My Re-Evaluation of Johnny Brewer’s Initial Report of December 6, 1963

[John Iacoletti]

The National Archives supposedly has the original KBOX tapes, but "cannot locate them".

The commonly heard Sam Pate recording ("something has happened in the motorcade route") was a re-creation done for the "Four Days That Shocked the World" LP record.

[Bill Chapman]

Thanks again for your always useful advancement of knowledge regarding the evidence in this case.

I'm just telling the tell. Batting clean-up.
Using my artistic-license privileges.

You lot can't even manage a Texas-leaguer, ffs.
Seems you 'knowledge-advancers' are going to need a walk-off homer.

[Jerry Freeman]

The National Archives supposedly has the original KBOX tapes, but "cannot locate them".

The Sixth Floor Museum has all the radio tapes that have been linked. After reading reply #81 [which pretty well defines the event] why is any further searching even needed?

[Joe Elliott]

Listen to the WBAP video around time stamp 3:15:00 - 3:45:00. They are definitely carrying NBC coverage at that time.  The official flash from Kilduff is reported at timestamp 3:37:00.  There is a 1:00 time-check at timestamp 03:05:05.

You are correct. Up to 11:54 PM CST (2:55:40 on the recording), it was broadcasting for ABC, 570 AM. Then the recording stopped.

On the tape recording, it immediately resumed again, but over an hour had passed. It started recording at about 12:50 PM CST (2:55:52 on the recording). You are right, by that time, WBAP had switched to NBC on 820 AM. And it was NBC during 1:00 through 1:40.

But what could cause Officer E. G. Sabastian “NBC News is reporting DOA” when we now know that NBC did not report this?

Well, listening to various radio recordings, I see that stations only occasionally identify themselves as WBAP/NBC, WBAP/ABC WFAA/NBC or WFAA/ABC. Probably, the way Officer E. G. Sabastian would identify a station is from the voice of the announcer. Just as, if you heard the TV in 1963 and heard the voice of Walter Cronkite reporting the news, you can infer that this is CBS news. Officer Sabastian would likely have done the same. If so, the voice he heard was sometimes on WFAA with NBC News (on 820 AM) was also sometimes on WFAA with ABC News (on 570 AM).

Going about his business, he could be stopped at a light and hear the radio from a car besides him, and hear that a Dallas police officer was dead. This could cause him to radio the Dispatcher to confirm this, and say that NBC News was reporting this, when in actual truth the reporter was on the ABC frequency at the time. I think something like this scenario is likely because I doubt Officer E. G. Sabastian was listening to the radio while on duty. It could cause him to miss a message from the Dispatcher.


So, what does our recording of WFAA report? David Von Pein has this recording below:

However, like so many of our other recordings, it starts well after the assassination. Three minutes into the recording, it says: “This report was issued at 1:48, which was just a few moments ago.” So, this recording started at 1:45 PM CST, which is too late to tell us what they were broadcasting between 1:10 PM and 1:40 PM, which is what we need.

It is often reported that all the radio stations reported everything they broadcasted. This is clearly not true. While a fair number were recording hours of broadcasting that day, even before the assassination, this may have been unusual and was only happening that day because of the President’s visit to Dallas. WBAP managed to start recording by 12:50 CST. They were setup to do this, since they were recording the President’s arrival at Love Field just an hour before. WFAA, which was not recording this event, took longer to hook up the recorder. KBOX is another station that comes to mind as starting its recording well after the assassination.

So, was Officer E. G. Sabastian correct that the death of an officer was reported by the media? We have no reason to believe he was not correct. Various local news stations did monitor the police radio frequencies. They could have learned of this shooting very early. Radio stations would broadcast news that had not yet been officially confirmed, like the shooting of a Secret Service man at Dealey Plaza, which was not an official report, or even a true report.

I would be shocked if we ever learned that Officer E. G. Sabastian was mistaken. It’s one thing to confuse two announcements that are an hour apart in time, two weeks later, as Mr. Brewer allegedly did. As I used to think he likely did. But to confuse two reports, one an hour in the past and the other a half hour in the future? No way.

