* * * * *
Within the week, his repaired camera was returned, along with a newer one, a Keystone Capri Model K-27 with a carrying case.241 Orville had gotten what he wanted and a new camera to boot. He was happy.
Sometimes it was good to lose your temper.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
“A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.”
John F. Kennedy242
The next week, Orville went into work a more confident man carrying his new Keystone Capri. To most people, this small victory over the powerful FBI would seem inconsequential; but to Orville, it was a coup. He had been intimidated by men of power most of his life, and now he felt what they must feel daily. He liked the feeling.
As he replayed his story over and over to his coworkers, relishing their admiring comments and interest, J.C. Price, one of Orville’s supervisors at the Terminal Annex Building called him into his office.
“Orville,” he began, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that day… the day the president was killed,” he said. “I saw it all too. I was on the roof of the building wearing my new glasses. I saw it all.” Mr. Price stared at Orville from across his desk. “I wanted to ask you what you saw.”
Orville stared back at him, uncomfortable with being in his office. It wasn’t as if the two were friends. This was one of his supervisors.
Noting his hesitation, Mr. Price continued light-heartedly, “You don’t have to worry, Orville, I don’t work for the FBI, I’m not going to break your camera.” He laughed, making Orville feel more at ease. Orville had complained to everyone at work about the broken camera and bragged about how he talked to the FBI.
“Oh, you heard about that, did ya? Yeah, that was sumpin, Mr. Price,” Orville replied. “They did a better job of tearin’ that camera up than my three-year-old grandson could’ve done, and that’s saying sumpin’. Wanna see his picture?” He reached for his wallet quicker than Price could answer and reaching across the desk said, “That’s him, David… but I call him Bubba. Orville beamed with pride and Price reacted courteously.
“That’s a fine young man, Orville, a fine young man.”
Orville put his wallet back into his pocket. “So what did you want to know, Mr. Price?”
“Well Orville, I wanted to know if you saw what I saw. It seems the Warren Commission isn’t calling for my testimony. Did they ask for yours?”
Orville shook his head no.
“Seems odd don’t you think, especially since you took that film?” Price replied. “Maybe they just think we’re all hayseeds and can’t be trusted,” he continued.
“Maybe,” Orville agreed. “What did you see? One of the boys said you had new binoculars.”
J.C. Price continued, “Well, I had just bought me a new pair of high-powered glasses, not binoculars, you know, my older ones were giving me vision problems and I needed new ones to watch the employees in the yard and in the parking lots. We’ve gotten a lot of complaints about cars being messed with and we can’t afford to hire a security guard. Anyways, I was wearing them that day.”
Price took them off to show Orville.
“Look at ‘em, Orville,” he told him, “they’re a damned good pair. You can see what color slip a woman is wearing with these if her dress is thin enough,” he winked at Orville.
Orville took his own glasses off and put his supervisor’s glasses up to his eyes and looked out across the hallway. He could see one of his co-workers James putting sugar in his coffee and could even read the headlines of the paper in the break room. Maybe I should get a new pair of glasses, he thought to himself.
“Lord, Mr. Price, this is a damned good pair,” he said to his boss as he gingerly gave them back.
“Yessiree they are, that’s what I told that deputy sheriff I called on the day of the killing. I also told him while I was sitting up there on the northeast corner of the roof waiting for the president to come by I heard the shots ring out. I saw the Governor Connally slump over and I looked up. That’s when I saw a man, younger than us, maybe in his mid-thirties running like all get out. With these new glasses, I could tell he was wearing a cream-colored shirt and khaki pants, and his hair was that beatnik style, kinda raggedy and long and dark. He had something in his hand, but I couldn’t make out what it was.”243
Orville was stunned. Could his boss have seen someone else shooting at the president? He hesitated for a moment in that thought, then blurted out, “Where did you think the shots came from, Mr. Price?”
