, and not as the shooter.

No doubt part of the pressure applied on him after that------------to come on board the ridiculous lunchroom story-------------involved impressing upon him the 'fact' that Mr Oswald had killed one of Officer Baker's fellow officers

[Mitch Todd]

Your position is based on the notion that there was a "lockdown" and/or "the building was sealed off" at 12:36. (Yeah, I know you weasel it out to "about 12:36" at some point, buy you always refer back to 12:36 as a hard point.)
More BS. In the timeline I made clear that the times were approximations. You must have missed that in your eagerness to make an invalid point.

I said you start out claiming they were approximations; but that as the discussion goes on, you start to treat them as hard points. Can you not read?

The 12:36 comes ultimately comes from DV Harkness' channel two transmission

I'm not sure where you are getting this from, but I never said that and it is actually incorrect

Harkness' 12:36 transmission is the earliest mention in the record that there is even an intent to "seal off," "lock down," "cordon off," "ring," and/or otherwise surround the building with officers. If you didn't get it from Harkness, then where did you get the idea that the building was locked down at 12:36?

Only then does Harkness go to "seal off" the "back of the building." Even then, it's going to take some time for him to get into position. All of this activity, from transmission get taking position behind the building, would easily consume another minute, maybe another two or three. Instead of Harkness sealing off any part of the building at 12:36, it's really more like 12:37 at the earliest. Maybe 12:38. Or 12:39. Maybe even later.

So much irrelevant "reasoning" to make a completely insignificant point, because Harkness was sealing off the back of the building and Styles and Adams entered the building at the front entrance, so whatever Harkness was doing at that point in time is of no importance.

"Irrelevant," my tuchus! Adams encounter with the officer behind the TSBD indicates that she and Styles didn't leave the building until your "lockdown" was already in the process of forming. And Harkness is the first officer to cover that part of the building. So, the two women can't leave the building until some point after Harkness goes around to the back.

Adams' testimony, then, indicates that she didn't exit the building until after the cordon began to be established.

No, she did not indicate that at all. It's your speculative conclusion based upon your assumption that "the cordon began to be established" when Adams left the building. There is not a shred of evidence for that assumption.

What actually happened is that after Harkness delivered Euins to Sawyer, he and other two officers were instructed by Sawyer to check the railway yard, which is what they subsequently did. Adams testified that she got to approximately 2 yards within the tracks when she encountered a police officer who told her to go back to the building. So, the obvious conclusion must be that Adams encountered a police officer who had been ordered to check the railway yard. That's it. That's all we know. Everything else originates from your imagination.

Again, my conclusion is based on Adams' own description of her encounter with the police officer behind the TSBD. We know from her account that the encounter occurred very close to the TSBD itself: she had to skirt the west side of the building to get to the front, and her initial response to the officer is, "but I work here." She doesn't say "but I work over there." This, in turn, demonstrates that the tracks she crossed were the spur running next to the Depository.

The officer's instructions are very specific: return to the building. That's would be expected if he was trying to seal off the building to keep people from leaving or those from outside from entering onto the premises. If his goal was to keep her out of the rail yards, then he wouldn't have cared where she went so long as it wasn't the rail yards, and he wouldn't have ordered her to a specific destination.

To top it off, you've mangled (oh, let's say it just for giggles: misrepresented) Harkness' testimony. After he'd put Euins in Sawyer's car, Harkness went around the TSBD to cover the rear of the building until he was relieved by other officers assigned to that task. He then went back to the front and helped Sawyer deal with crowd control for some unspecified amount of time. Only then was he tasked with checking freight cars on a train that was set to leave the yard. Going by DPD the radio logs. This activity didn't commence until after 1:44 PM, when the radio dispatcher told Sawyer that the railroad people wanted an outbound train to be inspected so it would be clear to leave the yard. The train involved was a northbound train located to the West of Lee Bowers' tower. The freight car shakedown is too far away from the TSBD to account for Adams' police encounter, and happens much, much later than you want to believe.

