Post by John Duncan on Mar 17, 2022 15:51:29 GMT -5
That Damn Paper Bag Again
By Raymond Gallagher
3/2008
Edited by John Duncan
It is even possible that the paper bag had nothing to do with the murder weapon. Why would a shooter go to the trouble of neatly refolding the bag when he was in such a dangerous position?
As long as we are on the subject of the paper sack, let me add some more "crap" about it.
I don't believe that LHO was the shooter. However, I believe that he was well aware of what was to happen since he was blackmailed into participating in the murder of the President. Blackmailed because it was common knowledge to the plotters and planners that he was the one who shot at Walker*. I SUSPECT that the weapon (not Lee's) was already in the building before LHO even got to work and the shooter and another man were in the building---on the seventh floor most of the night waiting for the motorcade. I also believe the plan was to shoot from the west side of the fifth floor since there was so much work being done on the sixth floor and, in the end, the shooter had to go to the only place where he could not be seen by employees on their lunch hour --- the sixth floor sniper's nest.--- the worst place in the building to fire from. It was the farthest place to exit from and the most likely place to be seen from the street. There was nothing secure about that building. Anyone could enter and leave during the dark hours of the night and probably did on more than one occasion during the planning of the murder of JFK.
* The JFK Assassination Board does not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald fired a shot at General Edwin Walker since there is no evidence showing this.
The defenders of the Warren Commission's claim that LHO constructed a paper container from materials in the TSBD to transport his Mannlicher-Carcano from the Paine garage, in Irving, to the sixth floor of the building where he worked, have got some questions to answer. If Lee snitched paper and tape from the shipping room, when did he do this without Troy West seeing him and when and where did he manufacture the final container? Troy West testified that he seldom moved away from his station.
A replica bag was made of similar materials from the same area of Troy West's shipping room by SA Bardwell D. ODUM on Sunday, December 1 when West wasn't there to watch over his coffee business and his paper rolls. Did ODUM construct his sack while in the shipping room or did he too take the paper and tape home with him, hidden in his trousers and construct his container without being seen?
If Lee did have his weapon in the mysterious bag and carried it from Frazier's car into the TSBD, where did he deposit it until needed to shoot at the President? Since he was allegedly seen entering the back door of the building empty handed, how did he make his package disappear?
When last seen by Frazier, he had the alleged rifle under his arm and by the time he was seen by Dougherty the package was no longer an issue. If true, Lee had about four hours to retrieve his murder weapon and take it up to the sixth floor without being seen.
Considering the above, we must conclude that the package was hidden outside the building without Frazier seeing Lee conceal it. This would indicate that at some point during the morning Lee had to leave the building, recover his package and carry it, unseen again, to the sixth floor where he had to assemble it.
Difficult to explain? Indeed!
Now, the defenders of the curtain rod story also have some explaining to do.
If Lee did take paper and tape from the shipping room and was able at some point to construct the brown paper bag, the same scenario exists.
If he had curtain rods in the package when he exited Frazier's car and was seen empty handed by Dougherty, what happened to his rods? Let's examine Dougherty's testimony since so much value is placed on his seeing Lee enter the back door empty handed.
He says he was sitting on the wrapping table "when Lee came through the rear door" empty handed. When asked about the location of the door and if it was the only door, he said, "Yes." He was not necessarily lying. However, what he said was misleading. To explain, we must examine the floor plan drawing of the first floor of the TSBD. (CE 1061). Where he was seated, he could not have seen Lee enter the rear door to the building from outside since that door only deposits a person onto the deck of the rear loading dock-not the first floor proper where Dougherty described seeing Lee enter empty handed.
jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo3/exhibits/ce1061.jpg
LOOKING AT THE DRAWING: After entering the loading dock from outside, we see a door from the dock to the first floor and the shipping floor equipment where Dougherty was sitting. So now we have our antinomy!
Both sides of the argument can argue that Lee left the package (containing the rods or rifle) someplace on the loading dock where neither Frazier or Dougherty would have seen it.
