The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • 79

ci.vtiNWTi rrrvn li Trim nKxrr (IN Sunday, June 2Z, 1DC7 -4 A I I I It ha pjM'iiPd in a small park called Dealey Plaza, named in honor of a famous Dallas publisher. Its central landmark used to be a bronze statue of that citizen, George B. Dealey. Now there are others. The yellow brick mass of the Texas School Hook Depository and, close by, an embankment now called "the grassy knoll." Some saw a rifle in a building window.

The Warren Commission decided it was from there the assassin fired. Some saw a puff of smoke on a grassy Critics have decided it was from there an assassin fired. i JL i1 Iff tf Iff" tl I am afraid those sounds came from our building, because it sounded like they came just so directly over my head." Two witnesses. Two versions Both appear in the Warren Report. Only one does in "Rush to Judgment." "Many other persons scattered throughout Dealey Plaza through which Elm Street runs and the knoll and depository overlook placed the origin of the shots on the knoll," Lane observes.

And so they did. Jean Hill did. Billie Joe Lovelady did. William Newman did. John and Faye Chism did.

Roy Truly did. AT LEAST 34 PEOPLE DID, although it is difficult to pinpoint from some of their statements. It is also not always easy to pinpoint the more than 60 witnesses who thought the shots came from the depository. Or the 15 people of the motorcade itself who thought the shots came from the "right rear." Since almost none of such witnesses is mentioned in Lane's book, perhaps that is why he felt no need to mention such others whose testimony is helpful in locating the source of the shots. Such as Mrs.

Earle Cabell, the Dallas mayor's wife, who looked towards the depository at the sound of shots and "saw a projection" in an. upper window. Or Bob Jackson, a press photographer, who also looked up at the depository and told colleagues in a inotorcde press car "there is the gun!" Or James Crawford who looked up at the sound of the third shot and "saw a movement" in the southeast window of the sixth floor of the depository and told a friend "if those were shots, they came from that window" and then advised police to search around some boxes he saw In the window. Police did. They found three rifle shells that were fired by a rifle also found on that floor by that rifle and no other.

Bullet fragments found in Kennedy's car also came from that rifle and no other. 1 advised that it was his opinion that the shots came from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository." Miller: "It sounded like it came from the, I would say from right there in the car. Would be to my left, the way I was looking at him, over toward that incline the knoll." Murphy: "These shots came from a spot Just west of the Texas School Book Depository." REILLY: "The shots came from that park where all the shrubs is up there, to the north of Elm Street, up the slope." FESTER: "It the sound came from back in the corner of Elm and Houston streets." The depository is at the comer of Elm and Houston. Holland, who also picked the knoll, testified he immediately ran to that area. He saw no one suspicious.

Those are the six who "Indicated the shots came from a 'grassy knoll' Two, actually, picked the depository area. One who indicated the knoll also thought the shots sounded like they came from Kennedy's car. THERE ARE THREE other aspects of smoke, not dwelled upon by Lane or Epstein in connection with the knoll. There was a steam pipe in the area. FBI tests showed the alleged assassination rifie produced only a "small amount" of HOWARD BRENNAN is photographed where he stood when he said he saw a 'gunman firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Depository, window A.

Window marked is where he saw one of several Negroes who were watching the motorcade. One of them testified he heard shells hitting the floor over his head. Brennan's testimony is a key factor in the critics' books, as he saw more of Oswald's actions than any other witness. The grassy knoll Is a slope of greensward running southwesterly away from the Texas School Book Depository. There Is an arcade on Its ridge, then a picket fence, high.

The knoll runs along the north side of Elm Street on which Kennedy was slain. It ends at a railroad overpass which Elm Street goes beneath. Several men on the overpass saw smoke near the fence as the President fell. If the smoke came from the assassin's rifle, Kennedy could not have been shot in the back, as the autopsy doctors decided. It is as simple as that: He was facing obliquely toward the knoll.

If he was shot from the knoll, the throat wound must be one of entry, not exit even though doctors said it was of exit. The fabric of the hole in the back of his jacket could not have been bent inwards, even though it was. Governor Connally could not have been shot In the back by the same bullet, even though doctors said he was. Lee Harvey Oswald would not have been a lone assassin. THE COMMISSION GAVE less attention to the knoll than it did the overpass.

