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

This is another sentence from the Hosty/Bookhout joint statement of November 23 concerning Oswald's first interrogation the day before, and it is inherently disingenuous:

"Oswald claimed to be on the first floor when President Kennedy passed the building."

If Oswald said that he was in the first floor lunch room eating when the President passed the building, why didn't they say so? The first floor was a big area, so surely he would have been more precise than that. He was being accused of killing the President of the United States, and his alibi meant everything. Since we know he didn't do it, surely he would have been as straightforward and forthcoming as possible with his alibi. After all: why not?

But the second thing that makes it disingenuous is that the natural and automatic follow-up question was, "Didn't you want to see the President and First Lady? Why weren't you outside with the others watching it or doing so from a window?"

The way Hosty and Bookhout put it, the inference is that Oswald was doing something unspecified on the first floor, and he wasn't interested in seeing the President and First Lady. But, they didn't bluntly say so, and they should have. They needed to. That's because it's unusual. It's unexpected. And you definitely want to know the reason why.

But, Hosty and Bookhout said nothing about it. They just said that he said that he was on the first floor. Why didn't they expound? I'll tell you why: it's because they didn't want to tell the truth, which was that Oswald said he was out with Bill Shelley in front, but nor did they want to lie and make up something because they knew there was a lot of risk in doing that. They did not want to get caught in a trap. So, shrewdly, they just said that Oswald said he was on the first floor, which was arguably true if you consider the doorway a part of the first floor. 

But, the point is that the very vague designation of "first floor" had to be more vague than whatever Oswald told them, and the omission of addressing why Oswald refrained from watching the motorcade is a major and glaring omission. And, it leads the astute observer to conclude that when Hosty and Bookhout said that Oswald said he was on the first floor during the motorcade, what they really meant was that he was "out with Bill Shelley in front." 

"