Attached to the rear of the building was the loading dock (no longer there) that had two separate entrances to the building; one to the loading dock itself and another to the Houston St. Dock. (See CE 1061 . CE 362)
If I was making the movie, I would opt for the curtain rod story and improvise from there. Of course, that does not exclude the possibility of the rifle, or a similar rifle, having been brought into the building before the morning of the 22nd., especially since we are not sure when the rifle might have been removed from the Paine's garage, are we?
And obviously, Lee had not planned on returning home again to Irving, and logic says that he at least wanted to see his family for possibly the last time, so he fibbed to Frazier about why he wanted to go home a day early. And not to be seen as a liar, he did have a set of Ruth's curtain rods, already wrapped from the Paine garage. Hell, Ruth had lots of cheap rods and wasn't using them anyhow.
See Testimony of both Ruth and Mike Paine and you will see that they disagree on how many sets of unused rods were wrapped and stored in the garage in brown wrapping paper. The rods were 27 inches long.
Yes, if I was making the movie, I would plan the shooting from a window on the west side of the fifth floor where my shooter would not be seen by the crowds on Houston and Elm streets, and I would have my rifle nearby and ready to fire. I would hide it behind a box of those books and have it marked for my shooter so he would know where to pick it up when he came down from the seventh floor, where he had been hiding since the early hours before the book depository opened. When the human traffic was too much on the fifth floor, I would have him hurry to the sixth floor and look for a place to shoot at the motorcade.
Would I provide some background scenes to convince my audience that my movie making plot was sincere? Of course. I would have open windows on the west side of the fifth floor and I would show the marking made by Lee for my shooter, on the box where the gun was hidden (earlier by Lee and not necessarily on the 22nd. (CE 490)
But , I am not really making a movie so posting my thoughts will have to do for now.
See: jfkassassination.net/russ/wcexlink.htm
Scan down to Vol. XVII and view CE 730, 731, and 732 to see the wrapping benches where Dougherty was sitting when he saw Lee enter at 8:am. Then scan to CE 1061----- the floor plan and observe the outer door to the loading dock and the door from the dock into the first floor. Then (CE 490) to see where the rifle was hidden behind a box marked with the notation: CHICAGO ORDER.
Hmmm! I wonder what that means. It was the only box in the building so marked. Does it mean, here is a rifle from Klein's in Chicago? Compare the handwriting with Lee's script and compare the word CHICAGO with the envelope where Lee wrote the address of Klein's Sporting Goods CHICAGO. ILL. They appear to be the same handwriting.
One of the most controversial objects of evidence used against Lee Harvey Oswald was a homemade bag found by the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building. It was 38 inches long, just long enough to transport the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle when dismantled.
The Warren Commission believed and concluded that Oswald 1) Took paper and tape from the wrapping bench of the Depository and fashioned a bag large enough to carry the disassembled rifle; 2) Removed the rifle from the blanket in the Paine's garage on Thursday evening and carried the weapon into the Depository building on Friday morning concealed in the bag; and 4) Left the bag alongside the window from which the shots were fired.
The Commission also concluded that the bag containing the rifle was seen by Wesley Frazier, who worked with Lee Oswald, who also lived in Irving and drove Oswald to work on the morning of the assassination. Frazier later testified that Lee told him that the bag contained curtain rods to be used in his rented room in Dallas.
When the bag was found next to the window, it was examined and dusted for prints, as was the rifle when it was found, no prints were found. Later, "Using a standard chemical method involving silver nitrates the FBI Laboratory developed a latent palm print and latent fingerprint on the bag." (WR,p. 135) S.F. Latona, of the FBI Latent Fingerprint Section, identified the print as the right palm print of Lee Oswald. The FBI concluded that "No other identifiable prints were found on the bag" despite the fact that the bag had been handled by numerous people. The bag was found by Marvin Johnson, a Homicide and Robbery Bureau detective with the Dallas Police and his partner L.D Montgomery. From Johnson's testimony:
"WE found this brown paper sack or case. It was made of heavy wrapping paper. Actually, it looked similar to the paper that those books was wrapped in. It was just a long narrow paper bag...I know that the first I saw of it, L.D. Montgomery, my partner, picked it up off the floor, and it was folded up and he unfolded it... It was folded then he unfolded it... It was folded then refolded, It was a fairly small package." (Vol. VII, P. 103).