“Well hell, Orville, I don’t think… I know they came from that little park area in front of the train yards by the Triple Underpass. And that’s the direction that man was running from. He was running towards the passenger cars in front of the railroad tracks, between that area and the building that they say Lee Harvey Oswald was shooting from. I heard at least four shots, maybe five. Those FBI boys didn’t ask me, so I didn’t offer. They said I didn’t really see anything pertinent. Where do you think they came from?”
“The same place. And I heard four or five shots too,” Orville replied.
“I tell ya, Orville, we’re a government agency. But if we had screwed up like the police and the FBI and the Secret Service, hell all of ‘em, we’d have our asses at the unemployment office or handout line looking for food. And this Warren Commission thing? What a bunch of hogwash! How can they say they’re investigating what really happened when they don’t even talk to all the key witnesses? Not me, not you and who the hell knows who else! But you didn’t hear me say that. I can’t very well be kicking the balls of the government that feeds me.” He grinned at Orville again. It was a grin of understanding that quickly turned to a frown as he said, “I have an idea Orville, that there’s more to this than we know.”
* * * * *
Jesse C. Price made a point in 1964 that wouldn’t be revealed until several years later. The Warren Commission failed to call several witnesses who observed the assassination. A partial list includes:
1. Orville Nix: took a home movie of the assassination
2. J. C. Price: witnessed the assassination from the Terminal Annex rooftop.
3. Mary E. Woodward: junior reporter for the Dallas Morning News standing with three other friends on the North side of Elm St.
4. Maggie Brown: with Mary E. Woodward
5. Aurelia Lorenzo: with Mary E. Woodward
6. Ann Donaldson: with Mary E. Woodward
7. Wilma Bonds: took a series of colored slides immediately after the shooting showing the grassy knoll area.
8. Mark Bell: shot movie footage showing the knoll
9. Robert Hughes: shot a film showing the Texas School Book Depository sixth floor at the time of the assassination. No gunman is visible.
10. William and Gayle Newman: the iconic couple seen in movies and pictures protecting their two sons from shots, as they stood on Elm Street in front of Zapruder. They made statements, but not in Washington.
11. Ambulance Drivers: Clayton Butler and Eddie Kinsley of the Dudley Hughes Funeral home.244
But the most important witness not called until the Warren Commission had almost completed their work? The head of the Dallas Secret Service office: Forrest Sorrels. As a man who had been involved with the arrival of President Kennedy, the parade route, the Zapruder film, and the questioning of Jack Ruby, why did the Warren Commission wait so long to depose him?
The twenty-six volume Warren Commission Report is filled with such anomalies as the partial list above relates. In later years, the public would find that not only did the Warren Commission do a slip-shod job of investigating, but vital information was withheld by a government entity: the CIA. Was John F. Kennedy‘s assassination the result of a conspiracy? No doubt, if not by assassins, it definitely was by our government. Researchers have known this for years. As Henry Hurt wrote in his 1985 book, Reasonable Doubt:
“… the political impact of Kennedy’s death is why the
question of his assassination is as important today as it was decades ago — and as it will be decades hence, and for all the years of this republic. If the atrocity was the result of a conspiracy, the country and its government, even at this hour are subtly threatened by a cunning invisible enemy as politically potent as the most menacing terrorist or superpower. Moreover, the historical integrity of the whole country remains fractured until the questions are answered.”245
Who is this cunning, invisible enemy of whom Hurt speaks? A shadow government within our own? A handful of powerful men with a multitude of “yes” men to carry out their deeds? Or is it the same group of people who in 2013 sent drone strikes, tap American citizens’ phones and use technology, the Internal Revenue Service, and the media to ferret out the information they desire? Isn’t it strange that of the over eleven hundred documents still being withheld during the Obama Administration’s tenure that many are IRS files?
If hindsight is truly clearer, then for over fifty years the American people and the world have been lead through a glass darkly.246 Isn’t it time it stopped?
