18-04-2023, 09:34 PM
That's quite a compliment, Brian, including me with John Armstrong and Barry Ernest in your appreciation of the Depository itself as a criminal enterprise. The real pioneer in this portion of the JFK conspiracy is William Weston, who wrote numerous essays in the 1990s in The Third Decade focusing on the TSBD Company as a critical part of the coup (411 Elm Street, The Transformation of the Texas School Book Depository, The Spider's Web, etc.). Not only was the move to Dealey Plaza that previous winter downright suspicious. But innocuous details such as Truly's refusal to allow Building employees to get fingerprinted- on the pretense that it would disrupt work- looks very sinister today. (I got fingerprinted for Census work in 2010; the FBI processed about 20 of us in about a half hour.) Weston got railroaded out of the Ed Forum about 2006 for claiming that Shelley, Lovelady and Frazier- The Three Calm Men seen by NBC's Robert MacNeill- were part of the conspiracy.
***
Speculative reasoning is a healthy method to fish for answers that aren't readily apparent. Somewhat healthy, usually. With enough tries, one of them is bound to latch on, like a ring toss at a carnival booth. The tries that endure have the proper paradigm- something I learned reading through Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in a used bookstore basement in Cambridge in the 1970s- meaning the best model to structure the remainder of the belief-system around. A model that can explain existing phenomena and maybe predict some unexpected new phenomena. Like how general relativity, with its model of curved space-time, explained the bending of light and also predicted gravitational waves. Or quantum mechanics, with its model of discrete atomic energy levels, explained phenomena such as spectroscopic lines and also predicted lasers and superconductors.
So with the Depository- and its nebulous data hinting at employee criminality- I presented a paradigm in 2009 whereby the 6th-floor hit team escaped via the west freight elevator, which was operated by Jack Dougherty. I have to credit Harrison Livingstone in 1993's High Treason 2 for spotlighting the fact that this elevator descended while Baker & Truly were ascending the stairwell. That was a big anomaly that stayed in my mind, and no researcher ever seemed to enlarge upon that idea. And it took me 10 years, when I finally read Jack Dougherty's testimony, to realize he was definitely the elevator operator. Yet it all remained quite nebulous.
The freight elevator escape paradigm, coordinated by Dougherty and Truly, explains these phenomena: 1) The west elevator descended while Truly & Baker ascended the stairs 2) Dougherty gave a nebulous accounting of his lunchtime whereabouts 3) He made contradictory claims about being part of the floor-laying crew. Initially he said he was, but then it made no sense that he returned to work (on the 6th) before the lunch break was completed 4) Dougherty claimed he went down to the 1st upon hearing a shot and talked to Eddie Piper, but this wasn't physically possible (FBI time trials established the speed of the elevator) until after Truly & Baker started up the stairs- and Piper wasn't even asked whether he talked to Dougherty 5) Truly cut off Dougherty's Secret Service interview 6) Truly's problem calling down the elevators wasn't mentioned until his testimony 4 months later 7) Truly led Baker up the stairs 8) The route they took to the roof didn't permit a view of the 6th floor 9) Truly's testimony excerpt at III p. 237 in his characterization of Dougherty remains deleted, and this Dictabelt remains inaccessible at the National Archives, and 10) The Warren Commission produced an internal memo, seen only by its members and staff, entitled, "The Mystery of the West Elevator". (This is excerpted in the section Dougherty on the Loose in my 2015 essay Inside Job on page 124 of my book). They weren't sure- after Truly's testimony- just who had taken the west elevator down. Why would they even bother asking about the west elevator unless there was a possibility something fishy was going on in its regard?
Add on a couple of notable anomalies about Dougherty's history: a) He spent 2 years stationed at Freeman Field in Indiana, the central repository for captured Nazi equipment, which filled 42 warehouses. Mind Kontrol ULTRA had its origins in wartime Germany. b) After WWII he said he did "Nothing" until 1952, when he commenced working at the Depository. Only his father Redfern Dougherty knows what he was doing, since Jack lived at home. Redfern sat in on his FBI interviews of November 22nd and December 18th, since his son had received a medical discharge from the Army. Someone unknown suspected Jack of complicity and in 1967 Redfern forwarded this material to the FBI (see my book, pp. 127-128). And we still don't know who took Dougherty from the Depository that afternoon down to DPD HQ; this was apparently squelched by the DPD.