It ruled out the overpass in favor of the depository as the assassin's lair for many reasons, one being that no one on the overpass saw a rifle being fired from there. No one saw a rifle fired from the knoll, either. Yet the knoll abides. It does so because critics stress what people saw and heard there. They have not, however, stressed everything that people heard or saw there.

Or did not hear or see. Consider S. M. Holland. Holland was standing on an overpass above Elm Street as the motorcade approached.

The grassy knoll was slightly to his left in the foreground. The Texas School Book Depository, from which the Commission says the shots were fired, was also slightly to his left but behind the presidential limousine. Holland heard a noise like a firecracker. "I looked toward the arcade and trees and saw a puff of smoke come from the trees." That is what Holland told sheriff's deputies right after the assassination, and that is how Mark Lane quotes him in "Rush to Judgment." But there Is more to the sentence, although Lane does not include it It reads: And I heard three more shots after the first shot, but that was the only puff of smoke I saw." IF ONE PUFF OF SMOKE suggests someone shot a gun from the knoll, what does the absence of three subsequent puffs suggest? The Jury, the reading public, was not asked to decide. Mark Lane did it for them.

He decided not to raise the question. Epstein wrote Six out of seven of these witnesses on the overpass who gave an opinion as to the source of the shots indicated that the shots had come from a 'grassy knoll'." They did? The six cited are James Simmons, Austin Miller, Thomas Murphy, Frank Reilly, J. W. Foster and Holland. This is what they say in the Report volumes: Simmons, paraphrased by the FBI: people running EAST on Elm, away from the knoir.

Deputy Allan Sweatt couldn't tell which way to run because one man told him the shots came from toward the knoll and another said the depository. A colleague with him stayed at the depository while he ran on toward the knoll. Deputies Jack Faulkner and A. D. McCurley ran toward the railroad yards behind the knoll because they saw other officers running there.

Officer D. V. Harkness went -to the railroad yards because he saw "everybody hitting the ground" there. Undeniably, the knoll area was widely searched by officers immediately after the shots. And what was found? "There wasn't anything over there," said Patrolman E.

L. Smith. "We didn't see anything there," said Deputy Luke Mooney who thought the shots came from the knoll. Patrolman Charles Polk Player searched cars in the lot behind the knoll for two hours. He didn't report finding anything.

Several hoboes found in freight cars were questioned. Seymour Weitzman found footprints "that didn't make sense because they were going different directions." TWO PERSONS SAID THEY saw a rifle being fired from the sixth floor of the depository. One was Howard Brennan. To weaken the case for the depository, it is important for the critics to weaken Brennan's testimony. This they try to do.

Epstein notes, correctly, that Brennan testified the assassin was standing in the window as he shot. He does not note that Brennan also thought that three onlookers a floor beneath the assassin were also standing. They weren't. They were kneeling. So must the assassin have been to fire through the window.

A small point. A small rebuttal too small, evidently, to include in At a police lineup the day of the assassination, Brennan said he could not positively Conspiracy Talk identify Oswald as the assassin. Four months later, he told the Commission he could. He said he hadn't done so earlier because he feared Communist reprisal. Epstein uses this discrepancy to attack Brennan's credibility.

He doesn't mention that the Commission agrees with him. THE COMMISSION, however, does not question Brennan's credibility that he saw. a man firing a rifle from a depository window because near that window were found not, only a rifle but' shells and fingerprints of Lee Harvey Oswald. It might also be noted, although Epstein, does not, that while on November 22 Brennan said he could not make positive he did then say that man No. 2 in the lineup "most closely resembled" the man he saw in' the window.

Lee Harvey Oswald was man No. 2. Finally, as would any good defense at-torney, the critics question Brennan's ability to see anything. "Perhaps poor eyesight accounted for Brennan's inability to identify the man at the window," says Lane. "Brennan admitted that his eyesight was 'not good' when he testified before the Commission." Brennan, indeed, so testified.

He said this was so because his eyes had been accidentally sandblasted. That happened two months after g. the assassination. In a footnote on Page 90 of the hard- cover edition of "Rush to Judgment" Lane mentions the injury. Seemingly, there the matter would rest: That Brennan testified he was farsighted up until an injury two months after the assassination and that thereafter his eyesight was "not Yet, by Page 269, Howard Brennan haa become "weak-eyed Brennan, who claimed he saw Oswald in a window." After 170 pages maybe the author had forgotten how or when Brennan became Or maybe the reader had.

