Post by Rob Caprio on Dec 7, 2018 22:23:50 GMT -5
All portions are ©️ Robert Caprio 2006-2025
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Howard Brennan is the key witness for the Warren Commission (WC) as he is the only one to supposedly identify Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) as the shooter. He was a very inconsistent person though and his testimony does not match what he told the police in some areas. He also said some things even the WC had to adjust to make his story sound legitimate.
Brennan claimed that he was standing in front of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) shortly before and during the shooting. He said he arrived at this spot between 12:22 and 12:24 p.m., and he noticed from this time until the motorcade arrived, that a man came and left the 6th floor window a "couple of times." The WC said that "Brennan saw the man fire the last shot and then disappear from the window" and "that within minutes of the assassination, Brennan described the man to the police."
According to the WC this description most probably led to the radio alert sent to police cars at approximately 12:45 p.m., which described the suspect as “white, slender, weighing about 165 pounds, about 5' 10", and in his early 30s."
Brennan swore to the WC that the man he saw firing from the window "was standing up and resting against the left window sill." Photos taken seconds after the assassination show this to be impossible as the window was not fully open, therefore, anyone firing from a standing position would have to fire through the glass.
Since the window pane was intact the WC was resigned to concede "although Brennan testified that the man in the window was standing when he fired the shots, most probably he was either kneeling or sitting." Thus the WC was contradicting its own star witness and it makes one wonder if he is wrong about this, what else could he have gotten wrong?
This was a major part of the scenario too as the WC concluded "that the half-open window, the arrangement of the boxes, and the angle of the shots virtually preclude a standing position."
The WC said it was understandable for Brennan to have believed that the man with the rifle was standing due to the lower window ledges in the TSBD as compared to other buildings, and from the street level this creates the impression that a person is standing. Brennan invalidated this explanation himself though as he swore the he saw the man in the window both stand up and sit down. Furthermore, he had testified that he saw the man "come and go a couple of times" so the WC's own attempt at explaining this is incorrect, unless the man walked around on his knees.
Even if Brennan had studied the man in the window for a long time it would have required considerable skill and experience to be able to approximate height and weight from a position that is 100 feet away, and where you are only seeing someone from the waist up if he were standing, but as the WC said he was kneeling or sitting. Therefore, how much would Brennan have seen?
Basically from the shoulders up. How can anyone not trained (and even then it is highly doubtful) in this area be able to guess the height, weight and build type based on the shoulders up?
Even after the WC determined he could have seen no more than half of the man they said, "Brennan could have seen enough of the body of a kneeling or squatting person to estimate his height." Captain Will Fritz disagreed as the WC said that when Fritz arrived at the TSBD he was told by an officer the general description they had gotten and he said, "...the description didn't mean much to me because you can't tell 5 or 6 floors up if a man is tall or short."
The question of why Brennan would look up there at all when the shooting began can be asked because he testified that he thought the first shot was a backfire.
Brennan: And after the President had passed my position...I heard this crack and I positively thought it was a backfire.
Q: You thought it was a backfire?
Brennan: Of a motorcycle. (III, p.143)
Then he said he thought a firecracker was thrown from the building, and yet he never defined or explained why he thought this, and this is what caused him to look up and see the last shot. He then said he was the only one who approached the police and tried to inform them that the attention was being paid to the wrong area (most of the people and police were going to the knoll) and that the shots came from the TSBD.
The supposed policeman he spoke to was never identified or called by WC. The officer supposedly took him to Forrest Sorrels and Brennan would allege he spoke with Sorrels on the front steps of the TSBD within ten minutes of the shooting. Sorrels contradicted him as he was in the lead car at the time of the assassination and went to Parkland Hospital (PH) with JFK and Governor John B. Connally (JBC). Only after he was there for awhile did he return to Dealey Plaza (DP).
Sorrels entered the back door of the TSBD, talked with an employee and then found Roy Truly, the superintendent for the building.
Sorrels wanted the names and addresses of all the employees as they could be witnesses. Even with haste Sorrels said he was gone at least 30 minutes (from 12:30 p.m.) so it is impossible for him to have been the man Brennan spoke with. He could not have met with Brennan before 1:00 p.m., yet the radio dispatch went out at 12:45 p.m. describing the man they were looking for.