Detective Johnson gave the bag to Lt. J.C. Day who examined it and turned it over to Detective Hicks and Studebaker, who took it to headquarters along with other equipment, (Vol. IV, pp. 267,268; CE 626).
Lt. Day noticed that there was a similar paper and tape of the same width as that used to make the homemade bag somewhere else in the Book Depository.
From Day's testimony:
Mr. Day. "On the first floor of the Texas Book Depository, and I noticed from the wrapping bench there was paper and tape of a SIMILAR - the tape was of the same width as the bag...I directed one of the officers standing by me, I don't know which, to get a piece of the paper from the wrapping bench." (Vol. IV,p.268)
Lt. Day did not take any pictures of the wrapping bench on the day of the assassination, but returned to the building on April 13, 1964, and took three pictures of the area (CE 730, 731, 732) and told Commission Counsel Belin, "I don't think the benches had been changed since the November shooting." (Vol. IV, p. 268)
Mr. Belin: Do you recognize at any point on any of the exhibits the actual tape machine that was used?
Mr. Day: The one that we removed this from was the north roll and the tape on the east side of the bench.
Mr. Belin: You are now pointing at Exhibit 730. I notice a roll of paper underneath the bench in the center of the picture. Is that where you got the big paper, the main paper on Commission Exhibit 677?
Mr. Day: Yes , sir. To the best of my knowledge that is the roll we tore the paper off of." (Vol. IV, p. 268)
The Depository normally used approximately one roll of paper every 3 working days. (Not all from the same roll-average total usage).Of course, Lt. Day did not mean that his sample came from the same roll of paper that he photographed 5 months after the shooting, and CE 730,731 and 732 clearly show that there were many working areas with many rolls of wrapping paper and at least 3 visible portable tape machines. Despite the variety of paper and tape machines available for sampling, on November 22, Lt. Day was still able to select the exact roll of paper and the precise tape machine that Oswald allegedly used for material to fashion his alleged rifle case. How fortunate it would be to have a person like Lt.Day as a companion at the racetrack, on a bad day, to help in making race selections.
Mr. Belin wondered about the tape machines.
Mr. Belin: Were there other tape machines there also?
Mr. Day: Yes, but I didn't notice them at the time." (Vol.IV,p.268).
So much has been discussed and written about the treatment of the bag by the Dallas Police Department and the FBI, after the bag was found, that I will not belabor that aspect of the topic. It will be my purpose to suggest that there was no need for Lee Oswald to snitch paper or tape from the Book Depository since the rifle within the blanket, in the Paine's garage was already wrapped in paper.
There is strong evidence that the rifle found on the sixth floor and used to kill President Kennedy was not Oswald's rifle. The sixth floor murder weapon may have been brought into the building in a bag made from materials from the shipping room, but Oswald did not make the bag or carry a rifle into the building in a bag made from Depository wrapping paper. A bag for Lee's rifle was unnecessary - he did not have to make a bag. Lee's Mannlicher-Carcano had been wrapped in paper and placed in a "rustic" blanket in late September in New Orleans, and transported by Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald to Texas and the floor of the Paine's garage where it was observed and maintained by the Paines until it was removed from the blanket sometime before
November 22, 1963.
On Friday, September 20, 1963, Ruth Paine arrived in New Orleans on her way back to Dallas after a vacation in the east and mid-west. Ruth planned on returning Marina to Dallas with her while Lee looked for work in Houston. Ruth and her two children stayed the weekend with the Oswalds and planned to leave for Texas on Monday, September 23. Lee had packed all of their belongings and, on Monday, loaded Ruth's station wagon for the trip.