The Commission maintained that Oswald could not have been in Dallas September 26 or 27. He was in Mexico. The issue was never resolved," wrote Epstein. That is debatable. RECORDS SHOW THAT Oswald crossed into Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, between 6 a.

m. and 2 p. m. September 26. Two passengers on a Houston-Laredo bus said they saw Oswald on board shortly after they awoke at 6 a.

September 26. The Commission said there was strong evidence that Oswald had left Houston on a bus for Laredo at 2:35 a. m. that morning. It noted a bus had left New Orleans, where Oswald had been living, at 2:30 p.

m. September 25 arriving at Houston at 10:50 p. m. that evening. Oswald made a phone call to a woman in Houston that same evening.

It can't be determined whether the call was local or not. Epstein says the visit to Mrs. Odio occulted "the day before he Oswald left on his trip to This disregards Mrs. Odio's testimony. She said the visit occurred September 26 when Oswald had already crossed the border or the 27th when he had reached Mexico City and registered at a hotel.

Were some one's dates wrong? Epstein doesn't even mention there is a conflict between him and the testimony. ULTIMATELY, THE FBI located a Cali-fornian, Loran Eugene Hall, who said he had called on Mrs. Odio in Dallas in September with two other men. The two denied it. Hall later altered his story.

In its report, the Commission stated that the FBI had not completed its investigation of Hall at the time the report went to press. Yet it concluded in the report that Oswald had not been at Mrs. Odio's that September. "Is it too fastidious to insist that conclusions logically follow, not precede, an analysis of all evidence?" Lane asks. The point is well taken.

Despite the vast scope of the Warren investigation, the Odio matter has given the critics ammunition to charge the Commission with haste, with lack of thoroughness. Haste? Quite possibly, although the Commission denies it. But thoroughness? Who was thorough in detailing the Odio investigation? The Commission? Or Epstein? The Hall evidence neither proves nor disproves the Commission conclusion about Mrs. Odio. Epstein says the matter was never resolved.

But, in effect, it was. As much as It ever can be. The Commission was faced with a choice: the testlmosy of Mrs. Odio and her sister against the evidence they were mistaken. It chose the evidence.

Yet it was the Commission that presented all the evidence pro and con about Mrs. Odlo. The critics did not. It was the Commission that presented all the evidence about Lamar Hunt and Ruby, about Oswald's finances. The critics did not.

One may interpret what the Commission found, and the critics have, abundantly. But while, as of this date, there may be doubters, books and speculations, the critics have yet to produce that one essential of proof evidence. Lee Harvey Oswald: The lone, withdrawn child The lone reader of Marxist thunder in hushed libraries The lone rejecter of his homeland The lone prodigal returned to friendless frustration Cut, hunched in the depository window, still alone? The Warren Commission never said: Lee Harvey Oswald, alone, murdered John F. Kennedy, period. It actually said: "The Commission has found no evidence that Oswald was involved with any person or group in a conspiracy If there is any such evidence, it has been beyond the-reach of all the investigative agencies and resources of the United States and has not come to the attention of the Commission." There the matter has not rested.

smoke when fired: Modem military gunpowder is smokeless. NONE of the approximately 200 assassination witnesses questioned other than the four on the overpass mentions seeing ANY smoke, anywhere. Lane says only those on the overpass could see smoke from the knoll because of its elevation and the bushes around it. But those persons on the south side of Elm Street should have seen it, if there was any. They, not those on the overpass, were in a direct line of fire.

None of them mentioned smoke. Lane cites what people heard as well as saw to pinpoint the knoll. He quotes O. V. Campbell, vice president of the depository, who believed the shots came from "the railroad tracks near the viaduct overpass." This could be construed as the knoll area.

Campbell was standing in front of the depository, as Lane mentions. He does NOT mention that at his elbow stood Mrs. Robert Reid, a fellow employee. Lane does NOT mention that Mrs. Reid testified: "I turned to Mr.

