Brennan and Euins independently reported a man pointing a rifle in the direction of the President at the time of the shooting. The man was in the SE corner of the 6th floor.
Independent, corroborating evidence of exactly the same thing is quite strong in my book.
I agree, this doesn't automatically mean the man pointing the rifle at the President from the same window the shells were found at by the first officers to discover the SN is shooting at the President.
But I find it difficult to imagine a scenario in which someone was innocently pointing a rifle from the SN window at the President at exactly the same time he was shot. But I'm sure there is one.
The shells were seen in situ by a those officers on the 6th floor at the time of the discovery of the SN. Found at the same window a man was seen pointing a rifle towards the President at the exact moment he was shot.
Rowland's report of a man with a high powered, scoped rifle on the 6th floor 15 minutes before the motorcade arrived is of interest. I understand just because there is a man on the 6th floor with a high powered rifle before the motorcade arrives it doesn't automatically mean this man took the shots or that he was even the man Brennan and Euins reported. It is quite possible there were a few men wandering around the 6th floor with rifles that day.
But, rather than treat every detail as an isolated event, I have a tendency to try to pull all the details together into a narrative, and the man Rowland spotted would certainly be the same man Brennan and Euins reported. The numerous witness reports of seeing a rifle poking out of the SN window at the time of the assassination would also feed into that narrative.
Did three witnesses incorrectly describe a man with a rifle on the 6th floor of the TSBD?
I don't think so.
Witness testimony may be weak but I don't think that applies in this case.
It is a fact three clearly audible shots rang out that day. Over 160 witnesses can't be wrong about that.
They had to come from somewhere.
There is definitely evidence they came from the TSBD.
My question is - what evidence is there that the shots came from the Dal-Tex or anywhere else?
But I find it difficult to imagine a scenario in which someone was innocently pointing a rifle from the SN window at the President at exactly the same time he was shot. Agreed, if that's what happened.
It is a fact three clearly audible shots rang out that day. Over 160 witnesses can't be wrong about that.You may be right, but it's a fallacious argument. An appeal to majority isn't always correct. Besides, if I remember correctly, there were also witnesses who claimed to have heard more shots, who were ignored or simply told they were wrong. Dealey Plaza is often described as an echo chamber.
The shells were seen in situ by a those officers on the 6th floor at the time of the discovery of the SN. Found at the same window a man was seen pointing a rifle towards the President at the exact moment he was shot. Sounds convincing, I agree and yet I am not so confident this is was happened. The only person, if my memory serves, who actually claimed to see a man pointing a rifle when the shots rang out was Brennan and his account of what happened has not be consitent, to say the least. For one, he claimed to have looked up when the shots rang out, but there is photographic evidence that shows him looking at the motorcade. He also changed the position where he was sitting on the wall that day.
Euins was an impressionable young kid back then, who ducked away behind a wall when he heard the shots. I seriously doubt he actually saw any shots being fired.
Rowland's report of a man with a high powered, scoped rifle on the 6th floor 15 minutes before the motorcade arrived is of interest. I understand just because there is a man on the 6th floor with a high powered rifle before the motorcade arrives it doesn't automatically mean this man took the shots or that he was even the man Brennan and Euins reported.Indeed.
It is quite possible there were a few men wandering around the 6th floor with rifles that day. Possible? Maybe, but I doubt it.
But, rather than treat every detail as an isolated event, I have a tendency to try to pull all the details together into a narrative, and the man Rowland spotted would certainly be the same man Brennan and Euins reported. There's nothing wrong about pulling details together into a narrative, if and when those details are conclusive and can be relied upon. I am sceptical about that.
The one thing that always seems to be overlooked is that all the information we work with has been filtered through the FBI and WC and was not presented to the public until nearly a year after the murder, leaving no possibility of independent corroboration. We have been spoon fed a narrative, which has shown itself to be superficial and often not supported by the evidence in the 26 volumes. That makes me wonder if we can rely on any of the details of that narrative.
"First of all, that would depend on the actual position of the body at the moment they were hit and, secondly, it would equally consistent with shots from the Dal-Tex building."
Of course, knowing the precise body position at the time of the shots can refine where the shots came from but I am convinced that even a non expert can come up with a general direction.
