Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  Officer M. N. McDonald had come in the rear door and was standing at the side of the movie screen. In an article written the day after the assassination for the Associated Press, McDonald recalled:

  I noticed about 10 to 15 people sitting in the theater [which seated 900] and they were spread out good. A man sitting near the front, and I still don’t know who it was, tipped me the man I wanted was sitting in the third row from the rear of the ground floor and not in the balcony [as reported to the police dispatcher]. I went up the aisle and talked to two people sitting about in the middle. I was crouching low and holding my gun in case any trouble came. I wanted to be ready for it. I walked up the aisle and turned in Oswald’s row. We were no more than a foot from each other when he suddenly stood up and raised both hands. “It’s all over now,” he told me. Then he hit me a pretty good one in the face with his fist. I saw him going for his gun and I grabbed him around the waist. We struggled and fell around the seats for a few seconds and I got my hand on the butt of his pistol. But he had his hand on the trigger. I was pulling the gun toward me and I heard the hammer click. The primer [which detonates the bullet] was dented and it didn’t fire. . . . I’m sure glad that shell didn’t fire.

  McDonald’s account of Oswald’s gun misfiring was confirmed to the Warren Commission by theater patron John Gibson.

  But in his testimony to the Warren Commission, Brewer never mentions speaking to McDonald. In fact, he said he was standing by a rear exit when he was grabbed by a couple of policemen and asked what he was doing there. Brewer told them he was suspicious of a man in the theater. Brewer continued:

  And I and two or three other officers walked out on the stage and I pointed him out, and there were officers coming in from the front of the show . . . and officers going from the back. . . . I saw this policeman approach Oswald and Oswald stood up and I heard some hollering, I don’t know exactly what he said, and this man hit Patrolman McDonald. . . . I didn’t know his name [McDonald], but I had seen him quite a few times around Oak Cliff.

  Was the sitting man who tipped off McDonald to Oswald’s location Johnny Brewer? Apparently not, since Brewer stated he was standing and then on stage with several policemen. Brewer also never mentioned talking to McDonald, whom he said he recognized from around Oak Cliff. Who then was the man who tipped off McDonald to Oswald’s location?

  Brewer also told the Commission that as Oswald struggled with police, he heard one of the officers cry, “Kill the president, will you?”

  If members of the police department somehow knew that Oswald was an assassination suspect at this time, it is strong evidence that something was going on behind the scenes. The Warren Commission, while not contradicting Brewer’s account, nevertheless felt compelled to add, “It is unlikely that any of the police officers referred to Oswald as a suspect in the assassination.”

  George J. Applin, one of only two theater patrons questioned by the Warren Commission, told the Commission he was watching the movie when the lights came on and a policeman with a rifle or shotgun began moving down his aisle. Applin said he was sitting in the downstairs middle aisle about six rows from the back when the commotion began. He moved down the aisle to ask what was going on, when a policeman (apparently McDonald) passed him moving toward the rear. Applin then witnessed Oswald’s arrest.

  At the close of his Warren Commission testimony, Applin said:

  But, there is one thing puzzling me . . . and I don’t even know if it has any bearing on the case, but there was one guy sitting in the back row right where I was standing at, and I said to him, I said, “Buddy, you’d better move. There is a gun.” And he says—just sat there. He was back like this. Just like this. Just watching. . . . I don’t think he could have seen the show. Just sitting there like this, just looking at me.

  Applin told Commission attorney Joseph Ball twice he didn’t know the man, but in 1979, he told a news reporter that two days later, following the Oswald slaying, he recognized the man as Jack Ruby. Applin told the Dallas Morning News:

  At the time the Warren Commission had me down there at the Post Office in Dallas to get my statement, I was afraid to give it. I gave everything up to the point of what I gave the police there in town. . . . I’m a pretty nervous guy anyway because I’ll tell you what: After I saw that magazine where all those people they said were connected with some of this had come up dead, it just kind of made me keep a low profile. . . . [Jack] Ruby was sitting down, just watching them. And, when Oswald pulled the gun and snapped it at [McDonald’s] head and missed and the darn thing wouldn’t fire, that’s when I tapped him on the shoulder and told him he had better move because those guns were waving around. He just turned around and looked at me. Then he turned around and started watching them.