In Priscilla Johnson Mcmillan's book Marina and Lee (New York: Harper& Row, 1977), the author describes the loading of the station wagon as told to her by Marina Oswald:
"What she (Ruth) did not know was that among the items he was loading with such care in her car was almost certainly his rifle, wrapped in brown paper and a blanket and tied up in heavy string..." (p.370)
And more:
"...When she was certain Ruth could not see her she crept into the garage, to the place where Lee kept the rifle wrapped in paper inside the heavy blanket, a green and brown wool blanket of East German make that she had bought in Russia."(p.429)
In Marina's conversation with the Warren Commission, she testified that, while looking for crib parts, she opened the blanket only to see the butt end of Lee's rifle. She was not asked if the rifle was wrapped in paper. However, she was asked by General Counsel Rankin if she ever saw the rifle in a paper cover. Marina answered, "No." (Vol. 1,p.67) Today, with a better understanding of English, a "paper cover" might elicit a different answer.
Mike Paine, who had moved the blanket in the garage more than once, was asked by the Commission if he had the impression that there may have been any paper inside the blanket. His answer:
Mr. Paine: No, I didn't have that impression nothing crinkled, no sound.
Mr. Liebeler: Was there any indication by the crinkling or otherwise that there might be paper wrapped inside the blanket?
Mr. Paine: That's right.
Paine's vague answer, "that is right," did not satisfy Liebeler who returned to the blanket and how it was wrapped. Confused, Paine said, "I can't remember how it was wrapped at this end because I could grab my hand around the PAPER whereas this end, I think it was folded over." (Vol. IX, p. 439)
When Ruth Paine testified before the Commission in Washington, she claimed to have wrapping paper at her home in Irving that was similar to the paper used to make the homemade bag found in the Book Depository.
Later, when members of the Commission staff went to the Paine home to examine the paper, Mr.Jenner took a sample of the paper provided to him by Mrs. Paine. He took a sample 3 feet 1 inch in length and marked it as Ruth Paine Exhibit 272. This exhibit appears in Vol.XXI, p. 3.
In the contents of Volume XXI, this exhibit is titled: Sample of wrapping paper kept by Ruth Paine in her home.
In reality, this evidence and its claims are misleading and irrelevant. It has no connection with the assassination since this roll was purchased after the event. This, however, did not stop Assistant Counsel Albert Jenner from using the sample to mislead researchers.
At the time of Jenner's visit to the Paine home, Mrs. Paine was asked where she kept wrapping paper. She went to the kitchen-dining room area and took a tube of wrapping paper from the bottom drawer of a secretary desk and gave it to Mr. Jenner.
Mr. Jenner: And is that the remains of the tube of wrapping paper that you had in your home on November 22, 1963?
Mrs. Paine: No, this is a new one, similar to the old one.
Mr. Jenner: Did you purchase it at the same place that you purchased the previous wrapping paper?"
Mrs. Paine: I purchased the rolls at some dime store.
At this point, Jenner should have realized that the sample was meaningless as evidence and abandoned the effort, but he went on with the charade. He had his assistant, Agent Howlett, measure the width of the paper (two feet 6 inches) then cut 3 feet 1 inch from the roll.
Mr. Jenner: We will mark the sheet of wrapping paper... as Ruth Paine Exhibit No. 272. Would you mark that, please Miss Reporter? (Vol. IX, p.411)
The average investigator probably would have moved on when he realized that he was examining a roll of paper that could not have been used to make a rifle case, but Jenner was determined not to waste the visit to the Paine home in Irving. And, for the rest of the evening, Jenner, along with his team of assistants, with their tape measures in hand, measured everything in sight.
From the testimony:
Mr. Jenner: That your home is well set back, we'll measure it in a moment, from the street, and it is a generous lawn with some bushes, that bushes are not as solid as a screen but they are up close to your home. The lawn area is entirely open except for the oak tree which I have therefore described as being a generous shade tree about 2 feet in diameter. We will measure the circumference in a moment. John Joe, could we measure the distance from the south wall of the house to the sidewalk?
At this point, Agent Howlett saved some time by announcing:
"There is no sidewalk. There is a curb,"
After a measurement from the house to the curb (42 feet) they measured the canopy over the porch entrance, length and width (11 feet in depth and 7 feet three inches from east to west. (Vol. IX, p. 413)
Anyone watching this comedy would have taken Jenner for a real estate salesman preparing a brochure for a home sale. With members of the Warren Commission indulging in such ridiculous conduct, is it any wonder why there has never been any real enthusiasm for accepting the findings of the Warren report?