It could have been a regular officer, but the police dispatch transcript shows another broadcast just prior to 12:45 p.m. by J. Herbert Sawyer.
Sawyer: The wanted person in this is a slender white male about thirty, five feet ten, one sixty five, carrying what looked like a 30-30 or some type of Winchester...
Headquarters: Any clothing description?
Sawyer: Current Witness can't remember.(VI, 321, XXI, 392)
Between 12:49 and 12:51 p.m. it will be noted again in the log that there is still no description of clothing. Who was the current witness? Sawyer did not know and testified this to the WC. Brennan was wearing a worker's metal helmet, yet Sawyer had trouble remembering him.
Sawyer: Except that he was – I don't remember what he was wearing. I remember that he was a white man and that he was not young or old. He was there. They are the only two things I can remember about him.
This couldn't be Brennan because he gave a clothing description to Sorrels (or whomever he really spoke with), but the radio dispatches mention no clothing description was available. Despite the obvious conclusion that Sawyer and Sorrels spoke with different people (Brennan told Sorrels he had light jacket or shirt) the WC gave Brennan the credit as being the source for the police broadcast.
For further proof the WC offered up Officer Barnett to say Brennan was the man who gave the description, but Barnett was not asked one question about this in his testimony. In fact, he said he spoke with a construction worker but the WC never asked him to identify Brennan. If it was Brennan, Barnett said all the man said was "that he had seen a man in the window with a rifle", but he gave no description.
The fact that the WC would rely on Brennan when his testimony was not provable for the most part says a lot. He is probably not the source for the 12:45 p.m. radio broadcast. If he had told the police that he saw a man firing from the TSBD, why did it take so long for them to seal the building off? Why did most of the people and the police head to the knoll and the overpass unabated? Why was the building not searched at once?
The final nail in Brennan's coffin comes when he admitted to the WC that he deliberately lied to the police about his observations on November 22, 1963. (III, 144 & 148)
i.ibb.co/FVBttc3/Brennan-Look-Up.png
Howard Brennan is the key witness for the Warren Commission (WC) as he is the only one to supposedly identify Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) as the shooter. He was a very inconsistent person though and his testimony does not match what he told the police in some areas. He also said some things even the WC had to adjust to make his story sound legitimate.
Brennan claimed that he was standing in front of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) shortly before and during the shooting. He said he arrived at this spot between 12:22 and 12:24 p.m., and he noticed from this time until the motorcade arrived, that a man came and left the 6th floor window a "couple of times." The WC said that "Brennan saw the man fire the last shot and then disappear from the window" and "that within minutes of the assassination, Brennan described the man to the police."
According to the WC this description most probably led to the radio alert sent to police cars at approximately 12:45 p.m., which described the suspect as “white, slender, weighing about 165 pounds, about 5' 10", and in his early 30s."
Brennan swore to the WC that the man he saw firing from the window "was standing up and resting against the left window sill." Photos taken seconds after the assassination show this to be impossible as the window was not fully open, therefore, anyone firing from a standing position would have to fire through the glass.
Since the window pane was intact the WC was resigned to concede "although Brennan testified that the man in the window was standing when he fired the shots, most probably he was either kneeling or sitting." Thus the WC was contradicting its own star witness and it makes one wonder if he is wrong about this, what else could he have gotten wrong?
This was a major part of the scenario too as the WC concluded "that the half-open window, the arrangement of the boxes, and the angle of the shots virtually preclude a standing position."
The WC said it was understandable for Brennan to have believed that the man with the rifle was standing due to the lower window ledges in the TSBD as compared to other buildings, and from the street level this creates the impression that a person is standing. Brennan invalidated this explanation himself though as he swore the he saw the man in the window both stand up and sit down. Furthermore, he had testified that he saw the man "come and go a couple of times" so the WC's own attempt at explaining this is incorrect, unless the man walked around on his knees.