Campbell and I said, 'Oh, my goodness, Such handling of Commission evidence by the critics happens too often to be mere oversight. CONSIDER THE ALLEGED meeting in Ruby's Carousel Club November 14, 1963 between Ruby, J. D. Tippitt, the officer the Commission said was shot by Oswald, and Bernard Weissman. Weissman was the young Easterner who had helped place an ad critical of Kennedy in the Dallas Morning News the day of the assassination, Weissman had arrived in Dallas November 4 to try and set up a new conservative party by infiltrating right-wing groups.

The Commission did inquire Into the Carousel meeting with witnesses. One was Larry Crafard, a carnival" worker hired by Ruby to do odd Jobs around the club. The Commission volumes have a statement by Crafard in which he told the FBI he recognized a picture of Weissman as a man he had seen at the club "on a number of occasions." Lane does not mention that Crafard thought Weissman was a "white male American" 38 to 43 years of age. Bernard Weissman was a white, male American who was 26 in 1963 and who, if he had been at the Carousel "a number of occasions," had nonetheless been in Dallas only 10 days. Lane reports that several witnesses said Ruby knew Tippitt.

One that he cites was Dallas Police Lt. George C. Arnett. What Arnett actually told the FBI was that he did not recall to what extent Ruby MAY have known police officer J. D.

Tippitt but added that "he does not believe he was more friendly with Tippitt than the average officer." Arnett, in other words, did not say positively whether Ruby did or did not know Tippitt. LANE SAYS Crafard and Andrew Armstrong, Ruby's bartender and handyman, both heard Ruby say he knew Tippitt when he learned the officer had been shot. Lane does not say that Armstrong also told the FBI: "From what I gather later on, Mrs. Grant, Ruby's sister, told me it was a different Tippitt that he knew." In other words, there was two officers that had the name of Tippitt. Actually, there were three.

And Ruby did know one of them. He said he knew a detective Gayle Tippitt who worked in special services. book has this. It mentions that Gayle Tippitt said his "contacts in recent years with Ruby have been Infrequent." That is taken from Committee Exhibit 1620 in which Gayle Tippitt also said that in the 1950s he "became very well acquainted with Jack Ruby." Lane does not quote that part of Exhibit 1620. Maybe Lane had the Mrs.

Cabells and Bob Jacksons in mind when he said there is "some evidence" shots came from the depository. There is "some" evidence. No one saw a puff of smoke there. Only a rifleman. APART FROM WHAT witnesses heard or did not hear from the knoll, Lane attaches significance to what they DID there.

"Many officers said that as soon as the shots were fired, they ran directly to the knoll and behind the wooden fence and began to search the area, some passing the book depository on the way." Why did people converge on the knoll? Miss Patricia Ann Lawrence, who had been standing at Elm and Houston, ran "along with the crowd" to where the President's car had been when he was hit. So did Mrs. Charles Davis'. "I just ran along with them," said Danny Arce. Curtis Bishop, on the overpass, saw people "running in every direction." Geneva Hine, on the second floor of the depository, saw And 0 0 0 Nor is there evidence in the volumes to indicate a conspiracy in New Orleans.

The Commission and the FBI investigated several of the people that have figured in Garrison's case. They found no conspiracy. It should be mentioned that the chief witness against Clay Shaw so far is a man who first contacted Garrison two days AFTER the district attorney said the case was solved. The witness testified after being given "truth serum" and undergoing hypnosis. It should be mentioned another witness reportedly said he was offered a bribe by the district attorney's office to give favorable testimony.

The witness' lawyer said a lie detector test verified the bribe attempt. Garrison has said he has evidence that Oswald was working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Others have said Oswald was working for the FBI after his return from JACK RUBY fires at Lee Harvey Oswald at 11:21 Dallas time, November 24, 1963, four minutes after he sent a money order from the Western Union office several minutes' walk away. The time Interval is important in determining whether Ruby could have been Involved in a conspiracy and a later plot tr murder Oswald. 1 ill Ti jr 1 7 A the Soviet Union for a fee of $200 a month.

It is legitimate to ask how Epstein can state "no efforts were made by the Commission or its staff to investigate the rumor itself." That simply isn't true. THE COMMISSION, ITSELF, DID investigate in some detail reports of money orders Oswald reportedly had received while in Dallas. It turned out to be baseless. The commission, itself, DID Inquire why FBI agent James Hosty's name was in Oswald's address book. Oswald told his wife to take it down after Hosty had visited her at Ruth Paine's where she was living.