Shouldn’t we care?
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
A FORREST OF RUBIES
“One man can make a difference and every man should try.”
Robert F. Kennedy247
Like his friend Orville Nix, Forrest Sorrels kept reliving that day… the first day of the longest, four-day weekend he would ever experience. He still couldn’t believe what he had seen almost a year ago. How could he ever tell anyone? He kept asking himself the same questions over and over again. The questions kept running through his mind…all the damned questions. I should have said something. I should have checked it out. I should have jumped out of the car. But how could I? I would have been insinuating that there was more to this and maybe, just maybe some of the people I was working with were involved. I’m not a young man. I should retire soon. My daughter is ill. Oh God, what kind of man have I become?
Forrest was riding in the lead car about thirty feet ahead of the Presidential limousine on November 22, 1963. The car held four passengers: Forrest was on the right passenger side in the back seat; Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry was driving and Win Lawson was in the front passenger side. Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker was in the backseat on the driver’s side with Forrest.248 He had been worried all along about the tall buildings on Main Street and Houston, but as the motorcade got closer to the Triple Overpass, Forrest had begun to relax a bit. He had noticed some black men in the Texas School Book Depository windows as the motorcade turned on to Houston Street, but his worries seem to be unfounded. He stared out the right passenger window; the people weren’t as crowded down here at Dealey Plaza. As they passed the Texas School Book Depository making the turn onto Elm, something caught his eye. That was the moment… that moment he saw something he couldn’t quit thinking about.
There, behind the crescent shaped pergola was what looked like Honest Joe’s station wagon. What the hell was it doing there? The chatter in the car distracted him. Win was complaining that we were running late and radioed to the Trade Mart that we were five minutes out.249 Then…a sharp sound, not a backfire, not a firecracker. It sounded like it came from the terrace.
Then all hell broke loose. It was gunfire! The president shot! Pandemonium! Were his eyes deceiving him, or was that an officer in the terrace area as well? And there was a policeman on the Triple Overpass.250 He hadn’t placed anyone there. Had Chief Curry? Had Sheriff Decker? Before he could ask them the car radio was crackling with transmissions. Damned politics have no place in protection, he thought to himself. Sirens went off all around him. The car sped up and motorcycle cops pulled along next to them. Chief Curry told them to drive quickly to Parkland hospital. The president had been shot. He looked behind him as the cars sped away and looked towards the Texas School Book Depository. There were policemen running towards it. He had to get back there, but there he was heading to Parkland. He felt his chest tightening- a pressure he would feel daily until he died. Those four days were as ingrained in Forrest’s psyche as deeply as his wedding day; maybe even deeper. He now knew what it meant to be an island. He now knew from that day forward he could never trust another man.
He quietly began his own investigation; one he would never share with anyone, even his family. For the man who cared more about truth and justice than the government for which he worked, Forrest tried to find answers diplomatically without bringing attention to himself or the many agencies he worked with that day.
He knew the FBI had taken charge of the Kennedy assassination the day it happened. J. Edgar Hoover had investigative tentacles spreading all over the country; in fact, the boys from his branch in DC were already complaining about it. The Dallas Police Department and Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade were knocking on doors in and around Dallas day and night and not just to investigate; some said to intimidate.251 They had had their tails handed to them and didn’t like it one bit. The Texas Rangers, the Dallas Sheriff’s Department, hell, even the Army Reserve were all searching for or covering up evidence, and Forrest had to walk gingerly among the minefields that were government agencies. But the one group that Forrest could never get a clear handle on, the group no one ever heard from until it was too late to protect yourself, was the CIA. It was that group that scared him the most.
*****
HE COULD GIVE A DAMN WHICH PARTY WAS IN POWER.
HE WAS TO HAVE NO PART IN LAYING THE BLAME ON ONE AGENCY OR PERSON.