  Yet more questions have been raised by recent statements of concession stand operator Burroughs. In a 1987 interview with this author, Burroughs, who then had become assistant manager at the Texas Theater, reiterated his story of someone slipping in the theater about 1:35 p.m. that day. However, Burroughs claimed that it could not have been Oswald because Oswald entered the theater shortly after 1 p.m. Burroughs said Oswald entered only minutes after the feature started, which was exactly at 1 p.m.

  He said several minutes later, about 1:15 p.m., the man later arrested by police and identified as Oswald came to his concession stand and bought some popcorn.

  Burroughs said he watched the man enter the ground floor of the theater and sit down next to a pregnant woman. About twenty minutes after this, the outside doors opened and Johnny Brewer arrived.

  Several minutes after the man—identified by Burroughs as Oswald—took his seat, the pregnant woman got up and went upstairs, where the ladies’ restroom was located, said Burroughs. He said he heard the restroom door close shortly before Dallas police began rushing into the theater.

  Burroughs said, “I don’t know what happened to that woman. I don’t know how she got out of the theater. I never saw her again.”

  The story of Oswald being in the Texas Theater at the time of the Tippit shooting is further supported by Jack Davis, who went on to host Gospel Music Spotlight on a Dallas Christian radio station.

  Davis told this author that on the day of the assassination, he went to the Texas Theater to see the war movies. The eighteen-year-old Davis found a seat in the right rear section of the theater and recalled seeing the opening credits of the first film, which occurred a few minutes past the 1 p.m. starting time for the feature movie.

  He said he was somewhat startled by a man who squeezed past him and sat down in the seat next to him. He found it odd that this man would choose the seat adjacent to him in a nine-hundred-seat theater with fewer than twenty patrons in it. Davis said the man didn’t say a word but quickly got up and moved across the aisle and took a seat next to another person. Then shortly, the man got up and walked into the theater’s lobby. A few minutes later, Davis, whose attention had returned to the movie, vaguely remembered seeing the same man enter the center section of the theater from the far side.

  Twenty minutes or so after this incident, according to Davis, the house lights came on and when he walked to the lobby to ask why, he saw policemen running in the front door. He recalled:

  I was looking for the manager, but I never got to say anything because the policemen all came rushing past me. I did not see what went on in the theater, but I heard some scuffling going on. A few minutes later the police brought out this same man who had sat down next to me. He was shouting, “I protest this police brutality!” Later, of course, I learned that this was Lee Harvey Oswald.

  If Oswald was already in the theater at the time of the Tippit slaying as claimed by Burroughs and Davis, then who slipped in about 1:35 p.m.?

  Since it can be established that someone was impersonating Oswald in Dallas before the assassination, it is reasonable to suggest that someone besides Oswald lured police to the Texas Theater. But if this were the case, what happened to the man who slipped in without buying a ticket
? Initial police reports stated the suspect was in the theater’s balcony, this information perhaps coming from Burroughs’s belief that the man who sneaked in went upstairs.

  The Dallas police homicide report on J. D. Tippit of that day stated, “Suspect was later arrested in the balcony of the Texas Theater at 231 W. Jefferson.” A separate arrest report also stated Oswald’s arrest took place in the balcony.

  Was someone else arrested in the Texas Theater? Not according to the official record. However, there is now evidence that perhaps another man was taken from the rear of the theater.

  Bernard J. Haire owned Bernie’s Hobby House, located two doors east of the Texas Theater on West Jefferson.

  On November 22, 1963, Haire, who was unaware of the assassination, saw the street in front of his business fill up with police cars. He went outside and saw a crowd gathered at the Texas Theater but could not see what was happening. Haire was captured at the rear of the crowd in at least one photograph taken when Oswald was brought from the theater by police.

