Oswald's sack in the Sniper's nest.

[Charles Collins]

You are missing the point. Sure, many people travel with firearms, but how many of those have just used that weapon to shoot somebody? It's about Oswald's frame of mind. Having just tried to kill a man with that rifle, would he risk transporting it in a duffelbag with the barrel sticking out? I seriously doubt it....

But it is once again clear that you are using biased speculation to try to shape the narrative towards your own opinion.

This is Colin’s remark that inspired the reply containing conjecture regarding the duffel bag:

I find the notion that Oswald would construct a bag to transport the rifle, find that in order for the rifle to fit disassembled it, then simply leave the open end unsealed during transport, laughable.

I was simply pointing out that it could have been made intentionally to fit the disassembled rifle.

Furthermore, LHO was laughing at the cops because they apparently had no clue that he was the one shooting at Walker. His frame of mind was more like Alfred E. Newman’s (What, me worry).

[Colin Crow]

This is Colin’s remark that inspired the reply containing conjecture regarding the duffel bag:

I find the notion that Oswald would construct a bag to transport the rifle, find that in order for the rifle to fit disassembled it, then simply leave the open end unsealed during transport, laughable.

I was simply pointing out that it could have been made intentionally to fit the disassembled rifle.

Furthermore, LHO was laughing at the cops because they apparently had no clue that he was the one shooting at Walker. His frame of mind was more like Alfred E. Newman’s (What, me worry).

The advantage of transporting a disassembled rifle to reduce the length by a whopping 3” (8%). Then relying on an insecure fold over to prevent bits falling out or someone simple peeking are the things I cannot consider as plausible.

[Jerry Freeman]

Paine denied that he knew that Lee had a rifle on 11/22/63??

Mr. LIEBELER - You must have moved the duffelbags from the station wagon into the garage?
Mr. PAINE - That is right. I unpacked whatever was remaining in the station wagon to the garage.
So sometime later, I do remember moving about this package which, let's say, was a rifle, anyway it was a package wrapped in a blanket.

Right

Mr Paine: The garage was kind of crowded and I did have my tools in there and I had to move this package several times in order to make space to work, and the final time I put it on the floor underneath the saw where the bandsaw would be casting dust on it and I was a little embarrassed to be putting his goods on the floor, but I didn't suppose, the first time I picked it up I thought it was camping equipment. I said to myself they don't make camping equipment of iron pipes any more.

Totally ludicrous.
The argument is that Michael Paine was so polite and not wanting to be a snoop refused to ascertain exactly what was 'allegedly' wrapped up in this blanket.
Hogwash! His children had the run of the house..was he not concerned for their safety? What if these contents posed a danger?

Mr. LIEBELER - Why did you say that to yourself when you picked up the package?
Mr. PAINE - I had, my experience had been, my earliest camping equipment had been a tent of iron pipes. This somehow reminded me of that. I felt a pipe with my right hand and it was iron, that is to say it was not aluminum.
Mr. LIEBELER - How did you make that distinction?
Mr. PAINE - By the weight of it, and by the, I suppose the moment of inertia, you could have an aluminum tube with a total weight massed in the center somehow but that would not have had the inertia this way.
Mr. DULLES - You were just feeling this through the blanket though?
Mr. PAINE - I was also aware as I was moving his goods around, of his rights to privacy. So I did not feel--I had to move this object, I wasn't thinking very much about it but it happens that I did think a little bit about it or before I get on to the working with my tools I thought, an image came to mind.
Mr. LIEBELER - Did you think there was more than one tent pole in the package or just one tent pole?
Mr. PAINE - As I say, I moved it several times......

On and on he went with this unbelievable crap. The Commission must have fallen asleep.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did it occur to you at that time that there was a rifle in the package?
Mr. PAINE - That did not occur to me.
Mr. LIEBELER - You never at any time looked inside the package?
Mr. PAINE - That is correct. I could easily have felt the package but I was aware that of respecting his privacy of his possessions.

Oswald was gone.
99.9999% of humanity would have ascertained any suspicious contents. You know it & I know it.
And to answer the question above---

Mr. LIEBELER - I now show you Commission Exhibit 139, which is a rifle that was found in the Texas School Book Depository Building, and ask you if you at any time ever saw this rifle prior to November 22, 1963?
Mr. PAINE - I did not

Mr. LIEBELER - Have you seen it since that time and prior to yesterday?
Mr. PAINE - I saw a rifle being shown to Marina in an adjoining cubicle with a glass wall between us.
Mr. LIEBELER - When was that?
Mr. PAINE - That was the night of the 22nd. 