Wrong on all counts and it doesn't even answer my question. There is good reason to believe that the front entrance of the building was locked down at around 12:36 / 12:37 because Sawyer testified that he posted two men at the main entrance at that exact moment. And nowhere in her testimony does Adams indicate that she did not leave the building until after a cordon was established. You just made that up.

I never argued that Adams said that she "didn't leave the building until after a cordon was established". I said that her description of a confrontation with a Dallas police officer is what we would expect to see had the officer been trying to seal off the building, and not what we would expect if the officer was trying to keep people out of the parking lot and/or rail yards.

And I guess you weren't content to bungle just Harkness' testimony, deciding instead to give us an encore by mangling (nay, misrepresenting) Sawyer's testimony as well. Here is what Sawyer testifies to:

1.) After the motorcade passes his position at Main and Ervay, he waits for the crowd to disperse a bit, then starts westward in his car.
2.) At some point, he hears Decker on channel 2 ordering his people to the area of the triple overpass.
3.) He drives to Dealey Plaza, and parks his car in front of the TSBD. At some point before he leaves the car, he hears a transmission stating that the shots came from the TSBD (This is probably Haygood's 12:35 broadcast)
4.) He leaves the car and gathers information about what has happened from the few officers in front of the TSBD. At some point, one of the officers relates that a witness stated the shots came from the fifth floor of the TSBD.
5.) Armed with this information, Sawyer enters the building with two officers and takes the elevator to the top floor. He looks around, then comes back down. He remembers that this activity took "no more than three minutes." He agrees with Belin that he didn't walk back out of the building until at least 12:37.
6.) At some point after his return, he tells the officers already in front of the TSBD to not let anyone in or out.
7.) He gets on the radio to ask for more manpower, and asks for someone to start gathering up the officers still along the parade route on Main so they can be directed to go to the TSBD.

There are some complications here. The first is that Belin's "12:37" is based on a three minute span after Sawyer hears the Haygood transmission.  As Belin says "Then that would put it around no sooner than 12:37, if you heard the call at 12:34?" to which Sawyer agrees. Belin's transcript puts that transmission at 12:34; however, if you read the transcript, you'll see this:

142 (Ptm CA Haygood): I just talked to a guy up here who was standing close to it and the best he could tell it came from the Texas School Book Depository Building here with that Hertz Renting sign on top.

Dispatcher:   10-4. Get his name, address, telephone number there - all the information that you can from him. 12:35 p.m.

Belin's "12:37", to which Sawyer agreed, is really 12:38. That's the earliest that Sawyer said he could been back on the ground in front of the TSBD. It's the earliest possible time that Sawyer could have assigned anyone to prevent anyone from leaving or entering. It excludes the possibility of any "lockdown" being established at 12:36 or 12:37. And consider Harkness' testimony for a minute. Harkness said that when he showed up in front of the Depository with Amos Euins in tow, he saw Sawyer standing in front of the building "taking information." After getting Euins into Sawyer's car, Harkness told Sawyer that Euins said that he saw a rifleman on the 5th floor. This part of Harkness' testimony intersects neatly with Sawyer's recollections of collecting information while standing in front of the TSBD, then taking off into the building after hearing about a gunman on the 5th floor. Therefore, Sawyer's elevator ride didn't start until some point after Harkness told Sawyer about Euins. Since Harkness didn't tell the Inspector about Euins until some time after his 12:36 transmission, the elevator expedition could not have begun before 12:36. If the whole trip was only two minutes long, then Sawyer could not have been in position to order anyone to lock down the front entrance until at least 12:38. And if you factor in the time it took Harkness to get Euins on his bike, turn the bike around, get it back to Sawyer's car, get Euins in the car, and get Euins' story across to Sawyer, the Sawyer ascent can't occur before 12:37 and lasts until something like 12:39, minimum. At this point, the notion of a "12:36 lockdown" is a distant memory. 