  Haire walked through his store and went into the alley, which he said was also filled with police cars. Walking toward the theater, Haire was opposite the rear door when police brought a young white man out. He said the man was dressed in a pullover shirt and slacks and appeared to be flushed as if having been in a struggle. Although Haire was unable to see whether the man was handcuffed, he was certainly under the impression that the man was under arrest. Haire watched police put the man in a patrol car and drive off.

  For nearly twenty-five years Haire believed he had witnessed the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. He was shocked to discover that Oswald had been handcuffed and brought out the front door of the theater. He commented, “I don’t know who I saw arrested.”

  Neither does anyone else, but it is eloquent testimony that apparently someone other than Oswald led police to the Texas Theater and someone other than Oswald shot Tippit.

  The arrested Oswald was taken from the Texas Theater shortly before 2 p.m. and driven downtown to police headquarters. He was quickly taken to the third-floor office of captain Will Fritz, the crusty chief of the Homicide Bureau, and placed in a seat in the hallway.

  Detective Guy Rose was already busy interviewing assassination witnesses. He soon took charge of Oswald. Rose recalled:

  I took the man to an interrogation office. I removed his handcuffs. I asked him to identify himself. He refused. In his pockets I found two pieces of identification. One card was for Lee Harvey Oswald, the other was for Alek Hidell. “Which are you?” He said, “You’re the cop. You figure it out.” He told me a lot of lies. Captain Fritz called me out at some time near 2:20 p.m. He said that the employees of the Texas School Book Depository were accounted for—except one. He told me to get some men together and get out to this address in Irving. I asked what the man’s name was. He said, “Lee Harvey Oswald.” I was stunned. “Captain,” I said, “I think this is Oswald, right in there.”

  With a suspect in custody, the entire complexion of the assassination investigation changed.

  Despite what was heralded as overwhelming proof of Oswald’s guilt in both killings, it was not until late Friday, November 22, 1963, that he was charged with the murder of Officer Tippit. And it was well after midnight before he was reportedly charged with the murder of President Kennedy.

  Dallas police and federal authorities quickly lost interest in any information, evidence, or detained suspects that did not fit in with the presumed activities of Lee Harvey Oswald.

  Yet many puzzling aspects continued to crop up in the aftermath of the assassination. There were reports of a man seen with a rifle near Cobb Stadium, located on the Stemmons Freeway route from downtown to the Trade Mart. Nothing came of this report.

  At Redbird Airport, a private field located just south of Dallas, it was reported that federal officials seized a plane with its engine running the afternoon of the assassination and placed it in a closed hangar under tight security. Two days before the assassination, the airport’s manager, Wayne January, said three men talked to him about renting an airplane on November 22 to fly to Mexico. He said one of the men remained sitting in a car and closely resembled Lee Harvey Oswald. None of these stories regarding possible escape plans were properly investigated.

  It is clear that someone was impersonating Oswald and if this “Oswald” did not leave Redbird, how did that person get out of Dallas?

  The answer perhaps may be found in the 2008 book by James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable. Here Douglass recounts the story of Air Force Sergeant Robert G. Vinson, a staff member of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) who by happenstance hitched a ride on an unmarked military transport plane from Washington to his home in Colorado. Vinson soon found himself flying over mid-America all alone in the C-54 transport. At one point an unemotional voice came over the plane’s radio stating, “The president was shot at 12:29.” The craft suddenly banked left and headed south, arriving some time later in Dallas, a city with which Vinson was familiar. Vinson was surprised when the plane made a sudden landing on a dirt strip near the Trinity River and picked up two men, who sat near him without saying a word. The taller of the pair, both wearing beige coveralls, appeared to be Latino, a Cuban perhaps, while the second man was a nondescript young white male. The transport, which had never turned off its engines, immediately took off in a westerly direction.

