My Re-Evaluation of Johnny Brewer’s Initial Report of December 6, 1963
I didn’t think it likely that the media was reporting the shooting of an officer so soon after the shooting. Officer Tippit was shot at 1:15 pm. Oswald ducked into the foyer of the shoe store at 1:36. Surely, I thought, the media could not have been broadcasting this within 21 minutes, could they? Or if they had, surely someone on this board would know of this.
However, John McAdams maintains a website on the JFK assassination. At the following webpage, he has a transcript of the police communications from November 22, 1963:
https://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/This is broken up into three sections. In section 3:
https://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/tapes3.htmAt 1:26 or 1:27, we have the following information being relayed from Officer E. G. Sabastian to the Dallas police Dispatcher.
Sabastian 75. ; getting the Dispatcher’s attention
Dispatcher 75. ; Dispatcher acknowledging Officer Sabastian
Sabastian NBC News is reporting DOA.
Dispatcher That’s correct.
Sabastian That the officer?
Dispatcher Yes.
By 1:27, within 12 minutes of the shooting, NBC News was reporting the death of a police, who was reported DOA. I would expect,
probably, no, most certainly, that local radio stations would pick this up and report on it immediately. Mr. Brewer may have even been listening to NBC News. Mr. Brewer may have heard that a policeman was shot up to 9 minutes before Oswald showed up. It would have been the last major news break before he first saw Oswald.
I would now speculate that someone, in this case NBC News, had done what I thought was possible. Monitor the police frequency. And got a scoop that was promptly broadcast and would be picked up by the rest of the media, if they were not asleep, immediately.
Over time, I think it’s clear that Mr. Brewer’s memory did change. Two weeks later it was “I” was listening to the radio. Four months later it was “we” were listening to the radio. 33 years later it was “Two IBM employees were lounging around and killing time, on a work day, while we” were listening to the radio. But Mr. Brewer’s memory just two weeks later seems to have been spot on.
My apologies to Mr. Brewer. His memory of the events during the first two weeks appears spot on. In this case my “Probability” analysis was off. That’s why I call it a “Probability” analysis, not a “Certainty” analysis.
