Post by John Duncan on May 26, 2023 19:34:57 GMT -5
How Inspector Sawyer Duped The Warren Commission, You And Me, Too
By Donald Willis 2/2019
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hosting.photobucket.com/albums/b519/richardh11/SawyerArmPatchCrop_zpsaf7e186c.jpg
Famously, a complete stranger misdirected Insp. J.H. Sawyer when the latter first entered the depository. But it now seems that Sawyer was NOT misdirected, that he actually got to where he wanted to go, with or without the help of a stranger....
Sawyer might have been just about the most untrustworthy Warren Commission police witness. First, he seems to recall that Sheriff Decker came on the DPD radio at 12:30 and invoked the Texas School Book Depository. (v6, p. 316) Decker did not. "Then I went on down to the Texas Book Depository." (p. 317) But counsel David Belin advises Sawyer that "There doesn't appear to be anything pertaining to where the shots might have come from until... 12:34...." (p. 319) Sawyer agrees, then, that he did "not at least completely [leave his] car by 12:34pm". (p. 319) Maybe only a leg or two....
He then "immediately went inside the building" with "a couple of officers... [after other] officers around there [said that] the shots had come from the fifth floor...." (pp. 317, 319) Sawyer is again misleading counsel. The only officers who would have indicated "fifth floor" were Patrolman L.L. Hill, who had radioed, at 12:37, re shots from the "second window from the end... upper right hand corner" (DPD radio logs), and Sgt. D.V. Harkness, who radioed, at 12:36, re a witness who saw someone on the fourth or fifth floor--hard to make out the number on the radio-log tape. (See below re dispatcher's floor designation.) Hill was told by the dispatcher, at 12:38, to "report on down" to the depository. ("JFK First Day Evidence", p. 408) Meanwhile--after Harkness radioed--he took his witness down to the building. (v6, p. 310)
Sawyer's "fifth floor" officers, then, did not get down to the depository until, at least, about 12:40. He did not act on a 12:30 radio alert (strike one), nor on a 12:34 alert (strike two). Strike three: The "couple of officers" with whom he entered the building did not arrive until about 12:50! Sgt. Gerald Hill met Sawyer at the front of the depository and asked him if he wanted to "go in and shake it down" (v7, p. 45), just after Hill and Patrolman James M. Valentine had radioed, at 12:48, that they were on their way to Elm and Houston. (CE 1974, p. 26)
I have to admit that--for about 20 years, despite the obvious holes in Sawyer's testimony--I had accepted that his depository search was prompted by--as he testified--"officers around there [that said] the shots had come from the fifth floor." That was the one element of his testimony which seemed genuine. Okay, maybe I should have known....
As late at 12:46, he was telling his dispatcher that he did not know "whether [the suspect] was [in the depository] in the first place". The dispatcher has to tell HIM, "All the information we have received, 9 [Sawyer's call number], indicates that it did come from about the fifth or fourth floor of that building". (radio logs) Yes, it was hectic in Dealey Plaza about that time--so hectic that Sawyer did not yet seem to have had time to talk to his "fifth floor" officers. He does not explain the lapse. Perhaps he was too embarrassed at being told what was going on at the scene by someone not at the scene at which he, Sawyer, was supposed to have been....
When Sawyer went upstairs, then, it's pretty clear now that he was acting not on the words of officers at the scene--whom he either discounted or had not even debriefed. He was acting on the dispatcher's words, to wit, "fourth" and "fifth". I had always wondered why he would willingly admit that he was looking for the fifth floor, only then to testify that he never got there. Did he WANT to play the fool?
It was Sawyer, not the helpful stranger, who was the one misdirecting. Misdirecting the Warren Commission: "I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor [which was actually the fourth], which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about. We had talked about the fifth floor. And we went back to the storage area and looked around and didn't see anything." (p317) First, why would he go "back to the storage area"--it was at the back of the building (diagram, harveyandlee.net), not facing Elm St., where the motorcade had passed. Only a truly magical bullet could have hit someone on Elm from the BACK of the depository.
Sawyer and the "officers around there" had not "talked about the fifth floor", at least not with each other. Sawyer was clueless re the source of the shooting until at least 12:46, about five minutes before he went in: "9... it did come from about the fifth or fourth floor". Sawyer's testimony makes it sound as if he were in and out of the building BEFORE he had heard from the dispatcher. It's this deception which allows him to testify that he thought the fourth floor was the fifth, and that he had been misled. But he had not been. The fourth--the passenger elevator's top floor--was one of the two floors the dispatcher had mentioned. Sawyer was not a fool. But his testimony was completely compromised.