By Raymond Gallagher
3/2008
Edited by John Duncan
It is even possible that the paper bag had nothing to do with the murder weapon. Why would a shooter go to the trouble of neatly refolding the bag when he was in such a dangerous position?
As long as we are on the subject of the paper sack, let me add some more "crap" about it.
I don't believe that LHO was the shooter. However, I believe that he was well aware of what was to happen since he was blackmailed into participating in the murder of the President. Blackmailed because it was common knowledge to the plotters and planners that he was the one who shot at Walker*. I SUSPECT that the weapon (not Lee's) was already in the building before LHO even got to work and the shooter and another man were in the building---on the seventh floor most of the night waiting for the motorcade. I also believe the plan was to shoot from the west side of the fifth floor since there was so much work being done on the sixth floor and, in the end, the shooter had to go to the only place where he could not be seen by employees on their lunch hour --- the sixth floor sniper's nest.--- the worst place in the building to fire from. It was the farthest place to exit from and the most likely place to be seen from the street. There was nothing secure about that building. Anyone could enter and leave during the dark hours of the night and probably did on more than one occasion during the planning of the murder of JFK.
* The JFK Assassination Board does not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald fired a shot at General Edwin Walker since there is no evidence showing this.
The defenders of the Warren Commission's claim that LHO constructed a paper container from materials in the TSBD to transport his Mannlicher-Carcano from the Paine garage, in Irving, to the sixth floor of the building where he worked, have got some questions to answer. If Lee snitched paper and tape from the shipping room, when did he do this without Troy West seeing him and when and where did he manufacture the final container? Troy West testified that he seldom moved away from his station.
A replica bag was made of similar materials from the same area of Troy West's shipping room by SA Bardwell D. ODUM on Sunday, December 1 when West wasn't there to watch over his coffee business and his paper rolls. Did ODUM construct his sack while in the shipping room or did he too take the paper and tape home with him, hidden in his trousers and construct his container without being seen?
If Lee did have his weapon in the mysterious bag and carried it from Frazier's car into the TSBD, where did he deposit it until needed to shoot at the President? Since he was allegedly seen entering the back door of the building empty handed, how did he make his package disappear?
When last seen by Frazier, he had the alleged rifle under his arm and by the time he was seen by Dougherty the package was no longer an issue. If true, Lee had about four hours to retrieve his murder weapon and take it up to the sixth floor without being seen.
Considering the above, we must conclude that the package was hidden outside the building without Frazier seeing Lee conceal it. This would indicate that at some point during the morning Lee had to leave the building, recover his package and carry it, unseen again, to the sixth floor where he had to assemble it.
Difficult to explain? Indeed!
Now, the defenders of the curtain rod story also have some explaining to do.
If Lee did take paper and tape from the shipping room and was able at some point to construct the brown paper bag, the same scenario exists.
If he had curtain rods in the package when he exited Frazier's car and was seen empty handed by Dougherty, what happened to his rods? Let's examine Dougherty's testimony since so much value is placed on his seeing Lee enter the back door empty handed.
He says he was sitting on the wrapping table "when Lee came through the rear door" empty handed. When asked about the location of the door and if it was the only door, he said, "Yes." He was not necessarily lying. However, what he said was misleading. To explain, we must examine the floor plan drawing of the first floor of the TSBD. (CE 1061). Where he was seated, he could not have seen Lee enter the rear door to the building from outside since that door only deposits a person onto the deck of the rear loading dock-not the first floor proper where Dougherty described seeing Lee enter empty handed.
jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo3/exhibits/ce1061.jpg
LOOKING AT THE DRAWING: After entering the loading dock from outside, we see a door from the dock to the first floor and the shipping floor equipment where Dougherty was sitting. So now we have our antinomy!
Both sides of the argument can argue that Lee left the package (containing the rods or rifle) someplace on the loading dock where neither Frazier or Dougherty would have seen it.
