3. THE SET-UP FOR THE ASSASSINATION

Police and investigators approach most of their problems with a theory. Logical people, those who are careful and painstaking, usually learn enough about the facts before permitting themselves to form even tentative conclusions. At that point they search and. study to see if the facts support the conclusions they have in mind. But never do they lose sight of other alternatives, or of the possibility that the theory, no matter how attractive, is wrong. As a method of working and thinking, it is usually necessary to have some reasonable beliefs in mind, but not to the exclusion of all other possibilities.

None of the local or federal police ever imposed such restrictions upon themselves. Faced with the certain knowledge that they had made possible, or at least had not prevented, the crime of the century, all were deter mined to "solve" it expeditiously. The newspapers and magazines, radio and television and the country at large, as well as the rest of the world, demanded to know how such a monstrous crime could have been committed in the midst of police protection of an overwhelming magnitude.

Lee Harvey Oswald, the off-beat, unknown, virtually friendless nobody, had the supreme value of being a man who could, no matter how falsely, be accused of being a Communist. In the temper of the times, this encouraged wild though illogical speculations of a Russian plot. He was heavensent, having all the desirable characteristics the police sought. Better still, he was the bird in hand. Ignoring for the moment how the police got him in hand, they did have him, and he provided an immediate and the best possible answer to their problems.

With Oswald's capture but little more than an hour after the Kennedy murder, the public relations face of the police was resplendent. Even better, the police charged him with additionally killing a policeman, an officer who had a wife and children.

Emotion and money poured into Dallas from all over the country, and soon the bereaved Tippits were wealthy. Wealth cannot replace a loved husband and father, but at least the people were expressing their sorrow at the Tippit family's loss and doing what little could be done to ease their lot. Abraham Zapruder, who took excellent footage of the Kennedy assassination, got $25,000.00 for his film and gave it all to the Tippits.

Not until much later, when mature minds began to sift the steady flow of "information" from Dallas, were any doubts expressed. But these were almost entirely abroad, especially in Europe. What few questioning voices spoke out in the United States were weak, unknown, almost entirely unheard, and unbelieved.

So the police, with their suspect first securely in their possession and then dead and buried, had only to prove that the said suspect was the actual and sole culprit. But they were not compelled to prove it in a court of law where the adversary character of American justice would have afforded a disciplined opportunity for public scrutiny and evaluation of their "evidence." Their case needed only to be acceptable in two areas: First, to a press and a public anxious to seize upon any explanation they could persuade themselves might even remotely suggest a solution to the crime; and, second, to the Warren Commission. As it turned out, even before the police appeared before the Commission, that body seemed as anxious as anyone to attribute the crimes to the dead suspect to the exclusion of all others and without consideration of any other possibilities.

To do this, of course, it was necessary to place the suspect at the scenes of the crimes, to put him in a position to commit them, and to show that he had the capability to commit them. This the Commission did by the simplest of expedients: It believed only what it wanted to believe without regard to logic or credibility. It ignored what did not suit its purposes. And it said the sworn testimony in contradiction to its facile approach just was not true, again in the face of the most compelling logic and reasonableness.

Placing Oswald at the scene of the Kennedy crime was easy: He worked there (3H215). Even to his presence on the sixth floor, from which all of the shots were allegedly fired, he was there automatically. A major part of his work was on that floor. As of the period immediately preceding the assassination, he was working there (3H168).

The police could get away with "presuming" their suspect at the scene of both crimes because the suspect was dead and there was no judge and jury to consider the case. Unlike the police, the Commission had to make its Report credible to an international audience that had to be presented with a case that, at least superficially, seemed reasonable. Here the murder of Officer Tippit was a boon to both the police and the Commission, for it tended to make acceptable the intrinsically weak case on the Kennedy assassination. Superficially, the evidence in the Tippit case as strong and tended to obscure the weakness of the evidence relating to the assassination.

Despite the overwriting of the Report, there was, after almost a year, a paucity of hard evidence against Oswald. There were presumptions, inferences and theories, but not much of the kind of substantial documentation that would have held up in court or under cross-examination. To overcome this deficiency, the authors of the Report were driven to attempt what likewise was possible only without critical evaluation: The proving of smaller and less essential details that might also tend to buffer the weakness of the essential elements.

Beginning with the assumption that Oswald wanted to kill President Kennedy, of which there is not even a suggestion in any of the testimony, the Report then alleges that Oswald knew all about the plans for the President's visit and the route the motorcade would take. Again, the evidence is to the contrary (R31-40).