If a person, that is, were intent on checking out the fourth and fifth floors of the depository for signs of shooting, it would make perfect sense to take the elevator by the entrance up to the fourth floor, then the stairs to the fifth. If we take Sawyer's word, he went up only to the fourth floor. But we see what Sawyer's word is worth. He continued up to the fifth, spurred by the dispatcher's information. More proof that Sawyer's team went as high as the fifth floor: One member of same, Valentine, later stated that he was "assigned to the fifth floor". (v25p914)
Why would Sawyer not want to admit that he checked out the fifth floor? Because, of course, he testified that, at 1:12, he had radioed, "We have found empty rifle hulls on the fifth floor...." (p322) And by "we", we now see that he meant he, Sawyer, and his team, personally, not just "somebody inside the building". (p322) It's getting to seem less likely that he made a mistake here, and more likely that some of the other evidence for a working sixth floor "nest"--witness, photographic--may ultimately prove to be more than a bit sketchy.
Note: The third member of the Sawyer team, Sgt. Hill, testified that he was there when Deputy Mooney shouted out the window re the hulls (v7, p. 46), and, as Mooney noted, the time was "approaching 1 o'clock" (v3, p. 285), which is verified by the fact that Sgt. Harkness radioed for the Crime Lab wagon at 12:59. (radio logs). Mooney saw, down below, Capt. Fritz arriving. (p. 284) Confoundingly, Hill testified that he "went into the building" WITH Fritz (v7, p. 45), rather than with Sawyer. According to Hill, then--who gave Sawyer a real run for his money re untrustworthiness--he was downstairs with Fritz at the same moment that he was upstairs with Mooney. Thus, there is a real background problem with that photo of Hill shouting out the sixth-floor window, just after 1 o'clock (Trask p523). At the least, let's stipulate that he could not have been there both when Mooney found the hulls AND when Fritz entered the building. "How can somebody be in two places at once?" ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban") Impossible....
In their respective testimonies, Hill and Sawyer may have said that, once inside the building, they went their own separate ways. But though they testified that, between them, they had checked out just about every other floor above the third, they somehow missed the fifth! Not impossible, but....
A final question: Where WAS Sawyer between 12:30 and about 12:45???
dcw
By Donald Willis 2/2019
2.bp.blogspot.com/-1qyKYuuunw8/VBiaAijSfDI/AAAAAAAAUSE/9ZLLpw5pIBk/s1600/Three%2BTramps2.jpg
hosting.photobucket.com/albums/b519/richardh11/SawyerArmPatchCrop_zpsaf7e186c.jpg
Famously, a complete stranger misdirected Insp. J.H. Sawyer when the latter first entered the depository. But it now seems that Sawyer was NOT misdirected, that he actually got to where he wanted to go, with or without the help of a stranger....
Sawyer might have been just about the most untrustworthy Warren Commission police witness. First, he seems to recall that Sheriff Decker came on the DPD radio at 12:30 and invoked the Texas School Book Depository. (v6, p. 316) Decker did not. "Then I went on down to the Texas Book Depository." (p. 317) But counsel David Belin advises Sawyer that "There doesn't appear to be anything pertaining to where the shots might have come from until... 12:34...." (p. 319) Sawyer agrees, then, that he did "not at least completely [leave his] car by 12:34pm". (p. 319) Maybe only a leg or two....
He then "immediately went inside the building" with "a couple of officers... [after other] officers around there [said that] the shots had come from the fifth floor...." (pp. 317, 319) Sawyer is again misleading counsel. The only officers who would have indicated "fifth floor" were Patrolman L.L. Hill, who had radioed, at 12:37, re shots from the "second window from the end... upper right hand corner" (DPD radio logs), and Sgt. D.V. Harkness, who radioed, at 12:36, re a witness who saw someone on the fourth or fifth floor--hard to make out the number on the radio-log tape. (See below re dispatcher's floor designation.) Hill was told by the dispatcher, at 12:38, to "report on down" to the depository. ("JFK First Day Evidence", p. 408) Meanwhile--after Harkness radioed--he took his witness down to the building. (v6, p. 310)
Sawyer's "fifth floor" officers, then, did not get down to the depository until, at least, about 12:40. He did not act on a 12:30 radio alert (strike one), nor on a 12:34 alert (strike two). Strike three: The "couple of officers" with whom he entered the building did not arrive until about 12:50! Sgt. Gerald Hill met Sawyer at the front of the depository and asked him if he wanted to "go in and shake it down" (v7, p. 45), just after Hill and Patrolman James M. Valentine had radioed, at 12:48, that they were on their way to Elm and Houston. (CE 1974, p. 26)
I have to admit that--for about 20 years, despite the obvious holes in Sawyer's testimony--I had accepted that his depository search was prompted by--as he testified--"officers around there [that said] the shots had come from the fifth floor." That was the one element of his testimony which seemed genuine. Okay, maybe I should have known....