Attached to the rear of the building was the loading dock (no longer there) that had two separate entrances to the building; one to the loading dock itself and another to the Houston St. Dock. (See CE 1061 . CE 362)
If I was making the movie, I would opt for the curtain rod story and improvise from there. Of course, that does not exclude the possibility of the rifle, or a similar rifle, having been brought into the building before the morning of the 22nd., especially since we are not sure when the rifle might have been removed from the Paine's garage, are we?
And obviously, Lee had not planned on returning home again to Irving, and logic says that he at least wanted to see his family for possibly the last time, so he fibbed to Frazier about why he wanted to go home a day early. And not to be seen as a liar, he did have a set of Ruth's curtain rods, already wrapped from the Paine garage. Hell, Ruth had lots of cheap rods and wasn't using them anyhow.
See Testimony of both Ruth and Mike Paine and you will see that they disagree on how many sets of unused rods were wrapped and stored in the garage in brown wrapping paper. The rods were 27 inches long.
Yes, if I was making the movie, I would plan the shooting from a window on the west side of the fifth floor where my shooter would not be seen by the crowds on Houston and Elm streets, and I would have my rifle nearby and ready to fire. I would hide it behind a box of those books and have it marked for my shooter so he would know where to pick it up when he came down from the seventh floor, where he had been hiding since the early hours before the book depository opened. When the human traffic was too much on the fifth floor, I would have him hurry to the sixth floor and look for a place to shoot at the motorcade.
Would I provide some background scenes to convince my audience that my movie making plot was sincere? Of course. I would have open windows on the west side of the fifth floor and I would show the marking made by Lee for my shooter, on the box where the gun was hidden (earlier by Lee and not necessarily on the 22nd. (CE 490)
But , I am not really making a movie so posting my thoughts will have to do for now.
See: jfkassassination.net/russ/wcexlink.htm
Scan down to Vol. XVII and view CE 730, 731, and 732 to see the wrapping benches where Dougherty was sitting when he saw Lee enter at 8:am. Then scan to CE 1061----- the floor plan and observe the outer door to the loading dock and the door from the dock into the first floor. Then (CE 490) to see where the rifle was hidden behind a box marked with the notation: CHICAGO ORDER.
Hmmm! I wonder what that means. It was the only box in the building so marked. Does it mean, here is a rifle from Klein's in Chicago? Compare the handwriting with Lee's script and compare the word CHICAGO with the envelope where Lee wrote the address of Klein's Sporting Goods CHICAGO. ILL. They appear to be the same handwriting.
One of the most controversial objects of evidence used against Lee Harvey Oswald was a homemade bag found by the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building. It was 38 inches long, just long enough to transport the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle when dismantled.
The Warren Commission believed and concluded that Oswald 1) Took paper and tape from the wrapping bench of the Depository and fashioned a bag large enough to carry the disassembled rifle; 2) Removed the rifle from the blanket in the Paine's garage on Thursday evening and carried the weapon into the Depository building on Friday morning concealed in the bag; and 4) Left the bag alongside the window from which the shots were fired.
The Commission also concluded that the bag containing the rifle was seen by Wesley Frazier, who worked with Lee Oswald, who also lived in Irving and drove Oswald to work on the morning of the assassination. Frazier later testified that Lee told him that the bag contained curtain rods to be used in his rented room in Dallas.
When the bag was found next to the window, it was examined and dusted for prints, as was the rifle when it was found, no prints were found. Later, "Using a standard chemical method involving silver nitrates the FBI Laboratory developed a latent palm print and latent fingerprint on the bag." (WR,p. 135) S.F. Latona, of the FBI Latent Fingerprint Section, identified the print as the right palm print of Lee Oswald. The FBI concluded that "No other identifiable prints were found on the bag" despite the fact that the bag had been handled by numerous people. The bag was found by Marvin Johnson, a Homicide and Robbery Bureau detective with the Dallas Police and his partner L.D Montgomery. From Johnson's testimony:
"WE found this brown paper sack or case. It was made of heavy wrapping paper. Actually, it looked similar to the paper that those books was wrapped in. It was just a long narrow paper bag...I know that the first I saw of it, L.D. Montgomery, my partner, picked it up off the floor, and it was folded up and he unfolded it... It was folded then he unfolded it... It was folded then refolded, It was a fairly small package." (Vol. VII, P. 103).
