You, of course, know all about Umbrella Man and Dark Complected Man (a/k/a Walkie Talkie Man). If you're a CTer, you don't know what Louie Steven Witt was all about but by God he wasn't Umbrella Man. If you're a Serious Researcher like Bill Simpich. you started a thread at the Ed Forum just a few months ago suggesting Dark Complected Man was Felipe Vidal Santiago (Vidal to his friends) and Umbrella Man was Roy Hargraves (who in the photos just happens to look more like Louie than Roy). The sinister speculation went on for 9 pages. This is a serious issue, I tell you!
https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/30497-do-photos-show-felipe-vidal-santiago-as-the-dark-complected-man-and-roy-hargraves-as-the-umbrella-man/#commentsSure, why not?
Gunmen with assassination-quality rifles and scopes need spotters to tell them when to fire, don't they? The spotters should carry umbrellas and walkie-talkies and stand right at the curb, making hand signals and pumping umbrellas and whatnot, right? No one would notice
that, surely?
If you're really into this stuff, it's highly possible the umbrella was actually a deadly weapon. While one of the two or three frontal gunmen pumped a high-tech, dissolving CIA ice bullet into JFK's throat, Umbrella Roy did the flechette thing (but missed so badly Jackie thought it was a hummingbird - oh, well, he tried).
Fortunately for CTers 60 years later, Vidal and Roy made no effort whatsoever to disguise their appearances - why do
that, when all you're doing is assassinating a President? It's not like we're robbing a bank or anything. If we're clearly identifiable in a dozen post-assassination photos, what's the big deal? (Just in case you don't know, Vidal and Roy weren't exactly underground figures:
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsantiago.htm.)
Their mission accomplished, our heros sat placidly on the curb while everyone else ran up the Grassy Knoll or screamed in hysterics. Clever way to blend right in, no?
Louie, who vaguely recollected DCM as a Negro, told the HSCA the DCM had repeated "They done shot them folks" two or three times - rather a clever fabrication by Louie, it seems to me, so he must've been in on the plot even if he wasn't Umbrella Man. (He apparently lived in a 1,020-square foot house built in 1953 at 7209 Embassy Street in Dallas from at least 1963 until his death, so he must not have been paid big bucks for his efforts. He lived to be 90, dying in 2014. Why were he and sinister CIA operatives like the Paines allowed to live into their advanced dotage when so many others were rubbed out because They Knew Too Much, inquiring minds would like to know?)
Well, anyway, I like to try to inject rationality into these f-a-s-c-i-n-a-t-i-n-g discussions. What if, it occurred to me, DCM actually was carrying a walkie-talkie? Was there anything inherently sinister about this?
As it turns out, railroads were in the very forefront of pioneering use of this technology. To quote from an article in the August 1960 issue of
Electronics World entitled "Railroad Radio," "Train crews are often provided with 'walkie-talkies' which are extremely valuable in coordinating such tricky maneuvers. And the lucky flagman who has a walkie-talkie won't get left in the wilderness, which has often happened in the past." Indeed, "Today's modern railroad yard is a maze of electronic gear. The one-way loudspeaker paging system is still there but personnel now reply through tiny hand-carried portable radio transmitters called 'Dick Tracy' units by railroaders." And on it goes, extolling the ways railroad yard personnel could keep in touch in 1960.
Here, courtesy of eBay and Etsy, are two 1963-era walkie-talkies that are a far cry from the clumsy units of the 1940s and 50s:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/295953697177 and
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1420670445/two-1960s-ef-johnson-company-walkie.
I don't absolutely insist DCM was actually Railroad Worker Guy. However, put together Louie Steven Witt with the prevalence of walkie-talkies among railroad yard workers in that era, and I for one am not prepared to dive headfirst into Conspiracy World. Perhaps start by giving me one good reason why obscure Louie would have come forward in 1978, subjected himself to an embarrassing grilling by the HSCA, and disappeared back into anonymity if he
weren't Umbrella Man. (To quote 6th Floor Museum curator Stephen Fagin after Louie's death, "I sent him a couple of letters trying to talk with him, but he, I don't think, really ever spoke to anyone after testifying before the House Select Committee in the '70s.")
But what do I know? If a CT priest like Simpich says Umbrella Man was Roy and not Louie, maybe he was. Wait a minute, maybe Roy
was Louie (or Louie was Roy, as the case may be)? Hey, I think I'm starting to get the hang of thinking like a CTer!
