Who Were the Two Men Heading *Down* the Stairs at NLT 12:50?

[Tom Graves]

[...]

What does "NLT" stand for?

North Loading Transitional Zone, and you just forgot to put the Z in?

-- Tom

[Mitch Todd]

And that's the rub: There just doesn't seem to be a plausible innocent explanation for two well-dressed men coming down the stairs at 12:40-12:50. They obviously were not common laborers or else Mooney would not have assumed they were plain clothes law officers. The WC went of its way to establish that Mooney was the first law officer on the sixth floor. Yet, Ball simply ignored Mooney's account of two law officers on the stairs at a time when none were there and when none should have been there, and the Commission showed no interest in Harkness's encounter at the rear of the TSBD with men who claimed they were Secret Service agents.

10-20 minutes is plenty of time for other DCSD officers to enter the building, get up to a higher floor and come back down in time to meet Mooney. Also, Mooney may have just run into someone who worked in one of the publisher's offices in the TSBD, but whom Mooney took for a other deputies. Suits weren't uncommon businesswear in those days.

As for Harkness, he didn't run round to the back of the TSBD until after Euins had been seated in Sawyer's car. As Mr Storing has pointed out, film shows this occurring while the  TSBD's red gates are already closed. Dan O'Meara has shown that photographs show that those red gates are still open at 12:40 PM. Therefore, Harkness doesn't make it to the rear of the TSBD until after 12:40. Maybe even many minutes after 12:40.

At the same time, Forrest Sorrel's didn't hang around at Parkland for very long before he grabbed the first DPD car headed back to Dealey Plaza. Sorrel's testified that the car came down Houston, and that he exited the car and immediately entered the TSBD through the rear entrance. This would put him at the TSBD rear doors about the time that Harkness also showed up back there. The implication should be obvious.