Detective Johnson gave the bag to Lt. J.C. Day who examined it and turned it over to Detective Hicks and Studebaker, who took it to headquarters along with other equipment, (Vol. IV, pp. 267,268; CE 626).
Lt. Day noticed that there was a similar paper and tape of the same width as that used to make the homemade bag somewhere else in the Book Depository.
From Day's testimony:
Mr. Day. "On the first floor of the Texas Book Depository, and I noticed from the wrapping bench there was paper and tape of a SIMILAR - the tape was of the same width as the bag...I directed one of the officers standing by me, I don't know which, to get a piece of the paper from the wrapping bench." (Vol. IV,p.268)
Lt. Day did not take any pictures of the wrapping bench on the day of the assassination, but returned to the building on April 13, 1964, and took three pictures of the area (CE 730, 731, 732) and told Commission Counsel Belin, "I don't think the benches had been changed since the November shooting." (Vol. IV, p. 268)
Mr. Belin: Do you recognize at any point on any of the exhibits the actual tape machine that was used?
Mr. Day: The one that we removed this from was the north roll and the tape on the east side of the bench.
Mr. Belin: You are now pointing at Exhibit 730. I notice a roll of paper underneath the bench in the center of the picture. Is that where you got the big paper, the main paper on Commission Exhibit 677?
Mr. Day: Yes , sir. To the best of my knowledge that is the roll we tore the paper off of." (Vol. IV, p. 268)
The Depository normally used approximately one roll of paper every 3 working days. (Not all from the same roll-average total usage).Of course, Lt. Day did not mean that his sample came from the same roll of paper that he photographed 5 months after the shooting, and CE 730,731 and 732 clearly show that there were many working areas with many rolls of wrapping paper and at least 3 visible portable tape machines. Despite the variety of paper and tape machines available for sampling, on November 22, Lt. Day was still able to select the exact roll of paper and the precise tape machine that Oswald allegedly used for material to fashion his alleged rifle case. How fortunate it would be to have a person like Lt.Day as a companion at the racetrack, on a bad day, to help in making race selections.
Mr. Belin wondered about the tape machines.
Mr. Belin: Were there other tape machines there also?
Mr. Day: Yes, but I didn't notice them at the time." (Vol.IV,p.268).
So much has been discussed and written about the treatment of the bag by the Dallas Police Department and the FBI, after the bag was found, that I will not belabor that aspect of the topic. It will be my purpose to suggest that there was no need for Lee Oswald to snitch paper or tape from the Book Depository since the rifle within the blanket, in the Paine's garage was already wrapped in paper.
There is strong evidence that the rifle found on the sixth floor and used to kill President Kennedy was not Oswald's rifle. The sixth floor murder weapon may have been brought into the building in a bag made from materials from the shipping room, but Oswald did not make the bag or carry a rifle into the building in a bag made from Depository wrapping paper. A bag for Lee's rifle was unnecessary - he did not have to make a bag. Lee's Mannlicher-Carcano had been wrapped in paper and placed in a "rustic" blanket in late September in New Orleans, and transported by Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald to Texas and the floor of the Paine's garage where it was observed and maintained by the Paines until it was removed from the blanket sometime before
November 22, 1963.
On Friday, September 20, 1963, Ruth Paine arrived in New Orleans on her way back to Dallas after a vacation in the east and mid-west. Ruth planned on returning Marina to Dallas with her while Lee looked for work in Houston. Ruth and her two children stayed the weekend with the Oswalds and planned to leave for Texas on Monday, September 23. Lee had packed all of their belongings and, on Monday, loaded Ruth's station wagon for the trip.
