A man by the name of Howard Leslie Brennan became famous when
he, by pure chance, witnessed one of the most shocking events of the
20th century -- the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on
Friday, November 22, 1963.
Mr. Brennan watched as a gunman took aim at JFK from a sixth-floor
window of an old building (the Texas School Book Depository) across the
street from where Brennan had positioned himself to watch President
Kennedy's motorcade as it slowly zig-zagged its way through Dealey
Plaza.
Brennan would later identify the gunman he saw in the window as
24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, a minimum-wage warehouse worker who
was employed by the Book Depository Company.
And while it's true that Brennan did not immediately identify Oswald in
a police line-up on 11/22/63, it is also true that Mr. Brennan's
initial description of the assassin that he gave to the police (and in
his November 22nd sworn affidavit as well) was certainly a general
description that would not have EXCLUDED Lee Oswald......
"He was a white man in his early 30s, slender, nice looking, slender
and would weigh about 165 to 175 pounds." -- Howard L. Brennan;
November 22, 1963
And when Brennan testified in front of the Warren Commission in 1964,
he added a height estimate......
"To my best description, a man in his early thirties, fair complexion,
slender but neat, neat slender, possibly 5-foot-10, from 160 to 170
pounds." -- Howard L. Brennan; 1964
Sure, Brennan's first description of the assassin was not a perfect
description of Oswald. But it was also an eyewitness picture that does
not exonerate Oswald either. It's a description that "fits" Oswald in a
general sense -- a slender, fairly-young white man.
In fact, given the relatively-brief glimpse that Brennan had of the
gunman, his description actually matches Oswald fairly well in most
crucial respects. Because.....
1.) Oswald was a "white man".
2.) Oswald had a "fair complexion".
3.) Oswald was "slender".
4.) Oswald was 5'9" tall (so Brennan was off by just 1 inch here).
5.) Oswald was 24 years old (but, IMO, he looked older than 24).
6.) Oswald weighed an "estimated 150 pounds" (per his 11/24/63 autopsy
report). So, either one of Brennan's weight estimates wasn't too far
off either.
And when Brennan's initial description of the assassin is coupled with
his later positive identification of Lee Oswald as the gunman -- and
then is added to the very large batch of additional physical and
circumstantial evidence which shows Oswald to be guilty of killing
President Kennedy (and policeman J.D. Tippit too) -- it becomes quite
clear that the man who owned that rifle found on the Depository's 6th
Floor (a Mr. Lee H. Oswald) was the same man who was shooting at
President Kennedy on 11/22/63.
Given all the evidence in the case that corroborates Brennan's being
RIGHT when he identified Oswald as the TSBD sniper, the odds that
Brennan actually saw someone OTHER than Lee Harvey Oswald in that
window are extremely remote....to virtually non-existent.
And to the conspiracy theorists who think Brennan was lying when he
positively fingered Oswald after initially not being willing to do
that, I'd like to now submit a courtroom-like imitation of author and
former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who is a man who said this in 1986
when speaking of the JFK assassination:
"Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President
Kennedy. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming that he carried out
the tragic shooting all by himself. In fact, you could throw 80% of the
evidence against him out the window and there would still be more than
enough left to convince any reasonable person of his sole role in the
crime." -- Vincent T. Bugliosi
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[Vince Bugliosi "Mock Final Summation" courtroom
imitation turned on:]
Why didn't Howard L. Brennan positively identify Lee Harvey Oswald on
the day of the assassination, you ask? The reason for that, ladies and
gentlemen of the jury, is a reason that Mr. Brennan forthrightly gave
in his Warren Commission testimony and in a separate sworn affidavit,
dated May the 7th of 1964, wherein Mr. Brennan said, and I quote, "I
felt that my family could be in danger, and I, myself, might [be] in
danger". Unquote.
Howard Brennan, therefore, did not provide a positive I.D. of Lee
Oswald on November the 22nd, 1963, NOT because he didn't recognize
Oswald as the sniper in the Depository window....but, instead, because
he feared for his life, ladies and gentlemen of the jury! That's why!
And who among the twelve men and women seated in this jury box today
could honestly say that you, yourself, wouldn't have reacted the exact
same way as Mr. Brennan with respect to witnessing the murder of the
President? And fearing you might be the ONLY witness who was able to
say with a good deal of certainty that this man sitting at that defense
table, Lee Harvey Oswald, was the killer of our nation's President, you
clam up...but not out of indecisiveness...but, instead, out of fear and
concern for yourself and your family.
Because, ladies and gentlemen, if it HAD been out of indecisiveness on
Mr. Brennan's part as to whether he could or could not have identified
the defendant, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the President's assassin -- then
WHY did Mr. Brennan swear before Almighty God during his Warren
Commission testimony that he COULD positively identify this defendant
as the President's assassin?! Why would Mr. Brennan put himself through
that ordeal if it were not the TRUTH?!
