Anatomy of the Second Floor Lunchroom Encounter

[Albert Doyle]

Just to show the rubbish research Jim is putting his stamp of approval on, here is just the opening part of Kamp's essay as posted on the Kennedy's and King website:

[B]If the 2nd-floor lunchroom encounter did not happen,[/B]

[B]then was Oswald encountered somewhere else?[/B]


Some researchers think Oswald walked up the stairs inside the first floor vestibule, went through the corridor on the second floor, passed the door, moving from right to left, and got his coke. This is possible, but the news reports and statements, which come in various guises, show Oswald was encountered on the first floor instead, while trying to leave the building. It is even possible that Baker never saw Oswald until he was brought in while Baker was giving the affidavit taken by Marvin Johnson.

All Kamp offers above is a suggestive straw-man and nothing else. First of all, Kamp insists on calling the front entrance lobby a "vestibule". He does that because he's trying to condition the reader to think that when the real vestibule covering the lunchroom door is mentioned that it is referring to the front entrance foyer. This is the dishonest level of deception that Kamp uses to push across his Prayer Man arguments and Jim prints it straight without seeing what Kamp is doing. And these ARE Prayer Man arguments trying to put Oswald on the landing during the assassination. It's the whole purpose of the need to eliminate the lunchroom encounter because its offerers know it makes the Prayer Man theory unlikely.

The reason this is a straw-man is because Kamp tries to force all possibilities to his one scenario above of Oswald walking up and to the lunchroom. Kamp ignores that there are some people who credibly think none of what he suggests happened and Oswald was in the lunchroom the whole time. Typical of Kamp, what he knows threatens his theory just gets left out and not mentioned. This is a deceptive tactic because Kamp is using his interpretation of the evidence to say Oswald was spotted by the front entrance, inferring that this walk up the steps and to the lunchroom had to occur because these sightings occurred. Except that Kamp leaves out another possibility. That the 1st floor sightings did not occur or did not occur as he is interpreting them.

Bob Considine of the Hearst Press, for example, was told that Oswald had been questioned inside the building "almost before the smoke from the assassin's gun had disappeared." That hardly sounds like an encounter on the second floor does it? It points more to an altercation on the first floor, just where Oswald had claimed to be.

Smart people will see there is nothing in Kamp's begging quote that excludes this description from being the lunchroom encounter. Kamp seems to beg fate by using the word "altercation", since an altercation is exactly what happened when Baker held his gun at Oswald in the lunchroom. Considine is obviously referring to the lunchroom encounter as described. Mr Kamp seems to exist in a reality of his own that Jim DiEugenio courts. He forgets that any such altercation happening in the foyer would have been witnessed by many people.

Kamp is lying here. Oswald never said he was on the 1st floor in the context Kamp is begging for here. If anything he said he was in the 2nd floor lunchroom, the same place Carolyn Arnold had spotted him 6 minutes before.

Various newspapers made reference to this so-called first floor encounter instead of the second floor lunch room encounter.

Roy Truly was overheard by Kent Biffle, who reported in the November 23 edition of the Dallas Morning News:"In a storage room on the first floor, the officer, gun drawn, spotted Oswald. Does this man work here?', the officer reportedly asked Truly. Truly, who said he had interviewed and had hired Oswald a couple of months earlier reportedly told the policeman that Oswald was a worker."[B]
[/B]

Here is where Kamp really exposes his flagrant level of deception. Biffle is obviously mixing Ochus Campbell's story with Truly's lunchroom encounter. But the most outstanding example of Kamp's deception is his ignoring that Campbell clearly said he saw Truly and Baker run in to the building before he saw Oswald in the storage room. This twisted distortion ignores that Campbell established that Baker and Truly were well on their way before he went in and saw Oswald in the storage closet. So it separates the grilling of Oswald and Truly confirming he was an employee from Campbell's witnessing and establishes the two were separate events and therefore could not be one story as Biffle misreported. This correct context not only confirms the lunchroom encounter Kamp is doubting, but also suggests Campbell probably went in well after Truly and encountered Mrs Reid's Oswald after he came to the lobby. Kamp never allows this possibility because his ROKC group denies Armstrong's theory.

Another thing Kamp ignores is if Biffle got this story on Friday then he would have a record of Truly mentioning the lunchroom encounter in public on Friday.

[B][B][B][B]Biffle mentions overhearing Truly again in the Dallas Morning News, edition from November 21, 2000:[/B][/B][/B][/B]

[B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B]"Hours dragged by. The building superintendent showed up with some papers in his hand. I listened as he told detectives about Lee Oswald failing to show up at a roll call. My impression is there was an earlier roll call but it was inconclusive inasmuch as several employees were missing. This time, however, all were accounted for but Oswald. I jotted down all the Oswald information. The description and address came from company records already examined by the superintendent. [B]The superintendent would recall later that he and a policeman met Oswald as they charged into the building after the shots were fired.[/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B]

What Kamp is doing is deliberately misconstruing the story of the same reporter who misreported it the first time. There is absolutely nothing in the above quote to preclude the lunchroom as being the location where they confronted Oswald. This is obviously just Kamp fishing for suggestive meaning where none exists and trying to sell it as proof.




[B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B][B]

Ochus Campbell, the vice president of the TSBD, stated in the New York Herald Tribune on November 22:

[/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B][/B]

[B][B][B]"Shortly after the shooting we raced back into the building. We had been outside watching the parade. We saw him (Oswald) in a small storage room on the ground floor. Then we noticed he was gone." Mr. Campbell added: "Of course he and the others were on their lunch hour but he did not have permission to leave the building and we haven't seen him since."[/B][/B][/B]

Since Campbell separated seeing Truly and Baker running in to the building from his own encounter we can assume the two happened with a time separation in between. The way this should be interpreted is Truly and Baker were confronting Oswald in the lunchroom 90 seconds after the shots, so Campbell's witnessing had to be after that. OR HAD TO BE A SECOND OSWALD.


Kamp and DiEugenio insult the intelligence of better researchers by not considering that the Oswald allegedly seen by Campbell was possibly the Oswald seen by Roger Craig. The reason Kamp doesn't mention this possibility is because he is seeking the narrowest, most deceptive route to confirming the Prayer Man evidence. Kamp omits this because it creates the possibility that Campbell's evidence isn't evidence of Oswald being Prayer Man at all but is instead good confirmation of Armstrong and therefore keeps the lunchroom encounter intact and possibly explains why it wasn't mentioned at first.



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