The testimony of all the witnesses who were employed at the Depository Building revealed a lack of excitement over the President's trip. Some did not even plan to view the motorcade and watched it only as an afterthought. Others became interested when they learned by the gathering of spectators that it would come nearby.

Oswald's finances, as reconstructed by the Report, showed no subscription to the daily papers (R741-5). Yet they do show such small expenditures as a $1.00 subscription to "The Militant" and $1.23 spent on transportation. No one was produced who ever saw him buy a single issue of the daily papers or knew he used the radio or television.

Manager Roy Truly testified, "I would see him occasionally in the shipping department . . . (eating) . . . Maybe he would be sitting there reading a book or a newspaper" (3H218). Employees testified that occasionally when Oswald lunched in the employee lunchroom he might pick up a back issue of a newspaper that someone had brought in and read it (3H164).

Despite the emotional account attributed to his wife that she had denied her company and even her conversation to her husband the night before the assassination, in the narrative she wrote when first put under protective custody she indicated (18H638) that he knew nothing about the events of the next day: "Only when I told him Kennedy was coming the next day to Dallas and asked how I could see him -- on television, of course -- he answered that he did not know."

Fellow employee James Jarman, Jr., met Oswald on the first floor near a window during the morning of the assassination. He testified: "Well, he was standing up in the window and I went to the window also, and he asked me what were the people gathering around on the corner for, and I told him that the President was supposed to pass that morning, and he asked me did I know which way he was coming, and I told him, yes; he probably come down Main and turn on Houston and then back again on Elm. Then he said, 'Oh, I see,' and that was all" (3H201).

There is nothing here in the Report to indicate Oswald had even this much belated interest in or knowledge of the motorcade. Naturally, the Report could not have quoted what evidence the Commission had because it was opposed to the presumption the Report made, about which there was no evidence. With regard to the route of the motorcade, the Report is on even shakier ground, for it had to presume not only that Oswald knew about it, but that he knew the exact route directly in front of the Depository Building. But it could not make a totally unsupported presumption of the route since critical comment had already been printed questioning anybody's knowledge of the route.

To overcome this, the Report quotes from the Dallas papers in a less than honest or complete manner (R39-40). Selecting from the ten issues of the morning and evening papers for the period November 15-19, it could say only that two of the four articles it referred to even mentioned the motorcade touching Elm Street. The contrary version, with Elm Street excluded, appeared just as frequently. On this basis, all anyone could have if he read the papers was confusion. But there was one map printed, and this the Report avoided like the plague.

The entire front page of the morning paper of the day of the assassination was devoted to the President's visit and to the political situation in which it was being made. Buried in the body of one of these stories was some text the Report could and did use to connote something sinister on Oswald's part: "On the morning of the President's arrival, the Morning News noted the motorcade would travel through downtown Dallas onto the Stemmons Freeway, and reported 'the motorcade will travel slowly so that crowds "can get a good view" of the President and his wife.' " This planted the idea that Oswald knew all about the slow pace and found assurance of a better target because of it. Of course, the Report in this quotation does not find it necessary to use the exact language, "Main and Stemmons Freeway," as the route to the place of the luncheon meeting, with no mention of Elm Street.

And what the Report totally suppresses is the major reference to the route on the front page of that issue of that paper. Headed "Presidential Motorcade Route," there is a map showing the entire route, beginning at the airport This map shows the motorcade would not leave Main Street from the time it got on it until it reached the Triple Underpass. It showed the motorcade was not going to turn off into Elm Street, as it did. And it further showed that the planned route included an illegal turn into the Stemmons Freeway, the turn the Report infers could not be made because it was against regulations. And as though to answer the as yet unasked question, as though it knew the future significance of its front-page map, the paper marked the point of the only turn from Main Street with an arrow labeled "Triple Underpass."

The authors of the Report found a small fragment of type they could wrench from the paper and use out of context. But they seemed unable to refer to a map two columns wide, so large the authors did not have to read the entire front page to find it. There is a photograph of this map on page 65.

It is fair to regard this as a less than completely honest representation. It likewise seems fair to describe the two basic assumptions with which the Report begins its narrative of the assassination as in contradiction to the Commission's own evidence. This showed Oswald had neither knowledge of nor interest in the motorcade and that, instead of going to Irving to get the rifle the night before the assassination, even if he had known of and been interested in the President's visit despite the contrary evidence, he had no way of knowing the route would be under the window from which the Report alleges he fired.

