Roger Craig was right: The WC contrived Oswalds cab and bus rides. This is an excerpt from an article debunking WC cartoonist Dale Myers book. It is from someone who actually does real JFK research, M.T. Griffith: Attacking Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig Myers says Deputy Sheriff Roger Craigs account of seeing Oswald get into a station wagon that left Dealey Plaza lacks credibility (p. 215). After a great deal of what strikes me as waffling and nit-picking, Myers acknowledges that Craigs account of the station wagon leaving Dealey Plaza is credible, but he suggests Craig was lying or mistaken in saying Oswald entered the vehicle. Yet, Craig, who was a decorated deputy sheriff with an outstanding record, said he was certain the man he saw get into the station wagon was Oswald. (If he wasnt Oswald, he was someone who bore a marked resemblance to Oswald.) In his attack on Craigs linkage of the station wagon to Oswald, Myers fails to bring to the readers attention the fact that another witness said the man who got into the station wagon was the spitting image of Oswald. As he so often does with data he doesnt like, Myers buries this information in an endnote (pp. 634-635 n 604). The other witness was Mrs. James Forrest. Mrs. Forrest said the man she saw get into the station wagon so closely resembled Oswald that, If it wasnt Oswald, it was his identical twin. Why doesnt Myers mention this even once in his discussion of Craigs account? I suspect he doesnt mention it because it would tend to discredit his rejection of Craigs linkage of the station wagon to Oswald, and because it might tip the reader to the possibility that someone was impersonating Oswald. Myers never once mentions the possibility that Oswald was being impersonated in Dallas by a look-alike before and after the assassination. (Not only is there evidence Oswald was being impersonated in Dallas, there is also evidence he was being impersonated in Mexico City. Ed Lopez, the staff investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations who investigated the Mexico City angle of the assassination, concluded an Oswald imposter visited the Soviet Embassy and the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City as part of an effort to frame Oswald.) Myers doesnt dare acknowledge that Craig saw Oswald get into the station wagon, because throughout his book Myers accepts the Warren Commissions version of Oswalds movements after he left the Book Depository. Therefore, Myers accepts the story that Oswald returned to his house by riding in William Whaleys cab. If Craigs story is true, it can only mean one of two things: either the cab-ride story is false or an Oswald look-alike was seen leaving the Book Depository and getting into a waiting station wagon fifteen minutes after the assassination. There is good evidence that supports Craigs account, as Dr. Michael Kurtz explains: The Warren Report mentions that Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that about fifteen minutes after the assassination, he saw Oswald run from the rear of the Depository building, scamper down an incline to Elm Street, and enter a Rambler station wagon driven by a dark complected man. According to the commission, Craig may have seen a person enter a white Rambler station wagon 15 or 20 minutes after the shooting . . . but the Commission has concluded that this man was not Lee Harvey Oswald, because of the overwhelming evidence that Oswald was far away from the building by that time. What was that overwhelming evidence? It should be mentioned that even if the commissions version is accepted, Oswald was not far away from the building by that time. According to the commission, at 12:44 Oswald was getting off McWatterss bus only five blocks east of the Depository building. He then walked for four minutes to the Greyhound bus station only four blocks away. The overwhelming evidence is the testimony of William Whaley [the cab driver]. Remember that Whaley failed to select Oswald out of police lineup as his taxicab passenger. He also testified that Oswald was wearing TWO jackets, while the commission claimed that he wore none. In his taxi logbook, Whaley recorded the time of his pickup at the bus station as 12:30, yet the commission said that the real time was 12:48. Let us now examine Roger Craigs testimony in order to determine if it is consistent and accurate and supported by other evidence. Deputy Craig watched the motorcade in front of the Criminal Courts building on Houston Street. After hearing the shots, he raced to the grassy knoll area. Photographs of the scene show Craig in the large crowd of people converging on the knoll after the shooting. Craig then returned to the south side of Elm Street. As he was standing there with a group of law enforcement officials, he noticed a man run down the grassy embankment to the right front of the Texas School Book Depository building. A light green Rambler station wagon, driven by a heavy-set, dark-complected man, was traveling west on Elm Street. As the running man reached the curb, the station wagon stopped and the man entered. . . . There is, in fact, substantial evidence that provides far more corroboration for Craigs testimony than for the totally unsubstantiated statements of Whaley. Carolyn Walther was watching the motorcade from Houston Street. She saw a man standing on the fourth or fifth floor in the southeast corner window of the Depository building. He was holding a gun. Next to him was a man dressed in a brown sport coat. Shortly after the assassination, James Worrell saw a man run out of the back of the Depository. The man was five feet eight inches to five feet ten inches tall, average weight, had dark hair, and was wearing a dark sports jacket. The man was moving south on Houston Street. Richard Randolph Carr watched the motorcade from Houston and Commerce streets. Shortly before the shooting, he saw a man wearing a brown sport coat in an upper floor of the Book Depository building. A couple of minutes after the shooting, Carr