As late at 12:46, he was telling his dispatcher that he did not know "whether [the suspect] was [in the depository] in the first place". The dispatcher has to tell HIM, "All the information we have received, 9 [Sawyer's call number], indicates that it did come from about the fifth or fourth floor of that building". (radio logs) Yes, it was hectic in Dealey Plaza about that time--so hectic that Sawyer did not yet seem to have had time to talk to his "fifth floor" officers. He does not explain the lapse. Perhaps he was too embarrassed at being told what was going on at the scene by someone not at the scene at which he, Sawyer, was supposed to have been....
When Sawyer went upstairs, then, it's pretty clear now that he was acting not on the words of officers at the scene--whom he either discounted or had not even debriefed. He was acting on the dispatcher's words, to wit, "fourth" and "fifth". I had always wondered why he would willingly admit that he was looking for the fifth floor, only then to testify that he never got there. Did he WANT to play the fool?
It was Sawyer, not the helpful stranger, who was the one misdirecting. Misdirecting the Warren Commission: "I went with a couple of officers and a man who I believed worked in the building. The elevator was just to the right of the main entrance, and we went to the top floor [which was actually the fourth], which was pointed out to me by this other man as being the floor that we were talking about. We had talked about the fifth floor. And we went back to the storage area and looked around and didn't see anything." (p317) First, why would he go "back to the storage area"--it was at the back of the building (diagram, harveyandlee.net), not facing Elm St., where the motorcade had passed. Only a truly magical bullet could have hit someone on Elm from the BACK of the depository.
Sawyer and the "officers around there" had not "talked about the fifth floor", at least not with each other. Sawyer was clueless re the source of the shooting until at least 12:46, about five minutes before he went in: "9... it did come from about the fifth or fourth floor". Sawyer's testimony makes it sound as if he were in and out of the building BEFORE he had heard from the dispatcher. It's this deception which allows him to testify that he thought the fourth floor was the fifth, and that he had been misled. But he had not been. The fourth--the passenger elevator's top floor--was one of the two floors the dispatcher had mentioned. Sawyer was not a fool. But his testimony was completely compromised.
If a person, that is, were intent on checking out the fourth and fifth floors of the depository for signs of shooting, it would make perfect sense to take the elevator by the entrance up to the fourth floor, then the stairs to the fifth. If we take Sawyer's word, he went up only to the fourth floor. But we see what Sawyer's word is worth. He continued up to the fifth, spurred by the dispatcher's information. More proof that Sawyer's team went as high as the fifth floor: One member of same, Valentine, later stated that he was "assigned to the fifth floor". (v25p914)
Why would Sawyer not want to admit that he checked out the fifth floor? Because, of course, he testified that, at 1:12, he had radioed, "We have found empty rifle hulls on the fifth floor...." (p322) And by "we", we now see that he meant he, Sawyer, and his team, personally, not just "somebody inside the building". (p322) It's getting to seem less likely that he made a mistake here, and more likely that some of the other evidence for a working sixth floor "nest"--witness, photographic--may ultimately prove to be more than a bit sketchy.
Note: The third member of the Sawyer team, Sgt. Hill, testified that he was there when Deputy Mooney shouted out the window re the hulls (v7, p. 46), and, as Mooney noted, the time was "approaching 1 o'clock" (v3, p. 285), which is verified by the fact that Sgt. Harkness radioed for the Crime Lab wagon at 12:59. (radio logs). Mooney saw, down below, Capt. Fritz arriving. (p. 284) Confoundingly, Hill testified that he "went into the building" WITH Fritz (v7, p. 45), rather than with Sawyer. According to Hill, then--who gave Sawyer a real run for his money re untrustworthiness--he was downstairs with Fritz at the same moment that he was upstairs with Mooney. Thus, there is a real background problem with that photo of Hill shouting out the sixth-floor window, just after 1 o'clock (Trask p523). At the least, let's stipulate that he could not have been there both when Mooney found the hulls AND when Fritz entered the building. "How can somebody be in two places at once?" ("Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban") Impossible....
In their respective testimonies, Hill and Sawyer may have said that, once inside the building, they went their own separate ways. But though they testified that, between them, they had checked out just about every other floor above the third, they somehow missed the fifth! Not impossible, but....
A final question: Where WAS Sawyer between 12:30 and about 12:45???
dcw