All of this makes for a rock-solid paradigm for the west elevator escape- which penetrates much of the nebulosity surrounding the Depository, and explains the faulty police forensics; Fritz and Day knew about the elevator escape in advance, and made an error-riddled attempt to frame Oswald for the President's assassination. And this west elevator escape paradigm also makes an interesting prediction: it insinuates that Oswald, assigned to the lunchroom, was assigned the job within the assassination plot of helping to protect the descending west elevator from detection. Thus he baited the first responding cop and, by flinching away suspiciously from the vestibule window, drew him into the lunchroom. This was a maneuver that Oswald & Truly had to have prepared beforehand. Oswald could be counted on to pull this maneuver off, since he was an experienced spy and would be cool as a cucumber.
Oswald was perfect fodder for a patsy because, as a rogue intelligence agent, running off the rails of his training, not only would this "top secret" lunchroom mission increase his self-importance; he would be unlikely to spill the beans on fellow plotters (at least during that first weekend). He would, in any case, be quickly eliminated and the blame would be placed on him.
*************
Brian, you contend that "the power [was] turned off in order to make sure the elevator cab was beneath the 5th-floor elevator equipment", i.e. so that Armstrong's passenger elevator escape was feasible. But I devoted an entire section of Two Big Problems with the Passenger Elevator to this power-outage claim, in the section Power, Interrupted. Especially on p. 418 of my book, you can see that the 7th-floor storage room and 6th-floor west window had ceiling lights working. The 1st-floor elevator call button was working. And on a good-quality copy of HSCA VI, you can see vestiges of a ceiling lamp in the autoradiographic enhancement of Harold Norman's 5th-floor window.
So there was no power outage at the Depository. It is indeed curious that Carol Reed recalled the passenger elevator out, and its lights unlit, when she returned to the lobby... quite quickly, as film shows... But this is a 55-year-old memory... The passenger elevator definitely was working when Sawyer, Lovelady, and a couple Treasury agents used it about 12:37.... And it definitely wasn't working when Victoria Adams tried it at 12:40.... Without further corroboration, I would have to dismiss Carol Reed's memory simply as inaccurate due to the passage of time...
***
What I am saying in the west elevator escape is that "Lee Oswald" who was in the west window- and one or more assassins at the east window (such as Herminio Diaz Garcia and a spotter) went down from the 5th to the 1st floor with Jack Dougherty.
***
Adams heard the elevator cables move; she did not see them move. Sean Murphy's e-mail stated: "Sandra Styles told me in an e-mail that she recalled Vicki Adams telling co-workers that she had heard the sound of elevator cables when she and Sandra were running down the stairs." Bart Kamp was the one who made this error in his first lunchroom hoax essay, and I chided him for it in Death of the Lunchroom Hoax.
My interpretation of this is that Adams heard the cables just as she got to the 1st floor. She was then out of the noisy wooden stairwell, and the outer overhead roll-up gate to the 1st was lifted up- hence the shaft was open, with just the 4-foot wooden slatted inner half-gate in its down position. On the other floors that they traversed- 4, 3 and 2- the overhead roll-up gate would have been rolled all the way down (otherwise the elevators wouldn't function- a safety feature built into the 1905 design). So the 1st floor was the only floor they passed by with the shaft exposed, and with no wooden floor, makes it more probable in my eyes that this was where she heard the elevator cables moving.
***
The black trio on the 5th heard the hit team but were intimidated into silence. Bonnie Ray Williams, whose lies were easiest to expose, was the one who said he saw Baker's white helmet. They all lied about going to the 5th-floor west corner window after the shots and opening it to see what was going on; photos show that window open before the shooting sequence. James Jarman denied hearing the west elevator move in his 1977 HSCA interview. Harold Norman said he could hear it but "didn't see who was on it." He looked absolutely afraid to say anything in his last interview. They were all out in the street ready to flee the scene before they were ordered back inside by police. It was strange how they never said anything about seeing Dougherty, who was 20 feet away from their 5th-floor book bin.
****
Again, with Mrs. Reid's failure to correctly identify Harvey Oswald's reddish-brown shirt: She likely drew a blank, and couldn't remember what he wore. She knew he was a warehouse worker and so she said he had a t-shirt on.