There is one more thing about Sawyer's testimony that needs to be brought up, if just for the irony of it. Something that I'd forgotten about since I'd first read it years ago. Sawyer didn't take the freight elevators at the rear of the building. He used the passenger elevator near the building entrance. That elevator goes no higher than the fourth floor. Yes, that fourth floor! And Sawyer even noted to Belin:

Mr. BELIN. Was there anything other than a warehouse or storage area there?
Mr. SAWYER. Well, to one side I could see an office over there with people in it. Some women that apparently were office workers.

Honestly, I'm not sure what this really amounts to. But it's quite a kink in the story.

You have not shown that my so-called assumptions are unwarrented. All you have done is concocted your own little bogus story about when the back of the building was locked down.

You have it backwards. You have yet to show that your unwarranted assumptions are anything but.

MT:Adams testified that she saw Lovelady and Shelley on the first floor. She was allowed to review her testimony in print, and she literally signed off on it with not objections as to her testimony as to Lovelady and Shelley's presence in the first floor.

And yet Shelley and Lovelady did not confirm seeing Adams and Styles, despite the back area of the first floor being an open area and Adams told Barry Ernest that she wasn't aware this was in her testimony and she denied ever saying it. Also, the preponderance of evidence shows that it was a physical impossibility for Adams to see Shelley and Lovelady, when they re-entered the building at 12:35.

Adams handwritten corrections and signature on the original transcript trump any objection that you or Ernst can come up with. If she signed off on it, that's what she said that she said. BTW, Lovelady did mention seeing a woman on the first floor. While he said he couldn't swear that it was Adams, but he didn't say that it wasn't have been her. Just because Adams saw and recognized Lovelady and Shelly on the first floor doesn't mean that they were looking in the right direction or paying attention at the right time.

When all other parts of the evidence fit, the only thing that does not fit must be regarded as unreliable and not the other way around!

The problem is, you are in the habit of smashing sqauare pegs through round holes then pointing to the resulting splintered mess and crowing, "hey! look at how all this evidence fits!"

Aha... another mistaken or confused witness.... How convenient.

The Stroud letter is clear; Garner said she saw Truly and a police come up after the girls had gone down. That was relevant information which warranted to be included in the letter. Truly coming down and meeting another officer on the 4th floor would have been of no significance. But, nice try.

The one thing that's clear about the Stroud letter is that it's hearsay. We don't really know exactly what she said to Stroud. We know that Truly said he ran into an officer on the 4th floor as he was descending. 

When you need to bend and misrepresent the facts as much as you do, it's pretty obvious that I have made my point, yet again!

I keep noticing that, when you run out of ammunition you like to bandy about how you've been a victim of "misrepresentation." I also keep noticing that you are pretty light on exactly what was misrepresented, and how so. OF course, you make these baseless accusations in order to declare yourself the victor of some game that you alone are contesting.

First of all, where did you get the notion that the stockroom was full of books? Another assumption perhaps? Secondly, you assume that Adams and Styles stayed at the window after the shots, when in fact they didn't. In the wall between the office space and the stockroom, there is a door. Adams, Styles and Garner went through that door and directly to the stairs. They would have seen anybody in the area of the stairs, but even if they didn't see anybody, they most certainly would have heard somebody running on those wooden stairs and floors.

Now, why would I think that a company that sells books operating from within a book warehouse called the Texas School Book Depository would have a "stock room" that was full of books? Imagine that!

Next you will be angrily demanding to know why I think that Baskin Robbins is full of ice cream.

As for what Our Ladies of the Fourth Floor would have heard, it may not have been anything from near the stairs if they were still at the window in the office and so attuned to the activity on the ground below and/or their own chatter.

The bottom line is a simple one; in the timeline I have presented everything fits and is corroborated except for the location where Adams saw Shelley and Lovelady.

For your alternative timeline (fragments) to work, witnesses have to be mistaken, confused or misunderstood, Victoria Adams' testimony needs to be misrepresented, the lock down didn't happen when the officers said it did and it wasn't really a lock down at all. What you still haven't figured out is that more you have to misrepresent details to make a counter argument the less credible your story becomes.

