Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

OIC Chairman Larry Rivera sent me an article by William Weston entitled: The Transplantation of the Texas School Book Depository. It's very good, and it's fair to say that Weston is the leading advocate of the TSBD- as a company- having a pivotal role in the JFK assassination. 

He pointed out that it was Roy Truly who went to Fritz to inform him that one of his employees was missing, Lee Harvey Oswald. But, there is something I do not understand about that. Truly had gone through the experience with Officer Marrion Baker of encountering with Oswald in the lunch room. So, did Truly inform Fritz that the missing employee was the very one he encountered with Baker in the lunch room less than 90 seconds after the last shot? It seems awfully important to me, and if Truly failed to inform Fritz that this missing employee was the same one he encountered with Baker just 70 seconds after the shooting, it's troubling.    

Weston discussed the TSBD moving from the Dal-Tex building to "the old Sexton building" (411 Elm) that summer, and he implied and even stated outright his belief that it was for the purpose of conducting the assassination and not any legitimate business purpose. The building was way over-sized for their business. (Note that they had another warehouse just a few blocks north.) The floors were oily from the previous tenant, a grocer, and it was ruining the books. Didn't they know that when they moved in there? It seems like they would have noticed it right away and demanded that the landlord fix it. Who rents a building only to have to replace the flooring? 

There were only 15 "warehouse men" who worked at the TSBD at 411 Elm, who were under the command of Bill Shelley. And unlike other workers, they were all paid in cash. It turns out, we know most of them. Jack Doughterty, Eddie Piper, James Jarman, Harold Norman, Bonnie Ray Williams, Lee Oswald, Carl Jones, Roy Lewis, Danny Arce, Wes Frazier, and Charles Givens. The only ones I don't recognize are Troy West and Frankie Kaiser, and Kaiser wasn't there that day. Troy West was. He was an older guy: 57, and he worked in the mail room. He claimed to remain in the mail room eating lunch and never went outside, and he claimed that he heard no shots or suspicious noises. Mostly, Belin tried to lead him to imply that Oswald stole wrapping paper from the mail room to construct his bag for the rifle. As if Oswald made this bag:

How ridiculous. And how likely is it that Oswald would have had that big with him on November 21 and Frazier not notice it on the way to Irving? And how likely is it that Frazier would describe it as a "grocery bag"? This whole bag thing is a preposterous element of the story. 

But, recognize that every other one of those warehouse men ended up having a pivotal story to tell, and I find that weird in itself. Some of them, including Frazier and Arce, only started working there shortly before Oswald did. 

Then, Weston devoted a lot of attention to the FBI statement (of Hosty or Bookhout or both of them) which stated that Oswald said he interacted with Shelley out in front of the TSBD when he left to go home. Oh, how I wish I could talk to Weston because he needs to be enlightened about this. Oswald never said that. What he said was that he was "out with Bill Shelley" DURING the motorcade. It wasn't after; it was during.  Hosty and Bookhout flat-out lied. Why? Because they could hardly admit that Oswald turned in an air-tight alibi of being with Shelley during the shooting. It was air-tight just from him knowing that Shelley was out there. He wouldn't have made it up or gone with a hunch. He cited someone who was there: Bill Shelley, and he knew from being there himself. If Westin only knew that it was IMPOSSIBLE for Oswald to have encountered Shelley at 12:33 out front because Shelley left immediately with Lovelady for the railway area- as part of the throng which descended on that area. That was immediately after the assassination, and I mean within the first minute. And they never returned to the front. 

This particular lie- about when Oswald encountered Bill Shelley out front- is an example of a subtle lie that they could tell and get away with precisely because it was close enough to the truth. All they did was nudge it forward a little bit. But, what a difference it made. 

Weston, perhaps more than anyone else, has accused the TSBD as a company of being directly involved in the assassination, the idea being that the book distributing was really just a front for their clandestine activities. He notes that in the summer of 1963, presumably to justify their expansion into this big, humongous building, they increased their stock of books tremendously. He wondered out loud about the economics of it. But perhaps the economics of this business was not like that of regular businesses. 

Weston pointed out that the Warren Commission wound up with no documents from the TSBD except for a few piddling things like pay stubs for Oswald. Not a single letter, memo, or directive.