In Priscilla Johnson Mcmillan's book Marina and Lee (New York: Harper& Row, 1977), the author describes the loading of the station wagon as told to her by Marina Oswald:
"What she (Ruth) did not know was that among the items he was loading with such care in her car was almost certainly his rifle, wrapped in brown paper and a blanket and tied up in heavy string..." (p.370)
And more:
"...When she was certain Ruth could not see her she crept into the garage, to the place where Lee kept the rifle wrapped in paper inside the heavy blanket, a green and brown wool blanket of East German make that she had bought in Russia."(p.429)
In Marina's conversation with the Warren Commission, she testified that, while looking for crib parts, she opened the blanket only to see the butt end of Lee's rifle. She was not asked if the rifle was wrapped in paper. However, she was asked by General Counsel Rankin if she ever saw the rifle in a paper cover. Marina answered, "No." (Vol. 1,p.67) Today, with a better understanding of English, a "paper cover" might elicit a different answer.
Mike Paine, who had moved the blanket in the garage more than once, was asked by the Commission if he had the impression that there may have been any paper inside the blanket. His answer:
Mr. Paine: No, I didn't have that impression nothing crinkled, no sound.
Mr. Liebeler: Was there any indication by the crinkling or otherwise that there might be paper wrapped inside the blanket?
Mr. Paine: That's right.
Paine's vague answer, "that is right," did not satisfy Liebeler who returned to the blanket and how it was wrapped. Confused, Paine said, "I can't remember how it was wrapped at this end because I could grab my hand around the PAPER whereas this end, I think it was folded over." (Vol. IX, p. 439)
When Ruth Paine testified before the Commission in Washington, she claimed to have wrapping paper at her home in Irving that was similar to the paper used to make the homemade bag found in the Book Depository.
Later, when members of the Commission staff went to the Paine home to examine the paper, Mr.Jenner took a sample of the paper provided to him by Mrs. Paine. He took a sample 3 feet 1 inch in length and marked it as Ruth Paine Exhibit 272. This exhibit appears in Vol.XXI, p. 3.
In the contents of Volume XXI, this exhibit is titled: Sample of wrapping paper kept by Ruth Paine in her home.
In reality, this evidence and its claims are misleading and irrelevant. It has no connection with the assassination since this roll was purchased after the event. This, however, did not stop Assistant Counsel Albert Jenner from using the sample to mislead researchers.
At the time of Jenner's visit to the Paine home, Mrs. Paine was asked where she kept wrapping paper. She went to the kitchen-dining room area and took a tube of wrapping paper from the bottom drawer of a secretary desk and gave it to Mr. Jenner.
Mr. Jenner: And is that the remains of the tube of wrapping paper that you had in your home on November 22, 1963?
Mrs. Paine: No, this is a new one, similar to the old one.
Mr. Jenner: Did you purchase it at the same place that you purchased the previous wrapping paper?"
Mrs. Paine: I purchased the rolls at some dime store.
At this point, Jenner should have realized that the sample was meaningless as evidence and abandoned the effort, but he went on with the charade. He had his assistant, Agent Howlett, measure the width of the paper (two feet 6 inches) then cut 3 feet 1 inch from the roll.
Mr. Jenner: We will mark the sheet of wrapping paper... as Ruth Paine Exhibit No. 272. Would you mark that, please Miss Reporter? (Vol. IX, p.411)
The average investigator probably would have moved on when he realized that he was examining a roll of paper that could not have been used to make a rifle case, but Jenner was determined not to waste the visit to the Paine home in Irving. And, for the rest of the evening, Jenner, along with his team of assistants, with their tape measures in hand, measured everything in sight.
From the testimony:
Mr. Jenner: That your home is well set back, we'll measure it in a moment, from the street, and it is a generous lawn with some bushes, that bushes are not as solid as a screen but they are up close to your home. The lawn area is entirely open except for the oak tree which I have therefore described as being a generous shade tree about 2 feet in diameter. We will measure the circumference in a moment. John Joe, could we measure the distance from the south wall of the house to the sidewalk?
At this point, Agent Howlett saved some time by announcing:
"There is no sidewalk. There is a curb,"
After a measurement from the house to the curb (42 feet) they measured the canopy over the porch entrance, length and width (11 feet in depth and 7 feet three inches from east to west. (Vol. IX, p. 413)
Anyone watching this comedy would have taken Jenner for a real estate salesman preparing a brochure for a home sale. With members of the Warren Commission indulging in such ridiculous conduct, is it any wonder why there has never been any real enthusiasm for accepting the findings of the Warren report?