I had a similar experience just this past Saturday. I went into the bank and told a teller how pretty she looked; she was dressed up nice for a spring day. What was she wearing? It's now Wednesday and I hardly have a clue, maybe a dark dress, possibly with a wraparound sweater. Maybe blue, purple, brown or black. Basically, a complete blank, 4 days later, and it was a vivid experience at the time.
So Mrs. Reid's failure is a bit much to hang your hat on, for whether the passenger elevator escape is true.
***
In 2007 Sean Murphy and a Lancer photo-specialist, I believe named Jeff Daniels or Jeff Phillips, made a very precise reconstruction of exactly when Baker (nearly) reached the first step of the Depository landing. They arrived at a value of somewhere between 22.3 and 22.6 seconds after Z-313. They relied on matching Wiegman's film to Couch's film; "Wiegman began filming a little over 3 seconds prior to the President being hit in the head" (Pictures of the Pain, p. 373). At approximately 20 seconds into the Wiegman film Charles Hester can be seen ducking down in front of the pergola area; Hester's action can also be seen at the beginning of the Couch film, which captured Baker running toward the steps.
There's a lot of footwork on the Adams/Styles & Truly/Baker timelines that you just haven't done, Brian... I suggest you have a closer look at my book, pp. 98-101 and 131-135, and maybe read Michael T. Griffith's The Baker-Oswald Encounter.
***
It was Shelley who stepped up to OK Oswald at the front door... Truly did not witness the incident, since had been upstairs on his way to search the roof with Baker.... You ask, "Why does Jarman not see Truly in the Lobby?"... The correct answer is because Truly was up on the roof with Baker... All Jarman did, in his HSCA interview 14 years after the fact, was confuse Shelley for Truly....
***
You are really deep in the soup, Brian, making connections solely on your interpretation of "Linguistic Forensics", that are completely tenuous, and without substantive objective validity. You are too much in love with the idea that Frazier said Oswald left via the rear loading dock.... and you are willing to derange the evidence any which way you can in order to pretend that that is what happened.... even to the point of mixing Armstrong's passenger elevator escape- which is supported only by his own supposition- and tossing in Lee Oswald and the Utility Closet and thereby making a holy mess of how the lookalikes escaped the Depository....
What is clear to me is that: Lee Oswald went down the west freight elevator, and out the West Annex, and was seen running down the grassy incline into a waiting Rambler station wagon. Harvey Oswald- the historic Oswald- went from the 2nd-floor lunchroom down to the front landing, was stopped by a cop who had just arrived and was still getting his bearings, was OK'd by Shelley, so he proceeded down the front steps and up Elm Street to catch the 1213 Marsalis bus. And Welcome Barnett even admitted he let Oswald go at a 50th anniversary conference (see my book, p. 111).
***
Speculative reasoning is a healthy method to fish for answers that aren't readily apparent. Somewhat healthy, usually. With enough tries, one of them is bound to latch on, like a ring toss at a carnival booth. The tries that endure have the proper paradigm- something I learned reading through Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in a used bookstore basement in Cambridge in the 1970s- meaning the best model to structure the remainder of the belief-system around. A model that can explain existing phenomena and maybe predict some unexpected new phenomena. Like how general relativity, with its model of curved space-time, explained the bending of light and also predicted gravitational waves. Or quantum mechanics, with its model of discrete atomic energy levels, explained phenomena such as spectroscopic lines and also predicted lasers and superconductors.
So with the Depository- and its nebulous data hinting at employee criminality- I presented a paradigm in 2009 whereby the 6th-floor hit team escaped via the west freight elevator, which was operated by Jack Dougherty. I have to credit Harrison Livingstone in 1993's High Treason 2 for spotlighting the fact that this elevator descended while Baker & Truly were ascending the stairwell. That was a big anomaly that stayed in my mind, and no researcher ever seemed to enlarge upon that idea. And it took me 10 years, when I finally read Jack Dougherty's testimony, to realize he was definitely the elevator operator. Yet it all remained quite nebulous.