The Commission had to prove that Oswald had taken the rifle to the scene. With the possible exception of Oswald's alleged and completely unproved attempt on the life of General Edwin Walker (Marina's tale that even General Walker himself did not believe), no one reported any rifle in Oswald's hands for months. Actually, there is no proof that Oswald ever had the Serial No. C-2766 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in his possession after getting it at the post office And that is the rifle the Commission held was the assassination weapon To try and show that on the morning of the crime Oswald might have taken the rifle to work, the Commission called four witnesses, not counting his wife, who was in bed and had not seen him leave the house.

By means of these witnesses, the Commission attempted to show that Oswald purloined the materials from his place of employment and fabricated a long bag at home, disassembled the rifle, saving but a few inches in its overall length, placed it in the bag and took it to and into the Book Depository. It never attempted to show how or, in fact, that he did take it from the first-floor entrance up to the sixth and through the entire length of that floor, on which a number of people were continuously employed. In questioning those witnesses so employed, the Commission carefully avoided this question.

Without exception each of these four witnesses either swore that Oswald could not have carried the rifle (2H245ff.; 2H10ff.; 7H531ff.), did not carry it into the building (6H377), or did not take the materials for manufacturing the bag to the Paine residence in Irving (2H242),and, in fact, could not have (6H356ff.). Each and all of the witnesses proved the impossibility of the Commission's reconstruction. These were the only witnesses the Commission examined on this matter, except for technical experts on unessential aspects. And even their testimony does not support the Commission. Yet the Commission's conclusion is that Oswald did all of these things. Every single and essential aspect is clearly and unequivocally disproved by the witnesses in one of the unfortunately rare instances in which the Commission pressed its witnesses in search of fact. The more the Commission tried to get the witnesses to change or alter their stories, the more positive the witnesses became in their testimonies.

The alleged assassin's day began with his mind so untroubled he overslept his rendezvous with destiny, as the Commission describes it. Even the night before, which the Commission portrays as one of serious domestic disturbance, Marina said he played with the children and was not particularly agitated" (Exhibit 994 18H596). In her narrative prepared at the beginning of her period of protective custody, she recounts her husband's early retirement, following his revelation that he knew so little of the next day's events in Dallas he could not tell her how to view them on television.

"In the morning," she continued, "I did not usually get up to make breakfast for Lee -- he always did that for himself. (This of the man the Commission elsewhere said never ate breakfast, quoting Marina as its authority!) At 7:00 a.m. the alarm rang, but Lee did not get up. After 10 minutes I woke him up and began to feed Rachel. He said I should not get up, got dressed, said good-bye and went out . . ."

Having almost missed the opportunity for the place in history the Commission said was his driving compulsion, Oswald had to hurry. He was due half a block away, dressed and with his "large and bulky package" 10 minutes from the time Marina awakened him. His "ride," Buell Wesley Frazier, testified the normal departure time was 7:20 (2H210ff.; 7H531ff.). In 10 minutes he had to dress (Marina was disturbed because he had not eaten) and get to Frazier's home, meanwhile either picking up the package the Report says he carried or, so far as we know, even having to make the package. On this the Report says nothing except in conclusion. It merely places his departure from the Paine home at about 7:15 a.m. (R131). It quotes Mrs. Paine as saying that the previous night she had worked in the garage, the place in which the rifle was normally kept (R130). Mrs. Paine noticed the light in the garage was on and was certain she had not left it on. She "went out to the garage to paint some children's blocks, and worked in the garage for half an hour or so." That garage was a monument to clutter. It was so stuffed with the Paine and Oswald property not elsewhere in the home there was hardly room to move about in it. The Report makes no reference to this, nor does it reveal how Ruth Paine could have worked in it for a half-hour or so with out noticing anything odd or foreign, such as the "long and bulky package." And, although the garage provided little walking space, the Commission does not explain how Mrs. Paine could have maneuvered about in it for not less than half an hour first collecting her paint brushes and blocks, and then painting and arranging the blocks and storing the paints and brushes, without at least stumbling on the rifle, which the Report insists was "usually" kept lying on the floor, wrapped in a blanket (R131).

The Report leaves us to assume that Oswald had made his package earlier the night before, even though he was known to have spent much of his time playing with the children. Neither Marina nor Ruth saw him in the garage, which was entered from the kitchen. We must also assume that, having removed the rifle from its blanket wrapping, it was normal for Oswald to replace the blanket in its "normal" place on the floor, being careful to make the blanket look as though it still contained the rifle. And, of course, we must assume that such an elaborate operation served a purpose not served by merely putting the blanket elsewhere.

