PSC482G, Spring 2000
Answers to Assignment 13
Warren Commission Report 4
(N.B. This assignment is for your guidance only. It need not be turned in.)
Read: Warren Commission Report Chapter IV (pp. 118–195; pp. 156–176 optional).
Answer these questions (briefly):
(1–7) The commission laid out the evidence against Oswald in the following sequence. Briefly evaluate the strengths and limitations of each of their conclusions.
1. He owned and possessed the rifle that shot all bullets that were recovered (and maybe all the tiny fragments, too—but that’s another story). Rifle ordered but under the name of A. Hidell, a known alias of Oswald used on several occasions. Printing on order form and envelope was LHO's. Not clear whether A. Hidell could have received mail at Oswald's box. His palmprint was found on the barrel. Fibers consistent with his shirt also found on the barrel. He was photographed with a rifle like the one found. Marina had seen him with it numerous times.
2. He brought that rifle to the TSBD on the morning of 22 November 1963. He brought something long and bulky with him that morning. Called it “curtain rods,” although he needed none for his rented room. Some say that the brown paper bag was several inches too short to have been that particular rifle.
3. He was on the sixth floor of the TSBD a half-hour before the assassination. Charles Givens saw him on the sixth floor with a clipboard about noon that day. He said he would take an elevator down but didn't. Clipboard was later found on sixth floor.
4. He was seen firing one or more shots from the southeast window, pausing a moment to observe his handiwork, and then withdrawing the rifle. Several people, most notably Howard Brennan, saw a figure in the window. Brennan’s description was good enough for Patrolman Tippit to stop Oswald in Oak Park. But Brennan declined to identify Oswald in a lineup, although he later said he could have but was afraid to because he thought the assassination was the work of Communists.
5. Six months earlier, he had used the same rifle to try to kill retired Army General Edwin H. Walker in cold blood, but just missed when the general moved at the last moment. No eyewitnesses to the shooting, and the DPD never solved it. Oswald later told Marina he had done it, and showed her a notebook of plans. He retrieved the rifle a few days later. He left a general note for her, describing what to do if he were captured. Reference to their baby help to narrow down the time when the note was written.
6. Two weeks after the Walker incident, Oswald set out to kill Richard M. Nixon while Nixon was visiting Dallas, but was physically restrained by his wife Marina. Marina saw him with a pistol, and he told her what he was about to do. She may have even locked him in the bathroom. But the Commission decided that Marina may have been confused about the incident.
7. He was a good enough shot to potentially succeed at all these attempts. It cannot be proven that he was not good enough. His test scores from the Marines were good but not great. The four-power telescopic sight would have helped considerably. Assuming the first shot missed, there would have been plenty of time available, 4.8 to 5.6 seconds, to fire the third shot carefully. Anyhow, the three shots were not so great—the first missed the car completely (assuming there really were three shots), the second missed the head (the presumed target) and went into the neck/back, and the third shot came within an inch or so of missing the head.
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8. Briefly recap Oswald’s movements after the shooting. Within minutes after the shooting, he was found in the second-floor lunchroom by Roy Truly and Patrolman M. L. Baker. From there he left the building and walked eastward seven blocks, where he boarded a bus toward his rooming house in Oak Cliff. When the bus became stuck in traffic, he took a taxi to his rooming house. From there he started walking in the general direction of the Texas Theatre, when he met Officer J.D. Tippit.
9. During his detention, Oswald lied repeatedly. Note some of the lies. How helpful are they in establishing his guilt or innocence? He denied that he killed Patrolman Tippit. He denied that he owned a rifle, that he had bought it under a fictitious name, and that he had stored it in the Paines’ garage. He lied abut where he bought the pistol. He claimed that the photographs of him holding the rifle and the pistol were faked. He denied that he had used the name Alek J. Hidell and that he had received the rifle in a postal box with this name. He claimed that he had never registered at the rooming house under the name of O. H. Lee. First he said he returned to Irving for curtain rods rather than the rifle, then he denied this story. These lies are indicative about his guilt but not probative (consistent with his guilt but not proving anything except that he lied).
10. Summarize the tests on Oswald’s rifle. From pages 193–194. For stationary targets, riflemen without practice were able to hit three targets in 4.6 to 8.25 seconds. Tests of maximum speed indicated that three shots could be fired in 4.6 to 9 seconds.