The Second Oswald

by Richard Popkin

  Another possible clue about Oswald or second Oswald is that the Secret Service thought Oswald was responsible for ordering the anti-Kennedy “Wanted for Treason” leaflets, distributed in Dallas on November 21. The Secret Service pointed out that the copy had Oswald’s typical spelling errors and that the person who ordered them around November 14 resembled Oswald, except for his hair (XXV: 657).

  The next major, and final, report of the second Oswald’s appearance is right after the assassination. One eyewitness to the shooting from the Book Depository, J. R. Worrell, saw a part of a gun sticking out of the building, heard four shots (and he is one of the few who heard four, rather than three), and ran behind the building. He there saw a man come rushing out of the back of the building, and run around it in the opposite direction. According to a Dallas policeman, K. L. Anderton, Worrell told him that when he saw Oswald’s picture on TV, “he recognized him as the man he saw run from the building” (XXIV: 294). It is an interesting indication of the Commission’s concern in clearing up mysteries in the case, that when Worrell testified, all he was asked about this episode is whether he told the FBI the man looked like Oswald. Worrell said he didn’t know (II: 201). He was not asked if the man did in fact look like Oswald, which he had told Anderton.

  The final appearance of the second Oswald was also reported by Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, one of the most efficient policemen at the scene of the crime that day. (See Appendix IX.) Craig heard one shot, followed by two others, and like so many others of the Sheriff’s men at that time, he ran immediately up to the knoll and then to the railroad yards looking for the assassin. When he came back down to the area where Kennedy was shot, he ran into one of the puzzling witnesses, Rowland, who, according to Craig, told him that he had seen two men in windows on the sixth floor of the Book Depository before the shooting, one of whom was holding a gun with a sight. After talking to Rowland, Craig looked for the place where the bullet that missed the Presidential car had struck. About fifteen minutes after the shooting, he heard a whistle, and next saw a man run down from the Book Depository to the freeway, where he got in a light-colored Rambler station wagon, and then was driven away. Deputy Sheriff Craig tried to stop the car, but failed.

  Much later that day, around 5 P.M., after taking part in the search of the Book Depository, he telephoned in a report of what he had seen, and he was asked to come down to police headquarters and to look at the suspect that they had in custody. He immediately and positively identified Oswald as the man he had seen get into the station wagon and be driven away (VI: 260-73, XIX: 524, XXIII: 817 and XXIV: 23). Sic transit Oswaldus secundus.

  Craig saw Oswald in Captain Fritz’s office, and reported that Oswald made several remarks. When asked about the station wagon, he said it belonged to Mrs. Paine, and that she had nothing to do with the matter. Then, after Craig identified him, Oswald said cryptically, “Everyone will know who I am now” (VI: 270). When Craig testified on April 1, 1964, he was asked if he felt that the man he saw in Captain Fritz’s office was the same man he had seen running towards the station wagon; he replied, “I still feel strongly that it was the same person” (VI: 273).

  The Warren Commission dismissed all these incidents as mistaken identifications since they couldn’t have been Oswald. The Commission treated Craig’s case very gingerly. Although Craig may have seen someone enter a station wagon 15 minutes after the assassination, the person he saw was not Lee Harvey Oswald, who was far removed from the building at that time (Report, p. 253). There are more cases than I have mentioned here. Some are dubious, some possible. I have also heard of some cases that are not in the twenty-six volumes but seem quite startling and important. I noticed only one place in the twenty-six volumes where the conception of a second Oswald occurred to the Commission. One gets the impression that the hard-pressed staff found it convenient to ascribe all the incidents to tricks of memory and other aberrations, notwithstanding the fact that many witnesses were apparently reliable and disinterested people whose testimony was confirmed by others. Furthermore, they must have had considerable conviction to persist with their stories in the face of questioning by the FBI and Commission lawyers. The evidence seems to me compelling that there was a second Oswald, that his presence was being forced on people’s notice, and that he played a role on November 22, 1963.