The narrative continues with Mrs. Linnie Mae Randle (2H245ff.), Frazier's sister with whom he lived, noticing Oswald approaching with a "heavy brown bag," in the Commission's words rather than Mrs. Randle's. "He gripped the bag in his right hand, near the top. 'It tapered like this as he hugged it in his hand. It was . . . more bulky toward the bottom than toward the top.' " If this seems like a novel or dangerous way to carry a rifle, especially with the metal portion not attached to the stock and more likely to punch a hole in paper, it did not seem so to the Commission. And if Oswald's "gripping" and "hugging" might be expected to leave marks of at least crumpling on the bag, the Commission did not so expect and the bag itself (Exhibit 142, 16H513; Exhibit 1304, R132, etc.) shows no markings of the shape of a rifle, assembled or disassembled. The creases where it was folded in four are still sharp and clear. After untold handling, examination and testing, these creases are strong enough to keep the bag from lying flat when extended to its full length.

"Mrs. Randle estimated that the package was approximately 28 inches long and about 8 inches wide," according to the Report. It was not quite that way. Mrs. Randle first described the manner in which Oswald was carrying his package. In the part the Commission does not quote in the Report, Mrs. Randle said, ". . . it almost touched the ground" (7H248).

This was not lost upon the Commission, for when Assistant Counsel Joseph A. Ball misinterpreted Mrs. Randle's testimony asking "And where was his hand gripping the middle of the package" Mrs. Randle corrected him, saying, "No, sir; the top . . . " Ball reiterated her correction and her description of the package as almost touching the ground.

Knowing Oswald's sleeve length and height, as the Commission did, measuring the length of a package he could have held in his grip without touching the ground was simple and provided an accurate means of approximating the length. Actually, it requires a tall man, which Oswald was not, or a man with abnormally short arms (we don't know his arm length), for a 28-inch package to even barely clear the ground. The Commission had a passion for reconstructions. All of them had unsatisfactory results and at best jeopardized the Commission's findings. Some disproved the Commission's theories. The minimum length of the disassembled rifle was 34.8 inches (R133). The Report does not quote a package reconstruction.

Instead, it worked on its witnesses. Shown Exhibit 364, a replica bag, Mrs. Randle maintained, "Well, it wasn't that long, I mean it was folded down at the top as I told you. It definitely wasn't that long." Asked to stand up and use the bag as a prop, she reiterated it was too long. Then asked, "About how long would you think the package would be, just measure it right here," Mrs. Randle did, saying ". . . like this." Ball confirmed her markings, saying, "From here to here?" and is given an affirmative reply, concluding, ". . . with that folded down this much for him to grip in his hand."

The measurement was neither taken nor recorded. Anxious as the Commission was for a specific measurement, one can only speculate about this "oversight." Counsel Ball continued working on his witness, even asking her to guess the length of the entire bag, which she had not seen. Finally, she folded the bag to the length she thought it might have been, while Ball told her he was not sure which was the top and which the bottom of the bag. This time the length was measured, and it would seem the new length suited Mr. Ball better, for he measured it at 28½ inches. Mrs. Randle informed him, "I measured 27 last time." Earlier Ball had described another estimate of the total length of the bag by Mrs. Randle at "about two feet." She had indicated it might have been "a little bit more."

Thus, by both her description of the haphazard manner in which the bag was carried and in her repeated estimates and markings of the length of the bag, Mrs. Randle emerges as a consistent, highly credible witness. She was neither persuaded, cajoled nor deceived into altering her account in the slightest. Certainly the manner in which Oswald was carrying the bag is the kind of image she could clearly have kept in mind. And it fixed the bag's maximum length.

Her brother, whom the Report next quotes, was completely consistent with her, and his account likewise never varied. The Report says, "Frazier recalled that one end of the package was under Oswald's armpit and the lower part was held in his right hand so that it was carried straight and parallel to his body." On December 1, 1963, he had shown FBI agents the space he recalled the bag occupying on the back seat of his car (and who would have put a knocked-down rifle on the back seat, from which the first sudden stop could have hurled it to the floor, attracting attention and risking the rupture of the bag and revelation of its contents?). By the FBI measurement, 27 inches was the maximum possible length. Frazier's own estimate of the size when he first saw the package, which he assumed contained curtain rods, was two feet. When Frazier was questioned (2H210ff.; 7H531ff.), it turned out that he had once worked in a department store and had, in the course of that employment, handled packaged curtain rods.