For my "alternative timeline" to work, all I need are two things:

1.) For Adams to have left later than she remembered (IIRC, Styles thought it was minutes, not seconds, after the last shot was fired)
2.) for Garner to have misinterpreted seeing a later pairing of Truly and a DPD officer with the original Truly/Baker stairmaster episode.
 
Your scenario requires:

1.) Either Adams lied about seeing Lovelady and Shelley or her testimony was altered by the Nefarious Gubmint Kunspeeracy.
2.) Adams/Styles and Truly/Baker converge on the same area of the building near the freight elevators and back stairs at the same time without either member of either pair noticing the presence of either or both members of the other pair.
3.) A "lockdown" of the TSBD existing at 12:36/12:37, for which you've presented no actual evidence other than mangling (this is to say, misrepresenting) the testimony of Inspector Sawyer.
4.) A police perimiter guarding the rail yards before 12:35, something else for which you have presented any evidence for other than mangling (that is to say, misrepresenting) the testimony of Sgt Harkness.

Now, instead of making all sorts of assumptions that go nowhere, why don't you try to put together a timeline that takes in account all the known information and actually works? Shouldn't be so hard to do if you are sure you are right.....

I don't think you can really make a simple timeline out of all this. As far as I can tell, there are three possibilities regarding Adams and Styles:

1.) They left quickly (15-30 seconds after the last shot, per Adams) and made it down and left the building before some combination of Piper, Truly, and Baker notice them, even though the two ladies would have been right in front of Truly and Baker as the two men quickly made their way towards the NW corner of the building.
2.) The lunchroom crowd had the jump on Adams and Styles, but not by much, while lunchroom encounter happened with Truly, Baker, and Oswald (feel free to substitute for the latter if you must) entirely in the lunchroom. And the door closed enough that Adams and Styles swept right by without noticing what was happening. I should note that someone going downstairs (ie Adams)would turn away from the lunchroom door, while someone coming up the stairs (ie, Baker) would turn towards it. That could account for the Shelley/Lovelady sighting, but the outside officer encounter is a bad fit for this scenario.
3.) Adams and Styles left some minutes after the last shot. This would fit the Shelley/Lovelady sighting and the outside officer encounter, but Adams, at least, remembers leaving much sooner.

As for the "lockdown," it's probably worth remembering that at the time of the shooting there were three DPD officers stationed on the corner of Elm and Houston and two on the triple overpass. Harkness was at Main and Houston. That's why the initial response was dominated by the Sheriff's department with backup from the Constable's office; they were already lined up along the Plaza next to their headquarters, but the DPD presence was thinly sliced along the parade route.

the first mention of the TSBD as a source of the shots was the Haygood transmission at 12:35

The first mention of surrounding the building is Harkness' fifth-floor witness broadcast at some point well into 12:36. Even then, Harkness only signalled his intent to do so at this time.

Sawyer exits his car between these two transmissions. He stands on the sidewalk in front of the Depository, collecting information about what happened from the officers at the scene.

Harkness arrives with Euins and puts Euins in Sawyer's car. By the time he's through with that, it's 12:37. Then he tells Sawyer about Euins, and leaves to cover the rear of the TSBD.
In the beginning, the intent is only to prevent potential suspects from escaping the building. He gets to the rear of the building, but he's the only officer there. He gets on his radio at 12:41 and asks for a squad. The dispatcher responds to this request by detailing Billy Bass (#101) to meet Harkness at Elm and Houston. Bass is currently North of Dealey Plaza on Harry Hines and Wolfe. Dispatch thinks better of the situation, and follows up by ordering all police units downtown to converge on the TSBD. Unit #61 (Vaughn and Temple) respond to this call. Dispatch then assigns squad #71 (Marvin Wise), then southeast of downtown, to stop what he was doing and report to the Depository. Vaughn, Wise, and Bass all later play a role in the capture of the three tramps. Other officers (Sgt Jennings, Osburn, Williams, Wilkins, Davenport, Pearce) respond to the call by 12:45. At some point, enough officers are on site to cover the building that Harkness leaves them to cover the building, while he goes back to the front to assist Sawyer.