  It is interesting, and may well be significant that the groupings of double Oswald occurrences can be correlated rather closely with news reports of Kennedy’s plans to come to Dallas and of his route through the city. Fred Graham correctly states in the New York Times of August 28th that “Oswald got his job at the School Book Depository on October 15th, a month before anybody knew there would be a Presidential motorcade.” But the Report tells us that the Dallas Times-Herald of September 13th stated that Kennedy was to visit Dallas; that both Dallas papers on September 26th (the date of the Odio episode) confirmed Kennedy’s plan to visit the city and indicated the event would take place on either November 21 or November 22 (Report, p. 40). Thereafter there was much comment about Kennedy’s impending visit in the papers, especially after the violent incidents that occurred during Adlai Stevenson’s visit on October 24th. On November 8th (when second Oswald was seen in the grocery store and the barbershop, and when real Oswald’s location is not known) the plans for the visit were confirmed in the newspaper.

  The Report also points out that the traditional parade route is down Main Street, which anyone could have figured out would bring Kennedy within one block of the Book Depository; after Main Street, the procession was to go on to the Trade Mart. This route was mentioned in the Dallas Times-Herald on November 16th, and a detailed plan of the route, including the fateful turn onto Houston and Elm, appeared in both papers on the 19th. Thus, the second Oswald might have been planning his moves on the basis of the information about the Kennedy visit that he found in the press. We don’t know how well informed Oswald was about the President’s visit. Oswald apparently read other people’s newspapers in the lunchroom at the Book Depository, often a day later. When his wife asked him on the 21st where the parade was going to be, he professed no knowledge of the subject.

  Nine

  The Assassination

  If we take at face value the cases in which people saw someone who looked like Oswald, used Oswald’s name, imitated Oswald’s life and family, then how are they to be explained? I suggest that the duplication played a crucial part in the events of November 22. Second Oswald was an excellent shot, real Oswald was not. Real Oswald’s role was to be the prime suspect chased by the police, while second Oswald, one of the assassins, could vanish as Worrell and Craig saw him do. If the crime is reconstructed in this way, most of the puzzles and discrepancies can be more plausibly explained.

  Oswald, the methodical conspirator, goes to Irving on November 21, carrying nothing. He returns on November 22 with a package, about 27 inches long, attracting the attention of Frazier and his sister. The package vanishes by the time he enters the building. Oswald and second Oswald arrive separately. Since Oswald doesn’t talk much to people, second Oswald can easily enter undetected. Previously, or that day, one of them has brought the gun into the building. How? Two intriguing details suggest that this may not have been the case.

  These have been a problem. First, according to Marina, when Oswald went off to shoot General Walker, he left without the rifle and returned without it. He had secreted it in advance and afterwards. So he may have known how to do this. Second, a day or two before the assassination, someone had brought two rifles into the building, and Mr. Truly, the manager of the Book Depository, was playing with one of them, aiming it out a window (VII: 380-82). None of the employees mentioned this in their testimony, and it only came to the attention of the Commission because of a report that Oswald had mentioned it in one of his interrogation sessions. The other employees just had not noticed. In Dallas, guns are so common that on any day except the 22nd of November one could probably have carried one anywhere.

  Oswald makes
the bag that was later found. As we have seen, the only witnesses who saw the original bag were both adamant and cogent in insisting that it was not large enough to have held the gun; and the only witness who saw Oswald enter the building denied he carried a bag at all. By making a larger bag, Oswald creates an important, if confusing, clue. It connects him with the crime, helps to make him the prime suspect. At some time Oswald and second Oswald move several boxes to the sixth-floor window, either to establish another clue, or to make arrangements for the shooting, or both. (There is a set of still unidentified prints on the boxes [XXVI: 799-800], and all of the employees, police, and FBI who touched them have been eliminated.) Oswald seems to have spent a very normal morning at the Book Depository, and was seen working on various floors. He asked someone which way the parade was coming, as if to indicate that he was hardly concerned. Around noon Oswald told people he was going to have lunch. After that the next we know of him is that right after the shooting he was seen in the lunchroom, in complete calm, about to buy some soda pop.