At the time of the assassination, Frazier was picked up by the police. Before the Commission he was grilled and pushed in an effort to get him to change his description of the length of the package. At one point, when Frazier conceded the package might have been a bit wider than the five or six inches he remembered, Ball tried to interpret this as a concession of greater length until Frazier specified "width-wise not lengthwise."

After Ball declared there were no more questions, he suddenly told Frazier the Commission had the rifle in the bag and asked him to "stand up here and put this under your arm and then take a hold of it at the side." Frazier demurred. Ball ordered him, "Turn around." Frazier continued to demur, with explanations that accomplished nothing. He again insisted Oswald had the package "tucked under his shoulder" when asked by the Chairman, adding again that Oswald "had it cupped in his hand." The Chief Justice said, "I beg your pardon? and Frazier replied, "I said from where I noticed it he had it cupped in his hands. And I don't see how you could have it anywhere other than under your armpit" without the end being visible. To Ball he insisted the package was not and could not have been carried in any position other than the one he described. After reiterating his observations to Ball, Frazier added that he had followed Oswald to the place they worked for two blocks "and you couldn't tell he had a package from the back." Then, viewing Frazier holding the package rifle, Ball conceded the package extended "almost to the level of your ear."

In the course of attempting to get Frazier to modify his testimony, which the Report accurately depicts as two feet "give or take a few inches," the Commission merely established the clarity and positiveness of his recollection. As a by-product, this hearing called attention to the Commission's failure to allude to the third dimension of the package, its thickness. Frazier, however, unintimidated even if nervous, did this in two ways. First, he testified that from the manner in which Oswald carried the package "you couldn't tell he had a package," hardly a description of a bulky military rifle, especially when carried in two pieces (2H243). Earlier, when pressured by Ball about the narrower width of the package than suited the Commission's theory, Frazier gave the lawyer a polite lecture on measurements, saying, "if you were using a yardstick or one of these little -- " Ball interrupted to declare, "I was using my hand." Frazier replied, "I know you were, but there are some different means to measure it," and specified the difference between a rigid yardstick and a flexible tape measure, which would follow the contour of the package and, by including some of the thickness, result in a greater width measurement.

In the Report (pp. 133-4), of all the testimony by Frazier pinpointing the maximum length of the package, testimony in which Frazier never budged from either his opinion of the length or his observation of the position in which the bag was carried, the Commission quotes (from 2H241) this: "'Like I said, I remember that I didn't look at the package very much . . . but when I did look at it he did have his hands on the package like that,' and at this point Frazier placed the upper part of the package under his armpit and attempted to cup his right hand beneath the bottom of the bag."

The direct quotation is accurate. The rest is not. It is, in fact, a distortion and misrepresentation difficult to regard as accidental. Where the Report says, "at this point Frazier placed the upper part of the package under his armpit," Frazier was actually in the middle of his explanation, previously quoted, of the width, not the length, of the package, concluding with the specification that he was talking about the width and not the length. The quoted excerpt related to width, not to length.

This is not the only part of Frazier's testimony reflected in the Report in a manner other than as intended. The Report states that, when they arrived at work, "Frazier parked the car in the company parking lot about two blocks north of the Depository Building. Oswald left the car first, picking up the brown paper bag, and proceeding to the building ahead of Frazier. Frazier walked behind . . . It was the first time that Oswald had not walked with Frazier from the parking lot to the building entrance." (R133)

The sinister implication is that this had something to do with secrecy or stealth on Oswald's part, or was at least a reflection of his state of mind because of the dastardly deed he plotted. This is not only unwarranted; it is diametrically opposite to the truth, on which Frazier was explicit: "(I) looked at my watch . . . saw we had a few minutes . . . sat there . . . watching (railroad) Cars . . ., but I was letting my engine run and getting to charge up my battery, because when you start and stop you have to charge up your battery" (2H227-8). A glance at Frazier's ancient vehicle (Exhibit 447, 17H167) would seem to remove any doubt of the desirability of this practice.