The Commission DID investigate through the Internal Revenue Service Oswald's finances after his return from the Soviet Union. His known and assumed outgo remarkably approximated his income down to the cash balance he had when arrested. The Commission did NOT take at face value the denials of the FBI. And Epstein did NOT mention the foregoing in claiming the Commission "relied entirely on the FBI to disprove the rumor" of Oswald's FBI connection. Another conspiracy rumor: Ruby entered the Dallas police headquarters to shoot Oswald, not by accident but by design.

In accord with some superplot, the assassin had to be assassinated. One incontestable fact of time, however, must be considered. The exact time of Oswald's tranfer depended on when police were done questioning him. At the time that was decided, Ruby was driving downtown to send a money order to one of his strippers. The time he handed the money order across the Western Union counter was punched by a time clock: 11:17 a.

m. Oswald was shot at 11:21 a. m. It takes several minutes to walk from Western Union to the police basement where Oswald was slain. A commuter catching a train would scarcely cut his- corners so finely.

Would a man engaged in a superplot do so? Particularly if he knew in some unexplained way his only chance would come at ANOTHER CONSPIRACY: Oswald, the admitted Marxist who wanted fair play for Cuba, was actually in the anti-Castro underground. The source of this was Sylvia Odlo, an aniti-Castro Cuban. On September 26 or 27, 1963, two Cubans or Mexicans called at her apartment in Dallas with a third person introduced as Leon Oswald, she said. The man told her they had recently come from New Orleans and were friends of her father, a prisoner of Castro. The next day one of the men, who said his name was Leopoldo, phoned Mrs.

Odio and said he wanted to introduce Oswald into the Cuban underground. Leopoldo said Oswald had been in the Marines, was an excellent shot and felt "the Cubans didn't have any guts because President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs and some Cubans should have done that After the assassination, a stunned Mrs. Odlo recognized pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man who came to her home. So did her sister. 1 In New Orleans, Dist.

Atty. Jim Garrison has claimed to have found what the Commission did not: Conspiracy. On the bookshelves of the nation are volumes that claim the same: That Oswald was innocent, that he was a fall guy, that he was involved with Jack Ruby or Bernard Weissman or the FBI or Communists or Texas oil interests or racists. A court of law will decide in New Orleans. But the other versions of conspiracy are not, and quite possibly never will be, before a judge and Jury.

But they are before the Jury of public opinion. They will be for some time. The Warren Commission, unfortunately, did not answer all the questions. Some, however, are probably unanswerable. But some are not questions at all.

They are innuendoes false scents that confuse the hunt for truth. What other construction can one put, for instance, on Mark Lane's Innuendo that there might have been a connection between Ruby and the right wing of Dallas? The Commission made an hour-by-hour probe of Ruby's actions from November 21 to November 24, 1963, to determine if he was involved in a plot. "The Commission found that Ruby's activities and associations were innocent," Lane writes in "Rush to Judgment." "An objective analysis of the record might yield a somewhat different evaluation of Ruby's conduct." Lane mentions an Instance on November 21 when the Commission had said Ruby "visited with a young lady who was Job hunting in Dallas." "Contrary to the Commission's unassuming summation," says Lane, "Ruby did not merely visit with a young lady who was Job hunting. Commission Exhibit 2270, an FBI report of an interview with Connie Trammel, the young lady in question, divulges the fact that Ruby drove with her to the office of Lamar Hunt, the son of H. L.

Hunt." LANE DROPS THE MATTER at that point. Ruby is left at the office of Lamar Hunt, whose Texas-rich father is a strong supporter of ultraright causes. The reader of "Rush to Judgment" is left to make what he may of this suggested link between Ruby and the Dallas right ring. For clarification, however, he might turn to a Commission exhibit. Not 2270.

Try 2291. It also is a statement by Miss Trammel, now Mrs. Penny, to the FBI. "During the trip to the bank, Ruby seemed impressed with the amount of money that Lamar Hunt had made," Miss Trammel told the FBI, "and had mentioned that he knew most of the prominent people in Dallas but did not know Lamar Hunt." 3.