  At 12:30 or 12:31, the shooting began and was of extreme accuracy, far beyond anything the Commission could achieve in its tests with Oswald’s rifle. Many of those present in the immediate area thought that the first shot at least came from the knoll area beyond the Book Depository. Some even saw smoke from this area (even though the Report claims there is no credible evidence of shots from any place except the Book Depository. It depends on what one considers credible). So, in keeping with the evidence, let us suppose that at least one shot came from the knoll. This might account for the throat wound that looked like an entrance wound to the Dallas doctors. Some others apparently came from the Book Depository. If these include Kennedy’s back wound, Connally’s wounds, and Kennedy’s fatal wounds, the marksman was magnificent at hitting moving targets.

  It should be stated that there is a problem for those, like myself, who doubt the “official” version of the shooting in accounting for what became of the bullets. If Kennedy was hit from in front in the throat, where did that bullet exit? If the first bullet entered his back and did not exit, what became of this bullet? If the bullet that injured Connally ended up in his femur, where is it? As yet I know of no satisfactory answers to these questions, unless the bullets fragmented or were deflected and disappeared in the confusion of that day.

  The Commission, of course, has a neat solution in its theory about bullet No. 399, since this bullet is supposed to be the one that did everything—entered Kennedy’s neck, caused the throat wound, wounded Governor Connally, and fell out of his body to be found in Parkland Hospital. But this explanation of the shooting only works if the Commission’s general theory is possible, that is, if Kennedy were shot in the neck and not in the back; if the first bullet really went through his body; and if No. 399 could in fact have inflicted so much damage, and yet emerged in such pristine condition. And if this could be shown the Commission would still have created other problems to solve.

  The critics at the present time have a genuine difficulty in offering an explanation that will accord with the scattered and incomplete bits of available data. The FBI expert, Frazier, was careful to leave open the possibility that a bullet could have been deflected on striking the President and “may have exited from the car” (V: 173). And two witnesses believed they had seen a bullet hit the pavement near the Presidential car, Mrs. Baker (VII: 508-09) and Mr. Skelton (VI: 238). But it may well be that at this stage of our understanding of the affair, no completely consistent account of all of the basic details can yet be given.

  It so happens that Oswald’s rifle could not be aimed accurately, and may not have been used at all. Strange as it may seem, no one ever checked to see if Oswald’s rifle had been used that day, and no one reported the smell of gunpowder on the sixth floor. Deputy Sheriff Mooney, the man who discovered the shells near the sixth-floor window in the Book Depository, was specifically asked by Senator Cooper, “Was there any odor in the area when you first got there?” He replied, “I didn’t particularly notice any,” and also said that he did not smell any powder (III: 289). The three shells found near the window are odd in that the FBI reported they had markings indicating they had been loaded twice, and possibly loaded once in another gun (XXVI: 449). Weisberg has some very interesting and intriguing discussions about this, about the boxes and the conflicting information about their arrangement, and about the positions from which the shooting could have been done from the Book Depository window, all indicating that the event could not have taken place as surmised by the Warren Commission.

  Weisberg suggests as a possibility, based on the information about the shell cases that J. Edgar Hoover sent the Commission (XXVI: 449-50), that the shells might have been fired from another gun, and then placed in Oswald’s in order to connect them with his rifle. As for the boxes, Weisberg shows there is no clear picture or statement as to how they were arranged when found, and thus there is no way of telling whether they would have helped or hindered in the shooting. And there is a problem, depending on how far the window was open at the time, as to the position an assassin would have had to assume in order to fire from there. (See Weisberg’s chapters 4 and 5.)