In the meantime, Sawyer continues to collect info until he figures he has enough info to go on, and decides to go into the TSBD to see for himself. He takes the front elevator to the fourth floor, looks around for a bit, and comes back down. He gives the officers near the building entrance orders to not let anyone into or out of the building. He gets on the radio at 12:43 to ask for "more manpower." I figure he did both of those soon after coming back down from four; it make sense that once he had the entry covered, he'd quickly ask for more guys to finish surrounding the building. He didn't seem to know that Harkness has asked for additional guys....kinda hard to listen to a police car radio when you're in an elevator. Also, by 12:43 the reinforcements directed to Elm and Houston by the dispatcher at Harkness' request haven't arrived yet.

If you roll it up, the police don't begin to surround the TSBD no sooner than 12:37 at the very earliest. Even then, it's initially only Sawyer and the few cops with him at the front door and Harkness all by himself at the back. It's really not until about 12:45, maybe even later, that enough officers are on site to really "seal off" the entire building. The "lockdown" part doesn't start until Sawyer is through with his excellent adventure upstairs, and really isn't earlier than about 12:40.

AS for Adams reentry, this depends on which "police report" she heard mentioning the 4th floor. There are two transmissions that mention the 4th floor. One at 12:40 and one at 12:46. Both place the shots on the "4th or 5th floor" of the building. Of course, she remembered hearing "2nd or 4th," and there is ED Brewer radioed in a report at 12:38 that a witness saw someone shooting from the 2nd floor. Either she listened to the 12:38 and 12:40 broadcasts and forgot the thing about the 5th floor, or she hears either the 12:40 or 12:46 broadcasts and misremembered 5th as second. Either way, she misses a floors, as it were. Each interpretation has it's own good and bad points.

Those are the pieces, anyway

[Mitch Todd]

To add to my previous reply to Mitch Todd, let's examine for a minute the hypocrisy of his position.

In his last post he wrote;

Although what he said is true, in as much as that it says that in her testimony and she did indeed sign the document, which btw happened several days after her testimony when somebody showed up at her workplace and asked her to sign it, after she initially waived signing it.

Todd's hypocrisy is nevertheless on full display, because in the same testimony, Adams also says;

Mr. BELIN - Sometime after the third shot, and I don't want to get into the actual period of time yet, you went back into the stockroom which would be to the north of where your offices are located on the fourth floor, is that correct?
Miss ADAMS - Yes, sir; that's correct.
Mr. BELIN - When you got into the stockroom, where did you go?
Miss ADAMS - I went to the back stairs.

and

Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it was between the time the shots were fired and the time you left the window to start toward the stairway?
Miss ADAMS - Between 15 and 30 seconds, estimated, approximately.
Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it was, or do you think it took you to get from the window to the top of the fourth floor stairs?
Miss ADAMS - I don't think I can answer that question accurately, because the time approximation, without a stopwatch, would be difficult.
Mr. BELIN - How long do you think it took you. to get from the window to the bottom of the stairs on the first floor?
Miss ADAMS - I would say no longer than a minute at the most.
Mr. BELIN - So you think that from the time you left the window on the fourth floor until the time you got to the stairs at the bottom of the first floor, was approximately 1 minute?
Miss ADAMS - Yes, approximately.

yet Todd completely ignores that and dismisses it, while at the same time attaching great importance to the Shelley/Lovelady remark.

It is obvious there is a great discrepancy between the two remarks, as the Shelley/Lovelady remark implies that Adams and Styles left the 4th floor much later than Adams testified she did. When there are two contradicting statements from a witness, the best way to determine which one is the correct statement is to look for corroboration.