In other words, why didn't Howard Brennan just simply take the easy way
out? He could have done so...very easily. He could have just kept his
mouth shut and refused to positively identify the defendant as the
person he saw firing a rifle from that sixth-floor window.
But he did NOT do that, ladies and gentlemen! And the reason he did not
do that is because he's an honest man, with integrity. And he KNEW he
had to come forward with this ultra-important information regarding the
murderer of President Kennedy -- even though he KNEW he would probably
be hounded by the critics for the rest of his life!
He still felt it important enough to come forward and tell the truth
about who he saw point that gun at the President on November the
twenty-second, 1963. And he felt it was important enough to swear out a
second official affidavit in May of 1964, wherein he repeated his
reasons for why he had not initially positively identified the
defendant as the President's assassin.
Did he HAVE to do those things, ladies and gentlemen?! The answer to
that question is an unequivocal 'No'! He didn't have a gun to his own
head, being FORCED to positively identify Lee Oswald as JFK's murderer.
And this defense team is 100% wrong when they attempt to spoon-feed you
the ridiculously-absurd lie that Mr. Brennan WAS somehow being FORCED
to twist his story into a convenient "Oswald's Guilty" tale of
deception.
And this unscrupulous defense team sitting at that counsel table across
this courtroom is also 100% wrong when they also assert the alternative
notion that Mr. Brennan deliberately lied when he told the Warren
Commission on March 24th, 1964, that he HAD, in fact, been able to
identify Lee Oswald as the man in the Sniper's window!
And this defense team has absolutely no proof to back up the despicable
allegation that Mr. Brennan would have done such a vile, rotten thing
as to intentionally give known-to-be-false information regarding the
investigation into the murder of the President of the United States!
These defense attorneys should be ashamed of themselves for even
suggesting such a thing to you folks here in open court! Because there
is not a shred of verifiable proof to back up the idea that Mr. Brennan
is anything but what he appeared to be on that witness stand -- and
that is an honest citizen of these United States, who came forth with
THE TRUTH concerning the man he saw shoot the President .... even when
he didn't have to come forth and tell that truth.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
[V.B. mode off]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A large percentage of the American population firmly believes that a
vast conspiracy of some sort was afoot in Dealey Plaza in November 1963
when JFK was murdered. And most of these people also believe that
multiple guns were used to assassinate America's 35th President.
Those conspiracy believers have faith in their belief that a
conspiracy took place in Dallas in '63. But there's one not-so-little
thing they do not have, and never did -- and that's the raw PHYSICAL
EVIDENCE to back up the conspiracy theories that they place their faith
in.
All of the ballistics evidence in the John F. Kennedy murder case
spells "Lee Oswald Was A Presidential Assassin", because every scrap of
"bullet" evidence in the case can either be conclusively traced to
Oswald's very own Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (#C2766), or is bullet
evidence that is consistent with coming from Oswald's rifle.
I'd then ask any conspiracist this question -- What are the odds of the
above occurring if President Kennedy had, in fact, actually been struck
by bullets from one or more additional guns on 11/22/63?
The odds must be virtually nil (in such a multi-gun scenario) of having
all of the bullet trace evidence leading back to only Lee Harvey
Oswald's one weapon, or even being generally "consistent" with having
come from Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano, instead of from other types of
guns.
And from the conspiracy theorists I've encountered over the years, a
goodly number of them do believe that other types of weapons (such as a
"Mauser" rifle, or a "Fireball" pistol, or other kinds of guns, even
low-powered weapons) were, indeed, being utilized in Dealey Plaza
during JFK's assassination by any number of assorted
(always-unidentified) "professional assassins".
And yet (per the CTers who buy into such nonsense), somehow, some way,
ALL of the trace evidence from those other non-Oswald guns simply
disappeared off the face of the Earth, without any
definitively-identifiable non-C2766 bullets or fragments entering the
official record of the JFK murder case. Mighty convenient for the
conspirators, huh?
And to think that all of those potential non-LHO bullets and fragments
were picked up and disposed of by evil plotters after the
assassination is a theory that belongs in a fairy-tale book.
(Especially when you consider how many ordinary doctors and nurses
could have easily seen and handled many of those unwanted bullets and
fragments at Parkland Hospital within just minutes of the shooting
itself.)
In a nutshell -- If things didn't boil down to that "Lone Assassin"
conclusion that the Warren Commission arrived at in 1964, we would
certainly have a lot more verifiable, usable stuff on the "Conspiracy"
table after 40-plus years of conspiracists trying day-in and day-out to
prove that a multi-gunmen plot ended the life of John F. Kennedy in
1963.
David Von Pein
August 2006
LINK TO ORIGINAL POST (OCTOBER 31, 2006)
