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

One of the most important witnesses in the JFK assassination was Carolyn Arnold. In fact, no one exceeds her in importance.

I'm talking about the Carolyn Arnold of 1963 not 1978. The Carolyn Arnold of 1978 told a non-credible story about seeing Oswald eating lunch in the 2nd floor lunch room. Oswald said he ate in the 1st floor lunch room, and others said he always ate there. It was the lunch room for the grunt workers, the order fillers. The 2nd floor was where the offices were, and it's where the office workers ate. The grunt workers went there to use the vending machines, but that's all; they ate in the domino room.

The Warren Commission never asked Carolyn Arnold to testify. The HSCA never asked Carolyn Arnold to testify.

And even in 1963, she wasn't allowed to make her own statement. An FBI agent wrote a statement based on what she told him. But, how do we know he didn't edit it? 

Why didn't they let Carolyn Arnold make an affidavit in her own writing, in her own words, like Lovelady and Shelley and others did? 

Here is the statement by Special Agent Richard E. Harrison:

Mrs. R. E. ARNOLD, Secretary, Texas School Book Depository, advised she was in her office on the second floor of the building on November 22, 1963, and left that office between 12:00 and 12:15 PM, to go downstairs and stand in front of the building to view the Presidential Motorcade. As she was standing in front of the building, she stated she thought she caught a fleeting glimpse of LEE HARVEY OSWALD standing in the hallway between the front door and the double doors leading to the warehouse, located on the first floor. She could not be sure that this was OSWALD, but said she felt it was and believed the time to be a few minutes before 12:15 PM.
She stated thereafter she viewed the Presidential Motorcade and heard the shots that were fired at the President; however, she could furnish no information of value as to the individual firing the shots or any other information concerning OSWALD, whom she stated she did not know and had merely seen him working in the building.
on 11/26/1963 at Dallas, Texas
File # DL 89–43
by Special Agent Richard E. Harrison

I accept everything but the times. First: It says she left her office between 12:00 and 12:15? No, no, no. Nobody would assign a block of 15 minutes to indicate the time she left her office. And when I say nobody, I mean not one person who is alive or ever lived. That was just Harrison's way to push the time back as early as possible. 

Carolyn Arnold was late in getting outside. She was one of the last to get out there. Nobody who was out there early reported seeing her. She wasn't like Lovelady and others who ate outside. She did her eating inside. Those time designations were Harrison's, not hers, and they were an attempt to reconcile what Carolyn Arnold saw with Oswald having enough time to get up to the 6th floor- although it doesn't leave enough time for him to retrieve his rifle, rebuild his rifle using a dime in place of a hollow ground screwdriver, set up the Sniper's Nest, etc. So, I would tell you that even if it was 12:15 that Carolyn Arnold saw Oswald at the doorway, it rules him out as the assassin. It exonerates him. But, I don't concede it. I think it was later, much later. More like 12:25. 

But, they got to Carolyn Arnold. In February 1964, the FBI returned to the TSBD to take statements again from the TSBD workers. What the pluck for? Why would they do that? They did it not so much to find out what they saw but to tell them what they saw and what they didn't see. And in Carolyn Arnold's case, what she didn't see was Lee Harvey Oswald. "I did not see Lee Harvey Oswald at the time President Kennedy was shot." 

Funny isn't it that right away everybody started referring to him as Lee Harvey Oswald? You can't tell me that in the six weeks that he worked there before the assassination that people knew him as Lee Harvey. "Where's Lee Harvey? Have you seen Lee Harvey? I've got to give something to Lee Harvey." And yet, we have a statement from 20 year old Carolyn Arnold in which she's referring to him as Lee Harvey Oswald? Why not say Lee Oswald? It's because the three name bit is how they refer to deranged assassins, starting with John Wilkes Booth. 

But wait! The FBI blew it! They absolutely threw it away!

In her second statement taken in February, which did not include any reference to her seeing Oswald, they admitted that she didn't get outside until 12:25.

They didn't think about the incongruity with the first statement which said 12:15. It's because they didn't need it to be 12:15 for the second statement since she wasn't claiming to see Oswald. So, they told the truth, that she didn't get outside until 12:25.

But, if you merge the first statement with the second statement, then you get to the truth: that Carolyn Arnold didn't get outside until 12:25, and it was then that she saw Oswald at the doorway. 

That's what happened. That's the truth. They scared her into retracting it in February 1964. They made sure she included an emphatic statement denying seeing Lee Harvey Oswald. What did they threaten her with? Who knows. What did they threaten Lovelady with to get him to finally start claiming to be Doorman? And that wasn't until Mary 1964. 

Carolyn Arnold. Billy Lovelady. Joe Molina. Buell Frazier. Victoria Adams. And more. It was rough being a TSBD employee after the JFK assassination. They expected you to tow the line- or else. Wish I'd have been there. Else it would have been, but not the way they were thinking.