There is none of Frazier's testimony about Oswald that is not opposed to the Commission's theories. He found Oswald truthful, quiet, devoted to his family, especially fond of his children and smiling and happy in talking of and being with them. Oswald never talked politics and made no mention of the President's visit or the motorcade (2H219ff.). Frazier's account of the clothes Oswald was wearing that day was in contradiction to the Commission's, and Frazier saw more of these clothes than anyone else. Frazier also insisted the shots came from a point other than the one the Commission alleged, and in this he was in accord with a majority of the observers, including police of various kinds.

Frazier's truthfulness was established, according to Detective R. S. Stovall, by a polygraph examination (7H190, 21H602). Stovall's words were, "The examination showed conclusively that Wesley Frazier was truthful and that the facts stated by Frazier in his affidavit were true."

But the Commission had to use Frazier to get Oswald to the building with any kind of a package, even though Frazier, as did his sister, proved Oswald could not possibly have been carrying the rifle. With complete and total disregard of the only testimony it had, the commission concluded exactly the opposite from its only evidence. It said simply, "Frazier and Randle are mistaken" (R134).

So Frazier put Oswald at the building and was himself about 50 feet behind the presumed about-to-be assassin. This is how the Report gets him into the building: "One employee, Jack Dougherty, believed that he saw Oswald coming to work, but he does not remember Oswald had anything in his hands as he entered the door. No other employee has been found who saw Oswald enter that morning." (R131) At this point the Report refers by footnote to that part of Dougherty's testimony (6H373-82) appearing on pages 6H376-7.

The excerpt from the Report needs clarification. It was Oswald, not Dougherty, who was then corning to work, and Oswald, not Dougherty, who went through the door. Dougherty was trusted with extra responsibilities by his employer and reported to work an hour earlier than the other employees.

Asked, "Did you see Oswald come to work that morning?" Dougherty told Ball, unhesitatingly, "Yes -- when he first came into the door."

"When he came in the door?" the interrogator repeated, and Dougherty said, "Yes." Then Ball wanted to know, "Did you see him come in the door?"

"Yes; I saw him when he first came in the door -- yes," was Dougherty's unqualified reply. So much for the use of the word "believed" to describe Dougherty's testimony.

Now for the language that says Dougherty "does not remember Oswald had anything in his hands."

Dougherty had answered the question less positively than satisfied Ball, saying, "I didn't see anything if he did." Ball then asked him additional questions, to which Dougherty replied, "I didn't see anything in his hands . . ."

"In other words, you would say positively he had nothing in his hands?" Ball demanded. (All emphasis added.)

"I would say that -- yes, sir," was Dougherty's equally unqualified response.

Oswald was now in the building. The only person who saw him enter swore "positively" that Oswald had no package in his hand, and the package the Commission was concerned about was in a bag 38 inches long with two heavy items each of awkward and uncomplimentary shape

The Report does not consider it necessary to do more than get Oswald to the building and into it. It dismissed the unequivocal and uncontradicted testimony of Frazier and his sister by deciding they were "mistaken." it paid even less heed to Dougherty, the only witness who saw Oswald enter the building when he said "positively" Oswald carried no package -- it just ignored him in its conclusions (R137).

These conclusions also state Oswald "took paper and tape from the wrapping bench of the Depository and fashioned a bag large enough to carry the disassembled rifle."

Just as there is no evidence of any kind that the rifle was ever disassembled, there is no evidence that Oswald ever took any paper and/or tape. There were no eyewitnesses. There was absolutely no evidence -- not even a wild rumor about either. The Commission simply decided that, because the unassembled rifle was 5.4 inches shorter, it was 5.4 inches closer to the only testimony on the size of the package. It did the same with the packaging materials. Having decided that Oswald carried the rifle into the building in a bag, despite the fact that its only evidence was exclusively to the contrary, the Commission had no problem deciding that Oswald had just taken these materials and made the bag. It does not say whether he made the bag in the building before taking it to Irving -- which involved the possibility, if not the probability, of detection -- or made it in Irving, which the statements by Marina and Ruth Paine would seem to eliminate as a possibility. He just made it, unseen and somewhere. Each reader may decide for himself where and how. It made no difference to the Commission. And it makes no difference, in any event, for there is no evidence that he made or used it.

Having made the bag of a material that had the remarkable quality of preserving fold markings imperishably and accepting none other, or having just stolen this paper, Oswald had to get the bag or the paper to Irving. The only man who ever took him there, and without doubt the man who took him there the evening of November 21, was asked about this. His answer was: Oswald had nothing that evening and never had. Ball asked about both a package and about "anything," and Frazier was positive in his response to both forms of the question (2H242). And the package was much too large to have been pocketed.