  Just after dusk, Vinson said, they landed at Walker Air Force Base at Roswell, New Mexico, which Vinson was told was closed and under alert. A few hours later, Vinson was able to continue his trip home. Watching the constant news coverage of the assassination, he was shocked to realize the man he saw get on the transport in Dallas was Lee Harvey Oswald. “He’s in jail,” Vinson’s wife argued, adding, “Keep quiet about it.” Vinson did keep quiet even after being assigned to CIA projects, apparently in an effort to keep him under surveillance and control. Finally, his conscience prompted Vinson to tell his story to a TV news reporter in 1993 and eventually write down his account in a book published in 2003. Needless to say, Vinson’s story never garnered national media attention.

  But if doubts remained in Dallas as to Oswald’s guilt, there were none in Washington. Less than two hours after the assassination—at a time when Dallas police were not even certain of the identity of the man they had in custody, FBI Director Hoover called Robert Kennedy. In a bureau document released to the public in 1977, Hoover wrote, “I called the attorney general at his home and told him I thought we had the man who killed the President down in Dallas.”

  Hoover went on to describe Oswald as an ex-Marine who had defected to Russia, a procommunist and a “mean-minded individual . . . in the category of a nut.” This incident raises the troubling question of how Hoover could have had all this information on Oswald at a time when the Dallas authorities were not even certain of their prisoner’s identity.

  On November 24, less than two hours after Oswald was killed in Dallas, Hoover telephoned the Johnson White House, saying, “The thing I am most concerned about . . . is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”

  In 1976 a Senate Select Committee report stated, “Almost immediately after the assassination, Director Hoover, the Justice Department and the White House ‘exerted pressure’ on senior Bureau officials to complete their investigation and issue a factual report supporting the conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin.”

  Over the assassination weekend, information on—and evidence against—Oswald continued to pile up. The news media was on around-the-clock alert. No bit of information was too insignificant to broadcast or publish.

  The Dallas Morning News of November 23, 1963, carried a story stating:

  [District Attorney Henry] Wade said preliminary reports indicated more than one person was involved in the shooting which brought death to the President and left Gov. John Connally wounded. . . . “This is the most dastardly act I’ve ever heard about,” Wade said. “Everyone who particip
ated in this crime—anyone who helped plan it or furnished a weapon, knowing the purposes for which it was intended—is guilty of murder under Texas law. They should all go to the electric chair.”

  But Wade’s initial claim of evidence of a conspiracy was quickly dropped as official statements began to center more and more on Oswald. Years later, Wade recalled why:

  Cliff Carter, President Johnson’s aide, called me three times from the White House that Friday night. He said that President Johnson felt any word of a conspiracy—some plot by foreign nations—to kill President Kennedy would shake our nation to its foundation. President Johnson was worried about some conspiracy on the part of the Russians. Oswald had all sorts of connections and affections toward Castro’s Cuba. It might be possible to prove a conspiracy with Cuba. But it would be very hard to prove a conspiracy with Russia. Washington’s word to me was that it would hurt foreign relations if I alleged a conspiracy—whether I could prove it or not. I would just charge Oswald with plain murder and go for the death penalty. So, I went down to the Police Department at City Hall to see Captain Fritz—to make sure the Dallas police didn’t involve any foreign country in the assassination.

  With an ever-growing pile of evidence of conspiracy in the assassination, the federal government began to assert itself as early as the afternoon of the assassination.

  The FBI Takes Control

  What criminal wouldn’t like to gain complete, secret, and unsupervised control over all the evidence in his case for two full days? Wouldn’t the verdict in his criminal trial be a swift “not guilty” if he had the opportunity to “doctor” the evidence?

  This is exactly the situation that occurred in the murder of President John F. Kennedy beginning the very day of the assassination. Although the proof of the disappearance and reappearance of the JFK evidence has been lying right in front of researchers since the fateful weekend, no one seems to have perceived the significance of the matter. However, at least one person with access to official federal government documents apparently recognized this significance and took steps to conceal it from the public.