[Jerry Freeman]

Furthermore, LHO was laughing at the cops because they apparently had no clue that he was the one shooting at Walker. His frame of mind was more like Alfred E. Newman’s (What, me worry).

Nonsense....Where is any of that in evidence? 

[Martin Weidmann]

This is Colin’s remark that inspired the reply containing conjecture regarding the duffel bag:

I find the notion that Oswald would construct a bag to transport the rifle, find that in order for the rifle to fit disassembled it, then simply leave the open end unsealed during transport, laughable.

I was simply pointing out that it could have been made intentionally to fit the disassembled rifle.

Furthermore, LHO was laughing at the cops because they apparently had no clue that he was the one shooting at Walker. His frame of mind was more like Alfred E. Newman’s (What, me worry).

I agree with Colin in as much as that there was no apparent need to create a paperbag at work and take it to Irving for the sole purpose of transporting a rifle he had previously transported in other ways.


His frame of mind was more like Alfred E. Newman’s (What, me worry).

Pray tell, how in the world do you know what his frame of mind was?

[Jack Nessan]

Biffle was almost certainly thinking of the lunch sack. From chapter 4c:

Kent Biffle, the only newsman besides Alyea to witness the search of the building, may also have seen this sack. Unlike Weatherford, however, he seems to have confused it with the bag purportedly found in the sniper's nest. In an account purportedly written in March 1964, and subsequently published in the Fall 1998 issue of Legacies, a History Journal For Dallas and North Texas, Biffle claimed that after the rifle shells were found by the "ambush window", "We all stood around staring at the brown wrapping paper found nearby. It was a reasonable conclusion that it held the rifle." Note that he says it was found "nearby," and not right by the window, as later purported by Studebaker. Note also that he says "we all stood around staring" at the wrapping paper, an impossibility if the wrapping paper was sitting folded on the far side of the box purportedly used as a seat by the assassin, in the southeast corner of the building. As shown on the Blind Detective slide, this was an incredibly confined space behind stacks of boxes. The "wrapping paper," should it actually have been found in this location, would not have been visible to more than a few people at a time. Perhaps, then, Biffle saw the bag sometime after it had originally been "found." Perhaps, after its initial "discovery" by Montgomery, wherever it was "discovered," Studebaker placed the bag on the floor in a more accessible location, where it was subsequently viewed by Biffle.

But there's a problem with this scenario as well. In his account, Biffle presents his observation of the bag before he presents the discovery of the rifle. Well, if this was so, why didn't Mooney, Walters, Hill, Craig, Faulkner, Boyd, Fritz or Alyea remember seeing the bag? Was it "found" after they left the area but before the rifle was found?

No, it was not. Det. Marvin Johnson, whose partner L.D. Montgomery was credited with the discovery of the bag, claimed the bag was discovered after he'd witnessed the dusting of the area around the lunch sack. And the record is clear that this didn't occur until after the discovery of the rifle.

So...was Biffle simply mistaken about the bag? Was the sack he'd observed the lunch sack observed by others, only with 20-200 hindsight in which it morphed into the "sack" purported to have held the rifle?

It sure seems so. A Biffle-authored story was published in the 11-23-63 Dallas Morning News. There, he mentioned that a "gnawed piece of fried chicken" and an "empty cold drink bottle"--items found near the lunch bag-- were found near the sniper's nest, but made no mention of a large bag or wrapping paper.

There's also this. Below is an image, (taken from the Owens film), showing the reporters invited up to the sixth floor on the afternoon of the 22nd gathering around the window where Bonnie Ray Williams ate his lunch. They appear to be looking down at something. The man with the tie, in particular, appears to be looking down at where the lunch bag was a few minutes before, before Det.s Johnson and Montgomery took the lunch sack, cigarette pack, and pop bottle to the crime lab.



Well. I'm pretty sure this man is Kent Biffle, pointing out to the other reporters where the lunch sack they'd just seen taken from the building had first been discovered.

Here's a photo of Biffle from 1963.