saw the same man walking very fast heading south on Houston Street. After going around the block, the man entered a grey or green Rambler station wagon. Marvin Robinson was driving his car west on Elm Street about fifteen minutes after the shooting. He saw a man come down the grassy incline and enter a Rambler station wagon, which then drove away. Mrs. James Forrest was standing in a group of people who had gathered on the incline near the grassy knoll. As she was standing, she saw a man suddenly run from the rear of the Depository building, down the incline, and then enter a Rambler station wagon. The man she saw running down and entering the station wagon strongly resembled Lee Harvey Oswald. If it wasnt Oswald, Mrs. Forrest has declared, it was his identical twin. The testimony of Walther, Worrell, Carr, Robinson, and Forrest all provide strong substantiation for Roger Craigs story. Craigs story is also supported by photographic evidence. One photograph shows Deputy Craig running toward the grassy knoll. Another shows him standing near the grassy knoll. Another shows him standing on the south side of Elm Street looking toward the Book Depository building. In the same photograph, a light-colored Rambler station wagon can be seen heading west on Elm Street. In another photograph, Craig is seen looking toward Elm Street in the general direction of the station wagon. . . . Despite the impressive corroboration for Craigs testimony, the Warren Commission chose to reject it. Instead, it accepted the unsubstantiated and contradictory testimony of taxi driver William Whaley. There is no corroboration for Whaleys story. Whaley did tell the commission that when Oswald entered his cab, an elderly lady tried to enter it from the opposite side. Oswald volunteered to let her have the cab, but the lady refused because another taxi was waiting just behind Whaleys. There is no indication that the commission attempted to locate the other cab. Both the driver and the lady could have supported Whaleys observations. By studying the logbook of the other cab, it would be possible to attempt to trace the lady. Neither the police nor the commission did so. Whaley testified that Oswald had on two jackets. The commission decided there was none. At the police lineup, Whaley picked out eighteen-year-old David Knapp instead of twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald (Knapp did not even resemble Oswald). Whaley registered 12:30 p.m. in his logbook as the time when his passenger entered the cab. This, of course, eliminated Oswald, since Oswald was in the Depository building at that time. The commission attempted to explain this by noting that Whaley recorded all trips in fifteen-minute intervals, regardless of how long the actual trip took. Since the commission decided Oswald entered the cab at 12:47 or 12:48, it did not explain why Whaley entered 12:30 instead of 12:45 in his book. Nor did it explain why other trips were entered at 6:20, 7:50, 8:10, 9:40, 10:50, and 3:10, rather than regular quarter-hour intervals. In his original log, Whaley entered 500 North Beckley as the spot where he let Oswald out. The commission decided that Whaley was wrong here, also. It should be obvious to the disinterested observer that the Warren Commission was trying to fabricate a case against Oswald as a lone assassin and murderer. There is not one iota of evidence to substantiate Whaleys testimony about the cab ride. Deputy Sheriff Craigs story is supported by the testimony of five other witnesses as well as five photographs. (Crime of the Century, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982, pp. 130-133, original emphasis). Another reason lone-gunman theorists reject Craigs account is that, if true, it could mean Oswald never boarded Cecil McWatters bus. Myers accepts the WCs claim that Oswald rode on McWatters bus and that he boarded it at 12:40 P.M., ten minutes after the assassination. Myers mentions the report that McWatters bus transfer and five bullets for the pistol were found in Oswalds pockets (p. 349). Yes, they were supposedly found in Oswalds pockets—two hours after Oswald was arrested. So were supposed to believe that Oswald, whom Myers describes elsewhere as cool, cunning, and calculating (pp. 199, 208, 359, 363), was so stupid that he failed to dispose of the bus transfer and the bullets after he allegedly shot Tippit, even though he had ample time to do so. Though one would never know it from reading Myers discussion on Oswalds movements, the bus-ride story, like the cab-ride account, is open to doubt. The bus transfer is of questionable evidentiary value. As mentioned, it wasnt supposedly found on Oswald until some two hours after he arrived at the police station, and we have only the Dallas Police Departments word on its discovery, which is hardly reassuring. For one thing, it seems a little hard to believe the police waited two hours before searching Oswald. Didnt they search him when they arrested him? And, again, why didnt the calm, cunning, calculating Oswald have the brains to dispose of the transfer and the bullets after he supposedly shot Tippit? On the one hand, lone-gunman theorists claim Oswald disposed of his jacket after the Tippit shooting. Then why on earth wouldnt he have disposed of the bus transfer and the bullets, not to mention the revolver itself? If nothing else, one would think Oswald would have at least tried to get rid of the revolver and the bullets once he saw the police enter the theater. For that matter, in the two hours before the police supposedly finally got around to searching him, Oswald could have asked to use the bathroom and then, once inside the toilet stall, flushed the transfer and bullets down the toilet. Moreover, McWatters WC testimony suggests he gave the bus transfer to a young passenger named Roy Milton Jones, not to Oswald. The day after he viewed the police lineup, McWatters recognized one of his regular passengers, the teenager Jones, as the man who had boarded his bus at 12:40. McWatters only gave out two transfers