The freight elevator escape paradigm, coordinated by Dougherty and Truly, explains these phenomena: 1) The west elevator descended while Truly & Baker ascended the stairs 2) Dougherty gave a nebulous accounting of his lunchtime whereabouts 3) He made contradictory claims about being part of the floor-laying crew. Initially he said he was, but then it made no sense that he returned to work (on the 6th) before the lunch break was completed 4) Dougherty claimed he went down to the 1st upon hearing a shot and talked to Eddie Piper, but this wasn't physically possible (FBI time trials established the speed of the elevator) until after Truly & Baker started up the stairs- and Piper wasn't even asked whether he talked to Dougherty 5) Truly cut off Dougherty's Secret Service interview 6) Truly's problem calling down the elevators wasn't mentioned until his testimony 4 months later 7) Truly led Baker up the stairs 8) The route they took to the roof didn't permit a view of the 6th floor 9) Truly's testimony excerpt at III p. 237 in his characterization of Dougherty remains deleted, and this Dictabelt remains inaccessible at the National Archives, and 10) The Warren Commission produced an internal memo, seen only by its members and staff, entitled, "The Mystery of the West Elevator". (This is excerpted in the section Dougherty on the Loose in my 2015 essay Inside Job on page 124 of my book). They weren't sure- after Truly's testimony- just who had taken the west elevator down. Why would they even bother asking about the west elevator unless there was a possibility something fishy was going on in its regard?
Add on a couple of notable anomalies about Dougherty's history: a) He spent 2 years stationed at Freeman Field in Indiana, the central repository for captured Nazi equipment, which filled 42 warehouses. Mind Kontrol ULTRA had its origins in wartime Germany. b) After WWII he said he did "Nothing" until 1952, when he commenced working at the Depository. Only his father Redfern Dougherty knows what he was doing, since Jack lived at home. Redfern sat in on his FBI interviews of November 22nd and December 18th, since his son had received a medical discharge from the Army. Someone unknown suspected Jack of complicity and in 1967 Redfern forwarded this material to the FBI (see my book, pp. 127-128). And we still don't know who took Dougherty from the Depository that afternoon down to DPD HQ; this was apparently squelched by the DPD.
All of this makes for a rock-solid paradigm for the west elevator escape- which penetrates much of the nebulosity surrounding the Depository, and explains the faulty police forensics; Fritz and Day knew about the elevator escape in advance, and made an error-riddled attempt to frame Oswald for the President's assassination. And this west elevator escape paradigm also makes an interesting prediction: it insinuates that Oswald, assigned to the lunchroom, was assigned the job within the assassination plot of helping to protect the descending west elevator from detection. Thus he baited the first responding cop and, by flinching away suspiciously from the vestibule window, drew him into the lunchroom. This was a maneuver that Oswald & Truly had to have prepared beforehand. Oswald could be counted on to pull this maneuver off, since he was an experienced spy and would be cool as a cucumber.
Oswald was perfect fodder for a patsy because, as a rogue intelligence agent, running off the rails of his training, not only would this "top secret" lunchroom mission increase his self-importance; he would be unlikely to spill the beans on fellow plotters (at least during that first weekend). He would, in any case, be quickly eliminated and the blame would be placed on him.
*************
Brian, you contend that "the power [was] turned off in order to make sure the elevator cab was beneath the 5th-floor elevator equipment", i.e. so that Armstrong's passenger elevator escape was feasible. But I devoted an entire section of Two Big Problems with the Passenger Elevator to this power-outage claim, in the section Power, Interrupted. Especially on p. 418 of my book, you can see that the 7th-floor storage room and 6th-floor west window had ceiling lights working. The 1st-floor elevator call button was working. And on a good-quality copy of HSCA VI, you can see vestiges of a ceiling lamp in the autoradiographic enhancement of Harold Norman's 5th-floor window.
So there was no power outage at the Depository. It is indeed curious that Carol Reed recalled the passenger elevator out, and its lights unlit, when she returned to the lobby... quite quickly, as film shows... But this is a 55-year-old memory... The passenger elevator definitely was working when Sawyer, Lovelady, and a couple Treasury agents used it about 12:37.... And it definitely wasn't working when Victoria Adams tried it at 12:40.... Without further corroboration, I would have to dismiss Carol Reed's memory simply as inaccurate due to the passage of time...
***
What I am saying in the west elevator escape is that "Lee Oswald" who was in the west window- and one or more assassins at the east window (such as Herminio Diaz Garcia and a spotter) went down from the 5th to the 1st floor with Jack Dougherty.
***
Adams heard the elevator cables move; she did not see them move. Sean Murphy's e-mail stated: "Sandra Styles told me in an e-mail that she recalled Vicki Adams telling co-workers that she had heard the sound of elevator cables when she and Sandra were running down the stairs." Bart Kamp was the one who made this error in his first lunchroom hoax essay, and I chided him for it in Death of the Lunchroom Hoax.