And finally... Biffle's latter-day story, written months after the shooting, does not begin with his entering the school book depository. Before that, he discusses his racing over to the grassy knoll after the shots. He then relates "The other side of the fence held no gunman. There was just a maze of railroad tracks and three dazed winos. 'What happened?' one asked me." Well, this is just not credible. None of the police officers claiming to have raced back behind the fence after the shots saw these "winos." If Biffle had talked to one of them, and had not bothered to point this man out to a police officer as a possible witness, then he was not much of a citizen, let alone a reporter. The so-called "three tramps" found in a railroad car passing through town, it should be noted, were not discovered till almost 2:00, an hour and a half after the shooting, and were not arrested until a few minutes later. It only follows then that Biffle had used "artistic license" to incorporate them into his story, and that he may have used this same "license" to add the bag into his story. One certainly can't accept his account as credible when he says "we all" stood around staring at the bag, when none of those to first observe the sniper's nest, including his fellow newsman Tom Alyea, had ANY recollection of the bag. It seems probable the bag Biffle was thinking of, then, was not the bag or sack supposedly used to carry Oswald's rifle, but the other bag or sack reportedly found in the building, the lunch bag, which most all the sniper's nest witnesses remembered, and which Biffle alluded to in his initial article in which he mentioned the gnawed chicken and empty bottle.

Biffle took 150 pages of notes on 11/22, the day of the assassination. He also stated he ran into the TSBD with the first wave of officers.

Biffle stated he saw the bag and "We" does not necessarily mean group of men standing in a circle. Everything else is conjecture that he somehow meant something different than seeing the bag and surmising it held the rifle.

He does say "nearby" and that is the point of how it possibly ends up on the top of the boxes being viewed by a group of men.

From an earlier post:
"The Bag was discovered "nearby" and possibly placed on top of the boxes before they realized its importance. In an odd way it validates the evidence collection because after realizing the mistake, Day decided to not stage the location of the bag and photograph the bag because it had been moved. They never wanted to admit the mistake by one of the detectives."

[Bill Chapman]

1. This isn't a court room, and if it was, the judge would give you a warning about abusing the witness. I thought we were researchers with a shared interest sharing different viewpoints. You could have asked for more info, instead of jumping to your stance that Hunt and/or myself are liars who'd faked a photo to make a relatively minor point. I mean, do you know anything about Hunt, and all the stuff he found, simply by going to the archives, and looking?

Mr. CHAPMAN: Your honour, if it pleases the court, I would like to remind all present that image-manipulation techniques are available to all comers.
Mr. SPEER: I OBJECT, your honour. The prosecution just abused us, calling us liars.
JUDGE JUDY: Overruled. The cropped photo of a watch on a wrist shown to Mr. Chapman does not prove who's body was attached to that wrist. Now sit down before I give you a spanking.

CTers here lard up every bit of minutia as sinister and foreboding.
And to them, everything else is either faked, planted or altered in some way.

This particular forum is treated like a courtroom by contrarian barrister-wannabes.
Be patient; they'll reveal themselves soon enough.

The remainder of your post is on your say-so.
No one who comes through here is without bias.

[Colin Crow]

Mr. BALL. And it was after that that you went to the place where the rifle was found?
Mr. SIMS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Then did you go back to the place where the hulls were located on the floor?
Mr. SIMS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. That's when the picture was taken?
Mr. SIMS. No, sir; he was making pictures during that time.
Mr. BALL. Who picked up the hulls?
Mr. SIMS. Well, I assisted Lieutenant Day in picking the hulls up.
Mr. BALL. There were three hulls?
Mr. SIMS. Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL. Now, what kind of a receptacle did you put them in?
Mr. SIMS. He had an envelope.
Mr. BALL. Did he take charge of the hulls there?
Mr. SIMS. I don't know.
Mr. BALL. Did he take them in his possession, I mean?
Mr. SIMS. I don't remember if he took them in his possession then or not.
Mr. BALL. But you helped him pick them up?
Mr. SIMS. I picked them up from the floor and he had an envelope there and he held the envelope open.
Mr. BALL. You didn't take them in your possession, did you?
Mr. SIMS. No, sir; I don't believe I did.
Mr. BALL. When the rifle was found, were you there?
Mr. SIMS. No, sir; we we still on the sixth floor where the hulls were, I believe.
Mr. BALL. Did you see anyone pick the rifle up off the floor?
Mr. SIMS. Yes, sir; I believe Lieutenant Day--he dusted the rifle there for fingerprints.

Day and Studebaker stayed in the SN. Sims went to the SN to assist Day dust the shells. After placing them in an envelope all three left and went to the rifle, leaving Montgomery and Johnson to guard the SE corner. No mention of discovery of a long sack by the time the rifle was discovered. At that stage the only paper was the lunch sack.