on that trip, one of them to a woman. The WC asked McWatters if he could identify Oswald as the man who had boarded his bus and to whom he had given a transfer. McWatters answered that he could not make that identification (2 H 370). McWatters even denied telling the Dallas police that the number two man in the lineup, i.e., Oswald, was the same man who boarded his bus. Since McWatters said the man who boarded his bus at 12:40 and who asked for a transfer was Jones, not Oswald, and since McWatters only gave out two transfers during that trip, the logical conclusion is that one of the transfers was given to Jones and the other to the woman. Did anyone see Oswald on McWatters bus? Myers cites three witnesses as seeing Oswald on the bus, a woman named Mary Bledsoe, the abovementioned Roy Milton Jones, and, misleadingly enough, McWatters (p. 281). Even the WC declined to cite McWatters as a witness to place Oswald on the bus, saying McWatters recollection alone was too vague to be a basis for placing Oswald on the bus, and the commission admitted McWatters said he had been in error [in identifying Oswald] and that a teenager named Milton Jones was the passenger he had in mind (Warren Commission Report, p. 159). The Dallas police falsely listed McWatters as having positively identified Oswald in the police lineup as the man who had boarded his bus at 12:40. As mentioned, McWatters later said Jones was actually the person who had boarded the bus. Myers doesnt mention any of this. Myers matter-of-factly says Jones told the FBI he believed he had seen Oswald on the bus. Says Myers, Roy Milton Jones, a passenger on McWatters bus, told the FBI that the man he believed was Oswald was wearing a light blue jacket. (p. 281) Myers is giving a misleading picture by omitting relevant information. Even a casual reading of Jones statement reveals Jones was not at all sure the man was Oswald, that he didnt get a good look at the man, and that it didnt even occur to him the man might have been Oswald until McWatters--yes, McWatters-- suggested this to him. I quote from the FBI report on the interview with Jones: Jones stated he did not observe this man closely since he [the man] sat behind him [Jones] in the bus, but, on the following Monday when he caught the same bus going home from school with the same driver [McWatters], the driver told him he thought this man might have been Lee Harvey Oswald. Jones said that after the driver mentioned this, and from his recollection of Oswalds picture as it appeared on television and in the newspapers, he thought it was possible it could have been Oswald. He emphasized, however, that he did not have a good view of this man at any time and could not positively identify him as being identical with Lee Harvey Oswald. He said he was inclined to think it might have been Oswald only because the bus driver told him so. (CE 2641, p. 2) And, as mentioned, the bus driver, McWatters, later insisted it was Jones, not Oswald, who boarded his bus at the time in question. Jones said the man in question was wearing a light blue jacket. But, according to Myers, Oswald left his blue jacket at work when he left the Depository after the assassination. Furthermore, Oswalds blue jacket was not light blue. The one and only witness who firmly put Oswald on McWatters bus was Mary Bledsoe. Her testimony is lacking in credibility. Mrs. Bledsoe had been Oswalds landlady for a brief time before the assassination. She made it clear in her testimony that she disliked Oswald. Numerous authors have discussed the questionable nature of Mrs. Bledsoes story, and I would refer the reader to their critiques (see, for example, Kurtz, Crime of the Century, p. 127; Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, New York: Vintage Books, 1976 edition, pp. 76-82; and Harold Weisberg, Selections from Whitewash, New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994, pp. 110-112). Ill quote one brief section from Harold Weisbergs analysis of Mrs. Bledsoes testimony: Most of Mrs. Bledsoes answers were: I dont know. I didnt pay any attention. I didnt care. I didnt look. I didnt even look. I couldnt tell you, and other such valuable contributions. At one point, following one of her nonresponsive answers, [WC attorney] Ball interrupted her to say: But, before you go into that, I notice you have been reading from some notes before you. Her reply was: Well, because I forget what I have to say. (Selections from Whitewash, p. 110) It should be mentioned that both McWatters and Jones said the man who boarded the bus at the time in question was wearing a jacket. As mentioned, Jones said the jacket was light blue in color. Interestingly, the cab driver initially said the man who rode in his cab during the time in question was wearing a faded blue jacket. The WC said the man in both instances was Oswald, but the commission also insisted Oswald wasnt wearing a jacket after he left the Book Depository. The commission had to deny the accounts of the light blue jacket because it claimed Oswald left his blue jacket at work that day, where it was allegedly found weeks later, and because that jacket was not light blue. Deputy Sheriff Craigs account of seeing Oswald get into a waiting station wagon is more credible than the bus-ride and cab-ride stories that Myers and other lone-gunman theorists accept. It should be added that Craig had won an award for outstanding performance as a law enforcement officer and had an excellent record. Several people reported seeing a man who looked like Oswald at times and places when the real Oswald was known to be elsewhere. It is possible that the real Oswald rode in Whaleys cab and on McWatters bus, and that Deputy Sheriff Craig saw an Oswald imposter. It is also possible, if not somewhat more likely, that Oswald did not ride in the cab nor on the bus, and that Craig either saw the real Oswald or an imposter—and if Craig saw an imposter, then Oswald simply got home by other means. mtgriffith/web_documents/malice.htm
Posted on: Sat, 28 Jun 2014 17:59:03 +0000