My interpretation of this is that Adams heard the cables just as she got to the 1st floor. She was then out of the noisy wooden stairwell, and the outer overhead roll-up gate to the 1st was lifted up- hence the shaft was open, with just the 4-foot wooden slatted inner half-gate in its down position. On the other floors that they traversed- 4, 3 and 2- the overhead roll-up gate would have been rolled all the way down (otherwise the elevators wouldn't function- a safety feature built into the 1905 design). So the 1st floor was the only floor they passed by with the shaft exposed, and with no wooden floor, makes it more probable in my eyes that this was where she heard the elevator cables moving.
***
The black trio on the 5th heard the hit team but were intimidated into silence. Bonnie Ray Williams, whose lies were easiest to expose, was the one who said he saw Baker's white helmet. They all lied about going to the 5th-floor west corner window after the shots and opening it to see what was going on; photos show that window open before the shooting sequence. James Jarman denied hearing the west elevator move in his 1977 HSCA interview. Harold Norman said he could hear it but "didn't see who was on it." He looked absolutely afraid to say anything in his last interview. They were all out in the street ready to flee the scene before they were ordered back inside by police. It was strange how they never said anything about seeing Dougherty, who was 20 feet away from their 5th-floor book bin.
****
Again, with Mrs. Reid's failure to correctly identify Harvey Oswald's reddish-brown shirt: She likely drew a blank, and couldn't remember what he wore. She knew he was a warehouse worker and so she said he had a t-shirt on.
I had a similar experience just this past Saturday. I went into the bank and told a teller how pretty she looked; she was dressed up nice for a spring day. What was she wearing? It's now Wednesday and I hardly have a clue, maybe a dark dress, possibly with a wraparound sweater. Maybe blue, purple, brown or black. Basically, a complete blank, 4 days later, and it was a vivid experience at the time.
So Mrs. Reid's failure is a bit much to hang your hat on, for whether the passenger elevator escape is true.
***
In 2007 Sean Murphy and a Lancer photo-specialist, I believe named Jeff Daniels or Jeff Phillips, made a very precise reconstruction of exactly when Baker (nearly) reached the first step of the Depository landing. They arrived at a value of somewhere between 22.3 and 22.6 seconds after Z-313. They relied on matching Wiegman's film to Couch's film; "Wiegman began filming a little over 3 seconds prior to the President being hit in the head" (Pictures of the Pain, p. 373). At approximately 20 seconds into the Wiegman film Charles Hester can be seen ducking down in front of the pergola area; Hester's action can also be seen at the beginning of the Couch film, which captured Baker running toward the steps.
There's a lot of footwork on the Adams/Styles & Truly/Baker timelines that you just haven't done, Brian... I suggest you have a closer look at my book, pp. 98-101 and 131-135, and maybe read Michael T. Griffith's The Baker-Oswald Encounter.
***
It was Shelley who stepped up to OK Oswald at the front door... Truly did not witness the incident, since had been upstairs on his way to search the roof with Baker.... You ask, "Why does Jarman not see Truly in the Lobby?"... The correct answer is because Truly was up on the roof with Baker... All Jarman did, in his HSCA interview 14 years after the fact, was confuse Shelley for Truly....
***
You are really deep in the soup, Brian, making connections solely on your interpretation of "Linguistic Forensics", that are completely tenuous, and without substantive objective validity. You are too much in love with the idea that Frazier said Oswald left via the rear loading dock.... and you are willing to derange the evidence any which way you can in order to pretend that that is what happened.... even to the point of mixing Armstrong's passenger elevator escape- which is supported only by his own supposition- and tossing in Lee Oswald and the Utility Closet and thereby making a holy mess of how the lookalikes escaped the Depository....
What is clear to me is that: Lee Oswald went down the west freight elevator, and out the West Annex, and was seen running down the grassy incline into a waiting Rambler station wagon. Harvey Oswald- the historic Oswald- went from the 2nd-floor lunchroom down to the front landing, was stopped by a cop who had just arrived and was still getting his bearings, was OK'd by Shelley, so he proceeded down the front steps and up Elm Street to catch the 1213 Marsalis bus. And Welcome Barnett even admitted he let Oswald go at a 50th anniversary conference (see my book, p. 111).