Do people think that Officer E. G. Sabastian was hearing voices?


P. S.

A see that David Von Pein has also pointed out that when the recording of KBOX starts at 1:35 PM, within the first minute it reports that a Dallas detective was DOA at Parkland Hospital. And as David reports, this was two errors, ‘detective’ and ‘Parkland’. But it shows that local Dallas news stations were reporting on the death of a Dallas policeman a good deal earlier than I had been led to believe. And it is possible that this was not the first report on the death of a policeman but was a repeat of an earlier report. We cannot tell because, like other stations, KBOX was not recording its broadcast at the time of the assassination and it took a little while to setup the recording equipment.

But even the 1:36 report is early enough that Mr. Brewer could have heard this just before Oswald walked up to his store.

[David Von Pein]

...KBOX is the only station for which there is no extant audio for the time period in question.

Not true. There are several other Dallas-area radio stations that Brewer could have been listening to for which there is no extant audio at all (as of this date in August 2020) -- e.g., WRR, KVIL, KIXL, and KSKY (and perhaps some others too).

But maybe CTers can just pretend those stations didn't exist on 11/22/63.

Plus, as Joe Elliott just pointed out by posting my WFAA video above, we have no idea what WFAA-Radio was reporting at the key time in question (1:15 to 1:45 PM CST), because the archived WFAA coverage doesn't even begin until 1:45.

So why on Earth would you, John I., say that KBOX is the only station with gaps in the coverage? Because that's certainly not the case at all.

BTW / FWIW....

Here's the NBC Radio Network coverage on 11/22/63 (the national feed from New York):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2ERm-cucsE0VVBnRTZqWktPUnM/view

And here's the ABC Radio Network (national feed):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2ERm-cucsE0eHlZc2F2SnJfd3M/view

[Joe Elliott]

So why on Earth would you, John I., say that KBOX is the only station with gaps in the coverage? Because that's certainly not the case---at all.

Why? Because just as James Bond has a license to kill, CTers have a license to lie. Including “I’m not really a CTer”.

I mean, come on, even WBAP, a station which he posted a link to and discussed its broadcast in detail, has an almost one hour gap, from 11:54 to 12:50. Or just talking about the time of the assassination, a 20 minute gap from 12:30 to 12:50. The recording of the first hour after the assassination was very spotty by the local Dallas radio stations. I believe they were all scrambling to get a recording started, while, at the same time, having various people work on reporting the news as soon as possible, which was the higher priority.

While CTers try to give the impression that is a known fact that Mr. Brewer could not have heard a report of a policeman’s shooting before 1:35, this is just not the case. And we have a recording of a police officer talking about such a broadcast at 1:28. As well as a recording of an actual broadcast at 1:35, shortly after the recording starts.

[John Tonkovich]

Nonsense. Brewer didn't "fabricate" anything.

I think Brewer was probably listening to KBOX Radio on 11/22/63. And Dale Myers seems to think so too....

http://jfk-assassination-as-it-happened.blogspot.com/2015/12/kbox-radio.html

"KBOX Radio might have been the station that Johnny Brewer had turned on that day, because within the first minute of the KBOX coverage [linked above] (which equates to about 1:35 PM CST), there's a bulletin which states: "We also have one Dallas detective reported dead on arrival at Parkland Hospital." (If that report was referring to Officer Tippit, then there are two errors in it, because Tippit was taken to Methodist Hospital, not Parkland, and Tippit, of course, was not a "detective". But later radio reports did also make the mistake of calling the slain policeman "Detective Tippit". So that KBOX bulletin probably is referring to Officer Tippit's death. And if that's the case, then Johnny Brewer could have heard about the Tippit shooting prior to seeing Oswald come into the lobby area of his shoe store. And it's also possible that KBOX could have provided a bulletin about the policeman's shooting even earlier than 1:35, but I have no way to confirm whether they did or not, because the version of the KBOX material in my collection begins at about 1:35 PM.)

[...]

"I'm certainly willing to accept the possibility that Johnny Brewer might have gotten mixed up concerning the precise time when he first heard the news about a police officer being shot in Oak Cliff. Perhaps he did hear that news a little later in the day. But also keep in mind the 1:35 PM KBOX report about the DOA "detective" (which is a remarkably speedy bulletin, because KBOX not only was reporting on the wounding of a police officer, they were already reporting on the death of that policeman as early as 1:35), which tends to indicate that at least one Dallas-area radio station was reporting the officer's shooting at a time which would be perfectly consistent with Johnny Brewer's account of only seeing Oswald after hearing about the policeman's shooting on the radio.

"The KBOX audio footage I provided does not, however, give the necessary detail about the shooting taking place in Oak Cliff, but, as I mentioned earlier, it's possible that such an "Oak Cliff" detail was mentioned in an earlier KBOX bulletin, which preceded the point in time when my truncated copy of the coverage begins.

"In any event, even if Brewer didn't hear any pre-1:36 PM radio bulletin concerning the Tippit shooting, it's still quite clear to me from the weight of John Brewer's testimony and statements over the years that Brewer was suspicious of Lee Harvey Oswald's behavior and actions shortly after 1:30 PM on 11/22/63 (such as: Oswald turning his back to the street just as the police cars went roaring by).

[...]

"BTW / FYI .... Here is a CBS-TV interview with Johnny Brewer from 1964. In this interview, Brewer says this: "Just a few minutes before he [Oswald] walked into the lobby, on the radio they had a bulletin that an officer had been shot here in Oak Cliff." " -- DVP; April 18, 2019

-----------

From Dale Myers....

"My work on this issue was quite exhaustive and appears as endnote No. 617 (pages 738-739 of the 2013 Edition of “With Malice”). ....
A 1:59 p.m. KBOX report from newsman Sam Pate repeats information known to have been previously broadcast, including a report about the Tippit shooting (“Moments ago a police officer reported to have been shot down at Tenth and Patton in the Oak Cliff area. Several squads of police, approximately twenty men, ordered to the Oak Cliff area. A late word shows that the police officer was dead on arrival at Methodist Hospital.”). This KBOX report on the Tippit shooting was probably broadcast earlier on KBOX shortly after 1:31 p.m. when it was reported over the Dallas police radio that Tippit was DOA at Methodist Hospital." -- Dale K. Myers; E-Mail To DVP On April 19, 2019

http://jfk-archives.blogspot.com/2019/04/jfk-assassination-arguments-part-1317.html

You and Dale Myers are the proponent of the KBOX theory.
So, it is convenient that there are no tapes.

[Joe Elliott]

The KBOX recording:

Like many local Dallas radio stations, KBOX took awhile to set up a recording of their broadcast immediately after the assassination.

0:00:46 We also have one Dallas detective reported dead on arrival at Parkland hospital.

 0:03:58 “The President died at 2 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, 1 o’clock Dallas time, some 39 minutes ago.”

The recording starts at 1:35 and by 1:36 we have the report of the death of a Dallas police officer on at least one station, KBOX.

Now, one can say, this report has errors. A detective? DOA at Parkland? Could this be an erroneous report, that had nothing to do with the Officer Tippit shooting? Like the report of a Secret Service agent being killed at Dealey Plaza? It doesn’t matter. Mr. Brewer could have heard that radio report. And learned within the hour more details, that it was officer Tippit, shot in the Oak Cliff area just 20 minutes before Oswald showed up. And report two weeks later that he heard about the policeman being shot just before Oswald showed up.

And we don’t know what was being broadcast by other radio stations at that time. There is a strong clue that WFAA may have reported the shooting of a police officer. Officer E. G. Sabastian reported to dispatch that there was such a media report at 1:28.

Certainly, any reporters listening to the police radio broadcasts should know that the shooting was in the Oak Cliff area, and this may have been reported, possibly by KBOX (before 1:35) or WFAA or other stations. But since so many stations had not started recording their own broadcast before 1:35, there is no way to tell.