Even if Brennan had studied the man in the window for a long time it would have required considerable skill and experience to be able to approximate height and weight from a position that is 100 feet away, and where you are only seeing someone from the waist up if he were standing, but as the WC said he was kneeling or sitting. Therefore, how much would Brennan have seen?
Basically from the shoulders up. How can anyone not trained (and even then it is highly doubtful) in this area be able to guess the height, weight and build type based on the shoulders up?
Even after the WC determined he could have seen no more than half of the man they said, "Brennan could have seen enough of the body of a kneeling or squatting person to estimate his height." Captain Will Fritz disagreed as the WC said that when Fritz arrived at the TSBD he was told by an officer the general description they had gotten and he said, "...the description didn't mean much to me because you can't tell 5 or 6 floors up if a man is tall or short."
The question of why Brennan would look up there at all when the shooting began can be asked because he testified that he thought the first shot was a backfire.
Brennan: And after the President had passed my position...I heard this crack and I positively thought it was a backfire.
Q: You thought it was a backfire?
Brennan: Of a motorcycle. (III, p.143)
Then he said he thought a firecracker was thrown from the building, and yet he never defined or explained why he thought this, and this is what caused him to look up and see the last shot. He then said he was the only one who approached the police and tried to inform them that the attention was being paid to the wrong area (most of the people and police were going to the knoll) and that the shots came from the TSBD.
The supposed policeman he spoke to was never identified or called by WC. The officer supposedly took him to Forrest Sorrels and Brennan would allege he spoke with Sorrels on the front steps of the TSBD within ten minutes of the shooting. Sorrels contradicted him as he was in the lead car at the time of the assassination and went to Parkland Hospital (PH) with JFK and Governor John B. Connally (JBC). Only after he was there for awhile did he return to Dealey Plaza (DP).
Sorrels entered the back door of the TSBD, talked with an employee and then found Roy Truly, the superintendent for the building.
Sorrels wanted the names and addresses of all the employees as they could be witnesses. Even with haste Sorrels said he was gone at least 30 minutes (from 12:30 p.m.) so it is impossible for him to have been the man Brennan spoke with. He could not have met with Brennan before 1:00 p.m., yet the radio dispatch went out at 12:45 p.m. describing the man they were looking for.
It could have been a regular officer, but the police dispatch transcript shows another broadcast just prior to 12:45 p.m. by J. Herbert Sawyer.
Sawyer: The wanted person in this is a slender white male about thirty, five feet ten, one sixty five, carrying what looked like a 30-30 or some type of Winchester...
Headquarters: Any clothing description?
Sawyer: Current Witness can't remember.(VI, 321, XXI, 392)
Between 12:49 and 12:51 p.m. it will be noted again in the log that there is still no description of clothing. Who was the current witness? Sawyer did not know and testified this to the WC. Brennan was wearing a worker's metal helmet, yet Sawyer had trouble remembering him.
Sawyer: Except that he was – I don't remember what he was wearing. I remember that he was a white man and that he was not young or old. He was there. They are the only two things I can remember about him.
This couldn't be Brennan because he gave a clothing description to Sorrels (or whomever he really spoke with), but the radio dispatches mention no clothing description was available. Despite the obvious conclusion that Sawyer and Sorrels spoke with different people (Brennan told Sorrels he had light jacket or shirt) the WC gave Brennan the credit as being the source for the police broadcast.
For further proof the WC offered up Officer Barnett to say Brennan was the man who gave the description, but Barnett was not asked one question about this in his testimony. In fact, he said he spoke with a construction worker but the WC never asked him to identify Brennan. If it was Brennan, Barnett said all the man said was "that he had seen a man in the window with a rifle", but he gave no description.
The fact that the WC would rely on Brennan when his testimony was not provable for the most part says a lot. He is probably not the source for the 12:45 p.m. radio broadcast. If he had told the police that he saw a man firing from the TSBD, why did it take so long for them to seal the building off? Why did most of the people and the police head to the knoll and the overpass unabated? Why was the building not searched at once?
The final nail in Brennan's coffin comes when he admitted to the WC that he deliberately lied to the police about his observations on November 22, 1963. (III, 144 & 148)