  Also, some of those who saw a second Oswald at the shooting range reported that he collected the ejected shells after they flew out, and put them away. (The FBI accumulated all the 6.5 shells they could find in the Dallas area, and none was from Oswald’s gun [XXVI: 600].) Certainly, if the marksman wanted to avoid detection, he would have collected the shells. If he had wanted Oswald’s gun implicated, he would have left them where they fell. It is an interesting point that no evidence turned up indicating that anyone, anywhere, sold Oswald ammunition. The very few in Dallas who handled these shells had not, to their knowledge, dealt with him (XXVI: 62-64). The rifle was not sold to him with any ammunition. And, as Weisberg stresses, no rifle shells were found in his possession, or in his effects. If second Oswald did the shooting, he could have had additional shells. A confederate could have bought them in Dallas or elsewhere.

  There is a report that Oswald bought ammunition in Fort Worth on November 2 (XXIV: 704), but Oswald was in Irving that day. According to an FBI report dated April 30, 1964, a Mr. Dewey C. Bradford saw Oswald in a gun shop in Fort Worth making the purchase, and Oswald told Bradford he had been in the Marine Corps. Bradford’s story was corroborated by his brother-in-law. This may have been another appearance of second Oswald. But there is no indication that Oswald ever had any rifle ammunition (the shell fired at General Walker was unidentifiable).

  Further, there were no identifiable fingerprints on the surface of the rifle, on the shells, or on the remaining bullet in Oswald’s rifle (though there were, apparently, a few ridges that might be from fingerprints on parts of the gun). The famous palm print was old, and on a part of the rifle only exposed when disassembled. According to the Commission, this rifle had to be assembled that day, loaded with four bullets, fired rapidly, and hidden, without any fingerprints appearing on it. If they were wiped away by Oswald, when and with what?

  According to the Commission’s time schedule, he had barely enough time to hide the gun and get downstairs. If he loaded and fired while wearing gloves, where are the gloves? Second Oswald solves these problems. He could have wiped everything or worn gloves, since we have no inventory of his effects, and he had ample time. The palm print shows that Oswald at some time handled the rifle. Nothing shows who handled it on November 22, 1963, the most interesting day in the rifle’s career.

  Another point of some interest is the connection between the ballistics evidence and Oswald’s rifle. The shells had been in Oswald’s gun. Bullet No. 399, the one found in Parkland Hospital, had been in Oswald’s gun. The mashed fragments (Commission Exhibits 567 and 569, XVII: 256-57) don’t match up too well with comparison bullets in Exhibits 568 and 570.

  To make the identification, the ballistics expert had to infer how the pictures would match if the fragments had not been distorted. Only good old No. 399 really ma
tches up (Commission Exhibit 566, XVII: 255). Bullets fired from Oswald’s rifle into anything seem to mash and shatter very easily. Were it not for the marvelous discovery of No. 399, there might have been quite a job connecting Oswald’s gun with the remains after the firing.

  Ten

  After the Shooting: The Tippit Affair

  After the shooting, what happened? According to my theory there were two assassins, plus Oswald, the suspect. Assassin one was on the knoll; assassin two, second Oswald, was on the sixth floor of the Book Depository. In spite of all the eye- and ear-witnesses who heard shooting from the knoll and saw smoke there, what I believe has kept reasonable people from believing anyone shot from there, besides the pompous denials of the Warren Commission, is that the sheriff’s men and the police swarmed into and over this area immediately and found nothing. Anyone holding a counter-theory to the Warren Commission’s, and accepting the evidence of at least one shot from the knoll, is obliged to give some explanation of how this might have occurred unobserved.

  When I visited the scene of the crime, the ideal place for the shot to have come from seemed to be the parking lot on the top of the knoll. It has a picket fence, perfect for resting a gun upon. It can’t be seen from the overpass. A shot or shots fired from there would get the right angles to conform to some of the medical evidence and the pictures. Then what became of the gunman? I submit he either put the gun in the trunk of a car and joined the throng looking for an assassin, or he, plus gun, got into the trunk of a car. Cars were moving out of the parking lot very soon after the shooting. Unfortunately, for simplicity’s sake, this requires two additional accomplices, one a shooter and one a driver. But it provides an easy way for someone to disappear from the scene right after the firing.