Robert McNeil vs. Pearce Allman: One of them is lying, or there really were two Oswalds

[Drew Phipps]

Both of these known reporters claim to have met Oswald as he exited the TSBD. But both these stories cannot be true. Unless there really were two Oswalds.


Robert McNeil (of McNeil/Lehrer fame) was riding on the motorcade press bus (vehicle #17) during the assassination. He and others got the bus stopped when they reached the Triple Underpass. McNeil exited the bus, went up the Grassy Knoll, where the police were searching. When nothing appeared to be happening, he went to the TSBD to use the phone. He asked Oswald, who was exiting the building, where the phone was, who told him, "you better ask inside." His call to NBC occurred at 12:34. (main source - Vaughn motorcade schematic; this story is also told in Case Closed iirc)


Pearce Allman was standing on the corner of Elm and Houston, directly opposite the TSBD. When the motorcade went by he heard three loud explosions. He looked up at the TSBD, saw three guys on the third floor hanging out of the window looking up. He also thought he could see a rifle barrel. (6/5/16 episode Globe Trekker "East Texas" - you can see the interview here if you pay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmVjK_eVGso )

Allman (a reporter with local station WFAA) says he ran across the street to the TSBD to use the phone. He also says that he asked someone exiting the building for directions to the telephone, that turned out to be Oswald. (Main source Globe Trekker episode, but you can also read Allman's story here:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-jfk-...story.html )


You have undoubtedly seen the problematic issue here. It could not possibly have taken four minutes for Allman to run across Elm street. Oswald could not possibly have left the 6th Floor nest, ran across the building, hid the gun, ran down 5 flights of stairs, (paused in the lunchroom to meet Officer Baker and buy a Coke) and ran to the front of the building, in the time it took Allman to run across the street. Further, if you believe that Oswald recounted the story of meeting "a Secret Service guy" as he left the building, that would have been McNeil - since he was in the motorcade, he would have been wearing some sort of approved credentials.


My opinion is that Allman is not telling the truth. In addition to the problems above, had he seen a gun and been contemporaneously interviewed by the Secret Service (as he claims) he certainly would have been called to the WC as a "Howard Brennan"-type eyewitness. As far as I can tell, the claim that he saw a gun barrel first appeared in the 50th anniversary LA Times article.


Any contrary conclusion means that a) Oswald wasn't in the sniper's nest, and b) MacNeil is lying; or, that there were actually two Oswalds exiting the building (one early meeting Allman, and one later meeting McNeil).