Sow, let's see what Adams told the investigators prior to her testimony;

On 11/24/63 FBI agents Hardin and Scott wrote in their FD 302 report that Adams had said;

"She and her friend then ran immediately to the back of the building to where the stairs were located and ran down the stairs"

On 02/17/64 she told Jim Leavelle;

"After the third shot I went out the back door" and "The elevator was not running and there was no one on the stairs"

and on 03/23/64 she told the FBI

"After the third shot I observed the car carrying President Kennedy speed away. Sandra Styles and I then ran out of the building via the stairs"

In all these statements, Adams is perfectly consistent in saying that she and Styles ran to the stairs after the third shot

And Sandra Styles backs her up. In her statement to the FBI of 03/23/64 she said;

"I heard shots but thought at the time that they were fireworks. I was unaware of the place the shots came from. I saw people running and others lie down on the ground and realized something was happening but did not know exactly what was happening. Victoria Adams and I left the office at this time, went down the back stairs and left the building at the back door.

And then of course there is Dorothy Garner who, according to Martha Stroud, said she saw Baker and Truly come up after the girls (Adams and Styles) had gone down. Garner explained to Barry Ernest that she did not actually see the girls go down, but she could hear them on the noise stairs.

All these statements sufficiently corroborate Adams testimony - I am paraphrasing - that she and Styles left their position at the window and went to the stairs at the back of the building within seconds after the third shot.

Now let's examine what corroboration there is for the Shelley/Lovelady remark.

To say that there isn't any would be a misrepresentation of the facts, because Jim Leavelle wrote in his report of 02/17/64 that Adams said;

"I saw Mr. Shelley and another employee named Bill"

But that's about it.

Note that Adams did not say when and where she saw Shelley and Lovelady. That bit of information was only added on during her testimony on 04/07/64. It should also be noted that Adams was not included in the re-enactment of the events on 03/20/64, so before she even testified the WC lawyers were already not interested in what she had to say about what actually happened on 11/22/63.

Also note that Shelley, Lovelady and Sandra Styles did not confirm the alleged encounter on the first floor at the TSBD and that closer examination of Shelley's and Lovelady's actions after the shot show that both men were in the railway yard next to the TSBD until 12:35, which means there is no physical way Adams could have seen both men on the first floor if she came down the stairs immediately after the third shot. On the other hand, it is indeed possible that Adams saw Shelley and Lovelady in the railway yard as she passed the men on her way to the front entrance.

And finally it should be noted that on 04/04/64 WC assistant counsel Leon Hubert wrote a remarkable memo in which he refered to a recent staff meeting in which he had objected to what he called "editing of the transcripts of depositions". In the same memo he also complains about the practice of waiving signatures by the witnesses and advocates to have witnesses read and sign the transcript even if it contains errors, which according to him can later be rectified.

Now, isn't it just remarkable that Victoria Adams initially waived signing her testimony, as that would save her from having to return to sign it, only to be confronted by somebody at work a few days later who insisted she would sign after all. And isn't it just as remarkable that Victoria Adams told Barry Ernest that she never testified that she saw Shelley and Lovelady on the first floor?

This is all just a big bag of hot air intended to talk around the 900 pound gorilla whose married to the elephant in the room. However much innuendo you'd like to pile on, she was given the opportunity to review, make suggested corrections, and sign the transcript of her testimony. She took that opportunity and reviewed her testimony, made her suggested corrections right there on the pages, and signed off on it. This fact brutally kneecaps any notion that  she didn't testify to seeing Lovelady and Shelley in 1964. There is no way around that.

As to your charge of "hypocrisy," I will note that human beings are amazingly good at recognizing other humans who are familiar to them. The neuroscience people say that we're actually hardwired to do just that. We aren't nearly as good at estimating arbitrary periods of time.  Faith is better placed in "I saw so-and-so" than "it happened five minutes later."

[John Iacoletti]

Let's put this "light brown jacket" nonsense to bed.

This is CE151

It is described as a "Man's light-brown cotton long-sleeved sport shirt."

Here is a color photograph of CE 151: