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Author Topic: The Signal Man on Elm Street  (Read 12445 times)

Offline Jerry Freeman

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #16 on: September 19, 2021, 03:30:54 PM »
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Wrong again, Jerry.  https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol4/pdf/HSCA_Vol4_0925_7_Witt.pdf  Bad luck, SMART GUY. :D :D :D
Quote
Mr. FAUNTROY. Terrible had happened?
Mr. WITT. Had happened, yes, I was stunned.
Mr. FAUNTROY. I must admit that my reaction to the picture by
which you were ultimately identified was one of a very cool cat.
That is, you look rather cool there to me. But you were--
Mr. WITT. I can assure you I was not all that cool. I think one of
my reactions was knowing that I was there with this stupid um-
brella
and heckling the President and-of course, I didn't know
that the President had been killed. As a matter of fact, I didn't
know he had been shot.
Stupid umbrella was in the way?

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #16 on: September 19, 2021, 03:30:54 PM »


Offline Jerry Freeman

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #17 on: September 19, 2021, 03:47:08 PM »
If the limo stopped then that made it easier for lho to shoot JFK. Cbs were trying to hit a moving target in their reconstruction. Whereas lho was aiming at a stationary target if the limo was stopped.
It was a momentary braking. A driver fearing he was going into an ambush from the front it seems.
I thought the official story made some wild claims but you guys are coming up with some doozies ::)

Offline Robert Reeves

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #18 on: September 19, 2021, 09:10:20 PM »
What if he had the umbrella open way before he said so?


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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #18 on: September 19, 2021, 09:10:20 PM »


Offline Jerry Freeman

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #19 on: September 20, 2021, 10:30:16 PM »
Quote
What if he had the umbrella open way before he said so?
   
   So maybe Witt's umbrella protest was aimed not just at the Kennedys (who he figured weren't about to apologize for Joe Kennedy's "appeasement") and more at the politicians and reporters who were in the following cars.

Is that what he testified? 
You mean like aimed at all society?  :D
Pareidolia  Apophenia= Maybe he just thought it was raining.
Let's utterly-constantly speculate until the end of time.

Offline Rick Plant

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #20 on: September 21, 2021, 12:18:06 AM »
More at the politicians and reporters who were in the following cars that one day. Witt supposedly never did anything like that again. Poor arch-right fanatic missed out on voting for Trump but he lived out his life in a bubble in Dallas.

Wordage and semantics sure make make your imagination take flight.

Nah. Just one step at a time. No need to spread the BS around the web about an open umbrella in the Moorman Cycle Photo. Case closed. :P

The umbrella man here is very interesting. If you remembered the BLM protests last year, the right wing white supremacist infiltrators committing violence were all holding black umbrellas as a symbol.   

More at the politicians and reporters who were in the following cars that one day. Witt supposedly never did anything like that again. Poor arch-right fanatic missed out on voting for Trump but he lived out his life in a bubble in Dallas.

Wordage and semantics sure make make your imagination take flight.

Nah. Just one step at a time. No need to spread the BS around the web about an open umbrella in the Moorman Cycle Photo. Case closed. :P

The umbrella man here is very interesting. If you remembered the BLM protests last year, the right wing white supremacist infiltrators committing violence were all holding black umbrellas as a symbol.    ​


JFK assassination: Why suspicions still linger about 'Umbrella Man'

The man with the black umbrella in the Dallas crowd on the day of the JFK assassination remains an enigma to some and a sinister figure to others. What's wrong with the official explanation about Umbrella Man?


November 22, 2013

Nov. 22, 1963 was not rainy, and yet there he was in the crowd in Dallas's Dealey Square as President John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed by – the man with the black umbrella.

Through the 50 years since the JFK assassination robbed Americans of any semblance of political innocence, questions have persisted about that man and why he opened and pumped his umbrella in the moments before the president was shot. Was the hoisting of the umbrella a signal? Was the umbrella itself a weapon? Did the man know Lee Harvey Oswald?

The explanation from the man himself, coming 15 years later in congressional testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, has not put to rest all suspicions (as is the case with so many other facets of the JFK assassination). Today, 6 in 10 Americans do not believe the official version of what happened – specifically, that Oswald acted alone. Novelist John Updike was once prompted to write that confusion about Umbrella Man hangs over the assassination, dangling around “history’s neck like a fetish.”

“In all of Dallas, there appears to be exactly one person standing under an open black umbrella. And that person is standing where the shots begin to rain into the limousine,” Josiah “Tink” Thompson, author of “Six Seconds in Dallas,” says in a 2011 documentary short by filmmaker Errol Morris. “Can anyone come up with a nonsinister explanation for this? Hmm?”

Louie Steven Witt, aka Umbrella Man, offered one to Congress when he voluntarily came forward to testify – and a peculiar one it was. In his 1978 testimony, he said he had known nothing about the controversy surrounding his rain gear. The umbrella had indeed been intended to convey a message, Mr. Witt told lawmakers, but to Kennedy himself, not to any co-conspirators in an assassination plot. He called his actions that day "a bad joke."

But the photos and film footage of Umbrella Man's actions seem to many to defy explanation – and so they interpret the images themselves.

“One theory is that the assassins wanted Kennedy to know (in his final seconds) exactly why he was being killed,” writes blogger Croft Randle. “The umbrella symbolized Kennedy’s … refusal to provide a covering ‘umbrella’ of air support during the CIA’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The term had been widely used and the significance of the raised umbrella would have instantly been understood by Kennedy.”

In director Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, “JFK,” the Umbrella Man is a signal man. Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly cut his reportorial teeth on the Umbrella Man story.

Mr. Witt, in front of Congress, was asked specifically whether the umbrella was equipped with a shooting mechanism that could launch a flechette. He answered no. Indeed, he brought what he said was the same umbrella to the hearing to demonstrate that it was just an average black umbrella.

When one congressman suggested that Witt thought of himself as a “cool cat,” he replied, "I can assure you I was not all that cool. I think one of my reactions was knowing that I was there with this stupid umbrella and heckling the president."

"I would have to describe it as kind of like a bad joke that had gone sour, or a practical joke you pulled on someone that had gone sour."

The umbrella, Witt explained, was a visual protest, not of Kennedy’s policies, but of the backing that JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., gave to Britain's umbrella-toting Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement policies toward the Nazis in the late 1930s.

“In a coffee break conversation, someone had mentioned that the umbrella was a sore spot with the Kennedy family,” Witt told lawmakers. “Being a conservative-type fellow, I sort of placed him in the liberal camp and I was just going to kind of do a little heckling.”

Asked whether he had anything to add, Witt said, “If the 'Guinness Book of World Records' had a category for people doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place, I would be No. 1 in that position with not even a close runner-up.”

An innocent explanation, but is it true? Mr. Thompson, interviewed in the Errol Morris documentary, calls the explanation “just wacky enough it has to be true.”

Others say there’s no definitive proof that Witt was in fact the Umbrella Man. He fit the image: tall, thin, white. He was a 53-year-old Dallas warehouse manager, according to an AP story at the time he gave his testimony. Since that day, little is known of what became of Witt. He would be 88 now.

For some, the Umbrella Man has become a cautionary tale about America’s search for truth and meaning from the assassination, a search that itself has become a sort of societal addiction, in which facts, historical research, and theories continue to clash. For Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze, the investigation itself can muddy understanding, as when a mundane detail – a lone man with an umbrella on a sunny Dallas morning, for instance – becomes, as Mr. Schutze wrote recently, a "trap door" that leads to a "quantum universe of weirdness."

Believe what you will, but this much is true: No umbrellas are allowed in Dealey Plaza during Friday's public commemoration of the assassination.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/1122/JFK-assassination-Why-suspicions-still-linger-about-Umbrella-Man

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #20 on: September 21, 2021, 12:18:06 AM »


Offline Jerry Freeman

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #21 on: September 21, 2021, 01:52:13 AM »
  If you remembered the BLM protests last year, the right wing white supremacist infiltrators committing violence were all holding black umbrellas as a symbol.
Perhaps a link on mass umbrella toting interlopers wearing GOP bands on their right arms could be provided?

I found ONE video of ONE guy [dressed in black and wearing a gas mask] with a black umbrella and a hammer.. smashing windows.
Evidence of his political affiliation was not apparent.
I did find videos of riots. The claim was that extremist radical elements were responsible.
Many rioters black and white.
How governmental sympathies were determined was a mystery to me. 
They should have all been arrested, charged, brought up and convicted of felony destruction.
I wouldn't care what side of the political aisle they supported.

I did notice that they these are all liberal news networks [figures]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/29/umbrella-man-white-supremacist-minneapolis/
 https://www.justsecurity.org/70497/far-right-infiltrators-and-agitators-in-george-floyd-protests-indicators-of-white-supremacists/
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/authorities-suspect-white-supremacists-and-far-left-extremists-are-behind-violence-at-protests/
« Last Edit: September 21, 2021, 06:13:47 AM by Jerry Freeman »

Offline Walt Cakebread

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #22 on: September 21, 2021, 02:20:35 AM »
The umbrella man here is very interesting. If you remembered the BLM protests last year, the right wing white supremacist infiltrators committing violence were all holding black umbrellas as a symbol.   

The umbrella man here is very interesting. If you remembered the BLM protests last year, the right wing white supremacist infiltrators committing violence were all holding black umbrellas as a symbol.    ​


JFK assassination: Why suspicions still linger about 'Umbrella Man'

The man with the black umbrella in the Dallas crowd on the day of the JFK assassination remains an enigma to some and a sinister figure to others. What's wrong with the official explanation about Umbrella Man?


November 22, 2013

Nov. 22, 1963 was not rainy, and yet there he was in the crowd in Dallas's Dealey Square as President John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed by – the man with the black umbrella.

Through the 50 years since the JFK assassination robbed Americans of any semblance of political innocence, questions have persisted about that man and why he opened and pumped his umbrella in the moments before the president was shot. Was the hoisting of the umbrella a signal? Was the umbrella itself a weapon? Did the man know Lee Harvey Oswald?

The explanation from the man himself, coming 15 years later in congressional testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, has not put to rest all suspicions (as is the case with so many other facets of the JFK assassination). Today, 6 in 10 Americans do not believe the official version of what happened – specifically, that Oswald acted alone. Novelist John Updike was once prompted to write that confusion about Umbrella Man hangs over the assassination, dangling around “history’s neck like a fetish.”

“In all of Dallas, there appears to be exactly one person standing under an open black umbrella. And that person is standing where the shots begin to rain into the limousine,” Josiah “Tink” Thompson, author of “Six Seconds in Dallas,” says in a 2011 documentary short by filmmaker Errol Morris. “Can anyone come up with a nonsinister explanation for this? Hmm?”

Louie Steven Witt, aka Umbrella Man, offered one to Congress when he voluntarily came forward to testify – and a peculiar one it was. In his 1978 testimony, he said he had known nothing about the controversy surrounding his rain gear. The umbrella had indeed been intended to convey a message, Mr. Witt told lawmakers, but to Kennedy himself, not to any co-conspirators in an assassination plot. He called his actions that day "a bad joke."

But the photos and film footage of Umbrella Man's actions seem to many to defy explanation – and so they interpret the images themselves.

“One theory is that the assassins wanted Kennedy to know (in his final seconds) exactly why he was being killed,” writes blogger Croft Randle. “The umbrella symbolized Kennedy’s … refusal to provide a covering ‘umbrella’ of air support during the CIA’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The term had been widely used and the significance of the raised umbrella would have instantly been understood by Kennedy.”

In director Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, “JFK,” the Umbrella Man is a signal man. Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly cut his reportorial teeth on the Umbrella Man story.

Mr. Witt, in front of Congress, was asked specifically whether the umbrella was equipped with a shooting mechanism that could launch a flechette. He answered no. Indeed, he brought what he said was the same umbrella to the hearing to demonstrate that it was just an average black umbrella.

When one congressman suggested that Witt thought of himself as a “cool cat,” he replied, "I can assure you I was not all that cool. I think one of my reactions was knowing that I was there with this stupid umbrella and heckling the president."

"I would have to describe it as kind of like a bad joke that had gone sour, or a practical joke you pulled on someone that had gone sour."

The umbrella, Witt explained, was a visual protest, not of Kennedy’s policies, but of the backing that JFK's father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., gave to Britain's umbrella-toting Neville Chamberlain and his appeasement policies toward the Nazis in the late 1930s.

“In a coffee break conversation, someone had mentioned that the umbrella was a sore spot with the Kennedy family,” Witt told lawmakers. “Being a conservative-type fellow, I sort of placed him in the liberal camp and I was just going to kind of do a little heckling.”

Asked whether he had anything to add, Witt said, “If the 'Guinness Book of World Records' had a category for people doing the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong place, I would be No. 1 in that position with not even a close runner-up.”

An innocent explanation, but is it true? Mr. Thompson, interviewed in the Errol Morris documentary, calls the explanation “just wacky enough it has to be true.”

Others say there’s no definitive proof that Witt was in fact the Umbrella Man. He fit the image: tall, thin, white. He was a 53-year-old Dallas warehouse manager, according to an AP story at the time he gave his testimony. Since that day, little is known of what became of Witt. He would be 88 now.

For some, the Umbrella Man has become a cautionary tale about America’s search for truth and meaning from the assassination, a search that itself has become a sort of societal addiction, in which facts, historical research, and theories continue to clash. For Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze, the investigation itself can muddy understanding, as when a mundane detail – a lone man with an umbrella on a sunny Dallas morning, for instance – becomes, as Mr. Schutze wrote recently, a "trap door" that leads to a "quantum universe of weirdness."

Believe what you will, but this much is true: No umbrellas are allowed in Dealey Plaza during Friday's public commemoration of the assassination.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/1122/JFK-assassination-Why-suspicions-still-linger-about-Umbrella-Man


“One theory is that the assassins wanted Kennedy to know (in his final seconds) exactly why he was being killed,” writes blogger Croft Randle. “The umbrella symbolized Kennedy’s … refusal to provide a covering ‘umbrella’ of air support during the CIA’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The term had been widely used and the significance of the raised umbrella would have instantly been understood by Kennedy.”


The umbrella plus the red rings on the windows of the TSBD was intended to remind JFK that he had  pulled the UMBRELLA OF AIR COVER and the red rings on RED  beach were there as markers to the aircraft ......

Offline Robert Reeves

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Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #23 on: September 21, 2021, 08:07:40 AM »


The man with the umbrella in this pic is allegedly Rip Robertson in 1964. It was posted by John O'Hare's son

People have speculated Rip & O'Hare are the guys pictured in the plaza.







O'Hare's son, so far, hasn't said if he believes it was his father & Rip Robertson photographed in dealey plaza. But I thought it was a hint that he posted this pic of his father's friend Rip!

BTW, November 24th 1964 CIA led an invasion into the Congo (Assault on Stanleyville – November 1964), to free some hostages, which O'Hare's son said this pic was then taken (in the Congo). Would be interesting to know the pics real date. Kinda like Rip might have been commemorating something with this umbrella and bottle of booze in his other hand. Just my opinion ... of course.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2021, 08:40:10 AM by Robert Reeves »

JFK Assassination Forum

Re: The Signal Man on Elm Street
« Reply #23 on: September 21, 2021, 08:07:40 AM »