Note 1: this scenario is about the only way to plausibility explain Oswald having had a 2nd floor lunchroom lunchroom encounter with Baker at 90 sec post shots, given the Hosty note placing Oswald outside of TSBD at time of shots fired.
Mr Mason, I would argue that this is the
reason the second floor lunchroom was used as the
fictional location for a
fictional encounter: it allows for two very different scenarios
----------------LHO has just come from sixth floor
----------------LHO has just come from front entrance
It also splits the difference between two completely different sightings that have already been reported
----------------'worker' caught walking away from the rear stairway several floors up (Baker affidavit)
----------------LHO spotted in a small storage room on first floor shortly after the shooting (Mr. Ochus Campbell)
The 'investigating' authorities knew that Mr. Oswald was out front for the P. Parade. The risk that proof of this could at any time seep out into the public domain (through e.g. a civilian who had a camera in Dealey Plaza going straight to an honest journalist with photographic/film evidence clearly establishing Mr. Oswald's alibi) restrained them from going all in on Mr. Oswald as sixth-floor shooter.
The interrogation reports for the first interrogation tell the story.
Here's what Agent Hosty writes in his draft report:
A perfectly clear sequence of events:
1. Pre-motorcade purchase of Coke in second floor lunchroom
2. Down to first floor to eat
3. Then outside to watch P. Parade
No mention of lunchroom cop encounter.
But look how this sequence of events is written up in the joint Hosty-Bookhout interrogation report
for that same interrogation session:
Key
elements found in the Hosty draft report are included, but the timing and sequence of events has been rendered ambiguous. This version
allows the reader to suppose the following sequence of events:
1. Eats lunch on first floor (and is there when Pres. Kennedy passed the building)
2. Up to second floor lunchroom for Coke (just after the shooting)
By rewording Mr. Oswald's claim to have gone outside onto the front steps for the P. Parade into a much vaguer claim to have been "on the first floor" when Pres. Kennedy passed, the report's authors have avoided telling an outright lie, but have also avoided telling the plain truth. Why don't they want to tell an outright lie?
Because they know just how precarious the case against Mr. Oswald is, and need to cover themselves for the eventuality that he is exonerated at some point in the future.And no mention yet of any cop encounter in the second-floor lunchroom.
Which brings us to the masterpiece that is the solo Bookhout interrogation report, which covers
that selfsame first interrogation session:
Mr. Oswald is now dead, and the distortion of his claims in that first interrogation session can be perfected. The new starting point of Mr. Oswald's story is "the time of the search" of the building by police (i.e. post-assassination). This yields the following 'confirmation' from the suspect himself of the lunchroom encounter fiction:
1. Post-assassination purchase of Coke in second floor lunchroom
2. Cop comes in etc
3. Down to first floor to eat lunch (as though nothing has happened!)
4. Then (finally!) goes outside
So------------------Mr. Oswald tells one straightforward (and true) story, and this is then written up in three dramatically different ways.
If this really is Mr. Oswald sipping from his Coke bottle----------------
---------------then everything the 'investigating' authorities do can be explained as putting together a case for him as a the SN shooter that can, should clear evidence of his alibi come to public light, be
walked back. It would, for instance, have been easy for Captain Fritz et al to just claim (after Mr. Oswald's death) that he finally broke under interrogation on Sunday morning and confessed to the shooting. But that would have given a massive hostage to fortune........................
If Mr. Oswald went BACK up to the second-floor lunchroom, after the shooting, to retrieve his jacket (why wouldn't he have brought it down with him to the domino room in the first place?), then one presumes he would have told this fact in interrogation. Yet we get not a word about such anywhere in any of the reports. instead we get the blatant evolution in the interrogation reports from
purchase of Coke in lunchroom pre-motorcade to
purchase of Coke in lunchroom post-motorcade. Mr. Oswald didn't change his story in that first interrogation: he had his story changed by those in charge of curating his words for the official record.
There WAS no post-assassination visit to the second-floor lunchroom, and no cop encounter there, and that is the point.