This would be consistent with the general direction of the TSBD and, as you say, the Dal-Tex.
Now this is where my "narrative" method comes into its own. Rather than just leave it at "it could be the TSBD or it could be the Dal-Tex, we can't be sure", my "narrative" method, rather than just treating this as an isolated detail, would look to other evidence to see if we can decide whether the trajectory of the shots was coming from the TSBD or the Dal-Tex.
So we could say something like - "Oh look, witnesses saw a man pointing a rifle towards the President at the moment of the shooting from the 6th floor of the TSBD but nobody saw anybody pointing anything from the Dal-Tex."
In this scenario, the trajectory information would be used to strengthen the case for the shots coming from the TSBD. When the trajectory information is looked at in isolation it doesn't really tell us anything definitive. I strongly suspect this is the case for any piece of evidence.
"What has always bothered me is that they never checked if the rifle was fired that day, nor did they ever test for powder residue on the window pane. I know they removed part of the window sill, but I have never seen any positive test results for that."
Who would be the person who would make the call for immediately testing the rifle?
my "narrative" method, rather than just treating this as an isolated detail, would look to other evidence to see if we can decide whether the trajectory of the shots was coming from the TSBD or the Dal-Tex.
So we could say something like - "Oh look, witnesses saw a man pointing a rifle towards the President at the moment of the shooting from the 6th floor of the TSBD but nobody saw anybody pointing anything from the Dal-Tex."
In this scenario, the trajectory information would be used to strengthen the case for the shots coming from the TSBD. You do understand this is circular logic, right?
Somebody saw a man in the window of the TSBD with a rifle, so the trajectory of the shots must be coming from the TSBD.
As the trajectory of the shots came from the TSBD the witness must have seen a man in the window of the TSBD with a rifle.
When the trajectory information is looked at in isolation it doesn't really tell us anything definitive. I strongly suspect this is the case for any piece of evidence.True. But when you start combining pieces of evidence into a narrative, you want to be sure the individual pieces are authentic, credible and can withstand scrutiny. I don't see that here.
Who would be the person who would make the call for immediately testing the rifle?That would be Day or Studebaker, I imagine. But I am not sure what you mean by testing. I am told that when a rifle is fired, the bullet clears away any debris in the barrel, so it seems to me that it could be easily verified if there was debris in the barrel or not. Also, and I am no expert on this, it seems to me one would smell power fumes.
If the murder of Kennedy was a conspiracy, there are various ways (one more risky than the other) to get the rifle and shells in situ without there ever having been a shot fired from the TSBD. Let me give you one scenario. In the moments directly after the shots there was absolute mayhem and confusion.
Dorothy Garner told Barry Ernest;
"It was total confusion," she said. "The Dallas police, FBI, Secret Service were coming up the stairs, in the elevators, in all the
offices. The news media and workers and outsiders were going everywhere."
Now, let's say, as a hypothesis, one of the first men into the building was part of the conspiracy and it was his job to take the rifle from it's original hiding place (where it was possibly left during the night prior of the murder) and plant it, as well as three shells, on the 6th floor. If I remember correctly, the sniper's nest wasn't found instantly, so there would have been plenty of time and opportunity to actually plant those items while pretending to be looking.
You may call it far-fetched but I don't think it is and I can tell you why. If there was a shooter on the 6th floor, then where did he go? I am convinced by now that the "Oswald on the stairs" story is not plausible or credible, predominantly because Dorothy Garner would have seen him, or anybody else, coming down on the stairs from the 5th floor and she didn't. The WC did their best to put Oswald on the stairs anyway, but they did so by dismissing the account of Victoria Adams, not interviewing the other girls and ignoring Garner's comment to Martha Stroud. In fact, the whole thing was circular logic at it's best; Oswald was the shooter and Baker saw him 90 seconds after the shots in the 2nd floor lunchroom, so he must have come down the stairs.
The rifle and shells being planted during the first minutes of the chaos would explain why no shooter was ever found on the 6th floor. I know, the hypothesis does not match the accepted narrative in any shape or form, but, looking beyond the narrative, it is a possibility nevertheless. Of course, there is no evidence for it, but there also isn't any evidence for Oswald having been on the 6th floor and running down the stairs at around 12:30.