Meanwhile, the Commission's identification expert is invoked in a section erroneously entitled "Scientific Evidence Linking Rifle and Oswald to Paper Bag" (R135-7). Through FBI questioned-documents expert James C. Cadigan, the Commission established that a sample of paper taken from the wrapping table the day of the assassination could be identified as from the same roll as that from which the paper for the bag came (R135; 4H93). This related no more to Oswald than to anyone else with access to the building. But in also establishing that a roll of paper was consumed in three days (R136), the Commission clearly proved that Oswald could not have taken the bag and/or the paper to Irving, for the materials could have been taken at most two days (if, indeed, at all) before the day of the assassination. Unless, of course, it could prove that the Depository had other rolls of paper from the manufacturer's same batch, which it could not prove (R136).

Mr. Cadigan's science further weakened the Commission's theory in two additional ways, which the Report ignores. First, he established that the tape had been run through the tape-dispensing machine. The significance of this will become clear in discussion of the totally suppressed testimony of Troy Eugene West. Then he reported on his careful scientific examination of the bag to see "if there were any significant markings or scratches or abrasions or anything by which it could be associated with the rifle . . ." The result? There were none (4H97).

The Commission found it expedient to ignore this part of its own expert's testimony on his scientific inquiry on its behalf in referring to the "Scientific Evidence Linking Rifle and Oswald to Paper Bag."

Instead, it quoted Paul M. Stombaugh, another FBI laboratory expert, on his examination of "a single brown delustered viscose fiber and several light green cotton fibers." Stombaugh compared these few fibers with the blanket and found they did match some of those in the blanket. Despite this, "Stombaugh was unable to render an opinion that the fibers which he found had probably come from the blanket . . ." (R137).

Briefly, then, the "Scientific Evidence Linking Rifle and Oswald to Paper Bag" did not do any such thing. It may fairly be said this "evidence" did the opposite.

Custodian of the wrapping table at which these materials are kept was Troy Eugene West (6H356-63). West had been employed by the Book Depository for 16 years and was so attached to his place of work that he never left his bench, even to eat lunch. His only separation from it, aside from the necessary functions of life (and this is presumed, it is not in his testimony), was on arrival before work, to get water for coffee.

He knew of no time when any employees had ever borrowed any tape or ever used it for themselves. Asked if Oswald ever helped him or if he ever noticed Oswald around either the paper or the tape, both of which are at his bench, West replied: Never. Asked, "Do you know whether or not he (Oswald) ever borrowed or used any wrapping paper for himself?" West declared, "No, sir; I don't." Assistant Counsel David W. Belin, conducting the examination, repeated, "You don't know" and West reaffirmed his answer, replying, "No; I don't." (6H360)

If this is not the reason the Report ignores West's testimony, what follows is equally destructive to what the Commission wants believed. West reiterated his testimony that, so far as he knew, no employees "ever" used or borrowed the tape for themselves, and Belin turned to questions about the dispensing machine itself. The Commission had already established that two of the cuts on the tape had been made by the machine, presuming them to be the cuts at the end of a length of tape that was later torn into smaller pieces by hand. Hence, Belin wanted to know, "If I wanted to pull the tape, pull off a piece without getting water on it, would I just lift it up without going over the wet roller and get the tape without getting it wet?" West explained this would be impossible, saying, "You would have to take it out. You would have to take it out of the machine. See, it's put on there and run through a little clamp that holds it down, and you pull it, well then, the water, it gets on it." (6H361)

Having proved that the tape on the bag had been dispensed by the machine, the Commission thus established beyond any question that the tape was wet when dispensed and had to be used immediately, if not at the bench, at least very close to it. And the man who was always there established that Oswald never was.

The only possibility remaining, an effort to get West to admit that he was away from his bench, was totally unsuccessful and had the opposite effect.

"No, sir," he reiterated, "I never did hardly ever leave the first floor. That is just I stayed there where all my work was, and I just stayed there" (6H362).

The only suggestion of any connection between Oswald and the bag was through fingerprints. Because Oswald worked where the bag was reported to have been found, the presence of his fingerprints was totally meaningless. Sebastian F. Latona, supervisor of the FBI's Latent Finger-print Section, developed a single fingerprint and a single palmprint he identified as Oswald's. More significantly, "No other identifiable prints were found on the bag" (R135).