HE KNEW IN HIS HEART OF HEARTS THERE WAS MUCH MORE TO THIS MURDER THAN THE GOVERNMENT WANTED AMERICA TO KNOW.
To anyone who knew Forrest well, his Warren Commission testimony was the first sign that he had more on his mind than memos, blame for inadequate presidential protection and political correctness. He could give a damn which party was in power. He was to have no part in laying the blame on one agency or person. He knew in his heart of hearts there was much more to this murder than the government wanted America to know. He left the Warren Commission crumbs in which to follow his trail of answers to their questions. How did he do that? He mentioned the Honest Joe’s Gun and Pawn Shop vehicle not once, but twice. Twice! He also mentioned that he had thought he heard gunshots come from the knoll area as he couldn’t see the Texas School Book Depository.252 Why didn’t Messrs. Burr W. Griffin, Leon D. Hubert, Jr., Samuel A. Stern, assistant counsel of the President’s Commission, and Fred B. Smith, Deputy General Counsel, U.S. Treasury Department, who were all present pick up the crumbs he put down for them to follow in his testimony? Why didn’t they ask the right questions? He was on record with testimony two days in a row: once to Hubert and then again to Stern. When Hubert questioned Sorrels about his activities the day Oswald was shot, this was his direct testimony to the Warren Commission:
I told him I had seen Honest Joe, who is a Jewish merchant there, who operates a second-hand loan pawn shop, so to speak, specializing in tools, on Elm Street, and who is more or less known in the area because of the fact that he takes advantage of any opportunity to get free advertising. He at that time had an Edsel car, which is somewhat a rarity now, all painted up with “Honest Joe” on there. He wears jackets with “Honest Joe” on the back. He gets writeups in the paper, free advertising about different things he loans money on, like artificial limbs and things like that. And I had noticed Honest Joe across the street when I was looking out of Chief Batchelor’s office.
So I remarked to Jack Ruby, I said, “I just saw Honest Joe across the street over there, and I know a number of Jewish merchants here that you know.”
And Ruby said, “That is good enough for me. What is it you want to know?”
And I said these two words, “Jack---why? “He said, “When this thing happened”-- referring to the assassination that he was in a newspaper office placing an ad for his business. That when he heard about the assassination, he had canceled his ad and had closed his business, and he had not done any business for 3 days. That he had been grieving about
this thing. That on the …
HUBERT: Did he at that time, the first interview, indicate anything, or say anything which would indicate what his motive or reason for his act was?
SORRELS: Yes; and I might say that it was at that time that I found out his name was Ruby in place of Rubin, and he informed me his name had formerly been Rubinstein, and that he had had his name changed in Dallas. I asked him--after I identified myself, I told him I would like to ask him some questions.
He said, “For newspapers or magazines?” I said, “No; for myself.”
He appeared to be considering whether or not he was going to answer my questions, and I told him that I had just come from the third floor, and had been looking out of the window, and that Friday night he had gone to the synagogue and had heard a eulogy on the President. That his sister had recently been operated on, and that she has been hysterical. That when he saw that Mrs. Kennedy was going to have to appear for the trial, he thought to himself, why should she have to go through this ordeal for this no-good so-and-so.
HUBERT: Did he use any words or did he say “no-good so-and-so”?
SORRELS: He used the word “son-of-a-bitch,” as I recall.
HUBERT: All right.
SORRELS: That he had heard about the letter to little Caroline, as I recall he mentioned. That he had been to the Western Union office to send a telegram, and that he guessed he had worked himself into a state of insanity to where he had to do it. And to use his words after that, “I guess I just had to show the world that a Jew has guts.”253
When Stern questioned Sorrels about his interview with Oswald, the last interview Oswald would give, Forrest knew there were concerns about how Jack Ruby had gotten into the Dallas Police building. He didn’t want to implicate, but he wanted it on the record as to what he saw. Again his direct testimony the next day to Mr. Stern:
The Missing JFK Assassination Film Page 16