After all the handling of the bag attributed to Oswald, first in making it, then in packing it, then taking it to Frazier's car, putting it down in the car, picking it up and carrying it toward if not into the building for two blocks, and then, at least by inference, through the building, and when removing and assembling a rifle Marina testified he kept oiled and cleaned, how is it to be explained that he left only two prints? The only thing as strange is that this bag was also handled by the police and was the only evidence they did not photograph, according to their testimonies, where found. Yet the freshest prints, those of the police, were not discovered.

"Oswald lied when he told Frazier that he was returning to Irving to obtain curtain rods," the Report declares (R182). Because it evaluated as false some of those things Oswald is reported to have told the police, the Commission decided to believe none of what he is alleged to have said.

On what basis did the Commission prove Oswald had no curtain rods with him that fateful morning? Was there an immediate and thorough search for them (if for anything)? Not at all. The Commission's "evidence" is a long delayed afterthought. On August 31, 1964, almost as the Report was going to press and more than nine months following the assassination, the Commission wrote the FBI Dallas office asking that Roy S. Truly, manager of the Depository, "be interviewed to ascertain if he knows of any curtain rods having been found in the TSBD building after November 22, 1963."

The FBI reported, ". . . He stated that it would be customary for any discovery of curtain rods to immediately be called to his attention and that he has received no information to the effect that any curtain rods were found . . ." (Exhibit 2640, 25H899).

Aside from the inference that Truly had special regulations about the finding of curtain rods, this means nothing. After more than nine months, who knew what might or might not have been taken from a building into which a rifle was taken without detection? Truly had testified twice, at great length and under oath, without having once been asked about the curtain rods. Nobody cared to ask him. On August 3 he supplied the Commission with an affidavit (7H591) attesting that the door in the vestibule outside the employees' lunchroom was usually closed because it was controlled by an automatic mechanism. It would seem that it was not until the Commission called Oswald a liar in the draft of the Report that, too late for the inclusion of a sworn statement, the staff belatedly asked for a secondhand, unsworn and meaningless opinion.

One possibility remained: Did the "room" Oswald rented: need curtain rods? The Report quotes the owner, not the housekeeper (R130), as saying the room "had curtains and curtain rods." It may well have, but the Commission need not have depended upon the word of a landlady who could hardly be expected to say her tenants lived in a fishbowl. This room was so thoroughly searched by the police immediately after the assassination that on a check the following day nothing was found except a single paper clip. Many police and media people were there. The hearings abound with identical pictures repeated numerous times under different exhibit numbers, and both the report and the Hearings have large areas of blank spaces on countless pages. Why, then, was there no picture showing whether, in fact, Oswald's cubicle had curtains?

Perhaps Joachim Joesten, the German writer, has supplied the answer. He wrote a book on the Kennedy assassination in early 1964. The Commission's general counsel, under date of March 4, wrote to him and asked for copies in German and English. His wife was visited by two FBI agents in New York. And the Assistant Legal Attache of the United States Embassy in Bonn located the surprised Joesten in Hamburg and flew there to interview him, declining to discuss his business by phone for reasons of national security. All wanted the same thing, Joesten's information. Joesten said he supplied it.

Mr. Rankin's promise to Joesten was only too well kept. He had said, "You may rest assured that the material you furnish us will not be circulated beyond the files of the Commission."

On page 32 of the book, Joesten said, "With a ground floor window front running the full length of his room and opening out on the neighbor's driveway, Oswald was indeed living, as his landlady herself said in the course of a 45-minute talk I had with her, in 'the most public room' of the house. A goldfish has more privacy in his glass bowl than Oswald had behind this unbroken window front, especially at night, when his room was glaringly lighted by an unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling."

The Report has an entire section of perhaps 15,000 words devoted to what the Commission entitled "Speculations and Rumors" (Appendix 12). If there were any the Commission had assured itself of knowing, they came from Joesten.

There is no reference to this in that entire Appendix.

The Report of the Commission which called Oswald a liar ends its major subsection, "The Rifle in the Building," in its chapter titled "The Assassin" and labeled "Conclusion" (R137) as

follows:

"The preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald (1) told the curtain rod story to Frazier to explain both the return to Irving on a Thursday and the obvious bulk of the package which he intended to bring to work the next day; (2) took paper and tape from the wrapping bench of the Depository and fashioned a bag large enough to carry the disassembled rifle; (3) removed the rifle from the blanket in the Paines' garage on Thursday evening; (4) carried the rifle into the Depository Building, concealed in the bag; and (5) left the bag alongside the window from which the shots were fired."